Yungang’s Silk Road Spirit and Its Enlightenment for the Joint Construction of the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

The ancient Silk Road witnesses economic and cultural exchanges in human history and has important significance. Datong, as the starting point of the Silk Road that connects the Han Dynasty in the earlier period and ushers in the Sui and Tang dynasties in the later period, has the Yungang Grottoes as the most powerful historical evidence left behind. The Silk Road Spirit represented by “peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual reference, and mutual benefit and win-win results” has laid the ideological foundation for today’s the Belt and Road Initiative. Under the background of the ancient Silk Road, this paper introduces the connotation of the Silk Road in Yungang and analyzes the great significance of the Belt and Road Initiative. Then, the author elaborates on the relationship between the Silk Road Spirit of the Yungang Grottoes and the construction of the Belt and Road. On this basis, the paper puts forward the enlightenment of the Silk Road Spirit for jointly building the Belt and Road, aiming to provide theoretical and practical references for the construction of the Belt and Road.