President Xi: China to Host 2nd Belt & Road Forum in 2019

Under the Belt and Road framework, Xi explained, all parties can join hands to meet the global challenges in the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.

At the outset of the meeting, Xi thanked Nikai for his participation and Japan's interest in the belt and road initiative, under which China is planning to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in a vast infrastructure network in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Xi said the project has "no political agenda".

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is highly helpful in expanding global cooperation and development, a scholar at an Ethiopian think-tank told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"However, India sent no official representatives+".

The troubling relations between India and Pakistan is a concern for the respective neighbours and has nothing to do with China, it said.

"One single feather does not make a bird fly high", he said.

At the forum this year, held on Sunday and Monday, 29 foreign heads of state and government as well as chiefs of worldwide organizations, corporate leaders, senior officials and scholars gathered to chart the blueprint for the Belt and Road Initiative, which has won positive feedback from more than 100 countries.

Other governments welcome Chinese investment in a region that the Asian Development Bank says needs to spend US$7 trillion this decade on ports, railways and other trade-related facilities to keep their economies growing.

"We need to improve policy coordination and reject beggar-thy-neighbor practices", Xi said. As pointed out by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the CPEC would also be instrumental in addressing some of the root causes of extremism and terrorism by way of generating economic and employment opportunities as well as interaction of people of backward areas with people from other parts of the country and regional countries.

"We need to seek win-win results through greater openness and cooperation, avoid fragmentation, refrain from setting inhibitive thresholds for cooperation or pursuing exclusive arrangements and reject protectionism", he said.

The inclusive tone of China's Belt and Road push stands in stark contrast to US President Donald Trump's "America First" policy.

The TPP, touted by the previous United States administration of President Barack Obama, has effectively been killed by Trump. He said deep-seated problems in global development had yet to be addressed effectively, with worldwide trade and investment sluggish, and economic globalization encountering headwinds.

India's objection is mainly based over the fact that the CPEC project, key to Beijing's ambitious "One-Belt, One-Road" initiative, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir which New Delhi considers as its integral part.

Also Monday, the Philippine defense minister, who attended the Beijing meeting, said he signed a letter of intent with a Chinese military contractor to purchase weapons for Manila's army, navy and air force.