The year of 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since 2013, LIU Weidong and his team at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have been intensively engaged in BRI research and made very endeavor to "introduce the BRI to the world". He is one of the pioneers and the most cited scholars in this research field. In 2016, he was invited to report his BRI research results to President XI Jinping at the First Meeting on the Development of the BRI. 

First, he has led his team to undertake a great deal of important studies on BRI, some of which provided support for China's Central Government decision-making. Based on these in-depth studies, he has published several representative academic papers such as Scientific understanding of the Belt and Road Initiative of China and related research themes. These papers systematically analyze the macro background of the BRI, and make discourses about its scientific understanding, construction ideas, spatial corridors and major issues. In particular, he tries to help audience understand the BRI from the perspective of globalization and puts forward a theoretical concept of "inclusive globalization". His studies provided important scientific support for the formulation of the Vision and Action on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21^st Century Maritime Silk Road. Besides, he led the Third-Party Assessment on the Progress of Belt and Road Construction. In making the assessment, he developed a "CAS Connectivity Index”, which systematically and quantitatively evaluates the construction of the Belt and Road from five areas of cooperation priorities. Furthermore, he led the research on Assessments of Green and Inclusive Silk Road Development for Policy-making, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences priority research program titled Pan-Third Pole Environment Study for Green Silk Road Development. Based on field trip of more than 20 countries, this research expounded the overall characteristics and development trends of society, economy, resources, and environment along the Belt and Road, carried out more than 30 in-depth case studies on overseas construction projects, and proposed a road-map towards green and inclusive Silk Road development. Supported by this project, LIU Weidong and his team have published five important monographs, among which, Joint Construction of Green Silk Road: Social, Economic and Environmental Context (2019) played a role at the Green Silk Road Forum at Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.