Panel 1

former Foreign Minister of Chad, Reims.

President of Solidarité & Progrès, Paris.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche

President of the Schiller Institute

Well, I would like to go into the matter of culture, but unfortunately, I have to go first into the area of counter-culture. That is, in commenting on this last panel, I was very, very shocked— and, as a matter of fact, it really shows that we are in a war, a war for civilization,—because it was just revealed that the new Papal Encyclical, which is supposed to come out on the 18th of June, in a couple of days, will be on climate change. And if you look at who will be the presenters, the official presenters of that Encyclical, it will be Cardinal Peter Turkson, who is the head of Justicia et Pax, and it will be Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon, a leading representative of the Orthodox Church of Greece. And it will be our old acquaintance, whom I just accidentally mentioned yesterday in my speech, John Schellnhuber.

Now, this is really incredible, because, as Ben Deniston mentioned in his remarks earlier, evil is really situated in this ideology. Now, that means, the devil is about to take over the Catholic Church. Or has already taken over. They are trying to compete for evil with the Protestant Church in this respect.

Now that is a declaration of war, because they have said that they want to influence two major conferences: one is the International Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place in Addis Ababa, which means that they want to completely influence that conference, so that only “sustainable technology,” only “appropriate technology” is permitted.

Unacceptable Horror

You have to understand that our fight against that goes back forty years or more. Because we had a positive conception—I mean, I joined this organization, because when I went on this trip in 1971, on a cargo ship which went to Africa, and parts of Asia, to Malaysia, Thailand, China, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. But also, I could spend a couple of days in some cities of Africa. And I spent some longer time in China. I came back from that trip, with—I mean, I really was absolutely convinced that the world could not be like that.

It could not remain like that. Because if you travel on a cargo ship, you get a completely different picture, than if you go on a cruiseliner, a luxury ship,—or if you have your well-to-do life, and you jet-set around the globe, and you go from four-star hotel, five-star hotel to five-star hotel; you don’t see this. And if you belong to a certain layer in society, you blind yourself to the real condition of where mankind is.

But when you travel on a cargo ship, you see the world as it is. For instance, in Dakar, Senegal, I left the ship in the morning, at six o’clock, and there were twenty people—beautiful tall, great Senegalese women and men, who were taller than even me, and they tried to sell me some handicrafts. And I told them, look, I don’t have money. I’m a student. I cannot buy this. And I could not convince them that it was futile. And I thought, what does this do to the dignity of man, if adult people feel that they have to run after me, a poor student? I knew that I couldn’t get it across to them.

Then, I went—we went to Thailand. At the port, parents brought their 10, 11 and 12-year children as prostitutes for the sailors. The parents brought them.

I could go on and on. When you see what poverty does to people, in their desperation, you understand that poverty is the biggest human rights violation there is.

And therefore, I joined this organization, because when I met Mr. LaRouche, and he had these ideas that you have to develop the developing countries. We started to make plans for Africa—the first book on the development of Africa, we published in 1976. Actually, we had here in Paris, a presentation of that plan, which, it is very clear, still is needed. You need ports. You need bridges. You need roads, railway. You need infrastructure, because without infrastructure, you don’t even have agriculture, because you can’t transport whatever is being produced. You need food processing.

And it would be so easy to do all of this, if there were the political will.

The Four Horsemen

So anyway, now we are here so much later. But, this has been a war between our organization and likeminded people, like Indira Ghandi, with whom we worked on a forty-year development plan for India. We worked with Lopez Portillo on a development plan for Latin America, which he started to implement. And it would have succeeded if, at that time, Argentina and Brazil had cooperated.

Then in 1974, I went to the U.N. Population Conference in Bucharest, and I went there with a development plan, which was essentially the idea that you need a large-scale technology transfer from the industrialized countries to the developing sector. And it would have been very easy to overcome the underdevelopment.

But what happened, is that you had John D. Rockefeller the Third, who presented his plan, which essentially was the first time they used this terminology: sustainable development, appropriate technology. Appropriate technology means, the Africans should never get railways, they should have little shovels, and little fountains in their village. And do things that are appropriate to them.

So at that time, these ideas were new. Environmentalism was really not yet existent. And all the left groups who were at this Bucharest population conference, they said, “Oh, population explosion.” Rockefeller said, there is an explosion of population. We have to reduce population. And all the left groups said, “Oh, the population bomb is a Rockefeller baby,” because people knew that that was an oligarchical interest.

