colonial era—began to display with suspicious prominence the latest issues of
I wondered what the Chinese were interested in. What on earth would compel them to open an embassy in Kiribati of all places? No one builds embassies on Tarawa. Even the two countries that did have embassies barely filled them with staff. Australia had four diplomats. New Zealand only one, and he was also assigned to several other countries.
The government of Kiribati soon announced that it had agreed to buy an airplane, the Y-12, from China. Every aviation specialist in the Pacific thought Kiribati should buy a Twin Otter, which are reliable and safe. The entire region was flying Twin Otters, ensuring a nearby supply of spare parts. Instead, the government bought a Chinese airplane for what was universally regarded as a wildly inflated price. Clearly, there was some funny business going on, but what? Selling one airplane to an impoverished nation hardly struck me as worthy of a new embassy.
The government then announced a plan to send I-Kiribati girls to Hong Kong, where they would work as servants for $400 a month, minus rent and meal costs. Who knew that China was suffering from a labor shortage? The prospective employer could choose the girl of his choice after viewing his options on videotape. As details of the contract emerged, which stipulated that the girls would have no recourse should they be unhappy with their employers, popular disgust with the plan forced the government to abandon it.
Still, procuring unwilling prostitutes, which was among the Red Army’s more financially rewarding sidelines, did not strike me as an activity necessitating an embassy. It was only when the government announced that it had agreed to lease land to China so that they could construct a satellite tracking station that it began to make sense. The Chinese Embassy declared that the tracking station would only be for civilian-use satellites, but many found this hard to believe. Why did the Chinese prevent customs officials from examining the shipping containers they brought in to build their satellite tracking station? Why would the government of Kiribati allow them to get away with it?
Once the Chinese began construction of the station in an isolated grove in Temaiku, the rumors flew. The Chinese were bringing in guns. A boy had seen a Chinese man board a bus with a gun. The embassy had an armory. A submarine had emerged just beyond the reef in Temaiku on a moonless night and supplied the tracking station with mysterious goods, presumably guns. It did not help that the Chinese, and sometimes there were dozens of them, kept completely to themselves.
“I am scared of the Chinese,” Tiabo told me. “They are bad people. They have guns.”
“I don’t like the Chinese,” Bwenawa said. “They don’t believe in God. They do not care about the I-Kiribati people. And they have guns.”
Even Radio Kiribati felt obliged to comment. Rumors that the Chinese are bringing in guns are false, it declared. To prove it, several
The
“I am very worried,” Bwenawa said. “We know that China has enemies, and I am scared of what would happen to Tarawa if China goes to war. Will those countries attack Tarawa? It has happened before.”
China’s enemy, or strategic partner depending on the week, happened to be quite busy nearby. On Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the United States was preparing to test its new missile defense program. An intercontinental ballistic missile would be fired from Vandenberg Air Force base in California. Shortly thereafter, an interceptor would be fired from Kwajalein. As the date approached, more and more Chinese arrived, and from their curt bearing, I assumed they were from the Red Army. Once the test was conducted, they left again. Clearly, the tracking station in Temaiku was a spy station.
Sylvia and I decided this needed investigating. We approached the tracking station by bicycle, stealthlike. Just in front of the building, on the beach, were massive piles of discarded Styrofoam, deposited there by the Chinese as they finished the construction of the station. In the days that followed, the Styrofoam would travel down the atoll, befouling it, until the ocean took it forever.
The station itself was nothing much to look at. It looked like a rural school with single-story buildings and tin roofs. The most striking feature was the massive satellite dishes. The complex was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Just outside the gate, we got off our bicycles.
I looked at Sylvia.
“I think we should,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes. We must.”
“You’re right. It’s necessary.”
“
And then we pedaled like hell before they shot us.
SHORTLY THEREAFTER, Sylvia was dispatched to the Federated States of Micronesia, where she would donate the hospital equipment that the government of Kiribati had declined to accept. With Sylvia traveling—and oh, how I envied her—I decided to have my fish and rice at the Otintaii Hotel, which offered a deceptively impressive menu, though in fact it could rarely scrounge up anything more than fish and rice. There, I discovered a veritable Chinatown. I passed the time guessing who represented Chinese officialdom and who was there to buy I-Kiribati passports, a lucrative sideline for the government of Kiribati, particularly in the months leading up to Hong Kong’s absorption by China. The Hong Kong Chinese were easy to spot. The men display flash, and the women, unaware of local cultural mores, display flesh. The differences between a Shanghai merchant and a Beijing lackey were more subtle, but the shoes gave everything away. The bureaucrats wore plastic sandals; the merchants genuine imitation leather.
I was sitting by myself when a young Chinese man asked if he could join me. There were no other seats available. He sat down, and though his English was halting and my Chinese nonexistent, we got to talking. He was an engineer, a recent graduate from Beijing University, and he was on Tarawa to help finish the Chinese Embassy. “I want to build the most beautiful building in Kiribati,” he said. He was affable. I found it curious that he got his degree at Beijing University. Only the country’s elite studied there, the children of the Communist Party’s leaders. I asked him about the demonstrations in 1989, when thousands of students, particularly from Beijing University, demanded reform.
“They were misguided,” he said. “China is a very great country.”
He looked deeply uncomfortable.
“What about the massacre in Tiananmen Square?” I asked.
Before he could respond, an older Chinese man, clearly someone of authority, walked over from the next table and pointedly put out his cigarette in the ashtray in front of me, all the while staring at the young engineer.
“Excuse me,” the engineer said. “I have found another seat.”
I spent the rest of the evening alone.
When Sylvia returned, I told her about the incident. Obviously, the Chinese smoker was a political officer. I also updated her on the latest rumors. There was a second submarine. More guns had been spotted.
“Oh good. More information to pass on,” she said.
“Pass on to whom?” I asked.
“The American ambassador to the Marshall Islands.”
“Excuse me? You’re informing the Americans about the Chinese on Tarawa?”
“Uh-huh. I met with her in Majuro and told her everything I knew.”
“Not knew.
“Whatever. She wrote it all down, and asked me to keep her updated.”
This was an interesting project for Sylvia to pursue. Of all the guidebooks to the Pacific, only one mentioned Kiribati. And in that guidebook, FSP was described as a CIA front. This had outraged Sylvia.
“I thought you were going to send a letter to that guidebook,” I said.
“I am.”
“But now you’re spying for the U.S. government.”
