Fouad Al-Ghaffari

Marco Zanni

A Future for Europe after the Euro

European Parliament Member, Marco Zanni (ITALY)

Transcript

Thank you again to the Schiller Institute for this invitation and for having organized, once again, such a very interesting conference. The speeches of the people that spoke before me confirms that there is a worldwide community, not just in Europe, in Africa, and in China, that is thinking about a better future for our people in the world.

Today I will talk about the future of Europe, because it’s clear that something is not functioning well in this continent, and it’s clear that what is happening is not only at a political level. We are meeting in Germany, and the debate about a future government of this country is the sign that something is going wrong. But also, we must also consider the situation that we are living in at a micro-economic level, and the fact that the European Union is not able to address and to solve the three main challenges and problems that European citizens are living through today. The first one, the most debated, is clearly the economic and financial crisis that is still alive in our continent; the second is the problem of internal security and all the problems related to terrorism; and the third one is the problem related to the management of migration flows, that are affecting a lot of countries, and especially my country, Italy, because of our geographical position as the bridge of the European continent and in the Mediterranean area.

It’s pretty clear that we have to challenge the rhetoric, that there is no alternative to the European Union, with which the European establishment has campaigned in the last twenty years, that the European Union is a political infrastructure that should remain, and continue in the future. This super-state, this institutional framework for Europe is not able to solve problems, is not able to create better conditions for Europeans, and is not able to fulfill the promises that European politicians made, especially after the end of the Cold War at the end of the 1980’s.

So it’s time, today, for a new European political class to think about what could be an alternative project for Europe that could challenge the actual framework of the European Union. As I said, we are challenging— and I, personally, as a representative of the European and Italian people in the European Parliament—are trying to challenge this TINA (There Is No Alternative) rhetoric. Because we need an alternative institutional framework for the European people.

Let me clarify one very important thing: The European elites are trying to use the term “European Union” term as something that is close, or is comparable to Europe. I would like to stress the fact that in my opinion, the European Union and Europe are two very different concepts. Europe is a geographical, historical concept that includes a lot of countries. The European Union is a political infrastructure, a political framework, that was founded in 1957, so it’s here, but it has been present only for a short time period, compared to the history of Europe, and it includes only twenty eight countries—a huge part of the countries in Europe—but they are not the totality of the countries and people living today in Europe.

Today, as I say, the European Union is not only failing in addressing problems of the people on this continent, but the policies and the political framework of the European Union are also making these problems worse. The policies and rules that we are applying and which were built into the European Union in the last twenty years, are creating divergencies and asymmetries, not only between countries, between the countries participating in the Union and in the Eurozone, but also between people inside the same country. Germany is one of the best examples of what is happening at the country level with this European Union framework.

The poor people, or let’s say, the majority of people, are negatively affected by the rules agreed to at the European Union level, and the elite are strengthening their powers to shape European legislation to protect their interests. This situation is causing suffering not only in the so-called PIGS, the Southern European countries of Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, but as I said, also in the core European countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries. And the political situation of those countries is the proof of this situation.

The Failure of the EU

In the last election German voters decided not to support the more traditional parties, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats of Mrs. Merkel; they decided to support so-called populist, euro-skeptic parties, right-wing and left-wing parties. The strong support that the AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland) and also the liberals, the FDP (Free Democratic Party) received in the last German election is also a sign that, people and voters of the country that received the biggest benefits from European rules and the Eurozone framework, now are challenging the future of this project, because this project, the Eurozone and the European Union rules, are negatively affecting their lives. The economic situation of people living in the former East Germany is really bad. Unemployment is very high, people are living on money transfers from the central state and richer regions, and the situation is very bad. It is comparable to the situation in other member-states, such as Italy.

In Italy, we are still coping with a lot of problems in terms of youth unemployment. The youth unemployment rate in Italy is close to 40%, an unacceptable rate. Total unemployment is stabilizing, but only at close to 11-12%, another unacceptable level. A macroeconomic labor market indicator that the ECB is using to assess the situation in the labor market of the Eurozone countries shows that the rate in Italy is the highest in the European Union. It’s close to 30%; that means that we have 40% of our working population under stress. And the policies of the European Union and the Eurozone are not only not addressing this problem, but are instead strengthening differences and asymmetries inside the countries.

Another problem that we are facing is the problem related to our financial system and to our banking system. There is a huge debate inside the European Union, as to what should be the future of our financial institutions. After the big financial crisis in 2008 and after the sovereign crisis that affected the Eurozone in 2010, the European institutions decided to set up a very comprehensive set of new rules, trying to regulate the banking industry in the Eurozone. This huge amount of rules, this new framework, was called the Banking Union. This was based on three pillars: The first one is common supervision of the biggest financial institutions in the European Union; the second pillar is the Single Resolution Mechanism, the so-called bail-in rule. This is a unique mechanism at the European level that would intervene to resolve banking crises should one of those big institutions get into trouble; and the third pillar, which is not agreed upon— we are working on it—is the common deposit insurance for all the Banking Union countries.

It’s clear that this new framework is not functioning well. The biggest mistake of this framework was to try to create regulations that would cope with the consequences of a financial and banking crisis without doing anything to try to set up instruments and tools to avoid the causes of a financial crisis. This new framework of rules created more instability in the financial sector inside the Eurozone, because now, not only taxpayers, as happened in the past, have to, so to speak, participate in the bail-out of a big financial institution, but also savers and common people who invested their savings in financial products—in bank bonds, in deposits, or in other very simple financial instruments—have also had to participate in the bail-in of bank institutions. The European politicians, in 2012, when the Banking Union was agreed to, promised that with the Banking Union, no more would taxpayers’money would be used to save big financial institutions. What happened in reality? We now have three years of experience with more than 10 banks that have been “resolved” according to the new Banking Union framework. What happened was that not only did taxpayers have to participate in the resolution of banks, but also common people and savers who were misled with financial products, had to participate in this.

In Italy, in 2017, we had two very big financial problems related to our banking system. One was the suddenly famous resolution and saving of the Banca de Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which was one of the world’s first banks, founded at the end of the 15th Century and operating in Italy and all over Europe since that time. The other one was the resolution of two regional banks, which were very important, because they were located in one of the most industrialized and developed regions of Italy, Veneto. I’m referring to the resolution of Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Bank, two Venetian banks that were resolved in April 2017.

The cost of the resolution of these two banks was very high. More than EU20 billion of taxpayers’money have been used to save these two banks, and more than EU15 billion in shareholders’ value, in bondholders’ value, have been used to save these banks. It’s clear that this framework cannot be efficient in making our financial system more resilient, more effective in supporting the real economy, more effective in supporting public infrastructure investment, more supportive in assuring strong support for European citizens in pursuing their entrepreneurial activities, and so on.

An Alternative is Required

It’s clear that we need a different framework.

The big question that we are working on, and that is very important for the future of Europe, is this: Is the European Union the best institutional framework that we can create or that we can have in Europe, in order to address these very important problems that European citizens are facing today? Looking at what happened in the last twenty years.According to my experience in the European institution in the last four years, my reply would be: “No. Clearly, no.”

Why? Because the European Union today, and the rules that we agreed to at the European Union level, are impeding member states and governments in addressing properly the problems that European people are subjected to.

What can we do to challenge the European Union’s “There Is No Alternative” rhetoric, that European institutions and European leaders are using today to justify their failure and to go on with this failing project? We have to create a new institutional framework that will start from the core of the European democracy, that is, member states. We have to give back to member states powers in order to shape the right mix of policies to cope with the crisis today. That means, give back to member states the power to set up their monetary policies; the power to set up the right mix of fiscal policies that they want. It’s clear that a “one size fits all” approach cannot work, and is not working! A single monetary policy for 19 different countries that are facing 19 different economic cycles cannot work! Today, Germany probably would need a less accommodative monetary policy; Germany would need to have interest rates rising; Germany will need the end of quantitative easing. But it’s clear that Italy and other countries need the continuation and increase of competitivity and more of an accommodative monetary policy.

The fact that we agreed—and I’m going to conclude with this point—that we agreed on a public balanced budget rule, is impeding European countries and governments from dedicating appropriate resources for infrastructure investment, and that is not happening only in Italy, but also in Germany. Public investments in infrastructure in Germany are a bit low! They are not recovering after the financial crisis.

