FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Portuguese Media Play Up Schiller Institute New Silk Road Report To Promote Port of Sines’ Role
Dec. 11, 2018 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute’s identification of the key role Portugal’s Sines port must play in the Belt and Road Initiative, as presented in the Institute’s Special Report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge: A Shared Future for Humanity, Vol. 2” received a new round of coverage in Portugal in the aftermath of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Dec. 4-5 visit to that country. Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding joining the Belt and Road during that visit, and the port of Sines was on the agenda.
Portugal’s leading business and economic journal, O Jornal Económico, kicked off the new coverage with a Dec. 7 story titled “Sines Port Named as a ‘Critical Point’ for ‘Silk Road’ Success.” Like the coverage in Macau’s government site Macauhub and in Revista Cargo on the Schiller Institute report prior to Xi’s visit, O Jornal’s story was taken from material circulated in Portugal by a Schiller Institute delegation which visited the country in mid-November, to present its New Silk Road report.
“The Schiller Institute updated its 2014 study on the impact of the Chinese ‘New Silk Road’ and considers the [Sines] port in Alentejo a crucial link for the success of this global initiative,”
O Jornal Económico wrote. The port is considered crucial by
“leading world specialists of the sector ... in particular for its special geostrategic, privileged position of linking the continents of Africa and the Americas, North and South,”
stating that the subject of the port was certainly on the table during President Xi’s visit last week.
Like Macauhub and Revista Cargo, O Jornal reported that the Schiller Institute is led by Helga and Lyndon LaRouche, and quoted the Schiller Institute’s evaluation that
“the Iberian Peninsula is, in fact, the natural geographical interface of the Silk Road Economic Belt, which now extends from the Pacific to the Atlantic through the landmass of Eurasia, with the Maritime Silk Road, which will extend to the West, across the Atlantic, to Ibero-America, the Caribbean and the United States, as well as south towards Africa.”
O Jornal Económico’s full article was available only to paid subscribers, but it was quickly published in full on the websites of the Association of Portuguese Ports, of the Association of Portuguese-Speaking Ports (APLOP, representing the ports of Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa and Brazil, as well), among others.
