Xi
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
April 26, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said trade talks with China are going very well, as the world’s two largest economies seek to end talks with a trade agreement to defuse tensions.
Trump said on Thursday he would soon host China’s President Xi Jinping at the White House.
Earlier this week, the White House said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would travel to Beijing for more talks on a trade dispute marked by tit-for-tat tariffs between the two countries.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief, return to discussions after a break at Park Hwa Guest House in Pyongyang, North Korea, July 7, 2018. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Hyonhee Shin
SEOUL (Reuters) – The demotion of Kim Yong Chol, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s point man for nuclear talks with the United States, signals he has taken the fall for the failed second summit between the two countries, diplomats in Seoul and regional experts said.
The hawkish former general and spymaster was recently removed from a key party post and is expected to hand over his leading role in the nuclear talks to diplomats who had been previously restrained to playing a secondary part, they said.
Kim Yong Chol remains a formidable force in Pyongyang but there is no word whether he has been given a new role in the ultra-secretive North Korean power structure. He did not accompany Kim Jong Un to Russia this week for a summit with President Vladimir Putin, the North Korean leader’s first international foray since his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February ended in disarray.
“The summit damaged the North’s long-held principle that its leader never makes an error, so they have to shift the blame,” said Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.
“This may not mean an immediate shift in their U.S. strategy, but the diplomats will likely take the initiative to contain the fallout from Hanoi and promote diplomacy with various countries.”
Kim Yong Chol was beside Kim through the last 12 months, including for his three meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, two with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the two Trump summits, in Singapore and Hanoi.
But for those who have known him as a hardline military general, Kim Yong Chol never seemed comfortable with the art of negotiating the roll back of his country’s nuclear program in exchange for concessions from the United States.
Kim avoided getting into details at negotiating sessions, instead leaving it to diplomats to build strategy, two diplomatic sources in Seoul familiar with the North’s diplomatic engagements said.
Even then, he refused to yield control, one of the sources said.
“Whether or not he understood the issues, he kept a tight grip on the negotiations. It seemed like: ‘Over my dead body I’m going to let Ri Yong Ho take over,’” the source said, referring to the North’s foreign minister.
‘REAL SPOKESWOMAN’
Ri and his deputy, Choe Son Hui, are seen to be taking over the vacuum left by Kim Yong Chol, flanking the leader as he met Putin on Thursday.
The collapse of the Hanoi summit was a major setback for Kim Jong Un, who, several sources said, was led to believe by hawkish aides like Kim Yong Chol that he was about to win sought-after sanctions relief in return for a promise to partially scrap nuclear facilities.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at South Korea’s Sejong Institute, said the demands Kim made of Trump in Hanoi had the hallmarks of the “best scenario” strategy advocated by hawks like Kim Yong Chol.
“But it turned out to be a scenario that the United States could never accept,” Cheong said. “Kim Jong Un cutting his reliance on Kim Yong Chol is a positive sign for the negotiations.”
The person who now appears to have Kim’s ear is Vice Foreign Minister Choe, North Korea experts said.
She has steadily grown in influence over the last 15 years, rising from a junior player on the North’s U.S. diplomacy team to become vice foreign minister and a member of the powerful State Affairs Commission.
She held several news conferences after the collapse of the Hanoi summit, playing the rare role of conveying Kim Jong Un’s thinking.
Thae Yong Ho, former North Korean deputy ambassador in London who defected to the South in 2016, said Choe has joined an inner circle of women close to Kim Jong Un, including his sister and his wife.
“Now she’s the real spokeswoman for Kim Jong Un,” Thae told a forum hosted by the Asan Institute of Policy Studies on Wednesday in Seoul. “How can Choe read his mind? Because she has access.”
A diplomatic source also said Choe appears to have built rapport with Kim Yo Jong, Kim’s sister who is also a senior party official, which contributed to her recent promotion.
“We have to remember that (Foreign Minister) Ri and Choe are not only North Korea’s best people for the job of dealing with the U.S.,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the U.S.-based Stimson Center.
“But they both have known the leader since he was a small boy so there is a dynamic of their wanting to see Kim Jong Un thrive and succeed.”
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Jack Kim and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Source: OANN
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Florence Lo
April 26, 2019
By Brenda Goh and Yilei Sun
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Belt and Road initiative must be green and sustainable, President Xi Jinping said at the opening of a summit on his grand plan on Friday, adding that the massive infrastructure and trade plan should result in “high quality” growth for everyone.
Xi’s plan to rebuild the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with huge spending on infrastructure, has become mired in controversy as some partner nations have bemoaned the high cost of projects.
