Journalists visit Sanpower's exhibition room. [WANG ZHUANGFEI / China Daily]

The same applies to Sanpower, a conglomerate that controls 100 companies in sectors such as banking, retail, media and property, and has assets valued at 80 billion yuan and annual sales of 85 billion yuan.

The lobby of its Nanjing headquarters, completed in 2013, is dominated by a world map lit with the locations of existing and potential markets. Red lights mark current operations, while future ones are highlighted in white. The company already owns many iconic global brands, including the House of Fraser in London.

The company was created in 1993 by Yuan Yafei, its chairman, who started by trading goods from a satchel attached to a black bike.

In one of the most remarkable examples anywhere in the world of the ascent of a businessman, the company's display hall shows a 10-cm model of the bike at the far end of a 2-meter-long spectrum leading to cars and private jets.

The Belt and Road Initiative also places a great emphasis on maritime trade, and this is where Jiangsu has a keen geographical advantage.

Lianyungang port, currently being expanded, is a Sino-Kazakhstan logistics cooperation base and one of the national technical demonstration ports. Its location means that it is frequently mentioned as a bridgehead to western and central parts of China and beyond.

With 60 specialized berths, it can handle cargo throughput of 210 million tons and more than 5 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers. Ore, grain, coke and liquid chemicals are shipped from here, but one of the key ingredients for Jiangsu's future success is unrelated to port facilities. Chemical processing plants are being built for both imported and exported products, a two-way street for trade that adds value to raw materials.