By Pepe Escobar
February 22, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - The New
Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) –
were launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first
in Central Asia (Nur-Sultan) and then Southeast Asia
(Jakarta).
One year later, the Chinese economy overtook the
U.S. on a PPP basis. Inexorably, year after year
since the start of the millennium, the U.S. share of
the global economy shrinks while China’s increases.
China is already the key hub of the global
economy and the
leading trade partner of nearly 130 nations.
While the U.S. economy is hollowed out, and the
casino financing of the U.S. government – repo
markets and all – reads as a dystopian nightmare,
the civilization-state steps ahead in myriad areas
of technological research, not least because of
Made in China 2025.
China largely beats the U.S. on
patent filings and produces at least 8 times as
many
STEM graduates a year than the U.S., earning the
status of top contributor to global science.
A vast array of nations across the Global South
signed on to be part of BRI, which is planned for
completion in 2049. Last year alone, Chinese
companies signed contracts worth up to $128 billion
in large-scale infrastructure projects in dozen of
nations.
The only economic competitor to the U.S. is busy
reconnecting most of the world to a 21st
century, fully networked version of a trade system
that was at its peak for over a millennia: the
Eurasian Silk Roads.
Inevitably this state of things is something
interlocking sectors of the U.S. ruling class simply
would not accept.
Branding BRI
as a “pandemic”
As the usual suspects fret over the “stability”
of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Xi
Jinping administration, the fact is the Beijing
leadership has had to deal with an accumulation of
extremely severe issues: a swine-flu epidemic
killing half the stock; the Trump-concocted trade
war; Huawei accused of racketeering and about to be
prevented from buying U.S. made chips; bird flu;
coronavirus virtually shutting down half of China.
