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The Print
06-07-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Dalai Lama decides to reincarnate. His successor may only get an imagined homeland to rule
Last week, almost seven decades after he escaped the PLA and entered India in 1959, Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, laid out a map for his succession. The Gaden Phodrang Trust, which once ruled Tibet and now manages the personal affairs of the Dalai Lama, will seek his reincarnation in consultation with all four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. There was also evidence of genocide: From March 1959 to September 1960, the blue satchel documents revealed that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had killed more than 87,000 Tibetans as it sought to assert China's sovereignty over the region. Elegant as ever in a conservatively tailored business suit and rimless eyeglasses, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency briefly removed his pipe from his mouth to deliver his verdict: 'The best intelligence coup since the Korean War.' The blood-stained blue satchel Allen Dulles held up had travelled thousands of kilometres, on foot from Tibet into Nepal and India, and then aboard a special CIA aircraft. The 1,600 pages of classified documents , recovered in a November 1961 ambush by Tibetan insurgents, showed that Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward had plunged China into desperate famine and social chaos. The choice of a reincarnation will mark a decisive moment in Tibet's troubled relationship with China. From teetering on the edge in 1960, the Chinese state has become a global hegemon, with its control of Tibet now beyond question. The government of China has long insisted that the new Dalai Lama can only be chosen by drawing lots from a golden urn held at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, following a Qing-era imperial ritual dating back to 1792. There is little doubt about what Beijing will do if the successor to the Dalai Lama is chosen from within Tibet: Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a six-year-old identified by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, has simply disappeared. The People's Republic has no intention of allowing India or the West to influence its Tibet policy. Also read: Battle over Dalai Lama's reincarnation is a geopolitical contest with global implications The demographic tide Figures make one thing clear: The Tibetan diaspora in South Asia is ageing and in decline. Three factors, scholars Tenzin Dorjee and Tsewang Rigzin argue, have brought this about. First, the PLA has made using mountain passes to leave Tibet increasingly dangerous. In 2006, the PLA opened fire on a group of Tibetans, including children, crossing the Nangpa La pass into Nepal, killing several. The threat of force, coupled with heightened digital surveillance, has slowly choked off refugee flows. Larger factors, Dorjee and Rigzin argue, are also at play. Liberal immigration quotas in the United States, Canada, Australia, and France allowed thousands of young Tibetans to build new lives in the West each year. Meanwhile, Tibetans in India faced restrictions on buying property, obtaining business licenses, and voting in elections until 2014, when they became eligible to apply for citizenship. Finally, like other communities with high levels of educational attainment, Tibetans in India have a low birth rate. Economic opportunities, meanwhile, have drawn large numbers of ethnic Han and Hui migrants into the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where they now make up an estimated 15% or more of the population of 3.2 million. The Han, scholar Tsultim Zangmo writes, have been drawn to the TAR by relatively high incomes, the availability of land, and private-sector opportunities. Many small businesses, shops, and restaurants in urban areas are owned by Han, Zangmo notes. There is no shortage of evidence that the cultural changes resulting from these policies have angered many Tibetans. The flight of two high-profile Lamas considered pro-establishment—Arjia Lobsang Thubten from the Kumbum monastery in 1998, and the Karmapa from Tsurphu near Lhasa in 2000—shows discontent runs deep. Even though the TAR periodically faces large-scale protests, as in 1998 and 2008, Beijing remains confident that its economic policies are creating a Tibetan élite that sees itself as Chinese. The government has set up a system of Tibetan-oriented lower middle schools for Tibetans living elsewhere in China. At the same time, it has scrapped plans for greater cultural autonomy within the TAR, abandoning efforts to grant Tibetan official status or require Han officials to learn the Tibetan language. From the Chinese government's point of view, limiting autonomy and ensuring economic growth are the twin pillars necessary to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union. And history helps understand why this gamble might just work. Also read: When Dalai Lama & Nehru talked about Tibet for 4 hours. 'He could be a bit of a bully' The PLA's Tibet For generations, Indians have seen Tibet through incense-tinted lenses, as a Shangri-La-La-Land punctuated by exotic palaces, prayer wheels, and colourful flags. Like many other feudal states in Asia, Lamaist Tibet was also a place of savage inequality and violence. Although there has been an ideologically charged scholarly debate on the scale and conditions of Tibet's peasantry before 1959, historians like Mervyn Goldstein have shown that hereditary serfdom was widespread, with much of the land held by monasteries and aristocrats. The single monastery of Deprung, political scientist Michael Parenti has written, was one of the world's largest landowners, with 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herders. Monastic leaders were often scions of aristocratic families. Even though Tibetan Buddhism rejected the death penalty on theological grounds, severe punishments were common. 