Top Left Link Buttons
  • English
  • German

World Land-Bridge updates

Category Archives

Amidst US/China Tensions, Schiller Institute Holds “Win-Win” Forum on BRI in Los Angeles

July 3, 2019by Jason Ross in General, Helga statement, article, transcript, Los Angeles SI activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Our cultural events, Our economic development events, World Land-Bridge updates

In the midst of a flare-up of tensions between the US and China, sparked by the Anglo-American establishment’s fierce commitment to drive a wedge between the two nations, the Schiller Institute held a forum on June 15 in the Los Angeles area to promote the idea of cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The session was opened by a movement from a composition for unaccompanied violin by J.S. Bach, performed by a student from the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts. This was followed by a five minute video of Schiller Institute founder and chairperson Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who greeted the attendees and provided a strategic context for the meeting. She deplored the recent nasty provocations being directed at China by some notorious political factions in the US, and presented a vision of an alternative path, where the US and China lead the world into the future based on the highest cultural and scientific principles, and the most ambitious infrastructure scheme in human history, the BRI.

Zepp-LaRouche was followed by Shi Yuanqiang, deputy consul general for the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles. Shi provided a very thorough explication of the goals and structure of the BRI, stressing that there is extensive consultation between China and the other nations participating in the project, that all parties participate as equals and share in the benefits. He provided examples of the projects that are being built with Chinese collaboration in Africa and Central Asia, and elaborated on President Xi Jinping’s vision of a “Community of Common Destiny”, a mutually beneficial, “Win-Win” relationship among nations. Shi emphasized that there was a place at the table for the United States.

Shi-presentation

Following Shi’s presentation, there were remarks by Richard Chen, a board member of the US-China Forum who had acted as an interpreter for Chairman Deng Xiaoping during his historic visit to the US in 1979. Chen said that the two great accomplishments of the US after the end of World War II were the establishment of the United Nations, and the Marshall Plan. He compared China’s current role with respect to the developing nations, to the Marshall Plan.

Platt-presentation

The concluding presentation was by Schiller Institute representative Daniel Platt. He opened with an image that juxtaposed two historic paintings, showing Americans and Chinese fighting their respective battles against British colonialism during the American Revolution and the Opium Wars. Platt asserted that the methodology of the Empire, typified by the “Zero-Sum Game” approach of geopolitics, is an “article of faith” for today’s neoconservative movement. To this he contrasted President Xi’s concept of “Win-Win”, or Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s vision of humanity entering adulthood. He discussed the historical parallels between the US and China with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s embrace of the economic conceptions of Abraham Lincoln, and their shared approach to infrastructure development. He then reviewed the history of the proposals made by Lyndon LaRouche in the years following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, culminating in the World Landbridge.

platt-wlb

Among the eminent personalities who took part in the forum were the consul generals of Kenya and Belgium, as well as consular officials from Armenia and Malaysia, and a large delegation from the PRC consulate.

A Silk Road for the 21st Century – CCTV Interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche

April 23, 2014by tobi in Helga media coverage or interview, Helga Video, World Land-Bridge updates

Founder and president of the international Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, was interviewed by Chinese host Yang Rui at the CCTV studio in Beijing, China on April 15, 2014.

China To Build New Megaport in Peru as “Continental Hub”

May 20, 2019by Jason Ross in New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

Peru’s signing an MOU joining the Belt and Road Initiative during the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation April 25-27 has set into motion huge economic development projects which China has been offering.

Peru’s Volcan mining company and China’s port and shipping giant COSCO signed an agreement on May 13 to construct a megaport in Chancay, 50 km north of Lima. Chancay is a natural deepwater harbor (maximum water-depth of 16 meters), capable of handling today’s largest ships, but currently with no commercial port capacity. Now it is to be developed into the biggest port on South America’s Pacific Coast, and serve as a “continental hub” for cargo between South America and China, with two specialized terminals able to handle container, bulk, roll-on/roll-off and general cargo. Projected completion is in 28 months, with an estimated 9,000 jobs (1,500 direct and 7,500 indirect) created in the process.

The signing ceremony was attended by Peru’s President Martin Vizcarra and Transportation Minister Maria Jara, and COSCO’s Chairman Captain Xu Lirong and Managing Director Zhang Wei, and received great national media coverage.

“COSCO Shipping will jointly cooperate with Peru to develop the Port of Chancay into an important hub port in Latin America near the Pacific Coast, which will promote regional economic development. It will become the new link and bridge for trade and economic exchanges between China and Peru,” Captain Xu said at the signing.

President Vizcarra called the signing

“a milestone. Based on mutual connectivity of the Belt and Road Initiative, the companies from China and Peru jointly invested and developed the Chancay Project, which lays a solid foundation for Peruvian economic development,” he said.

“The construction of the Port of Chancay will contribute to regional development, and we expect to develop the Port of Chancay into one of the most important ‘hub’ ports in South America, and a logistics center near the Pacific Coast, which will promote regional trade and trade between China and the Latin America.”

This new “regional hub” begs the question of the continental rail network which has yet to be built. Not surprisingly, President Vizcarra raised the bioceanic part of that rail network, in a recent interview with Reuters. Vizcarra suggested that China — among others — could be a natural partner to help finance and build the bioceanic railroad, because it would be purchasing its products. He referred to the Central Route, connecting Brazil and Peru through Bolivia.

Urgent Appeal to the UN General Assembly

September 26, 2013by tobi in World Land-Bridge updates, World war danger updates

This statement by the President of the Schiller Institute was distributed at the opening of the 68th UN General Assembly in New York.

