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Hindustan Times
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Guerrilla-turned-filmmaker: Colombia's versatile envoy in Beijing
Colombia's ambassador to China first arrived in Beijing six decades ago and trained under Mao Zedong's revolutionary forces, before returning home to join a communist guerrilla group. Sergio Cabrera then made a name for himself as an acclaimed filmmaker, and now his storied career has brought him back to the Chinese capital where he is spearheading Colombia's landmark rapprochement with the Asian giant. The 75-year-old envoy was a young teenager when he came to China in 1963, accompanied by his communist parents who entered the country secretly in order to teach Spanish. His return to Beijing is "stimulating and very exciting", he told AFP, especially with the capital city now full of skyscrapers and modern electric cars on its streets. "Compared to Bogota, Beijing was a village," Cabrera said in an interview inside the stately Colombian embassy, with shelves lined with books and walls adorned with posters of his films. "It was a one-storey city. There were no avenues, no cars, people were dressed all the same. It was a poor country. I remember my sister saying to me: 'Why is dad bringing us here?' "You see this country now and it is a country full of abundance, of possibilities, where there is everything," he said. "At that time there was nothing." Those years followed shortly after Mao's ruthless reform to modernise China's agrarian economy, known as the Great Leap Forward, causing enormous shortages and millions of deaths from famine. The young man knuckled down to learn Mandarin, which he still uses today, and soaked up the revolutionary thinking of the times. He served as a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution Mao's violent movement against capitalist and bourgeois influence and worked in agricultural communes and factories. After training with the People's Liberation Army he returned to the Colombian jungle to join the communist guerrilla movement. But after four years, he told AFP he left the armed struggle feeling "deeply disappointed". "I realised that there was a tendency of pathologically lying, to invent that we were very powerful and to believe it," he said. From Colombia he returned to China, where he studied at Peking University before turning to what had always been his dream filmmaking. Through movies with strong political undertones such as the acclaimed "La estrategia del caracol" , Cabrera found "ways to revolutionise a little" the public's mind on the silver screen. "Since I can't do it the hard way, or with bullets, I'm going to do it the good way," the director told AFP. And in contrast to that passion for "creating worlds" in cinema, his job as ambassador for more than two years has involved grappling with real-world issues on behalf of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro. A former guerrilla like himself, Petro has entrusted him with the task of strengthening ties between Colombia historically aligned with the United States and China. "I can't make a revolution through diplomacy," he admitted. "But I can continue with the idea of transmitting, of somehow improving bilateral relations." As a result of the diplomatic pivot, Colombia this month signed up to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, a project already involving two-thirds of Latin American countries. "We were like the black sheep of the flock," Cabrera said, branding the step as "very beneficial" for Colombia. However, the agreement has aroused the unease of US President Donald Trump's administration, which sees Latin America as a crucial player in its struggle with China, and Cabrera admitted the move comes at a "delicate moment" in relations with Washington. "There have been frictions and we know that President Trump is against any rapprochement with China," he said. But "the sovereignty of one country cannot depend on the need to be allied with another". Closer relations have been years in the making. Over the last decade, imports from China doubled to $14.7 billion in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, they even surpassed those from the United States, which nevertheless remains the main destination for Colombian products, with almost 30 percent of the total. As Bogota draws closer to Beijing, Colombian business owners have grown concerned about the impact on the volume of US-bound foreign trade. But Cabrera urged them to overcome their "fear of the reactions of the United States". According to Cabrera, the agreement will generate investments in transport or clean energy and will help to open up the Chinese market to products such as beef or coffee, which is becoming increasingly popular in the traditionally tea-drinking country. The possibilities would be even better with a trade deal with China like those signed by Chile and Peru, he argued, while conceding that "in Colombia, there is not a good climate for a free trade agreement". bur-dbh/je/hmn/rsc
Economic Times
21-04-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Not just GDP: Why India must think like China and Japan, says Sridhar Vembu
