Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Bring the United States into the New Paradigm!
[Print version of this transcript]
The following is an edited version of a dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche that took place at a special LaRouche PAC Manhattan Meeting on August 26, 2017. That conference, which included presentations by Mrs. LaRouche as well as a panel of experts, dealt with the necessity for the immediate implementation of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws. A full video of the event may be found at https://larouchepac.com/20170827/manhattan-town-hall-revive-hamilton-s-american-system-and-presidency-through-larouche-s
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Ladies and gentlemen in New York, I’m very happy to be able to address you, because this gives me the opportunity to emphasize from my own perspective why I think that this is the most dramatic moment in history—in our lifetimes. If this goes in the right direction, then we could be in a completely New Paradigm, in a new set of relations among nations in a very short period of time. And if it goes in the wrong way, we would be quickly back on the course of confrontation with Russia and China, as we were with the previous administration. Given all the crisis spots and drama points of the situation, this could lead to World War III and the extinction of civilization.
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Combat Camera
Bush-Obama era perpetual war: Helicopter deployment in Iraq (left) and patrol in opium poppy field in Afghanistan (right).
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I think between these two possibilities, the tension could not be greater, and obviously the place where this is fought out is the United States. Now, there is a coup in process, and I think we better go back to the article which appeared in the British magazine the Spectator on the 21st of January, where they—under the headline “Assassination, Coup, or Impeachment?”—discussed the need to get rid of President Trump, this only one day after his inauguration. It was quite amazing that from minute one, the trans-Atlantic establishment reacted to the election of the President with shock, with unacceptance, and with a complete demonstration of disrespect which I have never seen manifest against an American President. Now remember, that the people who put themselves in the moral high seat, so to speak—these are the same elites who have no problem with the wars declared by Bush and Obama, wars which were based on lies, which have cost literally millions of lives in the Middle East and elsewhere. They had no problem with the drone killing; they had no problem with the civilian casualties of these drones, calling them “collateral damage.” They turned a blind eye to the suffering of the people in the United States, whom Hillary Clinton called so despicably “the deplorables.” They had no sympathy for the lack of development in the Middle East or in Africa, which has resulted in millions of people fleeing from these areas.
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DoD photo/Staff Sgt. Kaily Brown, U.S. Army
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Now these liberals, who are now attacking Trump in such an arrogant way, are the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights, of democracy, of western values, and they have declared war on the Presidency of President Trump. What is the crime of President Trump in their eyes? He promised to improve the relationship with Russia; he subsequently established a very good relationship with President Xi Jinping of China. He pledged—and is in part implementing it—to end the interventionist wars; he promised to return to the American system of economy, of Alexander Hamilton, Henry C. Carey and Lincoln, and to create jobs in that tradition. And he promised to fight the horrible drug epidemic going on in the United States right now. All of these policies, however, were a threat and are a threat to the idea of a unipolar world which the neo-cons had tried to establish in collusion with the British after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was their policies which promoted color revolution, regime change, interventionist wars—and this is on the record. Victoria Nuland, obviously in collusion with her boss, Hillary Clinton, admitted that the State Department of the Obama administration spent $5 billion in the Ukraine alone to cause regime change. Remember, the narrative about the Ukraine—namely that Putin supposedly changed the borders by force—is a complete lie, because it was the regime change policy to which Russia reacted. It was that narrative which has been one of the key reasons for the demonization of President Putin in Russia.
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creativecommons/tandalov.com
Neo-Nazi protestors in the Maidan, January 2014.
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Due to the heroic forensic investigation of the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), which proved that there was no Russian hacking, but there was a leak from the inside, Russia-gate is sort of on the back burner right now, and it may go nowhere—in large part because the Schiller Institute distributed the findings of the VIPS internationally.
So now you are looking at the next phase of the coup, which started or escalated in Charlottesville, a city which was called the center of resistance against Trump by its mayor, Signer, from day one. So what happened was, you had a violent demonstration, the KKK and the white supremacists on the one side, and the Antifa on the other side—in a typical gang-countergang fashion, which was obviously permitted by the mayor and a police force that did not even keep these two groupings apart; they clashed. For everybody who remembers the role of the FBI in the Civil Rights movement, it was clearly a moment of déjà vu, of remembering how these gang-countergang violent escalations are controlled.