China has repeatedly said it is not seeking to trap anyone with debt and only has good intentions, and has been looking to use this week’s summit in Beijing to recalibrate the policy and address those concerns.
Xi said in a keynote speech to the summit that environmental protection must underpin the scheme “to protect the common home we live in”.
“We must adhere to the concept of openness, greenness, and cleanliness,” he said.
“Operate in the sun and fight corruption together with zero tolerance,” Xi added.
“Building high-quality, sustainable, risk-resistant, reasonably priced, and inclusive infrastructure will help countries to fully utilize their resource endowments.”
Western governments have tended to view it as a means to spread Chinese influence abroad, saddling poor countries with unsustainable debt.
While most of the Belt and Road projects are continuing as planned, some have been caught up by changes in government in countries such as Malaysia and the Maldives.
Those that have been shelved for financial reasons include a power plant in Pakistan and an airport in Sierra Leone, and Beijing has in recent months had to rebuff critics by saying that not one country has been burdened with so-called “debt traps”.
Since 2017, the finance ministries of 28 countries have called on governments, financial institutions and companies from Belt and Road countries to work together to build a long-term, stable and sustainable financing system to manage risks, China’s finance ministry said in a report released on Thursday.
Debt sustainability has to be taken into account when mobilizing funds, the finance ministry said in the report, which outlined a framework for use in analyzing debt sustainability of low-income Belt and Road nations and managing debt risks.
The framework is based on the IMF/World Bank Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries while penciling in local conditions and development of partner nations, according to the report.
CHINESE PROMISES
The Belt and Road initiative will also open up development opportunities for China just as China itself is further opening up its markets to the world, Xi said.
“In accordance with the need for further opening up, (we’ll) improve laws and regulations, regulate government behavior at all levels in administrative licensing, market supervision and other areas, and clean up and abolish unreasonable regulations, subsidies and practices that impede fair competition and distort the market,” he said.
Xi promised to significantly shorten the negative list for foreign investments, and allow foreign companies to take a majority stake or set up wholly-owned companies in more sectors.
Tariffs will be lower and non-tariff barriers will be eliminated, Xi added.
China also aims to import more services and goods, and is willing to import competitive agricultural products and services to achieve trade balance.
“China will strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination with major economies in the world and strive to create positive spillover effects to promote a strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth for the world economy,” said Xi.
VISITING LEADERS
Visiting leaders include Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, a close China ally and among the biggest recipients of Belt and Road investment, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, which recently became the first G7 country to sign on to the initiative.
The United States, which has not joined the Belt and Road, is expected to send only lower-level officials, and nobody from Washington, citing concerns over opaque financing practices, poor governance, and disregard for internationally accepted norms.
“The United States is not sending high level officials from Washington to the Belt and Road Forum,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said.
“We continue to have serious concerns that China’s infrastructure diplomacy activities ignore or weaken international standards and best practices related to development, labor protections, and environmental protection.”
(Reporting by Brenda Goh and Yilei Sun; Additional reporting by Tony Munroe, Stella Qiu, Ryan Woo, Cate Cadell and Tom Daly; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump departs after delivering remarks at the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
April 25, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will soon host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House, setting the stage for a possible agreement on trade between the world’s two largest economies.
The White House said on Tuesday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will travel to Beijing for additional talks on a trade dispute that has led to tit-for-tat tariffs between the two countries.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Tim Ahmann)
Source: OANN
The Belt and Road Initiative is fully in harmony with Hungarian interests, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday in Beijing, at talks with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
Ahead of the talks, Orban said it was a great “honor” to be invited to the second forum of the economic initiative, to be held on Friday and Saturday in Beijing.
Belt and Road is a “serious safeguard of worldwide free trade and the freedom of world economy”, Orban said. As “Hungarians need an open world economy,” Hungary is ready to cooperate further within the initiative, and will reject “all outside ideological pressure” to the contrary because the Hungarian government will “always act according to national interests”, Orban said.
Chinese companies have greatly contributed to modernizing the Hungarian economy, Orban said. Chinese investments have now reached some 4.5 billion dollars in Hungary, he noted, and proposed that the inflow of capital investments be upheld in the future.
Steven Mosher joins Alex Jones to expose the tactics of communist China to infiltrate our technology infrastructure and deceive the masses in the west.
In his greeting to the Hungarian delegation, Li Keqiang praised Sino-Hungarian cooperation and expressed hope that it should be extended further in sectors such as digitization. Cooperation between the countries has already brought results and offers great opportunities for large companies as well as SMEs of both countries, he said. Free trade and economic development will strengthen world peace, too, Li said.
