Excerpts from a presentation by Schiller Institute founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 17. It was titled, “The New Silk Road and the End of Colonialism: A New Shared Future for Humanity,”

…Now, ever since Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in Kazakhstan in 2013, about 100 countries have joined this effort. There have been investments in all of these countries, 12 times the size of the Marshall Plan, and all based on “win-win” cooperation. An enormous amount of infrastructure corridors, industrial parks, power plants; various agricultural projects have been built. And in the recent time, you have the building of a completely new system of international relations based on the respect for the sovereignty, and respect for non-interference in  the affairs of the other country, respect for the perspective of a different social system, and this has created a different dynamic in the world.  This has, for example, recently led to the integration of the Shanghai Cooperation organization(SCO) with the Belt and Road Initiative.  There is a new formation of South-South relations which became very apparent at the recent annual BRICS meeting in Johannesburg, where you had the formation of Global South, which was practically all the organizations from the developing sector, the G77, the Organization of Islamic Countries, Mercosur, the African Union, many regional organizations.  And then, subsequently, you had the very big Africa-China summit, FOCAC [Forum on China Africa Cooperation] in Beijing at the beginning of September, where you had about 48 presidents and 5 heads of state of governments participating from Africa, announcing a new age in the friendship and historic relationship between China and the African continent

Now, Putin at the BRICS summit, had already promised that Russia would light up Africa in providing electricity, not from oil and gas, but through helping African nations to build nuclear power.  And Xi Jinping at the same meeting, had said that Africa, of all the places in the world, has the biggest development potential in the world.

The New Silk Road Spirit, which has captured this dynamic is transforming geopolitical conflicts in many parts of the world. For example, the very successful developments around North and South Korea, who are now fully on the way to possibly announce a peace treaty before the end of the year, going in the direction of unification. This is definitely one of the great successes of President Trump, who at the Singapore summit where he met with Kim Jong-un, is promising to help the make North Korea a prosperous country if  denuclearization continues to proceed. And China has promised to integrate the Koreas into the Belt and Road Initiative.  Russia has promised to help the economic prosperity in North Korea. This is a model, where you can see how this new spirit is helping to transform previous crisis situations into real miracles.

A similar thing is happening in the Horn of Africa, where as a result of the construction of the fast railway between Djibouti and Addis Ababa, you have now Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia developing new diplomatic relations and cooperation which was unthinkable a very short period before.

Now, the biggest breakthrough in this development was the signing of a MOU-Memorandum of Understanding between the Italian government and the Lake Chad Basin Commission on the realization of the Transaqua project. Transaqua is a project which the LaRouche organization has been fighting for, for over 30 years, and the fact that it is now agreed upon between China, Italy and six African nations to build is a game-changer for the entire African continent. Transaqua is the idea that you refill Lake Chad, which is now down to about 10% of its previous volume, bringing 3-4% of the water from the tributaries of Congo River, from about 500 meters high, through a system of canals into Lake Chad.  And this will provide an inland waterway for participating countries: It will provide hydro-power, it will provide huge amounts of water for irrigation, it will fill up Lake Chad, and it will still provide for a large areas in the Sahel zone to be irrigated: And that way you can really improve the life about 40 million people who are living there.

This is a tremendous breakthrough, and I think this is really the kind of project which can happen around the world everywhere. Now, in the context of the New Silk Road, there have been also an enormous amount of strategic realignment of countries which previously, for historical reasons and past wars, were at complete odds.  For example, now there is a new cooperation between Japan and China, where both of them said that there is the possibility of joint projects in Africa.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, just two days ago, said that Japan and China can cooperate in third countries and the pivot of it could be Thailand.  And as we have been fighting for another great project, also for more than 30 years, the Kra Canal, there has been recently a conference putting that back on the agenda:  And that would be a game-changer for the entire transport route in Southeast Asia.

A wonderful example of cooperation with the New Silk Road is Austria, where Chancellor Sebastian Kurz will conduct a big forum, a Europe-Africa Forum, before the end of the year, because Austria has the presidency of the European Union for this present half-year; and many institutions in Austria and Vienna are completely enthusiastic.  For example, the head of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce [WKW] is pushing for the complete integration of Austria into the New Silk Road.  And he said the New Silk Road is very easily explained:  It is our economic future.  The Mayor of the city of Linz called the connection of Austria to China the “Trade Route of Creativity.”

Also the Italian government, the new government, which is being attacked by the mainstream media practically every day, is practically going for a full strategic alliance with China. Various cabinet ministers, Michele Geraci and Giovanni Tria were just on trips to China making huge deals, inviting China to rebuild the Italian infrastructure.  And the substitute commerce minister, Paolo Savona, who made a wonderful speech in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, calling for the new economic plan of Italy is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and he advocated the cooperation of China and Italy in Africa.  And in the Transaqua memorandum of understanding, there was previously  memorandum of understanding between China and Italy to engage in this great project:  So this can be a model of any Western country….

There is a new concept of great power relations, developed by China, and proposed to the United States.  The {Global Times}, a government-related newspaper recently, in light of the tensions between China and the United States, asked the question:  What should the relations be between China and the United States in 30, 40, 50 years from now, or even towards the end of the century?…

And I would like to remind you of what Friedrich Schiller, [a great German poet] said, in “Why We Would Study Universal History,”- and I’m saying it now in my own words:  We should look at the long chain of generations before us, who gave us the tremendous heritage. And should it not be our proud and passionate desire to connect our ephemeral life to that long chain of human generations, and contribute with our own life, that soon that generation will be living a better life as a result of what we have done?…