And I intervened at that conference. I said, look, the consequence of what you are proposing is a hundred times worse than Adolf Hitler.

Now, that was absolutely true, because, if you count the number of people who have died as a consequence of the denial of technology through imposing IMF conditionalities on the Third World, I once calculated that you come to hundreds of millions of people. And, in a certain sense, we now have a situation, where Schellnhuber, who is a CBE—Commander of the British Empire—is a complete fraudster. He’s psychologically a very difficult person, to use diplomatic language. But, that he is now influencing the Catholic Church for a decarbonization of the world economy—I mean, we fought this, when he presented it to the German government, because it would mean eliminating every fossil fuel. It would mean eliminating, naturally, nuclear energy altogether.

And if you only go by renewable energies—wind, solar and so forth— you end up with the population carrying capacity of the Earth of about one billion people.

And we have studied the Zero-Growth movement way back into the early seventies, and there were people who said, “Well, how do you reduce population?” Well, there are the four riders, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Death, Famine, Epidemics, and you just let these things grow, and then the population falls by itself.

Now, if they were to succeed in imposing that into the Paris climate conference, which I don’t think will happen,—but, there will be a massive attempt to do that,—it will be tantamount to really turning these institutions into genocidalist institutions. And we really have to fight against that, with all possible means. Because this is a form of Nazism, or fascism. It’s eco-fascism, or, I don’t know how you call it, but it’s really that.

It Starts With the Mind

And so, I think that we have to really mobilize in all countries around the world to block that. And I think the panel this afternoon gave us excellent ammunition. These are fraudsters. They are, the kinds of scientists— I don’t know if you remember this old record, where you had a little dog, and a grammophone—they sing the song of whoever feeds them. These are not scientists.

This goes back to how they tried to destroy the influence of Leibniz in the Berlin Academy. They would have contests in which the most corrupt scientists would be promoted. And people like Kaestner and Lessing, and so forth—they fought against these people. This is an old trick by the oligarchy. And right now, you have a situation where many of these scientists are bored. They are not scientists; they are just doing what you get a grant for. And some of the better scientists even use green terminology, in order to get better funding. And then they sneak in their little project, so that they can do some research. But they give it a green name to get the funding.

I mean, the corruption of the mind is incredible.  Why do you think that this whole thing functions? Why do you think we are on the verge of war? Because people are too stupid to think things through, and they belong to clubs where it is the peer belief to not think that way. If you are a part of a club which is proBritish, or pro-American, then you don’t even think that it could be different.

And I can only challenge you, if you have any doubts about what has been said here, that we are on the verge of World War Three,—if you have any respect for your mind, you do not just reject it. You go home and you do your homework. Because if you have not yet studied it, and come to that conclusion yourself, you are just intellectually lazy. Because I have done the work. I have looked at all the papers of all the military experts in America, in Great Britain, in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Russia, in China, and there is no question, that, if you look at the evolution of the military doctrine, if you look at the whole forward deployment, if you look at the whole first-strike doctrine, if you look at the Russian reactions, at the Chinese reactions, if you don’t come to the conclusion that we are on the verge of World War Three—I hate to say it—you are an intellectual lazy bum. Or worse.

Because, if you are serious, you have to come to that conclusion. If you come to that conclusion, you have to get off your behind. because you have to do something to help to save civilization. And I think the corruption of the mind comes mainly from that fact. We’re not promoting anybody’s cause.

Gifts for the Future

I really think we are the only organization which takes the future into account, a thousand years from now. I even would say, a couple of billions of years from now, because I want humanity to be the immortal species. I have some good contacts who are geophysicists. And they tell me, the human race will disappear one second after twelve, or after midnight. And I do not accept that.

Because for me—I don’t know if you remember, but when the Voyager left our solar system a couple of months ago, they had records on the spaceship of Furtwängler conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. So Furtwängler conducting the Ninth Symphony is now travelling outside of our solar system, which for me, is a very intriguing idea, that if there are some intelligent people somewhere—we don’t know, because the universe is really big, and we only know a very tiny part of it—it could be that somebody gets this record, and listens to Furtwängler conducting the Ninth Symphony!

But the idea, that all of that would have been for nothing, all the great struggles of mankind. The Indian people, freeing themselves from British imperialism,—Mahatma Ghandi, other struggles. The Chinese liberating themselves from the Opium War. All the many, many courageous people. The German Resistance who tried to fight Hitler, and who got chopped off. All the beautiful human activities which led to the point where we are here today, would have been for nothing?

