While the FBI has shuttered the website Silk Road 2.0, another Silk Road is rising, yet though both Silk Roads are involved in the sale of goods, the new one surely won't be closed by the FBI or any other government body.

In fact, this brick-and-mortar Silk Road would span three continents - Asia, the Middle East and Europe. On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will allocate $40 billion to revive this historic trade route taken by Chinese merchants centuries ago, to sell the expensive textile and other commodities overseas, mainly the Mediterranean.

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Xi told leaders from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Tajikistan that the infrastructure project is aiming to break Asia's connectivity bottleneck, as he declared that many countries in the continent are prepared "to get on board the train of China's development."

"Such a framework accommodates the needs of various countries and covers both land and sea-related projects," Reuters quoted the Chinese president.

Under the New Silk Road Economic Belt that Xi proposed in September 2013, the land-based component of the ambitious project, would begin at Shaanxi province's capital city, Xi'an, then move southwest across Central Asia, the MidEast and Europe. Meanwhile, the ocean-going part of the project starts near Guangdong Province on the South China Sea and traverses the Malacca Strait and Indian Ocean, moving further to the Horn of Africa into the Red Sea and Mediterranean.

The two routes will both lead to Venice, the port of entry for European trade with Asia during the period of famous traveler Marco Polo.

Besides constructing physical roads and setting maritime routes, the endeavor would also build 20,000 Silk Road centers that would train connectivity professionals in the next five years, Xi said.

Silk Road represents a new direction for China, unlike before where its focus was to attract foreign investments. But with the Asian giant becoming a global economic powerhouse, the once closed communist state is encouraging more of its capital to be spent overseas, observed Feng Yujun, senior researcher at the Beijing-based China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Outside Silk Road, China's joining hands with 21 Asian countries in establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has an initial subscribed capital of 50-billion U.S. dollars, could pose a strong competition to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in global lending.

TagsSilk Road