BRI is revival of all the historical relations between China and the world

Now China is becoming one of the largest trading partners to Jordan. Many businesses and people from Jordan come to China and benefit from Chinese market. The relations between Jordan and China have been always on the increase, and have always been growing, especially in the recent years, particularly after His Majesty King Abdullah II assumed his power as the king in 1999.

Since then, we have very good interest and attention from His Majesty the King to support the growing and developing relations between China and Jordan. This support from His Majesty was also matched by the Chinese leadership, especially His Excellency President Xi Jinping.Together, they managed to give a very good support to the relations.

Luckily, in 2015, we managed to reach the stage of strategic partnership. The strategic partnership agreement was signed during the visit of His Majesty the King in 2015, as I said. I would say that the relations have always been on the increase.  China is a very important one of leaders and nations. We value very much our relations throughout the history with China.

The recent years, particularly the recent few years, have seen quite very good development in terms of trade and economic relations. I was so pleased that when I came here in China in 2019, we have a trade volume around $4.2 billion a year. And now, again, we are having the same excellent relations between both our nations and our civilizations, and it's growing.

So we are proud of it, and we are happy with it. We look forward to more in the future. The way I see the Belt and Road Initiative is a revival of all the historical relations between China and many parts of the world, including my country and our part of the world and the Middle East. As I said earlier, we have long relations. 2,300-2,400 years ago, there was the Great Arabic Nabataean Kingdom in the south of Jordan, capital of which was Petra.

The kingdom of Petra was a very rich and very strong kingdom at that time. It was one of the great and important destinations on the Silk Road that comes from China. Actually, it was a dream destination.It was a dream for all the travelers and traders because of its status as a rich kingdom. They sold their spices. They sold their silks and all the commodities coming from China.

The Belt and Road Initiative have come at a very good time to revive all these historical relations between those parts of the world with China. We belong to great civilizations, the Arabic civilization and the Chinese civilization. We have a long history of cooperation, long history of exchange, and long history of trading, not only businesses and commodities, but also our cultures, our values, and so on. We have a lot in common.

We have a lot of shared common values that bring both our nations and our civilizations. The Belt and Road Initiative, as I see now, is reviving all these relations, historical relations, also reviving all these specifics of our relations and bringing to more visibility, these strong bonds of relations between both our people.

My country, Jordan, lies in the heart of the Middle East. One of the luckiest things of all is that this location is a very strategic location,

is a meeting point of the maritime route of the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as the land route of the Belt and Road Initiative.

So if you take those two routes, the maritime and land routes going out from China, you will see that one of the points that both routes can meet are in my country, Jordan, in the heart of the Middle East.

This is just a simple example of how significance these relations can be and this trade route becomes.

What brings more interests in the Belt and Road Initiative is that it's not only about business and economy. It's also about culture and exchanges.There will be more interaction in terms of science and technology cooperation, in terms of people-to-people exchanges, in terms of academic exchanges and education.

So there are plenty of areas that will again push forward on surface those values that we have between all of our nations and bring them to the surface back again and push them toward more cooperation and more exchanges that will bring more development of our nations, more development of our neighborhood, and also a better advancement for the humanity in general.

The new technologies are bringing more windows of exchanges.

The new technologies in terms of information technology, social media,internet of things and artificial intelligence...

All of these are new developments that are bringing people closer.

As we can see, China is paying a very good attention to these areas of development in terms of technology, information technology and digital technology, I would say.

My country, Jordan, is one of those countries in the middle of paying very good attention. Jordan is a country that depends a lot on its human resources. These are one of our most valuable resources of the country. Education and higher education have helped the country build one of the most significant manpower in the region, especially in the areas of internet, information technology, telecommunications and digital technology in general.

When we look at this new advancement in both China and in our region, in my country, Jordan, we see that there are new opportunities that these new technologies will bring us closer and will bring more interactions and people-to-people exchanges.

The recent years have seen quite a very good development in terms of interest among Jordanian to learn Chinese language for themselves.We really want to invite you to share your points of view on Chinese modernization, which is one of the most important things for China, for Chinese people now.

I think this is one of the important points throughout the history in the relations between the Arabic and Chinese civilizations. China has always been a source of knowledge, science, information and development throughout the history. It is always a source of attraction for travelers, for who are seeking knowledge and information.

At the same time, in our part of the world, the Arabic civilization has always been a source of renovation and sciences from time to time. And also there is a lot of contribution to humanity that also took place in our Arabic civilization.

When you look at the historical relations, you'll see this kind of exchange and successful interaction has always been between the Arabic civilization and the Chinese civilization.

Author：Hussam Al Husseini