A12 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020
the Trump administration’s ef-
forts to restrict Chinese compa-
nies’ access to American technol-
ogy amid escalating tensions be-
tween the two countries. Instead,
Mr. Xi broadly warned that “the
world has entered a period of tur-
bulence and transformation.”
Shenzhen’s experience, he said,
showed that China must “gain the
initiative in the global technolog-
ical revolution.”
China is striving to revive its
economy and repair its interna-
tional standing amid the coronavi-
rus pandemic, which began late
last year in the central city of Wu-
han. The pandemic has driven
negative views of China to new
heights in the United States and
other wealthy democracies, ac-
cording to a survey by the Pew Re-
search Center that was published
last week.
Mr. Xi is also trying to quell jit-
ters about Hong Kong, the semi-
autonomous Chinese territory
where a sweeping security law
was recently imposed in response
to tumultuous antigovernment
protests last year.
Mr. Xi’s speech in Shenzhen
gave a likely preview of a Commu-
nist Party leaders’ meeting late
this month, when he will lay out
China’s economic strategy for the
next five years, including har-
nessing more domestic innova-
tion and consumer spending.
Mr. Xi pledged to make Shen-
zhen a proving ground for upgrad-
ing China’s economy and
strengthening innovation, citing
plans to step up spending on tech-When China first opened to
overseas investors, the country
was desperate for foreign technol-
ogy to revive its growth. Now, as
China faces rising global barriers,
its leader, Xi Jinping, is urging
greater domestic innovation.
Mr. Xi delivered this message
on Wednesday during an anniver-
sary pilgrimage to the southern
city of Shenzhen, which in 1980
was established as a “special eco-
nomic zone” next to the global fi-
nancial hub of Hong Kong. Shen-
zhen quickly became an incubator
for “reform and opening up,” the
strategy championed by the Chi-
nese leader Deng Xiaoping that
paved the way for the country’s
decades-long economic takeoff.
Forty years later, Mr. Xi said
China still welcomed foreign in-
vestors, but he also said it must
prepare for a less welcoming
world. The coronavirus pandemic
has accelerated the rise of barri-
ers to the free flow of goods and
technology, Mr. Xi said, a theme
that he has stressed recently.
“The world economy is at low
ebb, and international trade and
investment have drastically
shrunk,” Mr. Xi said to a confer-
ence hall packed with officials and
guests wearing protective masks,
in a speech that was promoted
heavily by the Chinese news me-
dia.
Mr. Xi did not refer directly to
nology research. He stressed
Shenzhen’s importance in a re-
gional economic initiative that
also encompasses Hong Kong, a
strategy that could enhance Chi-
nese influence over the former
British colony and underscore its
reduced importance for Beijing.
Mr. Xi’s speech and other com-
ments during his trip this week to
Guangdong Province, which in-
cludes Shenzhen, have also un-
derscored his effort to redefine
China’s decades-old strategy of
“opening up.”
Past leaders stressed drawing
in foreign capital and technology
to help China catch up. Mr. Xi
wants to shift the balance by tak-
ing Chinese technology, invest-
ment and power to the world.
“We’re experiencing a transfor-
mation the likes of which hasn’t
happened for a century,” Mr. Xi
said on Monday while visiting a
factory in Chaozhou, another
coastal city in Guangdong. “We
must take the road toward a
higher level of self-reliance.”
Officials have already spent
years trying to shift Shenzhen
from low-end industry to high-
tech design and manufacturing.
Mr. Xi wants to wean China off for-
eign suppliers for crucial compo-
nents, such as silicon chips, and
the city is a part of those plans.
Shenzhen is home to the head-
quarters of big Chinese tech firms
such as Huawei, one of the world’s
biggest smartphone sellers. The
United States has imposed sev-
eral restrictions on Huawei in the
past year, deeming the company asecurity threat, a claim that the
company denies.
“This is a new spin using Shen-
zhen to say, ‘We can be economi-
cally strong, we can be technolog-
ically innovative, we can be so-
cially progressive, on Chinese
terms,’ ” said Juan Du, an associ-
ate professor of architecture at the
University of Hong Kong and au-
thor of a recent study, “The Shen-
zhen Experiment.”
“A lot is riding on this for Shen-
zhen to be able to set an example
for other cities in China,” she said.
“Shenzhen’s importance to the na-
tional psyche is far greater thanjust its economic importance.”
But China remains greatly de-
pendent on imported technolo-
gies, especially semiconductors,
the brains of all electronic devices.
Despite billions of dollars in state
support, Chinese chip makers lag
far behind rivals in Taiwan, South
Korea and the United States.