After the talks, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and Innovation and Technology Minister Laszlo Palkovics signed bilateral agreements with Chinese officials. Among them were agreements to set up a Hungarian-Chinese cooperation center, cooperation in sports, creating a “digital Silk Road”, setting up a working group to facilitate bilateral trade and the export of Hungarian poultry to China.
Orban met Chinese President Xi Jinping later on Thursday, the prime minister’s press chief told MTI. They marked the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Hungary and China, the successes in economic cooperation and European affairs.
On Friday and Saturday, Orban will attend the Belt and Road forum, where 37 heads of state and world leaders are expected.
Alex Jones breaks down the true origins of ‘Earth Day’ and lays out how the Globalists are planning on fueling phony outrage about environmental conservation to usher in their technocratic control system over every nation of the world.
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Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond attends a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua (not pictured) at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee/Pool
April 25, 2019
By William James
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain and China will hold the next round of their Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) in mid-June in London, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Thursday, after months of reports that talks had been delayed by diplomatic tension.
The EFD has been used in the past to announce closer cooperation on trade and banking initiatives, and to sign commercial contracts.
However, relations between London and Beijing have been strained in recent years, most notably after a British warship sailed close to islands claimed by China last August.
The EFD talks were agreed during Hammond’s visit to Beijing to speak at a summit on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, championed by President Xi Jinping, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China to Asia and beyond with extensive infrastructure investment.
“By deepening our cooperation on financial services, trade, and investment with international partners, we can ensure Britain’s global future,” Hammond said in a statement.
In that light, Britain will view the agreement of potentially lucrative talks as a success and a step closer to rebuilding the close ties seen earlier in the decade when then-finance minister George Osborne successfully courted Chinese investment.
Hammond said the talks would continue the “golden era” of cooperation – a phrase used repeatedly since Xi’s state visit to London in 2015 which has become a byword for Britain’s pitch to tap the investment power of the Chinese state.
Earlier on Thursday, Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua expressed regret to Hammond that the South China Sea issue had harmed ties, and that he hoped Britain could “respect China’s core interests and important concerns”.
A Treasury statement said Hammond was due to tell the Belt and Road forum that Britain is a “natural partner for quality global infrastructure initiatives due to the world class talent and expertise the UK has to offer.”
The Chinese initiative has become mired in controversy, with some partner nations bemoaning the high cost of projects, though China has repeatedly said it is not seeking to trap anyone with debt.
Hammond will emphasis in his remarks that projects must meet international standards on governance, debt sustainability and environmental impact, the Treasury said.
(Reporting by William James, additional reporting by Andy Bruce, Editing by Kylie MacLellan and Elizabeth Piper)
Source: OANN
President Donald Trump touted progress in the fight against opioid abuse on Wednesday and promised to hold drugmakers accountable for their part in the crisis, a day after his administration brought its first related criminal charges against a major drug distributor and company executives.
America’s opioid epidemic, especially damaging in rural areas where Trump is popular, has been a focus for the Republican president.
On Tuesday, the government charged drug distributor Rochester Drug Co-operative Inc and company executives for their role in fueling the epidemic. The company agreed to pay $20 million and enter a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve charges it turned a blind eye to thousands of suspicious orders for opioid pain killers.
“We are holding big Pharma accountable,” Trump said at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta.
Deaths from opioid overdose in the United States jumped 17 percent in 2017 from a year earlier to more than 49,000 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths from potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl surged 45 percent in that time, according to the CDC.
Hundreds of lawsuits by state and local governments accuse drugmakers such as Purdue Pharma of deceptively marketing opioids, and distributors such as AmerisourceBergen Corp , Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp of ignoring that they were being diverted for improper uses.
Trump said he convinced Chinese President Xi Jinping in a December meeting in Argentina to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance.
China last month listed all fentanyl-related substances as controlled narcotics after criticism from Trump, though its government blamed U.S. culture for abuse of the drug and said the amount of fentanyl going from China into the United States was “extremely limited.”
“Almost all fentanyl comes from China,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They are going to make it a major crime.”
Little has come of Trump’s earlier calls for executing drug dealers. But the administration has taken some action to address the crisis on other fronts.
Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October 2017. Last week, U.S. health officials said they will spend $350 million in four states to study ways to best deal with the opioid crisis on the local level, with a goal of reducing opioid-related overdose deaths by 40 percent over three years in selected communities in those states.
The Democratic National Committee said in a statement before Trump’s remarks that his proposed Medicaid cuts and efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, could make the opioid problem worse.