So, it is clear that we have to create a new framework of rules in Europe, in order to challenge this European Union framework that is failing to address European countries’ policies. We have to create another Europe that will be the bridge between the Asian countries, the developing countries, the new world powers that are approaching the elite, and the United States. That’s a role that Europe can do, but with the EU’s current policy, with these provocations that the European Union is bringing face-to-face with Russia, with this new Common Defense Project provocatively putting of a lot of military forces at the border with Russia, the future of Europe and the European countries will be really, really tough.

We have to regain our sovereignty. We have to return power to member states, not only in terms of fiscal policy and monetary policy, but also in terms of diplomacy; and we have to coordinate all European sovereign countries in order to create more positive political scenarios for Europe, and for our historical partners outside Europe—Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, African countries,Egypt, and a lot of developing countries. It will be very important to create and set up a cooperative “win-win” approach that could benefit not only the Italians, not only Europeans, but people worldwide, in order to ease conditions, and to create development and opportunities for people in the continent of Africa, in order to stop these migration flows that are affecting the European Union.

Thank you very much for your time.

Prof. He Wenping

The Belt and Road: China Shares Its Development with Africa and the World

Prof. He Wenping is the Director of African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. This is an edited transcript of her address to the International Schiller Institute conference on “Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind,” Nov. 25, 2017, in Bad Soden/Taunus, Germany, which she presented under the title, “President Xi’s Perspective for the Year 2050 and the Perspective of African Development.” Subtitles have been added.

Transcript

Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honor for me to be here, to join in this wonderful conference. Thank you very much, Mme. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President and founder of the Schiller Institute, for inviting me here. I am very impressed, first of all, by this opening music, the lovely song called “The Jasmine Flower.” Actually, when I hear the beautiful song, I have a kind of motivation to jump on stage, to sing together with this beautiful song. [applause]

This song I know is very famous in the Western society, seemingly like one of the Chinese dishes that is called Gong Bao Ji Ding, which I hear is also very famous in European countries, and especially in Germany. I think several years ago, when I spent my visiting fellowship in the German Development Institute, I had a very good friend—she’s a German—she invited me to her apartment to cook this Gong Bao Ji Ding. And she followed all the procedures, how to begin doing it from the first step, second step, so it’s amazing. Even me, I couldn’t do that Gong Bao Ji Ding from the beginning to the end. So, we tasted that delicious dish together.

So, like founder and President Helga said, now in China, the Chinese people eat very well, but not so healthy! We have to learn how to diet now! Before, during Mao’stime, we had a shortage economy, and when Deng Xiaopingmade reforms and thisreform, the “Opening Up,” and now the Chinese can feed themselves. But, now they’re learning how to eat healthily, how to do the diet. So, I want to speak over my dinner, and also do a diet in order to keep a good figure.

Today I think it’s a wonderful conference theme, called “Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind.” I have the honor of talking about President Xi Jinping’s perspective for the year 2050, and the perspective of African development. I have been told I have 20 minutes—I hope I can finish all my slides in 20 minutes.

First, the point in China is the roadmap and this development goal of 2050; 2050 is not too much further away, it’s just quickly, every year passes so quickly, so very soon we will reach 2050. His perspective, first, is in China, how to resolve the challenges we’re facing at home.

And then, in the world there is the peaceful diplomacy, also called One Belt, One Road. So, One Belt, One Road is something linking China and all of the world: It’s like our Confucian philosophers, and also like the Germans, with lots of famous philosophers coming from here, Schiller and so many! Those philosophers’ thinking also needs to be connected together.

And then, inAfrica:Africa is a wonderful continent, I think, unfortunately now still left behind. So from China and from the world, how should we work together to help the people in that continent? That’s the main point.

Two Pictures of China

First, in China, the roadmap development goal— you all know on Oct. 18 in Beijing we had the 19th Party Congress, and all those very important documents will be released from the Party Congress. During the Party Congress, President XiJinping spelled out a longterm roadmap for the Chinese people, and the goal is to establish a moderately prosperous society, which we call the Xiaokang society. Xiaokang is a Mandarin Chinese word which means now moderate well-being. It’s notso much a superpower yet, but just a moderate wellbeing society. So by counting, we should be out of poverty for all 1.4 billion population.

This is a tremendous job! Now we are entering into a new anti-poverty phase, called a “target anti-poverty phase.” What is the meaning of “target”? About a half year ago, I traveled to our poverty-stricken area in Shanxi province, and also I traveled to another, called Guizhou province, to see the poverty area, and I found that the local village heads will find out which households are still in poverty. So this is called the “targeting.” And the heads of the village and the village leaders,their job is to help those poverty-stricken households to help them to get rich in a certain amount of time.

To bring out of poverty all of our 1.4 billion population by 2020, is not an easy job. The per-capita GDP will reach $10,000. Now Chinese per-capita GDP is $8,000 in the year 2016; but back in 1978, our per-capita GDP was $156! So it was very, very poor, when this opening and reform was just starting. In Mao’s time, we had a very interesting phrase, to express Chinese people’s thinking about our three generations of leadership: The first generation of leadership, which is Chairman Mao—Chairman Mao helped the Chinese people “stand up,” which means, before we were lying on the ground, being colonized, semi-colonized by Japan, but Mao helped the Chinese people stand up, but not to be well fed, not well clothed, just to stand up: political independence.

Then Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up. Deng Xiaoping helped the Chinese people to eat well, now becoming rich, but only economically. But now, under Xi Jinping’s leadership, so they not only stand up and eat well, becoming rich, but we should make more contribution to the world, becoming people who really enjoy life, and the country also enjoys dignity in the world. That’s to establish a Xiaokang welfare society.

And then, how to reach that goal, the two stages from 2020 all the way to 2050. The first stage is to 2035, to realize the socialist modernization, per-capita GDP will reach $30,000; that’s the goal.And then GDP as a whole will reach $43.6 trillion, becoming the level of what’s called the middle-developed country. That’s the first stage.And then, from 2036 to 2050 to become a country of prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony—the beautiful socialist modernization power. That’s the goal that’s been set up in this 19th Party Congress.

So, when we think about China, there are two pictures of China, that is, generally speaking. If you go into details, there are a thousand different pictures of China. Those general two pictures—one is a rising power, seems very strong; this is the second biggest economy already, but—let me show the picture here—here is the general picture about China, this is the Global Economy by GDP. When we see the top right, United States of America, accounts for 24.32% of total global GDP; and then, to the left top, that’s China, the yellow one—China accounts for 14.84% of global GDP. And then, a lot of others have double-digit percentages of GDP. So, in general, China is very powerful now.

But, when we go to the per-capita GDP, this is the picture. We talked before about the Xiaokang. We’re still struggling, heading forward toward Xiaokang, just to get to $10,000 per-capita GDP. Even recently,— let me share with you what the heated debate has been in recent days. Just a week ago in Beijing, there was a big fire; I think it was beyond the north Fifth Ring. That big fire cost around 28 lives. Eventually, after an investigation, we found that fire started in the basement, during the renovation of the building. And they found that there were a lot of people, migrant people living in that area, so fire safety measures hadn’t been taken, and eventually the municipal government made a decision that all those places below the standard of fire safety have to be demolished. And then we had lots of debating from the rich saying, those migrant people, now they have to go back to their home towns. So that is the real picture.

It’s another picture of China: Per-capita GDP is very low, and then the poor people, migrant people, are still struggling for their lives. In Beijing, winter season is very cold for those migrants. They have to leave Beijing and go back to their home towns with very short notice. That’s another picture of China, so not saying that “everything’s beautiful”; there are also very huge challenges.

So those two stages for 2050 are a huge challenge for China itself.

China Has Passed the Tests

So how to realize those beautiful goals? I think President Xi Jinping has done these things ever since 2013, when he took office. He has done things domestically, of course. Political development is to strengthen Chinese Communist Party, the ruling party’s leadership, through the anti-corruption and anti-poverty campaigns. Anti-corruption is to do the things from the party leadership, but anti-poverty is to resolve the people on the ground, so there are two ends of those campaigns. But both ends of those campaigns are intertwined with each other. We started with anti-corruption, otherwise you cannot re-collect the confidence of the people on the ground to the ruling party. Although we started to resolve this poverty issue, you cannot claim it for yourself; you are still marching on the socialist path.

