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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

TRUMP’S DEFENSELAWYERS ARGUE:NO CRIME, NO CASEPAGE 5 | WORLD

EMPIRE BUILDINGANGOLA IS POOR,BUT SHE GOT RICHPAGE 6 | BUSINESS

INSPIRED BY VIOLENCEART THAT STARTS ATTHE SCENE OF THE CRIMEPAGE 14 | CULTURE

city’s news kiosks. He is visible at thehead of weeks of marches through Paris.He pops up at early-morning pep ralliesto keep the strikers mobilized.

Mr. Martinez has been the Mr. No ofthe strike aimed at stopping Mr. Ma-cron’s ambition to overhaul France’spension system. It has been no to Mr.Macron’s pension plan, no to the conces-sions offered by the government, no to

The reckoning for France’s longest-evertransport strike is not yet in, even as theaction itself is losing steam. On Monday,the national rail company said trafficwas “near normal” on much of its net-work, although the strike is not officiallyover.

But when the winners and losers aretallied, one man previously consigned tothe political dead will have to be countedamong the living: Philippe Martinez,the combative head of the country’smost militant union.

Behind his giant mustache, Mr. Mar-tinez, an ex-communist who headsFrance’s oldest union, the C.G.T., or Gen-eral Confederation of Workers, has be-come the public face of the strike, whichhe has used to revive a moribund unionmovement that was shedding members.

He has risen as the counterpoint toPresident Emmanuel Macron and to hisbusiness-friendly vision for France. Heis omnipresent on television and radio.His giant image plasters the walls of the

the conciliatory gestures of more mod-erate unionists.

He has said throughout that he wantsnothing less than the government’s totalsurrender. He is not going to get it. Butthe strike has already given new energyto a union movement that was hurt lastyear by the Yellow Vest protests, whichrocked Mr. Macron’s presidency even asthey bypassed organized labor.

The strike has also, by Mr. Martinez’sreckoning, forced some major conces-sions from the government as it getsready to formally unveil its pensionoverhaul at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

Mr. Martinez argues that the Frenchgovernment’s numerous capitulationswould never have happened if he hadn’tkept tens of thousands of his people inthe streets, week after week. The strikeis now well into its second month — thelongest in the country’s recent history.

Over the course of it, the governmenthas pushed back by 12 years the startingage for its planned pension changes —only those born after 1975 need be con-cerned — and carved out at least nineexceptions to its so-called “universal”plan. It has restored, for now, Europe’slowest retirement age. Mr. Martinezclaims the credit.

“It’s thanks to the mobilizations thatwe’ve gotten all of them,” Mr. Martinezdeclared in an interview in his office atthe C.G.T., a sprawling glass-and-con-crete Brutalist complex at the edge ofthe highway that circles Paris.

Mr. Martinez, pushing the strike everforward, has become one of Mr. Ma-cron’s biggest headaches. He and his un-ion have successfully played off Mr. Ma-cron’s past as a banker to heighten fears— erroneous — that the president isplanning to remake the current Frenchpay-as-you go pension system into mar-FRANCE, PAGE 2

Philippe Martinez, the general secretary of France’s oldest union, the General Confederation of Workers, has emerged as the public face of the country’s longest transport strike.CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

The French president’s Mr. No

Union members marching in Paris. They are protesting the government’s plannedpension system overhaul, which is to be unveiled at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

PARIS

Union leader uses strikeagainst pension overhaulto revive labor movement

BY ADAM NOSSITER

About a year after American forcesseized Baghdad, an Iraqi man ap-proached the artist Dia al-Azzawi in acafe in Amman, Jordan, and offered tosell him several rare paintings.

Mr. Azzawi, who helped to assemblecollections for various Iraqi museums inthe 1960s and 1970s, knew that two of theworks had been plundered from Bagh-dad’s National Museum of Modern Art.He failed to persuade the man to returnthem.

Years later, Mr. Azzawi still finds it un-fathomable that Iraqis pillaged variousnational museums in 2003 while theAmerican troops who had toppled Sad-dam Hussein watched.

“All the people who went to steal ev-erything, to destroy everything, theydid it without realizing that all this stuffdoes not belong to the government, it didnot belong to Saddam, it belonged tothem,” he said during a lengthy inter-view at his London studio. “They losttheir identity, they did not care aboutanything.”

For him, that wanton destruction,compounded by Islamic State fighterslater taking sledgehammers to irre-placeable ancient statues, crystallizedhow the long years of dictatorship, warand punishing Western sanctions hadunraveled Iraqi society.

The influence of those decades onIraqi, American and other artists is thefocus of a sprawling exhibition includingmore than 250 artworks at MoMA PS1 inNew York, through March 1, called“Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars1991-2011.”

