On July 12, 2019, the State Council Information Office of China (SCIO) invited officials from Zhejiang Province to brief the media on the province's efforts to deepen its "Double-Eight Strategy" and further reform and opening up.

Che Jun, Secretary of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Congress, and Yuan Jiajun, Deputy Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the Governor of the Zhejiang Provincial People's Government, introduced the province's work and answer questions from the media.

During the question-and-answer session, a reporter from the UAE Chinese Arabic Television first acknowledged Zhejiang’s progress by stating that Yiwu City of Zhejiang Province is standing out as a global distribution center for small commodities in recent years. Many business people from Arab countries come to the city to make purchases. The first China-CEEC Expo was held in Ningbo, Zhejiang this year. He then asked Che Jun whether these are evidence of Zhejiang’s increasingly important role in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Che Jun, Secretary of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, illustrated the status and role of Zhejiang Province in the BRI construction, accordingly.

Located at the organic intersection of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the province stays clear about its status in the BRI – to establish a key BRI hub with all efforts. Three advantage of Zhejiang will give full play to its role, said Che Jun.

The first strength lies in the Zhejiang business people, according to Che Jun. Up to now, over 6 million Zhejiang businessmen are doing business and managing enterprise nationwide; not to mention the 2 million Zhejiang people who are investing and starting up their own business in countries and regions around the world. This group of people serves as the unique strategic resources in the BRI construction, with which Zhejiang will better its platform function to promote more business people to participate more actively in the BRI construction.

Moreover, Zhejiang boasts channel advantage, said Che Jun. Ningbo Zhoushan Port, a “living fossil” of the Maritime Silk Road, is now the largest port in the world with cargo throughput exceeding 1 billion tons and the container throughput surpassing 26 million TEUs last year. The Yiwu Small Commodity Wholesale Market has 13,000 overseas businesspeople living and purchasing all year round. The export goods cover more than 200 countries and regions. Over 300 YIXINOU trains departed from Yiwu last year. In addition, Zhejiang's digital economy is taking the lead in the nation. An increasing number of goods and products are imported and exported through cross-border e-commerce platforms. In 2018, the province’s online retail sales of cross-border e-commerce reached RMB 84 billion yuan, an increase of 39 percent. Zhejiang plans to further expand these channels, allowing more Zhejiang manufacturing to go global and foreign goods to come in.

The province also has platform advantage, stated by Che Jun. Zhejiang owns a large number of opening up platforms of high capacities, China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone, China-CEEC Expo, China Yiwu Import Commodities Fair, and World Overseas Chinese Import Commodities Fair, to name a few. Furthermore, it has a number of opening-up platforms invested by Zhejiang businessmen in the countries along the Belt and Road. There are 12 trade and economic cooperation parks overseas; the BRI YIXINOU railway express establishes a Dubai station in Dubai and a Czech station in the Czech Republic, facilitating as a distribution center for goods.

Che Jun said Zhejiang will make full use of these major platforms to make contributions to the BRI construction.