CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VIII (2) ContEurVIII2 | Page 8

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VIII (2)
other resources for infrastructure development, this initiative facilitates
industrial, financial, and economic cooperation among the countries
along the BRI. 18 The geography of this initiative includes the African
continent, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus (including
Armenia), Middle East, Russia, South Asia, South East Asia, 19 and China
has also called on Latin American countries to join the initiative, making
it a global program. 20
The BRI requires heavy capital investments, including projected
$1.3 trillion annually until 2030, which is a massive development finance
initiative. The BRI initiative can be categorized by having the first
continental roads and rails connecting China to Europe through Central
Asia, by following the traditional “Silk Road route,” and the second route
is the Maritime Silk Road, which connects Chinese ports to the Indian
Subcontinent, goes through the Indian Ocean to Africa and crosses the
Suez Canal, continuing on to Europe. 21
The program was announced in President Xi’s speech in Astana on
September 7, 2013 and a few days later at the summit of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek on September 13, 2013. 22 In
the document called “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road
Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” China announced
that the 21 st century is a “new era marked by the theme of peace,
development, cooperation and mutual benefit” and that “the Belt and
Road Initiative is a systematic project, which should be jointly built
through consultation to meet the interests of all, and efforts should be
made to integrate the development strategies of the countries along the
Belt and Road” for reinforcing the Silk Road Spirit – "peace and
cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual
benefit" carried through generations for thousands of years. 23

18 Zeng
Lingliang, "Conceptual Analysis of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Road
Towards a Regional Community of Common Destiny," Chinese Journal of International
Law 15, no. 3 (2016): 517-541.
19 The Economist and Intelligence Unit Report, "One Belt, One Road: An Economic
Roadmap,” March 2016, (available at
http://www.iberchina.org/files/2016/obor_economist.pdf).
20 Rumi Aoyama, “‘One Belt, One Road’: China's New Global Strategy,” Journal of
Contemporary East Asia Studies 5, no. 2 (2016): 3-22.
21 Davies Gloria, Jeremy Goldkorn, and Luigi Tomba, eds. Pollution: China Story
Yearbook 2015. ANU Press, 2016, in chapter "One Belt One Road: International
Development Finance with Chinese Characteristics", 245-250.
22 Zhenis Kembayev, “Towards a Silk Road Union,” Chinese Journal of International
Law, 15, Iss. 3, (2016): 691–699.
23 Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century
Maritime Silk Road, jointly released by the National Development and Reform
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