‘Trade bullying’ rejected
ZHANGJIAJIE, Hunan: Countries must enhance trade and economic cooperation through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to hurdle the impact of “trade bullying,” speakers said in a business summit on Tuesday.
Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce (SRIC) Chairman Lu Jainzhong told participants of the 2018 Silk Road Business Summit that global uncertainties were rising due to trade protectionism.
Trade tensions between the world’s biggest economies, particularly the United States and China, have prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut its global growth forecasts for this year and the next.
Speaking at the business summit’s opening, Lu said that the SRCIC “opposes economic hegemony and trade bullying.”
“Global economic governance needs involvement of all countries. The international rules of trade and economic should be written up by all countries,” he added.
“We need to guarantee the multilateralism supported by WTO (World Trade Organization) so that we can build economic, international business environment featured by safe, stable, open, transparency, and predictability.”
China’s BRI initiative, Lu claimed, is a means of achieving this goal.
The development strategy, unveiled in 2013, calls for massive infrastructure development and investments in over 80 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. The move has been viewed as a Chinese strategy to expand Beijing’s influence and concerns have been raised that participating countries could end up massively indebted to China.
Lu, for his part, said there was a need to pursue peaceful cooperation, mutual cooperation and beneficial development.
“We need to carry forward this entrepreneurship and pursue this international cooperation platform of BRI to integrate the pursuit of happiness of all people around the world so that we can conduct pragmatic cooperation and pursue [a] win-win result,” he pointed out.
The SRCIC is a transnational business confederation mainly composed of the national commercial associations from Silk Road economies. It currently has 90 members from 75 countries.
Former Croatian President Stjepan Mesic also spoke at the summit and criticized US protectionism.
“Some people want to destroy the value of development but China has proposed Belt and Road as in response to this,” he said.
“If we work together, we have the power to stop those who want to destroy development,” he added.
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