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Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Long-lost, tattered Town Hall diary, signed by leaders from Zhou Enlai to Saddam, restored
On a December afternoon in 1955, Soong Ching-ling – known better as the 'Mother of Modern China' – stood beneath the high grand Victorian Edwardian-style arches of Chandni Chowk's Town Hall, bathed in the warmth of applause. Zhou Enlai signs the visitor's diary, flanked by then PM Jawaharlal Nehru and a young Dalai Lama in 1956. (Mahika Aggarwal) 'India, China. Two nations resurgent. Peking, New Delhi. The new Asia arising. Peace, Friendship. One Billion Pairs of hands. Your protectors! Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai. Hindi-Chini Bhai,' she wrote in the Town Hall's visitors' book in Chinese, sealing the moment with the optimism of the short-lived Hindi-Chini friendship of the 1950s. Soong, an honorary president of the People's Republic of China and a revolutionary figure in her own right, had come to New Delhi in the dawn years of India's independence. Back then, Delhi's Town Hall was more than a civic building – it was the city's diplomatic salon. Under its colonnades, mayors welcomed presidents, poets, and heads of state. Civic receptions were staged with the gravity of statecraft: symbolic keys to the city exchanged hands, garlands draped over shoulders, abhinandan patra (formal letters of congratulations) read aloud as cameras clicked. For decades, those encounters seemed to live only in fading photographs, and in the memories of dignitaries and officials who were part of these meetings. Then, during a routine record room cleanup last year, a municipal heritage team stumbled upon a piece of history. A battered, leather-bound visitors' book. Its spine cracked, its pages foxed and crumbling, the ledger held in its hand-inked lines the ghost of an era — signatures, messages, and sketches from foreign dignitaries who passed through Delhi from the 1950s to the 1980s. 'It's a treasure,' said a senior official from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which is now restoring the book. 'Every page tells you what the world thought of India in those formative years, and how Delhi presented itself to that world.' The first pages record Soong Ching-ling's flourish in 1955, followed by a neat November 1956 note from Zhou Enlai, China's premier. He wished for the 'peaceful construction' and 'long friendship' of two nations, ending with 'Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai' in carefully brushed Chinese characters — hope inked just years before the 1962 war would shatter it. Two lines down, a royal signature: Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor whose reign bridged the colonial and post-colonial worlds. His 1956 visit was steeped in solidarity. Ethiopia still remembered India's support during Italy's brutal occupation two decades earlier. Selassie came to speak with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru about African and Asian decolonisation, Delhi at that moment being the nerve centre of what is now known as the Global South. These grand gestures often unfolded under the watch of Ram Niwas Agarwal, president of the Delhi Municipal Committee from 1954 until 1958, just before the creation of the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). His granddaughter, Mahika Agarwal, has preserved photographs in a family album she calls Bauji's Delhi: her grandfather alongside Nehru and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia; her grandmother welcoming Soraya, the Empress of Iran, in February 1956; her grandfather greeting Queen Elizabeth. Also among these photographs are one of Zhou signing the book, flanked by Nehru and a young Dalai Lama in 1956 – three years before the Tibetan leader fled to India and sought refuge. In the book, Tito's words appear – a typewritten note from November 15, 1956, during the Unesco General Conference held in Delhi: 'The days which we spend in New Delhi will remain as an unforgettable memory. The warm reception given to our delegation by the citizens of this beautiful and blooming city has left a deep and pleasant impression on us.' The 1956 UNESCO conference, which was the first to be held east of the Mediterranean, transformed Delhi into a diplomatic amphitheatre. For a month, global faces debated science, education, and culture even as the Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution shook the world. Tito's friendship with India would later be immortalised in the naming of Josip Broz Tito Marg in south Delhi. The ledger, which became a chronicler of that historic summit, reads like a roll call of mid-century history. There is Nehru's own signature in 1955, then President Rajendra Prasad's in the same year, Japanese PM Nobusuke Kishi in 1957, Harold Macmillan and his wife in 1958, New Zealand's PM Keith Holyoake, and Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, in February 1958. In 1959, Edwina Mountbatten – the last Vicereine of India – signed her name during a visit from then Burma, a reminder of the colonial past still in memory. 