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“The Silk Road Economic Belt” and “the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road” initiative aims at promoting regulated flow of economic factors, allocating resources efficiently, integrating markets, and developing a broader, higher, and deeper level of regional interaction to create an open, inclusive, balanced, and widely beneficial regional economic cooperation framework. Comprehensive and objective assessment and research on investment-climate geopolitical strategy of the countries in the “Belt and Road” zone would help improve security and stability of China’s foreign economic and trade exchanges along with its political and economic influence. Based on Delphi technique, the investment environment evaluation system of the “Belt and Road” countries has been developed and used to comprehensively analyze social and economic development, traffic infrastructure, informatization, resources, and political and security environment, all of which are the important conditions for investment environment of the “Belt and Road” countries. The results show that Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Central Asia, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary represent the attractive investment areas. Eastern Europe, India, and Iran represent the key investment areas. Based on the analysis, investment strategy steps for the “Belt and Road” countries have been formulated. We hope our research can provide the scientific foundation for decision-making in China in relation to the “Belt and Road” foreign investment strategy.

A number of countries are concerned, to a certain degree, about the prospects for the implementation of the Chinese strategic initiative for the joint creation of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (SREB). These concerns relate to fears of the transfer from China to the “belt” countries of excessive capacities of the polluting primaries industries, possible environmental degradation, and the destruction of the traditional way of life as a result of the implementation of mega-projects, and the fragility and vulnerability of many ecosystems along the routes of the prospective throughways between the eastern provinces of China and Europe [Bezrukov, 2016]. Environmental problems are clearly of key importance for the prospects of China’s initiative. The initiative’s program documents have stressed the need to take into account the interests of all parties and act solely on the basis of mutual benefit. The authors briefly consider the variety of natural and socio-economic conditions in the SREB zone and the sharp differences in the degree of economic development of the territory, which require close attention and scientific justification for political and economic decisions. Particular differences include temperature regime, precipitation, modern atmospheric circulation, transport of particulate matter and contaminants, soils, vegetation, land use, and risks of desertification in the SREB zone. The potential of complementarity of the natural resources of China and a number of neighboring countries may be realized. The paper also discusses China’s present policy in the transition to sustainable development and its underlying concepts and achievements, especially at the level of regions and cities, including the concept of “ecological civilization” and the six stages of greening of cities. The authors believe that tourism related activities should be coordinated specifically at the city level as part of “green development.” It is necessary to create free economic zones in the “economic corridors” along the planned transcontinental lines and utilize the existing national special zones. Such zones are particularly effective in border regions and cities. In conclusion, it is recommended to develop international research networks in the SREB zone, to establish an International Data Center, and to collect, organize, exchange, and publish jointly scientific information on the problems of transition to sustainable development.

China's bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games will promote rapid development of domestic ski tourism. More than 10 provinces in the northern China list ski tourism as a new source of growth in the tourism industry. Formulating a scientific evaluation system is an important foundation for ski resort development. By referring to the conditions of existing international ski resorts, a comprehensive index system for evaluating ski resort development was developed based on natural factors, human factors, athletic sports, and popular ski tourism. The system was composed of one target layer, two indices, seven sub-indices and twenty-five basic indices. Based on data collected during a field investigation in 2012 and on a statistical model, the development conditions of the following ski resorts were quantified: Yabuli Ski Resort in Heilongjiang Province and Beidahu Ski Resort in Jilin Province in Northeast China, Wanlong Ski Resort in Hebei Province and Nanshan Ski Resort in Beijing in the northern China, and Silk Road International Ski Resort in Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in the northwestern China. The resulting index values of development conditions at Beidahu, Yabuli, Wanlong, Nanshan, and Silk Road International Ski Resorts were 0.304, 0.278, 0.270, 0.214, and -0.025, respectively. Various natural and human factors exert positive and negative effects on the development potential of ski resorts. The development conditions of the five ski resorts were inferior to those of first-class international resorts. Therefore, the development conditions of the five ski resorts should be improved with future construction.