All news

Russia, China are not rivals in Central Eurasia — Valdai Club analysts

Analysts point to a unique combination of international political and economic circumstances that allow the states of the region to implementing the potential of cooperation and joint development

MOSCOW, June 3. /TASS/. Russia and China are not rivals in Central Eurasia by virtue of objective reasons, as follows from an analytical report by the international discussion club Valdai entitled Silk Road Economic Belt and the Priorities of Eurasian States. The team of authors presented the report on Wednesday.

"One of the tasks that we set to ourselves was to banish the delusion Russia and China are rivals in implementing investment projects in the region," the director of the European and International Studies Center at the World Economy and World Politics Institute of the Higher School of Economics, Timofei Bordachyov said.

The authors of the report point to what they have described as the Central Eurasian momentum - a unique combination of international political and economic circumstances that allow the states of the region to implementing the potential of cooperation and joint development.

The authors believe that "the potential of in-depth inter-regional cooperation in Central Eurasia, closely inter-connected with the Silk Road Economic Belt is not just a transport project, but a project enabling the region’s countries to co-develop."

China’s leader Xi Jinping came up with the idea of a Silk Road Economic Belt in the autumn of 2013 in Kazakhstan. It envisages support for investment and infrastructural projects, expected to bring about a common market of Europe and Asia and a network of automobile roads and railways, industrial parks and power plants.

The project is to be funded through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank having a capital of $100 billion. At the moment there are 57 countries on the list of the bank’s founders. Russia’s application for joining the bank was approved on April 14, 2015.

Tags