Anyhow, how to re-collect the confidence of the people and build the party’s leadership? So three self-confidences have been put forward: those three, called the self-confidence, are the Development Road Confidence; the road we have chosen is called the socialist system with Chinese characteristics. So: Development Road Confidence, Theoretical Confidence, and Confidence in the State System—actually, the three things are the same thing, but have three different sides.

Maybe I should show the “shoe theory” President Xi Jinping mentioned, which means everybody wears our shoes, and the shoes should fit the feet, rather than the feet fitting the shoes. This is very simple knowledge, but when we deal with those very complicated theories, sometimes we lose sight of the simpler things.

So, we have this traditional story coming from this shoe theory. China has a 6,000 year history. Recently, U.S. President Trump mentioned this story: President Xi Jinping met President Trump and the First Lady to visit the gorgeous Forbidden City, the imperial palace, and he mentioned, China has 6,000 years of history, and President Trump answered, “Oh, yes, I know that! Egypt has a longer history—8,000 years.” President Xi Jinping said, “Yes, yes, Egypt has 2,000 years longer history than China, yet both are very civilized.”

So anyway, in our 6,000-year history, we have this phrase—when you learn Chinese, we have lots of beautiful phrases; all these phrases come from stories. This story mentions a guy who went to the market to buy shoes, but those shoes didn’t fit his feet. Maybe the shoe style was beautiful, but it didn’t fit his feet. And then, he immediately got out his knife, trying to cut his feet smaller, in order to fit into the shoes. This is the story: All our primary school students, they know this story when they write in Chinese writing; if you use a beautiful phrase you can get a higher credit, because you know the character very well.

So, it looks very simple, but it seems like our national condition is just like our feet: Our national condition, our character, our history, our population, our philosophy, all of that. Our feet cannot change, but those beautiful systems, liberal democracy, with some finger-pointing at China saying, “it’s a one-party system,” like you see a lack of transparency, and also maybe there’s no fixed election—blah, blah, blah. We know what’s better for China. At least those self-confidences are not naive belief! “I’m super, I’m super,” but in fact, you just have very poor performance. That’s not where self-confidence comes from. The self-confidence comes from your good performance.

What kind of things have we done that are good? Of course, from $156 per capita GDP, now becoming the second biggest economy, and also, we have gone through a lot of tests,such as the Arab Spring. When the Arab Spring took place in the year 2011 in Tunisia, there was lots of guessing, saying “China should be next,” to have an Arab Spring very soon. Things were happening from Tiananmen Square, lots of reporters, every day they go to Tiananmen Square just to “catch the picture,” to offer the picture to the newspaper and get it on the front page. But it’s very disappointing: There is no such thing happening.

And then, there was a lot of talk, after the 2008 financial crisis on Wall Street, with people saying “China will be next,” and all those economic things about Deng. Before, they were even talking about China breaking up. But all of those tests, now the Chinese people and the government have gone through. Still, the economy is good; in politics people are united. And even the issue of terrorism, you see Egypt has suffered from another terrorist attack just yesterday. China also needs to watch closely for all those potential terrorists, maybe they are coming back from Syria, from Iraq. All of these are the great, great challenges.

Therefore, the confidence coming from those things—we have passed through all those tests, it’s not just coming from empty things.

Also, put forward the Chinese Dream—I’ll move a bit faster now—achieving the rejuvenation. I don’t have the time to compare the Chinese Dream and the American Dream; there is a bit of difference from the American Dream.

Quality Matters

Secondly is combating corruption. President Xi Jinping mentioned power must be caged by the system, and the rule of law must be strengthened. Also there are several channels to anti-corruption. The first is to improve the Party’s conduct and strengthen Party discipline. Party discipline: Its power has been dramatically strengthened. A lot of tiger-level corrupted officials, and the mosquito-level corrupted officials—no matter whether you are tiger-level, like on the level of the Political Bureau, very high level those leaders; and the mosquito-level is the countryside, the village level, the heads of villages. With all levels of corrupt officials, there is no method.

Now, also we have the Party school. I will not go into detail for lack of time. But one factor in the anti-now,corruption campaign,— I visited from time to time different provinces, and the people in the provinces, especially grassroots level people, now feel happy, because before, whenever you’d go to see a doctor, or you send your kids to school, you have to go through the back door; otherwise there’s no chance for the poorer people, for their kids to get into a good school because corrupt behavior was everywhere, at all levels. But now, those people are saying, “Oh, thank President Xi Jinping, we no longer have these kinds of officials, bold enough to collect the ‘red envelopes.’ ” In China, the red envelope is where you put the money to give to the doctor, so he will maybe be careful in doing the surgery for you; if he doesn’t get the red envelope, you know, maybe he’s not as careful in your surgery.

Now, those things are no longer there, especially among officials. And we also have the anti-poverty campaign.

Economically developed green economy and ecological progress. So, from “speed matters” now to “the quality matters.” Before, in Deng Xiaoping’s time, we had a slogan, “Only development matters: Development, development, development; GDP, GDP, GDP.” All levels of officials, they just concentrated on how much GDP growth rate they achieved, otherwise there’s no hope for their promotion. But now, GDP no longer matters: quality matters! So our environmental protection ministry is very powerful. They will go to different provinces to check on pollution. So if you are not concentrating on quality, you will not get your promotion anyway.

In Deng Xiaoping’s time there was a very famous slogan—these are the words of Deng Xiaoping: “No matter whether it’s a white cat or black cat, as long as it catches the mouse, it’s a good cat.” He was referring to the fact that no matter whether it’s the capitalist way or socialist way, as long as it can make our GDP go forward, we’ll take it. But now, people are saying “Black cat or white cat doesn’t matter at all, we are far beyond that ideological thinking, but now it should be a Green cat.” We cannot suffer from this pollution, and there’s a lot of very bad air pollution.

One of our Party Congress documents talks about establishing the “beautiful China,” so you can see a blue lake, a blue sky, very clean water, fresh air—those things we used to have before. But, after “development, development, development,” you have money in your pocket, and you have to pay to put on your face mask [to protect against air pollution]. So, what’s the meaning of life?

It just like a person, people were saying, before you reach 40 years old, you sacrifice your health to chase after money; but after you reach 40, you spend all the money you accumulated, trying to get your health back! That’s the significance for China: Before we were sacrificing our sky, our blue sky, clean water, to chase after GDP. But now we have to use all the money in the GDP trying to get back the blue sky! That’s the vicious circle.

How to pay attention to this quality issue in economic development? We made another change, which is a a production-driven economy to the innovation-driven economy. The pollution comes from what kind of thing? Coming from “Made in China”—China serving as the world factory, where everything was “made in China,” so everything was spent in China, and pollution was left in China. So the world factory caused this pollution. We no longer want to be the world factory, we want to be the world’s office, like India. The India President for instance said his country is a world office. We also want to be the world office.

Now, the world factory is also OK, but we need to improve, from those polluting ones, to becoming a very clean industrialization. So that is how to balance this growth and development, and inclusive development. Not to have only GDP growth rate with poor people and migrant people being chased away from the capital city. So, we have to be inclusive. All of these environmental developments, domestically speaking, this world of 2050, and internationally, are in the China One Belt, One Road initiative.

On One Belt, One Road, I don’t think I need to go into detail, because when I entered this conference room, I saw lots of books over there [The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge]—maybe I’ll do some advertisement for those books—they are very rich for the world One Belt, One Road. So, I’ll skip over that.

The Three ‘No’s’

Earlier, we were talking about the peaceful rising of China, and then because maybe some American friend said “it’s very aggressive,”—“peaceful rising, it’s very aggressive.” And it’s not so nice to the ear, so we changed the name to “peaceful development.” So when our American friends put forward the Asia Pivot, we also thought it was quite aggressive, Asia Pivot. And so they also very nicely changed the name to the “Rebalancing Asia.” So you see, we both changed and could meet in the middle.

