The New York Times International - 29.08.2019

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I NTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY,AUGUST 29, 2019

VIRGIL ABLOH

CAN A MUSEUM

CONTAIN HIM?

PAGE 12| STYLE

NAOMI OSAKA

DEFENDING TITLE

WITH NEW COACH

PAGE 13| SPORTS

next morning, he declared, unconvinc- ingly, that he “felt strong” and was “ready to race today.” Sure enough, a few hours later, he was back at the starting gates in another pre- liminary round race of the Regional Po- lice Chief’s Cup 2019, bruised but riding again. In the city of Bima on the island of

The boy mounted the horse barefoot, with only an ill-fitting Hello Kitty helmet to protect his head and a talisman under his clothing to give him the courage of his ancestors. The last thing the boy, Firmansyah, 8, remembered about the ensuing race was being boxed in against two compet- ing horses, spurred on by equally young bareback jockeys, as they galloped around the track. He lost his grip on the mane of his horse, Isidia, and fell. Firmansyah doesn’t remember hit- ting his head on the ramshackle wooden railings lining the racecourse or landing on his shoulder as the three horses in the trailing pack thundered past. Nor does he recall being scooped up by a police of- ficer who sped him on a motorbike to a bare-bones clinic. He has no memory of his uncle’s applying herbal remedies to his wounds that night. But when Firmansyah woke up the

Sumbawa in Indonesia’s sprawling ar- chipelago, the use of child jockeys in professional horse racing is part of a longstanding tradition. And the average age is dropping, with jockeys as young as 5 bestride horses and most jockeys 10 or younger. Child-welfare advocates insist that the practice constitutes child abuse and

exploitation and should be banished. Child labor laws in Indonesia are rarely enforced, however, and children are known to work in fireworks fac- tories, tobacco farms and prostitution. Many here consider child jockeys con- tributing to their family’s income as a perfectly acceptable practice in one of Indonesia’s poorest regions. Equestrianism is a deep-rooted part of Sumbawan culture, where children as young as 4 learn to ride the short, stocky horses for which the island is known. “In the late ’90s, jockeys were usually aged from about 10 to 14 years old, but then we found the lighter jockeys to be faster, and now they are aged from about 6 to 10,” said Fahrir H.M. Noer, the deputy chairman of the race. Racing is a tradition in many families, with jockeys growing up in households where their brothers and fathers also competed as boys. Supporters of the practice say this family connection is an important difference separating Sum- bawan child jockeys from those who race camels in the Persian Gulf, where there have been reports of child enslave- ment and trafficking. But tradition is not a sufficient reason to continue using children in horse racing, said Arist Merdeka Sirait, chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection, a nonprofit organization. I NDONESIA, PAGE 4

Child jockeys 5 to 10 years old in a professional race on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. The income the boys earn from a race can be meaningful to a poor family.

Where jockeys retire at age 10

INDONESIA DISPATCH BIMA, INDONESIA

PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT BY ADAM DEAN

On an Indonesian island, children earn cash in high-stakes horse races

Cheering in the stands for a final race in the Regional Police Chief’s Cup in Bima. The top prize for winning a final is a moped worth $1,200. Second prize is a cow worth $500.

The private art collection of Roberto
Toscano and his wife, Nadia Toscano-
Palon, features works by artists includ-
ing Daniel Turner, Anish Kapoor, James
Turrell and Oscar Tuazon.
Since 2012, the collection has grown to
more than 100 works — rarely seen, like
most private collections, by anyone out-
side of the couple’s immediate circle.
This is a problem for many collectors,
Mr. Toscano included, who want to show
their works to broader audiences or be-
lieve that there’s a public good to shar-
ing the works they own. Though col-
lectors at the highest end of the market
are increasingly opening private muse-
ums, it can be difficult to afford or staff a
space.
Private collections can often be so
opaque, Mr. Toscano said, that even art-

ists don’t know where their own works are. “If I don’t put them in some kind of public database, these works essentially disappear from the planet,” he said. Enter Collecteurs, a website and social media platform that is boldly billing itself as the “Collective Museum of Pri- vate Collections.” Collecteurs, based in New York at the New Museum’s NEW INC., a cultural incubator, is a public benefit corporation — not a nonprofit — with a stated mission to bring artwork into the light — at least, the light of the internet. Its founders are Jessica and Evrim Oralkan, married collectors who became overwhelmed by the size of their own trove of art. They were strug- gling to manage it and share it with the public. “You get to a point where your walls can’t take anymore art,” Mr. Oralkan said. The Oralkans have uploaded images of their personal collection online, as have Mr. Toscano and about 1,200 oth- ers. Anyone with a computer can now C OLLECTEURS, PAGE 2

Sharing art once hidden in private collections

Project aims to make works

held outside of museums

accessible online to public

BY SOPHIE HAIGNEY

Evrim and Jessica Oralkan, the founders of Collecteurs, a website that bills itself as the “Collective Museum of Private Collections.” It is partly a social media platform.

