Helga Zepp-LaRouche omtalt på CGTN
Det strategiske landskab for BVI: Fortid, nutid og fremtid

Helga Zepp-LaRouche omtalt på CGTN

Det strategiske landskab for BVI: Fortid, nutid og fremtid

“Så, landene i Vesten bliver nødt til at træffe et valg i den kommende tid: Enten vil de holde fast i deres ideologisk motiverede politik og blive mere og mere marginaliserede, eller også vil de ihukomme deres bedste traditioner og beslutte sig for at samarbejde med den nye økonomiske orden, som er ved at opstå.”

Fru LaRouche var med i et CGTN-indslag i denne uge, hvor hun skarpt beskrev den virkelighed, som den vestlige verden står over for.

CGTN TV:

“Når man ser tilbage på de seneste ni år, har Bælte- og Vej-Initiativet (BVI) frembragt en lang række resultater, såsom højhastighedsbanen Jakarta-Bandung, Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville-ekspresbanen, Kina-Laos-jernbanen, Velana Internationale Lufthavn osv. 

Hvad er de vigtigste faktorer for en vellykket gennemførelse af BVI-projekterne? I 2023 markerer Kina 10-årsdagen for BVI i Kina. Hvilken udviklingsretning bør man koncentrere sig om i de kommende år? Og hvilket område vil være toneangivende i fremtiden? Hør Helga Zepp-LaRouche, grundlægger og præsident for Schiller Instituttet, for at få mere indsigt.”

Link til video her:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-12-03/A-strategic-landscape-of-BRI-Past-present-and-future-1fsxJB1SHsc/index.html

Engelsk transskription:

Dec. 3, 2022 (EIRNS)—CGTN TV broadcast a 15-minute special video featuring Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche, on Dec. 3, under the headline, “Strategic Landscape of the Belt & Road Initiative—Past, Present and Future.” Her presentation was illustrated with beautifully composed photography. Below is a transcript, giving the questions and her answers. (https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-12-03/A-strategic-landscape-of-BRI-Past-present-and-future-1fsxJB1SHsc/index.html)

Looking back at the past 9 years, BRI has made a lot of achievements, such as the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville Expressway, China-Laos Railway, Velana International Airport, etc. What are the key factors to implementing all these BRI projects successfully? Do you think these cases can be replicated on other projects? Do these cases prove that BRI is of interest for both parties?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: In all of these cases, and one could add the CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] or projects in Africa, these transport projects provided, often for the first time, the beginning of the construction of modern infrastructure in countries of the developing sector. They always bring an improvement in the speed and access for the movement of goods and people, save an enormous amount of time, always create the framework for investments in industry and agriculture, sometimes are enlarged with investments in energy production and distribution and communication, and often are the beginning of entire development corridors, opening up landlocked areas for development.

As one could see with the joy and pride with which President Widodo announced the opening of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway at the occasion of the G20 summit in Bali, these projects contain within them the hope for a better future of the respective country. The tragic earthquake occurring within days after the G20 summit in Indonesia on the island Java, killing so far 162 people, just underlines the need to finally install a global earthquake early warning system, since the effect of such natural disasters can only be minimized through better infrastructure systems.

If one looks in the history of the development of the so-called advanced countries, let it be the United States, Germany, Japan, or Russia, the building of a grid of national infrastructure was always the beginning of industrialization. The criticism by the West of the BRI, that it would be an effort by “China to take over the world,” create debt traps, create dependencies, etc. are thinly veiled cover stories. The former colonial powers had a long time to build railways, roads and industrial parks in their former colonies, but obviously they didn’t. So the BRI has spread so quickly by finding the cooperation with 140 countries, because these nations often see the participation in the BRI as the first real chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment and create a hopeful future for their citizens.

It is the natural course of the advancement of mankind, that eventually all nations will enjoy the infrastructural, industrial and agricultural conditions for a decent living standard of their populations. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which destroyed approximately 500 million jobs and the ongoing threat of a world famine, the world needs the creation of around 1.5 billion new productive jobs. Many of these can be facilitated by developing continentally integrated grids of railways, highways, waterways in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as well as creating the energy requirements for an improved living standard of the people in the Global South. The fact, that circa 2 billion people don’t have access to clean water, points to the need to create new fresh water sources, through water management, as well as the investments in desalination projects with the help of small nuclear reactors, ionization of the atmosphere, or accessing aquifers.

One of the most exciting projects of the BRI is the ongoing engagement of Chinese companies building a massive science city in Iraq, under the landmark oil-for-projects agreement signed with Baghdad in 2019. There are other such science-city projects underway with different countries of the Global South, which will allow them to educate a great number of students in advanced sciences, and in this way make it possible for the country to leapfrog from underdevelopment, to a modern, science-oriented economy.

Until August 2022, nearly 60,000 China railway expresses have been launched, and more than 250 companies joined the “Silk Road Maritime Association,” 12 trillion yuan invested in BRI countries, besides, BRI created over 340,000 jobs. What are the impacts of these developments for the global economic landscape?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: While the world economy overall has been sluggish, investments in infrastructure in Europe and the U.S. are dangerously lagging behind and geopolitically motivated sanctions are completely backlashing against especially European economies, the Chinese economy and the BRI have been the true motor of the the world economy. China is the largest trade partner for the U.S., the EU and ASEAN. But the most important aspect of the BRI projects is that they are all investments in physical economy, therefore, they represent real assets, as compared to investments in monetary values, which can evaporate in a crash. These investments remain physical assets, even if many of the monetarist values are being wiped out by the hyperinflation now threatening the financial sector of the neoliberal system.