Obviously it is not Charlottesville, it is not the gangs and countergangs on the ground—but behind that is Wall Street, the neo-con operators who are orchestrating what has been called correctly a “Maidan II,” in reference to the coup against the elected government of Kiev. Obviously, a third force is moving, controlling both sides. This situation has created such chaos that, for example, the official paper of the Chinese government, the Global Times, compared what is going on in the United States right now to the Cultural Revolution of China which lasted from 1966 to 74. That was a period which the present Chinese people and government look back on as probably the darkest moment in the history of China. Under the rule of the Gang of Four and the Red Guards, you had a reign of terror. People were taken out of their beds in the night; any intellectual was attacked. People were really living in horror. We are in danger of that climate developing in the United States. I was absolutely reminded of the last days of the Weimar republic, when the Nazis and the communists were similarly fighting it out in the streets. That is what led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. It is obvious that this whole scenario is threatening to tear the United States apart.
Financial Breakdown and Remedy
Let me add one more dimension to this picture. The same financial system that the neo-cons are trying to preserve is about to collapse. The deregulation of the trans-Atlantic financial sector after the repeal—first of Bretton Woods in 1971, and then Glass-Steagall in 1999—led to these incredible excesses in speculation and then to the financial crash of 2007-2008. Ten years later, the situation is much worse than it was then. All the so-called instruments of the central banks have been used up—quantitative easing, pumping of money, negative interest rates; all of these policies have increased the state debt, the corporate debt, the student debt, the auto debt, and all of these crises could erupt at any moment, triggered by any one incident: a collapse of a large number of corporate firms, the Italian banking crisis, or any other derivative failure. Everyday, $5 trillion of currency is floating around the globe; $5 trillion every day.
There are many crises. For example, the level three derivatives; these are the derivatives which cannot be sold because they are toxic. They are sitting there like a complete bomb in the system. Spiegel magazine had an article warning of the next crash a couple of days ago. The former Italian economic minister Tremonti said the next crash is absolutely about to happen. So, the extreme danger is very clear. If this were to happen in an uncontrolled way, what would such a financial crash do to the already extremely explosive situation in the United States? Under those circumstances, a civil war and a plunge into complete chaos is absolutely thinkable.
There is a remedy available, and the solution is already in place. About four years ago, China’s President Xi Jinping initiated, very much in cohesion with our own efforts of the Schiller Institute, a policy he called the New Silk Road. This has become, in four years, the largest infrastructure program in history. It is already—some people say, twelve times, others say twenty times, as big as the Marshall Plan. There are an unbelievable number of projects in progress: six large economic corridors in different parts of Eurasia, seventy countries cooperating fully with China, and at the Belt and Road Forum in May there were 110 countries represented. Silk Road cooperation has gained enormous traction in Latin America, but also in Europe, despite the relative opposition of the European Union. The 16+1, that is, the Central and Eastern European countries, are fully cooperating, and so are Italy, Portugal, and even France.
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Xinhua
An Ethiopian driver gets on the train in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Chinese- financed and -built railroad was inaugurated Oct 1, 2016.
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But the largest change in the strategic situation, as the result of the New Silk Road, has arrived in Africa, where China has built many, many projects: a railroad from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, another from Rwanda to Kenya is in progress, and many industrial parks and hydropower projects. The largest single infrastructure project in history has now been agreed upon by the Chinese government and the Italian government: the development of the Trans-Aqua project, which is the idea of bringing water from the tributaries of the Congo River to Lake Chad. This will provide irrigation to twelve countries; it will allow inland shipping; and it will change the whole agricultural situation. It is being promoted by the same Chinese firm which built the Three Gorges Dam.
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Lake Chad Basin Commission
The livelihood of millions depends on Lake Chad, now severely depleted, shown in an aerial photo. The largest single infrastructure project in history, the Trans-Aqua project, bringing water from the tributaries of the Congo River to restore the lake, has now been agreed upon by the Chinese and Italian governments.
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This is very, very important, because the biggest Achilles Heel, in my view, of President Trump, is the fact that all these maneuvers against him have made it virtually impossible for him to deliver on his promise to create jobs and build infrastructure worth $1 trillion. Now some jobs have obviously been created, but it has not led to the total change which FDR was able to implement with Glass-Steagall and the New Deal, and that kind of big change is absolutely necessary. That is what we are trying to put on the table, and maybe the crisis in New York can be the trigger point to cause that change to happen.
