Belt and Road Initiative builds connectivity, shared future

Inside an exhibition hall at the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, the world's busiest port by cargo throughput, a giant screen pulses with real-time port operations data. A group of visitors could recently be seen watching intently as a digital platform mapped out how smart port technologies were driving efficient management and greener growth.

"This is precisely the standard a global hub should meet," said Douglas Jardine Flint, former group chairman of HSBC. What had impressed him, he said, was not just the physical scale of the port but the powerful digital infrastructure behind it. "This reflects an open, forward-looking China," he added.

On Thursday, the Advisory Council of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held its 2025 session in the city of Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province. A day earlier, advisory council members from Kenya, Egypt, the United Kingdom and beyond visited the world-class deep-water port in Zhejiang.

The Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is the only port in the world that has handled over 1 billion tonnes of cargo annually for 16 consecutive years. It has more than 200 deep-water berths across 20 port areas stretching 220 kilometers of coastline, with each berth capable of accommodating 10,000-tonne ships.

The port is a golden hub of the Yangtze River Delta and a vital link connecting China with the Middle East, Africa and Europe under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"I once worked as a transportation engineer and was involved in many port projects in Egypt," said Essam Sharaf, former prime minister of Egypt. "But Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is clearly a more advanced and more important one."

In Sharaf's view, the world economy is increasingly dependent on maritime transportation, and efficient ports are the cornerstone of global trade.

"You can see the dedicated employees, cutting-edge innovation and advanced science here. No wonder it's one of the biggest ports in the world," Erastus J.O. Mwencha, former deputy chairperson of the African Union Commission, said as his gaze swept across the bustling port.

To Mwencha, the port is more than just a logistics hub -- it stands as a symbol of multilateralism.

"One of the goals of the BRI is to advance global cooperation and achieve mutual benefit," he said. "Whether it's ports, highways, regional hubs or air routes, all are key programs of the initiative. These infrastructures don't just connect locations -- they connect development opportunities."

Since the BRI was proposed over a decade ago, port cooperation has remained a key field of connectivity.

China and its partners have worked together to transform critical maritime infrastructure, with projects including the Gwadar Port of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Greece's Piraeus Port, which is the largest port in the Mediterranean, as well as Lekki Deep Sea Port, which is the first modern deep seaport in Nigeria.

The goal is to achieve not just broader trade routes, but shared development. For many of the advisory council members who traveled to Ningbo, witnessing the scale and sophistication of the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port reaffirmed the possibilities of deepened Belt and Road cooperation.

Sharaf, a long-time observer of international development, called the BRI "one of the most important cooperation platforms in the world today." It carries, he said, "the development hopes of many nations -- and historic significance."

Through partnerships and joint projects, the BRI has "created a global web of connectivity, shared planning and common purpose," Sharaf said. "Under this initiative, we don't impose things but share the benefits."

Mwencha expressed a similar view. "To me, the BRI is itself a port of hope, of progress, of the future," he said with conviction.