Economic development updates

The Message Which López Obrador Should Take to Trump: A World Summit of Nations Is Urgently Needed to Address the Crisis

July 6, 2020by David Dobrodt in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Economic development updates, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Statement by the LaRouche Citizens’ Movement of Mexico

July 3 — The opportunity has arrived. On the eve of the upcoming July 8 meeting between the Presidents of the United States and Mexico, Donald Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a number of international statements and developments have occurred which highlight the world importance of that meeting, in particular because of the role that Mexico will play as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, starting on Jan. 1, 2021.

At the beginning of 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed that a summit be held of the five permanent members (P-5) of the U.N. Security Council (Russia, China, United States, France and the United Kingdom) to address the grave crises which the entire planet is facing, and which require immediate joint action. These urgent crises include:

* The coronavirus pandemic;

* The collapse of the physical economy and the total bankruptcy of the Wall Street and City of London speculative financial system, a collapse worsened – but not caused – by the pandemic.

* The need to create a new international security architecture, in order to prevent a Third World War from being unleashed. The recent article by President Putin on the subject of the origins of the Second World War is an important contribution in that regard.

Such a summit must be held as soon as possible, based on the same approach that the great American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) set forth in his New Deal and Good Neighbor policies.

That is the central message which President López Obrador should communicate to his counterpart President Trump at their upcoming meeting.

Both Presidents, whose presidencies share a common origin — which is that their respective populations were fed up with the old system of looting –, also share a background of fighting to make their campaign promises a reality. But they have also been bogged down by the burden of ferocious attacks coming from a deafening campaign by the media and certain political circles to prevent them from taking any action. On the eve of their meeting, a new wave of collective hysteria has launched protests, which are being joined by congressmen and governors on both sides of our common border, demanding that the upcoming presidential meeting be cancelled.

It is not hard to imagine the fear of political and media circles tied to the current bankrupt system, at the prospect that the two presidents might reach agreements regarding the benefits that would come from joining their efforts to the call issued by the Presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping
respectively, to govern relations between nations on a new basis, such as the kind of approach taken by the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his long terms of office.

Recently, even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated on June 30 that he will orient his government along the lines of FDR’s New Deal policies. “It sounds like a New Deal, and all I can say is, that if so, then that is how it is meant to sound and to be, because that is what the times demand — a government that is powerful and determined and that puts its arms around people at a time of crisis.”

In response to that statement, Schiller Institute founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated:

“If, however, Boris Johnson would be serious about it [the New Deal approach], and he would immediately agree to participate in the summit called by Putin, and would insist that the New Deal in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt is being made the subject of such a P5 summit, then it could be taken seriously and would actually be a useful contribution.”

Why we emphasize Roosevelt

Russian President Putin has called for a new, global security architecture, such as in his famous 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, shaped around FDR’s approach: “It is well known that the field of international security goes well beyond issues of military and political stability. It involves the stability of the world economy, overcoming poverty, economic security, and the development of a dialogue among civilizations. This all-encompassing, indivisible character of security is expressed in its fundamental principle, that ‘the security of each is the security of all.’ As Franklin Roosevelt put it in the first days after the outbreak of the Second World War, ‘When peace has been broken anywhere, peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.’ These words remain topical today.”

As for Chinese President Xi Jinping, he told a Seattle business group during a visit to the U.S. in 2016: “In my younger years … I was interested in the life story and thinking of Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and other American statesmen.”

President Trump has also turned directly to FDR on numerous occasions, including in his victory speech the night of the 2016 election, stating: “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

President López Obrador, throughout his campaigns, has emphasized the historical importance of FDR. In mid June, he instructed Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s representative before the United Nations, where Mexico was elected to serve as a non-permanent member of the Securtiy Council, to promote “the fulfillment of the four fundamental freedoms proclaimed by President Roosevelt,” freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want.”

