By Luo Yuze, DRC

2017-5-5

The significance of promoting infrastructure connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative is as follows. 1. It is beneficial for breaking the bottleneck hindering development and speeding up national economic development and improvement of people's livelihood of countries and regions along the routes. 2. It is helpful to improving economic and trade cooperation between countries and regions along the routes, so as to complement each other's advantages and achieve win-win development results. 3. It is favorable for gaining swift achievements to enforce people’s confidence on the Belt and Road Initiative.

The main challenges facing the promotion of infrastructure connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative include: 1. The construction fund is not totally in place due to relevant investment and financing difficulties. 2. The environment for project construction is not adequate with high commercial risks. 3. There lacks a comprehensive regional cooperation mechanism with related targeted measures and strong binding force.

The basic measures for promoting infrastructure connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative consist of: 1. The construction and connectivity of infrastructure should let planning go first. They should be based on the different needs of various countries and regions and common demands for development and guided by mutual benefit and win-win result, while taking into account the progress, quality and efficiency of the projects, through joint consultations for the implementation of the connectivity construction plan. 2. We need to push ahead with the projects in an orderly manner and gradually build an infrastructure systematic network. 3. We need to enhance supportive measures and improve the environment of investment, construction, and operation. 4. We need to enhance efficiency, and let the government and enterprises play a coordinated role, focusing on solving the problems with high risks and poor profitability. In view of our financial power, we need to make joint consultations with relevant countries and regions along the routes relating to construction projects, advance the construction of both the software and hardware, enhance the cooperation between government and enterprise and push on the construction projects step by step.

The strategic measures to promote infrastructure connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative are: 1. We need to set up a coordinated committee relating to the infrastructure connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative. 2. We need to innovate and improve the investment and financing mechanism. 3. We need to establish a joint research fund for common development relating to the Belt and Road Initiative. 4. We need to form a simple and efficient coordination mechanism in China.