Wu Guangqiang

jw368@163.com

IN essence, the ongoing trade war Donald Trump forced on China is a conflict of two entirely different business mores, that is, China’s principle of shared prosperity based on mutual respect and benefit versus America’s “winner-take-all” game based on the “America First” concept.

Americans believe in the law of the jungle — the weak and frightened are pursued and mauled; the strong are respected and accommodated. Trump is taking the concept to the extreme. Since taking office, he has thrown his weight around the world, stepped out of every international organization or agreement that he thought took advantage of the U.S., and imposed high tariffs on goods of every country that he thought dealt unfairly with his country. Never has any of his predecessors brandished the stick of sanction against the nations he dislikes more frequently than he has.

By contrast, there are no such phrases in Chinese business dictionaries as sanction, embargo, or coercion against business partners, even though there are different views. Chinese people have been taught since their childhood that harmony brings wealth, and common prosperity is true prosperity.

This has been best exemplified by the launch and implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R Initiative).

When speaking at Nazarbayev University during his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013, President Xi Jinping officially proposed the idea of building the “Silk Road Economic Belt.” In October the same year, in Indonesia, he called for the making of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” marking the launch of the initiative.

Xi’s proposal is part of his grand ideal of building a community of shared future for mankind. As Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.N., pointed out, “In our interconnected world, no single country or group of countries can on their own address the complex transnational security and development challenges confronting us,” adding that Xi’s concept presents an innovative approach by seeking to build an international community based on the convergence of interests and cooperation rather than competition.

Lodhi’s remarks represent many countries’ aspirations for economic growth and poverty reduction. Much of the world is still in a state of underdevelopment, troubled with a severe lack of infrastructure and investment. As a developing country itself, China knows what developing countries need urgently is infrastructure, including roads, railways, ports, power plants and telecommunication networks.

For the past five years, China has been working closely with countries involved in the B&R Initiative as stakeholders, investing heavily in infrastructure, and has yielded fruitful results.

The 471-kilometer-long Mombasa-Nairobi stretch, the first section of a planned East Africa railway network connecting Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, with Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, will cut the travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi from over 10 hours to a little more than four hours. It will play an important role in promoting the country’s economic growth as a traffic artery. No other country better knows the importance of roads and railways than China.

Under the joint efforts of Chinese and Pakistani engineers and workers, the construction of the Gwadar Port Free Zone is in full swing. A key element of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and an essential component of the Gwadar Port development project, the free zone aims to improve trade logistics, facilitate processing trade, and promote warehousing and financial services. Once completed, the free zone will significantly boost the development of Gwadar Port and spur economic growth in Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan.

Nowadays, hundreds of freight trains are shuttling daily between the Chinese cities of Yiwu, Chongqing and Harbin and numerous European cities, transporting thousand upon thousand tons of goods to each other’s destinations, fulfilling China’s goal of selling and buying globally, bringing about common prosperity among nations along the rail lines.

China’s B&R Initiative is inclusive and open, characterized by such principles as equal discussion, construction through joint efforts and fruits-sharing, without involving geopolitics, political unions or military alliances.

In the past five years, trade volume between China and the countries involved in the B&R Initiative has exceeded US$5 trillion, and China has invested more than US$60 billion there, creating more than 200,000 jobs for the related countries.

China is earnest in building a community of a shared future.

(The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)