CIRSD Participates in High-level Think-tank Symposium

CIRSD Senior Fellow Damjan Krnjević Mišković participated in a featured panel entitled “The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiatives and the Opportunities They Offer to the 16+1 Cooperation” at the Second High-level Symposium of Think-tanks of China and Central and Eastern European Countries. The event was held in Bled, Slovenia, on 2 and 3 September and took place in the context of the 2014 Bled Strategic Forum.

The High-level Symposium was organized by the Slovenian Foreign Ministry and the Secretariat for Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, together with the China Foundation for International Studies (CFIS) and the Bled School of Management. Speakers and panelists included former heads of state, senior government officials and diplomats, former ambassadors, renowned scholars, and influential opinion-makers from Central Europe, the Balkans, and China.

The panel in which Damjan Krnjević Mišković participated explored various proposals on how to reestablish the ancient Silk Road, which for nearly 2,000 years encompassed western China, Southeast Asia and the Malay archipelago in the east, moving across the Central Asian steppe in the north and the Indian subcontinent in the south, extending into Persia, the Arabian peninsula and the Fertile Crescent into Anatolia, the Red Sea basin, and East Africa, as well as the Balkans and other parts of the European continent.

First put forward by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2012 and 2013, the New Silk Road 'One Belt, One Road' concept is a major economic and opening-up initiative conceived as a way to increase policy communication; road, rail and maritime connection; unimpeded trade; currency flow; and people-to-people exchanges—with an emphasis on practical cooperation in infrastructure, connectivity, economy, trade, energy, environment-friendly sectors, and financial services.

In his remarks, Damjan Krnjević Mišković spoke of the importance of this initiative, which presents a great opportunity to deepen and expand opportunities for all-around cooperation between the 16 Central European and Balkan countries and China. He also referred to the strategic implications of the New Silk Road, underscoring its great ambition: “if this idea is implemented as envisioned, it can fundamentally change the geopolitics and geo-economics of globalization.”

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