Interconnected Asia Pacific benefits all
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E-mail Xinhua, October 10, 2013
The approach is clear-cut. As an old Chinese saying goes, build the roads first if you want to make a fortune. True enough, infrastructure building is one of the most effective ways to leverage the development of a country or a region.
The Asian Development Bank estimates, by 2020, Asian countries will have spent eight trillion and 290 billion U.S. dollars improving domestic and regional infrastructure, respectively.
China has strong capacity for infrastructure building and stands ready to foster shared prosperity with its neighbors. The British weekly, The Economist, has said a number of countries will find it impossible to complete such costly projects without China's engagement.
Cooperation on infrastructure not only offers a way out for China's capital and products, helps to balance international payments and pushes the RMB to go global, but creates more local jobs and provides opportunities for Asia's emerging economies that lack either capital or technology.
Aside from developing "hardware" such as railways, highways and airports, interconnectivity is also nurtured through intangible institutional reform and people-to-people exchanges. The combination of hardware and software can bring out the best in each country.
A sagacious person should come to realize that, contrary to some media speculation, China put forward the blueprint not out of expediency or on a whim. Rather, it incorporates a big strategy that concerns a shared destiny for all regional members.
And only by achieving interconnectivity and fully harnessing the dividend of regional economic integration can we better pave a win-win road toward world prosperity.
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