It's not just a strategy that goes out towards Central Asia through Turkey,
and then on to Europe.
But there's also a component of this, the one belt, the one road.
One of the components of this is to go south down into Southeast Asia and
to link up there.
And there is a recognition and I think it's a very intelligent recognition
by the Chinese leadership that if you build, that building infrastructure
is really important, critical for economic development for these countries.
That's part of the way that China's done so well.
It's one of the reasons that India doesn't do as well, right?
China built harbors, it built high speed rail and roads and
all this kind of key infrastructure for its own development.
And so China, in fact, to try and promote this kind of global or
regional development put forward the idea
of creating an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, at the AIIB,
to facilitate this flow of China's overseas development investment.
But actually it became a thorn and a problem between US and China.
Because the United States, I believe foolishly,
was not supportive of this effort.
And both the United States and
Japan did not join this Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,
while all of Europe very quickly, even including Britain,
quickly rallied to join because they really see this as a positive strategy.
So let's talk about, let's have a conclusion here,
sum up briefly what do we find?
Well first of all, I think overall the findings suggest that China has benefited
enormously from 37 years of the open policy, right.
That the previous experience of global integration,
global economic integration was its relationship
with the outside world was dictated by foreign imperialism.
And then in the 1950s, it was dictated by the USSR.
And, China, it's not an easy road to go out,
to become more interdependent overseas.
It's just not an easy road and so there are lots of blips on the road.
Before we get to this last two points here, I do want to add, and
it's not here on the slide, but I think it's important to go back and
to remember as well, I think, a very important concluding idea is
the fact that China was smart to promote rural development.
And the decollectivization strategy beginning back in 78,
79, as you recall, in terms of its domestic political economy,
was really a huge boom for China's economy.
Through the 80s, into the 90s, it helped promote rural industrialization,
which then helped enrich the quality of the incomes of rural people.
It helped promote economic development overall.
It helped integrate China into the global economy.
So I think going back looking at this, one of the very, very important aspects of all
of the political economy was to begin with this rural reform and I'm.
For me, that was great because that's where,
I was there on the countryside watching this.
But in retrospect, in sort of the final thoughts that I would emphasize
is really this kind of close link that emerged between
the reform of the domestic political economy and China's link overseas,
partly because of the exports from the township and village enterprises.
And now we see the state still trying to use its excess capital,
push the state owned enterprises to go overseas,
to invest overseas as a strategy for developing its own economy.