PARIS, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will certainly bring "multilateral benefits" and "important" geo-strategic effects to the countries along the routes, a senior French analyst said on Wednesday.
The standard of judgment should be based on whether cooperations within the framework of the initiative yield "multilateral benefits or not," the director of French think tank Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) Pascal Boniface said at the first Paris Forum on the Belt and Road.
He cited the railway between Nairobi and Mombasa which has brought benefits to both Kenya and China.
The flagship project of China-Kenya cooperation, the 480-km line has been providing daily passenger services between the Kenyan capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa since its inauguration on June 1.
According to Boniface, multilateralism is a common value shared by France and China. "The defense of multilateralism can also bring together French-Chinese collaboration," he said.
The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, comprises the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and aims to revive and expand cooperation and exchanges along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes, which nurtured trade between Asia and the outside world in the past.
The Paris Forum on the Belt and Road was jointly organized by IRIS and the Chinese Embassy in France.
