[Belt&Road] Sameh El-Shahat: Respecting Other Countries’ Civilization Is Important

On May 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which earned wide acclaim from experts, international delegates and entrepreneurs.

During his speech, President Xi called the Silk Road spirit a “great heritage” of human civilization and said the Belt and Road should be a “road of civilization,” on which different countries understand, respect and trust each other.

When commenting on this, Sameh El-Shahat, president of China-I Ltd., who was born in Egypt and moved to the UK at an early age, said, “If you don’t respect another country’s civilization, you cannot invest in it in a long term. To achieve sustained investment, a country must respect the target country’s civilization. You cannot do it in other ways.”

“The idea of respecting other countries’ civilizations is very new,” he continued. “If you put it together with investment, it offers a different way of thinking. This is important and should be understood by other countries.”

He added that China treats other countries as friends under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a new idea. “Not everything is about money, but contribution.”