Chinese Reiterate Offer to U.S. to Join In Developing the World

As heads of state and businessmen from around the world join Asian leaders for the start of China’s four-day Baoao Forum for Asia, dedicated this year to “Asia’s New Future: Toward a Community of Common Destiny,” China’s official media extended once again China’s invitation to the United States to forget geopolitics, and join other nations in the common struggle to improve humanity’s condition.

Top on the agenda of the Baoao Forum, which Chinese President Xi Jinping will address, are the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. According to a report by Xinhua last week, the Chinese government is to unveil here a detailed prospectus of the hundreds of major regional infrastructure projects envisioned in this “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Heads of State from 16 nations, including Armenia, Austria, Indonesia, Nepal, Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zambia, will be there.

Why is the United States not present?

China’s CCTV turned to Peking University professor Zha Daojiong to make the case today that the AIIB should not be viewed as a “a Beijing-vs-Washington issue.”

Professor Zha wrote that “the level of public fury emanating out of Washington in recent weeks is a puzzle…. To view ongoing developments associated with AIIB as a manifestation of soft power competition between Beijing and Washington is overbearing. After all, no country has money to burn.”

Nonetheless, “China would be ill-advised to regard Washington’s disapproval of its allies joining AIIB as an affront. As a traditional Chinese saying goes: ‘Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened; heed only one side and you will be benighted.’ If the US is concerned about AIIB having an impact on its soft power, it could serve its own interests better by keeping an open mind about the project. It should also look at possibilities of collaboration on specific investment projects in the future.”

So, too, Xinhua news agency featured an interview with John Farnell, senior advisor of Brussels’ EU-Asia Center, under the headline, “U.S. Urged to Weigh Its Role in China-Proposed AIIB,” in which Farnell argues that “the AIIB would provide a complement to what has already existed. ‘This is not a question of winners and losers, it is rather one of parallel efforts to achieve a common goal.'”

As Xinhua news agency emphasized in another editorial comment posted yesterday: “The “Belt and Road” initiatives are a product of inclusive cooperation, not a tool of geopolitics… The ‘Belt and Road are original Chinese concepts aimed at improved cooperation with Asia, Europe and Africa and building a community of common interests.”