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WELLINGTON, Oct. 21-- China has played an increasingly key role in the world and adopted new ways to promote economic integration as reflected in the Belt and Road Initiative, a New Zealand politician said. In a recent interview with Xinhua, Nigel Haworth, president of the New Zealand Labor Party, said the Belt and Road Initiative is an important way of looking at global integration economically. "We should all look at it very seriously and should engage with it constructively," he said. The Belt and Road initiative shows that China has started looking constructively at new ways of complementing the systems of economic integration, such as the World Trade Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Haworth noted. Proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to promote trade, financial integration, infrastructure inter-connectivity and people-to-people exchanges along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes linking Asia with Europe and Africa. Haworth said that the lovely historical imagery about the Silk Road in the Belt and Road model forms a natural way in which China has captured its role in the global economy. "I think the world expects China to play its role and I think China is stepping up to that challenge seriously," Haworth said. His confidence in China's role is also reflected in his congratulatory message to the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its 19th national congress, which opened Wednesday and will draw a blueprint for China's development in the next five years and beyond. | 
