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Keywords to Understand the Belt and Road Initiative
Keywords provide an insight into the Belt and Road Initiative
  ·  2017-09-04  ·   Source: NO. 36 SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

The China Academy of Translation, a research institute affiliated with the China International Publishing Group, the country's leading international publisher, has analyzed prevailing terms concerning the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and translated them into a number of foreign languages. In each issue, Beijing Review presents some of these keywords to help readers know more about the initiative.

United Nations: Silk Road Initiative

The Silk Road Initiative was first discussed in the 1960s. The initial plan was to build 14,000 km of railway linking Singapore and Turkey. Many governments and organizations supported the initiative, with the United Nations playing the driving role.

The United Nations Development Programme formally launched the Silk Road Initiative in February 2008. Officials from 19 countries including China, Russia, Iran and Turkey signed letters of intent in Geneva, Switzerland, committing to invest $43 billion in the ensuing years to reinvigorate the ancient Silk Road and other Eurasian land arteries over a combined distance of 7,000 km.

A total of 230 projects were planned from 2008 to 2014 to improve the infrastructure along the ancient trade routes and open a number of economic corridors. The ultimate goal was to bring a renaissance to the ancient routes, providing new development opportunities for Central Asian and East European countries and enabling inland areas to benefit from globalization.

Russia: Eurasian Union

The idea of a Eurasian Union was first proposed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an op-ed in Izvestia on October 5, 2011. It aims to integrate the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States into a customs and economic union and ultimately to build a supra-national

alliance of sovereign countries.

Russia's plan is to start with six countries (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), then expand the Eurasian Union to include all former Soviet republics, and beyond that, to cover the Asia-Pacific region.

A central component of the Eurasian Union, the Eurasian Economic Union was launched in 2015. Free flow of products, services, capital and labor within the union is envisaged by 2025, and the final goal is to broaden the union into one similar to the European Union, with a unified market benefiting some 170 million people.

The prospects for aligning the Eurasian Union framework with the Belt and Road Initiative appear promising. The latter will buttress Russia's efforts to shift the center of gravity of its economic development to Siberia and the Far East, to bridge the gap between its Asian and European parts, and to propel the process of building a fledgling Eurasian Union.

Kazakhstan: 'Bright Road' Initiative

In November 2014, President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan announced an economic policy called "Bright Road," intended to spur the country's economic growth by means of large-scale investment.

The "Bright Road" Initiative plans to spend $9 billion over a period of three years on transport, logistics, industrial and energy infrastructure, public facilities, water and heating supplies, housing, public services, and small and medium-sized enterprises. The huge investment will upgrade Kazakhstan's transport network and make the country a global transit corridor connecting markets in China, Europe and the Middle East.

Kazakhstan's decision-makers expect that the initiative will double the freight transported through the country to China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe to 33 million tons per year. They and their Chinese counterparts agree that the "Bright Road" Initiative and the Belt and Road Initiative are complementary and mutually reinforcing. They have expressed a strong desire to seek a better alignment of the two, and practical measures are being taken in this regard.

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com

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