A colorful night view in Qingtian county. [Photo/Lishui Daily]

A shipment of Italian wine imported by Qingtian overseas Chinese recently arrived at a bonded warehouse in Qingtian county – located in Lishui city, in East China's Zhejiang province – after a 40-day voyage and underwent customs clearance procedures.

The wine is among the imported products from over 400 wineries in Belt and Road or BRI countries – including Serbia, Austria and Spain – that will be showcased at the Qingtian Overseas Chinese Expo, to open on Nov 12.

Qingtian has a large population of overseas Chinese who are widely said to have made positive contributions to the BRI's construction over the past decade.

Qingtian folk have a tradition of migrating abroad and engaging in cultural exchanges. About 300 years ago, they brought stone carving artworks along the ancient Silk Road to Europe and Asia, becoming friendly ambassadors between China and other countries.

Today, there are 381,000 overseas Chinese from Qingtian living in 146 countries and regions, with 60 percent of them residing in BRI countries.

Sun Chengyan, an official from the Qingtian Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Experimental Zone, said that Qingtian had more than 300 overseas Chinese associations – adding that more than 100,000 of its overseas Chinese were involved in international trade, handling an annual trade volume worth over $40 billion.

To implement the BRI, Qingtian overseas businesspeople have actively sought cooperation with foreign partners.

Since 2015, the Qingtian Imported Commodity City platform has attracted more than 300 overseas businesspeople to return to their hometown to start a second venture there, creating an "import supermarket" that offers more than 100,000 kinds of goods from more than 70 countries.

Qingtian has also hosted the Overseas Chinese Expo for four consecutive years and the Coffee Expo for two sessions, attracting more than 3,000 import enterprises from more than 70 countries to participate. That's introduced more than 2,800 international brands and brought the products of 640 foreign wineries to Qingtian.