On January 10, the first "door-to-door" New Year's goods train of the China-Europe Express (Xi'an) arrived at the Xi'an Xi'an International Port Aiju Agricultural Products Logistics and Processing Park. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Yibo

The total number of China-Europe freight trains has exceeded 100,000 trains, the total number of freight transportation of China-Laos Railway has exceeded 50 million tons, the annual number of trains in the Western Land-Sea New Corridor exceeded 10,000 for the first time, the China-Europe cross-Caspian Express has been launched, the construction of the China-Japan-Ukraine Railway has started, the China-Vietnam cross-border railway and the Malaysian East Coast Railway have made important progress, and the "Qiankai-Shanghai" China-Latin America new corridor has achieved two-way connection... Recently, good news has been heard from China's interconnection and cooperation with relevant countries.

In recent years, China has become an important driving force for global connectivity. China insists on consultation, joint construction and sharing, and continuously expands new space for win-win development at a higher level, more resilient and more sustainable level, and shares opportunities and dividends with the world with high-quality development and high-level opening up.

Connectivity and cooperation go deeper and more practical

Recently, the General Administration of Customs of China has successively issued 15 measures to further promote the development of the western region and 16 measures to support the accelerated rise of the central region in the new era, and proposed to work together to promote the construction of a major international logistics channel and accelerate the formation of a comprehensive open pattern of land, sea, domestic and foreign linkage, and east-west mutual assistance. This is China's latest practice to promote global connectivity.

"In recent years, China has accelerated the construction of a new development pattern with the domestic circulation as the main body and the domestic and international circulations mutually promoting each other, which has put forward higher requirements for better connectivity between the domestic market and the international market." Xie Laihui, director of the "Belt and Road" Research Office of the Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told our reporter that the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee reviewed and passed the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and Promoting Chinese-style Modernization", emphasizing the improvement of the system and mechanism of high-level opening up, and proposed a series of specific measures such as optimizing regional opening-up layout and improving the mechanism for promoting high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road" mechanism, which is conducive to promoting the flow of high-quality factors such as global innovation, talents, funds, and data, realizing the mutual promotion of domestic and international economic cycles, and injecting more momentum into global connectivity.

Under the framework of the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative and the Global Development Initiative, from the Eurasian continent to Africa and Latin America, China's interconnection and cooperation with relevant countries has gone deeper and more practical, and has played an important role in maintaining the stability of the international production and supply chain and promoting global economic growth.

In recent years, the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative has adapted to the new trend of global development and actively built a new platform for bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the fields of green and innovation, and the space for international cooperation is broader. China has jointly established the "Belt and Road" Green Development International Alliance with more than 150 partners in more than 40 countries, becoming the main international cooperation platform leading the joint construction of the Green Silk Road; initiated and implemented the "Belt and Road" Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan, and promoted the mechanism-based operation of the "Belt and Road" Science and Technology Exchange Conference; promoted the conclusion of the "Global Data Security Initiative" and the "Belt and Road" International Cooperation Initiative for Digital Economy", launched the "Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative", promoted the establishment of an artificial intelligence governance framework and standard specifications... On a global scale, China has made important breakthroughs in promoting cooperation mechanisms in new areas of connectivity.

"China's global connectivity and cooperation show some important characteristics." Xie Laihui analyzed that, first, it is comprehensive and comprehensive, which not only includes "hard connectivity" of infrastructure, but also emphasizes "soft connectivity" of rules and standards and "heart connectivity" of people-to-people-building countries; second, it emphasizes people-centeredness, coordinates major landmark projects and "small and beautiful" projects, and focuses on enhancing the sense of gain and happiness of people-to-building countries; third, it focuses on the impact of the ecological environment, promotes the transformation of the energy structure, and promotes green and low-carbon interconnection; fourth, it emphasizes equality and mutual respect, without presets of cooperation, and has no ideological bias; fifth, it coordinates the relationship between development and security, strives to provide security guarantees for interconnection projects, and injects more stability into the global supply chain industry chain.