An End to Geopolitics
Now infrastructure normally has a life expectancy, depending on the category, of anywhere between twenty and fifty years, but most of the infrastructure of New York is already about 100 years old. As a result, you have trains derailing, you have fires in the subways, and absolute chaos. Now, compare that to China. China had built, by the end of last year, more than 20,000 km of high-speed rail systems. You can only see such high-speed rail systems in China, not in the United States or Europe. By the year 2020, China wants to have all major cities connected by high-speed rail systems. They now have a fantastic project, which I think is of the highest interest for New York. It’s the idea of taking the entire region of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province, which has about 130 million people, and completely modernizing it by building a new city outside of that, to relieve the pressure on infrastructure in Beijing and around it. Now such an approach could be taken for New York, for example, because I don’t think you will solve the problem of New York infrastructure by just repairing this little piece and that little piece. You need a complete grand design. China has offered to invest $1.4 trillion of its U.S. Treasuries in American infrastructure. Just a few weeks ago there was a meeting in New York, where the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Ambassador Cui, reminded people that looking back in history, there were sixteen examples where one country was economically surpassing the leading country. In twelve cases it led to war, and in four cases, the emerging country just took over the role of the old leading country. Ambassador Cui said that China does not want either of those, but wants to propose a completely new paradigm of win-win cooperation, what President Xi Jinping always calls a community for the shared future of mankind.
Now, many people are reluctant to accept these Chinese offers, and they think what China is doing is just pursuing its own interest, or just trying to replace Anglo-American imperialism with Chinese imperialism, e.g., to take over the raw materials of the world. But I think this is a wrong conception, because we can not stay in the geometry of geopolitics, of the idea that you have a legitimate interest of one country or a group of countries against another group of countries—or even worse, of maintaining a unipolar position, where you will not allow any other country to become stronger. Well, China has 1.4 billion, and India has more than 1.3 billion people. The idea that the United States will be the unipolar power forever is just not realistic. We have to find a different approach.
The problem is that many think-tanks, and especially the mainstream media, look at this like looking into a mirror. What they see in the mirror is their own face, namely evil intentions, geopolitical games, imperialist domination, manipulating the rules to your own benefit, and promoting color revolutions. So they have these policies, and they just project the mirror of their own evil thinking. It is quite interesting, that the German magazine Der Spiegel, which is the German word for “mirror,” has exactly that name.
What China is proposing is a completely new paradigm—win-win cooperation, which is based on very clear principles of non-interference into the internal affairs of other countries, respect for the sovereignty, and the interest, of the other. People have to grapple with that concept. What we are talking about is a completely new paradigm, a completely new idea that you have to put the interest of mankind first, and then comes the interest of any individual country. Now that method was developed for the first time by Nicholas of Cusa, a great thinker of the 15th Century, who developed a method of thinking of the coincidence of opposites—the idea that the human creative reason is able to formulate a level where the one is of a higher magnitude, of a higher order, than the many, and that you can, on the basis of reason, find that higher level of interest, where the conflicts of the many are solved on a higher plateau.
Now, this method of thinking is not just a philosophical conception. It was the basis for the Peace of Westphalia, and it is presently the effort to replace military solutions with diplomatic solutions. Fortunately, this is already happening in various parts of the world, despite back-and-forth and disturbances. One very good example of where this method is working is Syria, where because of President Trump’s collaboration with Putin, there is a ceasefire in almost all of Syria right now. You have right now—in the last couple of days—a very large industrial fair in Damascus, with high-level delegations from China, from India, and from Japan—and the reconstruction of Syria is now on the table. Six hundred thousand Syrian refugees have already moved back, and there is hope that many more can return to their homes. In Afghanistan, despite the very unfortunate announcement of President Trump that he will send more troops to Afghanistan, there are other initiatives. For example, the Afghan government has just invited India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, the United States, and China to participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and that must be the solution.
As to the Korea crisis, South Korean President Moon has reconstituted the Northern Economic Commission, and in that way signalled that he is intending to go back to the Sunshine Policy of President Kim Dae-jung, which is the idea of collaboration between South Korea and North Korea, together with Russia and China, in the development of North Korea.
