Province sits at core of 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, vice-governor says

Fujian province has used its unique strengths to advance the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and has achieved fruitful results in building the core region of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, its vice-governor, Guo Ningning, said.

A four-pronged corridor consisting of sea, land, air and cyberspace connectivity had taken shape in the eastern Chinese province, Guo told Xinhua News Agency in an interview.

She said 317 enterprises and institutions had joined in a sea transportation network linking 131 ports in 43 countries and regions.

The province had also expanded the capacities of the China-Europe freight train service and adopted multimodal transport, including sea-rail transport, to link the East and West, Guo said.

In terms of air transport connectivity, 85 international flight routes to major cities across the globe had been opened in Fujian, she said, adding that the province had also launched remote sensing satellites and helped build a satellite data service center, providing maritime surveying and mapping services for countries and regions involved in the initiative.

Given the advantages of its location on China's southeast coast, Fujian has been considered a vital link and corridor in BRI cooperation.

Guo emphasized the continuous expansion of Fujian's economic and trade cooperation with countries and regions taking part in the BRI, saying that the province had invested in nearly 1,400 projects in 95 such countries and regions in the past decade.

The volume of trade between Fujian and countries and regions involved in the initiative over the past decade totaled 4.4 trillion yuan ($608.4 billion), with last year's figure of 735.1 billion yuan up 142 percent from that in 2012.

Given that 80 percent of the 16 million overseas Chinese with ancestral homes in Fujian now lived in Southeast Asia, the province considered the region key to its endeavors to build the core region of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, Guo said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations had become the province's largest trade partner, she said, as well as its second-largest investment destination and one of its major sources of foreign investment.

The Chinese end of an industrial parks project between China and Indonesia had become home to 620 trade enterprises, Guo said, adding that enterprises based in Fujian had launched 36 industrial projects in the Indonesian end of the project.

Guo also mentioned the province's efforts in establishing closer people-to-people ties, saying that Juncao, a technology developed in Fujian that uses grass to grow mushrooms, had spread across the globe and helped people in developing countries shake off poverty.

Cities in Fujian have sister-city relationships with 124 cities across the globe, she said.

The province now planned to improve its integrated multidimensional transportation networks, speed up the construction of new types of infrastructure, and aggregate more resources and production factors from home and abroad, Guo said.

Fujian would continue to leverage its demonstration role as the core zone of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, push forward with high-level opening up, and contribute more to BRI cooperation and Chinese modernization, she added.

XINHUA