Full coverage: Belt and Road Initiative

The Silk Road Business Summit is drawing to a close in Northwest China's city of Xi'an. The summit centered discussions around implementation plans for China's Belt and Road Initiative.

That's the strategy to revitalise the ancient silk road that linked China with the Middle East and Europe. CCTV reporter talked to summit participants about the initiative's economic impact.

"These countries can benefit from a new model of the economic cooperation, top down, rather cooperation from the bottom up. And I think in terms of the economic growth, many of the countries along the belt and road have huge deficits in infrastructure, the economics are slowing down, jobs are not being created in this economy," said Hamid Rashid, UN Global Economic Monitoring Unit.

"Now you see new opportunities, lots of the jobs are created especially from the SMEs. And if you look at the historic ties in the last 100 or 200 years, the ties are broken, so this ties revive the trade route along the silk route, where many of the small cities and companies will benefit from it. We are very optimistic about the future of the initiative."