The Belt and Road initiative is China’s plan to build a community of shared future for mankind and represents China’s vision for the world in a new era. Engineering technology has played an important supporting role in the Belt and Road construction, especially in major infrastructure construction, energy and resource development, and international industrial cooperation, ensuring the smooth progress of major construction projects. This study examines the opportunities and challenges faced by engineering science and technology in supporting the Belt and Road construction; outlines the strategic goals and overall tasks in various stages before 2035; and elaborates the development strategy of “supporting the Belt and Road construction through engineering science and technology” and its corresponding safeguard measures. Moreover, the study identifies new requirements for engineering science and technology in advancing the Belt and Road construction, including development of a system of key technologies, frontier and high technology breakthroughs, and international cooperation; and concludes that it is necessary to optimize the allocation of research and development resources at the national level, thus to give better scope to the supporting and leading role of engineering science and technology.
Manufacturing industry is the basis of national economy and the foundation for developing or reviving the industries of the Belt and Road countries. The Belt and Road initiative can create opportunities and challenges for high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. Integrating the development of manufacturing industry and the Belt and Road initiative is an important measure for realizing the “Three Transformations” proposed by Xi Jinping, implementing the innovation-driven development strategy, and accelerating economic transformation and upgrading. This study analyzed the opportunities and challenges of international collaboration in terms of policy, infrastructure, trade, capital, and people-to-people exchanges. Finally, the prospects for developing China’s manufacturing industry along the Belt and Road were proposed.
The economic, societal, and natural environments of the Belt and Road countries are diversified and complex, which brings numerous constraints to the highway traffic infrastructure connectivity along the route. And the connectivity currently requires strategic research and guidance. Based on abundant investigations and special studies, this paper comprehensively evaluates the highway development of major economic corridors, and summarizes the constraints faced by highway construction along the route. It also proposes an overall construction and promotion idea, from the aspects of strategic thinking and technical solutions. The needs and foundations determine the direction of a highway, the direction determines the natural and environmental barriers, the barriers determine the key projects, and the key projects determine technical solutions. Based on this, development paths and key engineering proposals for the highway traffic infrastructure of main economic corridors along the Belt and Road can be formed. For specific implementation, a construction sequence should be proposed after evaluating the complexity and capital requirement of key control projects; and feasible financing and operating plans should be formulated based on the social and economic environments of the projects.
Recently, China has become the world’s largest consumer of primary energy and mineral resources, and its import percentage of energy and resources has increased by years. The countries along the Belt and Road are rich of diverse energy resources, which complements China well. Energy and resource cooperation is an important part of the development of the Belt and Road, and is crucial in transforming geographical proximity and resource advantages into economic growth with mutual and sustainable development. This paper reviews the basis for China’s participation in engineering technology cooperation in the energy and resource industries of the Belt and Road, analyzes the problems in the cooperation, studies the cooperation prospects, and proposes measures for strengthening energy and resource cooperation.
This paper first introduces the market demand of countries along the Belt and Road, then studies the prospects for cooperation between China and countries along the route based on the supply capacity of China’s oil refining and petrochemical industries, and proposes cooperation opportunities in resources, market, etc. This paper also comprehensively analyzes the resources, markets, support policies, and investment environment of China and the Belt and Road countries, and selects the key cooperation countries and tasks during cooperation in oil refining and petrochemical investment, technology trade, engineering services, and equipment export by using the analytic hierarchy process. It also proposed several policy recommendations, including coordinated promotion of the whole industry chain, increased publicity, standards integration, fiscal and tax incentive, and risk control.
Information application plays an inclusive and fundamental role in exchanges and cooperation between countries along the Belt and Road, and offers a new perspective for the joint development of information infrastructure. This paper first analyzes the difficulties that China met when participating in the information infrastructure construction in countries along the route and depicts the emergence and development of information application service enterprises in countries along the route. Research shows that information infrastructure construction in countries along the route is slow, due to complex geopolitical, ideological, and national security factors. Information application is an emerging field with adequate market competition. It accords with the needs for social life and government governance, so the cooperation space in this field is huge. Using basic information application to activate the information infrastructure construction of countries along the route is an effective way to achieve connectivity.
The advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative has enabled the countries along the route to deepen cooperation in ecological and environmental protection. With the increasing pressure for air environment quality improvement along the route, and China’s experience and technologies in air pollution control, opportunities are provided for the globalization of China’s air environmental protection industry. This study first summarizes the air environment status of countries along the Belt and Road, and then analyzed the cooperation conditions and demands of these countries. It also evaluated the level of air environmental engineering technology and equipment in China, and the level of air environmental services including air environmental monitoring and project operation, thus to explore the advantages for going global. By comprehensive analysis of cooperation approaches and advantages, strategic recommendations are proposed, including prioritizing cooperation in air environmental monitoring technology and equipment, encouraging international cooperation in air environmental services, promoting cooperation in the air pollution control technology and engineering, establishing a major technological project for air environmental engineering, and making full use of green finance.
This paper analyzes the demands for medical and health cooperation along the Belt and Road, and proposes to establish a telemedicine service system along the Belt and Road by using the natural advantage of telemedicine that it can break the geographical distance limitation. The construction objectives and implementation path of the telemedicine service system were also proposed. Subsequently, challenges in funds, language, talents, and technology in the implementation process were further analyzed, and specific countermeasures and suggestions were proposed, including: building a multi-level and all-round financial support system, applying multiple language strategies “English as a common language, equipped with professional language talents, timely promotion of Chinese”, establish a multi-disciplinary and new mode of talent training mechanism and tailor-made talent export mechanism, form a continuous investment and operation mechanism through the establishment of a professional team.
The globalization of the seed industry technology is a priority field for China’s agriculture to “go global”. This paper expounds the practical significance for China’s seed industry technology to “go global”, then analyzes the status quo and deficiencies of this globalization from the aspects of scale structure, technological level, market condition, trade policy, and supporting service. To promote the globalization of China’s seed industry technology, this paper proposes to improve government policy support system, optimize seed development and validation mechanism, accelerate industrial mergers and acquisitions, support overseas research and development, and strengthen international information exchange.
The construction of the Belt and Road is shifting from overall planning to concrete implementation, which sets higher demands for international cooperation of China’s manufacturing industry. Based on 2016 statistics of the UN Comtrade Database, this paper focuses on the six economic corridors of the Belt and Road, and uses the revealed comparative advantage index to comprehensively analyze the comparative industries in these countries. Meanwhile, the multidimensional scaling method is adopted to explore the overall trade and manufacturing cooperation between China and these countries. Finally, based on the competitive industries and factor endowments of the countries in the six economic corridors, the development direction for high-quality cooperation between China and the countries along the Belt and Road is proposed.
As the Belt and Road initiative develops in depth and breadth, substantial achievements have been scored in multiple fields, such as infrastructure, trade and investment, and green finance. Power and energy are important areas for the Belt and Road international cooperation. To better understand the importance of international energy and power cooperation, this study elaborates the resource superiority of the Belt and Road countries for clean energy development from the aspects of environment and cost, and analyzes the potential of power connectivity among these countries. This study also analyzes the supporting role of technological revolution in power connectivity, in terms of thinking innovation, mode reform, technological innovation, and benefit sharing. Research shows that the energy and power demand of the Belt and Road countries is increasing rapidly, and the widely-distributed and advantageous clean energy resources of these countries have made power connectively possible. In the international energy and power cooperation, comparative advantages of all countries should be given full play, and key technology innovation in fields, such as renewable energy, power grid, and information, should be adopted to support the power connectivity.
To capture the strategic opportunity created by the Belt and Road Initiative to go global, enterprises in China should fully understand the environmental standards of countries and regions along the route. This paper first summarizes the ambient air quality standards of countries along the Belt and Road, and then compares and analyzes these standards in terms of standards setting, pollutants and their limits, regional differences, etc. We found that most countries along the Belt and Road have formulated their own ambient air quality standards; however, there are still profound discrepancies in pollutants setting, average time, and concentration limits among these standards. The standards in Mongolia, Russia, and most Central and Eastern European countries are comparatively stringent, while those in Central and Southeast Asia countries are relatively loose; and there is a great diversity in the strictness of standards in South Asia, West Asia, and Middle East regions. Considering the differences in environmental standards requirement and economic development level, suggestions are proposed accordingly, including environmental standards cooperation, and export of China’s environmental standards and industries.