López Obrador also state that, in terms of sustainable development, “the rich nations and international financial institutions [should] support poor peoples and governments in combatting hunger, epidemics, avoiding racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia and discrimination; help with investments and regional development programs so that no one, no human being on this Earth is forced to emigrate from the place of their birth due to a lack of opportunity to work or because of violence.”

Finally, he said the Security Council must be guided by the principle of Mexico’s great President Benito Juárez, that “among individuals as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.” López Obrador said that “in no conflict shall force be used and in no case shall the hegemonic force of the powers be imposed.”

For these reasons, we issue this call for President López Obrador to be the messenger of peace and take President Trump a message of unity, so that a world summit be carried out under the guidelines set forth by Roosevelt, whether that be under the aegis of a Four Power Summit (Russia, China, the U.S. and India) as Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly proposed, or one initiated by the P-5, as Putin has called for – so long as the summit’s mission is to construct a new paradigm of world peace based on universal economic development, and that the summit be only the beginning of an international association open to all nations on the planet.

We believe that only an institutional force on such a scale as this can lead the world away from the current social and health crisis, which stems from the pandemic and the economic collapse, and orient the path of nations towards a new paradigm of general welfare for all.

China’s Success Throws Free Market Ideologues Into Crisis

February 21, 2018by Jason Ross in General, World Land-Bridge updates

Feb. 13 — In the Jan. 29 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, an article titled “What if China Really Is Exempt from the Laws of Economics?” very aptly captures the consternation/ constipation imposed on the intellectually impoverished proponents of standard academic economics by the astounding development of China. Author Michael Schulman gets far more points for candor than he does for historic insight. He seems thoroughly oblivious to the simple fact that the U.S. industrial base was built entirely by economic dirigism, never mentioning Alexander Hamilton. He devotes zero attention to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

However, what he does say would be hilarious, if the consequences of his outlook were not so dire: “But recently, my faith in the corpus of collective wisdom has been shattered. By China.” He elaborates: “The more I apply my rules of economics to China, the more they seem to go awry. China should be mired in meager growth, even gripped by financial crisis, according to my maxims. But obviously, it’s not. In fact, much of what’s going on right now in that country runs counter to what we know–or think we know–about economics. Simply, if Beijing’s policymakers are right, then a lot of basic economic thinking is wrong—especially our certainty in the power of free markets, our ingrained bias against state intervention, and our ideas about fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Schulman bemoans the fact that the role of the CPC in the Chinese economy is more central than ever, but, even worse (for his ilk), that no disaster, but only sustained real growth has resulted from that top-down intervention. He inserts some politically correct caveats and qualifiers, to the effect that maybe some catastrophe is lurking off stage, but pretty much admits that he can’t discern it.

So, it’s therefore time to overhaul your failed axioms, right? Sorry, like Linus, Schulman isn’t ready to ditch the security blanket just yet: “I’m clinging to my maxims…but thanks to China, I’m prepared to edit them.”

A more open admission of intellectual bankruptcy would be hard to imagine.

The whole article: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/what-if-china-is-exempt-from-the-laws-of-economics

India-China Cooperation Advances at BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting

June 12, 2018by Motoki Kasai in BRICS updates

June 5 -“Continuing multifaceted engagement between two large economies! [Indian Foreign Minister] Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Minister of China Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the BRICS Ministerial Conference. Both leaders discussed ways to maintain the momentum in bilateral and multilateral cooperation,” Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar enthusiastically tweeted yesterday after the two held a bilateral meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa on the sidelines of the meeting among the BRICS Foreign Ministers.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang was also enthusiastic. Xinhua reported that Wang had said in their meeting that “China and India working together will accelerate the common development of the two countries, benefit the entire world, and contribute to the progress of human civilization…. China and India have extensive common interests, and they have far more consensus than differences,” he emphasized, according to Xinhua. “The two sides should take bilateral relations and people’s fundamental interests as a starting point at all times, properly handle problems and differences, and prevent the interests of one party from affecting the overall interest. China and India should strengthen coordination and play a constructive role in promoting the development of BRICS cooperation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other multilateral mechanisms.”

