Belt and Road: a new model for supplying international public goods

China is now a main international public product provider and fulfills more responsibilities as a great power.

The Belt and Road Initiative has created a new model for the providing of international public goods for three reasons.

First, the initiative is the largest international economic cooperation proposal, not only for China, but also of any single country after the Cold War. It involves more than 100 countries and organizations on four continents, involving more than 4.3 billion people.

The available public funds of the initiative hit nearly $300 billion, more than many projects of the United Nations and the World Bank.

Last year, China's total trade volume with the countries on the routes of the initiative amounted to 6.3 trillion yuan ($913 billion), up 0.6 percent year-on-year.

China has established 56 economic and trade cooperative zones with more than 20 countries on the routes, with a total investment of $18.5 billion, creating 180,000 jobs for the countries.

Second, the initiative is highly open. It is in line with China's basic policy of opening up as well as China's proposal of building a type of open world economy.

Chinese leaders, on different occasions, have reiterated that China hopes to work together with other countries to maintain and develop a type of open world economy, and opposes artificial exclusive standards, rules and systems, which cause a fragmentation of markets and trade systems.

China commits to having regional cooperation of higher quality, at a deeper level and in a wider range through the initiative to form an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation framework.

Last but not least, the initiative is a structural innovation of international cooperation, which follows the principle of jointly building the Belt and Road through consultation to meet the interests of all.

(The author is a researcher of world politics with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. This is excerpt of his article first published by china.com.cn on April 11.)