So, from “peaceful rising” to “peaceful development,” is the guideline for China’s diplomacy, but some people have noticed, saying in Deng Xiaoping’s time, Chinese policy seemed more or less to keep a low profile, and then in Xi Jinping’s time, it seems more becoming active somehow, making more contributions to the world. Probably, yes, that’s right. When you have the capacity, maybe you should make more contributions.

Let’s skip over and go to the “Three No’s,” the three things we will not do: One “No” is “no intention to rely on so-called new colonialism.” We have been labeled as the “new colonialists” in Africa, but not even our African friends have had the right to say whether China is the new colonialists or not. So I have no right to say that—our African friends have the right.

And secondly, the second “No,” is no intention for military expansion, and war like Germany and Japan did in the Second World War.

And no intention to ask for the “China model” or to pursue ideological confrontation.

So those are the Three No’s to explain why China’s policy is peaceful development.

The Industrialization of Africa

Let’s quickly go to the One Belt, One Road: This is just what I call—this is not official, it’s what I call it—I think this is a 1.0 version of One Belt, One Road, because all those things you see, the Maritime one and the Silk Road continental one, go through 64 countries. In this 1.0 version, only Egypt is from Africa, among these 64 countries. But now, I think One Belt, One Road is entering 2.0 version—that is, now facing all the countries in the world. As President Xi Jinping mentioned to the Latin American countries, “you are all welcome to join the Belt and Road.” In the Chinese “40 Minutes,” Xi said, all the African continent is now on the map of the One Belt, One Road, the whole African continent, especially after the May Belt and Road Summit in Beijing had taken place.

So now, its face is open to all the countries in the world, now it’s inclusive. Any country that would like to join, I would like to say. You see, these are two leaders in the world: People are saying “America First” is the idea. You see from abroad, Trump in the White House saying, “America First.” If anything is not too good for America, it’s not good at all. But, for President Xi Jinping, the One Belt, One Road is to make the world better. It’s not, “make China better,” because with all this Belt and Road, the Chinese foreign exchange reserves, we’re now enjoying the number-one highest foreign exchange reserves in the world.

So, we’re going to use those foreign exchange reserves to build all those roads—connectivity! Connect China and other countries to join together, to build trade. And there are three connectivities we are talking about: First is the policy connectivity, China’s One Belt, One Road initiative is relevant to countries, their own development strategy. For example, Ethiopia. Ethiopia has now been named as the “next China” on the African continent. It’s not my invention, these words—many scholars have been published talking about which country in Africa is going to be the China in Africa, which means, developing faster! Faster and leading other countries forward. Most of them refer to Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has now reached an GDP growth rate, last year, as high as 8%, but the whole rest of the continent, especially the oil rich countries, are suffering from lower oil prices. So they have developed an industrialization strategy; their strategy and the China strategy should be connected. One is called the policy connectivity.

One is to make the world better, another is to make “America First,” America better. So we look for the world, and America now looks for America only. That’s the difference.

This is the connectivity—“policy coordination,” our policy and the relevant country, not only in Africa, but policy connectivity first. And then, physical connectivity, to build infrastructure. Infrastructure to link the countries together. And then we push for trade, unimpeded trade. Allow me to share another number with you: In the world as a whole, there are 193 countries, but China serves as the number one trade partner with as many as 128 countries! So, we are based on economic growth, based on export, based on trade. Now Chinese President Xi Jinping is holding high the flag of free trade.

So free trade and also inclusive globalization. When he joined the World Economic Forum in Davos, earlier this year, this is the first time a Chinese President had joined the World Economic Forum; before that, the highest official was only the Prime Minister. When he joined that forum, he put forward two things that China wants to push forward: One is free trade, and the other is the inclusive globalization.

That is the trade we want to push for as global trade, and financial connectivity, financial integrity. China is pushing the One Belt, One Road to share its development with the world, and the way to push for such a major initiative was to establish what’s called the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This is a multilateral bank. And also the Chinese currency, the RMB, will also be widely used with those countries that are doing business with China.

And then, the people-to-people bond, that’s another connectivity. So we’re talking about five connectivities within this One Belt, One Road. People-to-people is very important. Before, China has been doing very well with the G2G, government-to-government, and then it has been doing very well with the B2B, business-to-business, but we have not been doing very well in P2P, people-to-people. Maybe Chinese people are very shy, so maybe that’s one reason they’re not very good at doing the P2P. So we should become more open and not so shy.

You know, in our education, like my son, all the way from primary school, kindergarten to the university, there’s no debate in the classroom, you just take notes, take notes, about whatever the teacher is teaching. Take notes, take notes; no challenging, debating, raising questions. And we don’t have political campaigns, so there are no such places for talking. There are lots of places for listening!

Anyhow, people-to-people contact, we need a lot of NGOs to go abroad.

Africa Is Rising

So very quickly, let’s move to Africa. In Africa, we have commitment, that is the FOCAC, the full name is the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. This forum was established in 2000, and every three years there is a FOCAC meeting. The FOCAC meeting in 2015 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. In that meeting, President Xi Jinping joined the meeting, put forward ten cooperation plans, and pledged the money—as high as $60 billion—to cover all ten areas: industrialization, agriculture, infrastructure, finance, environmental protection, and more.

The Belt and Road is very good for Africa’s job creation. A lot of money has been earmarked to use for the industrialization of Africa. Let me just highlight in my last two minutes, the two areas, like two engines—like in an airplane, if you want to take off, you need two engines: One is industrialization, another is infrastructure. Without good infrastructure, there’s no basis for industrialization—short of electricity,short of power,short of roads, and then it’s very hard to make industry take off.

We have done a lot. Africa now is rising. Before, Africa was regarded as a hopeless continent, more than 15 years ago. But now, with kite flying over, now it’s Africa’s rising time. You see this map from the IMF, only in those deep blue places do they enjoy very high economic growth rates in the past decade—Asia, and Africa. So those two blue areas have above 6% GDP growth rates. They are mutually serving as the engines for each other—Asia’s growth coming from Africa, Africa’s growth coming from Asia. A booming future, industrialization creating jobs. I am sharing with you a lot of pictures of Ethiopia’s Oriental Industrial Zone. I visited that zone—there is a shoe-making factory, lots of jobs have been created. You see, I visited that zone at least six times; every time I saw more business there.

Just to show you another infrastructure map: the Mombasa to Nairobi railway that was just finished at the end of May. We are going to build the second phase, from Nairobi all the way to Malaba in Uganda, and then that’s an East African Community network. When this railway was finished—this is President Uhuru Kenyatta, saying this laid the foundation for industrialization. This shows people celebrating this railway connection, and this shows a man holding a paper saying “Comfortable, convenient, very soft, safe, and very beautiful.” And here, very beautiful at 100 years old, a grandmother. [applause]

Thank you very much.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the Founder and President of the Schiller Institute. This is an edited transcript of her presentation to the Nov. 25-26, 2017 Schiller Institute Conference, “Fulfilling the Dream of Mankind.”

Transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you to this conference of the Schiller Institute. There are many honored people in the audience, whom we will introduce in the course of the event. But let me just greet especially the Consul General of Ethiopia, Mr. Mehreteab Mulugeta Haile.

Let me start with an idea of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He said that we are actually living in the best of all possible worlds. This is a very fundamental ontological conception. It’s the idea that we are living in a developing universe, that what makes the universe the best of all those possible is its tremendous potential for development. And it is created in such a way, that every great evil challenges an even greater good to come into being.

I think when we are talking about the New Silk Road and the tremendous changes which have occurred in the world, especially in the last four years, it is actually exactly that principle which is working. Because it was the absolute, manifest lack of development under the old world order, which caused the impulse of China and the spirit of the New Silk Road to catch on, so that now many nations of the world are absolutely determined to have development, which will give a better life to all of their people.

Now, I think that the New Silk Road is a typical example of an idea whose time has come; and once an idea becomes a material reality in that way, it becomes a physical force in the universe. I personally have had the chance to see the evolution of this idea, which in many senses really started with this great gentleman—my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who many decades ago—almost half a century ago—had the idea of a just new world economic order. This then became more manifest in the 1970s, then in the 1980s—but especially in 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, this idea of creating a just new world economic order became very prominent.