'This was a time when the city, through its mayor, was part of international diplomacy,' said a municipal heritage official. The Town Hall's embrace was not limited to politics. On November 21, 1957, Marian Anderson – the celebrated African American contralto whose voice became a weapon against segregation – is found mentioned as well. Anderson was a poignant figure in American civil rights movement. Two decades earlier, barred from performing before an integrated audience in Washington, Anderson had sung instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a concert arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt. By 1957, she was a goodwill ambassador for the US State Department, touring Asia. In Delhi, under the gaze of Gandhi's statue behind Town Hall, she performed 'Lead Kindly Light' – the first Westerner to sing at his memorial. Some entries, meanwhile, are more surprising, especially in hindsight. In 1974, a young Saddam Hussein – the then deputy leader of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council – filled half a page in Arabic, praising 'shared experiences and historic relationships' between the two nations. Back then, he was a rising regional figure; decades later, his name would be synonymous with war and dictatorship. By the late 1970s, the tone of the book changes. Many entries are signed not by presidents and premiers but by committee members, bureaucrats, and cultural delegations. Pages are missing, torn, or water-damaged. Officials suspect the gaps conceal other major visits – or perhaps that they were lost during Delhi's political upheavals in the 1980s and '90s, when the corporation was suspended for years. Today, about 140 pages have been painstakingly restored. Conservators humidify the brittle paper, flatten creases, and reinforce torn corners with Japanese tissue. The fragile handwriting – from elegant calligraphy to hurried scrawls to foreign scripts – is being digitised, each name cross-referenced with archives, newspaper clippings, and family collections. Photographs and, where possible, film footage are being sourced to accompany the book in a planned municipal museum gallery. Saroj Kumar Pandey, a conservator working on the conservation project, said that such brittle papers with handwritten notes using ink require extra care. 'Paper has not strengthened and torn pages are are filled in with Japanese rice paper. We use gluten-free starch as an adhesive. Each paper is tested through bleeding test and ink signatures are stabilised using chemicals after removing stains.' In Chandni Chowk, Town Hall stands restored on the outside, its mustard-yellow façade bright against the jostle of traders and rickshaws. Inside, the council chambers are silent. But in the ledger's pages, Delhi's voice is vivid – hopeful, confident, eager to be seen. The rediscovered visitors' book is more than civic memorabilia. It is an atlas of mid-century diplomacy mapped onto one city's address book. And in that sense, the book serves as a memory of how Delhi imagined itself – as a Capital not just of India, but the epicentre of the post-colonial world.
Telegraph
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The French revolution should never have happened this way
It is more than 50 years since Zhou Enlai said that it was too early to say how the French Revolution had turned out. However, in this well-researched, detailed, though sometimes dense book, simply titled The French Revolution, John Hardman appears to have brought us nearer a conclusion: although change had to come in a country where feudalism survived long after it had disappeared in England, and absolute monarchy was unsustainable, it would have been far better that matters changed in a different way to what actually occurred. Hardman claims, justifiably, to have written the first purely political history of the revolution for over a century. This does not mean that the colour of extraneous events is entirely eliminated; but if you want the full drama you would do better to start with a more generalised history that takes a bottom-up view of the proceedings, for Goodman's is unashamedly top-down. (Although it was written nearly 190 years ago, and has, in terms of material available, long since been surpassed, Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, which in parts reads rather like a screenplay, still gives the reader all the atmosphere he or she could need.) Hardman does not write for the uninitiated. Although he begins his book helpfully with a dramatis personae, and ends it equally helpfully with a retrospective timeline, some basic idea of what happened in the years before and after 1789 is broadly assumed. New readers should not start here, but those who know the general story, or think they do, will find his book adds a thorough and different dimension to the events. Some, but not all, assumptions turn out to be true. King Louis XVI harmed his cause by his reluctance to end France's caste-based politics and system of rule, for castes that had been long excluded were only more determined to have a part in the running of their country. As for Louis's wife, Marie Antoinette of Austria (l'Autrichienne was one of the more charming sobriquets the French people found for her), she really never was quoted uttering 'qu'ils mangent de la brioche' – 'let them eat cake' – when the mismanagement of the economy by the ancien régime has caused grain and therefore bread shortages. However, her extravagance, her colourful private life (she was not faithful to her husband) and her willingness to become involved in the government of the country in which she had no constitutional right to interfere became well known beyond the court, and made her deeply unpopular. Hardman makes the useful point early on that other revolutions have, regrettably, largely followed the template of France's; and one is constantly reminded of what happened in Russia after 1917, though that was, if anything, even more violent and divorced from anything approaching the rule of law than what had happened 130 years earlier. In both instances, the people rose up and some from what had not traditionally been