Dec. 11, 2017 -Speaking at the Sanya Forum on the Belt and Road, held on Hainan island, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called the Belt and Road “a showcase project building a new type of regional integration” and “a unique chance for local and global stability.” Globalization has created a complex network of interdependency, also in terms of risks, between countries, so that stronger regional integration is necessary in managing those risks, he said. The Belt and Road promotes political and cultural understanding by integrating countries from at least three continents, De Villepin said.
The expansion of infrastructure in remote regions will be a major driver of stability in Central Asia as well as East Africa, and economic stimulation will be a great opportunity to support long-term recovery in major economies like Europe and China, De Villepin told the forum. The Belt and Road “offers a new model of prosperity based on inclusiveness, sustainability and balance.”
The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world — and the economic effects of the health measures taken to crush it — reveal the inexcusable lack of development of the human species, and demand a global approach to curing not only the coronavirus presently menacing us, but that underdevelopment that leaves us susceptible to the pandemic’s taking a terrible toll. This video explains the international cooperation necessary to defeat both the pandemic and poverty, as well as the dangerous lies — about China and the coronavirus itself — that stymie these efforts.
It is only through economic development that we can truly build health infrastructure for all.
Please sign the Schiller Institute’s petition to build a global health infrastructure.
We recommend the film “This is China: Epidsodes 1 and 2 of the Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge” which is a CGTN production.
The builders say that they plan to build another seven or eight such bridges, and show a map (42 minutes 45 seconds into the 50 minute film) with projects all over the world, including in the United States and Scandinavia.
This is China: Episode 1 of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge
This is China: Episode 2 of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge
Dec. 5 -At a reception of the Dec. 4-5 Sino-Japanese Entrepreneurs and Former High-level Officials Dialogue in Tokyo,Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, stressing the need for open economic activity across Asia, gave his approval for Japan’s participation in China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. He said:
“I believe Japan will be able to cooperate well with China, which has been putting forward its One Belt, One Road initiative” in a free and open Indo-Pacific region…. Meeting robust infrastructure demand in Asia through cooperation between Japan and China will contribute greatly to the prosperity of Asian people, in addition to the economic development of the two countries,” Kyodo News reported.
Abe’s willingness to participate in the Belt and Road was expected, following the appearance on Nov. 28 of an article in Japan’s {Yomiuri Shimbun} that the Abe government is considering supporting Japanese companies to carry out joint projects with the Chinese companies along the China-formulated One Belt, One Road economic project, for “improving Japan-China relations and obtaining China’s cooperation in hindering North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.” The article had also said that this emerged following a meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the July G20 summit in Germany. “During the meeting, Abe described the project as an ‘initiative with potential’ and expressed his willingness to cooperate,” the article wrote.
The third round of Sino-Japanese Entrepreneurs and Former High-level Officials dialogue, according to Xinhua, was attended by former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda along with 70 business leaders.
Dec. 2 – Chinese and Portuguese public companies last week signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a joint partnership to build rail and road projects in Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, with the possibility of doing the same in Brazil.
The MOU protocol was signed in Lisbon on Nov. 24, at the headquarters of the Portuguese Agency for Foreign Trade and Investment (AICEP), between the IP Engenharia/Grupo Infraestruturas de Portugal and the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group/China Railway Engineering Corp.
According to Shao Gang, vice-president of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group/China Railway Engineering Corp., a joint commission of Portuguese and Chinese companies will meet in January next year to draw up a timetable for the implementation of joint projects in Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde, São Tomé and Principe, and Guinea-Bissau, “in the projects that each country will most need to develop and stimulate the local economy,” Jornal de Angola reported on Nov. 27.
Shao spoke also of possible Chinese loans, on advantageous terms, to “financially weaker” African countries, but he said that this would have to be approved by both the Portuguese and Chinese governments.
The Angolan paper reported that during its visit to Lisbon, China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group/China Railway Engineering Corp. also signed a MOU with the big Portuguese construction company, Teixeira Duarte, on identical terms.
Dec. 1, 2017 -In his opening remarks to the first session of the China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Summit (China-LAC 2017) in Punta del Este, Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez set the tone for the day’s discussion when he identified China as “the champion of international trade and a motor of global economic growth.”
Speaking before approximately 3,000 attendees, Vasquez said that because of its growing trade, economic, political, scientific, and cultural ties to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), China now “occupies a central place in the affairs of Latin America and the Caribbean….[and] a central place in the future of the region.” That future, he underscored, “is not predetermined, but is rather built in the present, because the future can be shaped among us all, as no country, no matter its size, [defines] its fate by itself.”
