High-quality Belt and Road cooperation: The platform for action

China and its partners have taken steady steps to jointly pursue high-quality cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since the start of 2024.

As long whistles echoed through the air, China-Europe freight trains left stations of cities across China, including Xi'an, Hefei, Lianyungang, and Chifeng, embarking on their first trips of the year.

A Lancang-Mekong Express freight train running on the China-Laos Railway entered China from the Mohan railway port in southwest China's Yunnan province, bringing a new shipment of Thai durians to the Chinese market.

China and the Maldives signed cooperation documents, agreeing to focus on pursuing high-quality Belt and Road cooperation in the efforts to better synergize their development strategies.

The Phoenix Park Industrial Estate, a flagship project of China-Trinidad and Tobago cooperation under the BRI, was officially inaugurated, marking the leap-frog cooperation between the two countries from trade and infrastructure construction to industrial docking and upgrading.

In the autumn of 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping, with profound insights into historical development and a deep understanding of the trend of the times, put forward the BRI.

The major initiative is a creative development that takes on and carries forward the spirit of the ancient silk routes – two of the great achievements in human history and civilization. It enriches the ancient spirit with the zeitgeist and culture of the new era.

By proposing the BRI, Xi expressed the hope to put into practice the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind, providing a practical platform and blazing a trail for creating an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity.

Turning the BRI into a road of peace, prosperity, openness, green development and innovation and a road that brings together different civilizations is highly consistent with the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Over the past decade or so, China and its partners have carried out high-quality cooperation under the BRI, which has become the world's most broad-based and largest platform for international cooperation.

Adhering to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, upholding the concepts of open, green, and clean cooperation, and following a high-standard, people-centered, and sustainable approach, the BRI stages a symphony played by all partners, which features the "hard connectivity" in infrastructure, "soft connectivity" in rules and standards, and "heart connectivity" with the people of the partner countries.

The BRI transcends differences between civilizations, cultures, social systems, and stages of development. It has opened up a new path for exchanges among countries, and established a new framework for international cooperation. The initiative represents humanity's joint pursuit of development for all.

Practices have fully proven that the BRI, with its ultimate goal to build a community with a shared future for mankind, has proposed a range of regional and bilateral initiatives on building communities of shared future in relevant fields, effectively contributing to world peace, security, and common development.

Belt and Road cooperation is based on the belief that flame runs high when everyone adds wood to the fire and that mutual support can get people far. Such cooperation seeks to deliver a good life not only to people of just one country, but to people in other countries as well. It promotes connectivity, mutual benefit, common development, cooperation and win-win outcomes.

The BRI has created more than 3,000 cooperative projects, galvanized nearly $1 trillion of investment, and helped lift about 40 million people out of poverty, facilitating the delivery of an array of national landmarks, livelihood projects, and milestones of cooperation. It has profoundly demonstrated to all parties that humankind is a community with a shared future.

Signature projects of the BRI, including the China-Laos Railway, Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, and Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, have effectively promoted connectivity for relevant countries and regions.

The establishment of Luban workshops, programs for the introduction of Juncao technology and hybrid rice technology, as well as other "small yet smart" people-centered programs launched under the BRI, have continuously benefited people of relevant countries.

These vivid stories about how Belt and Road cooperation has turned deep chasm into thoroughfare, land-locked countries into land-linked countries, and places of underdevelopment into lands of prosperity have demonstrated that win-win cooperation is the sure way to success in launching major initiatives that benefit all.

Facts have shown that the BRI has broadened the consensus on building a community with a shared future for mankind and accumulated valuable experience for its realization.

As the world faces severe challenges including insufficient development momentum and a widening development gap, it is more imperative than ever before that the international community pools consensus and strength for openness and cooperation so as to advance universally beneficial and inclusive development through joint efforts.

In his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) held in October 2023, Xi announced eight major steps China would take to support the joint pursuit of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, setting a new direction, opening new vistas, and generating new momentum into international cooperation under the BRI.

By joining hands with various parties to comprehensively implement the outcomes of the third BRF, improve the quality of cooperation and explore more areas of cooperation for high-quality development of the BRI, China will inject new impetus into the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Building a community with a shared future for mankind is a beautiful goal, that requires generations of efforts to achieve, and demands concerted efforts, confidence, determination, breadth of vision, openness of mind, action, and a sense of responsibility from all countries.

As China advances national rejuvenation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization, it will align its own development with that of the world, and align its people’s interests with those of all peoples, while working together with various parties to pursue high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, thus jointly building a community with a shared future for mankind.