It is almost certain that the impact of the BRI, which was initiated by President Xi Jinping only 10 years ago, will be judged by future historians of universal history as one of those outstanding occurrences which mark the end of one era and the beginning of a new epoch. 

Because in these 10 years – of which the first five or so passed rather unspectacularly, almost completely blocked out by the Western media and think tanks – the power of the large infrastructure projects of the BRI triggered a monumental change in the strategic situation. 

Many countries of the Global South could experience for the first time the transformational benefit of large infrastructure projects, and with them the concrete perspective to overcome the poverty and underdevelopment the neoliberal financial system of the transatlantic sector had condemned them to.

China of course was able to launch and carry through with the BRI based on the rich cultural tradition of the ancient Silk Road, because it had performed a gigantic transformation from a poor rural country to what could very well be already the most powerful economy in the world in terms of real productive capacities. 

Starting with Deng Xiaoping's policy of Reform and Opening Up, China started the most impressive poverty elimination policy ever by lifting 850 million people out of poverty, culminating in the very personal hands-on approach by President Xi finding ever more innovative ways to tackle poverty in remote rural areas. 

This unprecedentedly successful Chinese economic miracle was the innate credit the BRI offered from its outset to all future participating countries, of which there are now 150 and therefore representing the vast majority of the human species.

Contrary to Western critics of the BRI, who watch the world always through mirror glasses in which they only can see the projection of their own motives, and misrepresent the largest infrastructure project in history as a design of China's imperial ambitions, in fact the longer historic arc of the Chinese economic miracle extending into the BRI represents the greatest improvement to human rights on the planet so far. 

The worst violation of human rights

Poverty is the worst violation of human rights. Just imagine: a poor child is born to poor parents; malnutrition and inadequate healthcare prevent the fullest development of his or her body; no or poor education prevents the unfolding of all creative potentials of the mind; the child spends his entire energy to find one meal a day, then prematurely some treatable disease snatches away this uncompleted life for a lack of affordable medicine. The poor person dies, without ever having had the chance to live the life it potentially could have lived. Isn't that the worst violation of human rights, which so far has affected many billions of people? 

On the contrary: the same Western forces who complain about the BRI had decades after World War II in which they could have built infrastructure in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but they didn't. They preferred to keep the countries of the Global South deliberately underdeveloped as raw material exporting countries so that they would control all stages of the value added production chain and reap in the profit, while keeping the developing countries on the shackles of credit conditionalities, which cemented their disadvantage. 

This deliberate continuation of colonialism in its modern form not only ruined the lives of the victims of this policy, but also the moral character of the people who permitted this situation to go on, who are fantasizing that they live in a beautiful garden and the rest of the people live in a jungle.

An entirely rural society will remain poor. As the German economist Friedrich List noted, a purely agricultural society will always remain poor, since it has little to sell and even less to buy things, and therefore will not participate in a flourishing trade. 

The development of basic infrastructure therefore is the precondition and key for a harmonious development of agriculture, trade and industry, and manufacture encourages the arts, the sciences and skills, which are the source of prosperity and an ever increasing living standard. 

Infrastructure and productivity

Basic infrastructure, as it is the underlying conceptual foundation of the many projects of the BRI, opens therefore the gateways to the unleashing of the creativity of the individual to discover and apply fundamental universal principles of the universe as scientific and technological progress in the production process. 

It is that increase of productivity which is the only source of social value, not the resources as such or the conditions of trade. Infrastructure is not some addition to agriculture and industry: it defines on each level of its development the bandwidth of the immediate productivity per person and per square kilometer in the production process.

The cooperation among different countries with China in the framework of the BRI is making it possible that so far less developed countries can leapfrog to more advanced levels of infrastructure. Good examples of this are the railway between Kunming and Singapore, which makes Laos the first country to connect to the Chinese high-speed railway network using Chinese technology, and the intercity high-speed rail service which connects two of Indonesia's largest cities, Jakarta and Bandung, with a top speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

The trade between China and Europe has been facilitated to a great extent by 77,000 China-Europe freight trains over the last 10 years, providing services for 217 cities in 25 European countries, as the National Development and Reform Commission published recently. They transported 7.31 million containers of goods worth a total of $340 billion. 

The improved inter-connectivity and diversified transport channels clearly benefited all participating countries without "risks." Those propagating "derisking" from these advantages should study the basic lessons of economy. Those who want to be part of a new paradigm in international relations should cooperate with the BRI for their own benefit.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the Founder of the international Schiller Institute.