Belt, Road a boon for global cooperation

China Energy Engineering Corp Ltd, a Beijing-based State-owned enterprise, announced in March that it had started to build a large-scale wind power project in Uzbekistan.

The project is expected to generate jobs in the Central Asian country, as well as set an example of China-Saudi Arabia third-party market cooperation in jointly developing the BRI, said Xue Danfeng, deputy board chairman of Energy China's international group.

Financing for the wind farm project in Uzbekistan is being provided by ACWA Power, a Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based developer and operator of power generation and water desalination facilities with a presence in 10 countries, largely in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.

The Bash and Dzhankeldy wind power project, located in Bukhara province, is expected to have the largest installed capacity of its kind in Central Asia. It includes the construction of two 500-megawatt wind power plants and associated power transmission lines.

Taking full advantage of substantial prevailing winds in the region, the project, once operational, is expected to provide more than 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually, representing a reduction of 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, Xue said.

It is expected to help millions of people in Uzbekistan by enhancing the local power supply, improving the local power structure and transforming the energy structure in the country, he said.

By mid-February, China had signed cooperation agreements with 151 countries and 32 international organizations under the BRI, and its annual trade value with BRI-related countries and regions almost doubled from 2013 to 2022, according to the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

China's foreign trade has been boosted by closer business ties and complementary trade structures with many trading partners. The nation's trade with countries and regions participating in the BRI rose 16.8 percent year-on-year to 3.43 trillion yuan ($482 billion) in the first quarter. That growth rate was 12 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of China's foreign trade during the same period, said the General Administration of Customs.

China's exports of intermediate goods to those economies reached 1.1 trillion yuan, up 18.2 percent on a yearly basis. Intermediate goods are often used to produce a finished product. Those exports accounted for 54 percent of the country's total exports to BRI-related markets during the same period.

Many BRI-related economies are entering a new era of environmentally conscious growth and industrial upgrading. That has contributed to Chinese exports of automotive components to those markets jumping 40.5 percent year-on-year between January and March. Exports of lithium batteries to those markets surged 50.3 percent and electrical control device exports rose 23.9 percent on a yearly basis, Customs officials said.

China has emerged as a crucial contributor of global public goods and a proactive responder to uncertainties and risks, said Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. That is, China has become a greater contributor to global prosperity, Wang said.

Such public goods provided by China now cover a broad spectrum, ranging from anti-epidemic products to frameworks that promote international cooperation such as the BRI, Wang said, stressing that the BRI also provides Chinese solutions for reforming the global governance system.

Humanwell Healthcare (Group) Co Ltd, a Wuhan, Hubei province-based pharmaceutical company, invested in a pharmaceutical factory it put into operation in Mali in 2015. As production has expanded at the plant in subsequent years, Mali has ended its dependence on imported drugs and significantly lowered market prices for such products, while driving the growth of related industries.

Ninety percent of the factory's employees are locals, and it exports drugs to eight neighboring countries, substantially alleviating the problem of medicine shortages in West Africa.

Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said China will continue to play an important role, given the size of the Chinese economy and its level of integration with the global economy.

China's nonfinancial outbound direct investment rose 26.6 percent year-on-year to 289.29 billion yuan in the first four months of 2023, while its nonfinancial ODI in countries and regions participating in the BRI came in at $7.53 billion, up 9 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.