Guang Hua Media Interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche
October 2014
Helga Zepp-LaRouche. |
In President Xi Jinping’s trip to Central Asia in 2013 he proposed the idea of the "Silk Road Economic Belt." By strengthening communications, roads, communications, trade improving currency circulation, China and Central Asian countries can build emerging economic cooperation zones.
In Germany, the Schiller Institute, founded 30 years ago, called for the establishment of the Eurasian Continental Bridge and the world land-bridge. China’s "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the Schiller Institute ideas coincide. Recently, this reporter interviewed the founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
Q: How did the Schiller Institute first arrive at the idea of the Eurasian Continental Landbridge?
A: As early as 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, my husband and I (co-founders of the Schiller Institute) advocated a "Paris-Berlin-Vienna Triangle" program of construction projects which would promote a coordinated development of science and technology between West Europe and East Europe. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, and the "Iron Curtain" came down, we expanded this to bring Asia into the original vision. Located along the two continents’ population and industrial centers, the Landbridge would be able to integrate them more closely, enabling them to share together in the region’s subsequent enhanced development. Later, the idea of the Eurasian Bridge had been further deepened and called the new Silk Road, which will provide not only all Eurasian countries huge economic benefits, but also help to build a New Peace Order for the 21st Century.
Q: Today, the "Chongqing-Europe" train runs through China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany. Who do you think will be the beneficiaries of the "new Silk Road"?
A: I have been to Lianyungang, in 1998, one of the end points of the Eurasian continental bridge, but now just one of several lines. In the future we will also see the World-Wide Landbridge developed. The New Silk Road will then only be one constituent part of the world’s continental bridge, each continent with its own system of high-speed rail, public roads and waterway transportation networks and connected to each other in a single network. In coming years, a high-speed rail system will more quickly than ship transport travel from Acalpulco, Mexico up through Alaska and then, by way of the Bering Strait, reach Beijing or Mumbai. The Old Silk Road opened for mankind an age of mutual understanding, The new Silk Road, will do this with modern science and technology and bring even greater achievements of civilisation. The New Silk Road will initiate a new era of development for mankind.
Q: The Silk Road promotes economic and trade cooperation, but does it also have an effect in the area of politics, culture and education as well?
A: The old Silk Road promoted the best commodity circulation of its time, but not only in silk, porcelain, paper and writing, and music, but also technology, knowledge and in insight into other cultures. The New Silk Road is also not merely the transportation belt for present-day goods, but also for the transfer of modern technology, such as thermonuclear fusion technology, which will provide energy and raw materials security for all mankind. It also includes giving each country access to modern space technology and cooperation in space research, for instance, in developing a program for defense against asteroids and comets; it includes the means for overcoming diseases that have hitherto proven difficult to eliminate, to the point of creating the flowering of a new cultural renaissance. Compared to our present-day world, the New Silk Road will bring a more humane era, mutual collaboration peoples will progress rapidly. We can no longer resort to war to settle our disputes, but must establish closer bonds between peoples around the task of achieving our common goals.
Q: You said in a visit to China a few months ago that in Third World countries, many people still suffer from hunger, and the countries along the New Silk Road will help solve the hunger issue. Will others draw lessons the Chinese model?
A: Absolutely! This is a magnificent concept. The UN Human Rights Council’s anti-corruption division has put a new man in charge, Mr. [Jean] Ziegler, who denounced hunger, saying the problem is an organized crime of a cannibalistic economic order, which produced the inevitable result. If each government has the will to solve the problem, hunger and malnutrition can be overcome. The New Silk Road sector will make this a thing of the past.
Q: Do you think that the causes of war are the extreme imbalances in world economic development? Why did you say that the new Silk Road could create a new order of peace?
A: I think the root of the contemporary threat of war is that after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, London and Washington did not establish a commitment to a peaceful international order, but rather consistently expanded the system of globalization. Globalization is merely another form of the idea of an Anglo-American empire. Therefore, pushing “color revolutions” to force a policy of regime change is a part of that system, for instance, in the 2003 Georgia Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the 2010 Arab Spring, and again since last November in Ukraine, and including what happened recently in Hong Kong. Behind these shenanigans you will find the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Meanwhile, there are many cautious people world over, such as the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. He has repeatedly warned people that the United States should not fall into the "Thucydides trap"—the theory that a new rising Great Power will inevitably challenge the existing power, and that the existing power must therefore respond to that threat. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides believed that the rise of Sparta would inevitably make war with Athens inevitable. Therefore, since a policy of containment toward China would have serious repercussions, Dempsey has warned peopl against it.
If mankind wants to avoid a new world war, all thinking people must be aware that we have to reject the notion of geopolitics. All mankind must make unite their efforts in realizing our common goals. As Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly underlined, the new Silk Road is an open concept in which each country can participate. We must achieve a higher level of development in which all the major powers would recognize their interests in a common developmen perspective and in which for all the young people would have hope for the future, so that they will not be desperate and join religious extremism or terrorism.
Q: As a territory of Eurasia and the world’s largest country, what is the attitude of Russia to the new Eurasian continental bridge, the Silk Road? How do you see the current Sino-Russian relations?
A: Putin is not opposed to it, and Russia looks more to China noq. Now with Western countries pushing their political lies, and Russia under unjust sanctions, the "BRICS" collaboration and integration with other developing countries needs to be accelerated. I think that the current Sino-Russian relations are the best they have been in history.
Q: Let’s turn our sights to the East—the potential trouble-spots in East Asia. For instance, the instablity on the Korean Peninsula, the complex relations between China, Japan and the United States. But many people feel that the conflicts here will not break out into war like in the Middle East. From the standpoint of the Silk Road Economic Belt, how do you view this problem?
A: Recently on Oct. 4, a North Korean high-level delegation visited South Korea, with the meeting of Korean Prime Minister Jung Hong-won and the D.P.R.K. delegation, which shows that reconciliation between the two countries is a topic of discussion. Negotiation, naturally, is the best way to eliminate the threat of war. And if South Korea moves ahead to join the Eurasian Land-Bridge and the new Silk Road construction, I believe, this will help to avoid a potential conflict. How relations between China, Japan and the United States develop will depend on the attitude of the United States, on whether it is willing to wake up to the danger of the present Anglo-American Empire policy orientation. Only when the superpower, the United States joins with the rising "BRICS" to achieve cooperation, will we be able to ensure world peace for the future.
