Pe 3 aprilie, este publicat un articol semnat al domnului Ambasador Han Chunlin intitulat “Shared Opportunities, Shared Future - Belt and Road Cooperation Ushering into a New Stage of High-Quality Development” în publicația românească “Nine O’Clock”. Textul integral este următorul:
In March 2013, facing the major topic of “what kind of world to build and how to build the world”, President Xi Jinping proposed the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind. In September and October that year, he raised the initiatives of joining with others to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st century Maritime Silk Road. The Belt and Road Initiative is the creative development that takes on and carries forward the spirit of the ancient Silk Road. Over the past decade, the Belt and Road cooperation has extended from the Eurasian continent to Africa and Latin America. China has signed more than 200 BRI cooperation agreements with over 150 countries and 30 international organizations across five continents. To promote greater connectivity through BRI cooperation, we have continued to facilitate policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties, by orienting towards “hard connectivity” in infrastructure, bolstering “soft connectivity” through harmonized rules and standards, and strengthening people-to-people bonds. The BRI is founded on the principles of “extensive consultation, joint contributions, shared benefits”, committed to open, green and clean cooperation towards inclusive and sustainable development, and aims at the objectives of high-standard, sustainability and better lives. It has turned blueprints into reality and has become the most popular international public goods and the largest platform for international cooperation in the world today. China and other parties have jointly carried out more than 3,000 practical projects, attracting nearly 1 trillion US dollars in investment, creating more than 420,000 jobs for the partner countries and lifting nearly 40 million people out of poverty. At the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation last year, President Xi Jinping announced eight major steps China would take next, marking a new stage of joint pursuit of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.
The high-quality Belt and Road cooperation has become a vivid practice of building a community with a shared future for mankind. Both China and Romania are beneficiaries of economic globalization. As the world enters a new stage marked by turbulence and transformation, the contradictions between growth and distribution, between capital and labor, between efficiency and equity are becoming more pronounced. Economic globalization is facing counter-currents, unilateralism and protectionism being on the rise. China has always believed that the historical trend of economic globalization is irreversible, but its form and content should develop in a more universally beneficial and inclusive direction. That is, we should not only make the economic pie bigger and share it fairly to achieve common development and prosperity of all countries, but also support all countries in finding development paths suited to their own national conditions and oppose all forms of unilateralism and protectionism.
In the concrete practice of the initiative, following the principle of “extensive consultation, joint contributions, shared benefits”, China does not engage in ideological confrontation and geopolitical games, and opposes “unilateral sanctions and decoupling and supply chains disruption”. China pursues cooperation and mutual benefit, seeks common development and win-win collaboration. Over the past decade, the Belt and Road Initiative has focused on addressing the major problems that hindered the economic development of most developing countries and implemented a large number of practical projects, which have effectively enhanced local working and living conditions and the environment for economic development. The Belt and Road initiative is actually China's plan to promote economic globalization. It aims to make economic globalization more inclusive and sustainable, so that the gains of development will fairly bring benefit to people of all countries.
The high-quality Belt and Road cooperation is a valuable opportunity for the world to share China’s “continuous development”. Earlier this month, China held the “Two Sessions” and announced China’s development achievements in 2023 and China’s development goals for 2024. Looking back at 2023, the Chinese economy has a steady and positive momentum, with a growth rate of 5.2%, contributing with one third of the global economic growth. In addition to a reasonable growth in quantity, the Chinese economy has maintained an effective upgrade in quality. The following sets of data and scenarios enable us to feel the strong new momentum of the Chinese economy. At the Zhoushan port of Ningbo, over 10,000 electric cars were boarded on ships and transported abroad by sea. At the Khorgos port, the cars are transported by train, with China-Europe Railway Expresses lining up in a long queue. In 2023, the output of solar cells, new energy vehicles and power generation equipment has increased by 54%, 30.3% and 28.5% respectively. Behind the double digit growth lies the perfect combination of the strong Chinese market and the production and supply capacity, which possesses unlimited potential.
As President Xi Jinping said, “Humankind is a community with a shared future. China can only do well when the world is doing well. When China does well, the world will get even better”. China is accelerating the development of new quality productive forces and is entering a new stage of high-quality development. The Chinese modernization has brought a growth impetus and huge opportunities for the world. China is willing to work with global partners including Romania to make the Belt and Road a broad path for China and the rest of the world to share opportunities for common development.
The high-quality Belt and Road cooperation has constituted a “bridge of friendship” of cooperation and mutual benefit between China and the Central and Eastern European countries. The Central and Eastern European zone is the only way westward for the Belt and Road Initiative. The cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries under the Belt and Road Initiative has also yielded many noteworthy achievements. Over the last ten years and beyond that, the Pelješac Bridge in Croatia and the Belgrade to Novi Sad section of the Hungary-Serbia railway have been opened to traffic, the Delimara Power Plant Phase 3 in Marsaxlokk, Malta and the Mozura Wind Park in southern Montenegro have been put to use, and the Hesteel Group has wholly acquired the Smederevo Steel plant, giving new life to this century-old plant. Over the past decade, more than 85,000 trips of China-Europe Railway Express have carried 7.9 million TEUs of goods, having reached 219 cities in 25 European countries. In 2023, the total value of bilateral trade between China and Central and Eastern European countries has reached a new high of 941.52 billion RMB, and the bilateral trade volume between China and Romania has exceeded the 10 billion US dollars for three consecutive years since 2021. It is worth mentioning that in August 2022 the first “Wuhan-Constanta” freight train has successfully set out from Wuhan Railway Central Station loaded with 37 million RMB worth of machines and equipment, daily necessities and other goods, and headed for the beautiful coastal city Constanta, opening a new rail-sea combined transport line across the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea.
Romania, as a major country in Central and Eastern Europe, is an important hub connecting the East and the West and an important country along the Belt and Road. This year marks the 75th anniversary of China-Romania diplomatic relations and the 20th anniversary of the establishment of a Comprehensive Friendly and Cooperative Partnership. It also marks the year in which the Belt and Road Initiative enters a new stage of high-quality development. China wishes to view this as an opportunity to join hands with Romania in every aspect, to focus on key areas, to work intensively in order to promote the high-quality and constant development of the Belt and Road Initiative, to obtain new results and to initiate new prospects for a practical cooperation between China and Romania.
At present, we live in the century of rapid change and the destinies of all countries are even more tied together. The high-quality Belt and Road cooperation complies with the aspiration of the peoples of the world to share development opportunities and to create a strong desire for a better life. It has also become the path of cooperation, of opportunities, of prosperity for all countries to pursue development together. Looking forward, China is ready to join all nations including Romania with open arms to make our bond of interests closer, explore more roads to prosperity, and build more networks for cooperation. This will help bring more stability and positive energy into this changing and turbulent world and contribute to a more glorious future for the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.