the governing class took over. Once that happened, the ideology of those who ruled moved steadily to the Left (which in the end became largely indiscernible from what we now think of as the fascist Right), factions developed, and (to use a well-worn metaphor) the revolution began to devour its own children. Something that began in defence of liberty, and freedom of speech ended up creating a polity in which there appeared to be no liberty at all, and where free expression could easily lead to the guillotine. One conspicuous difference between the French and Russian revolutions, as Hardman outlines, was the fate of the monarchy. Although Louis was reluctant to cede rights as an absolute monarch he soon understood the practicalities and began to yield powers, albeit through an attempt at negotiation. In Russia, the Romanovs were simply arrested, imprisoned and, without any attempt at a trial, slaughtered. Louis XVI was eventually put on trial as the people in charge of the French government became more extreme and motivated by class hatred, and steadily imprisoned and executed members of those factions who were happy to retain a constitutional, as opposed to an absolute, monarchy. Louis's trial was, as Hardman points out, entirely unfair; he was charged with crimes against liberty, which could mean everything and nothing, and was predictably found guilty – though the decision to give him the death penalty was made by the margin of only one vote. There was then a vote on a reprieve for the King, which was rejected by 70 votes. Not only did the assembly that tried him seem reluctant to overturn the previous, albeit narrow, decision, but the roots of the bloody Reign of Terror were already taking hold: people disposed to take a lenient view of those deemed enemies of the revolution risked being viewed not simply as compassionate, but as enemies of it themselves. Louis went to the guillotine in January 1793; his wife followed a few months later after a trial that was less unfair but more grotesque than his. Not least to see whether she could be provoked into an act of treachery by revealing military secrets to the country of her birth, France had declared war on Austria. She duly obliged and passed secrets on to her Austrian contacts. The other charges she faced were as absurd and unprovable as those her husband had faced, and the grotesquerie came when entirely fabricated charges of her having sexually interfered with their son, the Dauphin, were presented. It was wholly unnecessary, as treason alone would have sufficed to send her to the guillotine, entrapped though she had been. At least the Bolsheviks who machine-gunned a cellar full of Romanovs in 1918 made no pretence of following the rule of law. The show trials of the King and Queen led to a rash of such outrages in the year or two afterwards, and massacres of large numbers in cities such as Lyon where people were deemed recalcitrant. Factions split into further factions – Girondins, Dantonists, Montagnards, Jacobins and so on – as those who found themselves temporarily in charge decided to kill many of those who were not. Something approaching civil war came when the Commune took on the Convention; a climax of sorts followed when Robespierre was put to death, in the wake of which a degree of sanity and order were eventually restored. A great lesson of the French Revolution is that, when much of the population of a polity has nothing to lose, they can behave rashly and accordingly. Louis should have realised this long before 1789. Hardman, leaving all possibilities open, invites us to question whether he failed because his upbringing and his place in France's constitution made him inflexible, or whether his wife's dominance undid him, or whether he was simply obtuse. This is a book of exceptional clarity and analytical force, reliant on evidence and not on supposition, and tells the story with great conviction. Hardman also astutely compares Louis's fate with those of Charles I – brought down not by a mob but by losing two civil wars and for refusing to accept the will of his people – and James II, forced to flee in 1688 at the Glorious Revolution for wilfully ignoring the reality of the Reformation and the move towards constitutional monarchy. But it is also clear that 17 th century England was a happier country than France, with nascent democracy and social mobility. These were examples France, and above all the Capetian dynasty, ignored until far too late: and some of the scars are still visible in France today. ★★★★★
Korea Herald
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Korea Herald
N. Korea touts robust ties with China on anniversary of key treaty signing
North Korea's state media on Friday touted its robust relations with China, reaffirming its commitment to further strengthening bilateral ties as the two nations mark the 64th anniversary of their mutual defense treaty. "It is the unwavering position of our party and the republic to ceaselessly strengthen and develop the friendly relations between North Korea and China," the Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported. The report came on the anniversary of the signing of the North Korea-China Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance on July 11, 1961, by the North's state founder Kim Il-sung and then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The North's most widely read newspaper described the treaty as an "important landmark in reinforcing strategic cooperation" between the countries, especially at a time when international peace and security are being threatened by "reckless military adventurism and hegemonistic policies by hostile forces." Despite obstinate plots by "the enemies of peace" to destroy the friendship and unity between the peoples of the two countries, the bilateral relationship "boasts sturdiness and invincibility," the newspaper said. North Korea and China plan to mutually strive to strengthen and develop their friendship to a higher level, upholding the spirit of the treaty, it added. Pyongyang and Beijing appear to be working to mend their traditionally close ties, which have been strained by the North's alignment with Russia in its war with Ukraine. Following the North's deployment of its forces to aid Russia in the war, Moscow has emerged as Pyongyang's main partner in cooperation and assistance. (Yonhap)