I think that that is a completely unacceptable idea. And in the spirit in which Schiller wrote “Why We Should Study Universal History,” I think that we should have gratitude for the rich donations from previous generations, and organize our life in such a way that we give it richer to the future generations.

And, I think that this is really something that I want to put into your heart and into your mind. Don’t think narrowly. Because it is the narrowness of the mind, which has led to two world wars. And we have set out explicitly with the idea that we must overcome geopolitical thinking, because geopolitics has twice led to world war in the Twentieth Century. And because of the existence of thermonuclear weapons, if we don’t get over geopolitics right now, the danger is that we will extinguish ourwelves.

And, why did I mention yesterday in my remarks, the difference beween ratio and intellect? And I really want you to think about it, because most people think, “Ya, it’s my Menchschenverstand—my common sense: I know everything myself. I am a learned man. I have studied. I have titles of all kinds.” But they are not self-conscious—that’s what happens if they’re thinking on the level of ratio, which is, you think in terms of contradictions. You think that my interest is against that interest. That I have this interest against the other person’s. And what’s the difference if you think on the level of reason or as Cusanus calls it, the level of intellect? Then you think on the level of coincidentia oppositorum—the coincidence of opposites, which is an idea of looking through, or you look on the level where the contradictions no longer exist. And in the philosophy of the Platonic humanist tradition of Europe, it’s the idea that the One has a higher order, and a higher power, than the Many.

And you have to think in this way. Because as long as you remain on the level of contradictions, you can’t solve any problem. I mean, that was the great achievement of the Peace of Westphalia. Because they recognized, that after 150 years of religious war in Europe,— if they had continued, nobody would have been left. Because in some areas of Europe, two-thirds of humanity were already destroyed. So they came to the conclusion that a higher principle had to be found. The idea of the “interest of the other.” That a permanent peace can only be built on the interest of the other.

Beauty is Lawful

And that is a method of thinking which you can apply to every field. You will not make a new discovery in science if you can’t hypothesize, what is the necessary step in the unknown. Scientific discovery is not that somebody has a bright idea, and then you discover something. No, it is the accumulation of knowledge, of Geistesmassen [thought-objects],—more Geistesmassen accumulate and resonate, and then out of that, is the necessary next step of discovery. Like, why, for example, thermonuclear fusion is one of the absolutely necessary next steps, because it leads to a higher energyflux density, which is important for the continued existence of mankind.

In the same way, you cannot make a great composition in classical music, if you throw out all the laws of composition. Then you end up with atonal music, or with twelve-tone music, and you end up with ugliness.

You have to go through the late string quartets of Beethoven, through the beautiful symphonies, through Brahms, through Schubert, through the beautiful songs of Schubert, and all the high points of Classical music, and then define what is the next step of the composition. You have to respect the rules and enlarge the rules in a lawful way.

And in that sense, I think that mankind has reached a point where I don’t think we will get out of this mess otherwise. And we have a mess. If you don’t think that we are at a civilizational breakdown crisis, wake up!

I mean, look, for example, some countries have young people. Like Modi. Modi said, the reason why India has such a beautiful future is because they have so many young people. And if these young people get educated, they will be the biggest export possibility, because there are countries which have demographical crises, like Germany, Italy. These countries will vanish without the Indians in the future. Because people don’t procreate anymore. I don’t know, you have too many marriages of all kinds of forms which don’t procreate.  So sooner or later, they will cease to exist. But fortunately, we have the Indians to help the Germans to survive. [Laughter, applause].

So,—but Modi said, if we educate these young people, then they are the potential of the future. And that is really how we have to think. Because, in a certain sense, the civilizational crisis is not just that we are on the verge of World War Three; that we have a refugee crisis which is heartbreaking. If you look at those pictures in the Mediterranean, I think that this is the declaration of bankruptcy of the EU. Because this is the worst of the worst behavior. Instead of developing Africa, they shoot at the boats. What is that? What is the self-image of the EU?

But it’s not just that. It’s not just that two billion people go hungry every day. Two billion people! One billion are really starving, and one billion are at the edge of not having enough to eat. And it is not necessary. It’s not only that. The drugs. Look at the drugs— how many people are taking drugs. In Russia alone, every year, 40,000 people die of drugs. And Russia has said that this is the biggest national security crisis they have. Look at the young people who go to discos. Eighty-five percent of all young people going to discos take drugs! Look at the pornography. I mean, there is no limit any more. There is no longer anything that you cannot see on public television. Every time I turn on the television, which happens once in a while, I am absolutely shocked! I don’t want to go through the gory details, but, I said, this cannot be. Every time that I think it has reached the absolute bottom of perversity, of pornography, of violence,—they come up with something new.

