The neighboring countries and regions are important starting points for the construction of both the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. That's why China attaches great significance to consolidating its neighborhood cooperation as a foundation for implementing the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi's visits indicate bilateral cooperation is an important means to furthering the construction of the Belt and Road. The countries visited have huge needs in infrastructure construction, including roads, airports, ports, energy, and telecommunications, and constructing this infrastructure is key to building the aforementioned corridors, which should not only promote interconnectivity in their infrastructure construction, but also create jobs, and form regional production networks and value chains for industrial development in the countries concerned.

There was an international seminar on the Belt and Road Initiative held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, recently. A report issued at the seminar showed the achievements of the initiative in the past three years have been more than expected. Xi's visit to Pakistan in 2015 effectively pushed forward the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and the construction of the China－Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor will be of practical importance to deepening win-win cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and shaping the maturity of China-ASEAN partnership in the coming years.

Likewise, the construction of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor will inject new vitality into China-South Asia cooperation.

Only when these two corridors see concrete progress will the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road be pushed forward in a balanced way.

The author is a researcher on Asian-Pacific studies and global strategies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.