The Man From Beijing Read online

  ‘They must see the whole picture,’ the president had said. ‘The whole must not be split up. Every pause brings with it a risk that doubts would crop up, cracks in the coherent understanding that what we must do is necessary.’

  He devoted the next hour to a historic overview of China, which underwent a series of dramatic changes not just during the last century but throughout the many centuries since Emperor Qin first laid the foundation of a united country. It was as if within this Middle Kingdom a long chain of hidden explosive charges had been laid. Only the most outstanding leaders, the ones with the sharpest visionary eyesight, would be able to predict the moments when the explosions would take place. Certain of these men, including Sun Yat-sen and not least Mao, had possessed what the ignorant population regarded as an almost magic ability to interpret their times – and would bring about the explosions that someone else, let us call her the nemesis divina of history, had placed along the invisible path that the Chinese nation had to traverse.

  Needless to say, Yan Ba spent most of this part of his lecture talking about Mao and his era. Mao founded the first Communist dynasty. Not that the word ‘dynasty’ was used – that would have aroused echoes of the previous rule of terror – but everyone knew that was how the peasants who had spearheaded the revolution regarded Mao. He was an emperor, despite the fact that he allowed ordinary people to enter the Forbidden City and didn’t force them to step to one side, at risk of being beheaded if they didn’t, when the Great Leader, the Great Helmsman, went past. The time had now come, Yan Ba explained, to turn back once more to Mao and accept with humility that he had been right about how the future would evolve, even though he has been dead for thirty years. His voice was still very much alive; he had the capabilities of a prophet and a scientist to see into the future, to shine his own kind of light into the dark of future decades.

  But what had Mao been right about? There was a lot he had got wrong. The leader of the first Communist dynasty had not always treated his contemporaries the way he should have. He had been at the forefront when the country had been liberated, and the dream of freedom, the spiritual content of the liberation struggle itself, according to Yan Ba, was about the right of even the poorest peasant to hope for a better future without risking being beheaded by some despicable landowner. Instead, the landowners were now the ones who would be decapitated; it would be their blood that enriched the earth, not that of the poor peasants.

  But Mao had been wrong in thinking that China would be able to make enormous economic advances in just a few years. He maintained that one iron foundry should always be sufficiently close to another for the workers to see the smoke from each stack signalling to one another. The Great Leap Forward, which was supposed to project China into both the present and the future, was a huge mistake. Instead of large-scale industrial production, there were people in their backyards melting down old forks and saucepans in primitive furnaces. The Great Leap Forward failed; Chinese workers were unable to jump over the bar because their leaders raised it too high. It was now impossible for anyone to deny, even though Chinese historians had to be sparing with the truth when describing difficult times, that millions of people had starved to death. There was a period of some years when Mao’s rule was not unlike earlier imperial dynasties. Mao had locked himself into his rooms in the Forbidden City and never admitted that the Great Leap Forward had been a failure. Nobody was allowed to talk about it. But nobody could know what Mao actually thought. In the writings of the Great Helmsman there was always an area conspicuous by its absence: he concealed his innermost thoughts. No one knows if Mao ever woke up at four in the morning, the bleakest time of day, and wondered just what he had done. Did he lie awake and see the shadows of all the starving, dying people who had been sacrificed at the altar of his impossible dream, the Great Leap Forward?

  Instead, Mao counter-attacked. Counter-attacked what? Yan Ba asked rhetorically, and paused for several seconds before answering. Counterattacked his own defeat, his own failed policies, and the danger that there might be whispering in the shadows, a backstairs coup. Mao’s exhortation to ‘bombard the headquarters’ – a new kind of explosive charge, you might say – was his reaction to what he saw around him. Mao mobilised young people, just as everyone does in a state of war. Mao exploited young people the way France, England and Germany did when they marched them off to the battlefields of the First World War to die with their dreams choked by the slushy mud. There was no need to go on about the Cultural Revolution – that was Mao’s second mistake, an almost entirely personal vendetta against the forces in society that challenged him.

  By then Mao had started to grow old. The question of his successor was always at the top of his agenda. When the next in line, Lin Biao, turned out to be a traitor and perished in a plane crash on his way to Moscow, Mao began to lose control. But to the very end he continued to issue challenges to those who would outlive him. There would be new class warfare; new groups would try to benefit at the expense of others. Or as Mao repeated as a mantra, ‘Each individual will be replaced by his opposite.’ Only the stupid, the naive, anyone who refused to see, would imagine that China’s future was assured once and for all.

  ‘Now,’ said Yan Ba, ’Mao – our great leader – has been dead for thirty years. We can see that he was right. But he was unable to identify precisely the conflicts he predicted would come. Nor did he try to do so, because he knew that was impossible. History can never give us exact knowledge of what will happen in the future: rather, it shows us that our ability to prepare ourselves for change is limited.’

