Blair talks of effect of B&R Initiative on the world

China's new era will prove to be of major significance for the rest of the world, according to former UK prime minister Tony Blair.

Blair said General Secretary Xi Jinping's report to the 19th CPC National Congress in October clearly demonstrated China's ambition to occupy a central position on the global stage.

"It indicated that China has the ambition to go now to the next level of development and authority, and this is of big significance to the world," he said.

In an exclusive interview with China Daily, Blair also said the China-led Belt and Road Initiative will have major global implications.

"This is a huge thing for China and, by the way, for all the countries that are going to be impacted by it," he said.

"I remember being at a conference in Xinjiang in about 2013 when I first heard of it and I remember thinking this is going to be really big and really important. It has got huge implications politically, of course, as well as economically."

Blair, who was interviewed at the headquarters of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in central London, called on the United Kingdom and other Western countries to embrace the initiative.

"I would like to see us work out ways in which we can be part of this. We should actually be understanding. This is China exerting the role that it will inevitably exert as it becomes more powerful," he said.

Blair, 64, who left office as prime minister in 2007, also welcomed other China moves such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and supported the UK government's decision to be a founding member.

"The problem with the Western institutions is that they have become hopelessly bureaucratic. One of the reasons why there are African countries who welcome Chinese investment is that it tends to be much less bureaucratic and much swifter to be realized."

Blair said many in the West do not comprehend the scale of China's achievements since reform and opening-up, which has lifted 700 million people out of poverty since it began 40 years ago.

"It is a really significant event. If you were a Western student, you would study lots of things about the politics of the late 20th century. You would study the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid," he said.

"You wouldn't probably study in the same way the opening-up of China, and yet it signaled that China was going on a new path of engagement with the world with the opening-up of its economy. The results have been staggering."