Argentine Ambassador to China Sabino Vaca Narvaja has seen with his own eyes how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) brought changes to northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Recalling his experience of tasting local food and visiting local companies, Vaca Narvaja said that the initiative has indeed facilitated infrastructure construction and improved people's lives.

The BRI is an unprecedented one that facilitates international cooperation and mutual benefits, and Argentina attaches great importance to it, Vaca Narvaja said at the 2021 China Xinjiang Development Forum held in Beijing this week.

"Seeing is believing," said Erkin Tuniyaz, acting chairman of the Xinjiang regional government.

"We welcome all of you to visit Xinjiang and experience the harmony, stability, prosperity and development of Xinjiang," he told Chinese and foreign guests attending the forum.

Xinjiang has opened wider to the outside world under the BRI, with related cooperation deals covering more than 50 countries and regions, Erkin Tuniyaz said.

For the past few years, Xinjiang has taken proactive measures to build itself as a core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt and made progress, said Jiang Jianguo, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

The region has become an important channel for exchanges between countries along the BRI and an important gateway for China to open up to the West and foster opening-up on all fronts, Jiang said.