The strategic conception of building the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road is an important decision that China has made to actively adapt to the profound changes across the globe, expand its international influence, and take international moral obligations. Carrying forward the ancient Maritime Silk Road legacies and conveying the new-era concepts of peaceful development and common prosperity, it is a strategic ladder for the country to realize its Chinese Dream, as well as the Asia Dream, the Asia-Pacific Dream, and even the World Dream of lasting peace and common prosperity.

The connotation of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road in the new era is about peace, commerce and trade, cooperation, opening to the outside world, development, and safety. The implementation and acceleration of such ideas will create new strategic opportunities for the overall development and innovation, socially and economically, in China as well as the countries and regions involved along the Road.

We should take the general plan of the "One Belt and One Road" as the strategic framework for the construction of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, make final approach of great regional cooperation through the communication of policies, connection of highways, access to trade, circulation of currencies, and contacts of the people, as well as innovation on cooperation model to promote work in all areas by drawing upon experience gained in the work on key points.

To make it more specific, we should take the following steps. First, to disseminate, discuss and accelerate the construction of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road by making full use of the current mechanism for international communication;Second, to initiate the construction of the economic cooperation mechanism in the section of the South China Sea, so as to minimize the opposite force caused by persistent overheating of issues in this region;Third, to speed up the cooperation in the sectors of infrastructure, economic and trade contact, financial investment, maritime collaboration, industrial construction, and cultural exchange;Fourth, to quicken the flow of talented personnel at different levels for the establishment of the strategic reserves system of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.

LIN, Yongxin

(Deputy Director, Institute of Maritime Silk Road, National Institute for South China Sea Studies)

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