PM’s visit to boost M’sia, China economic growth

People take pictures in front of a “Golden Bridge on Silk Road” installation, set up ahead of the Belt and Road Forum, outside the National Convention Centre in Beijing May 11, 2017.

A planned 418-kilometre (260-mile) rail line between the Asian giant and Laos attempts to be the first overseas route that connects with the vast rail system in China.

A new worldwide airport will also be built in Gwadar.

Featuring a group of children hailing from the countries that lie along the OBOR route, the video showed them singing to a catchy tune of a grammatically awkward sounding song named, “The Belt and Road Is How” (“how” is a near-homonym of hao, the Chinese word for “good”). While China says the New Silk Road is not political, it has run into opposition from India due to a section of it in Pakistan, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, where some projects run through the disputed Kashmir region.

For countries like the U.S., he said, “it’s impossible not to view the BRI through a geopolitical lens – a Chinese effort to build a sphere of influence”. China understands that as its economy matures and income levels rise, the lower-wage industries that have fuelled the country’s growth so far will migrate to less-developed nations where labour costs are lower. Thus, the two countries’ leaders will meet at a BRICS (an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Xiamen.

“China’s a reality and it’s not going to go away”. “We’re breaking barriers, we’re making history”.

Meanwhile, if your child prefers sing-alongs to bedtime stories, China’s official Xinhua news agency has also published a video starring some ethnically-diverse children singing the praises of the Belt and Road.

It also outlined Beijing’s plan to negotiate free trade agreements with some partners.

That was because government funding would not be sufficient to finance the initiative, which involves massive construction of infrastructure projects and industrial cooperation.

One Belt One Road has $US1.3 trillion worth of projects already initiated under the banner.

The forum will outline a new vision for multilateral cooperation and offer an opportunity for African countries to modernize their economies with technical and financial support from China, Kenyatta told a media briefing on Tuesday.

“This. will be a jointly consultative document by all parties to reflect their shared consensus on advancing the Belt and Road”, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Wednesday, referring to the summit communique.

“Many projects have been signed, but these need to be implemented on the ground”, he said.

Sun Ping, vice president of the Export-Import Bank of China, said that it had established risk-control mechanisms to evaluate the feasibility of loans based on the upper limit of debt each country could bear, and widespread defaults on sovereign debts were unlikely.