Overblik over præsentation af Kinas Silkevejspolitik “Et Bælte, En Vej”
under Boao Forum for Asien konference

China Presents Action Plan for `One Belt, One Road’

March 30 (EIRNS) — This year’s Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) became
a central focus for China’s mobilization around the “One Belt,
One Road” project for Asia and the world. In his speech on March
28th, President Xi Jinping had traced the development of the
Asia-Pacific region during the last 70 years from the end of the
Anti-Fascist War and the founding of the United Nations, to the
historic Bandung conference 60 years ago, where Chinese leader
Zhou Enlai and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru had laid out the Five
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, including non-interference in
the internal affairs of other nations. “This year we will witness
the completion of the ASEAN Community,” Xi Said. With the
development of the two new Silk Road projects, China hopes to
create by 2020 an East Asian Economic Partnership.
Boao drew 48 nations this year with a much greater
participation of world leaders, attracted by the vision of the
New Silk Road. Most significantly, China used the opportunity to
present a broad and detailed program of how they envision the
development of their “One Belt, One Road.”
As they did so, the number of countries applying to be
founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
(AIIB) rose to 45, with Sweden and Egypt being among those
announcing themselves today. Among major economies remaining
outside, are {only} the United States, Canada, and Japan. One
investment group in China estimated that the AIIB’s $100 billion
capital, “properly borrowed against” with bond issuances, could
provide $1.3 trillion in financing.
“This is the development we have been pushing for,” Lyndon
LaRouche noted today, “which Helga and I have been pursuing for a
long time.” He characterized it as “far, far greater than a
Marshall Plan.”
The “Action Plan” is a grandiose vision of trade and
development which makes the stalemated PNAC imperial vision of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pale in comparison. And the
principles of the “One Belt, One Road” laid out in Xi’s speech —
where the underlying principle is the mutual respect shown to
each country’s core interests and choice of development paths —
contrast starkly with the imperial unipolar world that lies at
the basis of the TPP notion.
Entitled “Visions and Actions on Jointly Building Belt and
Road,” the document, issued on March 28, detailed the various
aspects of the envisioned process, involving economy, finance,
culture and security. The “framework” of the project includes
linking Asia, Europe and Africa by means of the Silk Road
Economic Belt through China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe, a
link through Central Asia and West Asia to the Persian Gulf and
the Mediterranean, and a sea-land corridor linking China with
Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean, and through the
South China Sea to the South Pacific. Further corridors will be
developed through China-Mongolia-Russia, China-Central Asia-West
Asia and China-Indochina Peninsula. There will also be a
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and a
Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor.
Economic priorities involve coordinating, enhancing and
accelerating trade and transportation, eliminating obstacles on
the borders with regard to customs and multimodal transport,
promoting connectivity of energy infrastructure, enhancing
cooperation in oil and gas, in hydropower and in nuclear energy,
and collaboration among the nations in developing new industries,
setting up science centers and cross-border economic and
investment zones.
The “Road and Belt” will also be supported through a number
of new financial institutions, the action plan continues: the
AIIB, the BRICS Bank, the Silk Road Fund. A financial arm will be
established in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and
cooperation will be strengthened in the China-ASEAN Interbank
Association and SCO Interbank Association. China will also allow
companies and financial institutions with good credit ratings to
issue renminbi bonds in China for their financing needs. They
will also create a regional financial risk early-warning system,
and create an exchange and cooperation mechanism for addressing
cross-border risks and crisis.
The cultural exchanges are equally important with the
promotion of student exchanges between the “Belt and Road”
countries promoting tourism along the Belt and Road as well as
sports exchanges; cooperation in the area of medicine and in the
control of epidemics and other medical emergencies in the region
as well. Joint labs and research centers will be set up to
promote innovation in science.
The report goes on to indicate the effects this will have in
the continued “reform and opening up” policy in China, including
the development of the northwest region with Xian in the center
and the northeast region with a focal point in Harbin and
corridors going north into Russia and Mongolia.
In addition there will be a development of a western
corridor from the Yangtze Delta region along the Yangtze River to
Chongqing and to Chengdu, which has become a transportation hub
along the Central Asian Economic Belt. Such a Yangtze River
Corridor would also include such inland cities as Changsha,
Nanchang and Hefei, the site of the China Science and Technology
University and the Chinese fusion program. The action plan also
indicates accelerating cooperation between the upper and middle
reaches of the Yangtze and their counterparts along Russia’s
Volga River. [wcj]