  Yan Ba noticed that the audience was still concentrating hard on every word he said. Now that he had finished his historical introduction, he knew they would be listening even more intently. Many no doubt had a premonition of what was about to come. Yan Ba was aware that he was giving one of the most important speeches in the history of the new China. One day his words would be repeated by the president.

  There was a little clock placed discreetly next to the lamp on the lectern. Yan Ba began the second hour of his lecture by describing China’s present situation and the changes that were necessary. He described the widening gap between different groups of citizens that was now threatening future developments. It had been necessary to strengthen the coastal areas and the big industrial centres that were at the very heart of economic progress. After Mao’s death Deng had decided rightly that there was only one way to go: to emerge from isolation and open Chinese ports to the world. He quoted from Deng’s famous speech, which declared that ‘our doors are now opening and can never again be closed’. The future of China could only be fashioned by cooperation with the world around it. Deng’s understanding of how capitalism and market forces worked so ingeniously together had convinced him that the moment when the apple could be picked was soon; China could once more and with conviction assume its role as the Middle Kingdom, a great power in the making and, in some thirty or forty years’ time, the world’s leading nation both politically and economically. During the past twenty years China had developed economically in a way that was without precedent. Deng had once expressed it by saying that the leap forward from every citizen owning a pair of trousers to a situation in which every citizen could choose to acquire a second pair was a leap greater than that first one. Those who understood Deng’s way of expressing himself knew that he meant something very basic: not everybody could be in a position to acquire that second pair at the same moment. That hadn’t been possible in Mao’s time either: the poorest peasants living in the remotest areas in their squalid villages were the last in line, long after the urban dwellers had cast off their old clothes. Deng knew that progress could not take place everywhere simultaneously. That went against all economic laws. Progress was a sort of tightrope walk, attempting to ensure that neither wealth nor poverty grew so fast that the Communist Party and its inner circles, who were the tightrope walkers, fell off and hurtled down into the abyss. Deng was no longer with us, but the moment he had
feared and warned us about, the point at which balance was in danger of being lost, was now upon us.

  Yan Ba had reached the section of his lecture in which two words would dominate: one was ‘threat’ and the other ‘necessity’. The biggest threat came from the gap in living standards – while those who lived in the coastal cities could see their lot in life improving, the rural peasants found that nothing had changed, and they could barely make a living from their agriculture. The only course open to them was to migrate to urban areas in the hope of finding work. The authorities encouraged this, especially in the industries that made goods for the West, toys and clothes. But what would happen when these industrial cities, these seething building sites, could no longer cope with the influx? How would it be possible to prevent hundreds of millions of people, who had nothing to lose but their poverty, from rebelling? Mao had said it was always right to rebel. So why should it be wrong if those who were just as poor now as they were twenty years ago were to rise up in protest?

  Yan Ba knew that many of those listening to his lecture had spent a long time thinking about this problem. He also knew that a few copies had been printed of a plan incorporating an extreme solution. Nobody spoke about it, but everybody who was familiar with the Chinese Communist Party’s way of thinking knew what it contained. The events that took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989 could be seen as a prologue proving the plan’s existence. The party would never allow chaos to break out. If it came to the worst, if no other solution could be found, the army would be called in. No matter how large the confrontation – ten or fifty million people – the party would retain its power over the citizens and the country.

  ‘The question is ultimately very simple,’ Yan Ba told them. ‘Is there any other solution?’ He provided the answer: yes, but it would require the highest level of strategic thought in order to bring it about. ‘But, ladies and gentlemen,’ Yan Ba continued, ‘these preparations have already begun, even if they appear to be concerned with something quite different.’

  So far he had only spoken about China, history and the present. Now, as the third hour approached, he left China and discussed Africa.

  ‘Let us now travel,’ said Yan Ba, ‘to an entirely different continent, to Africa. In recent years, in order to secure sufficient supplies of raw materials, not least oil, to meet our needs, we have built up increasingly strong relationships with many African states. We have been generous with loans and gifts, but we do not interfere in the internal politics of these countries. We are neutral; we do business with everybody. As a result, it makes no difference to us if the land we are dealing with is Zimbabwe or Malawi, Sudan or Angola. Just as we reject any kind of foreign interference in our internal affairs and our legal system, we acknowledge that these countries are independent and that we cannot make any demands with regard to the way in which they are run. We are criticised for this approach, but this does not worry us because we know that behind such criticism is envy and fear, as the USA and Russia begin to realise that China is no longer the colossal nonentity they have imagined us to be for so long. People in the Western world refuse to understand that African nations prefer to cooperate with us. China has never oppressed them, nor colonised them. On the contrary, we supported them when they began to liberate themselves in the 1950s. Our friends in Africa turn to us when the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank rejects their applications for loans. We do not hesitate to help them. We do so with a clear conscience because we are also a poor country. We are still a part of the so-called Third World. As we have worked increasingly successfully with these countries, it has become clear that, in the long run, it may well be there that we find a part of the solution to the threat I talked about earlier this morning. For many of you, and perhaps also for me, my explanation for my thinking will be a historical paradox.