ROSE MARIE CROMWELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinion
from a wide range of perspectives in
hopes of promoting constructive debate
about consequential questions.

One former senior foreign policy official in the Obama administration received messages from someone on LinkedIn of- fering to fly him to China and connect him with “well paid” opportunities. A former Danish Foreign Ministry official got LinkedIn messages from someone appearing to be a woman at a Chinese headhunting firm wanting to meet in Beijing. Three middle-aged men showed up instead and said they could help the former official gain “great access to the Chinese system” for research. A former Obama White House official and career diplomat was befriended on LinkedIn by a person who claimed to be a research fellow at the California Insti- tute of Technology, with a profile page showing connections to White House aides and ambassadors. No such fellow exists. Foreign agents are exploiting social media to try to recruit assets, with LinkedIn as a prime hunting ground, Western counterintelligence officials say. Intelligence agencies in the United States, Britain, Germany and France have issued warnings about foreign agents approaching thousands of users on the site. Chinese spies are the most active, officials say. “We’ve seen China’s intelligence serv- ices doing this on a mass scale,” said William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Secu- rity Center, a government agency that tracks foreign spying and alerts compa- nies to possible infiltration. “Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit be- hind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.” The use of social media by Chinese government operatives for what Ameri- can officials and executives call nefar- ious purposes has drawn heightened scrutiny in recent weeks. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube said they deleted accounts that had spread disinformation about the Hong Kong pro-democra- cy protests. Twitter alone said it re- moved nearly 1,000 accounts. It was the first time Facebook and Twitter had taken down accounts linked to disinformation from China. Many governments have employed similar playbooks to sow disinformation since Russia used the tactic to great effect in 2015 and 2016. LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is both another vehicle for potential disinformation and, more important, an ideal one for espionage recruitment, Ameri- C HINA, PAGE 4

China hunts

on LinkedIn

for potential

spy recruits

WASHINGTON

The social media platform is an ideal source of assets, Western officials say

BY EDWARD WONG
It is impossible to exaggerate what a
dangerous cliff the United States and
China are perched on today.
If the current trade dispute tips over
into a full-blown economic war — and
that spreads to Chinese students and
scientists being thrown out of America
and American business executives out
of China and that spreads to all the
investments we’ve made in each other’s
countries being ripped out — the world
as we’ve known it for the last four dec-
ades is going to be replaced with some-
thing much uglier, less prosperous, less
stable and less able to meet global chal-
lenges, like climate change and cyber-
crime, that are bar-
reling down on us.
We need a cease-
fire now — and if no
one else is going to
propose the terms, I
will.
President Trump
should say to Presi-
dent Xi Jinping: “For
the next six months,
we’ll suspend all the
tariffs that we’ve
imposed. And in those six months we
expect you to order from the top down
an end to your worst trade abuses —
and you know which ones we’re talking
about: stealing intellectual property,
forcing technology transfers, restricting
access, etc. You don’t have to announce
anything or put anything into law. Just
get it done your own way and tell your
people whatever you want. I won’t tweet
a word to embarrass you. And we’ll
re-evaluate in six months whether the
results constitute meaningful
progress.’’
That’s not a perfect outcome after two
years of negotiations, but perfect is not
on the menu right now. Only “better” is.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump was right
to insist that the U.S.-China trading
relationship had to change. But Trump
vastly underestimated in several ways
how “easy” winning a trade war with
China would be.
Trump, by doing the whole thing in
public — with his ego-inflating tweets
always intended to show that he was
winning and China was caving —
clearly prompted the Chinese to remind
the U.S. president that they’re not some
dumpling restaurant in a Trump Tower
that can be bullied into paying more
rent. They’re actually one-sixth of hu-

Both Trump

and Xi can

win this war

OPINION

Each needs
to step back
from the
trade stand-
off for six
months, or
things will
turn ugly fast.

F RIEDMAN, PAGE 11

Thomas L. Friedman

ReinventingDemocracy:

NewModelsforOurChangingWorld

Registertoattend:athensdemocracy.org

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Finland € 3.50France € 3. Gabon CFA 2700Germany € 3. Great Britain £ 2.20Greece € 2. Hungary HUF 950

Israel NIS 13.50Israel / Eilat NIS 11. Italy € 3.50Ivory Coast CFA 2700 Jordan JD 2.00Lebanon LBP 5, Luxembourg € 3.

Slovenia € 3.40Spain € 3. Sweden Skr 35Switzerland CHF 4. Syria US$ 3.00The Netherlands € 3. Tunisia Din 5.

Qatar QR 12.00Republic of Ireland ¤ 3. Reunion € 3.50Saudi Arabia SR 15. Senegal CFA 2700Serbia Din 280 Slovakia € 3.

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The New York Times International - 29.08.2019

Where jockeys retire at age 10

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