I personally had the chance to see how it spread, after Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in 2013 in Kazakhstan. I visited China in 2014, and at that point there were still only a very few officials discussing it. But then it spread very rapidly. There were industrial fairs in all the cities of China; there were hundreds of international symposia; the BRICS countries started to join in the same spirit, as did the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; altogether, more than 100 large nations and international organizations joined in support. This was evident in the Belt and Road Forum this past May, where 29 heads of state spoke and 110 nations participated. Then I think the determination of the Chinese people to effect a new world economic order was consolidated in a completely new way at the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China in October.

The Optimism in China

This has generated a completely optimistic perspective. Xi Jinping announced that China will be a country in which poverty is completely eradicated by the year 2020. I think that is wonderful! And it is absolutely to be believed, because China has had an incredible economic miracle, in which it lifted 700 million people out of poverty. China now has only 42 million poor people left, so why should it not succeed in totally eliminating poverty by the year 2020? By 2035, China is to be a great modern country of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which in my view means predominantly Confucian characteristics. And by 2050, China will be—according to Xi Jinping—“a great modern country of socialism with Chinese characteristics, prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.”

So, the Chinese people are to be happier, and have safer and healthier lives by that time. But also, the peoples of the other countries of the world are to have better, healthier, and happier lives.

Now the Chinese media announce very proudly that this is a grand vision for the future. A new era has dawned. Xinhua wrote that “China will make a new and greater contribution to the noble cause of peace and development for all of humanity.” Well, it is very easy for the Chinese people to understand that, because the whole country is already united around this mission. The spirit of the New Silk Road has also caught on in the 70-plus countries that are cooperating. There are many people in the West who have also understood that, either because they have investments in China, or because they know that the New Silk Road is the largest infrastructure program in history. It is already now twelve or maybe even twenty times larger than the Marshall Plan was in the postwar period, but without its military connotation. It is creating total enthusiasm among all those who understand this project.

The Opponents in the West

But of course, there are also those in the West who are completely opposed. Right now, a fight is going on between the old paradigm of geopolitics and the New Paradigm of the one humanity. The representatives of the old paradigm say, “Oh, what Xi Jinping is saying is just empty propaganda. The real intention of the Chinese is to replace the United States as the hegemon. Xi Jinping is a dictator. He just wants a system that is a threat to the Western model of market-oriented democracy, and therefore, it is bad.”

The President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, even went so far as to explain, in his so-called “State of the Union” address, that the EU fully intends to block Chinese investments in Europe under whatever pretext. There are many think-tanks like MERICS or the Rhodium Group, which see the New Silk Road only as a geopolitical challenge. Der Spiegel magazine of last week had a big cover story with Chinese letters on the cover—“Xing Lai!” which means “Wake Up!”—and an article about the awakening giant, writing that when Trump went to China just two weeks ago, he kowtowed; that this was his farewell speech, handing over the leadership of the world! That the West must urgently wake up and unite against a rising China, that the Chinese achievements are a threat to the values and the system of the West.

Now, isn’t this funny? One day the headlines say that the collapse of the Chinese banks and the Chinese economy will trigger a world financial collapse—but the next day, the same papers write that China is about to take over the world.

Western Elites Unable to Reflect

Obviously, some of these critics are completely freaked out about the fact that the old order is very clearly not working—the idea that you can have a unipolar world and geopolitical control based on the Anglo-American special relationship in the tradition of Churchill and Truman in the postwar period, and what the neo-cons started to build after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As you can see in the revolt against the system: whether it’s Brexit or the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the U.S. election, the “no” to the referendum in Italy, or the pitiful collapse of the “Jamaica” coalition talks in Germany. The talks collapsed because none of the participating parties had any vision for the future, or any substantive ideas.

So, there is no comprehension among these parties of the rapidly changing strategic alignment going on in the world. The common denominator of all of these phenomena is that the Western, neo-liberal, left-liberal establishment is completely unable, and unwilling, to reflect on the causes of the demise of this Western system, which are: The absolutely ridiculous income gap, where eight individuals have as much wealth as half of the rest of humanity, while the gap between rich and poor is increasing in every country; the policy of regime change, of color revolution; and the abysmal situation of the refugee crisis. Also, people have seen that what we have been fighting for, for literally centuries, in terms of civil rights, has almost vanished without discussion. There is total surveillance by the NSA and the GCHQ—the British secret service.

Western values of democracy are in shambles. If the Democratic Party leadership decides one year before the party convention who the candidate will be, and then manipulates the election against Bernie Sanders for a year—that is not a happy picture of democracy. There is the collusion of the Democratic Party in the United States with British intelligence and MI6 to invent Russia-gate against Trump. There is the collusion of Obama’s heads of intelligence against the elected President of the United States.

If you look at the famous human rights of the West, well, even the UN Human Rights Commission has denounced what the Troika [IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank] has been doing in countries such as Greece—completely violating human rights. There is a deafening silence concerning the genocide in Yemen, conducted by the British and the Saudis. The way the EU has been treating the refugees has also been called a human rights violation by the United Nations.

When these people criticize China, what you can see is that they are projecting their own intentions and viewpoints onto China and the New Silk Road. These people in the West who are attacking China, cannot imagine the existence of a government which is truly devoted to the common good and a harmonious development of all people, because they think that the world is a zero-sum game—that if one wins, the other has to lose, and that they have to control the rules in order to be able to rig the game in their favor. If you can’t do that, you are a loser.

This all leads to very absurd conclusions. For example, in 1995, Lester Brown, who was the President of the Earth Policy Institute, had a big scare story, “Who Will Feed China?” saying that the growing number of people in China will mean a growing demand for food, which will overstretch demand on the food supply in the world. This is nothing but the old Malthusian idea that the number of people will grow more quickly than the amount of food. Now if you look at China today, they can perfectly well feed 1.4 billion people—and I can assure you, with excellent food. Many countries would be envious to have such good food—like the British, for example. Right now China is producing 30% of the world’s economic growth.

New Silk Road Reaches Africa

So, the reality is quite different from what the Western media portray.

In 2014, we published a study called The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge. That is exactly what is happening. What started with just the old Silk Road line between China and Europe, is now very quickly developing into six major development corridors.

Freight trains already run from China to different European locations over 40 rail lines every week. The 16+1 countries—that is, the Eastern and Central European countries and China—are having a conference right now in Budapest. They are completely on-board the collaboration with the New Silk Road. There is a new Balkans Silk Road. The President of Panama was just in China after Panama switched its diplomatic relations from Taiwan; now they are allied with the mainland. The President of Panama said that all of Latin America will join the New Silk Road, and that this is not directed against the United States, because the United States is also invited to join.

The New Silk Road has reached Africa, and there it has changed the mood in an unbelievable way. There is now a total sense of optimism.

But the most important shift, of course, is that of the United States, and of the relationship between China and the United States. The result of the recent trip of President Trump and his two-day state visit to China, is obviously the most consequential. Because if the two largest economies of the world have a good relationship, then prospects for world peace are moving in a very positive direction. Remember that the policy of Obama was the so-called “Pivot to Asia” and the TPP—which was the idea of the encirclement of China and exclusion of China. There is still an element of geopolitics, so we have to watch whenever the term “Indo-Pacific” is used, which is the idea of making Japan, Australia, and India a counterweight to China.

But a major breakthrough occurred when Trump visited China, where Xi Jinping gave him the most unbelievable reception—what Xi called ”state visit-plus-plus.” Remarkably, he closed down the Forbidden City for the day. The Forbidden City is the world’s largest complex of palaces, where the Chinese emperors had lived since the 15th Century. It’s incredibly beautiful; it’s majestic, it’s really breathtaking. So, Xi Jinping used an entire day to give Trump and the First Lady a course in Chinese history. They had a beautiful gala dinner; they had three Beijing operas. I want to read you some of the statements made by President Trump, which I think you need to hear because the Western media naturally will not report a single word of it.

‘Proud Spirits of America and China’

Trump, commenting the next day on his reception, said:

Yesterday, we visited the Forbidden City, which stands as a proud symbol of China’s rich culture and majestic spirit. Your nation is a testament to thousands of years of vibrant, living history.

And today, it was a tremendous honor to be greeted by the Chinese delegation right here at the Great Hall of the People. This moment in history presents both our nations with an incredible opportunity to advance peace and prosperity alongside other nations all around the world. In the words of a Chinese proverb, “We must carry forward the cause and forge ahead into the future.” I am confident that we can realize this wonderful vision, a vision that will be so good and, in fact, so great for both China and the United States.

