By Nita Ramcharan
September 22
Beijing sits 11 hours ahead of Suriname. When the capital Paramaribo is still wrapped in nighttime sleep, China has already entered its next working day. For a 10-person delegation of Surinamese journalists on a seven-day tour across China, this time difference quickly gained a far deeper meaning than a simple shift in clocks. More than just traveling 11 hours ahead of our home schedule, it often felt as though we had jumped decades forward into the future.
China overwhelms first-time visitors with the sheer scale and pace of its progress. This transformation is visible everywhere: in world-class infrastructure, cutting-edge digital technology, thoughtful urban planning, high-speed rail networks that connect the country in hours, industrial robots, and widely deployed artificial intelligence. Above all, what stands out is that this is a nation that does not merely discuss technological advancement – it actively implements it, even in industries as familiar to us as media.
For our group of working journalists, seeing the tools Chinese newsrooms use on a daily basis was a fascinating, eye-opening experience. Top-tier camera equipment, professional audio and lighting systems, mobile camera dollies integrated with teleprompters, and even AI tools already integrated into daily content production and presentation are standard now. These are tools that many of us in Suriname have only dared to dream about for the future of journalism, yet they are already in everyday use across China.
Take Shanghai as one striking example. When you stand along the Bund at night and gaze across the Huangpu River toward the Pudong district, you are greeted by a scene that feels almost like stepping into a fairytale. On one side of the river stand the well-preserved historic colonial buildings of the Bund, and on the other rises a futuristic skyline of glass and steel skyscrapers. Light, innovative architecture, and technology merge to create a view that leaves you speechless. As we stood watching, it felt less like we were looking at tomorrow and more like we were glimpsing what the world will look like in 2050.
This same sense of awe struck me when visiting large-scale infrastructure projects that integrate cutting-edge engineering. The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, for instance, is a 24-kilometer transport corridor combining two bridges, an undersea tunnel, and two artificial islands spanning the Pearl River estuary. The project cut travel time between the two major cities of Shenzhen and Zhongshan from roughly two hours down to just 30 minutes.
Projects of this scale do not materialize from a spontaneous decision to build a bridge one morning. They require years of long-term vision, careful strategic planning, advanced scientific research, world-class engineering, significant investment, and above all, consistent political commitment to see the project through to completion.
Of course, China is not some perfect fairy tale from *One Thousand and One Nights*. There are well-documented discussions to be had about human rights, the status of dissenting voices, press freedom, and restrictions on social media platforms. Not every policy China pursues deserves admiration, and certainly no country should simply copy every model China has implemented. But anyone who only focuses on these criticisms and refuses to acknowledge the extraordinary progress China has achieved in other fields does themselves a disservice. The reality of the 21st century is that the world can no longer ignore China’s role in global affairs.
What this tour made even clearer is that true development is never just a matter of money. Of course, large investments are required to build bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, and digital infrastructure. But money without a clear, long-term national vision will never drive real, lasting change for a society. And that is where the story turns back to Suriname.
Suriname has recently established a broad National Development Platform tasked with drafting a national development vision extending to 2050. This initiative cannot be allowed to become just another plan that, after endless meetings, grand speeches, and thick published reports, ends up gathering dust on a shelf. How many multi-year development plans, vision documents, and future strategy reports have we written over the past decades? We have poured countless hours and significant public funds into these efforts. Now, we are once again investing heavily in developing a new national plan.
This is why the current effort must deliver more than just paper reports. Suriname can no longer afford to restart the entire development process from scratch every time there is a change in government. It is natural and democratic for different administrations to have different political priorities and ideological orientations. But the fundamental long-term development direction of a nation cannot shift completely every five years.
We need to answer critical questions that will shape our future: Where do we want Suriname to stand in 2050 when it comes to education, healthcare, energy access, agriculture, housing, infrastructure, and urban planning? What role will we carve out for technology, automation, and artificial intelligence in our economy? And most importantly, how do we prepare our children for a world that is changing faster than many of us fully comprehend? These questions grow even more urgent now that Suriname stands on the cusp of significant new oil and gas revenue. The biggest mistake we could make would be to assume that oil revenue will automatically generate widespread development. It will not. Without a clear, shared long-term vision, even billions of dollars in new revenue can disappear without delivering lasting progress.
The outbound flight to Beijing via Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport took more than 28 hours, and the return flight, which lasted nearly 37 hours, was a grueling experience. Several members of our delegation, including myself, were not allowed to leave Schiphol during our layover. Even a 24-hour transit visa proved impossible to arrange, despite high-level efforts to secure it. We were unable to meet family members who live less than half an hour from the airport, which left many of us frustrated. But we returned home safely, tired after the long journey, but our minds full of new ideas and perspectives.
The biggest lesson China taught us on this trip is what long-term strategic thinking can achieve. Suriname does not need to become China – that is not possible, and it is not something we should want anyway. Our national scale, history, social fabric, and democratic traditions are fundamentally different. China itself has lived through a turbulent history of dramatic transformation, yet it still actively preserves and celebrates its centuries-old cultural heritage. That may be another key lesson for us: moving forward does not require forgetting where we came from.
Standing on the Bund in Shanghai, a group of Surinamese journalists stood among thousands of glittering lights, gazing out at a world that felt almost unreal. Beijing and Shanghai are 11 hours ahead of Paramaribo on the clock, but the gap in development felt far larger. We did not just travel to another country – we got a glimpse of the future that awaits Suriname, too. Now, the only question that remains is: how many years will it take us to catch up?