In line with the demands of global southern development

Connectivity is one of the key areas of cooperation in jointly building the "Belt and Road" initiative proposed by China, and it is in line with the demands of the global south to "empower development". The World Bank estimates that 2.8 billion people worldwide face varying degrees of housing shortage, 1 billion lack of road facilities, 1.6 billion lack of power facilities, and billions lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation services. Developing countries have strong demand for building high-quality, sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

Busani Nkaveni, dean of the South African National Academy of Administration, said that the global southern countries currently need high-quality development, and rapid industrialization, the construction of infrastructure development capabilities and technology transfer are very important to it, which can better understand and evaluate the benefits brought by the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative.

Xie Laihui said that China has a strong driving force for promoting global connectivity: First, this is an important measure for China to promote Chinese-style modernization and regional coordinated development and expand high-level opening up; second, as the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" enters a new stage of high-quality development, it is necessary to continuously enrich the new connotation of connectivity; third, the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" is a practical platform for promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. Taking common development as the goal, sharing China's development opportunities with the world will help transform the friendly relations and economic complementarity between the jointly built countries into the driving force for pragmatic cooperation, and promote countries to work together to meet challenges and achieve common prosperity.

"China's active promotion of global connectivity is conducive to improving the production and living conditions of relevant countries, breaking development bottlenecks, and stimulating the endogenous driving force for economic growth of relevant countries; on the other hand, it is conducive to reducing trade costs and promoting the optimal allocation of global resources." Xie Laihui said that the high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road" is based on the guiding principles of consultation, joint construction and sharing, openness, greenness, and high standards to benefit people's livelihood and sustainability. It has been included in important documents of the United Nations and relevant regional multilateral mechanisms, reflecting the international community's high recognition of China's important contributions to promoting global connectivity and promoting global development.

Contribute to global sustainable development

According to a recent report by Kyrgyzstan's "" News Network, the China-Kyrgyz-Ukraine Railway Project will open up new paths to strengthen China-Europe ties and is expected to become a new demonstration project for jointly building the "Belt and Road" cooperation. According to reports, after the railway is put into operation, it will not only shorten the cargo transportation time, but will also open up a channel for Central Asian countries to connect with China's railway network. Rafshan Nazarov, senior researcher at the Institute of National and Law of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, said that the railway project will help the development of logistics, energy, mining, agriculture and other fields. By optimizing the trade cycle, the role of Central Asia in global supply chains will be strengthened.

Xie Laihui said that connectivity is of great significance to global economic and trade cooperation and economic growth: First, break down barriers between countries and regions, so that more developing countries can better integrate into the world economy and achieve common development; second, it will help developing countries and emerging economies obtain new technologies, cultivate new economic momentum, expand new development space, and promote the optimization and adjustment of economic structure; third, promote the realization of more balanced and inclusive economic globalization, inject stable growth momentum into the world economy, and achieve global sustainable development.

The American magazine Foreign Policy published an article pointing out that the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative is crucial. For a world plagued by unpredictable crises, there is only one way to take meaningful collective action for the global public good - that is, to establish more supply routes to meet demand, which is what the Belt and Road Initiative is doing.

Gladen Paping, director of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, believes that the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative provides a new thinking model to help people think about how the world develops and communicates. Under this initiative, what "Soft Unicom" hopes is more pragmatic cooperation to enable countries to fully participate in the global cooperation platform. This participation can reflect the priorities in countries' culture and policies, while finding more ways to maintain connectivity.

In the future, China's interconnected cooperation on a global scale is worth looking forward to. Xie Laihui said that China will take the eight actions to jointly build the "Belt and Road" with high quality as a guide, comprehensively improve the quality and efficiency of pragmatic cooperation, deepen institutionalized and systematic construction, and contribute more Chinese wisdom and strength to global connectivity. (Reporter Jia Pingfan of this newspaper)

"People's Daily Overseas Edition" (Page 06, January 16, 2025)