Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, capital of China on April 26, 2019 (XINHUA)

Editor's Note: The Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was held in Beijing on April 26. Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the opening ceremony. The following is an edited excerpt of his speech:

Goals and achievements

The Belt and Road Initiative aims to encourage connectivity among participating countries and deepen practical cooperation whilst working to tackle the key challenges that mankind presently faces. These goals are orchestrated so as to realize mutual benefits and shared developments between cooperative economies.

Under the joint efforts of all parties, a framework of "six corridors and six channels serving multiple countries and ports" has been formed and a large number of cooperation projects have landed.

So far more than 150 countries and international organizations have signed cooperation documents on the Belt and Road Initiative with China.

The development of the Belt and Road Initiative pioneered the opening of a new space for the world’s economic growth. The initiative has also created a platform to increase international trade and investment whilst making use of practices to enhance global economic governance in a way that improves people’s livelihoods throughout the world.

Encouraging connectivity

Infrastructure is the cornerstone of connectivity and a bottleneck of development confronting many countries. Building high-quality infrastructure that is sustainable, resilient, inclusive, accessible and reasonably priced could help countries give full play to their advantages in resources and better integrate into the global supply, industrial and value chains for interconnected development.

China encourages multilateral financial institutions and financial institutions from different countries to invest in and finance the Belt and Road Initiative, and will stimulate third-party market cooperation to achieve mutual benefits for the parties involved.

We need to promote cultural and social exchanges among the countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. To realize this objective, in-depth cooperation is called for in education, science, culture, sports, tourism, health care, archaeology amongst other areas. To form an interactive communication flow between various countries, the exchanges between parliaments, political parties, and NGOs should be reinforced, while more frequent communications between women, youth and the disabled should be strengthened.

We will continue to fund the Silk Road Chinese government scholarship program, and activities like the International Youth Forum on Creativity and Heritage and the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp will go on.

To stimulate the sharing of wisdom and power between contributing countries, China will develop new mechanisms to promote shared progress, such as the creation of a Belt and Road International Think Tank cooperation committee and a Belt and Road news network.

A total of 10,000 representatives of political parties, think tanks and NGOs from countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative will be invited to China for exchanges in the next five years.

Reform and opening up

China has the world's biggest and fastest-growing middle-income group, and has earned its reputation as the "global market" and "global factory" of the world.

To meet the growing demand for material and cultural needs whilst increasing the options available for consumers, we need to reduce tariffs and remove non-tariff barriers, opening the Chinese market wider to the rest of the world and in turn to embrace high-quality goods imported from all over the world.

We do not seek trade surplus and will import more high-quality farm produce, manufactured goods and services in a bid to promote balanced trade.

Innovation and intellectual property rights protection

Innovation produces productivity, which makes companies competitive and countries prosperous. We need to keep up with the trend of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, jointly seizing opportunities created by digital, network and smart development, and exploring new technologies, new forms, and new models of development, so as to build a digital and innovative Silk Road by fostering new growth drivers and a new development pathways.

China will engage in innovation under the Belt and Road Initiative with all parties by pursuing four major initiatives, namely scientific and people-to-people exchanges, joint research labs, technology park cooperation and technology transfer.

The country will create a business environment that respects the value of knowledge, comprehensively improve the legal system for intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and intensify law enforcement. It will strengthen the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of foreign IPR proprietaries, eliminate forced technology transfer, improve trade secrets protection and crack down on IPR infringements according to the law.