Trump has used the crisis to support his call for building a wall on the border with Mexico, saying it would help keep out heroin and other illegal drugs and curb the crisis.
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: Tugboat escorts French Navy frigate Vendemiaire on arrival for a 5-day goodwill visit at a port in Metro Manila, Philippines March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/File Photo
April 24, 2019
By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A French warship passed through the strategic Taiwan Strait this month, U.S. officials told Reuters, a rare voyage by a vessel of a European country that is likely to be welcomed by Washington but increase tensions with Beijing.
The passage is a sign that U.S. allies are increasingly asserting freedom of navigation in international waterways near China. It could open the door for other allies, such as Japan and Australia, to consider similar operations.
The French operation comes amid increasing tensions between the United States and China. Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom of navigation patrols.
Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a French military vessel carried out the transit in the narrow waterway between China and Taiwan on April 6.
One of the officials identified the warship as the French frigate Vendemiaire and said it was shadowed by the Chinese military. The official was not aware of any previous French military passage through the Taiwan Strait.
The officials said that as a result of the passage, China notified France it was no longer invited to a naval parade to mark the 70 years since the founding of China’s Navy. Warships from India, Australia and several other nations participated.
Colonel Patrik Steiger, the spokesman for France’s military chief of staff, declined to comment on an operational mission.
The U.S. officials did not speculate on the purpose of the passage or whether it was designed to assert freedom of navigation.
MOUNTING TENSIONS
The French strait passage comes against the backdrop of increasingly regular passages by U.S. warships through the strategic waterway. Last month the United States sent Navy and Coast Guard ships through the Taiwan Strait.
The passages upset China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory. Beijing has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island.
Chen Chung-chi, spokesman for Taiwan’s defense ministry, told Reuters by phone the strait is part of busy international waters and it is “a necessity” for vessels from all countries to transit through it. He said Taiwan’s defense ministry will continue to monitor movement of foreign vessels in the region.
There was no immediate comment from China’s foreign or defense ministries.
“This is an important development both because of the transit itself but also because it reflects a more geopolitical approach by France towards China and the broader Asia Pacific,” said Abraham Denmark, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.
The transit is a sign that countries like France are not only looking at China through the lens of trade but from a military standpoint as well, Denmark said.
Last month France and China signed deals worth billions of euros during a visit to Paris by Chinese President Xi Jinping. French President Emmanuel Macron wants to forge a united European front to confront Chinese advances in trade and technology.
“It is important to have other countries operating in Asia to demonstrate that this is just not a matter of competition between Washington and Beijing, that what China has been doing represents a broader challenge to a liberal international order,” Denmark, who is currently with the Woodrow Wilson Center think-tank in Washington, added.
Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help provide the democratically ruled island with the means to defend itself and is its main source of arms.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart in Washington; Additional reporting by Sophie Louet in Paris, Yimou Lee in Taipei and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 2019 White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 22, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
April 24, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is expected to tout his fight against opioid abuse in remarks in Atlanta on Wednesday, a day after his administration brought its first related criminal charges against a major drug distributor and company executives.
America’s opioid epidemic, especially damaging in rural areas where Trump is popular, has been a focus for the Republican president.
Little has come of Trump’s calls for executing drug dealers, but on other fronts the administration has taken some action. Trump has worked to boost funding for treatment and raise awareness of the problem.
On Tuesday, the government charged Rochester Drug Co-operative Inc and executives of the major drug distributor. The company agreed to pay $20 million and enter a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve charges it turned a blind eye to thousands of suspicious orders for opioids.
Deaths from opioid overdose in the United States jumped 17 percent in 2017 from a year earlier to more than 49,000 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl surged 45 percent in that time, according to the CDC.
Hundreds of lawsuits by state and local governments accuse drugmakers such as Purdue Pharma of deceptively marketing opioids, and distributors such as AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp of ignoring that they were being diverted for improper uses.
Trump has said he convinced Chinese President Xi Jinping in a December meeting in Argentina to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance.
China last month listed all fentanyl-related substances as controlled narcotics after criticism from Trump, though its government blamed U.S. culture for abuse of the drug and said the amount of fentanyl going from China into the United States was “extremely limited.”
Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October 2017. He plans to provide an update on his administration’s work on the issue at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, a White House spokesman said.
Trump has used the crisis to support his call for building a wall on the border with Mexico, saying it would help keep out drugs and curb the crisis.
Heroin from Mexico accounted for 86 percent of the heroin found on U.S. streets, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most recent annual narcotic report. Heroin, unlike fentanyl, is derived from the seeds of the opium poppy plant.