Xinhua reported that India’s Swaraj spoke of the “unprecedented success” of the informal meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping at Wuhan at the end of April, as it “enhanced mutual trust between the two countries, strengthened cooperation, [and] made the parties more comfortable with each other.” As the two largest developing countries, “the two sides should further strengthen coordination and cooperation within multilateral mechanisms and contribute to preserving the common interests of developing countries,” she said.

The full BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting demonstrates that the BRICS process, uniting five members countries representing much of humanity–Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa–remains an active force, despite the “regime change” operations run in Brazil and South Africa in hopes of killing it. Brazil’s Foreign Minister did choose to attend the simultaneous Organization of American States General Assembly meeting in Washington, D.C. in order to support the drive to kick Venezuela out of that body, instead of the BRICS, but that government still had to send its Deputy Foreign Minister to represent it.

According to both Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Chinese Foreign Ministry press spokesman, the meeting was “constructive and thorough,” as the ministers agreed the purpose of the BRICS remains that of building “a brighter shared future for the global community,” as the final communiqué states.

Bolivia and China Sign “Strategic Association” Agreement

June 22, 2018by Motoki Kasai in General, New Silk Road / BRI updates

June 19–During his June 18-19 state visit to China, Bolivian President Evo Morales and his counterpart Xi Jinping elevated bilateral relations to the status of “strategic association,” by which they will deepen cooperation in a variety of sectors as well as coordinate on important international issues and at the United Nations. A special focus of their discussion was on advancing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Morales praised China for its efforts to create “a new type of international relations” in this context.

On June 13-14, Morales had a state visit in Russia, during which he and President Vladimir Putin also elevated their bilateral relations to the status of a strategic association. While in Russia, among other things, Morales indicated his interest in allying with the Eurasia Economic Union as well.

In a two-hour meeting June 18 with Xi Jinping, the two leaders signed an 11-point joint declaration detailing the specific areas in which they will expand cooperation — infrastructure, industrialization, finance, trade, manufacturing, science and technology (including aerospace), education and culture among them — and also signed a document committing themselves to jointly building the Belt and Road Initiative. Morales expressed the hope that by working together to build the BRI, this will also contribute to expanding cooperation between China and Ibero-America, Xinhua reported.

Xi commented that the BRI “offers a new platform” by which China’s relations with Ibero-America can be strengthened. He also pointed out that both China and Bolivia have ancient civilizations and should learn from each other to explore the use of “ancestral wisdom” to better deal with today’s problems. In terms of financing for development, the joint declaration emphasizes Bolivia’s intention to complete its application for membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). China’s Eximbank will make a credit line available to assist Bolivia in building a command-and-control center for a subregional security system, and the China Development Bank will be helping to finance construction of the Bombeo-Tuneo highway, according to Xinhua.

China’s Poverty Reduction Even More Impressive

February 21, 2018by Jason Ross in General, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Feb. 13 – Wan Guanghua, the principal economist at the Asian Development Bank’s Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, said that more impressive than China’s remarkable economic growth is its successful campaign in reducing poverty. “It is reasonable that China’s success in poverty reduction is usually attributed to its rapid economic development in the past three decades, as without economic growth, Chinese people’s poverty situation cannot be alleviated,” said Wan, reported {People’s Daily Online} yesterday.

Economic growth alone, however, is not the main cause of the poverty alleviation, Wan said, since many countries that have a high rate of growth do not necessarily see poverty significantly reduced. China’s poor people benefit a lot from the country’s economic growth due to strong support from the Chinese government, active promotion of industrialization and urbanization, as well as great importance attached to infrastructure establishment in poor areas, Wan said. They had set up the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation, encouraged rural workers to come to the cities to find better paying jobs, and built infrastructure in poor areas, such as roads, communication, and electricity facilities, thus narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

The economist stated that China’s practices and experiences in poverty alleviation can be studied by other countries in order to help them do the same. He further said that with development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation, China will continue to pass on its valuable experience in poverty reduction to other countries, help other developing countries to strengthen their infrastructure, advance industrialization, and contribute more to the international cause of poverty alleviation.

