Chinese Scholar Brings Silk Road Perspective for Middle East to Washington, D.C.

Professor Pan Guang at the National Press Club, April 24, 2015.

Professor Pan Guang, one of China’s most distinguished scholars on Middle Eastern affairs, addressed an audience consisting primarily of representatives of Washington’s diplomatic corps, think tanks, universities, and media, who came out on a Friday afternoon for the forum on “China’s Changing Role in a Changing Middle East; Building the Silk Road Economic Belt,” sponsored by the Schiller Institute.

The Schiller Institute’s Bill Jones introduced the event by contrasting China’s “One Belt, One Road” perspective, introduced in 2013 and expanded at Fortaleza, Brazil last July, to the austerity and collapse occurring in the United States and Europe, with their 40 years of economic degeneration. The Chinese project is not geopolitical; the United States should get on board, go with the AIIB, and take up the Chinese offer of development, he said.

Dr. Pan followed with a tour d’horizon of China’s relations with and perspective for the Middle Eastern countries, and beyond, and then answered a dozen questions asked by the audience at the forum, which lasted over two hours. Dr. Pan demonstrated an extraordinary knowledge of countries ranging from Africa to Afghanistan and North Korea, much of it gained from his travels in and discussions with the people of this area, as he detailed China’s investments and long-term perspectives for all the contending countries of the Middle East (Arab, Israel, Turkey, Iran) and Central Asia. China has productive investments in Iraq and Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran; etc. Telling stories of this place or that people, he built the case for economic development as the path for peace, getting peoples to work together economically, until they can then begin to work together politically.

These economic projects are now being developed under the global perspective of the “One Belt, One Road” umbrella, which serves as an umbrella for rail, air, sea and internet cooperation, and must be developed in other areas as well, he said. There are three Silk Road projects which have been put forward, he added: the Chinese, that of John Hopkins’ Fred Starr, and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. The question is to bring these all together in a cooperative effort. Certainly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union and China’s New Silk Road projects are similar, and cooperation between them will be discussed at the next BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia in July.

Major Asian media and the LaRouchePAC filmed the event, stay tuned to larouchepac.com for the full video proceedings.