Though we come from different places and faraway lands, there is much that binds the East and West. Both of our countries were built by people of great courage, strong culture, and a desire to trek across the unknown into great danger. But they overcame.

The people of the United States have a very deep respect for the heritage of your country and the noble traditions of its people. Your ancient values bring past and future together into the present. So beautiful.

It is my hope that the proud spirits of the American and Chinese people will inspire our efforts to achieve a more just, secure, and peaceful world, a future worthy of the sacrifices of our ancestors, and the dreams of our children.

Now I am sure that that is not what you read in Bildzeitung about Trump, nor does it ever report what President Trump is actually doing.

The Chinese Ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, recently made the point that there were sixteen times in world history when a rising country surpassed the country that had been dominant up to that point. In twelve cases it led to a war, while in four cases the rising country took over peacefully. He said that China wants neither of those outcomes, but that China wants to have a completely different system of a win-win relationship of equality and respect for one another.

It’s clear that the most important question, strategically, if you think about it, is to avoid the so-called “Thucydides trap.” That was the tension, the rivalry between Athens and Sparta in the Fifth Century BC, which led to the Peloponnesian War and the demise of ancient Greece. I think nobody in his right mind could wish that this occur today between the United States and China in the age of thermonuclear weapons—and therefore, we should all be extremely happy that Trump and Xi Jinping have developed this very important relationship.

I stuck my neck out in the United States in February of this year, by saying that if President Trump manages to get a good relationship between the United States and China, and the United States and Russia, then he will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents of the United States. Of course everybody was completely freaked out, because that is not the picture people are supposed to have about Trump. But I think if you look at what is happening, you will see that Trump is well on the way to accomplishing exactly that.

Trump came back from this Asia trip with $253 billion worth of deals with China. I watched the Nov. 13 press conference of the Governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, who said that now, because of China, there is hope in West Virginia. West Virginia is a totally depressed state; it has high unemployment and a drug epidemic. But he said that now we can have value-added production, and we will have a bright future. So the spirit of the New Silk Road has even caught on in West Virginia.

Obviously the United States has an enormous demand for infrastructure, especially now, after the destruction wrought by the hurricanes. Just to restore what has been destroyed will require $200 billion, without even talking about disaster prevention. So, this is all on a good path for China to invest in the infrastructure of the United States, and vice versa, for U.S. firms to cooperate in projects of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Putin’s Grand Design

There is a strategic realignment caused by all of this. The relationship between Presidents Xi and Putin is the best in history. They have developed a close friendship, and the integration of the New Silk Road and the Eurasian Economic Union is now quickly expanding.

In a separate, but nevertheless related development, there was a historic visit of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to Sochi, Russia, just now, to meet with Putin. What actually happened there was diametrically opposite to what you would read in the media, which says, of course, “the dictator Putin and the horrible Assad.” But what happened was the opposite. Putin introduced Assad to the Russian military leadership, and Assad thanked them for having saved Syria. Remember that when, more than two years ago, Putin decided that the Russian military would intervene in Syria to defeat ISIS, that country was in complete disarray. It was hopeless. Al-Qaeda and ISIS were winning. But now, they are militarily defeated and the reconstruction can actually begin—and Assad invited the refugees to return to help in the reconstruction of the country.

And the Silk Road will also be extended into Afghanistan, into Iraq, and hopefully all the other nearby countries.

This is a grand design of Putin, which involves the Astana process. He is integrating Turkey, Iran, and Jordan, and even trying to get Saudi Arabia onto a different track. We were already pushing the idea of extending the New Silk Road into Southwest Asia a long time ago. By 2012, we had a conference of the Schiller Institute, also in Frankfurt like today’s, where we said that the only way to stop terrorism and unleash development and peace in the Middle East, is for all the big neighbors—Russia, China, India, Iran, the United States, and also European countries—to join hands in its development.

This is now a concrete possibility, because of the Russian military intervention and the Chinese extension of the Silk Road. In this context, the relationship between Putin and Trump has also gotten onto a much better track: In the aftermath of the Assad visit, Putin and Trump had a 90-minute telephone discussion; and people in Russia on various levels—in the Duma and in the Federation Council—afterwards expressed great optimism that the relationship between Russia and the United States can now become much more fruitful and better.

Think about it—because I know that almost everything I am saying goes against all that you hear in the Western media. But think: From whom does the motion for peace and development come? Is it coming from those who attack Putin, Xi, and Trump? And from those who support Obama? It’s obviously time for people to rethink what the Western viewpoint is on all of these matters, or to change the glasses through which they look at the world.

Besides the change in the relations between the United States and China—and that in Southwest Asia—the biggest change for the better as a result of the New Silk Road, is in Africa. China has invested in Africa.

In railways, it has built a railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa; it is building other railways from Kenya, and they are supposed to go to Rwanda. They are building hydropower dams and industrial parks. Especially in the last four years, the outlook of most Africans has completely changed, because they see, for the first time, that after suppression by colonialism and the denial of development through the IMF conditionalities, there is a possibility to truly develop the continent. They do not want to be lectured any longer about good governance, human rights, and democracy, with no development—which is what the Europeans normally offer, but they want to treated as equal partners.

Lyndon LaRouche’s Vision for Africa

Let me give tribute to the person who had that vision for African development more than 40 years ago—again, my sweet husband. [applause] He wrote in 1980, as a supplement to the OAU’s Lagos Plan of Action, a book-length paper with the title ”Stop Club of Rome Genocide in Africa! Critical Comments Appended to the Lagos Plan of Action.”

There he laid out a beautiful vision, a grand design for the development of Africa, based on the LaRouche scientific method of physical economy, which in turn is based on Leibniz and Alexander Hamilton’s credit policy, but LaRouche of course has added very much to that. He said, “The competent conception of economic processes flows originally from a moral principle, which is immediately accessible to any sane adult or adolescent in any part of the world, however literate or illiterate. To make my mortal individual existence of some value, how do I develop and inform my practice to produce something of benefit for the development of generations to come?”

Lyn defines economic science as an inseparable facet of science, usefully called “statecraft,” which includes the development of law and the cultural advancement of the people—the development of the individual to master the lawful principles of the composition of the universe. He presented a total counterposition to that of the Club of Rome, with its “appropriate technologies” and “sustainable development”—which is just another word for no development. He proposed to upgrade the labor force continuously to higher modes of production, by changing the proportions of employment from rural to urban productive occupations, using continuously higher energy-flux densities in the mode of production.

He took as a reference point for the development of Africa, the development of the United States, and showed how, for example, in the United States at the end of the 18th Century, 98% of the people worked in agriculture. Today it is less than 4%, obviously producing much more food than at the time. This exemplifies the way for Africa to go, including the development of roads, canals, and railroads; the specialization of farmers; the increase of productivity and income in agriculture and industry; a shift away from labor-intensive to capital-intensive modes of production; and better education—all amounting to the development of the power of the population to produce material alterations of nature with an increasing potential relative population-density and at higher energy-flux densities.

He said, “The development of Africa must be directed to what nations of Africa are to become by the year 2000 and 2020.” This was written in 1980, namely, two generations ago. He said, “The conception needed is one of the development of the productive powers of the entire population, over the development period spanning two generations.” Apart from basic infrastructure—meaning a continental system of rail, waterways, and highways—he proposed a string of new cities of 250,000 to a maximum of 2 million inhabitants, where at the core of each new city would be an educational complex of pedagogical museums, libraries, cultural centers, parks, and teaching and research institutions, including medical science and research institutions.

He proposed a connected system of rapid transport for persons and freight, and low-cost transition from one mode of transport to another. He envisioned inner-city distribution of freight from warehouses in the city to stores, with daily deliveries of perishable goods such as foodstuffs. And around the core of the educational complex, then residential, industrial, and commercial areas would be developed.

Productive, Beautiful Cities in Africa

The cities were not only supposed to be functionally well designed, but beautiful, using the principles of Platonic ratios in architecture. Utilizing, for example, those methods used in Gothic cathedrals, or in the architecture of the Golden Renaissance of Italy. It included the idea of having many trees and flora, so that people would be happy and the climate would be moderated.