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
CCTV+: 64 Years of China-Japan Friendship Marked by a Bottle of Moutai
Table tennis champion Matsuzaki Kimiyo recalls receiving the iconic gift from Premier Zhou Enlai in 1961 BEIJING, June 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A timeworn bottle of Moutai takes pride of place at Expo 2025 Osaka's China Pavilion, telling a story of international camaraderie. In 1961, Japanese table tennis player Matsuzaki Kimiyo visited China after winning the championship at the 26th World Table Tennis Championships in Beijing. Premier Zhou Enlai presented her with a bottle of Moutai as a gift. Five decades later, in 2011, Matsuzaki personally returned this historic liquor to the Moutai Museum in Moutai Town, Guizhou Province. "I visited Moutai Town twice, in 2011 and last year," Matsuzaki recalled. "The memories are precious—meeting Ji Keliang (former chairman of Kweichow Moutai Group) and tasting 50-year-aged Moutai was truly unforgettable." She added, "The town's picturesque scenery also left a deep impression." This single bottle of Moutai—given by Premier Zhou in 1961 and personally returned by Matsuzaki half a century later— transcends time as a living testament to China-Japan friendship. More than just a relic, it carries three enduring legacies: a historical touchstone—chronicling decades of bilateral ties from grassroots exchanges to high-level diplomacy; an ambassador of culture—introducing Moutai's craftsmanship to Japan and beyond, transforming a Chinese tradition into a shared global heritage; and a diplomatic bridge—connecting the Chinese and Japanese people across generations. Additionally, Matsuzaki's Moutai narrative has become a heartwarming chapter in the annals of international friendship that continues to inspire new generations. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE CCTV+ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The History of Cultural Exchange Between the U.S. and China
President Richard Nixon inspects Chinese troops upon his departure from Beijing, China in 1972. Prime Minister Zhou Enlai walks to Nixon's right. Credit - Corbis—Getty Images Democrats and Republicans united in April 2024 to pass a bill to ban TikTok in the United States. The bill, signed into law by President Joseph Biden, enacts a further clampdown on the reach of Chinese technology in the U.S., stating that it is 'protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications.' Though TikTok is headquartered in Singapore, a new China-based app soon after went viral in its place. With a sense of curiosity, irony, or perhaps plain spite, more than three million Americans created accounts on RedNote, a Chinese app likened to Instagram and known in China as Xiaohongshu. Prompted by the threatened termination of TikTok's domestic services in January, these so-called 'TikTok refugees' found themselves digital tourists suddenly immersed in Chinese internet culture. These rare, unmediated exchanges between everyday Chinese and Americans appeared to reflect the simple pleasures inherent to internet culture—cute kids, cats, and comedy. 'The Chinese are so sweet, and so welcoming…I've made Chinese friends [that] I want to come visit,' relays one American user in a widely-circulated clip. In granting Americans intimate access to Chinese people and culture across the chasm of U.S.-China geopolitics, RedNote's window into Chinese life stands in stark contrast to the often menacing depictions of China in U.S. politics. On President Donald Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order to delay the enforcement of the ban on TikTok to April 5 and give the app an opportunity to find an American owner. So though RedNote's moment was likely fleeting, the kind of popular exchange it produced has precedent. There is a long history in which Americans and Chinese have sought to remake the relationship between the two nations by forging new relationships with one another through the exchange of books, films, and most importantly, people. TikTok Restores Service For U.S. Users Based on Trump's Promised Executive Order During the 1970s, people-to-people exchanges sought to bridge the gap between two nations that had lacked formal diplomatic relations since the formation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. For two decades, the U.S. imposed an economic and political embargo on the newly established PRC, a period during which all trade was banned, information was tightly monitored by the FBI, and overseas Chinese Americans were even prosecuted for sending remittances to their families back home. American leftists and progressives sought a break from U.S. Cold War foreign policy by launching 'friendship delegations' to China in the early 1970s. For instance, Black Panther leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown traveled to Beijing as part of an anti-imperialist tour of Asia, and members of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars toured the Chinese mainland. Expanding these efforts after its formation in 1971, the U.S.