China Daily: Future-Proofing the Belt and Road
In an opinion piece published on the China Daily, Prof Stuart Gietel-Basten, Faculty Associate of the HKUST Institute for Emerging Market studies, offered his suggestion on how China can make the Belt and Road initiative “future-proofed”.
He believed that “a strategic element of the Belt and Road Initiative is for Chinese companies to harness the demographic potential in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative as a response to the challenges at home”. With a rapidly aging population, coupled with the drying up of surplus rural workforce”, China needs to make the Belt and Road initiative “demographically future proof”.
That can be achieved by China being “‘good’ employers who provide decent employment with protections, rights, training, on top of the infrastructure investments along the Belt and Road countries. China should become “an example for countries, corporations as well as other businesses around the world that a better globalization can be set,” he wrote.
Read the original article here.
