Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday said that a total of 10,000 representatives of political parties, think tanks and non-governmental organizations from countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative will be invited to the country for exchanges in the next five years.
Belt and Road initiative is China’s most ambitious project, which is being criticised worldwide for indebting poorer countries and making them dependent on Beijing. Countering which the President said, “We need to maintain that all cooperation is conducted under the sun and work together to combat corruption with zero tolerance,”
He vowed that China will negotiate and sign high-standard free trade agreements with more countries, strengthen cooperation in customs, taxation, auditing and supervision, and establish a cooperation mechanism for jointly building the Belt and Road tax collection and management system.
“We need to pursue high-standard cooperation,” he said. “We will adopt widely-accepted rules and standards, and encourage participating companies to follow general international rules and standards in product development, operations procurement, tendering and bidding.”
Xinhua quoted Xi made the statement in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing
