MOSCOW, November 16 (Sputnik) — Du Jiang, deputy director of the CNTA, said at the China International Travel Mart 2014 (CITM) that the decision was made against the backdrop of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives which were proposed by China to boost regional economic and infrastructure cooperation, as well as people-to-people exchange in Asia, reports Xinhua.
China is already at the center of local trade and plans to spend billions of dollars to revive intercontinental land routes and develop maritime links to expand commerce giving it more weight in a freight system dominated by European shipping lines, stated Reuters.
President Xi Jinping spoke about this decision during a September 2013 visit to Kazakhstan, and he announced an initial $40 billion for a "Silk Road fund" to invest in infrastructure and industrial and financial cooperation, targeting to "break the connectivity bottleneck" in Asia.
The modern-day Silk Road starts at a railway station in the village of Tuanjie (which means "solidarity") in Chongqing, a city of 30 million where laptop maker Hewlett Packard and Apple supplier Foxconn have factories, among others, as stated by Reuters.
A map published by state news agency Xinhua foresees two routes: an overland one winding through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran en route to Vienna in Austria; and a maritime route from Chinese ports to Belgium's Antwerp.
In August, The State Council, China's cabinet, released guidelines to increase tourism, urging for better cooperation and more exchanges with countries in central Asia, south Asia and Southeast Asia. The CITM, Asia's largest professional travel mart, takes place in Shanghai from Friday to Sunday, with exhibitors from 106 nations and regions invited this year, reports Xinhua.