'All over Tibet,' wrote, Robert Ford, the British radio operator in Lhasa, people 'had been deprived of an arm or a leg for theft.' These amputations, he reported, were carried out without antiseptics or sterile dressings. For stealing two sheep from a monastery, Tsering Wang Tuci told the travellers Stuart and Roma Gelder, his eyes were ordered removed, one gouged with a knife, the other pulled whole from its socket with a half-hollowed ball. To complete the torture, two of his fingers were amputated. Even though these accounts might be tainted by ideological bias—the pro-communist Gelders infamously failed to report the 1960 famine in Tibet—similar accounts date back to the nineteenth century. American-educated Tashi Tsering—who returned to Tibet in 1963, only to spend years in prison during the Cultural Revolution—has also recounted how sexual violence against young boys was institutionalised in the monastery where he studied as a child. This, along with the PLA's early efforts to build schools and roads, led some modernising Tibetans to support China in the early years of occupation. Also read: Tibet has little chance to get help from UN against its powerful occupier Fallen dreams Following the incorporation of Tibet into China in 1951, policymakers in Beijing debated just how to deal with the new region. In 1955 and 1956, efforts to curb monastic power led to rebellions in the Kham region, culminating in the bombing of monasteries. Mao, believing the time wasn't ripe for enforcing socialism, counselled patience. Fan Ming, the party's head for the TAR, argued against holding back. Fan believed a delay would allow pro-independence forces to consolidate and pushed for PLA deployment across the region. Refugees from Kham gathered in Lhasa and formed an irregular army. Their anger exploded into rebellion in 1959, prompting the PLA to step in and begin forcibly confiscating monastery lands. The CIA, declassified documents reveal, began funding the insurgency later that year. Alongside India and Nepal, the CIA supplied weapons and trained insurgents until 1974. From the outset, however, the insurgency was doomed. Though many Tibetans resented China's assault on their faith and traditions, not all mourned the fall of the rapacious feudal families who fled with the Dalai Lama in 1959. The Tibetan insurgents generated valuable intelligence for the CIA, expert John Masko has written, but never came close to their stated goal of reversing Chinese control. Lacking a genuine mass base, the insurgent leadership was further weakened by regional and sectarian divides. Theocratic institutions that had long governed Tibet had also failed to build the ideological or political foundations needed for a unified national identity. Even after the insurgency collapsed, China recognised it had a political problem and made repeated efforts to address it. As early as 1979, China opened channels for dialogue with the Dalai Lama through Prince Peter of Denmark, a noted Tibetologist. Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang also reached out to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles in 1980. But though several rounds of talks took place, they led nowhere: The Tibetans insisted on genuine autonomy, while China was willing to concede some cultural space, but no political rights. Time has proved to be on China's side. Most likely, the new Dalai Lama—the heir to the centuries-old Lamaist state that once ruled Tibet with the prayer bead and the sword—will reign over a nation that now exists only in the imagination. Praveen Swami is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Prashant)
Newsweek
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Chinese President Xi Jinping's Tough Childhood Revealed in New Book: Excerpt
Chinese President Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, was a Communist Party official for more than seven decades—from the Communist Revolution through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square protests and beyond. In the first English biography of Xi Zhongxun, The Party's Interests Come First, Professor Joseph Torigian uncovers the story of his life and of the modern Communist Party—and sheds light on the formative influences on Xi Jinping. This excerpt from Torigian's deeply researched book talks about the family's home life. Xi Zhongxun with his sons Jinping (left) and Yuanping (center), 1958. Xi Zhongxun with his sons Jinping (left) and Yuanping (center), 1958. Xi Zhongxun huace At work, Xi Zhongxun faced a dizzying array of policy challenges and the vicissitudes of his own shifting fortunes. But in party culture, home life was no escape from the political. Everything from schooling and leisure to clothes and food in the Xi household were shaped by broader preoccupations within the elite. Aaron Solts, the Soviet Union's most famous theorist of Bolshevik ethics, had asserted that "the family of a Communist must be a prototype of a small Communist cell" and "must, in all their work and life, represent a unit of assistance to the Party." Domesticity presented an existential challenge to the Communist war on bourgeois weakness and materialism. Having fought decades of war to establish a transformational regime, party leaders in China were proud of what they had achieved yet concerned about their families losing the revolutionary élan that had proven so instrumental. The leadership, including Xi, worried that the next generation would grow up spoiled and separated from the so-called masses. Before he arrived in Beijing in 1953—well before the one-child policy—Xi was already a father to