Portugal Working To Put the Atlantic Ocean on the Belt and Road Map

June 12, 2018by Motoki Kasai in General, World Land-Bridge updates

June 5 – A three-page spread on “Portugal in China’s New Silk Road” in the May 31 issue of Portugal’s {Expresso} daily writes that “the Atlantic is missing from the current map of the initiative,” but Portuguese Belt and Road researcher Paulo Duarte tells them “the Atlantic Ocean is a space in transformation…. The trend will be for China to engage in this ocean in coming years.” Portugal offers “a string of pearls” of deepwater seaports on the European continent and on its Atlantic island such as the Azores, for this initiative, Jorge Rocha de Matos, president of the Fundacão AIP, a non-profit promoting private sector companies, told {Expresso}.

{Expresso} interviewed Portugal’s Minister of the Sea Ana Paulo Vitorino, who reported that Portugal and China are advancing on a memorandum on a “blue partnership,” dealing with everything related to the oceans and sea economy. The MOU will outline a portfolio of joint research projects on state-of-the-art maritime biotechnologies, deep-sea technologies, etc.

Portugal’s primary capital is its geography, when it comes to the BRI, she said, citing Portugal’s “strategic centrality. …. Portugal is at the interface between Europe and the Atlantic.” the reported that China is interested not only in building up Sines port, where the China Communications Construction Co. will be a bidder in the tender for expanding Sines which will be launched later this year. Increased Chinese activity here will turn this port, once considered a “white elephant” into a crown jewel, she said. But “China is not only looking at Sines;” it is also studying investments to upgrade the entire national port system, she said.

Now Amsterdam is Connected by Rail to China’s East Coast

March 9, 2018by Jason Ross in General, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Mar 8 – On March 7, a block train departed from the Port of Amsterdam on its 11,000-kilometer journey to Yiwu on China’s east coast. It will travel through through Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, and will reach its destination on March 23, Rail Freight.com reported today. Thanks to this new train connection, the Netherlands is now connected to the One Belt, One Road project.

“We are proud to add Amsterdam to our Chinese railway network, in addition to our existing connections between China, Russia and Germany. Amsterdam is the largest European port after Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, which makes it an important hub. The new connection will make it even easier for operators, retailers and brand manufacturers in the Netherlands to do business with and from China,” Erwin Cootjans, CEO of Nunner Logistics told Rail Freight.com. The Belt and Road’s international cross-border rail network has so far connected 35 Chinese cities with 34 European destinations over the past six years.

“The new train connection is an initiative of Nunner Logistics. This logistics service provider noticed the increasing demand for goods transportation from and to China. The need for this new kind of transportation increases now that cargo ships sail slower in order to save fuel. Transport by train is a faster alternative compared to sea transportation, and the costs are much lower compared to transport by airplane,” wrote Netherland’s Hong Kong Business Association in its website.

GBTimes Interviews Helga Zepp-LaRouche on China’s New Silk Road and Europe

February 18, 2018by Jason Ross in Europe SI activity, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga statement, article, transcript, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Feb. 16 – GBTimes is a multimedia news site, based in Finland where it was founded by Chinese entrepreneur Zhao Yinong, and which refers to itself as a “bridge between China and the rest of the world.” It published the following interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Feb. 16:

China’s ambitious plan to link itself with Europe and Africa through new Silk Road trade routes has so far received a mixed welcome in Europe. The Belt and Road initiative, the brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, proposes to boost trade and economic integration across Eurasia through over $1 trillion worth of investments in railways, ports, power plants and other infrastructure links. The initiative has been officially endorsed by Central and Eastern European countries, many of which are hoping that Chinese investment could create jobs and improve infrastructure.

But Western European countries have been more cautious, with British Prime Minister Theresa May declining to sign up to the initiative during her recent trip to Beijing and French President Emmanuel Macron warning during his trip to China that the New Silk Road cannot be “one-way.” There are also concerns in Brussels about a lack of reciprocity in trade with China and increasing Chinese investment in critical infrastructure in Europe.

