China's $40b Maritime Silk Road Shaping Up
China's $40 billion fund to finance its most ambitious global plan - the Silk Roads and Maritime Silk Road is moving forward steadily as its management team has taken shape.
China has appointed top officials to manage the fund. A team headed by Wang Yanzhi, an official with China's foreign exchange regulator, has been formed to formally operate the fund.
People's Bank of China (PBOC) assistant governor Jin Qi will be the fund's chief executive and Zhu Surong, governor of PBOC's Urumqi branch in Xinjiang, has been appointed board member of the fund.
The fund was announced by President Xi Jinping last year to build major infrastructure projects aimed to enhance its strategic influence and blunt the US' big push into Asia-Pacific.
The fund is part of China's national strategy to revive the land-based and maritime Silk Roads by financing major infrastructure projects along the centuries-old trading routes. About 65 percent of the fund will come from the country's nearly $4 trillion foreign exchange reserves.
China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund, will hold 15 percent stake in the Silk Road Fund. Two other State-owned financial institutions - the Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank Capital Co - will hold the rest of the stake, according to previous media reports.
China is working with numerous countries to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN said.
Chinese artists performed a Chinese Dance Drama entitled "The Dream of the Maritime Silk Road", at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Feb. 4, 2015.
The dance drama, through distinctively Chinese classical dance, tells a story of a commercial fleet in China's Quanzhou port, Fujian Province: The captain of the fleet was invited by a Persian prince to together develop a new sailing route. During the voyage, the fleet was struck by a storm and the captain sacrificed his life to save the Persian prince.
Echoing with the concepts of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the show is expected to act as a symbol of cultural exchanges, Xie Nan, executive director of the drama said.