Agencies Zoho's Sridhar Vembu Sridhar Vembu doesn't mince words. 'We Indians have had it far easier,' he wrote in a powerful post on X. 'I am not saying 'easy' in absolute terms, but compared to what the Chinese endured, it was much easier. We need to keep this perspective. The Chinese story is an inspiration.'His message: if India wants to rival China, it must embrace a much deeper transformation—one rooted in history, sacrifice, and Zoho founder isn't talking about GDP figures or quarterly earnings. He's urging a national mindset shift.'The Chinese never thought of it merely as 'developing the economy'. They thought of their national project as 'reviving their great civilisation',' Vembu explained. That, he said, is the core idea India must urgently Vembu, the difference lies in what fuels a nation's growth. 'This crucial point is so easily missed in purely economic discourse,' he wrote. 'It is about the culture and the civilisational mindset as much as it is about technology and industry.' In other words, a true national revival begins when people see themselves as heirs to something far older and grander than just a GDP graph.'We are not just growing the GDP and meeting quarterly numbers, as important as those may be in the short term,' Vembu said. 'Let's resolve to ourselves that what we are working on is nothing less than the revival of our great civilisation.'He believes this shift in thinking can build endurance and purpose. 'We must look beyond [our past], as hard as that is,' he wrote, referring to India's centuries of colonisation and invasion. 'Only then can the nation maintain the morale and endurance needed for long-term transformation.'To drive the point home, Vembu urged his followers to study China's modern history—its immense pain, missteps, and sheer resilience. 'Please read the history of China, of the last 100 years,' he said. He pointed to Mao Zedong's catastrophic Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962, when millions perished amid forced collectivisation, backyard steel furnaces, and mass starvation. 'About 30 million people perished as they killed landlords and intellectuals and the poor starved to death.' He also cited the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), when schools were shut and patriotic citizens were purged as 'capitalist roaders.' 'So much sorrow and heartbreak. So much human sacrifice to Maoist frenzy,' Vembu wrote. Despite all that, China rebuilt itself.'They survived all that and somehow revived their nation,' he said. Even Deng Xiaoping, architect of China's economic reforms, 'didn't have it easy at all' and barely survived three political point? India's challenges pale in comparison. But without matching China's will and long-term clarity, it risks remaining stuck in cycles of half-hearted critique isn't just philosophical—it's grounded in the reality of India's tech sector, especially the Indian IT services India's biggest software exporters posted disappointing quarterly results, Vembu warned that the downturn isn't just cyclical, nor merely caused by AI or Donald Trump's new tariffs. Instead, it signals the start of a painful reset.'Our jobs came to depend on [inefficiencies],' he wrote bluntly. He argued that for decades, the global software industry thrived on bloated systems and an input-driven billing model. India, he said, inherited and amplified this dysfunction.'A two-person team can outperform a 20-person team,' he stressed. Yet, Indian firms kept hiring in bulk, simply because fixed dollar budgets and low per-capita costs allowed a model that rewards bloat over brilliance. 'Billing by staff-months removed the incentive to innovate or streamline,' he many worry that AI will destroy jobs, Vembu sees it differently. AI, he said, brings only modest gains—for now. The deeper problem is that the industry was built on years of easy money, duplicated systems, and a fear-of-missing-out culture that justified spending without software became 'saturated,' he noted in an earlier post, due to 'easy VC, PE, and IPO money.' Companies layered on complexity and confusion, and Indian IT firms rode the that wave is warned that the current 'funding drought' means the day of reckoning has arrived. Unlike in 2008, when central banks flooded the system with cash, there's no easy escape this urged the industry to challenge old assumptions. 'The next 30 years will look nothing like the last,' he pointed to Indian banks as a model of lean, efficient tech adoption—forced to innovate without inflated budgets or Western-style time has come, he believes, for India to stop being the back office of the world and start solving problems at user on X echoed this sentiment, lamenting that 'generations of talent were sacrificed to function as backdoor offices for global giants.' They said this reliance undermined India's autonomy and user blamed the 'culture of jugaad,' calling it a barrier to true innovation and digital sovereignty. Vembu agreed.A third warned that with global cash flows drying up, not just tech—but finance, consulting, and other white-collar sectors—could face serious another user highlighted a structural flaw in India's service model: revenue depends on billable hours. Efficiency, ironically, becomes the enemy. 'Engineering teams resist efficiency initiatives if they lead to reduced billable hours,' they the critique, Vembu's message is ultimately one of he believes, is at the edge of a profound turning point—not just in industry, but in isn't about complaining over policy or corruption. 'We will not complain about this shortcoming or that bad tax policy,' Vembu wrote. 'We will not even complain too much about the corruption of our fallen political system.'Instead, it's about choosing to believe in something bigger—something ancient.'Let's resolve to ourselves that what we are working on is nothing less than the revival of our great civilisation,' he wrote. A call not just to work harder, but to dream longer.
