Southwest China's Yunnan Province has a geographic advantage in the China-proposed "One Belt, One Road" initiative, as it has easy access to Southeast Asia and South Asia and plays a major role in the Trans-Asian Railway, local merchants and experts said on Wednesday.
The comments were made after five Southwest Asian countries came to present 179 investment projects in the province on Wednesday. Proposed projects in agriculture, where Yunnan-based enterprises have advantages, accounted for many of the total, according to the website of the provincial government.
The delegation also offered 22 energy and electricity projects, 54 infrastructure projects and 11 manufacturing projects.
The province has been playing an active role in integrating into the Belt and Road, according to local experts and company representatives.
"It's located on the country's frontline to South Asia and Southeast Asia, two regions that are among the most populated in the world but that lag behind China in terms of economic growth," said Gong Gang, professor at the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics.
"We may find complementary industries between China and those regions," he told the Global Times on Wednesday.
The province is at a strategic location linking China with countries and regions along the B&R route through the pan-Asia railway network, which has a long-term goal of allowing trains to run to Singapore from Kunming, capital of the province.
The China-Laos railway, the Laos-Thailand railway and the Thailand-Malaysia railway are all part of the pan-Asia railway network, Huang Ningshu, vice director of the China-Laos Railway Project, told the Global Times in an earlier interview.
The project is a 417.9-kilometer line connecting Kunming with Vientiane, capital of Laos.
Convenient transportation has also helped many companies increase their investment in Southeast Asia in recent years, Chen Cuiying, general manager of a Laos-based subsidiary of Yunnan State Farms Group Co, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"By road and rail, cargo can be transported from the province to countries like Myanmar and Laos, which could save costs," Chen noted.
Yunnan-based companies' investment overseas grew 19.8 percent on a year-on-year basis to $1.61 billion in 2016, according to the website of the local government.
As of December 2016, it said, 680 local enterprises had invested $7.4 billion abroad.
