Mr. China Read online

  Back in Ningshan, a storm had burst about Chang’s head that almost overwhelmed him. First a key delivery of raw materials disappeared. The rumour was that a truck from Shi’s factory had secretly entered the docks in Shanghai at night. The Customs officials allowed them to load up eight tons of raw rubber that we were due to collect the next day. Chang reacted quickly and airfreighted rubber from Malaysia. It was money well spent.

  Shortly afterwards, there was a strike. It had been organized to coincide with one of my weekly visits in an attempt to embarrass Chang but he just walked into one of the workshops, picked someone at random and told him that if he wasn’t back at work within ten minutes, he would fire the entire section. By the time I left, they were all back at work.

  Three days later, the Deputy Mayor of Ningshan arrived with a posse of local policemen and, after several hours of stormy meetings, removed some key equipment. He claimed that it belonged to Shi. We cobbled together a new workshop consisting of a series of simple drills and presses set up in a tent in the truck park. The makeshift facilities enabled us to limp on.

  Next a hailstorm of writs hit the company. Shi had persuaded certain suppliers rumoured to be relatives of his wife to take court action to recover monies due from us. It felt as if I was back in Zhuhai when the local courts issued freezing orders over our bank accounts even though we had been paying normally. I made what I thought was a threatening telephone call to one of the suppliers in Shanghai accusing him of paying kickbacks but he just laughed and put the phone down. Chang quickly opened a number of undercover bank accounts outside Ningshan and diverted customer receipts, so we managed to avoid the freezing orders.

  After several orders were cancelled, we found that Shi had a warehouse in Shenzhen with a large store of faulty and defective goods. There were rumours that his people had taken defective goods and packaged them in our boxes and shipped substandard goods to our customers, but it sounded rather far-fetched to me.

  Back in the valley, the Village Committee stepped up its propaganda campaign. Chang was incensed by a pamphlet that Shi called ‘The Everlasting Beacon of Zhongxi’. The article had all the overblown outmoded rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution, praising Shi to a degree that was both embarrassing and ridiculous. Some of the locals were taken in but I told Chang to forget it and get back to work.

  By late April, confidence was returning. We had started a recruitment drive at the local universities in Hefei and Hangzhou for graduates to be trained into management jobs. We had been quite successful and around eighty students had signed up. A slow but steady trickle of people started to return up the valley. We had recovered our balance.

  My meetings with the managers in Zhongxi became a little more relaxed. I felt that confidence was slowly returning. After twenty years in a gearbox factory in Datong, Chang had no time for pretty words but he knew how to work an audience. He made a speech to the whole factory and I saw him warm up as he spoke. ‘Shi,’ he bellowed, ‘the Peasant Warlord, with no law and no heaven had boasted that he could sweep us away with one blow. But the “Seven Crushing Blows of Ningguo” have fallen and we are still standing.’

  When he finished a ragged cheer went through the audience. We had survived the strike, mass defection, rubber stolen from the docks, writs, the Village Committee propaganda, confiscated machinery and the faulty products in Shenzhen. Now it was time to counter-attack.

  Chang’s speech was important; all battles in China are won or lost on propaganda. Forced to take on Shi head-on, we had to hit back, so we decided on a publicity campaign aimed at unsettling his bankers. To get their attention, we had to come up with something big; something big enough and bad enough to frighten them away from giving him any more money.

  We spent days in an upstairs room in Zhongxi Village sifting through boxes of papers, trying to come up with a case against Shi. Our eyes strained as we tried to decipher the scribbled notes of Shi’s accounts clerks. The long hours were sometimes punctuated by a burst of excitement as someone found a particularly incriminating slip of paper. We were all absorbed in the work as we broke open cupboards and tore through dusty boxes together. The paperwork was in an appalling state but there was strong evidence of a horror story of machines transferred out to Shi’s new business, quantities of missing rubber and moulds, and spurious expenses. We also found further orders to transfer out a large batch of equipment on 6 December. Our dismissal of Shi on the second day of the month had been in the nick of time.

  In the end we cobbled together a claim for missing assets and damages from the non-competition agreement, more than a hundred million renminbi in all. It was a fantastic sum, big enough to pull Shi under if we won. After Zhuhai we knew that many of the claims would be thrown out by a court. But that was not the point. We were playing by the Anhui rules and perception was reality.

  We lodged a court case in Beijing and produced a booklet with screaming headlines about American investors pouring millions into China’s inner provinces to help modernize industry only to be ripped off by one of the locals. We included samples of scandalous documents and sent the whole lot to Shi’s bankers. It worked: his loans were frozen and the applications for more money were rejected. However, with the luck of the devil, Shi had just taken a large loan from a local quoted group arranged by his friends in the Prefectural Government. He survived. It seemed as if Round Three had been a stalemate. I knew that Round Four would be decisive.