The Guardian
14-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What does China really think of Trump? That he and vengeful chairman Mao would have got on well
When rare protests flared in China in 2022, one slogan read: 'We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution.' It alluded to complaints that the country's leader, Xi Jinping, was behaving in an increasingly Mao-esque manner. His extraordinary dominance over his party, political repression, tight social controls and burgeoning personality cult all lent themselves to comparison with the man who ruled China for decades. Yet Xi is committed to order and discipline, exerting authority through the organs of the Communist party. Mao Zedong relished disruption and turned to the power of the masses. That's why, increasingly, many in China are comparing Mao to another modern-day leader. Despite the ferocity of Donald Trump's trade war, they are perhaps just as shocked by what he is doing to his own country. They see a proud nation felled not by an external threat, but by the unbridled ego of the man at the top – a vengeful, anarchic force who uses dramatic rhetoric to whip up the mob and destroy institutions, and unpredictability to reinforce his power. It looks awfully familiar. In one widely circulated essay on US politics, the legal scholar Zhang Qianfan calls it 'America's Cultural Revolution'. Instead of tightly controlling everything, as Xi and other strongmen prefer, Trump sees opportunities in upheaval. Like Mao, preparing to unleash the Cultural Revolution almost 60 years ago, he appears to believe that a brighter future will be reached through 'great disorder under heaven'. Obviously, the analogy can only go so far. The decade-long Cultural Revolution saw perhaps 2 million people killed or hounded to their deaths and tens of millions persecuted in acts of extraordinary cruelty. It destroyed much of China's culture, closed schools and universities, silenced its greatest thinkers and tore families apart. No one elected Mao, and without a palace coup there was no way to remove him. The US has powerful checks and balances and free speech protections. This is about resonance, not repetition. But even before Trump won office, the writer Jiayang Fan noted the two men's 'polemical excess and xenophobic paranoia'. In 2017, the sinologist Geremie Barmé's lengthy comparison argued that Mao too 'portrayed himself as an outsider who championed an uprising of the masses against a sclerotic system'. As I researched Red Memory, my book on how the Cultural Revolution still shapes and scars China, Trump's uncanny ability to channel the public's id felt disconcertingly familiar. Like Mao, he amplifies political power by dividing where other leaders promise to unite. The revolutionary nature of Trump's second term only strengthens the case. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution after his disastrous Great Leap Forward: a hubristic economic plan that led to as many as 45 million deaths from famine before more pragmatic figures reined him in. He wanted revenge and the removal of doubters unwilling to pursue his next implausible goal. 'We can observe a purer Trump exactly as [the Cultural Revolution] revealed a purer Mao,' writes Michel Bonnin, a leading expert on the Cultural Revolution. The president, too, has shaken off restraints. Many on the right loathe these comparisons, however qualified, and not only because of the era's brutality or the shock of seeing their hero compared to China's most famous communist. They (and, in fairness, some Chinese survivors) argue that the Cultural Revolution is better compared to US campus protests in recent years, casting intolerant students as modern Red Guards. But even if you share their disapproval of protesters, the comparison doesn't hold. The Red Guards were Mao's means to Mao's end, born of his cult and able to run riot only with his support and encouragement. As Prof Zhang writes in his essay: 'Essentially, the Cultural Revolution means the supreme leader orchestrating a mass movement … harnessing ordinary citizens to root out disobedient elites.' Trump has replaced seasoned professionals with destructive ideologues, rendering parts of the state unable to function. His dislike of experts recalls an era in which loyalty and political attitude – 'redness' – were more important than technical knowhow. We are urged to 'trust the president's instincts' as the global economy shudders. Chinese citizens were once told to 'just follow' Mao's instructions, including 'those we fail to understand for the moment'. Leaders around Mao were often startled to learn his intentions from state media; Trump's cabinet is caught out by Truth Social posts. Like Mao, Trump makes