The China Academy of Translation, a research institute affiliated with the China International Publishing Group, the country's leading international publisher, has analyzed prevailing terms concerning the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and translated them into a number of foreign languages. In each issue, Beijing Review presents some of these keywords to help readers know more about the initiative.

South Korea: Silk Road Express

In October 2013, the then South Korean President Park Geun Hye proposed building Silk Road Express to connect railways in South Korea, North Korea, Russia, China, Central Asia and Europe and establishing an energy network of power grids and gas and oil pipelines in Eurasia. This is a core element of South Korea's Eurasia Initiative which intends to integrate rail, roads, ports and aviation into a unified system of logistics solutions.

The Silk Road Express project has, however, been put on the back burner due to the troubled relationship between the two neighbors on the Korean Peninsula and the difficulties in implementing the Eurasia Initiative. Meanwhile, both the government and business entities of South Korea have shown growing interest in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

European Union: Southern Gas Corridor

Southern Gas Corridor is a major initiative by the European Union (EU) to diversify its energy supply, and thereby reduce its dependence on a single supplier.

After years of talks between the EU and countries concerned, a plan was proposed in 2008 to build a southern corridor, with projects including the Nabucco gas pipeline. This EU-funded 3,300-km pipeline project seeks to ship gas from the Caspian Sea to Austria and onward to other European countries via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. With an estimated investment of 7.9 billion euros ($9.5 billion), the pipeline is expected to

deliver 31 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.

There are still daunting challenges in selecting sources of supply and pipeline routes and addressing international dynamics before the concept of this corridor can become a reality. The EU's path to energy security remains protracted.

United States: New Silk Road Initiative

The New Silk Road Initiative was originally conceived by Frederick Starr, a John Hopkins University scholar, in 2005.

The initiative was formally announced by then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July 2011 at the Second U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in India. It aims to build a new geopolitical bloc consisting of pro-U.S. market economies with secular political systems. With a special focus on Afghanistan, it seeks to expand cooperation among Central and South Asian countries in areas such as energy and transport as well as on political and security issues to boost local economic and social development and serve U.S. strategic interests in the region.

In October of the same year, the U.S. Department of State instructed U.S. embassies in the countries concerned to rebrand its Central and South Asia policies under the New Silk Road framework and to notify international partners accordingly. Such a move marked the formal inclusion of the New Silk Road Initiative in U.S. official policies.

Some of the New Silk Road Initiative projects have now been completed, including the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan Railway and Tajikistan's Sangtuda Hydropower Station, which is already supplying power to Afghanistan. Judging by official releases and the progress of the initiative, the United States has shown no intention of giving it up despite challenges in terms of underdeveloped support infrastructure, insufficient funds, lack of mutual trust, and terrorist and extremist threats in the region.

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