  ‘Let me suggest a parallel to illustrate what it was like in those countries fifty years ago. At that time Africa was made up almost exclusively of colonies suffering from the oppression of Western imperialism. We stood shoulder to shoulder with these people; we supported their liberation movements by supplying advice and weaponry. Not for nothing was Mao and his generation an example of how a well-organised guerrilla movement could overcome a superior enemy, how a thousand ants biting an elephant’s foot could bring it down. Our support contributed to the liberation of one country after another. We have seen how the tail of imperialism began to droop more and more. When our comrade Nelson Mandela was released from prison on the island where he had spent so many years, that was the final blow that defeated Western imperialism in the guise of colonialism. The liberation of Africa tilted the axis of the earth in the direction we believe indicates that freedom and justice will eventually be victorious. Now we can see that large areas of land, often very fertile, are lying in waste. Unlike ours, the Dark Continent is sparsely populated. And we have now realised that it offers us at least part of a solution to the circumstances that threaten our own stability.’

  Yan Ba took a sip of water from the glass standing next to the microphone. Then he continued talking. He was coming to the point that he knew would lead to animated discussions not only among his listeners, but also within the Communist Party and the politburo.

  ‘We must be aware of what we are doing,’ said Yan Ba, ‘but we must also be aware of what we are not doing. What we are proposing both to you and the Africans is not another wave of colonisation. We are coming not as conquerors, but as friends. We have no intention of repeating the outrages that were inseparable from colonialism. We know what oppression means because so many of our forefathers lived in slave-like circumstances in the USA during the nineteenth century. We ourselves were subjected to the barbarity of European colonialism. The fact that on the surface, like reflections of the sun, there may appear to be similarities does not mean that we shall impose colonial regimes on the African continent for the second time. We shall simply solve a problem at the same time as we provide assistance to these people. In the deserted plains, in the fertile valleys through which the great African rivers flow, we shall farm the land by moving there millions of our peasants who, with no doubt at all, will begin to farm land lying fallow. We shall not be getting rid of people; we shall simply be filling a vacuum, and everybody will benefit from what comes to pass. There are lands in Africa, especially in the south and south-east, where enormous areas could be populated by the poor people from our own country. We would be making Africa fruitful and at the same time eliminating a threat that faces us. We know that we will meet with opposition, not only in the world at large where it will be alleged that China has shifted from being a supporter of liberation movements to becoming a coloniser itself. We will also come up against resistance within the Communist Party. The reason I am delivering this lecture is to clarify this opposition. There will be many divergent opinions among the leading lights of our country. You who are gathered here today have the good sense and insight to realise that a large part of the threat undermining our stability can be eliminated in the way I have described. New ways of thinking always arouse opposition. Nobody was more aware of that than Mao and Deng. They were brothers in the sense that they were never afraid of new ideas and were always on the lookout for ways to give the poor people of this world a better life, in the name of solidarity.’

  Yan Ba continued for another hour and forty minutes to spell out what China’s policy would be in the near future. When he eventually finished he was so exhausted that his legs were shaking. But the applause was overwhelming. When silence returned and the lights went up, he checked his watch and found that the clapping had lasted for nineteen minutes. He had completed his task.

  He left the podium the same way he had come and hurried to the car that was waiting for him outside one of the entrance doors. On the journey back to the university he tried to imagine the discussions that would follow. Or perhaps the delegates would have to disperse immediately? Each hastening back to his or her own territory to start preparing for the momentous
developments in Chinese politics over the next few years?

  Yan Ba didn’t know, and he felt a certain sense of loss, now that he had vacated the stage. He had done his job. Nobody would ever mention his name when future historians came to examine the revolutionary events that could be traced back to China in 2006. Legend would have it that a significant meeting took place at the Yellow Emperor, but exact details would remain unclear. Those attending the meeting had been given strict instructions – note-taking was not allowed.

  When Yan Ba got back to his office he closed the door, fed his speech into the shredder and then took the rubbish to the boiler room in the university basement. A caretaker opened one of the fire doors. He threw in the shredded paper and watched it transform into ashes.

  And that was that. He spent the rest of the day working on an article about the significance of DNA research. He left his office soon after six and headed home. He felt a little flutter of excitement as he approached his new Japanese car, which was part of the remuneration for the lecture he had delivered.

  There was a lot of winter still to come. He longed for the spring.

  That same evening Ya Ru stood by the window of his large office on the top floor of the skyscraper he owned. He was thinking about the speech he had heard that morning. But what intrigued him most was not the content of the lecture. He had been aware for some time of the strategies being developed in the innermost party circles to counteract the major challenges that were in store. What had surprised him was the presence of his sister Hong Qiu, that she had been invited to take part. Even though she was a highly placed adviser to members of the inner circle of the Communist Party, he had not expected to meet her there.