And, if you look at the youth culture, the youth culture where eight-year, nine-year, ten-year old girls and boys know everything. About sex, about homosexuality, about sexual practices, about violence, about snuff movies. Look at the British crown. Look at what happens now with the paedophilia scandal in Great Britain. This involves the top elite in Great Britain. Sir Leon Brittan, whom I had the misfortune to meet at this 1996 conference in Beijing, because he was one of the speakers. And he said, “Oh, the Silk Road will never function. Terrorism, destabilizations in all of Central Asia.” And it was very clear the British Great Game does want this development.

Now, this guy is now,—he is dead. He’s probably roasting in Hell already. But he was involved in the highest-level paedophilia, running boys’ houses, which is huge. It involves thousands and thousands of the British elites. They’re degenerates!

If you look at the total picture of the youth culture in Europe and in the United States. In the United States, you better don’t go shopping, because if you go in a mall you have a good chance you will be shot, by somebody just driving by. If you look at the death rate in major cities in the United States. If you look at the police violence, why do you think in all of these cities— Ferguson, Baltimore—why do you have these riots? Because the police in the United States has been militarized. They get the heavy weapons from the Army to use against their own population. And if there is a collapse of the financial system, I think that the United States will explode in a civil war. Because you have these weapons everywhere. You have violence in the culture, which is really big. And you have now a counter-movement, in which the reverends unite in all of the United States, and they say, we have to get in the act, to prevent this from happening again.

A Qualitative Leap

So, I could go on for a long time. But if you are not blind to what is around you, you see that we are not just in a war danger, in a breakdown crisis, but we have a civilizational crisis,—like the caste system in India. There are people who think that the lower castes are lower people. And I have many good friends in India, and I have seen how they behave. I have a good acquaintance, and I saw how he behaved towards somebody who brought in the luggage in the hotel. This is oligarchical thinking. This person in India is not one iota better than the Queen running drugs. And the Queen does run drugs. We have been accused of having said that; we have proven the case.

If you look at the British-Saudi running of terrorism, which is what the issue of the “28 pages” is all about, and you heard Walter Jones, that there is a growing movement in the United States, and the truth will come out about all of this.

Anyway, I want to make the point, we have a civilizational crisis, which is really all-encompassing. And we have reached in the history of mankind, a point where either we make a qualitative jump into a completely new paradigm—and a new paradigm—there are examples in history where you can study it. Where you had a breakdown crisis, as in the Fourteenth Century in Italy, or in most of Europe actually. You had the Black Death. You had the flagellants. You had witch-burning.  You had a complete, complete collapse of society, and a collapse of the financial system. If you look at the pictures of Bosch and Breughel, where people— [groan]—one eye is going up, the other one is going down. Breughel and Bush— Bosch! [Laughter] Here you had another one of these strange-looking people! What these painters captured was the mental breakdown of society in a Dark Age. And then you have to look at how did we manage to get into the Golden Age of the Italian Renaissance? It happened through many steps. It happened through Dante, Dante Alighieri. It happened through Petrarch, and a whole movement of humanists, who started to collect the manuscripts of great thinkers of the past. And then you had the courageous fight of Jean D’Arc, which, together with Louis XI, transformed France. The living standard of the French population doubled in twenty years during the reign of Louis XI. Then you had especially Nicholas of Cusa, and the people he influenced. He was consciously saying, we need a completely new thinking. He attacked the Scholastics. He attacked the Peripatetics—the Aristotelians who had dominated all of the universities of Europe at that time. And he developed a new method of thinking, which was the basis of the modern nation state, which was the basis of modern science. Kepler could not have done what he did without Cusa, and he always talked about the divine Cusanus.

Vernadsky talked about the great stepping-stone of Cusansky [Cusa]. And fortunately, Vernadsky is much more known in Russia than in Europe, because this is very good capital which Russia is using, or has used.

So we need a break like that. We need to have a completely new thinking, not defined from the present conflicts among nations, among ethnic conflicts, geographical conflicts—all of that, but we have to define mankind as one, and think how do we survive as a human species in the future. And, if you start to define everything from that standpoint, every conflict can be solved.

