BRI will clear doubts as it progresses
Editor’s Note: Doubts have again been raised over the Belt and Road Initiative’s goals, with some calling it a “debt trap” for participating countries and China’s “geopolitical expansion tool”. Why are anti-China elements using such ploys to malign China? And will they see reason once the Belt and Road Initiative starts yielding fruitful results for the participating countries? Two experts share their views on the issue with China Daily’s Pan Yixuan. Excerpts follow: BRI’s aim is peaceful development for all Under the Belt and Road Initiative framework, China wants to share its development experiences with other countries and improve connectivity between Asia and Europe and Africa. China greatly benefited from infrastructure construction, and while sharing this experience with other countries, it aims to work with them to enhance the complementarity between the Belt and Road Initiative and their development plans to strengthen global cooperation. Many countries that need to build or improve infrastructure networks may not get loans from international financial organizations because of various reasons, including uncertainty of repayment and supposedly poor environmental protection rules. So when China provided such countries with loans-including Pakistan which suffers from electricity shortage owing to the lack of power plants-to help them solve their infrastructure problems, some observers and advanced countries started seeing red. China’s cooperation with Central and South American countries, Panama for instance-which the United States considers China’s strategy to...
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