New Circumstances and What They Demand

The new phase of world history which was formally inaugurated when the Belt and Road Summit was held May 14-15 in Beijing with Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s participation, is continuing to overturn the old imperial order, and open the way to the world’s entry into the New Paradigm for which the LaRouche’s have been fighting for decades. These totally new circumstances now require of each of us that we sharply upgrade the level of our overall assessment, our commitment, and our leadership, to meet the qualitatively new challenges of the coming hours and days.

Today is the day that LaRouche’s Manhattan Project has gathered, along with hundreds of others, to pay tribute to the immortal classical-music teacher Sylvia Olden Lee. But on the very same day, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a State of Emergency for the New York transit system. Who can doubt any longer that the solutions which Lyndon LaRouche has so urgently demanded, are needed immediately—based on a massive program of Federal credit, as dictated by LaRouche’s “Four Laws?”

Although the Group of 20 Summit as such—scheduled for July 7-8 in Hamburg—is apparently doomed to irrelevancy because of the folly of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, nevertheless, a great many much more important bilateral and trilateral summits have been scheduled around and in the interstices of the Group of 20 meeting. The most important of these is probably the meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin, one which both we and President Trump—and probably President Putin as well—had hoped to hold much earlier. Everything about this Trump-Putin meeting has become a matter of hand-to-hand combat with those who want to prevent any understanding with Russia at all costs. Given that, as of now, there will be some sort of meeting between the two Presidents in Hamburg, official statements about what sort of meeting it will be, seesawed back and forth during the day. Most recently, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, said that the White House expected the meeting to be a formal bilateral one, rather than an informal “pull-aside” conversation.

On another front of the same war, President Trump moved forward from his June 1 rejection of the Paris Climate Accord, to tell a meeting at the Energy Department this afternoon, that, “Today, I am proudly announcing six brand-new initiatives to propel this new era of American energy dominance. First, we will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector—which I’m so happy about—which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy. A complete review of U.S. nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource. And I know you’re very excited about that, Rick. [Energy Secretary Rick Perry.]”

To end this report in an entirely different dimension— McKinsey consultants has just published a pathbreaking study on the Chinese economic engagement in Africa. McKinsey estimates that about 10,000 Chinese firms are active in Africa—about 90% of them privately-owned—of which they studied about 1,000 in eight countries. They note that since the year 2000, China has catapulted from being a small investor in Africa, to becoming its biggest economic partner by far. Nearly a third of the Chinese firms in Africa are involved in manufacturing, a quarter in services, about twenty percent in trade, and twenty percent in real-estate and construction. Twelve percent of African industrial production—about half a trillion dollars worth—is handled by Chinese firms. Chinese firms fill nearly half of Africa’s internationally-contracted construction market. Seventy-four percent of the Chinese firms in Africa said they feel optimistic about the future there, and most have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa, rather than in trading or contracting activities.

In the Chinese companies surveyed, 89 percent of the employees were African, adding up to nearly 300,000 jobs for African workers. Scaled up to the estimated 10,000 total Chinese firms in Africa, this suggests that Chinese-owned businesses employ several million Africans. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese employers provide some kind of skills training. In construction and manufacturing, half of the firms offer apprenticeship training.

Half of the firms had introduced a new product or service to the local market, and one-third had introduced new technology. In some cases, Chinese firms had lowered prices for existing products and services by as much as 40 percent through improved technology and efficiencies of scale.

Under “areas for significant improvement,” McKinsey says that by value, only 47 percent of the Chinese firms’ purchases were from local African firms. Another “area for improvement” is that only 44 percent of local managers at the Chinese companies were African, although some firms had driven their local managerial employment above 80 percent.

Something new under the Sun, is it not?