NANJING — Jiangsu, located on China’s eastern coast, is giving full play to its advantages in location and resources in the Belt and Road construction, said a senior official of the province.
The province, situated in the converging area of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, has seen fruitful results and will continue to contribute its part to the joint implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Ma Xin, executive vice governor of Jiangsu, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Taking the building of the Belt and Road “converging point” as the overall plan, Jiangsu has carried out a series of campaigns, such as improving the transportation systems, deepening international production capacity cooperation, promoting Silk Road trade, upgrading major international cooperation parks, and enhancing cultural and people-to-people exchanges to further promote high-level opening-up, the official said.
From January to September, a total of 1,667 China-Europe and China-Asia freight trains were operated in Jiangsu, up 13.4 percent year-on-year, and the province has opened 24 China-Europe and China-Asia railway routes, covering more than 20 countries in Europe and Asia.
The province has built ten 100-million-tonne ports, opened 89 international container routes, and seen the comprehensive handling capacity of its ports exceeding 2.3 billion tonnes.
Jiangsu’s imports and exports to the BRI partners have grown at an average annual rate of 7.2 percent in the past decade.
According to Ma, the economic powerhouse province has continued to deepen international production capacity cooperation, nurtured a number of leading enterprises in this field, and built cooperation platforms such as a technology transfer centre between China and Central and Eastern European Countries. It also formed 146 pairs of sister cities with the BRI partner countries.
With its special location advantages, the province has been promoting the integration of the Belt and Road construction, the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, facilitating the flow of people, logistics, and data between different regions.
The province currently has seven cooperation parks overseas, which have attracted some 350 enterprises, creating 60,000 jobs.
In the future, Ma said Jiangsu will continuously give full play to its location advantage to help deepen the cooperation between different regions, build demonstration zones for international production capacity cooperation based on its overseas cooperation parks, and tap into its rich natural and cultural resources to further promote international people-to-people exchanges.
The province will continue to implement its campaigns to promote opening-up, create a more market-oriented, legalized, internationalized business environment, and go all out to build a globally attractive and two-way open hub, the official added.
