The Architecture of the Belt and Road Initiative -Feasibility Study on Sustainable Development of Free Trade Zone Made by BRI

As early as 2,200 years ago, goods, culture and population traveled through routes that connected ancient China and Mediterranean countries, and these routes later became known as the Silk Roads. based on the concept of the ancient Silk Road, China’s President Xi Jinping first proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. BRI (the contemporary silk road) combines two initiatives: The Silk Road Economic Belt (land based), and The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Facts have shown that the “Belt and Road Initiative” has become the world’s widest and largest international cooperation platform. Since the core of BRI's development lies in the economic and trade exchanges between the China and world, the construction or strengthening of related transportation networks and the development of domestic and foreign free trade zones (which can also be regarded as one of the node types of BRI's transportation network) are the most important one of the investment directions. However, BRI still faces many challenges in the process of promoting development, one of which is that some governments and scholars doubt the sustainability of its development. The construction of free trade zones (ports) accounts for a large proportion of BRI's projects. However, solving the environmental sustainability issues of these projects is a global challenge. This article mainly aims to explore the feasibility of BRI's free trade zone construction in terms of sustainable development, with one of BRI's partners, the Port of Venice as the research result object. During the research process, three free trade zone (port) projects in cooperation with BRI were selected as case studies, namely: The Port City of Colombo (Sri Lanka), The Djibouti International Free Trade Zone (Republic of Djibouti), Piraeus Port (Greece).