We have said many times, we do not just need a new world economic order—which we have presented with the idea of a world land-bridge, as a good approximation of what that could look like,—but we need a cultural Renaissance. Because the degenerate cultures has to go. And I believe that Confucius and Lessing were completely right when they said, if you decide to become good, you can decide it. If you can decide to be loving, you can start to love. It’s a moral question. Can you do it?

A Classical Revival

In the same way, I think we can break with the general culture, and I think that if each country develops their own high culture, like Germany should obviously revive the German classical period, the music from Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, and even some songs of Hugo Wolf—I want to put effort into this, and I even got my husband to agree with me. And naturally, Schiller and other great poets.

In France, you have to revive the École Polytechnique. You have to become again a science-driver society, in the tradition of de Gaulle’s thinking of France having a mission. Italy has so many rich scientists and artists—Verdi, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci. India is a country which has 5,000 years of history. You have to revive the Vedic writings. The Gupta period of drama. The Indian Renaissance of the late Nineteenth to the mid-Twentieth century, where you had so many beautiful poets and thinkers—Tagore, Shri Aurobindo, Vivekananda and many others. China is on the best way with Confucius.

The United States. The United States is struggling right now to revive the better part of its history, because the United States is not a monolithic monster, or a superpower you have to be a slave to,—or just like,—because they are the most powerful. No, the United States has two fundamentally different traditions. We just had a conference in New York last weekend where the thesis, the historical research was presented that the real making of America was the overcoming of slavery. It was really the question, which of the Founding Fathers would be the dominant. Was it the ones who would fight slavery? Or was it the compromisers, who were really influenced by the British Empire? And the British Empire never agreed to have lost the greatest colony, or the most important colony from their standpoint. So they tried to subvert it.

First, through wars—the British were allied with the Confederacy. The plantation owners financed the Confederacy. Then they realized that they could not regain America through military means, and they started using other means, like the Roundtable of Lord Milner and others, Milner’s Kindergarten. And the idea was that you have to convince the American establishment to run the world as an empire, based on the British Empire. And that’s the problem with the Bushes and the Obamas, because that is their philosophy right now.

But there is another America. The America of Benjamin Franklin, of Alexander Hamilton, of John Quincy Adams. Of Lincoln, of McKinley, of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of John F. Kennedy. We are right now very, very far advanced to regain that America. It’s my deepest conviction, that without that, there will be no solution to the world’s problems. And fortunately, you have right now a growing movement of Democrats and even a couple of Republicans, as you saw in the person of Walter Jones, you have Republicans who are absolutely decent human beings. As a matter of fact, I wish we had in Germany only one Member of Parliament like Walter Jones. Because he is a man of integrity. He is completely devoted to his constituency. There is not one wrong bone in him. And you have others like that.

So, America must become a Republic again. It must have a foreign policy like that of John Quincy Adams, who said, we have to have an alliance of perfectly sovereign republics. And that is what has to be, and then there is no problem in the world, because with that, everybody will be happy.

So I could probably find in every nation, its glorious period. But, you all know this yourselves. And you have to get to the high points of each nation and each culture. And we have to revive that. Then, out of that, we will create a new Renaissance. It will be like other Renaissances, in that you will revive what was beautiful in the past, but then, that will be the nourishment to create something even more beautiful for the future.

So I think that is the task we have immediately ahead of us. And I want you all to join in that, because this could be the most noble mission in your life. And it is necessary.

Head of the department of the international cooperation and innovative activities of the Russian Union of Youth.

Senior Research Fellow and Director of International Strategic Studies on Energy at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), a think tank of the Foreign Ministry, Beijing

First, I would like to congratulate the organizers of this conference. I would also like to thank the Schiller Institute for inviting Chinese representatives. The development of the BRICS is attracting more and more attention, and that especially since the economic crisis hit. I think that can be seen in two ways.

First, the role of the BRICS on the economic, social and political levels is growing. On the other hand, the development relations between the BRICS countries and developed countries is decreasing. And we see that with Brazil, India, Russia and even China. That means that the relation between the BRICS and developed countries is getting weaker. That is an issue to reflect upon.

We now have a big chance, especially economically, and that is financial support. The conditions are increasingly favorable. Compared to a few years ago, we have a growing capacity for investment.

China, as a developing country, and as a member of the BRICS, can play a very important role in fostering the development of other countries. So can India and Russia. Their role in the development of the BRICS continues to grow.

The upcoming summit of the BRICS in Ufa, Russia, will be a crucial moment for their development. We are expecting new measures, in particular, on the economic front, and in investments, culture and cooperation among youth. Personally, I am very much looking forward to the next BRICS summit.

