Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Silk Road Panel in Seattle

A panel on the New Silk Road was held during the 2016 Global Chinatown Conference Seattle Summit & Global Fortune Innovation Development Promotion Fair in Seattle on Feb. 24, sponsored by the North America China Council. The panel featured a 24-minute video with Helga Zepp-LaRouche on the importance of the Silk Road as a new paradigm for mankind. The leadership within the Chinese American community and U.S. business and community leaders more generally, have initiated the "Global Chinatown project" to further their own interests and to make the policies of the Chinese government better known among Americans. The inclusion of the Silk Road panel, which also included presentations by EIR Washington Bureau Chief Bill Jones and LaRouchePAC Policy Committee member and Northwest coordinator Dave Christie, underlined the importance the group attached to the topic and to our presence there.

While the fair might otherwise have been the usual run-of-the-mill "business conference," the addition of the Silk Road perspective and the participation of LaRouche in the event was seen by them as an important and dramatic elevation of what this project must accomplish. Both EIR and the Schiller Institute were billed on the program as sponsors of the event. In addition to business leaders and government representatives from Washington State and other parts of the U.S., the Vice President of the China Investment Association, Huiyong Liu, and the Deputy Director of the Central Economic Committee at the China Democratic League, Junsheng Wang, also participated, in addition to other business and academic leaders from China. There were many diverse topics taken up at the conference, including investment, smart cities, education, and the New Silk Road.

LaRouchePAC Policy Committee member Dave Christie moderated the Silk Road panel. Zepp-LaRouche delivered a hard-hitting video presentation highlighting her role in the project and reviewing her 25-year mission to bring the concept to fruition. She also presented a stark picture of the global strategic crisis, and offered the New Paradigm as the only path to peace, citing Nicolaus of Cusa's "coincidence of opposites" as the method of thinking required to deal with the global crisis, and laying out a vision for mankind's future based on a human creative identity.

Some of the Chinese participants were eagerly taking pictures of her on the screen and pictures of the maps that were depicting the route of the Belt and Road. Bill Jones presented Lyndon and Helga LaRouche's role in bringing the New Silk Road into existence, with a strong emphasis on the principles of mutual benefit which were expressed in the Treaty of Westphalia and reflected in the cultural climate of the melting pot of the ancient Silk Road. Dr. Hal Cooper then presented his role in promoting the Bering Strait Tunnel project, and the related high-speed rail grid for the United States as the U.S. joins the New Silk Road. Farzam Kamalabadi, a longtime promoter of the Silk Road concept, discussed the importance of the New Silk Road for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations and Northern Africa, and his role in facilitating trade and investment strategies.

Other business and academic leaders from China included Wang Junsheng, whose institute annually publishes a Blue Book on energy. He focused much of his speech on the importance of energy in the Belt and Road initiative. He was quite surprised -- and pleased -- when he discovered that there were people from the U.S. side who were speaking on the Silk Road project.

Some of the Chinese-Americans came up later and expressed their surprise at how much importance we placed on this initiative, which they had heard about but were not so well versed in. One young Chinese-American engineer was quite amazed to see non-Chinese Americans being so proactive on this issue of China's policy. A good number of contacts were made, and the organizers seemed very happy with the result, promising future cooperation as they continue their work in this series in other locations.