  Our legal battle slowly ground forward through the autumn and the first hearing in Beijing went well. Morale improved further some weeks later when we won two smaller court cases in Hefei. But this, in a sense, was a side issue. The real outcome would be determined somehow from within the Provincial Government but, of course, winning the legal cases would help in the propaganda campaign. At that point, we needed to get our message across more effectively to the top levels of the government so we found a retired General from the People’s Liberation Army to help us. When Deng achieved ultimate power in China by resigning his offices so that others were forced to resign too, the only position that he kept was Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission. This shows the importance of the army. Mao has often been quoted as saying that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ but that was only part of his maxim. He went on to say, ‘So that is why the Party must always control the army.’ There had always been some tension in that relationship, particularly when the Party started converting the military factories up in the hills to civilian production. The army had responded by going into hotels, resorts, trading companies and manufacturing businesses, until Jiang Zemin, after a long struggle, put an end to the free-for-all and forced them to give up their investments.

  The General was right at the edge of the very small group of people who control China and he could find a way into most government departments. He was a big, stern-looking man who didn’t smile much and rather stood on ceremony. I never felt comfortable with him; I always worried that I might inadvertently offend him. But he certainly understood business and enjoyed the odd bottle of baijiu at lunchtime. After listening to our case, he agreed to talk to the Provincial Government and over time the combination of improving government relations and the relentless pressure of the court cases started to have an effect. Throughout the following winter, Shi began to tire of the fight and, by the following spring, the decisive moment arrived.

  On a lovely clear spring morning, on the way to work, Chang and Yang Bai were just about to go through the gates of the factory when a car drove up at high speed. Two men leapt out from the kerbside. Chang and his companion were shoved into the back seat and driven off. Just before Thousand Autumn Pass, some twenty miles down the road, on a sharp bend, Chang and Yang Bai leapt out of the car and took refuge in a local house. They found a man with a tractor and made off. Returning down the valley, they saw that the factory gates were covered with notices proclaiming the formation of ‘The Committee for the Protection of the Investors’. It had seized control of the factory and
was allegedly headed by Madame Zhao. Madame Zhao was the old accountant whom we had hired some years before. She was a sweet old lady, a grandmother over retirement age who had spent several weeks in hospital at the time of Shi’s removal because her nerves couldn’t take the stress. The idea that she was the mastermind behind an attempted coup was utterly preposterous.

  It emerged later that the uprising had been led by a group of disgruntled managers at the jack factory where the workers had become worried about their jobs. Chang never liked the jack factory any more than I did, and, knowing him, he might have gone too far in saying so. When he arrived back at the village, Chang had tried to go to work but he was expelled a second time by a group of about fifty workers. He decamped to the Village Committee opposite the factory gates and waited. The Municipal Government down the valley was informed and Secretary Wu dispatched officials to try to calm the situation. Order was eventually restored and Chang returned to his office at the end of the day. That, so it seemed, was that.

  There was a group of drivers from the transportation department of a supplier staying at the guest house in the factory. They looked disreputable, drank too much and had been behaving boorishly that night at dinner, hassling the waitresses and making offensive jokes. They had some friends with them who were much worse. Rumours spread around the factory that these people were members of the local Black Hand Society, a feared and detested Mafia-type organization. The rumours were that Chang’s office manager had hired them to put down any further dissent. Subsequent investigations by the Government never reached a conclusion, but at the time it was like a red rag to a bull.

  The following morning, a large group of workers surrounded the guest house and forced their way up to the third floor to confront the intruders. At the door a serious scuffle broke out. The people inside panicked and produced knives, which in turn led to calls for more workers to come upstairs. A huge fist fight ensued, resulting in broken noses and stab wounds. A knot of people struggled up and down the stairs in a mess of broken glass, torn hair and bleeding knuckles. Nine people finished up in hospital.

  The fight raged up and down the stairwells and by the time it was over there was blood all over the marble floor in the entrance hall. We had a group of people from Beijing visiting at the time who were terrified and locked themselves in their room. Even from the inside, the noises were horrible: frightened voices and the sharp animal howling of people in pain. Eventually the intruders fled and the rage of the crowd turned against Chang, Yang Bai and the visitors from Beijing. The doors were broken open and they were all dragged outside. Marched out of the factory gates by a crowd of over a hundred, they were pushed and kicked the length of the main street of the little town.

  The Village Committee Secretary, Madame Ye, with her pinched white face visible behind a megaphone, tried to restrain the crowd but the mob was intent on revenge. They continued over the bridge and into the jack factory. The workers slammed the gates and the small group gathered into a knot in an attempt to avoid the blows and punches. Yang Bai seemed to be a particular target and she was taken alone to the back of a warehouse. She has never talked about what happened there.

  After a few minutes, the police arrived and Chang and Yang Bai got into the police car. Before it had time to leave, the car was overturned with Chang, Yang Bai and a couple of terrified policemen still inside. The car was then bounced out of the factory gates.

  By this time the Prefectural Government, alarmed by the serious civil unrest, authorized the use of the military and an army detachment was sent from Xuan Cheng. This news cooled down the hotheads and the crowd dispersed. Chang escaped to the Village Committee.

