Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 2 Special article: Connecting all directions through the past and present—the Maritime Silk Road has gained new vitality in the past ten years
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Ruiqing
This is a road that leads to all directions, a road that connects the past and the present.
Looking back at history, the endless Maritime Silk Road recorded the great attraction of Eastern spices, silks, and porcelain to the West, and also witnessed the civilization brought by Westerners such as Italian missionary Matteo Ricci across the ocean to the East. comminicate.
The clouds and sails are high, and the stars are galloping day and night. On October 3, 2013, China proposed to jointly build the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Together with the Silk Road Economic Belt proposed by China on September 7 of the same year, it constitutes the “Belt and Road” and opens a new chapter in international cooperation. In the past ten years, the Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit has moved from history into reality. The joint construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative has brought more stories about common prosperity on the blue ocean. , continues to write the story of the integration of civilizations, and verifies the timeless truth that countries along the Silk Road share weal and woe.
Build a solid foundation for common prosperity
The high-speed train whizzes past the fields, and people along the route are full of expectations. “It’s very smooth” and “very comfortable”, Indonesian President Joko Joko was very excited when he recently tried to ride the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train.
The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway connects the Indonesian capital Jakarta and the famous tourist city Bandung. It is a flagship project of China-Indonesia cooperation in building the “Belt and Road”. This high-speed railway, which carries the local people’s dream of connectivity and prosperity, was officially opened on October 2. Students expect it to shorten their commute to school, and restaurant owners expect it to bring more passengers… In the view of West Java Governor Kamil , the opening of high-speed rail will not only create new economic growth points, but will also benefit the next generation in a sustainable way.
Indonesia is the initiator of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, but Indonesia is not the only country that can truly feel the dividends of jointly building the “Belt and Road”.
The joint construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative originated from China, and the opportunities and results belong to the world. The Greek port of Piraeus on the Aegean coast was once dilapidated and a large number of shipowners abandoned the port. However, the change occurred after the arrival of Chinese companies. Today in Piraeus Port, the new bridge crane stands beside the container terminal, loading and unloading cargo from berthed large ships without stopping… With the steady growth of business, Piraeus Port has become one of the top 30 container ports in the world.
Antonis Apegis, director of the engineering department of COSCO Shipping Ports Piraeus Terminal Co., Ltd., said that the development of Piraeus Port fully demonstrates the win-win cooperation between Greece and China. On the one hand, it provides more jobs for the local area and promotes local economic development; On the other hand, Piraeus’s superior geographical location also brings advantages to the company’s development, and both Greek and Chinese companies and employees benefit from it.
In the Pacific island country of Fiji, the China-aided Fiji Juncao Technology Demonstration Center has opened up new ways to increase local employment and farmers’ income. In Thailand, the Thailand-China Rayong Industrial Park has attracted more than 230 Chinese manufacturing companies and 35 commercial supporting companies to invest in Thailand, creating more than 50,000 jobs in Thailand. In Sri Lanka, the Colombo Port City jointly built by China and Sri Lanka made local engineer Sanjiwa sigh: “This city rising from the sea carries the future of Colombo.”
If you plan for profit, you should plan for the benefit of the world. According to Naseem Mahmoud, executive director of the East Asia Center (Foundation), the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative vividly reflects China’s commitment to promoting global development cooperation. He said that over the past decade, China has made unremitting efforts to promote connectivity, trade and economic cooperation on a global scale, helping relevant countries with infrastructure construction, promoting regional integration, and promoting the common development and prosperity of the co-building countries.
Build a bridge of cultural exchanges
In a corner of the National Museum of Sri Lanka, there stands quietly the “Stele of Giving to the Buddhist Temple in Mount Ceylon”, which is engraved with praises and tributes to Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in Chinese, Tamil and Persian. This stone tablet was brought to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, by Zheng He, a navigator of the Ming Dynasty in China. Hundreds of years ago, the stone monument witnessed the historical story of civilizational exchanges; today, China-Sri Lanka joint archeology has established a new monument of civilizational exchanges.
