The International Seminar on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative was held in Quanzhou, southeast China's Fujian Province, on February 11-12. Beijing Review reporter Zhou Xiaoyan spoke to attendees of the seminar to hear their viewpoints on the most pressing questions related to the initiative. Edited excerpts of their views follow:

Objectives

Li Mingjiang (Associate Professor of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore): After opening up to the world for more than three decades, China needs to open up its economy and carry out international cooperation at a deeper level. The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives are the answers to that demand.

Noriyoshi Ehara (Chief economist at Japan Institute of International Trade and Investment): After the reform and opening up, China realized three decades of economic boom. Now, China hopes to share its development with the world through the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives. As China's former leader Deng Xiaoping said, "Let a part of the population get rich first, and they will lead the rest to common prosperity." Now China is adopting a similar strategy: to lead countries along the proposed trade routes to common prosperity after getting rich.

James Peck (Publisher of US-China Book Design Press): The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is a reflection of an enormous transformation in the global order from a unipolar to a multipolar world. It's a very bold dynamic economic plan. Countries along the proposed 21st Century Maritime Silk Road can definitely benefit from the trade route. Economic development among these countries as well as cultural understanding and respect for each other is something that can create a certain energetic vitality among countries which historically share links but had not been able to cooperate economically, given the structure of the international order. The synergic development among those countries will offer an opportunity both for them and for world development.

Some people have falsely compared it to the historical U.S. initiative called the Marshall Plan. (Editor's Note: Officially known as the European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan invested $17 billion in the rebuilding and bolstering of European economies after World War II.) But unlike the Marshal Plan, which is very politically directed in the European context to undercut all sorts of political opposition groups in Europe, China's proposal is more about opening up relationships with other diverse cultures economically and politically, without demanding that they conform to Chinese standards and methods.

And this is a major difference with the United States, which has traditionally required a more universal sense that society should be more or less alike, or at least compatible. China embodies a very much different approach toward the world, a much more tolerant perspective, and China has learned to live with differences between different countries.

Therefore, in one sense, it's like the Marshall Plan in that it can be very generous and open and can create all sorts of economic possibilities, but it's not driven by that kind of hard-edge narrow political agenda.