The Trump administration is
threatening to block Semiconduc-
tor Manufacturing International
Corporation, China’s most ad-
vanced chip manufacturer, from
using American software and
equipment out of fear that itsproducts are used by the Chinese
military, which the company de-
nies. The technology involved in
chip production is fiendishly com-
plex to master, making it difficult
for Chinese companies to catch up
easily with foreign makers.
“The Chinese government is
pretty much aware that technol-
ogy, by and large, comes from the
private sector,” said Jean-Pierre
Cabestan, a professor of Chinese
politics at Hong Kong Baptist Uni-
versity. Shenzhen and its tech
companies, he said, are “very
much part of this effort to leapfrog
and catch up with Western coun-
tries in high-tech.”
Mr. Xi’s vision of Shenzhen as a
base for China’s rising technolog-
ical prowess carries extra reso-
nance because his father, Xi
Zhongxun, was an official who
helped to establish the region as a
scrappy boomtown.
After Mao’s Cultural Revolu-
tion, a surge of people fled to Hong
Kong, and Xi Zhongxun, then the
party secretary of Guangdong,
hoped zones like Shenzhen would
help revive the economy and
stanch the departures, said Jo-
seph Torigian, an assistant profes-
sor at American University in
Washington who is writing a biog-
raphy of the elder Mr. Xi. The
younger Mr. Xi mentioned his fa-
ther indirectly in his speech, citing
him only as an unnamed provin-
cial leader.
Hong Kong investment and ex-
pertise were crucial to Shenzhen’s
rise in the 1980s, but Mr. Xi’s
speech on Wednesday showed thefinancial hub’s reduced role in Chi-
na’s ambitions.
The officials applauding Mr. Xi
in Shenzhen included Hong
Kong’s chief executive, Carrie
Lam, who is tasked with enforcing
the draconian new national secu-
rity law. This week, Mrs. Lam put
off her annual policy speech so
that it would not coincide with Mr.
Xi’s Shenzhen visit.
“It shows again that Hong Kong
is a kind of appendage to main-
land China,” Professor Cabestan
said.
Mr. Xi also used his speech in
Shenzhen to vow a bigger role for
markets, but Chinese en-
trepreneurs and economists have
expressed skepticism about his
commitment. Since coming to
power in 2012, he has stressed that
the Communist Party must keep a
tight grip on the economy and that
state companies must dominate
key industrial sectors. Last
month, the party announced plans
to extend its role in private busi-
nesses.
Mr. Xi’s visit to Shenzhen did
not signal any shift from his estab-
lished economic course, said
Deng Yuwen, a former editor for a
party newspaper who now lives in
the United States.
“I think the propaganda pitch
has been set this high this time to
try to shift the outside world’s
view saying that China is not re-
forming and is closing itself off,”
Mr. Deng said by telephone. “Of-
tentimes, what action you take is
not the same thing as in the propa-
ganda.”In City Where China Opened Its Economy, Xi Preaches Self-Reliance
By CHRIS BUCKLEYRaymond Zhong contributed re-
porting.
A leader urges
domestic innovation
amid global tensions.
tion as president of Indonesia, the
most recent in 2019.
In a surprise move, the presi-
dent who twice defeated him, Joko
Widodo, named him minister of
defense a year ago this month. Mr.
Joko’s apparent goal in appointing
him was to build support among
the major political parties in Par-
liament as he pushed through his
economic agenda.
Less than two months later, Mr.
Prabowo hired a Washington lob-
byist, James N. Frinzi, to repre-
sent him, according to a form Mr.
Frinzi filed under the United
States Foreign Agents Registra-
tion Act. The document provides
no information about the purpose
of his lobbying.
This year, Mr. Prabowo quietly
received the invitation from Mr.
Esper, and the State Department
issued him a visa.
Mr. Irawan, the spokesman,
said that Mr. Prabowo recognized
the United States’ “critical role in
maintaining peace and stability”
in the region and that the trip was
aimed at “exploring how our two
militaries can work together in the
future to ensure our mutual inter-ests are protected.”
“America is an important coun-
try,” Mr. Prabowo said before his
departure. “I am invited. I have to
fulfill the invitation.”
The human rights groups ques-
tioned whether the visa gave Mr.
Prabowo immunity in the United
States and, if so, urged that it be
rescinded. If he did not receive im-
munity, they said, the United
States would be obligated to in-
vestigate whether he was crimi-
nally responsible for torture and
possibly bring him to trial or ex-
tradite him.
“We urge you to clarify that the
visa issued to Prabowo Subianto
does not extend any form of im-
munity to him, and to ensure that
if he does travel to the U.S., he is
properly and promptly investi-
gated, and if there is sufficient evi-
dence, brought to trial for his al-
leged responsibility for crimes un-
der international law,” the groups
said in their letter to Mr. Pompeo.