ambiguous or contradictory statements, then sits back and watches underlings take chunks out of each other. What lessons might the US take from one of the grimmest parts of Chinese history? The first is that Mao was able to wreak havoc because those around him feared his often lethal wrath and did not fully comprehend his vision's extremity until it was too late. Republicans, business leaders and others can challenge Trump, yet still choose not to do so. The second is that nothing lasts for ever. The Cultural Revolution limped to a close with Mao's death in 1976. What followed was an extraordinary social, cultural, economic and even political flourishing. While democratic impulses were never allowed to take root, traces of that era's hope and creativity endure to this day, despite Beijing's best efforts. If that can happen even in a one-party system then perhaps, post-Trumpism, something better awaits. Yet China is still paying the political, social and psychological price for Mao's folly and ruthlessness. The longer such a campaign rages, the greater the damage done. Tania Branigan is foreign leader writer for the Guardian and author of Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution
Boston Globe
12-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Trump showed his pain point in his standoff with China
By pausing some tariffs for dozens of countries for 90 days and exempting electronics from some tariffs, he also gave away something to his main rival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with whom he has engaged in a game of chicken that risks decoupling the world's two biggest economies and turning the global economic order upside down. Advertisement Xi learned that his adversary has a pain point. As reckless and ruthless as Trump may seem to some parts of the world, in Xi and China, he is squaring off with a leader and a party state that have a long history of single-minded pursuit of policies, even when they resulted in economic and human catastrophe. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Among Chinese, a consensus among Beijing's critics and its supporters is that the endgame may come down to which leader will be able to make his people endure misery in the name of the national interest. 'Tariffs and even economic sanctions are not Xi Jinping's pressure points,' Hao Qun, an exiled Chinese novelist who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, wrote on the social platform X. 'He is not particularly concerned about the hardships tariffs may cause for ordinary people.' Advertisement Unlike Trump, Xi does not speak to the Chinese public through social media platforms, although he controls all of them. Everything he says and does is choreographed. It is impossible to get into his head because the public knows little about him beyond his official facade. But insights into how he might react in his standoff with Trump can be found by looking at how he views hardship, his relations with the Chinese public and his record as the leader of a nation of 1.4 billion people. The Chinese internet is full of nationalistic chatters about the need to 'resolutely fight back and stand our ground to the very end.' People shared a video clip of Chairman Mao Zedong talking about the Korean War: 'We will fight for as long as they want to fight, and we will fight until we win completely.' Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, shared comments made by the former chairman in 1964, calling the United States 'a paper tiger.' 'Don't believe its bluff,' Mao Zedong told a French parliament delegation visiting China. 'One poke, and it'll burst!' Some commentators online invoked the Great Leap Forward to show the Communist Party's ability to enforce austerity at times of difficulty. The party waged the campaign between 1958 and 1962 to rapidly industrialize China. Its policies defied science and the laws of nature, resulting in a famine and tens of millions of deaths. While starving people in the countryside were resorting to cannibalism, Mao instructed the farmers to eat grain bran and edible wild plants. 'Endure hardship for one year, two years, even three years, and we'll turn things around,' he said. Advertisement Xi, whom some Chinese view as Mao's successor to the mantle, likes talking about the benefits of withstanding hardship. Born in a revolutionary family, Xi experienced political turmoil and adversity at a young age. His father, a vice premier, was purged when Xi was 9 years old. During the Cultural Revolution, Xi's father was severely persecuted. The son, not yet 16 years old, had to move to a village deep in the Loess Plateau and work as a farmer. 