Zepp-LaRouche in China Warns
of Imminent Threat of War
by William Jones
March 1—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, accompanied by several colleagues, including this author, concluded a trip to China at the end of February, after addressing over a dozen think-tanks and university departments, where she warned of the danger of thermonuclear war coming out of the Western-backed coup in Ukraine.
While the trip was occasioned by the launching last year of the Silk Road Economic Belt by Chinese President Xi Jinping, a project with which Zepp-LaRouche has been involved over the last 20 years, the fascist coup in Ukraine thrust itself onto the agenda, as a matter which which had to be addressed with her Chinese counterparts to underline the imminent threat of a thermonuclear conflict between the United States and Russia.
While Chinese scholars have been warily eyeing the developments unfolding in Ukraine, few were prepared to draw the ultimate conclusions from this dangerous brinksmanship. Mrs. LaRouche's visit, therefore, gave them a clear warning that were this policy to continue, mankind itself would be threatened with extinction in the thermonuclear conflict that could result.
Zepp-LaRouche also made clear that the geopolitical crisis was a direct result of the ongoing collapse of the international financial system, a collapse which her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, had forecast decades ago. Without abandoning this failed financial system through the implementation of a Glass-Steagall legislation and a return to a Hamiltonian credit policy, she explained, the world would either devolve into a "New Dark Age" or, more likely, destroy itself in a thermonuclear confrontation like the one that threatens us today.
'Silk Road Lady' Returns
The LaRouches' reputation was well known to many of the scholars whom she met on her visit, some of whom were old friends. For those who were active in the 1990s, her role in the formulation of her New Silk Road policy, also known as the Eurasian Land-Bridge, was very familiar. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the need for a policy that would allow the development of the new nations that were created out of the now-defunct Soviet Union, she and her husband developed the concept of building a grid of high-speed rail through the Eurasian heartland, surrounded on each side by "development corridors" which would bring these land-locked regions in Central and South Asia into the mainstream of economic life. Discussions with Chinese representatives at the beginning of the 1990s led to the convening of a conference in Beijing in 1996, under the auspices of the Chinese Ministry of Science & Technology, at which Zepp-LaRouche was a principal speaker.
She later organized dozens of conferences in Europe, the United States, and Asia, to build support for this cornerstone project, winning the designation "Silk Road Lady." Some of her friends in China who were acquainted with her work at that time, organized a grand banquet in her honor in Beijing on the occasion of her return.
Others, who were younger, or unaware of the work she and her husband had done in promoting this project in the 1990s, were quite astounded to learn of her long history in a project that that they had first heard of when President Xi announced his Silk Road Economic Belt proposal in Kazakstan in September of last year.
But the broader perspective of the Silk Road proposal presented by Mrs. LaRouche, which went far beyond the traditional notion of new rail and highway connections and pipelines to a grand vision of building new cities and bringing civilization to the still undeveloped areas of Central Asia, combined with a renaissance of culture for the peoples of the region, sparked great interest and excitement in her audiences. The enthusiasm could be easily read on the faces of many of her listeners. All of the institutions she visited expressed a keen interest in maintaining contact with the Schiller Institute.
Shanghai Transformed
After a week of meetings in Beijing, Zepp-LaRouche took the high-speed rail to Shanghai. Along the route through Shandong and Jiangsu provinces, we traveled past the many farms and fields of the rural Chinese, who still comprise roughly 50% of the population. While we could observe farmers still using primitive agricultural methods, we couldn't help but notice the ongoing construction in the towns and villages along the way, providing the basis for raising the standard of living of the rural population.
The return to Shanghai was especially poignant, as Zepp-LaRouche was last in the city as a young journalist in 1971, when the country was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. While the Shanghai Bund, the center of Shanghai life since the Qing Dynasty, still maintained the old buildings that were once the offices of the colonial financial institutions, everything else had changed. Across the water in Pudong, which, at that time, had been only rice paddies and farms, there was now a flourishing industrial and commercial district, with the soaring structure of the 457-meter-high Oriental Pearl TV tower. Unlike Beijing, Shanghai could well pass for a European capital; indeed, it has often been proclaimed the Paris of the East.
Here also, the Shanghai-based scholars exhibited a keen interest in hearing what Mrs. LaRouche had to say. All took very seriously the warnings of the nuclear war danger. At one university, with a group that is normally concerned with energy issues, the questions were primarily focussed on the dangers lurking in the destabilization in Ukraine. While the think-tanks and universities in Shanghai do not have the same direct access to specific government ministries as is often the case in Beijing, they are keen on maintaining their status nationally by pursuing a higher quality in their research work. The unique perspective represented by the Schiller Institute was therefore of particular importance for them.
Silk Road Studies: A National Preoccupation
President Xi's September 2013 speech on the New Silk Road project provides the outlines of a strategy to be pursued by the nation. Now, the details still have to be worked out among the various educational and scientific institutions involved in the process. The project represents the path forward for the nation, and is therefore of the utmost importance. It touches upon China's internal development, particularly the all-important industrial development of China's western region, as well as on the sometimes difficult task of bringing the various nations of Central Asia together with Russia and China into a convergent policy of joint economic development.
In her discussions with Chinese scholars involved in the Silk Road research, Zepp-LaRouche stressed the need of a "grander vision" for the New Silk Road, beyond the simple infrastructure and transportation issues that attract so much attention, to encompass the building of new cities, changing the course of rivers to provide water for dry regions, and launching new nuclear power plants to provide electricity and desalinated water in order to "green the desert." These projects would accomplish a veritable transformation of human civilization in the region, and provide the basis for a grander "economic belt," extending through Eurasia and down into Africa, and from Siberia through a Bering Strait tunnel to North America, and down to Patagonia.
If we succeed in overcoming that "clear and present danger" of a nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States, stemming from the Western shenanigans playing out in Ukraine, and if we bankrupt the financial oligarchy through the enactment of a Glass-Steagall "firewall," the successful implementation of a Silk Road Economic Belt could well launch mankind into a new era of global economic development.
