For more than 2,000 years, the Silk Road has borne witness to exchange and friendship between the East and West. With its tales of trade and travel down the ages, the route has traditions that have become a source of inspiration for those who seek new opportunities for common development. Now, China is looking to work with Britain in a new partnership, on a new Silk Road for today: the Belt and Road Initiative.

This is an ambitious idea proposed by President Xi Jingping, which aims to harness the potential of countries on the old Silk route – countries in Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and Europe – to develop economic and trading partnerships through greater infrastructure and cultural links.

We are already seeing the fruits of this approach. In January, the first freight train from China’s eastern town of Yiwu arrived in London, extending Belt and Road (B&R) to the far western end of Europe. But there are other tangible results of this kind of enhanced, global, cooperation. During President Xi’s state visit to the UK in 2015, China and the UK reached the agreement to dovetail Britain’s “Northern Powerhouse” with the B&R project. At the eighth China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue last year, where our two countries reaffirmed their shared commitment to closer B&R cooperation, Britain announced a £40 million capital injection into the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.