People’s Daily Online: 2000 years ago the ancient Silk Road brought China and Egypt together. Now what influence does the “One Belt and One Road” initiative have in China-Egypt economic ties?

Magdy Amer: If we go back to history, we find that China and Egypt were the birth places of the old Silk Road. Indeed, the Silk Road went through other countries such as India, Turkey, Iran and so on, but Egypt and China were the two ends of that road. If you go through history, that Silk Road was active more than 2000 years ago. The Egyptian royal families and elites were using Chinese silk. How that silk reached Egypt—through the Silk Road. That was a commercial road actually. And along the road there were people-to-people and cultural exchanges as well. Both the Silk Road on land and the Maritime Silk Road existed more than 2000 years ago between Egypt and China. So today’s idea is very charming, especially to Egypt, because we have witnessed the Silk Road from its early beginning.

Nowadays it’s a very good opportunity for Egypt and China. If we look at the economic part, for example, the area of the Suez Canal. There will be huge development projects in the Suez Canal area -- 200 kilometers long on the two sides of the Canal. China is the biggest user of the Canal. China is much interested in those projects. Chinese companies want to have storage areas and manufacturing areas and transit areas for Chinese products and so on. This is part of the Maritime Silk Road. There is an understanding between Egypt and China on that issue. We welcome Chinese companies to those projects and of course China welcomes that very much. And this major project is even included in the documents of China-Arab States Cooperation Forum regarding to the reviving the ancient Maritime Silk Road. This is a very clear example of how China and Egypt can benefit from each other. This is a clear and concrete project. Now this major project in this vast area will come into existence very soon. Because Egypt will disclose the project in general of this area and it will open to all companies to go into and to bid for this project.

People’s Daily Online: What about the cultural exchanges?

Magdy Amer: From the cultural perspective. China and Egypt are the two oldest civilizations. We have a lot to do together. We are actually doing together in so many cultural activities. Every month we have Egyptian culture groups visiting China. And we have Chinese activities there in Egypt. Chinese groups go there nearly every week. Following the initiative of Chinese President, we hosted, here in this embassy, two exhibitions. The first one with the Silk Road Committee, a Chinese NGO, in March and in the near future we will organize exhibitions there in Egypt. The Chinese Silk Road Committee will go to Egypt to make an exhibition. In June we hosted another exhibition with All China Women's Federation. Actually this is an example of cultural exchanges between China and Egypt. Now if these initiatives in the cultural dimension come into existence, we believe that it will be important to have a kind of cultural forum for the Silk Road countries.

So that’s why we are saying that we need to convene a meeting for those countries so that we can sit together to look at the ideas. The main idea is there - the Chinese idea. But we need a kind of coordination between us in the economic aspect and to look at certain projects. We must also think about initiating a forum for cultural exchanges. Probably some other ideas will follow and other countries will participate and offer new ideas and contributions. So we need to cooperate in order to turn that idea into reality. That’s what we really need to do.