Zheng Yanxiong, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council and director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, speaks during the opening session of the Belt and Road Summit 2023 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai on Sept 13, 2023. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

A central government official stationed in Hong Kong has urged the United States to value the benefits brought by the 10-year-old Belt and Road Initiative.

Zheng Yanxiong, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council and director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, made the appeal in his speech at the opening of the 8th Belt and Road Summit in Hong Kong, citing the symbolic trip to China by a US ship about 240 years ago.

The United States had been a participant and beneficiary of China’s maritime Silk Road in history. 

Zheng Yanxiong, Director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in HKSAR

On Feb 22, 1784, the birthday of the first US president George Washington, the merchant vessel Chinese Queen set sail from New York harbor and later became the first US ship to dock in China at Whampoa in Guangzhou. After its return to New York on May 11, 1785, Washington himself bought some of its porcelain cargo.

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“The United States had been a participant and beneficiary of China’s maritime Silk Road in history,” noted Zheng.

Today, the US does not feel so comfortable with the BRI , but an article in a Philadelphia magazine at the time pointed out that someday the US would become as populous and prosperous as China, which exhibited US reliance on the Silk Road. 

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Three centuries later, the US has exceeded China in many aspects, but remains a beneficiary of BRI theory and practice, Zheng said. Its production and supply chains are more secure because of China, popular consumer products are provided mainly by China, and markets vital for many US businesses are fulfilled in China. 

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“Learning from history, the US today should value the opportunities that the BRI has brought about to the world even more, instead of trying all means to find fault with it and block it,” Zheng said. 

“Any acts unfavorable to the BRI are bound to lose popular support, undercutting interests of others while bringing no benefit to the self,” he stressed.

The two-day summit, which drew about 6,000 participants from across the world, ends on Thursday.