'The seven tough years I spent living and working in the countryside were a great test for me,' he was quoted as saying in a long feature by the official Xinhua News Agency. 'Whenever I encountered difficulties later on, I would think of how, even under such harsh conditions back then, I was still able to get things done.' It was 2023, and China's economy was struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic. Youth unemployment skyrocketed. Xi told young people they should learn to 'eat bitterness,' using a colloquial expression that means to endure hardships. In a state media article about Xi's expectations for the young generation, the word 'hardship' was mentioned 37 times. Early in 2022, it was evident that the omicron variant was too contagious to contain but that nearly all other countries that had embraced vaccines were able to reopen their economies. But Xi insisted that China live through his draconian 'zero COVID' measures while resisting importing Western vaccines. Hundreds of millions of people endured lockdowns, daily tests and forced quarantines. Many lives and livelihoods were ruined. In the past few years, Xi has resisted the calls of many economists and even his own officials to provide cash support to the public to boost consumption. In a 2021 speech, he urged against 'welfarism,' saying, 'Once welfare benefits go up, they don't come back down.' Advertisement The truth is 600 million Chinese take home less than $140 a month and have minimum social benefits, a major reason they save so much and consume less than the economy needs. Xi did end zero COVID eventually, but did so abruptly without proper vaccination. Many were quickly infected, seniors died, and long lines formed outside crematories. China's chronic real estate meltdown seems to have finally pushed Xi closer to accepting the idea of helping consumers, although some economists believe it might be too late, especially in the face of the trade war. Xi does have a pain point on the economy: He can't let things get so bad that it jeopardizes the legitimacy of the party's rule. Nationwide protests in November 2022 helped bring zero COVID to an end. The tariffs threaten China's exports, which are driving the country's economy. On Friday, Xi made his first public comments about the tariff war. 'China's development has always relied on self-reliance and hard work -- never on the charity of others, and never fearing any unjust suppression,' he was quoted saying by the state media. As the world learned this week, Trump cannot completely ignore the financial markets or the Wall Street and tech billionaires who supported his campaign. They reached out to his Cabinet members to convey their concerns. Even loyalists like Elon Musk and William A. Ackman, the hedge fund manager, expressed their disagreement with the president's tariff policies. Advertisement It's hard to imagine that any Chinese entrepreneurs would dare to do the same or, like Musk, have the channel to convey their concerns to Xi, who has pushed aside his political opponents and cracked down on private companies. If Trump aspires for absolute power like Xi, he has a long way to go. I have been checking Chinese social media the past few days hunting for any well-known company or entrepreneur complaining about the trade war. I found none. Ordinary people who lamented online that they faced pay cuts or lost business because of the tariffs were shot down by nationalistic commenters and labeled 'unpatriotic.' That's a base Trump can't compete with. 'Submitting to hegemony has never been an option for China,' wrote a Weibo user Thursday. 'If we could kick out the Americans during the Korean War, we have nothing to fear' with its tariff stick, the post continued. 'We must respond with an iron fist.' The comment was liked more than 3,000 times. This article originally appeared in
Telegraph
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Britain's betrayal of Jimmy Lai repeats an old mistake
This column normally resists the fashion of trashing the British empire. It contained many horrors, but its greatness was real. Like the Roman, it should be properly studied, not ignorantly deplored. In one respect, however, we are not self-critical enough. Our imperial withdrawals were not always as benevolent as we make out. Some, such as Canada or Singapore, were successful. Others, like the partition of India, caused great suffering. The last big colonial withdrawal was Hong Kong, which looked good but wasn't. Despite the best efforts of Margaret Thatcher and the last Governor, Chris Patten, the Foreign Office's long-term policy towards our once astonishingly thriving colony failed in its declared objectives. Witness the story of one man, Jimmy Lai, currently languishing in solitary confinement. It is well told in his