Aligning Belt and Road with EAEU to synergize Eurasia: Russian expert

MOSCOW - The alignment of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and the Russia-led construction of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) will synergize all related parties across the Eurasian continent, a Russian expert said.

"Actually, these blocs move along the same road. The principal economic space consisting of Russia, China and Kazakhstan will be the nucleus of the future Eurasia-wide structure," said Denis Tyurin, director of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Business Club.

Countries outside of the EAEU and the SCO also have shown great interest in them, he said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The Belt and Road Initiative refer to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, a key development strategy proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 with the goal of reviving the ancient trade routes.

The network covers more than 60 countries and regions, with a total population of 4.4 billion.

During a meeting between Xi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Russian city of Ufa in early July, the two sides agreed to take the SCO as an important platform to align the Belt with Russia's aspiration for the EAEU, a historic program to facilitate economic cooperation.

Working groups should be set up firstly between Russia and China to work out mechanisms to facilitate the linkage, Tyurin proposed.

"In the near future, we would see expansion of these working groups with the inclusion of representatives from other countries, like Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan," he said.

In that format, the working groups will draft concrete steps in all areas of cooperation, including transportation, customs policy, telecommunications, inter-state road, and railway traffic, he added.

The working groups, Tyurin said, should comprise not only government representatives but also those from large companies and business associations from various fields, which will help lay a solid foundation for the docking process.

Meanwhile, the expert highlighted the media' role in helping peoples of related countries understand the conjunction program.

"Currently, we still need to make more concerted efforts to raise public awareness about the cooperation project. ... It should not come into the spotlight only during the summits," he said.

"So there is a big task to increase the visibility of these initiatives in countries concerned," he added.

To that end, Tyurin said, the SCO has been thinking about creating a network of media organizations among its full members and dialogue partners to promote direct contact and exchanges among representatives of small- and medium-sized businesses from Eurasian countries.

"So, we have already made the first step," he added.