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
President of the Schiller Institute

We all know that the current economic order in the world only allows a very small percentage of the population to live a life of luxury, that only a relatively small percentage live decently, that many languish in inhumane poverty, while what Pope Francis called “hidden euthanasia” is widespread.

Only a few people know that, just a few weeks ago, mankind avoided by a hair’s breadth the danger of extinction in a thermonuclear war, because that would have been the consequence of an escalation following a military strike against Syria.

Both of these dangers, which threaten the very existence of the human species, are ultimately the result of the economic system of globalization, in which “anonymous decisions” — signed by high-level officials — sacrifice man’s unique dignity and his life to mammon, the god of lucre.

The diplomatic initiative around Syria raises the hope that the danger of a regional and possibly world war has been once again averted. But as urgent as war avoidance is, it is not enough. If we, as a species, are to have a future, we need a real perspective for peace, a completely new paradigm, that leaves behind for once and for all the geometry of solving crises through war, and replaces it by defining the common goals of mankind.

Is it not in the interest of all people on this planet to ensure energy security and raw material security as quickly as possible, and by so doing to overcome an essential cause of hunger and of the war danger? Is it therefore not in the interest of all people and all nations to launch the best possible crash program for the use of thermonuclear fusion, along the lines of the “Manhattan Project” for developing the atomic bomb during the Second World War, but this time for peaceful purposes and for the good of all mankind?

Likewise, it is high time to put the legitimate demand of the Non-Aligned Movement for a just world economic order back on the agenda. Such a new order could begin with the proposal of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the latest SCO conference, to build the new Silk Road as the basis for peaceful cooperation among all the countries along that route. This proposal is totally in line with the proposal for a Eurasian Landbridge that the Schiller Institute advanced in 1991, in reaction to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. That concept has been expanded, in the meantime, to an international Landbridge to bring people together, which has gained many friends and supporters throughout the world. Such a worldwide infrastructure and development program would hoist us onto the next higher economic platform where hunger and underdevelopment could be eliminated forever.

If the nations united in the UN General Assembly decide to replace the profoundly immoral and unjust system of globalization by an order allowing an alliance of sovereign Republics — in the tradition of John Quincy Adams — to work together in the common interests of mankind, our civilization can enter, consciously, into the next phase of evolution.

Why should that not be possible? We are the only creatures who, thanks to human creativity, can consciously improve the basis of our existence through scientific and technological innovation, and thus raise our living standards and life expectancy. Likewise, we are the only species which can scientifically determine with precision where the next step of research into the physical order of creation must lie, to ensure the continued existence of our species in the universe.

The Earth is not a closed, entropic system with finite resources. Our solar system and our galaxy are only a tiny part of the universe, which develops itself anti-entropically. What is wonderful about our order of creation is that there exists a verifiable concordance between the laws of the macrocosmos — the universe — and of the microcosmos — our creative reason — which is expressed in the physical power of our immaterial ideas.

What we need today more than anything else is tender love for mankind, an audacious vision for the future which looks at our planet from the perspective of astronauts and cosmonauts who see no borders, but only one mankind, while at the same time looking to the stars.

Friedrich Schiller said as much in his poem, and Ludwig van Beethoven in his 9th Symphony put those words to music:

Every man becomes a brother
Take this kiss throughout the world!
Brothers, o’er the stars unfurld
Must reside a loving father.

Our tormented mankind needs courageous leaders, committed to the mission of leading the world out of the danger zones of destruction into a better future, which is within reach!

French Dailies’ Supplement on Belt and Road Covers Schiller Institute Dossier

April 27, 2019by Jason Ross in Media coverage of our activity, New Silk Road / BRI updates, World Land-Bridge updates

The major French dailies Le Figaro and Le Monde published a full-page paid supplement on the Belt and Road Initiative last week which includes three articles: a larger one entitled “BRI: Soon Six Years of Implementation”; a second one entitled “One China-Europe Link Is Already on a Good Track,” and one last article, about one fifth of the page, on the Schiller Institute’s book-length dossier “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” headlined “Everything You Want To Know about the ‘World Land-Bridge.'” The three articles are written by People’s Daily journalists.

The first two articles are full of updates on the ongoing great Silk Road projects; the third, on the Schiller Institute and its dossier, was written by Ge Wenbo, who has already several times covered our work in Africa.

The articles are a paid supplement, published in both papers. The articles are shorter in Le Monde, in particular on our dossier, which became a small box with the same title.  The translation follows:

“All You Need To Know about the ‘World Land-Bridge'”

“Last year, on Nov. 6, the Schiller Institute, an international think tank, published the French version of its dossier ‘The New Silk Road, a World Land-Bridge To Bring Geopolitics to an End.’ The presentation, which took place in the Paris 5th arrondissement municipality, recommends countries to take part in the Belt and Road Initiative.

“Contrary to the analysts on the other side of the Atlantic, often prisoners of the ‘geopolitical’ software in which the winner always wins to the detriment of the loser, we try to show here that a new win-win paradigm is not only possible but indispensable.  Whereas the New Silk Roads must be known because of the major opportunity they represent for international trade, above all they must be known, explains this dossier, as a multilateral alternative to financial globalization, a true leverage to restart growth and a chance for peace. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president and founder of the Institute, affirms that since its launching in 2013, the BRI has shaped the world. The Chinese initiative will have a growing influence over more and more countries and improve the future.”

A photo of a container ship at berth accompanies the article with a following caption: “Container ship CSCL Star, with thousands of containers onboard, sailed from Shanghai and reached France’s port of Le Havre a month later. That port plays an important role in the implementation of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.” 

Page 9 of 9First...789