On November 19, 2022, the Macro-Finance Salon (No. 194) was held online. This event was co-hosted by the International Monetary Institute (IMI) and the Department of Monetary Finance, School of Finance, Renmin University of China (RUC). It was joined by Li Jianju, Vice-President,CUFE and Qu Fengjie, Member of Academic Committee, Institute of International Economic Research, NDRC. They shared their observation on how finance contribute to high-quality development in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation. The salon was moderated by Tu Yonghong, Professor, School of Finance, RUC; Dean, Yangtze River Economic Zone Research Institution of RUC.

Qu Fengjie delivered a keynote speech first. She said that the Belt and Road Initiative, after nine years of exploration, had now entered the stage of high-quality development. At present, the internal and external environment of the pursuit of the BRI has undergone profound changes and the BRI faces four major challenges of financial support: (1) huge funding gaps, (2) insufficient capital sources and channels for BRI development, (3) urgent needs to diversify financing models, (4) immature financial-risk-control systems. Given these four challenges, financing channels should be broadened to provide comprehensive and multi-level financial support for the BRI development. To reach that goal, nine steps should be taken: (1) aligning the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank with international rules; (2) ensuring a leading role of development finance and policy finance; (3) promoting participation of commercial banks and private capital in the BRI; (4) strengthening cooperation with multilateral financial institutions; (5) exploring third-party cooperation; (6) promoting regional monetary and financial cooperation; (7) developing differentiated financing strategies according to different project types; (8) developing a Belt and Road investment and financing platform; and (9) strengthening financial risk prevention and control and building a country-specific risk monitoring and early warning system.

Then Li Jianjun gave a speech. He pointed out that the BRI had achieved good results over the past nine years and had made significant progress in policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity, which had laid a sound foundation for the next phase of quality development. That said, the pursuit of BRI still faces challenges like a huge demand for infrastructure construction funds, insufficient supply of funds and poor financing channels. There are also geopolitical and legal risks in the development of BRI. We need to adhere to the principle of pursuing shared growth through discussion and collaboration. It is important to take hardware connectivity as a major direction, software connectivity as a critical support and people-to-people connectivity with BRI countries as a crucial foundation so as to ensure quality development in BRI cooperation.