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19-10-2023
BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country rejected “economic coercion” and “bloc confrontation” Wednesday, at the opening ceremony of a forum of international delegates to the forum marking the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Beijing.
Xi also lauded his grand plan of building global infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes, saying that “blueprints turned into real projects”.
Representatives of more than 130 countries, largely from the Global South, attended the forum including several heads of state, of whom the most prominent was Xi’s “dear friend” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We stand against unilateral sanctions, economic coercion, decoupling and supply chain disruption,” Xi told more than 1,000 delegates gathered in an ornate conference room in the Great Hall of the People west of Tiananmen Square.
Putin and other foreign leaders sat with key Chinese officials from the 25-member Politburo on the front row, as Xi delivered his opening remarks.
Xi pushed against Western efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese economy, saying that, “our lives will not be better and our development will not be faster if we view the development of others as a threat and economic interdependence as a risk.”
Reducing their dependence on supply chains with China has become a top priority among Western economies as Beijing’s threats to Taiwan heighten geopolitical risks in Asia. The trade disruptions of the pandemic years have also added urgency to the desire to limit their dependence on China.
Although BRI at first set out to connect China to Western Europe, senior EU figures were missing. The sole head of state present from the bloc was Hungary’s populist President Viktor Orban. Other notable attendees included the Afghan Taliban administration’s commerce minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi.
“China has more interest right now in developing Afghanistan at this moment, so we are more engaged with China. The Chinese have more interest in economic affairs, that’s why we’re here,” Azizi told a gaggle of reporters at the ceremony.
Western scepticism of Xi’s grand plans stems from suspicions over the way it would extend China’s global influence, analysts say. China has at times bristled at criticism of the BRI, saying it carries anti-Chinese prejudice and a wish to contain its rise, while overlooking what it says are genuine good intentions. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
