While many branches of the Belt and Road Initiative - which officially united with Russia's Eurasian Economic Union in 2015 - have manifested across Europe in the form of rail lines and ports, to this day no actual agreement has been reached between European powers and China.
As President Xi Jinping's trip to Europe from March 22-28 has demonstrated, there is for the first time a sense that the post-industrial society dominant in the West since the 1971 floating of the dollar is no longer the dismal fate of nations.
Xi Jinping has carried the Belt and Road Initiative into the heart of Europe, a lifeline for all patriots who wish to survive the coming financial collapse. As of Saturday March 23, the first G7 country has officially joined this program, with Italy's Prime Minister Conte signing his country onto the historic Memorandum of Understanding with China, setting a great precedent for other member-states trapped within the Euro currency cage.
The MOU stated:
"The Parties will work together within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to translate mutual complementary strengths into advantages for practical cooperation and sustainable growth, supporting synergies between the Belt and Road Initiative and priorities identified in the Investment Plan for Europe and the Trans-European Networks, bearing in mind discussions in the EU China Connectivity Platform."After signing the MOU, Conte pointed out that the 10 economic agreements and 18 institutional agreements reached between China and Italy amount to a value of $23 billion - but more important than the money, the agreement carries a new set of "operating procedures" into Italy's world, tying money to long-term growth of the real economy rather than short-term fluctuations of the City of London/Wall Street-controlled markets.
It is this new set of rules, uncontrolled by Western technocrats, that keeps the oligarchy up at night. Italy's Minister for Economic Development, Luigi Di Maio, stated:
"Today is for us a very important day, in which 'Made in Italy' is winning, Italian firms are winning. We made a step to help our economy to grow. Italy came first with China."While the US National Security Council attacked this MOU days before Xi's visit, stating that it gives "legitimacy to China's predatory approach," La Trobe Asia's Executive Director, Euan Graham, pointed out that Italy had no real choice given that the European Union has nothing but austerity to demand of its member-states:
"It's not hard to fathom Italy's motives, since much of the country is literally crumbling at the seams."A Flank on France
By Sunday March 24, Xi Jinping found himself in France, meeting with Emmanuel Macron and signing $63.6 billion of deals, but unlike the case of Italy, no similar MOU to join the Belt and Road Initiative was achieved. Soon thereafter the two heads of state were joined by Angela Merkel and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker in an unannounced meeting. Regardless of Macron's resistance to joining the BRI, it was a brilliant success and demonstrated how China's response to the hostility often presented by the NATO-led Western alliance has been to respond with olive branches and good will at every turn. In an op-ed titled 'Move Together Towards Common Development' published in Le Figaro, President Xi wrote:
"I take great delight to see that the China-France relationship is beaming with vigor and spring. On this visit, I will bring with me goodwill toward France. Such goodwill is based on the admiration both from the Chinese people and from myself for the splendid history and culture and the unique charm that France has to offer. It is also inspired by how our two great cultures have engaged and illuminated each other...."After calling for scientific, nuclear power, and aerospace cooperation and collaboration on the Belt and Road Initiative President Xi ended his op-ed with:
"We need to join hands to tackle challenges, promote global prosperity and stability, and build a community with a shared future for mankind."China knows that the Western banking system is on the verge of a collapse much greater than anything which struck in 2008, and they know that as that reality hits, the desire for real policies that carry real development, growth and survival of the PHYSICAL (rather than merely monetary) aspects of the economy will become a priority for Western nations.
This is a reality which the utopian technocrats attempting to manage a crumbling system - like the gods of Olympus - cannot deal with, and a reality which should empower citizens across the world to organize for a better world founded on cooperation, common development and long-term thinking.
About the author
Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and is an author at Fort-Russ. His works have been published in Executive Intelligence Review, Global Research, Global Times, The Duran, Nexus Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Veterans Today and Sott.net. Matthew has also published the book The Time has Come for Canada to Join the New Silk Road and three volumes of the Untold History of Canada (available on untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org). He can be contacted at matt.ehret@tutamail.com
Reader Comments
We were at that time in 2008 when the political / financial abusers should have been forced to retreat or flee but we did not know it and our venal media hid the facts from us. Now we know.
The solution to 2008 was not a cure just a delay. The time has arrived when debauching the currency has ceased to attract investment. Capitalist know the paper money value is maintained by sleight of hand (forward buying at high prices to suggest its still worth something) and the same 2008 opportunity will recur. Are we ready this time?. Do we know what to do?
Well this article contains the most beneficial solution - the BRI initiative. Fingers crossed our political dreamers can recognise it and welcome it.
But the American Empire is dying, rather quickly too. Its solemn word is worth less than pig-shit, its multi-trillion-dollar military cannot beat ragged tribesmen armed with rifles and sticks of dynamite, and its economy is collapsing, helped along by the use of sanctions as a weapon. Its government representatives reveal themselves to be more ignorant of the real world than a European third-grader. They are so ignorant they do not even know what is really going on in America. Their scientific understanding and world-view would fit in perfectly in twelfth-century Europe.
Italy has done the smart thing, and turned towards the emerging Empire, that of the East. Three hundred years from now, China too may start to decay, but right now it is filled with optimism and energy, the polar opposite of the West, which is mired in despair and decay.
The Chinese middle class is getting richer and richer every year, and they are as large as the entire population of Europe or America. They want the luxury goods, fashion, and style that the old Empire of the West produces, and this means Italian and French fashions and luxuries. Read again what Xi said in Paris. He was telling the French what the Chinese want to buy from them, but the French leadership turned their backs on him and spurned his offer. Such stupidity could not be believed, if we did not see it in action before our eyes.
Bravo Italy!!
Typical psychopath move to blame the other of exactly what he is doing.
There should be a competition and perhaps Sott.Net would host it whereby examples are culled from the usual sources - Fox News, CNN, BBC, etc and a raffle run on the number published each day.