World 'needs to hear more about message of benefits from the BRI'

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, or the BRI, offers huge potential to other countries, and more efforts need to be put into getting this message across, one of China's leading academics told a conference at Oxford Brookes University on Monday.

"The dramatic rise of China over the past 40 years is because China has found its own way to success, and this Chinese way has so many implications for the BRI," said Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute at Fudan University.

One of the key reasons for China's rapid development is its consultative democracy, which Zhang called "neodemocratic centralism".

"A good example is China's Five－Year Plan, which usually takes one year and a half to make," he explained. "During that process, the central government needs to consult lots of think tanks, members inside and outside Communist Party of China, to make decision."

The wide range of consultation included in the process energizes the plan and its goals, he said, making it represent the "holistic interest" of the Chinese people. "It requires people discuss together, build together and finally it will benefit people together," he added.

These valuable lessons from the development in China will be implemented when China promotes the BRI internationally. Countries and businesses who want to take full advantages of the BRI need to understand China fundamentally from political, economic and social points of view, he said.

Followed by Zhang's speech, delegates also heard from Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Center, and Martin Jacques, senior fellow in Political and International Studies at Cambridge University, sharing their views about the BRI.

"Interpreters from the outside often ascribe too much central direction to the BRI," said Mitter. "Their idea might be three people in Beijing control everything. I don't think this is the case at all."

From Mitter's perspective, the key issue about the BRI is whether or not different elements of all demands can really be coordinated.

"The BRI constitutes not a new international system, but a way of thinking about a new international system based on the majority of the world's population," Jacques added. "We have to learn from China. But what we learn and how we learn is a very difficult question."