He said, “The essential thing which the citizens of such a city must experience over the course of the city’s gradual completion, is a sense of ongoing progress of perfection.” To aid this process, there should be technology transfer from the developed countries, financed by grants. He made the correct point that technology transfer from Europe and the United States to Africa would stimulate the economy in the exporting nations and increase their tax income, and that the developing countries receiving grants would become the next generation’s customers for purchasing on a credit basis. The exporting nations would develop prosperous customers for tomorrow, and have an accelerated turnover of capital stocks, and thus those exporting countries would increase their productivity, and therefore their national and per-capita wealth.

Now, that is obviously completely the opposite of what the IMF did, which lured countries into the “debt trap” which was quite dramatically exposed by John Perkins in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Now, Lyn [LaRouche], on the other side, said that, “The technology-exporting nations must seek those portions of the labor force in the developing nations, which can be upgraded immediately to productive employment, using the most advanced technologies embodied in the capital stock to be exported from the industrialized nations. That labor force is able to assimilate the advanced technologies, and that must be expanded. It requires methods of promoting the development potentials of the population on a large scale, so the investment in infrastructure and the development of the population has to occur at the same time.” He said, “Every infant born in any part of the world, has the potential for the development of his or her mental powers to the level sufficient for a direct, competent use of modern technology. It is that potential development which is the only source of wealth. That development is a creditworthy asset in the eyes of a truly prudent lender.”

Citizens Become Artists

So what occurs at the point where economic development will have absorbed most of the population of the world? By that time, we must have an increase in the rate of development of technology, such that we no longer depend on the expansion of the economy in scale. When that transition to a new world economic order has been completed, we will have more and more members of society living and working as artists; as “golden souls,” as Plato describes them; as “beautiful souls” as Schiller terms it; as junzi, the Confucian idea of the noble man; or the people living on the level of Paradise in Dante’s Commedia; or, as Vladimir Vernadsky says, that the noösphere—that part of the physical universe which is dominated by creative activity of man—will take over more and more of the biosphere.

Actually, what is happening right now goes in this direction. What Xi Jinping has defined as a goal for 2050 for China and the rest of the world, is to lead better and happier lives, with poverty having been eradicated and people being able to devote their lives to meaningful purposes. This actually goes very much in this direction.

Is this realistic? I can practically can hear the howls of protest of the neo-liberals and neo-cons alike, in the West. “What about Western values? What about our freedom? What about democracy?”—or better, “market-conformed democracy,” as German Chancellor Mrs. Merkel likes to put it.

We had better reflect where these values have gotten us in Europe. Europe is completely disunited. We are faced with a financial crisis, worse than that of 2008, about to erupt. The EU has just completed guidelines eliminating the possibility for the separation of the banks, a Glass-Steagall type of separation which China has just reconfirmed. The right-wing movements are rising, and the refugee crisis has caused the reputation of Europe to go down the drain completely in the world. There is a very dangerous anti-immigration sentiment.

The entire social and political fabric of Europe is disintegrating. Because Europe, in its present form of the European Union, is like a giant Tower of Babel, attempting an amalgamation of cultures, languages, and histories that leads to ever more frictions between supranational integration and the self-interest of these nations of Europe. Not to even mention the government crisis in Germany, which is the worst since 1949, since the founding of the German Federal Republic.

Leibniz’s Proposals Were Analogous

This is not the first time that Europe has been in bad shape. This was addressed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in a policy memorandum of 1670, in which he named the challenges of his time—“in badly established trade and manufacturing; in an entirely debased currency; in the uncertainty of law and the delay of all legal actions; in worthless education … in an increase in atheism, in our morals, which are, as it were, infected by a foreign plague; in the bitter strife of religions; all of which … weaken us, and, … may in the end completely ruin us….” So, that was the situation Leibniz saw.

This was still in the aftermath of 150 years of religious war in Europe, when he came up with the idea that the solution was a merger of the Chinese ancient natural theology and European culture. He called it a beautiful coincidence that the two most developed cultures in the world, are like two poles reaching hands across between Europe and China. By creating a common exchange between them, civilization could reach the next, superior stage in human history.

In the preface of his Novissima Sinica (The Latest from China), he expressed this intention. Leibniz very closely followed all the news from China. He engaged in a very lively dialogue with many of the Jesuit missionaries, who informed him on all of the developments in science and the famous “Rites Controversy,” in which he sided with people of Matteo Ricci’s view, saying that there was a strong affinity between Confucianism and Christianity.

He said that Confucianism has much more to offer than any other known belief system of his time. He said, “We need the Chinese to send missionaries to Europe, so that we can learn from them the natural religion that we have almost lost.” He proposed an exchange of cultural ambassadors, which for his time was a very modern conception. He said, “There is in China a public morality, admirable in certain regards, conjoined to a philosophical doctrine, or rather a natural theology venerable by its antiquity, established and authorized for about 3,000 years, long before the philosophy of the Greeks.”

For Leibniz, the affinity of Confucius and Christianity, despite all differences in culture, proved that humanity has the universal characteristic of reason. The fact that the Kangxi Emperor and he—Leibniz—studied the same mathematical solutions, proved for him the universal character of human reason and the human species. In Chinese philosophy, he emphasized that the notion of the li refers to the supreme order of the universe, in which harmony exists if each being exercises its lawful function in its proper place. And together with the notion of ren, which approximates the Christian notion of agape—love—the Chinese Confucians use different terminologies and different conceptions, but they have analogy with, and affinity to what Leibniz describes in his Monadology.

According to Leibniz, “God has created the universe by the way of a pre-stabilized harmony, where the realm of the spiritual and the material world, the soul and the body are in total correspondence. This is so, because God—in His divine anticipation—has created the material and spiritual substance in such an ordered way and with such a precision, that even if they follow their own lawfulness embedded in their nature, nevertheless there is such a cohesion as if there existed between them, a reciprocal inference. And as if God, apart from His general contribution, were to act concretely in each single instant. Each monad, each uniform substance, reflects in germ the entire universe at large. But they only relate to each other because they take part in the absolute being of God.”

Leibniz and Xi Jinping

Once one understands this inner cohesion between Chinese ancient philosophy, especially in the Confucian expression, and the idea of Leibniz, it is no surprise that he not only recognized the affinity, but concretely thought a reciprocal exchange of the two cultures would merge into a superior, more advanced level of civilization. Among Leibniz’s plans for this project were the creation of a world language, for which he thought the Chinese language and script were most appropriate; the creation of a world academy of sciences, where Chinese and Western scientists would work together; and the creation of a world citizenship, which would allow every human being to absorb all cultures of the world.

He envisioned the future role of Russia in mediating between China and the West, and the development of Siberia in relation to the development of Northern Africa. And Peter the Great, with whom he was in contact, in 1712 ordered the expedition of Vitus Jonassen Bering, for whom the Bering Strait has been named.

Further, he advocated the comparative study of languages to find the common origin of human language, which was later pursued by philologists such as Humboldt and others. He proposed a chronology of the history of the West and China—and the only museum where I have seen that, is the museum in Taipei, where you have a beautiful exhibition where you see above the history of China, and below what happened parallel in the Western culture—which gives you a completely different way of thinking about universal history.

He also pioneered the binary system, which became the basis for computers and the like, and found evidence of its prior use in China. He proposed the development of a key which would make it easier to learn the Chinese language—now I think everybody who has tried to learn Chinese would be very thankful for such a key. He advocated the development of a method to teach the difference between Western and Chinese culture. He called for defining principles of a new moral code for Western statesmen and politicians, but also to guide the behavior of the ordinary citizen—based on Confucianism. He wanted an analysis of Confucianism based on Western methods, intending to show its closeness to Western Christianity.

If you look at these plans by Leibniz, it is absolutely amazing how similar they are to what Xi Jinping is doing with the New Silk Road policy today, which has aspects of all of these plans. So why, then, in the West, are so many people having a hard time accepting an offer of a “win-win cooperation” among all nations, which would be so clearly in the interest of all people?