Win-Win Policy for the World
Now the same approach must be taken in the United States. Just a few days ago, the civil rights leader Andrew Young responded to the events in Charlottesville by making exactly that point. He said the reason for these clashes is not race; the reason is poverty. Therefore, the way to solve this crisis is to create jobs. Now that is the American system of economy. This is what Henry C. Carey was talking about when he talked about a harmony of interests.
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CGTN
Calm is being maintained and displaced persons are beginning to return to Southwest Syria, as the U.S. and Russia collaborate in ceasefire.
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This is very urgent, because of the danger of the financial collapse, because of the danger of a social explosion in the United States. What must be put on the table urgently is the Glass-Steagall law of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in combination with the other laws proposed by my husband Lyndon LaRouche—which are for Glass-Steagall, a national bank, a credit system, and then a crash program for the development of fusion power and international cooperation in space technology, because you very urgently need a huge jump in the productivity of the economy.
Now the renewal of the New York infrastructure can be the key trigger to put such a change on the agenda. I think the only way it will function is to think about it as part of this global change, of all these development approaches to Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, and many other parts of the world. If this happens, then the United States could participate in the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank. American corporations could participate in many of the projects of the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese firms and engineers could invest in the United States, and you would have a completely new world in a very short period of time.
Now, global peace and social peace in the United States are part of the same new paradigm, and in both cases, the new name for peace is development. Thank you. [Applause]
Question: I’m Elliot Greenspan. Recently, in a piece in the Economist by Steve Bannon, in looking at the Chinese initiatives for global development, Bannon says, “We’re going to screw the One Belt One Road,” and he counterposes Judeo-Christianity to what he calls the mercantilist-Confucian order. He calls for the triumph, over the next generations, of “Judeo-Christianity” against the “mercantilist-Confucian order.” You had addressed some of this at two prior conferences this year, and I think it would be invaluable for you to set the record straight: What is it exactly that China is actually proposing? What is the Confucian order and so on? And how is it that we have a potential for a coincidence of opposites, so to speak, here?
Zepp-LaRouche: I don’t know what is going on in the head of Mr. Bannon, but I can assure you that most of the people who oppose the Belt and Road Initiative in Chinese policy, are doing that for quite different reasons than they say. They claim that it’s democracy and Western values and all of these things, but in reality it is the geopolitical control of the world. And therefore, I think it is important that people study what China is actually doing. Read the speeches of President Xi Jinping, and you will find that he expresses a completely different philosophy, namely a harmony of world development, based on the Confucian tradition, which after all is the tradition of 2,500 years of Chinese history, only briefly interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, which deliberately turned against it.
The Confucian idea of harmony is based on the maximum development of the individual, the self-perfection, lifelong learning, and improvement of the character; and based on that idea, everyone is challenged to become a wise person and a noble person. I have made the comparison to Friedrich Schiller’s idea of Aesthetical Education, where there is also the idea that each individual must become a beautiful soul, a beautiful character. Pursuing lifelong self-perfection of your mind and your character—this is the model, then, of a harmonious development of a family. That all the members of the family should strive toward the maximum development of all the other family members. You all know that in a good family, this is how the parents care for their children, or how the children care about their grandparents. A harmonious family, even if it has become a rarity in these modern times, has been the foundation of any functioning society, not only in China but actually everywhere.
That idea is then, for Confucius, the model of the harmonious development of the whole country; and by extension, the harmonious development of all nations on this planet.
Samuel Huntington, the evil author of The Soldier and the State and the Clash of Civilizations, claimed in this ridiculous book—which only proved that he knows nothing about Christianity, or Confucius, or Islam, or Hinduism—that Asian philosophy is incapable of universal conceptions. That’s not true! There is only one leader right now, who in a clear form, speaks about the one humanity, the community of a shared future, and a community of common principles, and that is Xi Jinping.
If you look at the reason the Chinese model is so attractive, it is not because it is offering military alliances, but is offering economic benefits for all countries which participate. China accomplished an unbelievable economic miracle in thirty years, lifting 800 million people out of poverty and creating a very sizable middle-level income bracket. Now their plan is to eliminate the remaining four percent of poverty by the year 2020.
China has, without any question, contributed the most to eliminating poverty, not only in China, but in many other countries, by offering the Chinese model to participating countries, countries that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The facts simply speak for themselves: For example, countries in Africa are optimistic for the first time that they can overcome poverty and underdevelopment, because of China—not because of the European Union, not because of the United States, but because of Chinese investments in infrastructure.