The two-day event, which includes businessmen, government officials, policymakers, and other experts from all three regions, is unprecedented in its size and has generated enormous enthusiasm and debate about the prospect of Latin America joining the Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, today’s first plenary session discussed the vision for an alliance among the three regions, in the framework of the Belt and Road.
One indication of the policy discussion now underway was Vasquez’s report that “we have received and are evaluating an interesting Chinese proposal which includes audacious and transformative ideas” such as promoting a free trade zone between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), which will be taken up in January at the group’s next annual conference in Santiago, Chile.
Other speakers at the opening session included Ma Peihua, Vice President of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, who said that China’s main goal is to establish cooperative associations with countries, especially to promote unity and collaboration with LAC countries, and push the world economy toward a more open and inclusive path that will offer universal benefits. China-LAC relations have now entered a “new historical phase,” he said, with good results. He recalled that over a period of four years, President Xi Jinping toured the LAC countries three times–the last time in 2016– strenghtening this relationship.
Nov. 29, 2017-The approximately 7,500-km transcontinental rail corridor from Port Sudan to Dakar, Senegal, on the Atlantic Ocean, was first proposed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 2005. From its eastern terminal in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, this northernmost transcontinental rail corridor is slated to cross Chad to its capital, NDjamena, then to Maiduguri and Kano in Nigeria, continuing to Niamey, Niger, to Bamako, Mali, to Senegal.
Agreements have already been made with China for the construction of two sections of this corridor, in Chad and in Sudan. On Nov. 7, 2017, the Sudanese Railways Authority signed an agreement for a feasibility study with two Chinese companies, China Railway Design Corporation (CRDC) and China Friendship Development International Engineering Design & Consultation Company (FDDC), to be completed in 12 months, to study the 3,400- km-long trans-Saharan Railway that would stretch from Port Sudan to the Sudanese city of Nyala, close to the Chadian border, and on to NDjamena. The lines are to be built to standard gauge and will allow trains to run at 120 km/h.
In March 2012, Chad reached an agreement with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation to build the Chad portion of the rail line from NDjamena to the Sudanese border. In 2014, Sudan reached a political agreement with Chad to link their capitals with Port Sudan. There were to be later extensions to Atlantic Ocean ports in Cameroon, Douala (the biggest Atlantic port in Central Africa) and Kribi (the deepest Atlantic port in Central Africa). Rebel activities in Chad have prevented these proposals from being implemented up to now. The construction of the Kribi deep sea port was financed by China.
The Schiller Institute invites you to join us on Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 2pm EDT for an international 75th year commemoration of the victory over fascism in Europe, commonly known as V-E day. World War II, 1939–1945, occurred at the concluding phase of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s twelve year presidency. FDR’s post-war vision for a world free from what he accurately termed the “18th century methods” of British, French, Belgian, Dutch, and Portuguese colonialism, was one intended to replace that imperial rule with Alexander Hamilton’s American Revolution in the science of physical economy.
The necessity for an international dialogue among nations, and particularly Russia, China, India, and the United States, is immediate. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and chairman of the Schiller Institute, said on Saturday, April 25: “I’m greeting all of you who are watching this internet conference from all over the world, and I think you are all aware that the human species right now is confronted with an unprecedented crisis, which not only threatens to cost the lives of many millions of people through illness and hunger, to sweep away many of the institutions which people had taken for granted until now, and to plunge large parts of the world into a new dark age, including culturally—but it can also lead to a thermonuclear war that would potentially wipe out all of humanity.”
The Schiller Institute’s April 25–26 conference, “Mankind’s Existence Now Depends on the Establishment of a New Paradigm!”, attended by 2,500 people, successfully established a vital international “symposium for durable survival.” This discussion process, which has already featured government-level representatives from many nations in dialogue with American farm leaders, physicians, scientists and science students, and activists, must be continuous and uninterrupted.
The United States must be pulled back from the brink of its own induced self-destruction at the hands of the British, which works much as did Othello’s induced self-destruction at the hands of his “trusted ensign,” Iago, in Shakespeare’s play. Consider this exchange between FDR and Winston Churchill in March, 1941, months before the United States entered the war:
CHURCHILL : “You mentioned India.”
FDR: “Yes. I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy…”
WC: “There can be no tampering with the Empire’s economic agreements.”
FDR: “They’re artificial. . .”
WC: “They’re the foundation of our greatness.”
Later that evening, according to Elliott Roosevelt, son of FDR, in his book, “As He Saw It,” Churchill continued:
“Mr. President,” he cried, “I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it. But in spite of that”—and his forefinger waved—“in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. . .”