The German-based Schiller Institute, however, has for the past several years been campaigning for the Belt and Road initiative in Europe by organizing hundreds of conferences on the topic. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the institute’s founder and president, talked to gbtimes.com about the initiative and why she believes Europe should embrace it.

Q: What is the Schiller Institute?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The Schiller Institute was founded in 1984 as a think tank, with the main idea behind it being that peace and order in the world would only function if each nation would relate to the best cultural tradition of the others and vice versa. One of the focuses was to fight for a just new world economic order, something like in the tradition of the Nonaligned Movement, especially inspired by the ideas of my husband, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, and secondly to fight for a renaissance of classical culture. I gave it the name of [German philosopher] Friedrich Schiller because his image of man was the most noble and beautiful one and I thought such a conception was urgently needed in the political realm.

Q: How did you first get to know China?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I went to China for the first time in 1971 on a cargo ship, which was repaired in Shanghai. So, I had plenty of occasions to visit many factories, children’s palaces, and the countryside. I also went to Shenzhen, Qingdao and Beijing, and that left a very lasting impression on me because this was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and China was very much different then. But it started a deep interest on my side in Chinese philosophy and culture. And then I was also inspired by the changes which took place in China after the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and I visited China many times in the 1990s and the 2000s, and especially after Xi Jinping announced the new Silk Road. And I could see the dramatic changes and the economic miracle which China has undergone. I feel very privileged that I have sort of personally witnessed the unbelievable transformation of China over almost 50 years.

Q: You mentioned President Xi Jinping who proposed the Belt and Road initiative in 2013. The Schiller Institute has been very supportive of this initiative. Why is this?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: First, the Belt and Road initiative is presently the most important strategic initiative on the planet because it proposes what Xi Jinping calls a community for shared future of humanity. The idea of one humanity is a perfect conception for overcoming geopolitics, which was the reason for two world wars and, in the age of nuclear weapons, can lead to a terrible catastrophe just as big. If you look at the incredible progress this initiative has made in the five years since it was announced, you already see a tremendous transformation where the developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, for the first time, have legitimate hope to overcome poverty and under-development. It just happens that the Belt and Road initiative is very much in accordance with proposals my husband and myself have made during the last decades. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 we proposed something that we called the Eurasian land bridge, which was the idea to connect the Eurasian peoples and industries through development corridors. The Chinese government picked up on the proposal to organize an international conference in Beijing in 1996, in which I participated as speaker. Already at that point China considered the development of the Eurasian land bridge a strategic initiative, but this was put on hold due to the Asian financial crisis of 1997. We were then extremely happy when Xi Jinping announced this policy in 2013 — with China’s economic power all these plans can now be realized. Why do you think the Chinese are interested in this idea of bridging the Eurasian continent? China has developed its own economic model of lifting its population out of poverty and it also wants to contribute to eliminating poverty on the world scale. I think that is a very different approach to many other countries. There are now only 30 million poor people left in China. In comparison, there are 90 million poor people in the European Union and more than 50 million people who are officially poor in the United States, but no clear plans to eliminate poverty in totality. So, you are saying China is currently the only major country that has a global vision? Yes. I participated in the Belt and Road forum in Beijing last year and everyone who participated in this conference had a distinct impression that we were witnessing the beginning of a new era of mankind. At the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi promoted the goal of having a fully developed, modern, culturally advanced, happy country by 2050 — not only happiness for the Chinese people, but for all the people in the world. Normally politicians in the West think at best until the next election, and I have not heard from any Western leader a plan on how to uplift the entire human species in the next 30, 40, 50 years. The idea to create happiness for the people as a policy goal was last heard during the American revolution when it was set in the American Declaration of Independence that it is a fundamental right to have life, freedom and happiness. This is a notion coming from Latin [sic — she said Leibniz] and it means the ability of people to develop their full potential. I have seen in China on many occasions that people really think that way. They have the idea that there is no limit to their ability to self-perfect to improve society and relations between nations, and it’s a completely different spirit to what you find anywhere in the West.
Q: All Central and Eastern European countries have officially joined the Belt and Road Initiative, but many Western countries including the U.K., France and Germany have been more cautious about it. Why do you think this is the case? ZEPP-LAROUCHE: When certain politicians in these countries say they want to insist on standards and rules, and that they don’t want the spreading of Chinese investment in Europe, I think it’s a question of geopolitical control. The EU for example could have developed Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, but they didn’t. When China then comes and starts to build the kind of infrastructure that the EU did not build, these countries are happy and want to go with the new Silk Road. And that causes some people who believe in geopolitics to see it as a threat. The present Western system is based not on the common good as a primary orientation, but on monetarist profit-making. This system benefits those who speculate and those who run the banking system. But it leads to such things like the 2008 financial crisis, which was a systemic crisis, and nothing has been done since other than quantitative easing and pumping money.