So there are, in a certain sense, facts to prove that China is, indeed, doing what they are claiming to do, and that is the reason that the Chinese model has developed a tremendous attractiveness around the world.
I would suggest to people who have doubts about what I an saying—don’t simply believe me, but start with reading the speeches of Xi Jinping, and look at the tremendous success story of China. If you take a vacation, travel to China—go to these places, talk to the people, and you will see that people are optimistic.
I just wrote an article about good government and bad government, which has been an issue since the Renaissance. I think government is not a “self-purpose”: Government is there, as the American Constitution says, for the happiness of the people. I think that all of these factors should help to overcome the prejudices which are spread by all the American think-tanks, and most of the German think-tanks. Unfortunately, Mr. Bannon seems to be very uninformed about what is going on, and maybe it’s a good thing he’s no longer there in the Trump Administration to spread his ideas.
Uplift the People
Question: This is Alvin in New York. We, in New York and throughout the country as a part of this movement, this organization—it’s been made clear to us how it is now our responsibility to awaken and uplift the citizens who are otherwise terribly demoralized and confused.
Yesterday, I viewed once again, an address that Mr. LaRouche gave in 2004 in Talladega, Alabama, where on the occasion of talking about Dr. Martin Luther King, LaRouche noted the qualities of leadership Dr. King possessed, and the association, in Lyn’s mind, of having the Crucifixion of Christ embedded within him. LaRouche went on to describe the case of Joan of Arc, her story, and thirdly the tragedy of Hamlet, which all seem very relevant to us now.
So I was wondering, since it is our job: can you talk to us more about that kind of love and agape—that type of leadership which is the only thing that can move people; that we have to demonstrate to them now?
Zepp-LaRouche: Well, it is very clear that people are struggling with demoralization. This is not only the case for the United States, but since we organize in Europe as well, we have noticed, even though the dynamic is quite different—because you have the Trump voters in the United States, of whom you have very few in Europe—but people are now worried. When Trump started to do the first things, like the meeting in Mar-a-Lago, the sending of Mr. Pottinger to the Belt and Road Forum, the ceasefire in Syria, people were actually very optimistic that Trump, indeed, was going in a completely different direction.
But then all of these attacks occurred. “Russiagate” was pounded in every day, new attacks from former intelligence heads from the Obama period, and the media campaign—the media in principle is only reporting negatively. Just to give you an idea, the Washington Post and the New York Times, which are the worst enemies in the campaign against Trump, have about 84% negative coverage; but the First German Television Channel has 98% negative views! So you can imagine that if people only watch these mainstream media, which are absolutely controlled by this neo-con apparatus, that people become depressed and demoralized.
Indeed, I would be telling you something wrong, if I said you can sit calmly and watch this thing, because it is extremely dangerous. Just think about all the open assassination threats coming against Trump: The Julius Caesar performance in New York, all the so-called Hollywood celebrities openly threatening, saying they could imagine assassination, ripping down the White House, and the unbelievable use of language. And then naturally this orchestration which you saw in Charlottesville, which was really an extremely evil thing. So there is reason to be extremely concerned.
But I think you have to look at the dangers without getting paralyzed, and without giving up, because the potential obviously is still there. And what I said earlier about the cease-fire in Syria, the hopeful signs, despite all the negative problems in Afghanistan, South Korea—these are indeed absolutely the beginnings of settling conflicts, all of which could have been the trigger for World War III.
I think it requires exactly this quality which you mentioned, which Lyndon LaRouche spoke about so beautifully in the Talladega speech: that when you are confronted with a great danger—but you know that the outcome of history for many generations to come depends on your own courage and your own activity—then you have to rise above your own life, and you have to call forth within yourself this quality of the Sublime, which Schiller spoke about so beautifully. Schiller said, if man is merely a mortal being, the threat to his physical existence will cause him to have fear. But what if you connect your life to ideas and principles which are bigger than your own life—like what will happen to the United States for generations to come? How can we intersect this historic conjuncture so that we overcome, for the very first time in history, the idea that you solve conflict with war? An idea which we should absolutely give up, because if you use thermonuclear weapons, that is the end, and civilization may just cease to exist.