My speech today is concerned mainly with China, and with the “One Road, One Belt” plan. This is a new idea. It’s a new thought. That is the contents of my presentation.

I have presented it in three points. First, why we launched this project of “One Road, One Belt”. After launching this project on March 26 of this year, on the Island of Hainan, our leaders published a dossier titled Perspective and Action on One Road, One Belt.

This is not only a new thought, it is also a real, palpable program. And it corresponds to the current situation. It is beneficial for the countries that participate in the project and for the countries bordering them.

Internationally, the project has attracted a lot of attention. Certain media and personalities believe that is only important for the development of China both socially and economically. That is true, but they fail to notice that it is extremely important for the world as well, and in particular for the Eurasian continent.

First part

When introducing the magnificent concept of the “One Belt One Road”‘, Chinese leaders already drew the attention of the international community.

The majority of the international community reacted very positively. But certain observers saw in this concept of One Belt, One Road the strategic importance of China’s economic and social development, and its diplomacy.

It appeared that China was only proposing this idea of “One Belt, One Road” in the perspective of its own development, and not as an important occasion and potential to bring growth and development to all the regions of the zone, and even worldwide.

Whoever thinks that the project of “One Belt, One Road” is only meant for the development of China, is misinterpreting the deep meaning of its strategic objective.

Many foreign media interpreted this concept as a “Marshall plan’’ in a Chinese version and a challenge to the international order of the US”. This is an even more biased interpretation.

So why did China propose this ambitious concept of “One Belt, One Road”?

First of all, I would like to analyze, starting from the standpoint of a balanced development, why China’s promotion of the “One Belt, One Road” is able to promote joint development of the countries along the road?

Concerning how to define a balanced development of the countries along the route, three different levels can be distinguished:

First, in light of the level of development of inland China, the project contributes to a balanced development between western and eastern China, because there is now an imbalance in the development of the east and the west.

As for China’s topography, everyone knows that the west is high and the east is low, the west is a plateau and the east is a plain.

However, in terms of economic development, it’s just the opposite. The east is on top and the west on the bottom. That is to say that in the east, including in the coastal region, economic development is stronger, while in the west, it is weaker. Economic development in the mountains and in the countryside is relatively backward.

You might say that it is the opposite of the topography.

According to the data recently published by the National Statistics Office, the GDP of China is 6,800 US dollars per inhabitant. While the GDP per inhabitant of the Xinjiang autonomous region on the western border is 6,200 US dollars, the GDP in the Delta of the Pearl River has been greater than 10.000 US dollars for several years now and in certain zones, it is close to 20.000 dollars. That is an enormous difference.

The second level concerns the unbalanced development between China and the countries to the east and to the west of its periphery.

In 2014, the volume of our trade with Japan reached 310 billion US dollars ; with the ASEAN countries, the volume was 480 billions US dollars ; and with South Korea, it reached 290 billion.

If you add up all three, Japan, South Korea and the ASEAN countries, the total trade volume was 1 trillion US dollars. On the other hand, what is the situation of imports and exports with the West?

In 2014, the trade volume between China and the five Central Asian countries was about 40 billion US dollars; with India, about 70 billion US dollars, and trade with Russia was not greater than 100 billion dollars.

The Russian Federation and India are among the biggest countries in the world. Together with Central Asia, the total trade between China and these countries was not even greater than the amount of trade between China and South Korea, which amounted to 240 billion US dollars. That is why we launched the concept of “One Belt, One Road”, a strategic vision oriented toward the west of China and toward the great Eurasian region, so that the development of these regions to the west could become as dynamic as in the eastern regions.

We know that the west of China is rich in resources. The region concentrates a wealth of resources. And the neighbors of the western region of China just as the Central Asian countries, Russia and those of western Asia are rich in resources, for example, in oil, natural gas and non ferrous metals. These are the countries in the world with many reserves.

Currently, China’s sustainable development is faced with a bottleneck, which is the lack of resources. Oil imports last year were 310 millions tonnes. 310 millions tons is a very large figure. It represents 58% to 59% of the total consumption of our country, nearly 60%. So it is obvious that China is dependent on foreign countries for its energy.

Therefore, China needs to cooperate for energy and resources with the countries along the road, not only to improve and develop their economies but also for the sustainable development needs of China itself.

Cooperation in energy and resources is not only in the interest of the development of the countries along the road, but is also advantageous for the development of China. The purpose is to serve the interests of the two parties.