The Commission for Missing
Persons and Victims of Violence,
an Indonesian rights organiza-
tion, expressed its disappoint-
ment with the decision to allow
Mr. Prabowo’s visit and said it
would hinder continuing efforts to
secure justice for the victims of
human rights abuses.
“This legitimization by the
United States government helps
the Indonesian government, and
especially Prabowo himself, avoid
resolution of past cases of gross
human rights violations that in-
volve his name,” said the group’s
chairwoman, Fatia Maulidiyanti.BANGKOK — For two decades,
Prabowo Subianto, a former Indo-
nesian general, was a pariah in in-
ternational affairs.
Mr. Prabowo, once a son-in-law
of the dictator Suharto, who died
in 2008, and a past commander of
Indonesia’s feared special forces,
was blamed for atrocities commit-
ted by troops he had led. Under
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush and Barack Obama, he was
prohibited from visiting the
United States.
But now, Mr. Prabowo is Indo-
nesia’s minister of defense and the
ban has been lifted. At the invi-
tation of Defense Secretary Mark
T. Esper, Mr. Prabowo arrived in
Washington this week and is ex-
pected to meet with top officials at
the Pentagon on Thursday.
For Mr. Prabowo, who will turn
69 on Saturday while on his trip,
the visit is the culmination of a
long quest to gain respectability.
For Washington, it highlights the
significance of Indonesia, a poten-
tially important U.S. ally against
China, and further signals the rel-
egation of human rights to a minor
diplomatic concern.
“The ban that applied to Min-
ister Prabowo has been lifted, and
he will visit the U.S. to discuss co-
operation,” said Irawan
Ronodipuro, a spokesman for Mr.
Prabowo and his political party,
Gerindra.
Amnesty International and six
other human rights groups urged
the Trump administration to can-
cel the visit, saying that it could vi-
olate the United States’ own rules
on the entry of people accused of
human rights violations and
would undermine efforts in Indo-
nesia to hold abusers accountable.
“Prabowo Subianto is a former
Indonesian general who has been
banned, since 2000, from entering
the U.S., due to his alleged direct
involvement in human rights vio-
lations,” the groups said in a letter
to Secretary of State Mike Pom-
peo. “The State Department’s re-
cent decision to lift the ban on
Prabowo Subianto is an abrupt,
complete reversal of longstanding
U.S. foreign policy.”
As commander of the country’s
special forces under Suharto in
the late 1990s, Mr. Prabowo was
discharged from the army by a
panel of generals for ordering the
kidnapping of student activists in
a failed effort to keep his father-in-
law in power. Mr. Prabowo was
also accused of atrocities in East
Timor, a former province that
broke away in 1999 and became in-
dependent in 2002.
After Suharto stepped down,
ending more than three decades
of kleptocratic rule, Mr. Prabowo
was discharged from the army on
allegations of repeatedly breaking
the law, violating human rights
and disobeying orders.
However, like other high-rank-
ing officials accused of atrocities
and rights violations, he was
never charged or put on trial. To
the dismay of human rights advo-
cates, he and others accused of
abuses received important posts
in subsequent democratically
elected governments and have
never been held accountable.
Mr. Prabowo, who once saw
himself as a possible successor to
his father-in-law, made four un-
successful attempts to win elec-Washington Opens Door
To Indonesian It Shunned
Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s
defense minister, has long
been accused of atrocities.DITA ALANGKARA/ASSOCIATED PRESSDera Menra Sijabat contributed
reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia.By RICHARD C. PADDOCKATHENS — An Athens court
sentenced the leaders of Greece’s
Golden Dawn party to 13 years in
prison on Wednesday, a week af-
ter declaring the neo-fascist party
a criminal organization in a ver-
dict that wrapped up one of the
most important political trials in
the country’s modern history.
Last week, the court convicted
the party leaders of crimes related
to a campaign of attacks against
migrants and leftist critics in 2012
and 2013. At the end of a trial that
lasted more than five years, the
party was tied to a string of at-
tacks, including the fatal stabbing
in 2013 of a left-wing rapper, Pav-
los Fyssas.
Giorgos Roupakias, a party
member convicted of murdering
Mr. Fyssas, received the harshest
sentence, life plus 10 years. The
court could still suspend some of
the sentences.
The convictions were widely
seen in Greece as a final blow to
Golden Dawn — which lost all of
its seats in Parliament in general
elections last year, as the trial
gradually eroded its popularity —
though the sentences fell short of
what some observers and oppo-
nents had been expecting.
The sentences “do not seem to
me as appropriately severe as one
might have expected,” said Sera-
phim Seferiades, an associate pro-
fessor of politics and history at
Panteion University in Athens.