We are at a point in history where people have to really become heroic, and fearless, and optimistic, and happy. Once you have all of these qualities mobilized in yourself, I think we can absolutely make a miracle, because I believe that there is something in the laws of the universe which gives us a chance to win. It is that quality about which Leibniz spoke, saying that a great force of evil catalyzes an even greater force of good, because that is the true freedom of the human being. I think the universe is made that way, and there are laws in this universe which you can call “natural law”; in other parts of the planet they call it cosmic laws. But there is a lawfulness in the universe which, if you do what you have to do—some people call it providence, some people call it just performing your historical responsibility—I think if we fulfill this, I think as Schiller said, even the longest arm of the tyrant can be pulled down, and we will win this battle—so be courageous! [applause]
Question: In order to become more courageous, sometimes people have to free themselves from the grip of deep lies. While we’ve been making tremendous progress in getting Americans to see China differently—it’s very different than even six months ago—yet there’s no question that there’s anger over what happened in the 1970s, with so many American jobs being shipped to China. I would like to ask you to comment on my own personal view of this, which is that when Nixon and Kissinger went to China, that while they went there to win China over against Russia, they also pursued the idea of China becoming the chief labor outpost of the United States, and that China was desperate for some kind of transformation. You’re an authority on this. Actually, China Daily just published a beautiful article in which you talk about your own visit there in 1971, and I’ve always wanted you to say something about this, about how they got drawn into that agenda.
Zepp-LaRouche: It is really funny because when I was in China in the summer of 1971, that was the moment when it was announced that Kissinger would come. I was surprised. Everybody else was surprised because this was the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and the talk about the United States at that time was that U.S. imperialism is just a paper tiger, meaning that it’s not very strong. You had a completely different dynamic then. China of the Cultural Revolution is the opposite of what China is now. Because of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, they have completely rejected everything that was associated with the Gang of Four. You have to imagine, they are as different as the Germany of the Classical period and the Germany of National Socialism. I mean you wouldn’t blame Schiller (unless you’re an idiot of the Frankfurt School) for what happened in the twelve years of the Nazi regime, and you wouldn’t compare present-day Germany with those twelve years. You wouldn’t compare the previous sixteen years of U.S. policy of Obama and Bush with the American Revolution. In the history of a country, you have completely different periods, depending on which faction takes over. When Kissinger and Nixon started the opening-up, it had exactly this geopolitical dimension against Russia, and in the first years of the opening up, China was completely a cheap labor market for the United States and for Europe.
We opposed that. I remember that we criticized this tremendously. We said this is not in the interest of China. It’s not in the interest of the United States. In the United States, it destroys jobs, and in China the cheap labor income does not pay for the cost of living for the population. It was a form of looting. While China was able to accumulate a certain amount of foreign currency and wealth doing that, it did so at the expense of the environment. China has very significant environmental problems—air pollution, polluted water—and this was because the cheap-labor production was just that, cheap labor. It didn’t protect the environment; it did not protect the labor force. I visited some factories at that time, and people were putting together transistor radios and things like that under sweatshop conditions. It was just completely horrible. It was really a bad policy, and it was completely rejected by Deng Xiaoping after the death of Mao, when the Gang of Four could be kicked out.
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NASA
Deng Xiaoping (center) and his wife Zhuo Lin (right of him) being briefed by Johnson Space Center director Christopher C. Kraft (right front) on Feb. 2, 1979.
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Deng Xiaoping had sent economic delegations to the United States and to European countries, and they studied there. In France, in Germany, and in Holland, they studied Friedrich List, and step-by-step, they replaced this cheap-labor production with the present policy which is completely the opposite. China, by applying this Confucian, Listian, Carey method of economy, has now put all their emphasis on excellence, on leap-frogging to the most modern technologies. As a result, China is now the avant-garde and the leader in many areas, like for example, high-speed train systems. They’re building the best high-speed train systems in the world right now. They have 20,000 kilometers (probably more by now) of high-speed rail while the United States has exactly 250 miles of high-speed rail, which goes 250 km/h at high speed, which is nothing. China already has trains that go 320 km/h and soon they will have trains that go 400 km/h.
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www.ibnlive.com
By 2012, China’s space program sent its first female astronaut Liu Yang into space when it launched Shenzhou 9 to dock with its prototype space lab.
