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Fruits of ‘B&R’ construction, archaeology on display at seminar

Author  :  Lu Hang and Shu Jianjun     Source  :    Chinese Social Sciences Today     2016-10-24

Representatives of more than 300 think tanks, enterprises and media agencies from more than 30 countries gathered at a seminar to witness the release of reports on the progress of “Belt and Road” construction and archaeological results from historical sites along the routes.

The International Seminar on the “Belt and Road” Initiative: Shared Memory, Common Development was held from Sept. 26 to 27 in Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

At the seminar, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China published the Third Anniversary Report on the Progress of the “Belt and Road” Initiative. Covering top design, policy communication, infrastructure, trade and other aspects, the report offered an overview of progress achieved in the initiative since it was launched three years ago.

The progress and outcomes have exceeded expectations while countries along the routes continue to deepen cooperation, said Wang Wen, executive director of the Chongyang Institute.

Liu Wei, president of Renmin University, outlined the achievements in more detail. Countries along the “Belt and Road” have reached a broad consensus on policy communication, building institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Euro-Asia Economic Forum as the basis for the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt.

Solid groundwork has been laid in facilities connectivity. Construction of expressways and high-speed rail is underway, Liu said.

Remarkable strides have also been made in trade facilitation: China and countries concerned have committed to removing a variety of trade and investment barriers in the past three years, he said.

A cooperation network has been established for financial integration. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was founded earlier this year and the first investment projects of the Silk Road Fund have been launched. In addition, people-to-people exchanges are being steadily promoted, including a wide range of activities that have been conducted among countries and regions along the routes, Liu added.

The ancient Silk Road has borne witness to communication between civilizations along the “Belt and Road,” laying a cultural foundation for its construction. In December 2013, the School of Cultural Heritage at China’s Northwestern University signed a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Archaeology at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan to excavate and investigate remnants of the ancient nomadic culture in the western area of the Western Tianshan Mountain.

They have so far found remains of an ancient nomadic culture in the piedmont surrounding the Surxondaryo River and speculated that the remains are related to Yuezhi or Rouzhi, an ancient Indo-European people who were first reported living in an arid grassland area spanning modern-day China’s Xinjiang and Gansu before the second century BCE. Scholars said that the findings have provided important clues for archaeologists and academics to further confirm cultural relics of Yuezhi and offered more details on relations between Yuezhi and Kushan, an empire formed by Yuezhi.

Aled Gruffydd Jones, a history professor at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, pointed out that Yuezhi is a major topic involving multiple disciplines, including international history, archaeology, anthropology and linguistics. It is of vital research and practical value to demystify the history of the Silk Road, to discuss interaction between Eastern and Western peoples and cultures in ancient Eurasia, and to promote mutual understanding of countries and peoples along the route, he said.

Yuezhi’s westward migration to Central Asia was a milestone in the history of the Silk Road that had a profound influence on ancient Eastern and Western cultures in Eurasia.

In order to find and confirm archaeological cultural relics of Yuezhi, Wang Jianxin, a professor from the School of Cultural Heritage at Northwest University, led an excavation in Gansu and Xinjiang that started in 2000. A preliminary confirmation was made that Yuezhi people originally settled in a region, with the Eastern Tianshan Mountain as the center, which corrected misconceptions about the western Hexi Corridor.

Moreover, Wang’s team also discovered many large-scale settlement sites from the Eastern Tianshan Mountain area to northern Xinjiang, the Mongolian grasslands and Central Asia, filling in the blank in previous studies and readdressing the prejudice that the nomadic people are “homeless.” Furthermore, they came up with basic research ideas and methodologies for settlement archaeology of nomadic culture, making a huge breakthrough in international nomadic archaeological research.

Editor: Ma Yuhong

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