The following are the remarks delivered by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche to an international symposium held on Aug. 4 in Munich. They have been translated into English from the original German. The invitation read: “The Schiller Institute in Germany and the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Munich cordially invite you to attend the symposium themed ‘Implementing the Four Global Initiatives and Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind’ for in-depth exchanges regarding the major challenges facing humanity today and jointly exploring solutions.”
Dear Consul General, Mr. President, distinguished delegation from Dunhuang, ladies and gentlemen:
First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Consul General, for us to hold our joint event at your consulate.
Allow me to begin with a personal observation: In this extremely tense international situation, the very existence of the People’s Republic of China and the four global initiatives proposed by President Xi Jinping are, in themselves, a great source of reassurance—a kind of anchor of stability and reason—because they offer a perspective on how we can emerge from the strategic crisis that is rapidly escalating these days.
We are currently witnessing the escalation of the regional wars over Ukraine and Iran, and since the Ukrainian attack on an Iranian tanker in the Caspian Sea, there is not only the danger that these conflicts could merge, but each of them individually has the potential to expand into a global nuclear war. The U.S. President’s statements, which change by the hour, do little to alter this. Retired General Harald Kujat, former Inspector General of the German Armed Forces and former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, compares the current situation to August 1914, i.e. shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, with the difference that a new world war would be nuclear, followed by a 50-year nuclear winter that would wipe out all life on the planet.
In the face of this unprecedented danger, it is naturally of existential importance to seek ways out of this extremely complex crisis. It is evident to everyone that the old world order, as it was defined after the end of the Second World War and then again after the end of the Cold War, is in the process of disintegrating. The Anglosphere’s attempt to establish a unipolar world order after the disintegration of the Soviet Union has failed spectacularly and has given way to multilateral chaos, in which international law has, at least by some political forces, been explicitly declared obsolete, or expressis verbis.
Throughout the world, but especially among the nations of the Global South, it is observed with dismay that diplomacy as a method of conflict resolution has apparently disappeared in Europe. Instead, the desired outcome of their current policy seems to be a zero-sum game in which only one side can emerge victorious, while the supposed adversary must suffer a “strategic defeat,” even though the only possible consequence of such a policy is that everyone loses. Some in Europe are now painfully realizing that, in a world governed by the law of the jungle, where might makes right, we will not be among the winners.
In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2022, President Xi Jinping said: “In the turbulent waves of global crises, countries are not sitting in more than 190 small boats, but in one large ship with a shared future. Small boats cannot withstand the storm; only a giant ship can weather the raging waves.” In earlier eras, the civilization of one region of the world could collapse—as has happened, for example, with the Roman Empire—while other regions prospered during the same period, such as the Sassanian Empire (Persia), the Gupta period, India’s Golden Age, the Aksumite Empire (present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea), or, somewhat later, the Tang Dynasty in China. Today, in the age of nuclear weapons, the Internet, and pandemics that can theoretically spread worldwide within a day through air travel, we are, for the first time in history, truly all in the same boat.
Leading nuclear weapons expert Professor Ted Postol explains how the use of even a single nuclear weapon could lead to a global nuclear war within five days. Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Jacobsen reports on numerous Pentagon war-game scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons, all of which achieved the same result: total nuclear war.
The Global Governance Initiative, presented by President Xi on September 1, 2025 at the SCO-Plus Summit in Tianjin, represents the only state-proposed concept for strengthening the principles of the UN Charter and expanding them into a new security and development architecture that is just for the entire world population. While the GGI is already being intensively discussed among the countries of the Global South, such a broad and inclusive discussion is urgently needed in Germany and throughout the West. If the people of Europe and the United States became aware of the enormous potential contained in the four global initiatives—the GDI, GSI, GCI, and GGI—to solve global poverty, establish a comprehensive security architecture, foster a dialogue among civilizations, and create a stable world order, the widespread cultural pessimism of today would give way to a justified hope for a better future.
The Western mainstream media have thus far reported almost nothing about these forward-looking initiatives, thereby demonstrating a remarkable lack of expertise on China, to put it mildly. All we in the West would have to do is accept the offers of cooperation that China has made through the Silk Road Initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the four global initiatives, and constructive solutions could be found for all the problems that currently appear unsolvable.
The German economy is currently in free fall, and it is of existential urgency that we modify our economic model. Germany is an export nation and therefore must find new export markets. This very point was recently made by Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, one of the BRICS leaders, at the G7 summit in Evian, where he outlined a way out of Europe’s collapsing economy:
“The world will not experience a new cycle of prosperity as long as wealth remains concentrated in a few countries. It is necessary to create new consumers—and that will only be achieved through investment, job creation, and rising incomes in developing countries.” He went on to say, in essence, that if people in Africa, Latin America, and other developing countries have higher incomes, they will also buy more high-quality goods. That creates new markets and ultimately benefits the industrialized countries as well.