What are the challenges to the BRI so far?
The most significant challenge comes from a negative shift in the attitude of some Western governments, think tanks and media, which first ignored this largest infrastructure project in the history of mankind, the BRI, for about four years, but then from 2017 on started to portray the BRI as an expression of China’s “imperial designs.” Initially many people and entrepreneurs in the U.S. and European nations reacted very enthusiastically to the “New Silk Road,” once they learned about it, for example from the Schiller Institute or people doing business with China. After these politicians, think tanks and media started to paint China as a “strategic competition” and “systemic rival,” the public opinion became influenced negatively.

This could be reversed, however, because of the present tumultuous political developments, with challenges even to the existence of some European nations as industrial states. More efforts have to be made to show the advantages these European nations would have if they engage in joint ventures together with China in investments in third countries. Under conditions of hyperinflation and even energy blackouts, the cooperation with China can become the lifeboat for many countries.

Follow up questions: according to BBC, EU launches €300 billion bid to challenge Chinese influence, meanwhile, leaders detail $600 billion plan to rival BRI at G7 summit 2022. What is your assessment of all the initiatives which are similar to BRI (e.g. Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), Build Back Better World (B3W) Partnership, Global Gateway initiatives, etc.)?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: So far, neither the United States nor the EU has come up with anything to match China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The so-called Build Back Better plan was repeatedly reduced in size, scope and cost, ultimately rejected through procedural tactics used in the Congress, and bits of it finally included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. “The EU’s Global Gateway is already delivering,” Ursula von der Leyen claimed during her State of the Union speech in September, but the question is, for whom? She did not mention the word “development” once, there is no fresh money allocated for it, and it is just a rebranding of previous plans like the Juncker plan, which went nowhere, since it counted on a combination of public investments, loan guarantees and private investments, which never came.

The key problem is that the G7 has no passion to alleviate poverty in the Global South through real economic development, but they want to export their Malthusian ideology as a geopolitical weapon against China. But they don’t realize that the countries of the Global South can see that the Emperor is naked. As long as the leaders of the G7 are sitting on their high horse, like Josep Borrell, who thinks the EU is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle, their ideological blindfolds will mean that they are living in a delusional world.

[Continued exchange:]

In 2023, China will mark the tenth anniversary of BRI, which development direction should be concentrated on in the next 5 years? And what field will be trending in the future? What do you think about the ‘Digital Silk Road’ and the ‘Green Belt and Road Initiative’?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think that one of major foci should remain building basic infrastructure in all the countries who wish to cooperate. That is the key precondition for everything else. Then, the pandemic has demonstrated that the building of the Global Health Silk Road, a modern health system in every single country on the planet, is a top priority.

Obviously the Digital Silk Road carries the promise that the countries of the Global South can leapfrog to some of the most advanced technologies provided it is combined with appropriate education programs. They do not have to march through all stages of development which the industrial countries passed through during the last 200 years, but, with the help of China and like-minded countries, they will be able to catch up in the foreseeable future.

The Digital Silk Road will bring dramatic changes in the next period as artificial intelligence and robots will increasingly replace traditional human physical work, setting human beings free to spend much more time for lifelong learning. This means that coming generations will have a much greater opportunity to develop all potentialities embedded in every single individual, something which is now completely wasted for billions of people who have to worry that they get their meal for the next day. Naturally the education of the mind and the aesthetic education of the character have to go along with these breakthroughs in science and technology and their application in the production process. But many Asian countries have already found the key to that problem, by reviving their sometimes 5,000-year-old cultures with an optimistic outlook for the potential of the future. So the Digital Silk Road and the Cultural Silk Road should be seen as part of the same project.

Also the Space Silk Road is related to that, because the extension of infrastructure into nearby space will represent the indispensable next phase in the evolution of mankind. Several countries of the Global South already have demonstrated great interest in participating in space programs. So there is all reason for optimism for the future of humanity.

Facing the severe global economic situation, how do BRI projects help participators cope with the economic downturn?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: As one can see now the central banks of the G7 are trapped in the hopeless contradiction between quantitative easing (QE) and quantitative tightening (QT). Eventually soon, only an end to the casino economy can resolve that problem. Several countries of the Global South are already reacting to the weaponization of the dollar system by designing their own international currency and a new credit system.

The Chinese economic miracle demonstrates also another interesting aspect, namely that continuous innovation eliminates the occurrence of so called long term economic cycles.

So the countries of the West will have to make a choice in the coming period, either they will stick to their ideologically motivated policies and become increasingly marginalized, or they will remind themselves of their better traditions and decide to cooperate with the emerging new economic order.

Given the immediate threat of deindustrialization of the German economy, because the German government follows policies dictated by the Anglo-Americans in the confrontation against Russia, the sanctions, and weapons deliveries to Ukraine, we will go into a very dramatic weeks and months in the coming winter. And if the German economy collapses, it will affect all other European economies. There are more and more people demonstrating in many German cities, against the sanctions, against the high food and energy prices, and for a negotiated end to the war. Germany is an export-oriented economy, and therefore, the possibility to participate in projects of the BRI, in joint ventures together with China and other participating countries, is the only recognizable way how a deep depression in all of Europe can be avoided. And naturally, in many countries of the Global South there is already a total spirit of optimism concerning the chances the BRI offers to them. [dns][mgm]