China’s Ambassador to Britain: “It’s an Opportunity, Not a Threat”

In an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, China’s ambassador to Great Britain, Liu Xiaoming, had some sage advice for those skeptics who see China’s New Silk Road initiative as a geopolitical grab for greater land and maritime power in response to the U.S.’s “Asia Pivot,” or as something simply driven by economic self-interest.

What the skeptics fail to grasp, Liu underscores, is “that the Chinese mind is never programmed around geopolitical or geoeconomic theory. As Confucius said, ‘He who wants success should enable others to succeed.'”

China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, Liu explains,

Liu points to President Xi Jinping’s affirmation that China will cooperate with countries along the route so that everyone will benefit from its development. The Chinese diplomat makes clear that the One Belt, One Road initiative, has nothing to do with what that well-known geopolitician Zbigniew Brzezinski discussed in the 1990s when he said the world was one grand chessboard, and predicted “an emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious Western and Eastern extremities.”

The reality, Liu concludes, is that the One Belt, One Road is much more than just a transportation network that will bring Europe and Asia closer. “It will bring development and prosperity to the whole of Eurasia — and every country will stand to benefit.”