Elliott Roosevelt concludes: “In saying what he did, he was acknowledging that British colonial policy would be a dead duck,…and British ambitions to play off the U.S.S.R. against the U.S.A. would be a dead duck. Or would have been, if Father had lived.”
Now, today, the world would welcome the real America, FDR’s post-war anti-colonial America, the America of World War II veteran Lyndon LaRouche and of the LaRouche “Four Laws.” On May 9, the greatest honor that can be paid to the over 70 million people that died through that war, would be to commit to build an alliance of nations, the Four Powers. Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasized, “The four main nations of the world—the United States, China, Russia, and India—must now establish a New Bretton Woods system and together with all nations that wish to join, a new paradigm in international cooperation among nations that is guided by the common aims of mankind. The fourth of Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four Laws” defines the qualitatively higher economic platform, the higher level of reason, of the Coincidentia Oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa, on which the contradictions of geopolitical confrontation will be overcome.”
Let us, therefore, pursue this noble discussion in the shadow of the immortal regiments that wish to see the world for which they fought, and died, finally come to pass.
Nov. 25 -{Global Construction Review} (GCR) reported on Nov. 24 the signing of an agreement between China Railway Group and Papua New Guinea to build a roadway system that is estimated to cost $4 billion. Apart from the agreement on the roadway system, government of Papua New Guinea has signed on Nov. 20 a series of Memorandums of Understanding with the government of China and the China Railway company that will deliver a number of new infrastructure projects in the Highlands, P.N.G.’s Prime Minister’s office reported.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said the new projects will have direct positive impacts on the lives of people in Eastern and Western Highlands provinces. These projects will enhance agriculture, roads and water supply in parts of the Highlands, will improve lives and help people to be more active in the economy. “China is one of our strongest development partners, and this direct investment is an example of the huge confidence that China and Chinese companies have in Papua New Guinea,” O’Neill said. “These projects are taking place as part of the One Belt, One Road initiative that is creating more efficient trade corridors between the Asia-Pacific and Western Asia.”
Papua New Guinea, with a population of about 8 million, is virtually bereft of transport infrastructure, partly due to the mountainous terrain. The country’s main road, the Highland Highway, is a single carriageway pocked with potholes, GCR wrote.
Nov. 27 -Joint cooperation through the global Belt and Road Initiative was the leading topic at the Sixth Summit of the China-Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC), also known as the “16+1 Cooperation,” which opened today in Budapest.
The Hungarian and Chinese Prime Ministers, Viktor Orban and Li Kequiang, kicked off this discussion in their addresses to over 1,000 entrepreneurs from China and the CEEC member countries attending the opening of the Economic and Trade Forum connected to the summit, according to a Xinhua report. The meeting of all 16 heads of government followed.
“If Europe shuts itself in, it loses the possibility of growth. We 16 have always been open and would always like to remain so. We always saw cooperation with China as a great opportunity,” Orban stated at the outset. “European resources are in themselves insufficient. For this reason we welcome the fact that as part of the new economic world order, China sees this region as one in whose progress and development it wants to be present.”
He referred to the Chinese role in the planned reconstruction of the railway line between Budapest and Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, as the “flagship project” of China’s increased presence in the region, asserting that the rail line could become the fastest transport route to Western Europe for China’s New Silk Road. Hungary announced today the public procurement tenders for the reconstruction of that railway line, which is being financed mainly by China.
“We see the Chinese president’s One Belt, One Road initiative as the new form of globalization which does not divide the world into teachers and students, but is based on common respect and common advantages,” Orban said.
Chinese Premier Li laid out an aggressive program for increased China-CEEC cooperation by “docking” the Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of the CEEC, in the words of Xinhua. “Our aim is to see a prospering Europe,” he said, adding that the closer ties with the 16 countries, which includes 11 European Union members, will “usefully complement” EU-China relations.
Li pressed for the building of connectivity projects such as the Hungary-Serbia high-speed railway to be accelerated; proposed production capacity building be expanded, through the joint
building of “economic and trade cooperation zones and creating an industrial chain, value chain and logistics chain featuring closer integration, stronger drive and wider benefit;” and called for cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises to be promoted, according to Xinhua’s report.
Li estimated China’s imports over the next five years should total $8 trillion, as it has moved from a phase of high-speed growth to high-quality growth, which “will surely create opportunities for all countries in the world… We hope the central and eastern European countries find their place in this volume and expand their presence on the huge Chinese market.”
Financial resources for all this, were also addressed. Li announced that the China Development Bank will provide $2.4 billion (2 billion Euros) for the China-CEEC Inter-Bank Association being inaugurated on Monday, and that China will provide another $1 billion for the second phase of capitalization of the China-Central and Eastern Europe Investment Cooperation Fund, most of which will be channeled to CEE countries.
