The Myanmar warplane that killed Chinese civilians by accidentally dropping bombs across the border has once again shown us the difficulty of developing good-neighborly relations with surrounding countries and creating an external environment for peaceful development. The incident also offered us a lesson in promoting the "One Belt and One Road" initiative.

The initiative highlights the Chinese ambition to build the longest economic corridor in the world. As a major project of international development in the 21st century, it could provide the biggest bonus that the rise of China has created so far.

The "One Belt and One Road" runs through Eurasia, connecting the Asia-Pacific economic circle in the east and the European economic circle in the west. This connection, linking over 60 countries, involving 4.4 billion people or 63 percent of the global population, has a collective gross domestic product (GDP) of $21 trillion, which accounts for 29 percent of the world's GDP in total.

What a spectacular example of economic development it would be if such a large area could make concerted efforts to promote economic growth and improve people's livelihoods, guided by China.

However, the conflicts in northern Myanmar sent us a warning of how hard it could be to push forward the initiative. There will be many ups and downs in front of us and it won't be easy to achieve economic win-win results. What's harder is to realize political stability, boundary demarcation, and ethnic reconciliation.

The development of countries along the route of the "One Belt and One Road" initiative requires trade cooperation, especially investment.

But the collaboration of politics, diplomacy as well as military affairs is also in need to keep pace. In certain areas, diplomatic cooperation should even be the priority or have equal importance to other factors. 

For example, we need to consider how to put our diplomatic strategy and economic programs together. In order to reduce the tensions in conflict areas, such as northern Myanmar, we should use the combined influence of economic and political cooperation as leverage.

China launched a project called the "Bridgehead Strategy" in 2011 to enhance trade cooperation with Myanmar, which proposes to turn Yunnan Province into a gateway to the west.

After the plan was adopted, the first thing Yunnan considered was how to form an outward-looking economy, referring to introducing more foreign capitals, as well as how to encourage Yunnan's enterprises to go global.

The conflicts in northern Myanmar, however, revealed that it is difficult to introduce foreign investment or push our business outside China under the circumstances of a volatile neighborhood. In some areas, simply promoting economic cooperation won't work.

The initiative of the "One Belt and One Road" is aimed at creating an economic circle of common prosperity, and it's not a simple trade deal. Thus, before any cooperation, we need to establish our mutual trust.

If we always need to keep an eye on each other, there won't be any collaboration in good faith.

China needs to become a good guide of the "One Belt and One Road" initiative. Instead of the old ways of cooperation, we need to think of innovative methods of working together, which will combine political diplomacy with economic and trade ties.

Trade relations should not be the only standard when we implement the initiative, nor should we focus on carving up economic interests.

Some projects require more specific matching options for maintaining peace and stability in the region, or at least emergency plans for handling the outbreak of clashes.

Therefore, we need to promote our trade projects with our neighbors not only based on the actual circumstances in the area, but also take the construction of peaceful and stable environment into account. And the programs that could provide jobs for other countries should be given more support.

Realizing the "One Belt and One Road" initiative is a systematic project. Our surrounding nations will achieve economic growth in this process. Meanwhile, the political and security structure of neighboring areas will also experience enormous changes.

In such circumstances, the focus of Chinese foreign strategy will turn from economic cooperation to the coordinative development of economic, political as well as diplomatic collaboration.

The author is a senior editor with People's Daily. He is now stationed in Brazil. dinggang@globaltimes.com.cn. Follow him on Twitter at @dinggangchina