Much of Mr. Azzawi’s painting andsculpture focuses on the grim conse-quences of war, and he lent 11 of his ownworks, plus 28 pieces from his broad col-AZZAWI, PAGE 2

A lifetime documenting the horrors of warLONDON

An Iraqi artist’s oeuvredepicts the human toll ofendless Middle East strife

BY NEIL MACFARQUHAR

Dia al-Azzawi, 80, at his studio in London. He has given 11 of his works and other piecesfrom his collection to an exhibit on Iraqi art now showing at MoMA PS1 in New York.

ELLIE SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

Among the corporate titans recognizedthis month by President Trump during aWhite House signing ceremony for hisChina trade deal was Sanjay Mehrotra,the chief executive of Micron Technol-ogy, whose Idaho semiconductor com-pany is at the heart of Mr. Trump’s tradewar.

Micron, which makes memory chipsfor computers and smartphones, is pre-cisely the kind of advanced technologycompany that the Trump administrationviews as crucial to maintaining a com-petitive edge over China. After Micronrebuffed a 2015 takeover attempt by aChinese state-owned company, itwatched with disbelief as its innovationswere stolen and copied by a Chinesecompetitor and its business was blockedfrom China.

China’s treatment of American com-panies like Micron fed Mr. Trump’s deci-sion to unleash a punishing trade warwith the world’s second-largest econ-omy, a fight he said would halt Beijing’suse of unfair practices to undermine theUnited States. But that two-year confla-gration may wind up being more dam-aging to American technology compa-nies.

The initial trade deal announced thismonth should make operating in Chinaeasier for companies like Micron. Thedeal contains provisions meant to pro-tect American technology and trade se-crets and allow companies to challengeChina on accusations of theft, includingolder cases like Micron’s that precedethe agreement.

But Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade ap-proach has also accelerated a technol-ogy arms race between the two coun-tries, putting American companies likeMicron at risk as the two nations try todecouple their economies. In an effort toreduce its reliance on American compo-nents, China has expedited efforts toproduce its own semiconductors, driv-erless cars, artificial intelligence andother technologies. Those efforts, alongwith the Trump administration’s desireto restrict the sales of American techproducts to China, could hurt the verycompanies Mr. Trump set out to protect.

“Let’s be clear, the trade war has beenvery bad for the semiconductor indus-try in several ways,” said Robert D. At-kinson, president of the InformationTechnology and Innovation Foundation,a think tank funded by the tech industry.“It’s like China woke up and said, ‘We’verelied too much on the United States.’”

The trade deal does nothing to curtailChina’s use of subsidies, industrial plansTRADE, PAGE 7

China dealcould meanbig losses forchip makersWASHINGTON

Aggressive trade approach puts companies in perilas 2 countries grow apart

BY ANA SWANSONAND CECILIA KANG

Landing in Shanghai recently, I foundmyself in the middle of a tech revolu-tion remarkable in its sweep. Thepassport scanner automatically ad-dresses visitors in their native tongues.Digital payment apps have replacedcash. Outsiders trying to use papermoney get blank stares from storeclerks.

Nearby in the city of Hangzhou aprototype hotel called FlyZoo usesfacial recognition to open doors, nokeys required. Robots mix cocktailsand provide room service. Farthersouth in Shenzhen, we flew the samedrones that are already making e-

commerce deliver-ies in rural China.Downtown trafficflowed smoothly,guided by syncedstoplights andrestrained by policecameras.

Outside China,these technologiesare seen as harbin-gers of an “auto-mated authoritari-anism,” using video

cameras and facial recognition sys-tems to thwart lawbreakers and a“citizen score” to rank citizens forpolitical reliability. An advanced ver-sion has been deployed to counterunrest among Muslim Uighurs in theinland region of Xinjiang. But in Chinaas a whole, surveys show that trust intechnology is high, concern aboutprivacy low. If people fear Big Brother,they keep it to themselves. In ourtravels along the coast, many ex-pressed pride in China’s sudden rise asa tech power.

China initiated its economic miracleby opening to the outside world, butnow it is nurturing domestic techgiants by barring outside competition.Foreign visitors cannot open Google orFacebook, a weirdly isolating experi-ence, and the trade deal announcedlast Wednesday by President Trumpdefers discussion of those barriers.

But unlike the Soviet Union, whichfailed in a similar strategy, China iseffectively creating a new consumerculture behind protectionist walls as atool of political control and an engine ofeconomic growth.

It comes at a crucial moment. Flashback to 2015, when China appeared tobe on the verge of the first recessionsince it began reforming the economy,four decades ago. China’s averageincome had reached the middle-classphase when developing economies

Technologyas salvationfor BeijingRuchir SharmaContributing Writer

OPINION

To outsiders,China mayseem like asurveillancestate. But techhas fueledgrowth andhelped staveoff recession.

SHARMA, PAGE 10

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