10
Decisions
Communist Party Chairman Han Wudi stepped off the Boeing 737 into the welcome warmth of a Hainan afternoon. He paused at the top of the passenger ramp, letting the warmth envelop him like a blanket while his eyes feasted on the luxuriant green of this tropical island, China’s southernmost province. What a relief to be out of the bitter cold of a Beijing January, with its parched landscape and incessant loess dust storms.
Welcome to China’s Hawaii, Chairman Han said to himself without thinking. He immediately grimaced at his slip. Never concede primacy to the U.S. in anything, he scolded himself. Lines from his recent secret speech to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Central Committee came unbidden into his mind: “The U.S. is in decline, while China is rising. Someday soon China will replace the U.S. as the world’s hegemon. Our goal is to lead the world in the twenty-first century.”
Han smiled. If things went as planned, the first concrete steps towards establishing — re-establishing, he corrected himself — Chinese hegemony over Asia would be taken at the upcoming expanded Politburo meeting. And that was only the beginning. Han’s smile widened wickedly. Someday American presidents will be riding in Chinese-made jets. And someday the world will refer to Hawaii as America’s Hainan. That is, if we allow Hawaii to remain an American possession after what the Americans have done to Taiwan…
Chairman Han was still smiling broadly as he descended the passenger ramp. He was greeted effusively by the Hainan provincial party secretary, a longtime crony who had first served under him twenty years before when he was Minister of Electronics. He nodded politely as the underling gushed about the island’s recent economic advances, listening with only half an ear. By now nearly all of the provincial party secretaries were his habagou, his lapdogs. After more than a decade in power he had managed to ease all of the possible contenders for his position into retirement, and to appoint dozens, no hundreds, of habagou to key posts in the party, military, and government. They were all talented enough, but his first requirement had been loyalty. As a result, Chairman Han now reigned supreme and secure at the top of the party pyramid. As Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee he was also commander-in-chief of the largest military in the world. Having concentrated all power in his hands, it was time to expand his writ abroad.
His underling — the man’s name escaped him — bowed low as Chairman Han got into the waiting Mercedes Benz. With the streets cleared by police escorts, he and they were out of the provincial capital of Haikou in minutes, speeding down a private and well-paved road towards the Thousand Palms Resort. Mao Zedong Wansui, he thought. Hooray for Mao Zedong. The late Chairman had projected the public image of a simple peasant, but had secretly nourished a taste for the good life. Every province had one or more palatial compounds that he had built exclusively for his own use. The one in Hainan was particularly luxurious, and had come in recent years to be used for meetings of senior leaders, particularly in the winter when everyone was eager to escape the biting cold and yellow grit of the North China plain.
Han stepped out of the Mercedes and addressed the assembled crowd of dignitaries, “Thank you all for coming to this expanded meeting of the Politburo,” he began with a smile. “We have an important three days of work ahead of us. China must resume her rightful place in the world — and soon. Our decisions over the next three days will determine how and when that happens. We have spent the past half-century developing our economy, our technology and our military. China has the world’s second largest economy, a rapidly expanding industrial base, and the world’s largest military. A new century is dawning, and it belongs to China.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yet we are still hemmed in by the American imperialists. They plot to destroy our Party and divide our country. They bomb our embassies. They prevent us from completing the liberation of the offshore islands and Taiwan. China must break out of this encirclement and assert its rightful place in the world!
“A half a century ago, upon the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao proudly proclaimed that China has stood up. Now it is time — no, it is past time — for us to take bold steps, steps that will shake the world.”
Premier Wang began clapping enthusiastically. The others joined in, including Chairman Han himself, for it was the Chinese custom to applaud oneself. Defense Minister Han’s applause, along with that of one or two others, was distinctly perfunctory.
Fu Zemin was the first to arrive at the entrance to the assigned conference room — the Dragon Room, it was called — the following morning. His mind was racing as the guards meticulously searched his briefcase and person. He hadn’t slept much the night before. Rather, gripped by an anxiety bordering on panic, he had spent the night making revisions to his speech, first taking a harder line, then a softer. Near dawn, exhausted, he had given up trying to guess the mood of the audience he was addressing and returned to his original draft.
The guards waved him through and he stepped through the moon-shaped entrance into the Dragon Room. His eyes widened in surprise—So this was where the name came from. The room was dominated by a large mural of a dragon, its serpentine body undulating in striking blue hues some 20 feet along the wall. How auspicious, thought Fu, that today’s debate should take place in the presence of the ancient symbol of China’s imperial glory. In this, the very Year of the Dragon.
Fu walked along the wall admiring the artist’s handiwork. The dragon-serpent in Chinese mythology represented power without principle. It was the distilled essence of the male principle, the masculine Yang factor with all of the feminine Yin removed. The unknown artist had captured this perfectly. There was something menacingly male about the dragon’s sinuous trunk, and his thick-muscled legs with their curving claws. The creature’s glittering eyes were devoid of compassion, its massive jaws wide open and predatory. Fu shuddered delightfully.
For centuries untold his ancestors had worshipped the dragon-serpent. They had buried their dead on hillsides overlooking the ridges of distant hills, calling these the dragon’s spine. They had centered the headstones of their grandfathers between twin pools of water, calling these the dragon’s eyes. They even called themselves the descendants of the dragon, in some Olympian fantasy of dragon-man miscegenation. All this was done to summon the dragon-serpent so that he would confer power and prosperity on them and their descendants. Fu was not a superstitious man, but he caught himself invoking the power of this great creature to aid his speech today. Its eyes seemed to rest on him for a moment, then went lifeless again.
His weariness and anxieties seemed to have vanished. “I will convince them to move against Taiwan,” he told the dragon under his breath. His fists clenched in anticipation of the debate.
Fu turned away from the mural to study the arrangement of the conference room. In the very center was a rectangular table, surrounded by ten chairs. On the table in front of each was a card containing the hand-brushed ideograph of its intended occupant. Chairman Han would be at the head of the table, of course, with Premier Wang occupying the opposite end. Two-dozen more chairs — each with its own card — were ranged along the walls. He made a quick circuit of the room, memorizing names, then staked out a position near the door. As the aides arrived he greeted them and made small talk, keeping an eye out for the key players, those who had a place at the rectangular table.