以下为英文原文：

I’m a businessman; I will try to use a businessman's perspective and talk about some of my observations about Belt and Road in a larger context of the world we're in.

I think it's obvious that the world is on a difficult path. For a brief moment in the past 30 years, the world seemed to be coming together. Trade was increasing, interconnectedness was increasing in all forms, and it brought tremendous benefits, especially for the United States, the West in general, and China.

But these 30 years created two problems that came about at the end that era. One is, in the US and the Western world at large, there was a big increase in inequality in their societies, which tore apart the social fabric. All the benefits, specifically in the US, went to the very top.

I'd like to use these numbers: since China joined the WTO about 2000, China's GDP increased more than tenfold. Meanwhile, the US GDP more than doubled from a much higher base, so the absolute increase was comparable. To put it bluntly, China and the US made similar amounts of money out of this process of globalization.

But China's median income increased ninefold, while at the same time, American median income stagnated and even declined. Where has all the money gone? It created tremendous inequality in the US.

The second problem was that much of the Global South lagged behind, didn't get to participate much. China was an exception. As you look at the Global South in general, Africa, Latin America, even Southeast Asia, lagged behind and did not get too much money from globalization.

As a result, today, the most significant force in the world is deglobalization, it’s a fact. And war is the most extreme result of this situation.

There are many fancy names to it: decouple, de-risk, but in essence similar forces. Deglobalization is about reducing interconnectedness. A high-level American official said, in the US, they want to build high walls around a small yard. By small yard, he meant technology and things like that. But since he's spoken, the small yard has expanded.

That's a phenomena that is happening, walls are being erected. We talked about the EU requirements about foreign investments. In education, Greece has a great opportunity: Chinese students spend $15 billion a year in American universities, 2.5 billion pounds in the UK. If we add Australia and some other countries, together it's a $20 billion industry. Chinese young people have this insatiable curiosity about the world, they just go aboard to study. But there are rumors they're not so welcome anymore in America and maybe in the UK, there are some difficulties. In the last couple of years, we've seen a decline. So, if Greece could get just a small percentage of this big pie, this is a pretty big opportunity. But even in education, we're seeing walls being erected.

There are a lot of dangers in the deglobalization process. One is, of course, reducing development opportunities, the lack of development. And that carries with it economic and social consequences, especially for the Global South, which didn't participate too much and needs more development. For Greece too, Greece needs more development, as Greece had a lot of economic issues, it’s at the peripheral of the Western core.

The second danger is that so many global issues are now being neglected. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, all these require the world coming together and working together. Deglobalization hurts that.

Thirdly, there are security issues. Rivalry leads to security deterioration, leads to threats and even military conflict.

In that context, I think Belt and Road initiative is important. BRI started 10 years ago as a big idea, but with pretty simple reasoning, which is the Global South needed investments, China had the money and China needed trade and to increase interconnectedness, so China was going to use the largess to go and help the Global South build the infrastructure that’s required to increase trade, increase economic interconnectedness.

This morning, a scholar put it in geopolitical terms, a grand strategy. There may be some sense of that too, continental interconnectedness as opposed to maritime interconnectedness. Regardless of whether it is a grand strategy or a “small strategy”, it is still all about increasing interconnectedness.

It's been 10 years now (since the launch of BRI). Today, it has become an imperative in multiple dimensions: it's the one globalizing force in a deglobalizing world, it’s maybe the only remaining significant force left that's pushing for continued interconnectedness. All the other forces are pushing us into separate worlds. We must seek to preserve and expand interconnectedness if we want a better world.

In the deglobalizing world, BRI is something I think has now become precious. I know it's an immense project. $1 Trillion have been invested in thousands of projects, tens of thousands of projects over last 10 years. There are bound to have problems. You can't expect a project with this immensity without problems. But to say that these problems are somehow delegitimizing a project like this, I think that’s invalid.

Many de-globalizers in the world, deglobalizing forces in the world, are calling BRI a geopolitical threat. But I would put it to them that de-globalization is perhaps the biggest geopolitical threat to the world. Not BRI.

I hear voices in China too, there’s Chinese public opinion that’s against it, saying “why are we spending $1 trillion? We need the money at home”. We get that on the internet. The funny thing is, you read the Western media, they're talking about China providing bad loans, and the Chinese are saying, “bad loans? We should be complaining, not them!” We're giving the money, we're not getting it back and they (Western media) are complaining? I hear those voices on Guancha, my own media company.

The BRI also carries significant meaning going forward, being the one remaining major force for globalization. It may signal a new kind of globalization, because as the old version globalization recedes, and it is receding, as we know we're in a deglobalizing world. BRI, perhaps more than keeping globalization alive, could even serve as a catalyst for nurturing a new kind of globalization based on new philosophies, new principles, new ideas.

This new globalization must involve heavily the Global South, which was left behind. The Global South is a highly diverse, pluralistic world. It’s huge: if you look at the map, except for America, Western Europe, Australia, maybe Japan, the rest of world is Global South. I was in Dubai, UAE. It is massive: every wall is built with gold, they’re extremely wealthy. That's Global South. I was in Saudi Arabia. and I was in the poorest countries in Africa. That's also Global South. The Global South is diverse and pluralistic, with many religions, many cultures, many economic circumstances.

The last globalization was based on a single standard, the Washington Consensus, being imposed on to the rest of the world. That's probably one of the reasons why it didn't work out. Using BRI as an example, I think China has an approach that's a little different, has an approach that doesn't impose its views on its partners, and let the people and countries that participate to pursue their own paths. A lot of Americans complain about that, but that's the point exactly.

If you think about Greek philosophy, which is called the mother of Western philosophical learnings, it is axiomatic. They come up with principles first, and then you make reality adhere to your abstract principles that you gave birth to in your brain. The Chinese culture is much more deductionist. We don't have axioms, we take the world as it is, and be pragmatic and work with it. That's what Confucius was about. BRI has that philosophy behind it, and we should hope that with a country like Greece, which has deep civilizational roots, a country is culturally and maybe religiously, not at the center of the Western core, could be fertile ground for this kind of experiment.

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