Last week, U.S. health officials said they will spend $350 million in four states to study ways to best deal with the opioid crisis on the local level, with a goal of reducing opioid-related overdose deaths by 40 percent over three years in selected communities in those states.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and David Gregorio)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: People walk past a flower arrangement set up to mark the upcoming Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
April 24, 2019
By Brenda Goh and Michael Martina
BEIJING (Reuters) – China is expected to promote a recalibrated version of its Belt and Road initiative at a summit of heads of state this week in Beijing, seeking to allay criticism that its flagship infrastructure policy fuels indebtedness and lacks transparency.
The policy championed by Chinese President Xi Jinping has become mired in controversy, with some partner nations bemoaning the high cost of projects. Western governments have tended to view it as a means to spread Chinese influence abroad, saddling poor countries with unsustainable debt.
While most of the initiative’s projects are ongoing, some have been caught up by changes in government in countries such as Malaysia and the Maldives. Projects that have been shelved for financial reasons include a power plant in Pakistan and an airport in Sierra Leone, and Beijing has in recent months had to rebuff critics by saying that not one country has been burdened with so-called “debt traps”.
Xi launched the Belt and Road initiative in 2013, and according to data from Refinitiv https://apac1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/Apps/BRI, the total value of projects in the scheme is at $3.67 trillion, spanning countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and South America.
A draft communique seen by Reuters said that 37 world leaders attending the April 25-27 summit will agree to project financing that respects global debt goals and promotes green growth.
Visiting leaders will be headlined by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, a close China ally and among the biggest recipients of Belt and Road investment, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, which recently became the first G7 country to sign on to the initiative.
The United States, which has not joined the Belt and Road, is expected to send only a lower-level delegation, and nobody from Washington.
Some Belt and Road projects “are going through a period of rationalization and evaluation,” said Li Lifan, deputy director general of the Centre for Belt and Road Initiative Studies at the government-backed Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
The summit “will be a time for reflection and to talk about the hopes for the future,” he told Reuters.
RHETORIC SHIFT
Industry insiders and diplomats say that there has been a shift in the way Beijing has been pushing Belt and Road overseas since the first such summit two years ago.
“The political part is handled by the foreign ministry now, not the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC),” said a senior Western diplomat in China, referring to the country’s state planner which drafted the initiative’s official outline in 2015. That shift occurred last year, he said.
Other analysts said there was a noticeable change in China’s overseas efforts to market the policy in the second half of 2018. In an unusual move, at least 10 of China’s ambassadors and diplomats in countries such as Mexico and Kenya published letters in local media outlets to defend the initiative.
Wu Ken, China’s new ambassador in Germany, acknowledged in his first speech on the job that there were “deep doubts” about Belt and Road.
“I hope relevant people can overcome the ‘allergies’ they have towards the Belt and Road as soon as possible so China and Germany can cooperate to jointly tap the benefits from it,” he said earlier this month.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a confidant of Chancellor Angela Merkel, will attend the summit.
William Klein, minister counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, told a forum earlier this month that the United States continued to have concerns about the Belt and Road.
“These concerns, for example, are opaque financing practices, poor governance and a failure to adhere to internationally accepted norms and standards.”
Andrew Davenport, chief operating officer at Washington-based consultancy RWR Advisory, which has been tracking Belt and Road investment, said China has become more reactive in its positioning of the initiative since the last forum.
“It’s relatively clear that the Belt and Road narrative being put forward by Beijing over the past several months is designed to counter the criticism and push back,” he said.
SUBDUED
While the number of foreign leaders due at the summit is up from 29 last time, the run-up to the event has been subdued compared with the 2017 meeting.
Two years ago, the weeks before the summit’s opening day were marked by a series of music and explanatory videos published by state media to advertise the Belt and Road initiative while the government announced the dates publicly roughly a month before.
There has been no such media blitz this year besides a handful of documentaries and advertisements, and Beijing only confirmed the dates last Friday, less than a week before the opening.
In events held to talk about Belt and Road before the summit, Chinese officials stressed that the initiative remained a “win-win” and an attractive opportunity for countries willing to become partners.
On Monday, NDRC official Xiao Weiming told a media briefing that Chinese companies had invested $90 billion in countries benefiting from Belt and Road and handed out between $200 billion-300 billion worth of loans between 2013 and 2018.
“The Belt and Road initiative is an open and inclusive idea,” he said. “As long as any country is willing to work with China, we will all have gardens along the Belt and Road.”
(Reporting by Brenda Goh and Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Cate Cadell and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, and John Ruwitch and Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Tony Munroe and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Source: OANN
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