People factor key to 'Belt and Road'

China's Belt and Road Initiative to boost common development must overcome geopolitical, cultural and security risks, because it should be aimed more at benefiting people and less at making money.

The cultivation of talents, a key factor that turns blueprints into reality, is dependent on China's relations with the world. China's reform and opening-up over the past more than three decades increased the exchange of talents with the rest of the world thanks to the rising number of Chinese students going abroad for studies and foreign enterprises bringing in more engineers and managers to China.

Chinese people, especially the younger generations, have more knowledge about the developed world than the developing world. So the government, as the main promoter of the Belt and Road Initiative, should encourage Chinese people to more closely study the histories, cultures, economies and religions of the developing countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.