recent biography The Troublemaker by Mark L. Clifford. Mr Lai was born in southern China, probably in 1948, just before the Communist Revolution. His father fled to Hong Kong, severing ties with the family. Jimmy's peasant mother brought him up as best she could, forced to a part-time labour camp, and returning home at weekends. During the week, the young Lai children had to fend for themselves. Aged 8 or 9, Jimmy, became a porter at the only station which admitted visitors from Hong Kong to mainland China. One day, during the famine caused by Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward, a passenger gave Jimmy a half-eaten Cadbury's Bar Six. He loved this unknown substance: 'That triggered my determination to go to Hong Kong.' Aged 12, he made it, hidden in a fishing boat. He reached his impoverished aunt in Kowloon. When he woke the next morning, he could smell proper food, the smell of freedom: 'I was so when the food was served, I stood up to eat it.' Jimmy quickly got work in a glove factory, losing a finger-tip in an accident. At night, he learnt English. Soon he became production manager at a weaving factory. In time, he acquired a textile factory, graduating eventually to retail and founding his first Giordano fashion shop in 1981. He was now a millionaire. Radicalised by the Tiananmen Square massacres of 1989, Jimmy Lai feared for Hong Kong's freedom after the colony's promised handover to China in 1997. In 1990, he launched a magazine, Next. As well as lots of showbiz scandals, it exposed political ones, argued for freedom and denounced Communism. In 2003, Next exposed China's cover-up of the SARS virus. When Covid-19 appeared in 2020, such reporting had been snuffed out. In 1995, Mr Lai launched the even more raffish Apple Daily. It published, for example, a user's guide to Hong Kong prostitutes. When Jimmy Lai became a Roman Catholic in 1997, he repented of such acts of naughtiness. Catholics were and are prominent in defending Hong Kong freedoms. (Alas, the present Pope, Francis, is not.) He had become a British citizen the year before and remains one. The British empire gave Hong Kong 'rule of law, private property, freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion,' he has said, 'That is why China is very afraid of us.' Unfortunately, modern British governments are very afraid of China. Soon after 1997 handover, China began violating the 1984 Anglo-Hong Kong Agreement. Apple Daily led the opposition to the new national security law which Beijing, thus breaking the agreement on 'One Country: Two Systems', wished to impose. Half a million people marched against the measure. The law was shelved. But gradually the clampdown tightened. Jimmy Lai's publications were now the only big ones which dared defy the authorities. In 2013, the huge 'Umbrella Protests' began, opposing the regime's attempt to go back on promised free elections. Mr Lai helped organise a protest plebiscite, which suffered a massive directed denial of service (DDoS) bombardment from China. At one demonstration, party thugs threw pig's offal all over him. Disgracefully some British banks withdrew their Apple Daily advertising. During further repression in 2019, Apple Daily signed up unprecedented numbers of subscribers with the pitch, 'Resist injustice with truth. It only costs 22 cents a day.' It ended up costing Jimmy Lai a lot more. He was arrested in 2020, charged with illegal assembly, the first of many such moves. The National Security Law was finally introduced, criminalising dissent and ditching jury trials. Unlike most business leaders, Jimmy Lai stayed and fought. Prison was the result, as was the freezing of his many millions. The final edition of Apple Daily appeared on 24 June 2019. Currently, Mr Lai is remanded in custody, awaiting a much-postponed trial under the National Security Act for 'colluding with foreign forces' – viz. meeting the then Vice-President, Mike Pence, in Washington. He languishes, with diabetes, alone in a windowless cell. He is allowed only visits from his wife. Silenced, he draws religious pictures, mainly of Christ on the cross, which sometimes reach the outside world. All legal moves against Mr Lai are carried out with the appurtenances, including wigs and gowns, of the English common law, yet the reality is that China has imposed totalitarian oppression. The former President of our Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, is still a 'non-permanent' judge on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, lending spurious respectably to this charade. Mr Lai and thousands of other Hong Kong people learnt about and flourished from freedom under the British Empire but have now been betrayed by the manner of its retreat.