Q: But do you think China itself has overcome geopolitics?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I know that that is not the view of many politicians in the West, but I think assumptions about China are just people’s projections of what they themselves think. I am not a naive person — I have studied this in depth and looked at it closely — and I do think that China does not plan to dominate the world with its system. The Chinese model is more attractive, and many countries want to repeat what it has been doing, but I don’t think China wants to impose its values. My explanation for this is China’s Confucian tradition. For example, Christians are supposed to win other people over to Christianity, but Confucianism does not do that. Confucianism is perfectly happy to live in coexistence. And if you look at the entire history of China, you never had religious war. You had Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity all living in a perfect ecumenical harmony. So, I think in Chinese history, you don’t find anything which would give credibility to the claim that China is not doing what they say. I think they are doing exactly what they say they are doing and they mean it.

Q: What would it mean for Western European countries to join the Belt and Road Initiative?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: It would mean that there would be a shift towards the real economy. Right now, you have this money-makes-money philosophy, but if you look at even an advanced country like Germany, there’s a tremendous backlog in infrastructure. There are warnings by some of the logistic organizations that Germany is about to lose its standard as a location for industrial development because of the collapse of the infrastructure. So, if European countries would join the new Silk Road it would mean that they could basically renew their infrastructure like China has done, and to build fast trains among all major cities. With the policy of the Troika [European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund], the industries and the economies of the Southern European countries were destroyed. Now you see that with the advantages that come from Chinese investment in the Piraeus port and other projects in Greece, it’s going upwards. And with the EU, it went downwards. The same is true for Italy, Spain and Portugal. Europe could also participate with China in the reconstruction of Southwest Asia, of Syria, of Iraq, because you must bring economic development to these countries if terrorism is supposed to be eliminated. You have to give young people a future which they don’t have right now. It would mean you could solve the refugee problem in a human way.

Q: But do you think that some Europeans might be cautious about the growing Chinese influence because they think they might have to someday accept the same kind of restrictions on freedoms that China has at home?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, but if people are worried that they may lose some of their hedonistic impulses — well, that might not be altogether such a bad thing. Because what we are seeing right now is a decadent society with all the violence, pornography and drug addiction. You have an opium epidemic in the United States, which is contributing to the fact that life expectancy is going down for the first time. If there is any parameter for the functioning of an economy, it is the life expectancy. If an economy is doing well, it’s increasing and obviously it’s an indicator that there is something fundamentally wrong if it’s going down because of suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction. On the other hand, there was just a poll made in Germany among 42 firms which were taken over by Chinese investors. In all cases, the management and the employees said that it was a positive thing that the Chinese took over, instead of speculators or hedge funds. I think some of these changes that come with more Chinese investment and influence would be beneficial. I would even go so far to agree with Leibniz, who said already in the 17th century that because of the superior morality of the Chinese, one should import Chinese missionaries to teach morality to the Europeans.