Many of the group’s opponents
jubilantly posted on Twitter under
a hashtag in Greek that translates
to “jail the nazis.” In English, #jail-
_golden_dawn was trending, too.
But there was also disappoint-
ment that the court did not impose
the maximum of 15 years in prison
for leading a criminal organiza-
tion.
In all, the court convicted 50
people of membership in a crimi-
nal organization — 18 of them for-
mer politicians for Golden Dawn,
including its leader, Nikos Mi-
chaloliakos.
In addition to Mr. Roupakias’s
conviction, five other party sup-
porters or members were found
guilty of the attempted murders of
three Egyptian fishermen in 2012.
Four others were convicted of
causing bodily harm in assaults
on members of Greece’s Commu-
nist Party trade union in 2013.
Thanassis Kampagiannis, the
lawyer for the Egyptian fisher-
men, said on Facebook that the
sentences for Golden Dawn’s
leaders are “high but not as strict
as they could be” while the terms
for party members and for the
perpetrators of individual crimes
“are lower than appropriate.”
Mr. Michaloliakos and five
other former members of Parlia-
ment for Golden Dawn were all
sentenced to 13 years in prison.
One other former lawmaker who
was among the party leaders was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The group’s remaining 11 former
lawmakers to be sentenced re-
ceived prison terms of five to sev-
en years.
“Today’s sentencing of the neo-
Nazi organization demonstrates
the resilience of our democracy
and the rule of law,” Prime Min-
ister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote
on Twitter. “This verdict marks
the end of a traumatic period in
Greece’s history.”
Before the sentencing, defense
lawyers had urged the court to
consider mitigating circum-stances, citing good character,
lawful behavior and, in some
cases, their clients’ marriages to
foreign women.
The party’s leadership was ar-
rested in September 2013, a few
days after the killing of Mr. Fyssas
— the first time a leader of a Greek
political party and its members of
Parliament were arrested since
the fall of the country’s military
dictatorship in 1974.
Some of them served the legal
maximum of 18 months in pretrial
custody and were then released in
early 2015 — time that will be de-
ducted from their sentences.
After the sentences were an-
nounced, the court was to deliber-
ate on whether to suspend any of
them, a decision that may not
come until Thursday. If the court
deems any of those convicted not
to be a flight risk, it might allow
their sentences to be suspended
pending the outcome of their ap-
peals. The arrests of those who
were convicted will be ordered, if
necessary, after the court makes
its announcement on whether to
suspend the sentences.
Golden Dawn’s fall was as spec-
tacular as its rise. It was cata-
pulted from obscurity into the
front line of politics at the peak of
Greece’s financial crisis in 2012-
2013 by tapping into public discon-tent over austerity measures and
a growing influx of migrants.
In a post on Twitter last week,
Mr. Michaloliakos, the party’s
leader, said Greeks would remem-
ber Golden Dawn “when illegal
immigrants are the majority in
Greece, when they concede earth
and water to Turkey, when mil-
lions of Greeks are unemployed
on the streets.”
He was referring to arrivals of
migrants from Turkey and a re-
cent political crisis between the
two neighbors over longstanding
territorial disagreements and cor-
responding energy rights.
He insisted that the party was
the victim of a witch hunt.
Mr. Seferiades said a failure by
successive governments to allevi-
ate the impact of years of auster-
ity, and by the European Union to
find a humane solution to the mi-
gration problem, had helped “nor-
malize racist discourse.”
“Everybody knew about Gold-
en Dawn since the ’80s, but there
was no political response,” he said,
adding that the 2013 crackdown
was a reaction to a public outcry
over the death of Mr. Fyssas, the
rapper. The government “finally
reacted because they ran the risk
of a social uprising which they
could not have handled.”
In spite of Golden Dawn’s de-
cline, neo-fascism in Greece has
not disappeared. Former mem-
bers of Parliament, including Ilias
Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn’s one-
time spokesman, have formed
parties with similar views.
Less extreme right-wing par-
ties have also sprung up, includ-
ing the nationalist Greek Solution.
In the immediate political fall-
out from the convictions, former
Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis
resigned last week from the cen-
tral political committee of the
main leftist opposition party,
Syriza and was subsequently
ejected from the party. In addition
to infighting within the party, he
cited concerns that a criminal
code introduced last year by the
previous leftist administration
could lead to lighter sentences for
Golden Dawn.A protest against the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party outside a courthouse in Athens this week. The party is tied to a string of attacks.
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESGreek Neo-Fascist Party Chiefs Sentenced to Prison
Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, testifying in Novem-
ber. He was sentenced on Wednesday to 13 years in prison.ARIS MESSINIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESBy NIKI KITSANTONIS