The CCF’s Cultural Poison

Let me briefly go back to the end of World War II, to find the roots of this problem. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his famous dialogue with Churchill in Casablanca, had pledged the end of colonialism and the help of the United States to develop the developing countries. Churchill, on the other side, said the British did not fight World War II in order to end the British Empire. Now unfortunately, Roosevelt died at a very inconvenient moment, and Truman—who was a very small man—took over the White House. Remember what Lyn always said—he was in India at the time—about how shocked the people were when Roosevelt died at that point.

So Roosevelt, who was allied with the Soviet Union in the Second World War, had gone. Churchill stepped into this vacuum, and basically then he made his famous March 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, launching the Cold War.

Churchill proposed a new alliance, based on the special relationship between the United States and the British Empire, and that speech by Churchill in Fulton shifted the American view on the U.S.S.R. Then followed the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, which allowed such atrocities as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witchhunt in America against everybody suspected of being a communist—a communist under every bed. Now this is what is happening with the anti-Trump witchhunt today.

What happened in Europe? Recently there was an amazing article in the leading German daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), covering an exhibition taking place in Berlin right now, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the scandal erupting around the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).

The CCF, which lasted from 1950 to 1967, was the gigantic cultural warfare program by the CIA, which had as its aim to recruit left-wing people, communists, into an anti-Soviet Cold War. In reality, they wanted to destroy the axioms in the population which had made Franklin D. Roosevelt possible, because Wall Street had been completely freaked out about Roosevelt’s implementing Glass-Steagall, about his New Deal, and his alliance with the Soviet Union. So, once they were rid of Roosevelt, Truman started, in cohesion with the British, to establish a paradigm shift in the population, using the left-liberal outlook which we have today. That is what the FAZ article said. It said the CIA did not plan to foster reactionary movements: Rather, they created exactly that left-liberal axiomatic outlook which is the politically correct view in Europe today.

I think that is really noteworthy to reflect upon, because that is exactly what they did in Germany through the Dulles brothers and High Commissioner [the U.S. dictator for defeated Germany] John Jay McCloy. If you look at this operation, it was huge: It involved 35 countries and 20 magazines. The CIA controlled practically every art exhibition and cultural event. In Europe, there were very few writers, poets, musicians, historians, critics, and journalists who were not connected to this project—some witting, many unwitting. It was part of the Cold War to fight for “the liberation of the human mind.” The CCF acted like a cartel. It controlled the entire cultural industry and based it on the myth of a freedom-oriented outlook.

Remember, the CIA, at the same time that it pretended to be for freedom, made a coup against Mossadegh in Iran, conducted the Bay of Pigs operation against Cuba, Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and other similar operations.

The CCF and the Frankfurt School

The cultural warfare was in part funded with money from the Marshall Plan, diverted to the CCF, but also, by altogether 170 foundations. One of the key ideologues, George Kennan, in a speech before the National War College in December 1947, developed the strategy of the “necessary lie,” which would become an essential part of U.S. foreign policy, laid down in NSC Directive 4A, and later in another directive for psychological warfare operations. This lasted for decades. So, the idea of fake news, of manipulating the population with lies, is not new, and it has not erupted only against Trump.

The aims of the CCF were very much those of the Frankfurt School. They wanted to destroy idealism and Classical culture. The Frankfurt School’s Theodor Adorno, for example, argued that idealism leads to Nazism, because it leads to a radical view. That has to be rooted out; both in order to eradicate the remnants of Nazism, but also to work against the dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Adorno said, for this purpose, we have to eradicate beauty from art completely. Remember that Schiller said that art which is not beautiful is not art. And I fully agree, because art has to ennoble people and uplift their spirit, and when it’s not beautiful, it does not do that.

In music, the CCF started a vicious campaign against Furtwängler; and instead of Classical composers, it pushed atonal, twelve-tone music, such as that of Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern, and eradicated the idea of polyphonic harmonic composition. The famous writer, Susan Sontag, said, “We knew we expected to accept ugly music as pleasant.” That is what happens when you go to the concerts—the Rheingau festivals or others—you always have Beethoven, alongside Berg and some other modern composer. You never can get a Classical concert.

They also made a list of allowed writers—including Ibsen, Shaw, O’Neill, Wilder, and Steinbeck. They forbade certain plays of Shakespeare and Kleist, and they invented the famous Regietheater, which is the idea that you completely destroy the Classical composition of Schiller or Shakespeare—each modern director puts his own interpretation on it, up to the point that you cannot recognize these plays any longer.

A big role was played by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which promoted modern painting—Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Expressionism, abstract art, serialism, and so forth. The writer Eva Cockcroft wrote in ArtForum magazine, “Abstract expressionism was a weapon of the Cold War.” The connection between the Cold War and this expressionism was absolutely no coincidence, because it was intended to destroy the ability of the mind to understand anything. Harry Truman—of all people—liked to go to the National Art Gallery in the United States, to see Holbein and Rembrandt. He said, “What a pure pleasure, and what a difference from our modern Schmierfinken [hacks], our mucky pups.”

The CCF influence did not end in 1967. It ended under that name, when everything came out in a big scandal, but its influence is working to the present. This is why people have this left-liberal ideology today. This is what is behind the interventionist policy, the color revolution, the export of democracy, the “right to protect” (R2P). This is what Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov calls “the post-Christian values.” He said, “Western values are no longer those values which were handed down from our grandfathers, from generation to generation. But it has been replaced by ’everything is allowed’—a complete hedonism, where freedom is misunderstood as the right of everybody to live out all their pleasures in the here and now. Do whatever you like to do.”

That ugliness is what you see when you look at most movies nowadays, at the video games, the art, or youth culture, which are all characterized by a cult of ugliness. So, in that sense, the CCF has done a very successful job.

Revive Classical Culture!

So, we do have a problem in the West, a big cultural problem. There is a huge drug epidemic in the United States, out-of-control violence, mass shootings in schools almost every week, and terrorism. But the good news is that the solution to these problems is readily available. When we founded the Schiller Institute—now more than 33 years ago—we said from the beginning that a just new world economic order must be combined with a renaissance of Classical culture. This is now actually happening, because with the New Silk Road development being pursued for four years now, the world has changed already, and many countries are reviving their Classical cultures. This is why the Schiller Institute, in all our conferences, always have a concert expressing this dialogue of Classical cultures.

We obviously need a completely new set of international relations. We must overcome geopolitics, and we must have a system of relations among us with total respect for sovereignty, non-interference, respect for the different social systems, win-win cooperation in the mutual interest of all of us, and the perspective of one single humanity.

Nicholas of Cusa, who developed the method of the Coincidentia oppositorum, the idea of the Coincidence of Opposites, argued that the One has a higher power, a higher order of magnitude than the Many. So the idea of harmony in the macrocosm is only possible when you have the best development of all microcosms. That development must not be static or linear, but it works like a contrapuntal fugue, where each development furthers the development of the next segment, becoming unified into a higher concept of the composition.

What we have to build is a completely new set of international relations in which each nation is allowed to celebrate statecraft, meaning making possible the realization of the creative potential of all of its citizens. This will be an interaction among nations in which each focuses on the best cultural tradition and potential of the other. China is reviving Confucianism and its philosophy of philosophical Classical culture in poetry, music, and painting.

In Europe, we must absolutely do the same. We must revive the ancient Greek Classical period, which is what Greece is actually doing: They recently had a conference in Athens of the ten oldest civilizations, and they revived exactly that spirit. In Italy, we have the Golden Renaissance; in Spain, the Andalusian renaissance and other great thinkers. In France, you have the traditions of Louis XI, Jeanne d’Arc, and the [Ecole] Polytechnique. In Germany, we have a tremendous wealth of philosophers, composers, and poets—Schiller and Beethoven. In America, we have the American Constitution, the American System of economy. All these treasures are there, and only need to be revived.

If we undo what the CCF did, revive the Classical culture of all nations, and enter a beautiful dialogue among them, mankind will experience a new renaissance and unleash the enormous creativity of the human species as never before.

So, it is very good to live at this moment in history, and contribute to make the world a better place. And it can be done, because the New Paradigm corresponds to the lawfulness of the physical universe in science, Classical art, and these principles. Neo-liberalism and left-liberalism are as outdated as Scholasticism, and will disappear, as did the scholastics debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. What will be asserted is the identity of the human species as the creative species in the universe. [applause]