Q: So, you are optimistic that the acceptance of the Belt and Road initiative is growing in Europe eventually?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: We have found that all people who do business in China or who have travelled to China or who are married with a Chinese person, are all positive, and they know that what China is doing is a historic transformation of humanity. The Belt and Road initiative is not just about economics; it’s not just about infrastructure from A to B, but it is really a new paradigm. And what I mean by new paradigm is a new way of understanding what is the role of humanity. We are the only creative species who can invent new technologies and sciences and change the mode of our existence. It’s not the nature of man to be greedy, to chase for stock market gains and try to exploit and dominate others. It’s the nature of man to develop our own potential to the fullest so that we can contribute to the development of the human species. And the new paradigm will be that more and more people, as time goes by, will be able to realize their true potential as human beings.

https://gbtimes.com/interview-with-helga-zepp-larouche-on-chinas-new-silk-road-and-europe

China Is Preparing for Manned Missions to the Moon

February 2, 2018by Jason Ross in General, Space updates

Jan. 27 -In 1971, the Apollo 15 crew left a retro-reflector on the Moon. It is a passive instrument, and just reflects laser pulses from Earth back to Earth. The time–very precisely measured–of he return pulse, indicates the distance between Earth and its nearest neighbor. In all, three reflectors were left on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions, and one by the Soviet Lunokhod 2 over. They are still used by scientists for research in astrodynamics, Earth-Moon system dynamics (the Moon is slowly moving away from the Earth), and lunar physics. The technique is called Lunar aser Ranging (LLR), and now Chinese scientists are using the Apollo 15 reflector for LLR experiments, in preparation for their future missions to land astronauts on the Moon.

On Jan. 22, Xinhua reported yesterday, an applied astronomy group at the Yunnan Observatories in Kunming carried out China’s first Lunar Laser Ranging experiment, to obtain precise measurments of he distance between the Earth and the Moon.

While it was an interesting scientific experiment, the technique also has important practical applications. Landing an unmanned vehicle on the Moon requires using detailed orbital photographs to define a safe and interesting general landing region, where the engineers aim the lander. For a robotic spacecraft, the landing ellipse can be a relatively wide area to aim for. But or a manned mission, a more precise targetting is preferable. China can now use the laser ranging technique for its manned lunar program.

Until now, only the U.S., France, and Italy have successfully deployed laser ranging technology. It is reported that on a future mission, China will place its own retro-reflector on the Moon.

Chinese scientists are also studying the human factor itself, and technology to support crew on the Moon. Chinese student volunteers have just completed 200 days in Beihang University’s “Lunar Palace.” The two men and two women are biomedicine students and are the second group to work in the simulated space lab. A main capability needed to live off Earth is regenerative life-support ystems, where waste is recycled, and in the advanced phase, virtaully no materials have to be suppplied from the outside. The “mission” also entailed study of the social interactions and sychological condtion of the crew.

Chief designer Liu Hong said that her team would apply to have a mini-life support system on a lunar or Martian probe, with another system as a ground control. NASA and its partners have used the International Space Station to test closed-cycle life support systems, and the station itself recycles various waste products to reduce the amount of material that has to be delivered from the ground.

Egypt: Fresh Vegetables Grown in the Desert

January 29, 2018by Jason Ross in World Land-Bridge updates

Chinese company, Sinomach Heavy Industry Corp., is building what is described as the world’s largest greenhouse complex in the Egyptian desert. The site is within two hour’s drive from Cairo, CGTN reported yesterday. The complex, which when complete will consist of about 3,000 greenhouses, will grow vegetables and fruit, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, and peppers. This was decided in consultation with Egyptian agricultural experts, Hou Huicong, the deputy project manager explained. The water for the crops will come from a sub-branch of the Nile River, and ditches will be built to divert water to the greenhouses.

Components for the greenhouses have been produced in 80 factories in China that have been working on the project since July. On this ambitious schedule, operation of the greenhouses is expected this year. This accelerated timetable can be met, said Sun Guiding, purchase manager for the project, because, “We mobilized almost all resources producing agricultural appliances in China. Many are working around the clock.”

The $400 million project is the product of an agreement signed with the Egyptian government last May.

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