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In other areas like fusion research, nuclear power, space research, China is now absolutely leap-frogging to number one; and in a certain sense, that worry of the trade union leaders and others in the United States that China is stealing jobs is not true. I mean just think what enormous potential will open up if the United States would cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative. It could rebuild its own middle-level industry. They could invest in all of the projects in Latin America, Africa, and along the Eurasian Land-Bridge. It would completely change the situation, and also rebuild the United States. You could have complete change in the United States. You could have fifty new cities. Why not build fifty new cities? Between the coasts, there are many states which are extremely thinly populated, with almost no cities—you could connect those cities with those of the coasts with the high-speed rail system, and you could have science cities. People have to have a power of imagination. China has done these things and is doing these things, also in other countries—China-Ecuador, China to places in Africa.
I think it is really important to imagine a completely different system. If the United States would now do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did—a New Deal, Glass-Steagall, and cooperate with China—the United States could experience an industrial revolution bigger than at any time in its own history. People have to understand that we are right now at the end of a system, a system which cannot be saved. We need to replace it with a completely new system. People just have a hard time imagining that, but there are examples of such changes. For example, the Marshall Plan in Europe was such an example, and the Meiji Restoration in Japan was such an example—so was what Roosevelt did with the New Deal. People have to grasp that such a dramatic change is absolutely possible today.
Question: This is Daniel in New York. I want to encourage everyone here to come out in the street with us and in every capacity, both at our public tables and interventions at town hall meetings, at conferences, and all the types of things that we need to do. Now’s the time to act with us. I want to report that particularly in the recent period, there’s been an explosive response to the effort to defeat this coup. We have been going to areas around New York City, and we also have people all across the country, including on the West Coast and in Michigan, who are finding people running up to our tables to join the LaRouche Movement in defending Trump and in creating this economic breakthrough for our nation.
I recently read with a couple of people a paper by Lyndon LaRouche which he dictated from prison, after he was railroaded into prison by Robert Mueller and others, which is In the Garden of Gethsemane, in which he says that only those revolutions that appeal to the divine spark of reason within the individual will succeed. It seemed to me that this represented a different concept of intelligence from what we commonly understand in the culture today. I wanted to ask you if you have any comment on that, with this in mind of getting much more mobilization in public activity from our supporters and friends.
Zepp-LaRouche: The enemy, as you say, does not really have a lot of methods. All they can say is that the Belt and Road Initiative will collapse because so much credit is financed by Chinese banks—but the difference is very simple. If you look at the enormous amounts of real production, infrastructure, factories, industrial parks, railways, hydropower projects, and bridges—the credit invested in the Belt and Road Initiative has resulted in real wealth. If you look at Wall Street and the City of London, on the contrary; they are investing in paper—not even paper but electronic figures in a computer. They say the Belt and Road Initiative will collapse because of this credit policy, but the reality is that the Belt and Road Initiative is already everywhere. Just because you don’t read it in the media, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I was talking to some people in Europe in the last couple of days in different countries, and they all said, “Your policy is winning. It’s coming. You know you were one important influence. This is your policy.” So, people who’ve known us for a long time know that, and therefore, you should just make sure that many people know about this alternative, because once people know that there is a completely different system, people start to think completely differently, and they become angry that they are being told lies, or the truth is being withheld from them. I think right now the key thing is to be confident that once people know this, then they change. I think we have a tremendous moment. All it requires is for President Trump to announce something big, like Roosevelt did with the New Deal. I don’t put it beyond President Trump that he can do that. I think President Trump has the character, he has the temperament to surprise his opponents, and I think that we should create an environment in the country to encourage him to do that. We have to increase the pressure from the population for Trump to go for a grand design for the United States, to be bigger than the pressure by Wall Street for him to remain within the box. They want to box him in. They threaten that if he doesn’t capitulate, they’ll kill him or impeach him. The way to get President Trump out of the box is by having a lot of people demand that he keep his promise of $1 trillion or preferably $8 trillion investment in infrastructure. I think that you have to have an absolute optimism that this can be done. It’s not Congress. The international environment for it already exists, so all we need to do is to get the American population to demand that Trump do what he proposed, and everything can be solved quickly.
With this mobilization, I think we should aim to find people in the Democratic Party who are not completely crazy (and I’m convinced that there must be some) and those people in the trade unions and other institutions, and basically use this absolutely unique opportunity. As long as President Trump is in office, that change can be effected. I think if we appeal to this option then people will have the courage, and I think it is the heart, and it’s the passion for humanity, which will make the difference, and not the algorithms of Wall Street. [applause]
