Chinese FM Wang Yi hails 3rd BRF as a milestone in building Belt and Road

The third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) marks another important milestone in the process of jointly building the Belt and Road, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday, calling the forum a “complete success.”

“The most important consensus reached at this forum is to open a new stage of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation,” Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said at a press conference.

Wang noted that the new stage of cooperation is bound to create even more new opportunities for the global economy and become a boon for the global situation.

“The greatest vision of this forum is to jointly modernize the world,” Wang said. “The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has created a cooperation platform for common development and helped many developing countries speed up their march toward modernization.”

During the forum, a total of 458 outcomes were achieved, far more than the second BRF, Wang added.

Over the past 10 years, Wang noted, the Belt and Road cooperation has made historic achievements, opening up a road of cooperation, opportunity and prosperity leading to common development.

The BRI has become the most popular international public good and the largest international cooperation platform in the world today, Wang said.

Wang added that the Belt and Road is an open platform and every country is welcome to take part in it at any time.

He expressed the hope that connectivity initiatives of other countries also remain open and refrain from creating exclusive cliques.

China stands ready to align with all other connectivity initiatives, Wang said.

At the press conference, Wang also dismissed the claim that the U.S.-launched Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment is targeted at the Belt and Road, calling the narrative another case of politicizing economic issues.