BEIJING (TIP): China will hold the third edition of the Belt and Road Forum here from October 17 to 18 and President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony, it was announced on October 11.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a multi-billion-dollar initiative launched by President Xi when he came to power in 2013. It aims to link Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf region, Africa and Europe with a network of land and sea routes.

Under the ambitious BRI, China provides funding for major infrastructure projects around the world, in a bid to speed Chinese goods to markets further afield.

The USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship project of the BRI. India has strongly protested to China over the CPEC as it is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

In July, India once again refused to endorse China’s ambitious BRI, becoming the only country in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation not to support the project. A declaration issued at the end of an India-hosted virtual summit of the grouping said Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reaffirmed their support for the BRI.

The third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) will be held in Beijing from October 17 to 18. President Xi will attend the opening ceremony of the forum and deliver a keynote speech, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced in Beijing. According to Hua, the theme of the third BRF is “High-quality Belt and Road Cooperation: Together for Common Development and Prosperity.” The BRI was in the news recently when Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said his country made an “improvised and atrocious” decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Critics see the BRI as a tool for China to spread influence. Both the EU and the US expressed concern when Italy decided to join the scheme. However, a senior Chinese official has claimed that the BRI has delivered mutual benefits over the past decade, featuring deepened trade and investment cooperation, more abundant connectivity projects, and improved cooperation mechanisms.

“China’s super-large market has provided important development opportunities for BRI participating countries, which contributed nearly half of China’s total imports,” Vice Commerce Minister Guo Tingting told the official Xinhua news agency.

As the major trading partner of over 110 BRI countries, China saw its total goods trade with all BRI countries reach close to USD 2.9 trillion in 2022. China’s direct investment in BRI partner countries topped USD 30 billion last year, while BRI countries invested more than 20 USD billion in China, the report said.

India along with the US and several major economies last month announced an ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

The new economic corridor, which many see as an alternative to China’s BRI, was jointly announced by the leaders of the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi. (PTI)