of experts who know more about the constitutional process than I do, but the Politburo members are not required to listen to them. They come from a very different political environment, and that’s the one they understand. For us ‘the people’ means popular opinion, polls, and ultimately elections. For them, it means the peasants and workers who are supposed to do what they’re told.”
“We do business with these people?” Winston asked the ceiling.
“It’s called realpolitik, George,” Ryan explained.
“But we can’t pretend they don’t exist. There’s over a billion of them, and, oh, by the way, they also have nuclear weapons, on ballistic launchers, even.” Which added a decidedly unpleasant element to the overall equation.
“Twelve of them, according to CIA, and we can turn their country into a parking lot if we have to, just it’ll take twenty-four hours instead of forty minutes,” Ryan told his guests, managing not to get a chill when he said it. The possibility was too remote to make him nervous. “And they know that, and who wants to be the king of a parking lot? They are that rational, Scott, aren’t they?”
“I think so. They rattle their saber at Taiwan, but not even much of that lately, not when we have Seventh Fleet there all the time.” Which, however, burned up a lot of fuel oil for the Navy.
“Anyway, this cash problem won’t actually cripple their economy?” Jack asked.
“I don’t think so, unless they’re pretty damned dumb.”
“Scott, are they dumb?” Ryan asked State Department.
“Not that dumb—at least I don’t think so,” State told the President.
“Good, then I can go upstairs and have another drink.” Ryan rose, and his guests did the same.
This is lunacy!” Qian Kun growled at Fang half a world away, discussing what turned out to be the same set of issues.
“I will not disagree with you, Qian, but we must make our case to the rest of our colleagues.”
“Fang, this could mean ruin for us. With what shall we buy wheat and oil?”
“What are our reserves?”
The Finance Minister had to sit back and think about that one. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the numbers on which he got briefed the first Monday of every month. The eyes opened. “The harvest from last year was better than average. We have food for about a year—assuming an average harvest this year, or even a slightly short one. The immediate problem is oil. We’ve been using a lot of that lately, with the PLA’s constant exercises up north and on the coast. In oil, we have perhaps four months in reserve, and the money to purchase another two months. After that, we will have to cut back our uses. Now, we are self-sufficient in coal, and so we’ll have all the electricity we need. The lights will burn. The trains will run, but the PLA will be crippled.” Not that this is an entirely bad thing, he didn’t add. Both men acknowledged the value of the People’s Liberation Army, but today it was really more of a domestic security service, like a large and well-armed police force, than a real guarantor of their national security, which had, really, no external threats to deal with.
“The army won’t like that,” Fang warned.
“I am not overly concerned with their likes and dislikes, Fang,” the Finance Minister countered. “We have a country to bring out of the nineteenth century. We have industries to grow, and people to feed and employ. The ideology of our youth has not been as successful in bringing this about as we were educated to expect.”
“Do you say that ... ?”
Qian shifted in his chair. “Remember what Deng said? It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. And Mao exiled him soon thereafter, and so today we have two hundred million more mouths to feed, but the only additional funds with which we do it came to us from the black cat, not the white one. We live in a practical world, Fang. I, too, have my copy of The Little Red Book, but I’ve never tried to eat it.”
This former railroad engineer had been captured by his bureaucracy and his job, just like the last one had been—he’d died at the relatively young age of seventy-eight, before he could be expelled from his Politburo chair. Qian, a youthful sixty-six, would have to learn to watch his words, and his thoughts, more carefully. He was about to say so when Qian started speaking again.
“Fang,