PEOPLE PROFILE
Who is Laurence Brahm and what is he doing in TIBET ?
In the spring of 1979, a young American named Laurence Brahm
disembarked in Hong Kong from a flight originating in Tianjin
China where he was studying in an intensive Chinese language
course. As a student at the Hong Kong Chinese University, he
arrived with a few Hong Kong introductions from family and friends
in the States. One of these was to a stranger named Tom Goetz.
Mr. Brahm's uncle worked for a U.S.A. button company and Goetz
was the Hong Kong agent. Goetz recalls at their first meeting
that Brahm was absolutely mesmerized by all aspects of Chinese
culture, language and history. At that time, Brahm was going
around addressing everyone as "comrade" after his
rigorous Mandarin language courses in Tianjin which still embodied
the effects of the Cultural Revolution. It never occurred to
either Brahm or Goetz at that first meeting that their paths
would continue to cross for over a quarter of a century! Brahm
finished his undergraduate studies in Hong Kong and went on
to the University of Hawaii to complete his first International
degree. (Juris Doctor, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law;
Masters in Asian Politics; University of Hawaii Center for Asian
and Pacific Studies; Chinese University of Hong Kong, Studies
in Political Science; Nankai University, Tianjin, Mandarin Language
Studies; Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science, Duke
University - whew!)
Some readers may recall Attorney Laurence Brahm as the Director
of the China Department fro Denton Hall Burgin & Warrens
in the late 1980's. Goetz does - he traveled with Brahm in 1998
as two of the members of the first American Chamber of Commerce
Delegation to Hainan island in China. Clark T. Randt, Jr., currently
the United States Ambassador to China was also part of that
small delegation. Later Brahm was with the Johnson, Stokes and
Master Law Firm in 1990-1992 and Director of JSM China Consultants
Ltd., in Vietnam. Prior to that Brahm was with Baker & McKenzie
and Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison Law Firms in
Hong Kong.
As fellow members of the Hong Kong Foreign correspondents'
Club, from time-to-time Goetz would attend presentations at
the FCC when one of Laurence Brahm's new books (myriads!-21
in total!) would be launched. Around 1997, Brahm and Goedz realized
that they both had a common interest in Chinese Cultural History
exemplified by their mutual interest in restoring and promoting
architecture and accoutrements from by gone eras in China. While
Goetz and his wife Lauralynn had created a humble "museum"
of traditional farming paraphernalia in un-spoiled Hakka village
in Hong Kong's new territories and opened the "Red Star
Cafe" in SoHo, Brahm was working on world-class projects!
Utilizing craftsmen from the Forbidden City, between the years
1996 through 2004, Brahm employed over 50 artisans to restore
a total of three old courtyard houses. His passion for restoring
the heritage of "Old Peking" is balanced by his belief
in "culturally sustainable development" ; in other
words. There's "no such thing as a free lunch"! The
first restoration was to create a home and office complex, as
opposed to living/working in drab high-rise developments.
The elegant restoration not only featured authentic artistic
details but also had open ceilings, allowing the beautiful beams
above to be seen. As friends and clients started creating excuses
just to visit and view his efforts ("Can we hold our marriage
reception here?!"), Brahm saw an opportunity to restore
a second property as an exclusive restaurant and bar - "The
Red Capital Club". Again the painstaking attention to detail
was coupled with furniture previously used by China's revolutionary
leaders. The final result proved to be commercially viable,
so that the costly artistic result was justified. All three
restorations are in the same area - Brahm's neighbors must be
thrilled with what he has done for property values in the neighborhood!
Emboldened by his successes in Beijing, Brahm undertook two
new huge projects virtually at the same time; one was to create
a "Red Capital Ranch" along side of the "Great
Wall" encompassing 13 hectares.
The second project is the answer to the title of this story
of today's Laurence Brahm. Based upon his prodigious vision
and exemplified by using his own resources to "boot-strap",
his greatest project is to protect and promote ethnic diversity,
along with financial and economic reform in Tibet. Brahm established
Shambhala foundation as an independent, non-governmental organization
(NGO), committed to promoting and supporting initiatives for
ethnic diversity and culturally sustainable development.
