The last box girder along the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) has been erected, laying a solid foundation for the completion of the HSR and its opening to traffic in June 2023. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By the end of 2021, China had signed more than 200 cooperative documents under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with 145 countries and 32 international organizations, covering fields like science and technology, trade, investment and people's livelihood.

With the Belt and Road Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation Action Plan launched in 2017, China and BRI countries have conducted cooperation projects in terms of sci-tech and people-to-people exchanges, joint laboratories, science parks and technology transfers.

By the end of last year, China had established sci-tech cooperative relationship with 84 BRI countries, investing 2.99 billion RMB, supporting 1,118 joint research projects and setting up 53 joint laboratories in agriculture, new energy and health care.

Along with the China-Belarus Great Stone Industrial Park and China-Ethiopia Eastern Industry Zone, several dozen cooperative industrial parks have also been built in BRI countries, acting as important carriers for economic and trade cooperation.

According to China's Ministry of Commerce, there were 46 countries where overseas economic and trade cooperation zones were built by the end of 2021, with a total investment of 50.7 billion USD, creating 392,000 job vacancies for local people.

Six economic corridors were established, with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as the flagship project generating 38,000 jobs during its first phase, over 75 percent of which were taken up by locals.

From a larger perspective, China has become the major trade partner of 25 BRI countries, and signed seven free trade agreements with 13 of them. The total import and export value between China and BRI countries soared to 11.6 trillion RMB in 2021 from 6.5 trillion RMB in 2013, with an average growth rate of 7.5 percent year-on-year.

According to a report by the World Bank in 2019, if implemented fully, BRI could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty — those who live on less than 3.20 USD a day.