Both roots and routes of BRI beneficial

The word "roots" (as in the roots of a tree) captures the essence of how we ought to be thinking about deepening our economic and social interaction routes or paths. In line with that thinking, the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative must be predicated on a clear sense of how we secure rootedness across countries in a way that goes beyond the assumption that the initiative is a vision of a single country or driven by self-interest in a world where cooperation seems to have given way to coercion and rivalry.

Some countries and regions have been seeking to barricade themselves off, so as to keep enjoying their historical privileges arising from unfair terms of trade of raw materials, the dominance of certain currencies in global trade and the tendency to allow for connectivity only under conditions that support the Global South's continued economic dependence on the Global North.

Beware of the advocates of an unequal global order