The Indian Ocean breeze blows and the coconut trees rustle. The archaeological experts from China had no time to pay attention to the scenery around them. They were busy hunched over with their Sri Lankan counterparts looking for traces of history in the soil. In recent years, Chinese and Sri Lankan experts have carried out joint archeology in many places in Sri Lanka. Only the investigation and excavation of the Alepiti ruins in the northern Jaffna region revealed more than 600 pieces of Chinese ceramic fragments, mostly from the late Northern Song Dynasty. It is not difficult to get a glimpse of the prosperous Silk Road trade exchanges nearly a thousand years ago.
Chinese experts demonstrated rejuvenating cultural relic protection techniques in Angkor, Cambodia, restoring the ruins of the Zhou Sa temple to its former glory; Chinese craftsmen who have the heart of “we are at home all over the world, and work wherever cultural relics are damaged” “Healing” the nine-story temple in Nepal that suffered an earthquake; archaeologists from China and Saudi Arabia jointly explored Port Selin buried deep in the desert to awaken the forgotten memory of the Silk Road; experts and scholars from China and Greece discussed the two countries The earliest “university”, Jixia Academy, held a dialogue with Plato’s Academy to discuss Chinese and Greek classical civilizations; Cameroonian Fabrice Mba, who was eager to learn Chinese Kung Fu, went to Songshan Shaolin Temple to study martial arts and Chinese medicine with the help of the local Confucius Institute; China and Egypt held cultural year activities and carried out more than 100 exchange activities covering various fields such as culture and art, books, youth education, etc., and cultural exchanges reached a new height…
Everyone appreciates their own beauty, and we share the beauty. In the past ten years, China and the co-founding countries have composed one beautiful chapter after another of civilizational dialogue, and jointly created civilization and prosperity in the new era through exchanges and mutual learning.
Raise the sail of a shared destiny
Shortly after the Bandung Conference in 1955, the then Indonesian Prime Minister Sastro Amizoyo visited China. He described the historical role and significance of the Maritime Silk Road as “beautiful”: “Since China’s adventurous ocean-going sailing ships first opened a shipping route between the two countries… this ancient country has exerted her cultural influence, and this influence It has had a wonderful effect on many civilizations in Asia.”
Nearly 60 years later, Marzuki Aliyah, then Speaker of the Indonesian Parliament, witnessed China’s initiative to jointly build the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. In his view, China today has become an important force in promoting the improvement of global governance and plays an important role in promoting policy coordination on major global issues.
From ancient times to the present, the Chinese nation has emphasized that “the world is one family”, advocated “community and material harmony, and harmony among all nations”, followed the principle of communication that “the strong will not oppress the weak, and the rich will not bully the poor”, and has longed for the ideal of “walking on the great road, and the world is for the common good” beautiful world. These ideas and concepts of China’s excellent traditional culture are reflected in every Chinese initiative and plan today, including the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”. As the British historian Peter Francopan said in the book “The Silk Road: A New World History”, “The Silk Road once shaped the world in the past and even shaped the world today, and it will also Shaping the world of the future”.
Virun Phichiwongpardi, deputy director of the Thailand-China Belt and Road Research Center, said that jointly building the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is an important international consensus and an important link in building an Asian community with a shared future. Kenyan scholar of international studies Cavins Adehill believes that the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative is another opportunity for China to lead other countries to shape a more beneficial, equal and inclusive international system. The number of countries participating in the joint construction is constantly increasing. The increase demonstrates the role of this initiative as a new frontier in global governance and development.
Join hands and keep moving forward. For thousands of years, the vast and distant sea has not become an obstacle to communication, but has become a link of connection. In the past ten years, more and more countries have participated in the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”, achieving win-win results in mutually beneficial cooperation, making common progress in the integration of civilizations, and riding on the ship of a shared destiny to brave the waves. In the future, the world looks forward to the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” sailing from a new starting point and leaving more magnificent chapters on the magnificent sea. (Participating reporters: Hou Ming, Yang Zhe, Li Hualing, Zhang Tianlang, Hu Guan, Wang Aona, Yu Qianliang, Sun Nan, Che Hongliang, Yu Shuaishuai)
(Zhu Ruiqing)
[Editor in charge: Xu Dan]
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2023-10-02 07:03:00
