China's leadership is vital for the success of the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road). It will not be easy, as it would take efforts to adjust its inward-looking history of thousands of years.

It's been three and half years since Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the historic Belt and Road Initiative in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan. It's been only a short time but work has been on the right track to promote free trade and investment in order to benefit peoples in different countries and regions across the two ancient trade routes.

With the same target as the Belt and Road, the Eurasian Economic Union was formed in 2015 as a purely economic union, which currently includes five countries. The EAEU aims to break barriers of the five member states and further deepen economic cooperation within an integrated single market of 183 million people.