Welcoming the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation
2019-03-29
The late 1980s saw that our city, Nanning of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the southern region, sent a host of engineers and construction teams to work in the international engineering market, opening the exploration of world market for the first time as the country China began to recover from the stagnation of economy in the previous period.
Those engineers worked in Bangladesh on a highway that connects the home village of the great writer Tagore to the outside world. Due to lack of international experience, the work progressed much slower than scheduled and the team of engineering of China was almost forced out of the poor country with the bad performance they delivered because they were not familiar with the FIDIC rule-based management of international engineering projects. Their practice was done following the usual government-ordered planning manner back home.
It was a Mr. Chen Tingzheng, the then Vice Mayor of Nanning, who is an engineer himself, that led the workforce there to fulfill the unfinished work on time, saving the face of the country and regaining the confidence of Bangladesh, a good neighor of China.
The effort of the city was in fact the beginning of the Belt and Road Initiative, only it took place more than 20 years ago. So it is very meaningful for us to read this book today, written by a woman writer who collects information from the workers on that project.
The official in charge gave a speech to the employer of that country and he was impressed, looked like a movie scene, but perhaps it might not have been so simple. There are sufficient reasons for those underdeveloped countries to be such poor countries, corruption being the usual factor.
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