The third level is to contribute to the development of all of the Eurasian continent. This will allow creation of a new locomotive of world-wide economic growth.

The Eurasian continent is a vast territory. The eastern part is the Asia-Pacific economic center, which has a flourishing economy. Western Europe,adjacent to Eurasia, is a prosperous economic space.

In contrast, the vast central zone is developing slowly, far behind the two extremities of the continent. The image of this situation is that of a barbell. Big at two extremities, with a narrow strip for the part in between. But it is contains many seeds and offers an enormous potential.

In other words, the two extremities of Eurasia experience rapid development and the central regions have lagged behind for a long time now.

If development of “One Belt, One Road” makes headway, it can build an immense new economic zone, in terms of population, total economy and development potential. None of the current two economic zones can be compared to this zone, which can create a structure which favors the development of all of Eurasia, going through the east, the center and the west of the region.

Acceleration of the development of the Eurasian continent will be an important locomotive for growth of the world economy. It will play an important role in balancing development, to stimulate the world economy.

Second part

China proposed this idea in circumstances in which it faces a great challenge, which greatly stimulated its inspiration and its creativity. The starting point is the development of China and, at the same time, the promotion of development and progress in the world as a whole.

What does the “One Belt, One Road” project bring to the world? In my opinion, there are the following points:

First, it will continue to promote the process of globalization. Over the past decades, the impetus of globalization accelerated the rapid integration of politics, the economy and culture.

The rapid development of globalization changed the political structure of the world economy. The role of states and of emerging economies in particular must not be ignored in the world economy.

Nevertheless, the financial crisis which began in the United States raised doubts in many countries. They no longer see in globalization just a plus for their own development, but also a source of many problems.

Some countries have even begun reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of globalization. Ideas and actions have even been raised against globalization. Problems are perceptible with regard to trade issues, where the developed countries toughened the trade standards for the emerging economies. Some even waved the banner of protectionism during the multilateral trade negotiations of the WTO.

Likewise, a new phenomenon in the world economy is the decoupling and the tendency to differentiate between emerging countries and developed countries. Economic growth in developed countries no longer reaches the level it used to have in the past, when it pulled along the growth of the emerging economies.

In that context, Président XI Jinping proposed the “One Belt, One Road” project to promote globalization. He stressed that China, under the impact of globalization, was not seeking self-preservation, but wanted ties to be forged among countries with their history and their culture.

“One Belt, One Road”, by bringing together over 60 countries and substantially strengthening the bases of communication as well as economic and trade cooperation among them, will give a powerful thrust to globalization.

Secondly, it concerns the creation of new locomotives for world economic growth. Europe is an example in this respect.

For hundreds of years, Europe was at war. Twice, Europe caused world wars which had a devastating effect on it. After the idea of the European Union, visionary European statesmen proposed a plan for creation of the euro and the Eurozone.

The birth of the euro in 1999 was a major event in the political and economic world.

Launching the euro allowed for stabilizing prices, accelerating the flow of capital and promoting economic development in the Eurozone.

Since the euro was adopted in international trade, companies no longer have to handle ten currencies, but only one, which makes it possible to greatly reduce fluctuations in the cost of transactions and exchange rates. The euro contributed greatly to the development of international trade.

It brought many advantages to the Eurozone countries. And a stable, prosperous Europe is vital for maintaining peace in the world.

At one of the extremities of the “One Belt, One Road” is the Asia-Pacific economic circle, at the other is the developed European economic space and in between, are countries with rich seeds, all of which has a tremendous potential.

If development of “One Belt, One Road” progresses, it can build an immense new economic zone, in terms of population, total economy and development potential. None of the current two economic zones can be compared to this economic zone. It will be an important locomotive of worldwide economic growth.

“One Belt, One Road” will contribute rapid growth to the construction of the world economy, as development is the solution of the problem of poverty. It is only sustainable development which will be the most efficient means to solve, finally, the problem of poverty and improve the living standards of the population.

Thirdly, it will release the positive energy of different civilizations and develop tolerance. All along the route of “One Belt, One Road”, given the complexity of the religions of each ethnic group, we have to maintain open-mindedness and tolerance conducive to resolving the above-mentioned problems.

Chinese culture is characterized by great tolerance. The influence of culture is fundamental. The tolerance of Chinese culture has been crucial in the logic of China’s action in the international community.

