The Belt and Road: Eight Voyages of the Dragon
Tuesday, 24 January 2017The Belt and Road Initiative (OBOR or BRI) has become a hot topic over the past 3 years. and China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) has been very actively involved in the development of BRI since the very beginning. Early this month, the Chief Executive of China Britain Business Council, Mr. Stephen Phillips attended a China-UK Trade & Investment Forum held in Tsinghua University and delivered an excellent speech named "One Belt, One Road: The China-UK Trade and Investment Approach".
In the speech Stephen reviewed list of business opportunities by key sectors, shared the China-Britain Belt & Road Case Studies Report produced by CBBC research team and introduced several UK professional services providers serving the BRI with their legal, financial and industrial expertise. Stephen also encouraged stakeholders in both countries working together, leveraging CBBC network and members to embrace the development of BRI.
The full presentation of Mr. Stephen Phillips, "One Belt, One Road: The China-UK Trade and Investment Approach" can be downloaded from this link.
As the Chief Representative at China-Britain Business Council Chongqing office, I lead my team to organise the "One Belt One Road" Roadshows in the past two years in Chongqing. Early than that we had series of China Outbound events, focusing on attracting Chinese overseas investment to the UK and promoting British professional services in China market. During these events I often borrowed the title of the book "Eighth Voyage of the Dragon", which was written by Bruce Swanson on China's quest for seapower, to describe the emerging trend of Chinese outbound investment in the last 4 years. We called it "the eighth" to express our admiration to the previous 7 voyages organised by Zheng He in the Early Ming Dynasty.
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| Voyages of Zheng He |
Today I happen to read an interesting article "Male prostitute, eunuch, Mohammed and ocean warlords" (男妓、太监、默罕默德与海洋军阀) on WeChat, which links current BRI with Zheng He's adventures 600 years ago. The author claimed that ultimate goal of Zheng He's voyages was to sweep the threat of Mongolia from both the oceans and Southeast Asia, it was part of the largest territory expansion of Chinese civilization after the Han Dynasty. The 7 voyages are just one of the three major frontlines of the battles between Ming Dynasty and Mongolians. The other two included Zhu Di's 5 journeys to the north, and semi-militarized diplomatic missions sent to Asia and Tibet. Zhu Di was trying to build a New Eastern Empire which never existed in Chinese history before, dominating both land and oceans.And that was the "One Belt One Road" strategy of Ming Dynasty.
In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang's uprising has overthrown the Yuan Dynasty, the emperor of Yuan dynasty, Toghon Temür lead the Mongolian royal family back to the Mongolian plateau. The Mongol Empire, the largest empire in human history, which dominated the Eurasian region finally began to shrink within its border, the afterglow of Golden Family slowly disappeared from the Central Plains...
-- "Male prostitute, eunuch, Mohammed and ocean warlords" by Chouma
The author stated that nowadays China will soon change itself completely from defensive farming civilization to offensive marine civilization and those national strategies are gradually being implemented today. On the military side, the warships are being put down to the South China Sea like dumplings in the pot; on currency side, the nation is gradually untied RMB from dollar; politically, the central power is highly enriched, decision-making process gets more quickly at top level; ideologically, the idea of strengthening army and richening state have been generally accepted by the public. Such situation is rare in Chinese history, the author argued that the most similar period in history might be Chinese external expansion and the "Belt and Road" during Ming emperor Zhu Di's regime. A review on the history of 600 years ago could be useful for the investors today, and we shall see the history evolving from the clash of nations.
Labels: history, investment
Posted by Guoyu @ 17:56,