Laurence J.Brahm is a lawyer and political economist by profession,
having spent over two decades advising and negotiating on behalf
of multinational corporations regarding their investments in
China. Goetz considers him to be a pioneer of culturally sustainable
heritage restoration in Beijing, having helped save historic
neighborhoods and sections of the Great Wall.
Author of numerous books on China and Asia, Brahm writes a
weekly column in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. He is
viewed by many as a barometer of China's economic and political
environment. During the years when "shock therapy"
was promoted in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
Brahm served as an advisor on financial, monetary and enterprise
reform to the governments of Vietnam and Laos. He helped draft
Vientiane's financial reform program and related legislations,
as well as Hanoi's policy for currency stabilization, credit
and securitization. During there years Brahm provided advice
which ran counter to the "Washington Consensus" economic
ideology then in vogue. Instead, he based his own theories of
transitional economics on China's gradualist model of institution
building in tandem with de-planning. He worked actively as an
advisor to the Chinese government on state-owned-enterprise
reform. He became known as an advocate of Zhu Rongji's policies
and coined the term managed marketization" on behalf of
the former primier.
Since 2002, Brahm has devoted most of his time to producing
and directing a series of film features and documentaries featuring
Tibet. This led him to initiate an independent dialogue between
the Dalai Lama and Beijing, around which substantial lobbying
efforts have been undertaken in a search to break the current
impasse. He is the only foreigner who has had access to the
Beijing recognized 11th Panchen Lama. This involvement in Tibetan
affairs led him to establish the Shambhala Foundation in 2005.
The Shambhala Foundation was set up to lay a platform for positive
policy initiatives to counter the global "social melting
pot" syndrome and unilateralist economic imperatives of
the Washington consensus.
Shambhala supports ethnic diversity in its various forms, culturally
sustainable development models, and a rational, middle way approach
to the resolution of international conflicts. While backing
a number of projects in Tibet and other ethnic regions of China,
Shambhala sees these micro initiatives as representing models
applicable to other countries and regions undergoing similar
transitions and phases of economic development. Last month,
on December 14th, the Shambhala Foundation organized peace Prayers
to be led by His Eminence Beru Khyentse Rinpoche, one of Tibet's
highest-ranking lamas and Buddhism's most revered teachers at
the Fringe Club in Hong Kong. Brahm's message to the press was
that whilst the media scrabble to report on violent protest
from anti WTO activists, Shambhala Foundation - an NGO dedicated
to ethnic diversity and culturally sustainable development hosted
a Voice of the Voiceless Film Festival; a forum to present the
public with the critical issues related to globalization and
corporate governance not being reported by mainstream media.
Its emphasis was on seeking peaceful, rational and constructive
solutions.
Brahm at the height of his consulting career had 4 offices
(Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City) employing
12 people. Now Red Capital employs 70 with internal affirmative
action programs for Tibetans having no education beyond high
school. He is currently funding monks in computer course in
Lhasa. So that's what he do in Tibet!
Laurence Brahm will be writing "Letters from Shambhala"
in Culture Hong Kong. He can be contacted at www.shambhala-ngo.org
Shambhala Foundation
In 2002 Laurence Brahm closed his law from and went to Western
China in search of "Shangri-la", along the way he
found it was another way of pronouncing "Shambhala",
a core Tibetan Buddhist concept envisioning a realm of future
peace. The legend of Shambhala describes cycles of war, disease
and environmental destruction laving arisen from greed and narrow
self-interest. Afterwards, a period of environmental harmony
and peace among humans and nature from the terrible times.
Shambhala Foundation is dedicated to the pursuit of this future.
