Ancient Wisdom and Legal Integration: Insights for the Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) faces significant legal challenges due to diverse legal traditions across countries. Existing research overlooks insights from ancient Silk Road trade rules. This paper explores core characteristics of ancient Silk Road trade rules (flexible contracts, credit governance, dispute resolution) via literature review and case analysis, hoping to integrate the ancient wisdom with modern legal systems. Findings reveal that ancient wisdom offers valuable solutions: flexible contracts with culturally adaptive clauses can balance legal diversity; credit mechanisms and trust can strengthen cross-border compliance; and locally embedded dispute resolution models can enhance the efficiency of conflict mitigation . The study further develops a "Three-Stage Legal Coordination Model" (preventive due diligence, in-execution consultation, and corrective revision) to offer practical compliance strategies for businesses and inform regional legal coordination for the BRI. Given that the BRI serves as an important platform for global economic cooperation and cultural exchange, integrating the wisdom of the ancient Silk Road not only enhances the theoretical system for legal coordination but also provides insights to address challenges.