Helga Zepp-LaRouche to Junge Welt:
‘The New Silk Road Was One of Our Ideas’
[Print version of this article]
Sept. 13—Junge Welt (Young World), a German daily, published a brief interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the German political party, Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BüSo) on Sept. 13, under the provocative title, ‘The New Silk Road Was One of Our Ideas’—provocative in the current debate over China’s New Silk Road in the German Federal election campaign, in which Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is leading a national slate of candidates. Junge Welt, published in Berlin, is a Marxist daily with a readership of 50,000. Without explanation, the interview was taken down from its website the next day.
In the interview, when asked what the BüSo stands for, Zepp-LaRouche replied, “We want a new paradigm in politics—a shift away from geopolitics, to the common aims of mankind. We believe that a continuation of geopolitics holds the danger of confrontation with Russia and China. That is one of the reasons we support the initiative of Xi Jinping to create a New Silk Road on the basis of win-win cooperation among all the nations of the world.”
But the New Silk Road is more than a Eurasian concept, she said: “This new model of economic cooperation has found widespread support in Latin America and above all in Africa. That rather obviously goes beyond the scope of a Eurasian Union. The development of Africa, as we see it, is the unique opportunity to solve the refugee crisis on a human basis, by combatting at long last the consequences of colonialism and of the subsequent IMF credit conditionalities. Only the development of infrastructure creates the preconditions for a real development of the entire continent.”
China’s Economic Miracle
Junge Welt asked about meeting the needs of working people.
Zepp-LaRouche: “In Europe generally, we have the problem of youth unemployment, that has immense consequences even now in southern Europe. When a third of young people are neither working nor studying, it means that they have no future. In Germany too, we have a gigantic problem of poverty, which the government had to admit in its Report on Poverty. In the prevailing circumstances, those who have the misfortune to be born into poor families have little opportunity to escape it.”
The interviewer aked what kind of redistribution she would like to see.
Zepp-LaRouche: “It is not so much a matter of redistribution, although naturally a different tax law would make sense. But what is urgent is the creation of new, productive jobs, which cooperation with the New Silk Road would help to accomplish. For example, we must invest more energy in fundamental research, and in developing cutting-edge technologies. We would raise the productivity of the entire working population through this kind of future-oriented cooperation. We should do what China is doing now. China gives great importance to excellence in education, especially in the natural sciences and engineering. That is exactly what Germany did to create its Economic Miracle, whereas today, the banks are dictating policy, which is the reason all of these abuses exist.”
Junge Welt asked if Zepp-LaRouche thought it was realistic to expect that her ideas would be adopted.
Zepp-LaRouche: “The vision of the New Silk Road was one of our ideas for creating a peaceful world order for the 21st Century. We have worked on for it for 26 years, and the Chinese government fully recognizes our part in this perspective. We are portrayed much more fairly in the press there than in the mainstream press here. Thus we are a party that operates on an entirely different plane than other so-called ‘small parties.’ And I would hope this will be converted into votes as well.”
In concluding, the interviewer asked whether Zepp-LaRouche would describe herself as a socialist.
Zepp-LaRouche: “I would describe myself as a humanist, as a world citizen.”