-China People's Friendship Association (USCPFA) sent more than 5,000 Americans to China in the 1970s. In 1979, one USCPFA delegation sent 22 Detroit youths to Shanghai and Beijing, where they played basketball with high schoolers, picked vegetables at communes, and performed American songs and dances at talent shows with their Chinese peers. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a group first founded in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, described these early delegations as an attempt to 'break through the wall of ignorance,' which had long separated Americans from China. Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing further peeled back this so-called 'bamboo curtain,' sparking a cultural wave of fascination with the Chinese mainland. China-mania spanned the ideological gamut: Black Power activists brandished copies of Mao's little red book. Friendship stores selling specialty foodstuffs, silks, and Maoist tchotchkes emerged to meet demand from both Chinese immigrants seeking familiar comforts and Americans fascinated by the exotic wares. Even Bloomingdale's got in on the action, unveiling in 1971 a 'China Passage' boutique selling bamboo and rattan housewares. But despite their differences, this array of actors shared a basic assessment: Americans had something to gain from engaging with China and Chinese people. More importantly, these ambassadors carried the belief that American and Chinese people from all walks of life had the power to shape diplomatic relations. As I Wor Kuen, a Chinese American revolutionary organization that mobilized support for normalization in the Chinese community put it: 'The masses make history and it is the masses who will make normalization a reality.' On the surface, today's 'TikTok refugees' bear little resemblance to the friendship delegations that came 50 years prior. While many 1970s counterculture youth viewed Mao-era China as a model for social revolution, young Americans today have mostly avoided identifying with foreign political models despite their historic dissatisfaction with U.S. capitalism. And yet, in pulling back the curtain on contemporary Chinese life, RedNote has inevitably held up a mirror to American ways of living. 'Do you think USA will ever have worker led revolution?' One Chinese user queried. 'Why do you eat like ur healthcare is free,' another joked. Others asked if Americans really had to pay for ambulances, or whether that was just government propaganda. But the most popular bit on RedNote has been a satire of U.S. national security claims about China, with Chinese netizens dead-panning about being individually assigned 'Chinese spies.' A viral TikTok video features an American similarly promising to 'dropship my DNA to the front door of the Chinese Communist Party before I watch an Instagram reel.' The comedic exaggeration is clear, but the bit is also a gesture to something deeper: Americans are skeptical about their government's national security claims against China and open to seeing the country and its people through a different light. In granting Americans both a window into contemporary China and a mirror to their own country, these exchanges also reflect the extent to which Americans continue to be siloed from Chinese people and culture. China has yet to enjoy the cross-cultural appeal that Korean dramas and Japanese anime have found across the Pacific. Netflix's controversial 2024 remake of Three-Body Problem—the popular Chinese science fiction franchise—reflects the notion that Chinese cultural works require repackaging before reaching American audiences. In this context, RedNote's breakthrough has been claimed by both Chinese state outlets and netizens as a soft power win—with one commentator on the Chinese video platform Bilibili likening the exodus of Americans to RedNote to the fall of the Berlin Wall. How the U.S. Can Win the New Cold War The historical allusion is fitting in an era of U.S.-China relations that a range of political commentators agree amounts to a new Cold War. Though largely confined to talk of supply chains, infrastructure, and security, these antagonisms inevitably trickle down to cultural and social exchange. As U.S. popular opinion of China hit an all-time low in 2023, the number of Americans studying in China dropped to around just 800, paling in comparison to its peak of 25,000 a decade ago. Should TikTok be compelled to find a new American owner, RedNote's moment in the spotlight may prove to be short-lived. And yet, in the quotidian moments of cultural exchange, inside jokes, and social commentary that the platform has afforded, we see an echo of the promise of those early years of U.S.-China detente, when a rising generation of Americans and Chinese dreamed of a future outside of the confines of Cold War antagonism. As Bertha Thomas, a member of the 1979 Detroit youth tour wrote on her return to the United States: 'A most interesting phenomenon occurs when… precocious American teenagers and young adults come into contact with oodles of Chinese teenagers and young people. What transpires is instant rapport and friendship.' If nothing else, RedNote's viral moment indicates both the rarity—and dire necessity—of such contact. Mark Tseng-Putterman is a writer and historian working at the intersections of Asian American social movements, Cold War militarism, and US-Asia relations. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Write to Made by History at madebyhistory@