This study constructed a global multi-scale nested model and a corresponding environmental satellite account, based on the multi-regional input-output analysis method; and estimated the virtual water volume for China’s trade in commodity and service with typical countries along the Belt and Road. Results show that in China’s trade with these countries, water consumed in China’s domestic production is less than virtual water implied in commodities and services consumed by China’s domestic consumers, which indicates that China’s domestic consumption of virtual water is satisfied by imported sources. Thus, China is a net importer of virtual water. Russia and South Korea are main importers of China’s virtual water, while India and Indonesia are the main exporters of virtual water for China. Analysis demonstrates that exported virtual water in China’s coastal, inland, northeast, northwest, and southwest regions decreases successively. As for the industry structure of traded virtual water footprints in China, the agriculture/forestry/animal husbandry/fishery industry is the largest export sector, while the food and tobacco industry, the construction industry, and other service industries are the top three virtual water import sectors.
With the continuous advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative, China-Laos cooperation in agricultural science and technology has been deepening. Based on the survey on the “China (Guangxi)-Laos Improved Crop Variety Test Station” project, this paper reviews the development and effects of the cooperation, and summarizes the experience and problems. Thus, the paper proposes some suggestions as developing an enterprise operation mode, pinpointing project objectives, and upgrading the project level. With the consideration of both social and economic benefits, cooperative projects could be evolved to national agricultural cooperative demonstration bases that aim to demonstrate high-level technology trials, hoping to provide some effective advice for the agricultural cooperation among Southeast Asian countries under the Belt and Road Initiative.
The backwardness in agricultural technology has seriously hindered agriculture in Africa. As a responsible nation with a long history of farming and culture, China can develop a win-win cooperation with Africa through export of its practical production technologies. Since enterprises are the main bodies for China’s agriculture to “go global”, this paper takes Jilin Province Overseas Agricultural Investment and Development Group Limited Company as an example. The competitive edible fungus industry in China and Africa’s own resources and market advantages make it possible for China’s edible fungus industry technology to expand its market to Africa. To promote this cooperation in edible fungus industry technology, suggestions are proposed, including selecting leading varieties suited to local conditions, controlling the production scale expansion speed, strengthening the training of technical personnel, and making full use of preferential national policies.
This paper first introduces the connotation of people-to-people and cultural exchanges in the engineering technology field and the significance of enterprises participation, then sorts out that the status quo of participation of key enterprises along the Belt and Road is mainly realized by organizing Chinese and foreign employees to exchange, carrying out Chinese and foreign cultural exchange and implementing public welfare activities. However, there are still some problems, such as the failure to form a regular and sustainable mechanism of the people-to-people and cultural exchanges in the engineering technology field, and the failure to effectively interact among multi-agents’ platforms. Therefore, we propose suggestions that forming a bilateral and multilateral mixed exchange mechanism with government-led and multi-agents participation, integrating platform resources among Multi-Agents, strengthening the publicity of China’s engineering standards and improving the internal system of engineering standards. So as to provide reference for promoting Chinese enterprises to deepen the participation in the people-to-people and cultural exchanges in engineering technology along the Belt and Road.
In the historical context of constructing “a community with a shared future for mankind” and the Belt and Road, international cooperation in space can help enhance consensus between China and countries along the Belt and Road and achieve mutual benefit and common development. Moreover, with the continuous development of international cooperation in space, the aerospace industry in China urgently requires a talent team to satisfy its need for leapfrog development. This paper first defines and analyzes international talent cultivation in aerospace engineering. Then, using the international talent cultivation practice of the China Academy of Space Technology of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation as an example, this paper elaborates the implementation of the international talents cultivating system in this academy, and presents the implementation effects of the cultivating system.
After over a century’s development, railway transportation is now occupying an important position in the comprehensive transportation system in Iran. To serve the demands for domestic economic and social development and give full play to the regional advantages as an international transportation hub, Iran has formulated a ten-year railway development plan. By the end of 2025, all the existing railway lines in Iran are expected to be electrified, the rate of double track railways will be increased to 100%, and the railway mileage in Iran will be doubled. This Iranian railway upgrading plan has provided favorable opportunities for Chinese enterprises to enter the Iranian engineering construction market. Meanwhile, Chinese enterprises are facing various challenges, including the uncertainty of The Iranian Nuclear Deal, unsound business environment, competition from other powers that are strong in railway construction, and Iran’s preference of technical standards. Therefore, Chinese enterprises should carefully assess the existing risks while observantly seizing the opportunities, and make rational decisions by comprehensively analyzing the international political and economic situations and comprehensively weighting the costs and benefits, thereby steadily “going global” under the “Belt and Road” initiative.