Silk Road economic belt highlights China-EU cooperation

In this respect, he added, EU institutions should play a crucial role as a safeguard in case of divergence among individual European countries.

Another important aim of this modern Silk Road is to accelerate and deepen the development of China's western areas including Chongqing, Tibet and Xinjiang, while promoting their stability, said Giovanni Andornino, professor of international relations of East Asia with the University of Turin.

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"Over the past decade, the Chinese central government and richer coastal provinces have supported major investments in western China, which comprises a quarter of the population and almost half of the country's territory," Andornino said.

"It is strategic that western provinces can now function as an effective bridge between China's developed eastern coast and Central Asia," he said.

Andornino said the strategic reorganization of Central Asia in 2014 with the reconfiguration of the U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan and the closure of the Transit Center at Manas near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek "provides an opportunity for China while requiring an assumption of responsibility to promote stability in this fragile region."

The fundamental enabling factor for China's growth and development in the past 30 years was "the pursuit of a moderate foreign policy in which the maintenance of stability in the international system, starting from the borders of China, was considered an essential interest of Beijing," he said, adding that the idea of the modern Silk Road in Central Asia has been created by the continuity with this approach.

"The bundle of infrastructures, flows and relations, both economic and cultural, destined to sprout along this path and flow into the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, will be a factor in the development of all the actors involved, if interpreted in a shared and responsible way," Andornino said.

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