three surviving children with his first wife (a son, Zhengning, and two daughters, Heping and Qianping), as well as two daughters with Qi Xin (Qiaoqiao and An'an). Two more sons, Jinping and Yuanping, were born in the capital in 1953 and 1955, respectively. All the children lived at school during the week. Qiaoqiao, An'an, Jinping and Yuanping all went to middle school at the August 1 School, where the students were primarily the children of high-ranking military, not political, figures. One graduate described the school as a place where "softness and delicateness were especially despised." Although it was tough, the August 1 School was also an exciting place. The students "were full of resolution to give their lives to the desire to struggle, the will to serve, the collective spirit and sincere beliefs and traditional pursuits, and at the same time, they were full to the brim with the special confidence and pride of victors," according to one former student. The education system emphasized class struggle, teaching that enemies could be lurking behind any problem, that anyone could be an enemy, and that such enemies were to be treated viciously. During political-education class, they read books such as Be a Successor to the Revolution, which in Jinping's own words "influenced the idealistic beliefs and life choices of our generation." Graduates of the school credit the education there with giving them the spiritual power not to lose hope during the dark times that were to come during the Cultural Revolution. In 2003, an interviewer bluntly asked whether Xi Jinping had enjoyed a privileged lifestyle as a child. Xi responded: "It can be put this way: there were no worries about clothes or food, but my father's demands upon us made us live very frugally." As an example, Xi said that he was forced to wear the clothes of his older sisters as hand-me-downs. He tried to depict his own family as especially thrifty, but in doing so, he also revealed the "privileges" he enjoyed when participating in activities with the party elite: "At the Lunar New Year, we participated in several evening parties; when we went to the Great Hall of the People or to Tiananmen Square, the staffers would ask whose children were wearing such run-down clothing? Those who understood would reply that we were the children of the Xi family." Xi did spend time with his children on weekends. By several accounts, Xi was a ferocious disciplinarian. Even Qi Xin wrote: "Sometimes, I really believed that your demands on the children were too strict." Xi's children often spoke of their father's thriftiness. Qianping wrote: "When we were little, none of us were willing to eat at the same table as father. We were terrified of his strict rules on frugality.... For example, when eating, he never allowed us to drop a single piece of rice or bits of food; if we were not careful and dropped any food, he would immediately pick it up and eat it." In 2001, Jinping told two interviewers at the end of a conversation that he would not ask them to stay and eat. "Actually, eating with me is a form of suffering," he said. "I am the son of a peasant. I have never been picky about eating, and, moreover, I never allow people to leave any leftovers." Xi's harshness also included physical punishment. In his diaries, Li Rui described a conversation with Ren Zhongyi—who would later succeed Xi as party boss of Guangdong—in March 1998: "[We] discussed how Xi raised his three sons; he was extremely brutal based on feudal rules of etiquette that included beatings." Journalist John Garnaut, who has conducted extensive interviews with elite political families in China, writes: "Xi Zhongxun, despite his noble exterior, drank too much and would occasionally explode with anger. His children were sometimes on the receiving end of his anger, according to a close family friend who witnessed such occasions." According to another journalist with deep ties in Beijing, on one occasion, Xi was so angry that he lined up his children, as well as the child of another high-ranking leader, and struck them one by one. Xi was tougher than most, but his behavior was still reflective of the context of the times. Many "cadre offspring" deeply worried their parents because they played too much and did not study hard. The Xi household was not the only "Red aristocratic" family in which children would kowtow; many elite families had such strict protocols. When a friend asked Xi why he was so cruel, he responded: "I do not do this to make them fear me. It is to make them feel a sense of awe and veneration for heaven and earth so that, from a young age, they have understood that one cannot act in an anarchic fashion." Children who did not respect their parents were a disaster when they entered society. But Xi had a softer side too. On one occasion, he carried Jinping on his head. When Jinping started urinating on him, Zhongxun waited patiently until Jinping had finished. Xi believed that when children were urinating, they should not be frightened, otherwise they will "have an illness for the rest of their life." Xi and Qi Xin would help their children jump rope, and they played "horse" on their father's back. Although the children feared their father, they cherished the time with him. In Qiaoqiao's words: "I was happiest at those times, but the time we had together with father and mother was truly too little." The Party's Interests Come First - The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping The Party's Interests Come First - The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping Courtesy of Stanford University Press Excerpted from The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, published by Stanford University Press, ©2025 by Joseph Torigian. All Rights Reserved.
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
