U.S. Must Play Its Part in the Belt and Road Symphony

The Chinese government has launched a global organizing drive to ensure that the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), to be held in Beijing on May 14-15, consolidates a “broad, international consensus on the Belt and Road Initiative,” in the words of State Councilor Yang Jiechi, the top-level Chinese official in charge of preparations for the Forum. Noting that “the global economy is yet to emerge from the profound impact of the international financial crisis,” Yang emphasized in a March 10 interview with China Daily that “we hope the BRF will help drive away the clouds of the economic doldrums,” and that already “in countries around the world, priority is given to the real economy, the manufacturing sector, industrialization and economic diversification.”

“The Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China. Yet it’s not going to be China’s solo show,” Yang stated. “A better analogy would be that of a symphony performed by an orchestra composed of all participating countries.”

China has repeatedly made it clear that the Belt and Road Initiative is open to all nations in the world, emphatically including the United States. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated on March 7, China, Russia and the U.S. should work with each other to pursue “win-win, rather than zero-sum outcomes…. We believe the three countries can develop healthy and positive relations so that jointly we can fulfill our responsibilities for world peace and development.” It is also noteworthy that Yang Jiechi was the Chinese official who was sent to the U.S. for discussions with the incoming Trump administration earlier this year.

“The New Paradigm is becoming the dominant, defining dynamic on the planet,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche told associates today. “And given the fact that we are less than 100 days away from the May Belt and Road Forum, I think we should use that time to really make sure that we get the U.S. to join, but also European nations to join, because that is the establishment of a higher level of reason which could really solve all problems.”

We have to proceed quickly, she added, because the entire trans-Atlantic financial system is a powder keg, for which the only solution is the reinstatement of FDR’s Glass-Steagall law, as part of LaRouche’s Four Laws. The danger we face is of a chaotic collapse of the entire system before we can get Glass-Steagall and the Four Laws in place. However, if the U.S. joins the Belt and Road symphony, America, with its terrible infrastructure deficit and economic collapse, can be reconstructed at a higher technological platform, with the help of China, Japan and other nations.

We have to quickly get people to think on a strategic plane, Zepp-LaRouche said, and to realize “that there is a tremendous, tremendous change occurring in history. Which really means that if we succeed to get the U.S.—and European nations, for that matter—in collaboration with Russia and China on the New Silk Road, all the problems in the world can be solved. That doesn’t mean that they disappear overnight, but they can be solved. And that is why the British Empire is so freaked out; that’s why the whole campaign against Trump exists. Because the last 25-26 years, when the City of London and Wall Street thought they could build a unipolar world, that is now out the window. That paradigm has gone under already, with the Brexit, the ‘No’ in the Italian referendum, with the Trump victory. And therefore the point is now to consolidate that, and make sure that the people who are trying to use every means to stop that change, are not successful.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche concluded that there is tremendous cause for optimism. “But $8 trillion in infrastructure investment cannot be mobilized with the present bankrupt financial system. But it can very well be implemented if you create a national bank, if the Chinese can put their U.S. treasuries into that infrastructure bank, and if you have coordinated productive investment after implementing Glass-Steagall, and LaRouche’s other three laws.

“The solution is really very close. So we should get people optimistic, and say to them: ‘Now is the time to move your behind; now is the time not to sit on the fence, because your fate can be turned into a much better situation in the short term. But we need you to act with us now.'”

Check out our latest report: ‘LaRouche’s Four Laws & America’s Future on the New Silk Road’, now available as a digital pamphlet