EP-IPS attends Belt and Road Global Think Tank Forum in China
On the invitation of China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), Executive President IPS Khalid Rahman participated in the ‘Belt and Road Global Think Tank Forum (BRF)’ and the ‘Fifth Global Think Tank Summit’, which were held respectively on May 14 and 15, 2017 in Beijing, China.
It worth’s a mention here that BRF was the highest-level forum under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aimed at discussing ways to boost cooperation, build collaboration platforms and share outcomes of coaction with the stakeholders.
The forum was participated by the representatives of ministerial-level delegations, heads of international organizations, former foreign dignitaries, well-known entrepreneurs, subject experts, and scholars from various countries. Alongside EP-IPS Khalid Rahman, the participants for the event from Pakistani side included Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, Shaukat Aziz, current director of Boao Forum for Asia and former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and Mustafa Said, executive director, Pak-China Institute.
The BRF forum was followed by ‘Fifth Global Think Tank Summit’ having a theme ‘Gathering Wisdom for Promoting Global Growth’. Rahman delivered a presentation on the occasion titled ‘Connectivity and BRI: A Shifting Paradigm’, in which he maintained that the Chinese initiative of Belt and Road represented an emerging paradigm shift in the contemporary globalized world where the ideology was now gradually sliding from orientation of power to orientation of mutual trust, respect, fair play, justice and shared benefit.
He however stressed that the process of BRI needs to be made sustainable both at the operational as well as conceptual levels; and that objective, he viewed, could be helped by continued interaction and exchange of ideas between think tanks aimed at developing synergies that would ultimately cultivate connectivity and a culture of increased cooperation.