  Late that night, up in Beijing, Michael and I met Pat in his office and got through to the Village Committee. Chang’s voice came over the line, sounding exhausted. He said that the violence had been an attempt to frighten us into removing him from his post. With an absent management, it would be pretty obvious who would be there to fill the vacancy. Chang was shaken and talked in a low voice as if there were others listening. He said that his back was ‘blue and bruised’ but that he wouldn’t leave.

  I heard months later that Chang had shouted at the mob in the jack factory that he would ‘rather die at his post than at home’. Wild rumours were circulating in the fraught atmosphere saying that we had already agreed to remove him. He said simply, ‘If you support me, I won’t run away. If you don’t, I’ll go now.’ I felt a tremendous wave of loyalty towards Chang at that moment. We had asked him to fight a battle that was not of his own making and he had put himself through fire for us. We all told him that we were relying on him and, to his evident relief, we promised to put through a call to Secretary Wu. We left in the small hours of the morning reasonably confident that the final crisis had been weathered. It had been a close call.

  When I saw Chang a few days later, he was withdrawn. The frightening events had shattered his normal ebullience. In the end his true feelings came out: ‘It seems so shaming to be beaten by your own people.’ He had always prided himself in winning the hearts of his employees, but up in the hills the memory of Shi was too strong. As I watched Chang struggle with his deeply wounded pride, the unfairness of it all left a bitter taste; and all for that wretched jack factory.

  After the final storm, events came neatly to a conclusion. The court in Beijing issued a ruling that Shi could not compete with our joint venture. Although I knew from Harbin that it would be almost impossible to implement the court order in practice, it dramatically increased the pressure on the Local Government to find a compromise. In the absence of a fair solution, we could try to blow up the whole dispute and go to the Central Government. No one wanted that.

  In fact, my immediate reaction was to do nothing. We had moles inside Shi’s business so we knew that he had thrown himself into a flurry of activity, coming to Beijing to meet with his lawyers and flying to Hefei to lobby officials. But everywhere he went the message was the same. The judgement could not be overturned. Most of the officials were wearied by this constant struggle. They were bored with the story and suffering from battle fatigue. They told him to settle with the foreigners. They didn’t want any more turmoil.

  Eventually the phone call came. Would we like to meet up in Beijing? Secretary Wu was at the Cadre Training School near the Summer Palace. Maybe we could meet up with Secretary Wu and the General? That way we might be able to reach agreement.

  Under a freezing blue sky in early December, Shi came to Beijing. We met in a hotel, on neutral ground. Despite everything that had happened I couldn’t dislike him. He was so incorrigible, the performer who would never give up. As he walked in, head on one side as usual, he looked at me with mock surprise and said, ‘Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?’

  There were several rounds of discussions with Secretary Wu and the General acting as referees. On the third round, down in Ningshan, I remember hammering Shi on some tedious point about accounts receivable where I had been particularly well briefed. He looked pained and walked out of the room. A minute later, a message came in; could Shi and I meet in a separate room?

  We sat alone on opposite sides of the table, separated by two cups of hot water containing floating tea leaves, just as we had six years earlier. Shi gave me a cigarette and I took it. In five minutes we had a deal. No lawyers, no minutes, just two people on either side of a table. He would hand over his shares in our business and we would drop all our claims. A small balancing payment would be made.

  That afternoon, in a haze of baijiu, Shi took me around his new factory. The same Old Shi was evident in the neat rows of machinery, the uniformed workers, clipped hedges and perfect lawns. I asked him if he would come up the valley with me for a visit to the old business. On our way up, he told me that he had not even driven past the gates of his old factory for two and a half years. He hadn’t been able to face it so it was a moment of bitter-sweet emotion when we walked through the gates together. As we toured the workshops, the atmosphere was electric.
Chang had extended the shift by an hour and the workers craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the vanquished warlord’s return.

  Much of the dinner that night is a blur in my memory but I do remember that the whole Government turned out: Secretary Wu, the Mayor and four deputies. The baijiu flowed and even the General relaxed a little, reciting poetry with a few lines missing. I sat between Chang and Shi, just in case there was trouble, but even they managed to hold a civil conversation.

  Through the window we could see Shi’s old apartment and I caught him shooting several glances in that direction. He seemed happy enough, but kept moving over to sit alone on an old wooden sofa at the other end of the room. I discovered later that it was from Shi’s apartment and that it had been moved there after he had been kicked out. At the end of the dinner, Shi gave me a huge seal carved from red granite. I was thrilled with it so after I returned I set about to find the best seal carver in Beijing. I was given an address: The Pavilion of Accumulated Literature, Glazed Tile Factory Street, Just South of Tiananmen Square. The woman in charge said, ‘Old Master Xu’s already stopped. He’s eighty-six.’ But she found me his apprentice. He was sixty-seven.

  He carved the chop with a poem that Shi had taught me years before. It tells of petals falling from a flower into the soil below and adding colour to next year’s growth, a poem of sacrifice and renewal from more than a thousand years ago:

  Falling Red is not without feeling,

  It changes the spring soil better to protect the flowers.

  After I collected the chop, I went over the road to buy a huge red inkpad so that I could use it. The shopkeeper recognized the character style of the carver.

  ‘He’s not bad,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘but he’s still too young.’