context: Once solely a government project, Chinese academia has worked to incorporate the Belt and Road Initiative as a field for intellectual debate. Sohu's project is unique in the way in incorporates experts from varied fields and backgrounds.
To be properly understood, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) needs its own original international relations theory, reports Sohu News. Sohu News collected views from experts working on a major National Social Science Fund project on ‘BRI Strategy and Xinjiang’s Social Development’.
Zhao Lei 赵磊 Central Party School Institute of International Strategy BRI Institute director writes that BRI
- has three levels of goals
- economic diplomacy's top-level design
- building a community of common destiny
- participation in global governance and provision of public goods
- seeks to connect the periphery to the core
- is ‘decentralised’ and ‘unpolarised’
- unlike the US-centric alliance system
- allows for dissemination of different cultural values
Zhao Ke 赵柯 Central Party School Institute of International Strategy associate professor
- BRI seeks to provide a new and more durable impetus for global economic growth through expanding markets and improving regional specialisation
Xiong Jie 熊洁 Central Party School Institute of International Strategy associate professor
- BRI has surpassed traditional economic growth models of market expansion by emphasising technological and system innovation and progress, within and between countries
Zhao Minghao 赵明昊 CPC Central Committee External Affairs Department China Center for Contemporary World Studies researcher
- BRI acknowledges that the world will be ‘multi-centre’, not multipolar, by
- affirming and safeguarding sovereignty
- promoting cooperation
- respecting the diversity of civilisations and international development models
Cao Feng 曹峰 Tsinghua University Center for Social Risk Assessment in China deputy director
- BRI is an effective strategy to create a sense of unity for all Chinese, in the mainland and overseas
- China should introduce measures to increase the Chinese diaspora's sense of identification with the mainland, because
- overseas Chinese, especially along the BRI, are an invaluable source of support for the initiative and community of common destiny
- the ‘China dream’ is for all Chinese people
Yuan Jian 袁剑 Minzu University Institute of Global Ethnologies and Anthropology associate professor
- BRI is a future-oriented framework, aiming to eliminate colonialism and hegemony
- BRI should take into account each country's needs for equality, security and religious and civilisational differences
- China must pay attention to overseas Chinese and issues of identity
Yang Mei 杨梅 Xinjiang University School of Politics and Administration associate professor
- China is crucial to the next step of globalization
- despite challenges from the current ‘anti-globalisation’ movement, China is promoting a new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and cooperation
- BRI’s global governance framework has become clear, and emphasises building a community of common destiny to counter anti-globalization movements and represent the development needs of all nations
Zheng Liang 郑亮 Xinjiang University School of Journalism and Communication associate professor
- geopolitics and US containment have caused China to review its Silk Road policy
- BRI is the means to achieve economic development in China’s western regions
Tang Jian 唐健 Central Party School Institute of International Strategy assistant researcher
- the community of common destiny is China’s solution to problems created by the US-led international order
- the China solution is based on
- diversity
- a global vision
- the Western solution is based on
- exclusivity
- greed
- disappearance of diversity
- the China solution is based on
- BRI can help achieve a diversity-based international order