People We Support
On his travels, Laurence was particularly moved by Yang Liping,
a Bai ethnic minority and China's most celebrated dancer, who
returned to Yunnan forsaking the comforts of Beijing's prestigious
Central Ethnic Dance and Music Institute, establishing her own
studio in Kunming. Traveling deep into Yunnan's interior, she
finds yet untouched villages where dance and music is still
oral tradition. According to Yang everything will be lost within
a matter of years, through development. So Yang frantically
video-records their dance and music, recruiting village youth
to her Kunming sutio choreographing ongoing performing arts
programs keeping traditions alive. Yang now supports 80 minority
kids at her studio through sporadic donations and personal savings
from a lifetime of performances, leaving her living in spartan
conditions, representing this celebrity's painful and powerful
commitment to preserving her people's ethnicity.
Tibetan artist An Sang spends his free time designing Tibetan
clothing and art motifs for a factory of handicapped Tibetans
established by a monk applying Buddhism to social work. Today
the factory(which only manufactures Tibetan crafts on the principle
of maintaining tradition) not only supports the fifty handicapped
working there, but an additional hundred orphans, many of whom
are also handicapped. The monk is not only a factory director,
but father figure to everyone in the social structure created
around both factory and school which it supports.
Initiatives like those mentioned above are occurring without
government financial support, in parallel against the backdrop
of China's hyper-frenetic development and new found infatuation
with materialism and western brands. While such grassroots activism
is being driven by a small minority, their efforts are compelling
and draw a following of intellectual youth with new-found conscience.
Despite the onslaught of globalization, there activities are
quickly converging into a trend with the potential to one day
become an alternative values movement. While ideas espoused
by individuals spearheading these initiatives do not fit into
an "anti-globalization" agenda per se, they represent
those same "green" global values being embraced by
the anti-globalization movement itself.
Our Beginnings
After producing two movies, writing three books about his travels
and inspired by the people and spirit of this region, Laurence
started Shambhala Foundation in the Spring of 2005.
Shambhala Foundation is an independent, non-governmental charitable
organization committed to promoting and supporting initiatives
for ethnic diversity and culturally sustainable development.
Shambhala was set up to lay a platform for positive policy
initiatives to counter the "one size fits all" mentality
and unilateralist economic imperatives of many large institutional
lenders. Shambhala supports ethnic diversity in its various
forms, culturally sustainable development models, and a rational,
middle way approach to the resolution of international conflicts.
While backing a number of projects in Tibet and other ethnic
regions of China, Shambhala sees these micro-initiatives as
representing models applicable to other countries and regions
undergoing similar transitions and phases of economic development.
Our Purpose
To support and promote projects for ethnic diversity and culturally
sustainable development which uphold or advance alternative
models to those espoused by mainstream institutions associated
with the Washington Consensus.
The building blocks for sustainable development lie in the
cultures of the peoples concerned. They have the right to determine
the direction of their own economic development and cultural
identity. Representative political institutions should be developed
on these two foundations.
We select initiatives to support and promote those which have
these characteristics. We look to illustrate these as collective
models of what can be achieved in diverse and ethnic regions
of China and other countries facing similar dilemmas of economic
transition and cultural identity.
Our Work
We focus on the following types of projects, supporting culturally
and environmentally sustainable initiatives:
i) Education(building schools in rural areas and native language
teaching)
ii) Medicine and Health (developing primary healthcare and mobile
clinics)
iii) Cultural Preservation and Development (restoring and preserving
traditional buildings and monasteries and reviving traditional
crafts)
iv)Entrepreneurial training(advising on socially responsible
business models)
We also support sustainable business models that develop and
protect diverse culture and lifestyles.
Promoting and Supporting Projuects
We promote and support projects through fundraising and media
initiatives. Most people are not aware that there is an enormous
amount of positive work being done in western China. We promote
international awareness through media. These initiatives raise
awareness and help to draw public support and finance for such
efforts, which otherwise may not be known.
Shambhala Foundation:
www.shambhal-ngo.org
Next Month culture Hong Kong will feature" Letters From
Shambhala" by Laurence Brahm.
