Belt and Road coordination with EEU seen as historic

The Amur International Rail Bridge - known in China as the China-Russian Tongjiang Rail Bridge - was first proposed in 2007 by Valery Solomonovich Gurevich, vice-chairman of the Jewish autonomous oblast - or administrative region - in eastern Russia.

The 2,197-meter bridge will link Nizhneleninskoye in the Russian Jewish region with Tongjiang, Heilongjiang province, at an estimated cost of nearly $230 million (216 million euros; 183 million), according to Gurevich.

The bridge was designed by Russia's Giprostroymost Institute, meeting both Russian and Chinese standards. It will have both a standard gauge (1,435 mm) track and a Russian gauge (1,520 mm) track, with the two tracks offset by 800 mm, so that only one can be used at a time.

Coordination of the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union is promising and historic, experts say. The Silk Road Economic Belt was initiated by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first in Kazakhstan, which is a key member of the Eurasian Economic Union, and he paid a state visit to Uzbekistan in June, on the path of the ancient Silk Road.

Shakhrat Nuryshev, Kazakhstan's ambassador to China, said China was the first country, in 1992, to recognize the independence of Kazakhstan and to establish diplomatic relations with the former Soviet republic.

Nuryshev says the Belt and Road Initiative, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and EEU can be more connected and provide a clear direction for multinational cooperation.

Kerry Brown, of the China Studies Center at Sydney University in Australia, says China would like to provide opportunities for EEU countries, especially those that are involved in the Silk Road Economic Belt, with long-term, low-interest loans similar to those given in Africa for big infrastructure projects.

Kamel Mellahi, professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, says: "Regional connectivity is the main objective of the strategy of China's Silk Road. There is little doubt that it's a win-win project for all countries involved."

Yang Cheng, deputy director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai, says most EEU countries have resource-based economies whose energy sectors suffered from the rapid downturn in oil prices - even though the lower prices brought opportunities for cooperation with China in other sectors.

Yang says the coordination of initiatives provides opportunities for countries that want to raise their competitiveness in international markets. Such coordination could result in constructive reforms of their resource-based economies and also see China and EEU countries build an efficient industry chain, allowing greater capital input.

He says that to coordinate the two initiatives, "all countries need to establish greater industrial cooperation - and not only industrial cooperation but capital, talent, technology, market and cultural cooperation".

renqi@chinadaily.com.cn