Abstract:
The principal themes of this thesis are the accounting training and the digital skills of accountants in Belt and Road Initiative. In particular, the aim of this work is to demonstrate how such a vast project is changing the role of the accountant and the skills required of him. The research will demonstrate this hypothesis through the analysis of white papers and official declarations, published by the Chinese government, as well as in-depth research, carried out by experienced professors in the field, concerning training, new skills and technologies available to accountants. The first part will introduce the context of Belt and Road Initiative, analysing it from a financial and economic point of view and stressing the importance of this project both for China and for all those countries that have decided to be part of it. Doing it, the thesis will focus on the importance of the accounting sector in the project: accounting in this case is to be considered at the same time a resource but also a possible source of misunderstandings due to the different accounting systems of the individual states. Precisely because of these risks, China, together with some associations, is moving to form the figure of a more competent accountant, who must have a global vision. In order to do this, it is necessary that the training process, the central theme of the second chapter, is updated in the modalities and that new skills, that are increasingly required from accountants, are also included during the educational process. Among the new skills, the most requested are, without doubt, those related to technology, which, once developed, will allow the accountant to communicate data in a simpler and faster way. The technologies available, however, are growing more and more and many of them do not require the figure of accountant: the aim of this thesis is, in the final part, to analyse the risks and benefits of such technologies.
