China pools strength on Belt and Road strategy(2)

The fund will comply with market rules and the international order of finance, welcoming participation by domestic and overseas investors, such as the China-Africa Development Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Jin said.

NATIONAL STRATEGY

The Belt and Road initiatives are also an important part in the government work report, delivered by Premier Li Keqiang to the nation's lawmakers at the opening of the parliamentary session.

Li said China will work with the countries linked by the initiatives to develop them.

"We will move faster to strengthen infrastructure connectivity with our neighbors, simplify customs clearance procedures and build international logistics gateways," Li said.

The government work report highlights strategies such as the Belt and Road as key in terms of stabilizing growth while the country further opens and improves the economy, said Zhao Yang, chief China economist of Nomura, Japan's leading financial institution.

As such, the report encourages Chinese firms to actively participate in overseas infrastructure investment and to export machinery equipment.

Li Chunhong, a deputy to the NPC and head of the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said the south Chinese province has completed formulating the implementation plan for the Belt and Road strategy.

Li said Guangdong has selected a number of significant projects to support the implementation of the strategy. Included were a 5-million-tonne oil refining project invested by a private company of Guangdong in Myanmar; a power plant project invested by China Southern Power Grid in Vietnam; and a few banana plantations in the Southeast Asian countries.

Li said Guangdong is playing a vital role and in a good position in the construction of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The transaction between Guangdong and ASEAN has exceeded 100 billion yuan.

A map covering the major countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt has been published this month to push the plan.

According to the Shaanxi Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, the atlas includes geographic, transportation, culture and economic information covering 16 countries and regions including China, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkey.

The atlas is the first comprehensive profile of the major countries along the silk road.

"People on the silk road are 'family members', and the frequent exchanges between them will promote business and trade," said Chen Zixuan, a NPC deputy from Fujian province, another gateway of the road.

The province has established a free trade zone to boost cooperation between nations.

Zhao Yang expects a detailed roadmap of the initiatives this month. He says the plan should help mitigate the severe overcapacity problem in upstream industries and boost overseas investment, led by policy financial institutions and large State-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Moreover, it could also promote the internationalization of the Chinese currency Renminbi, Zhao added.