Pan Yong

Pan Yong

(Director, Finance and Insurance Department, Business School of Guangxi University)

Author

Pan Yong is Director of Finance and Insurance Department, Business School of Guangxi University, Assistant to the President of China-ASEAN Research Institute, and Deputy Director of the Fiscal and Financial Research Center of Guangxi University. Pan specializes in China-ASEAN relations and finance and participated in drafting the overall plans for the “strategic pivot” and “Maritime Silk Road,” initiated by the local government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Major research projects headed by Pan include: Research on Currency Competition under the China-ASEAN Cross-Border RMB Settlement (Serial Number: 12BJL058), funded by the National Social Science Fund; and Research on China-ASEAN Regional Integration and its sub-topic Development of a China-ASEAN Cross-Border Economic Cooperation Zone, funded by the Ministry of Education. Major research projects Pan has participated in include: China-ASEAN Neighboring Provinces’ Industrial Policy Coordination and Regional Division of Work in the Process of CAFTA (06 & ZD036), funded by the National Social Science Fund; and The Evolution Mechanism, Development and Utilization of Location Value of Border Region—with China-ASEAN Border Region as an Example (70763001), funded by the National Natural Science Foundation.

Abstract

President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt with the five Central Asian countries, aiming at exploring and expanding the cooperation and economic ties between China and the Central Asia. The construction of the economic belt requires these nations to enhance their policy communication, traffic connectivity, trade facilitation, currency circulation and people-to-people exchange. It intends to achieve the development both at home and abroad, balance geopolitics, maintain energy security, promote trade and RMB internationalization, combat separatism and terrorism, strengthen people-to-people communication and shape the national image. It targets both economic mutual benefit and strategic win-win cooperation. But as the current international relationship grows increasingly complicated and competition becomes more intense, the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt will incur some conflicts of interest outside the belt, such as the geopolitical conflicts between China and Russia, the conflicts between China and the United States regarding containment and anti-containment, and the geopolitical conflicts between China and India. Deepening cooperation along the Silk Road Economic Belt requires properly

addressing these interest conflicts on the basis of realizing mutual benefits within the belt. China should also give away some short-term interest and set its eyes on long-term interest, beef up investment in public projects, and regulate corporate behavior. When it comes to handling interest conflicts, China need to take different strategies to deal with different countries: establish a cooperation coordination mechanism between China and Russia; and engage with the United States’ strategy of returning to Asia with a correspondingly flexible policy.