The 2nd Silk Road & Young Dreams took place on April 12 in Beijing. With the slogan “Get on the Road, Get to the Sky”, the event aimed to bring together young people along the Belt and Road, increasing cooperation and enhancing mutual trust.

The event was hosted by the Silk Road Cities Alliance, China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development, Beijing Belt and Road Cooperative Community, and the Chongyang Research Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China.

Compared with the first Silk Road & Young Dreams, held in Beijing last August, the 2019 event took place from April 12 to 14, and featured richer content on a larger scale.

While the first event saw 97 participants from 26 countries, this year, nearly 300 contestants from 70 countries signed up for the event.

This year, the event was composed of six competitions. Aside from music, language and photography competitions that took place last year, sand painting, essay exchange, and e-sports all featured in the recent event.

The competitions began after the opening ceremony in separate venues. The award ceremony was held on Sunday, where 38 candidates from 24 countries received awards, and the “Silk Road Youth Beijing Initiative” was issued at the same time.

“The Silk Road Youth Carnival” was also held in light of the event, as well as a tour of the historical sites in Beijing, and other cultural events such as fresh tea tasting.

The event echoes the upcoming 2019 Belt & Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), which will be held in late April succeeding the first BRF in May 2017.

Highlighting the theme of “Belt and Road, People-oriented”, the event calls on “the Silk Road youth to combine their dreams with the theme of the Belt and Road Era” and “all nations to build a community of shared destiny”, as stated in the “Silk Road Youth Beijing Initiative”.