China Once Again Invites U.S. to Join Silk Road

China has once again invited the United States to join the Silk Road and the AIIB, in the footsteps of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s forceful Nov. 12, 2014 invitation, made at a joint press conference with President Obama at the APEC summit in Beijing, in which he urged the U.S. join in Asia Pacific development.

The March 23 Global Times reports that Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui told the China Development Forum in Beijing, in the Global Times’s paraphrase, that “China and the United States share much common interests and space for cooperation in the Asia Pacific, which should become a region of priority to build a new model of major-power relations between the two countries.”

This echoed President Xi’s proposal at a joint Xi-Obama press conference–at the November 2014 APEC summit–for Chinese-U.S. capital-intensive collaboration in Asia and globally. President Xi said,

Now, as Obama is buffeted globally for refusing to permit the U.S. to join the AIIB, China is re-extending the invitation. Furthemore, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang said,