Chinese culture as inspired by « Confucius » requires “cultivating oneself and then helping others”. That means we should first do good for ourselves and then we are capable of interacting with others. The influence of Chinese political philosophy and culture is the principal and fundamental key of China: reflection inward and tolerance outwards.

This philosophy is very different from others in the world, in particular from western philosophy. Cultures on the world scale are different, but there is no difference in determining good from evil. The diversity in cultures only underlines the richness of humanity. The building of “One Belt, One Road” means learning from each other, practicing mutual tolerance and not pursuing a path toward conflict. These are the products and the capabilities which China hopes to contribute to the world.

Fourthly: help strengthen peace and security in the world. The experience of Europe and other countries shows that close cooperation of economic policies brings lasting peace and security.

The interests of the countries along the “One Belt, One Road” are intricate and complex. The terrain of traditional and non traditional security threats is very serious and it is a fundamental consideration for implementation of the “One Belt, One Road” project.

Setting up a sustainable regional security mechanism is indispensable for building “One Belt, One Road”. But the most urgent is the development of close economic cooperation among the countries along the Belt.

Economic integration in itself is an important basis for maintaining security.

President XI Jinping proposed a new security concept during the meeting of the CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building in Asia), underlining the need for common security, collaborative security, collective security and sustainable security. This concept could become an important consensus in the launching of the “One Belt, One Road”.

“One Belt and One Road” cannot be built without a common, collaborative, collective and sustainable security mechanism; it cannot be built without taking consideration to the security concerns of the major powers, and it must provide security along the sea and land corridors of the Belt and Road to protect the production, contributing by this to the future security of the entire world .

Third Part

What are the innovations in the “One Belt, One Road” proposed by China?

First, it differs, in terms of diplomatic philosophy, from the policy introduced at the beginning of the reform and opening, namely the notion of “borrowing external resources” in the service of economic reconstruction, but it also show that the vision of China’s strategy is not narrow nationalism, as some media claim, but has become a form of cosmopolitan thinking.

It is a combination of the development and the capabilities achieved with the reform and opening up to the international system for the past 30 years, and transmitting this back into the outside world, shaping thus a cycle of interactive two-directional development.

This shows that China has really begun to construct a kind of system of “justice and benefit’’ contributing to the common development of all the countries of the world, including neighbor countries, to share the dividends of China’s development.

This practice will become a plus in the interest of these countries. Because it means that China, which is continuing to develop, wants to actively build an international perspective on the basis of the rules in forces. It is also in this way that China and outside countries will end up in a kind of polymerization reaction, via the “economic zone of the silk road”.

Secondly, during the construction of the “One Belt, One Road”, China has made the political commitment to continue pursuing openness, equality and sharing. China’s main concern is to form a kind of cultural cooperation with the countries located along the region in spite of the large differences in terms of politics, ideologies and economic models.

One could say it is a distillation of the “Shanghai spirit”, which encompasses “mutual confidence, mutual advantage, equality, consultation, respect of cultural diversity and the search for joint development”.

It is the reflection of the new geopolitical and geo-economical reality of Eurasia in the post Cold War period. Its objective is to build and concretize lasting peace in the region, to provide a dynamic mechanism for harmonious development and common prosperity.

That means that all parties are called upon to participate in the cooperation among the stakeholders and to maintain partnership relations, and that any overly egoistical behavior, even if it is not aggressive, will affect the enthusiasm of the partners in cooperation.

In this framework, China’s orientation with other countries through a process of mutual cooperation in interests and policy, could stimulate the possibilities of cooperation.

Thirdly, when the obligations and responsibility of China in regional affairs is underscored, that does not mean that China would like to try and dominate them, or even monopolize them, and transforming it into some kind of geopolitical projects.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also underscored, in his last trip to Central Asia last year, that the essential rule is that China “does not seek hegemony in regional affairs, nor does it seek to manage a sphere of influence”.

Although this initiative is focused on ideas for building cooperation among certain countries in the region, China also wishes to maintain coordination mechanisms with other regions and on the international level.

China’s initiative to enhance the development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Community, in particular the signing by Chinese and Russia leaders in May of this year of the Joint Declaration of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “Eurasian Economic Union” is proof of the rapprochement underway.

The initiative of “The Silk Road Economic Belt” is certainly not an absolutely reciprocally beneficial exchange mechanism..

Rather it expresses China’s wish to provide the basis of its capabilities and other factors more public goods. It wants to share joint development opportunities with the countries located along the region, promoting mutual development and then to propose a community of interest along the Belt and to preserve and to promote the existence and continued development of that community of interest.