Global Times Interviews Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Belt and Road Initiative

In view of of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which convenes Oct. 16, the Chinese daily Global Times is conducting interviews with “influential scholars from Western think tanks” on their view of the Chinese economy and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. The second such interview, published on Oct. 9, was with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute.

Asked what has most impressed her about China’s economic development, Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the BRI, introduced in 2013, which has given developing countries the well-founded hope of overcoming poverty and underdevelopment. She went to explain that “This is only possible because the spectacular rise of China is based on the sound economic principles of continuous application of the results of scientific and technological progress in order to improve living standards. This enabled China to end extreme poverty by the end of 2020, and contribute to three quarters of the poverty alleviation globally.

“Since poverty is one of the most serious violations of human rights, it is no exaggeration to say that China has contributed more to the protection of human rights than any other country on the planet.

“Another impressive aspect is the conception of a community with a shared future for mankind, which the Chinese leadership has put on the table. Because that dialectical conception raises anyone who hears it or reads about it to think on a higher level and it is on that higher dimension where the mind can conceptualize creative new approaches to tackle problems.”

Concerning the economic challenges today, Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the soaring inflation rates in the West of food, energy and other resources, and cautioned that China, too, needs to protect itself from this. She also raised the threat of a blowout of the “neoliberal financial system”, either in “a hyperinflationary disintegration” or in “a sudden chain reaction of bankruptcies of both emerging markets and over-indebted firms”, if the central banks try to curb inflation with a high interest rate policy. “While this will obviously affect China, its economic blueprint approach of caring for each segment of the economy with appropriate incentives will be invaluable.”

Asked about the perspectives for China’s relations with Europe, and Germany in particular, she stressed that there are two “fundamentally opposed options. If Germany acts as a vassal of the U.S., and sticks to a suicidal ecologist ideology, it will become a de-industrialized, miserable, and completely marginalized place.” But if Germany and Europe “cooperate with the Global South in the new economic system now taking shape”, they could contribute a great deal to the new paradigm… advance multilateralism and participate in building a new and better world.”