The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing from May 14 to 15 has sparked heated discussions in and outside the venue on the initiative of the century and on the course of globalization.[Special coverage]
The following are some comments from intellectual and business circles around the globe:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president of the Schiller Institute think tank in Germany
-- The Belt and Road Initiative will continue to grow and become a true world land bridge. It not only brings economic prosperity to all participating countries, but also serves as a true basis for a peace order for the 21st century.
Joseph Matthews, director of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Education Center
-- Without peace, economic development of any region or country is impossible. The Belt and Road Initiative is the beginning of a new era of development in the region, and in the future this road will be known as the Peace Road.
Marc Uzan, executive director of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee
-- With the help of new financial institutions, the "One Belt, One Road" initiative opens a new chapter in the course of globalization. This initiative is an extremely important change of the global governance.
Jean-Francois Di Meglio, president of the Asia Center think-tank in Paris
-- The "One Belt, One Road" initiative can be seen as a reversal of the course of history with a Chinese power that is not only interested in its own development, but which asks what it can do for the rest of the world.
Ahmed Sallam, an expert in Chinese affairs and former Egyptian diplomat
-- The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative exceeded local limits and extended to provide extremely good benefits to a lot of states.
Luigi Gambardella, president of ChinaEU, a business-led international association in Brussels
-- The announcement (made by Chinese President Xi Jinping) of future investment plans was once again a firm commitment that China will continue to dedicate substantial resources to the success of the plan. This was instrumental to counter-argue the beliefs of those skeptics who feel that the investment levels in the countries along the road might have diminished over the past year.
Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of Chile-based Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
-- For me, it's a speech about the change of an era. Xi just made a very innovative proposal ... which has a panorama perspective, combining the objectives of all countries.
Suresh Sharma, executive director of the Kathmandu-based private think-tank National Institute of Strategic Studies
-- Nepal, a birthplace of Buddha and an apostle of peace, always has remained an admirer of this noble Belt and Road Initiative to bring peace, prosperity and brotherhood for the entire world.
Rehman Sobhan, chairman of Bangladeshi think-tank Center for Policy Dialogue
-- Huge resources are readily available with China and beyond. Asia is now poised to create a more integrated global order, the center of which is no longer in the Atlantic region, but in the Asia region.
