Beijing, China - July 31, 2026/Investment and cooperation under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are increasingly shifting toward high-tech, green and low-carbon sectors in the first half of this year, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Friday.

Since China first proposed the BRI in 2013, the initiative has continually worked to boost global connectivity, fostering the growth of trade and exchanges.

Speaking at the NDRC's July press conference, Jiang Yi, director of the Office of Policy Studies at NDRC, highlighted data that indicate ballooning trade between China and BRI partner countries so far in 2026.

"As for economic and trade cooperation, China's total import and export volume with BRI partner countries reached 12.97 trillion yuan (about 1.92 trillion U.S. dollars), up 14.8 percent year on year, accounting for 50.9 percent of the total foreign trade volume," said Jiang, who is also the spokesman of NDRC.

He highlighted that as the initiative has matured, it is now making significant contributions to the world's green transition and overall modernization.

"Investment and cooperation in jointly building the Belt and Road continue to extend into high-tech, green and low-carbon fields," the official said.

"From the perspective of interconnectivity, freight operations have officially begun on the Hungarian section of the Hungary-Serbia Railway. And the full-scale construction has commenced on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project. The China-Europe freight train operation has maintained strong growth. In the first half of the year, a total of 11,186 freight train trips were completed, marking a 20.2-percent increase compared to the same period last year," he said.