The Fat Years

your tracks.”

Fang Caodi had done business in Africa and had seen a very different scene from the one He Dongsheng described. When Chinese enterprises worked on major infrastructure projects, they hired only Chinese workers; they didn’t employ local workers and didn’t help reduce the high levels of local unemployment. Cheap Chinese products flooded the African market and ruined those few manufacturing industries still in existence there. The Chinese were no different from the former European colonialists. They colluded with corrupt local ruling elites to exploit Africa’s natural resources, and they didn’t help the African people with any long-lasting economic development that could be of genuine assistance.

“Why is such a powerful nation so weak that it can’t accept even the smallest amount of criticism?” asked Little Xi. “Why do you stifle freedom of speech? Look how frightened you are of the Internet-not at all like a great nation.”

After Fang Caodi had returned to China, he had traveled all over the minority peoples’ regions; because he was particularly looking for traces of his father and the former Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai, he went everywhere in North and South Xinjiang. His overall assessment was that the Communist Party’s nationalities policy was a total failure. The Han Chinese complained about the injustice of positive discrimination, while the Uighurs and Tibetans felt humiliated and oppressed. The local communist cadres in Xinjiang and Tibet were corrupt to the core and grew rich on the ethnic conflicts. With old hatreds and new complaints, Xinjiang and Tibet would never be at peace. “If China doesn’t institute a federal system, there will be dire consequences!” shouted Fang Caodi.

“He Dongsheng,” added Lao Chen more calmly, “you’re a typical old-style Chinese scholar. You have a head full of ideas about ‘ruling the nation and pacifying the world’ and you’re dying to become an official and a state tutor. When you’re close to power, you get all excited, and as soon as you enter the inner circle of power, you immediately support authoritarian dictatorship. You pretty it up with fancy words about needing absolute power to accomplish big things, but in fact you are consumed by a burning personal ambition. Doing something big doesn’t necessarily mean doing something good. You can also do something very bad that will have terrible and incalculable consequences for years to come. In the last several decades, there has been no lack of such examples, right?”

He Dongsheng listened with a smile, as if he was lapping up their criticism. “Everything you’ve said is true,” he said, “but all the information you normally have can’t possibly compare with the information I have access to; the two are completely out of balance. I can tell you several things that are even more terrible and absurd than those things you already know about. A couple of days ago, we had a meeting to discuss what kind of a major catastrophe would arise given the hypothesis that so much mud has eroded off the hillsides along the Three Gorges Dam that it blocks the Yangtze River. Everybody knows that this is going to happen sooner or later-we just don’t know which leadership group is going to be so unlucky as to have to clean up the fucking mess. But I’ll tell you something for sure: you can’t just watch other people do all the heavy lifting while you just reap the benefits. You always have to give up something. Some lousy and irresponsible work will always be done here and there in a big country, but that’s the only way it can function. I can tell you another thing straight from the heart: there is no possible way for China to be any better than it is today.”

“What do you mean there’s no way China could be any better than it is today?” asked Little Xi indignantly. She threw up her hands.

“Doesn’t the West believe in God?” asked He Dongsheng, ignoring her. “God created the world and God is completely good. So God could not have deliberately created a bad world, right? But there are many things in the world that are not totally good. Many have struggled with this-the German philosopher Leibniz’s theodicy set out to defend God on this score. He proposed that, although the world is indeed not perfect, a better world is an impossibility because God had created the best possible world he could. If God can’t even do it, how can China? China’s current situation is as good as it can be under the existing circumstances, and it’s a practical impossibility to make it better. You cannot just assume that China has Britain’s parliamentary tradition, or northern Europe’s social democracy, or America’s vast land resources… China is just China, and history is not a blank page that you can fill in any way you want to; you can’t turn back the clock either; you can only start from the present situation. I firmly believe that today’s China has already chosen the best option in the real world.”

“Voltaire long ago ridiculed Leibniz’s philosophy that the world could not improve,” said Lao Chen, “in the words of Dr. Pangloss: ‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’ ”

Fang Caodi wrinkled his brow in confusion.

“Whatever you say,” said Little Xi, “you’re just defending your one-party dictatorship.”

“Well, can you propose a better, more complete, and more feasible option?” asked He Dongsheng.

“Just because I can’t do it,” answered Little Xi, “doesn’t mean that I want to accept your option.”

He Dongsheng understood very well all the arguments and charges made by his captors. He knew that everything was due to the double-edged sword that was the Communist Party. Maybe the blame belonged to Lenin and Trotsky for first devising a one-party dictatorship.

“But can the dictatorship’s ‘Chinese capitalism with socialist characteristics’ be replaced by any other system? Or is it already the best option in the world as it really exists?

“One-party dictatorship is indeed incapable of eliminating its own corruption, and one-party dictatorship has to stifle freedom of speech and suppress any and all dissidents. But can China be controlled without a one-party dictatorship? Can any other system feed and clothe one billion, three hundred and fifty million people? Or successfully administer an ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis’? Could China rise so fast without the leadership of a one-party dictatorship?” He Dongsheng allowed his words to settle in his captors’ ears before continuing.

Some people might think that now that China has risen and its age of prosperity has begun, China can end its one-party dictatorship! The He Dongsheng of twenty years ago might even have thought that. He might have joined the democratic-reform faction within the Party and even supported a Chinese Gorbachev. But now He Dongsheng has absolutely no faith in the Western democratic system. Even more importantly, he knows that since June 1989, the Chinese Communist Party no longer has any ideals. As a party-state regime with a total monopoly of power in China, the Communist Party rules only to preserve its own power. Today He Dongsheng not only has no passion for political reform, but he even cynically believes there should be no such thing, there must not be any such reform, because any reform would lead to chaos.

“Just let China maintain the status quo,” he said, “and continue to develop smoothly for twenty more years, then we can see about reform. At the most we can institute a few small reforms and gradually move toward good government.”

“What would a post-Communist Party democratic China be like?” asked Little Xi.

He Dongsheng had no idea.

“Political reform?” he said with a sneer. “Is it that easy? The result of political reform will not be the federalism that you want, or European-style social democracy, or American-style freedom and constitutional democracy. The result of such a political transition will be a Chinese-style fascist dictatorship made up of a combination of collective nationalism, populism, statism, and Chinese traditionalism.”

“Your communist party-state is already fascism,” responded Little Xi, raising her voice. “You don’t need any transition!”

“Even if we are fascist,” He Dongsheng replied calmly, “we are only in the early stages of fascism now. You still haven’t tasted the full flavor of violent fascist despotism. From the way you talk, I can see that you lack the imagination to comprehend genuine evil.”

At that, the faces of a few Communist Party leaders he knew who harbored true fascist ambitions rose before his mind’s eye, and he thought that if any of these men came to power, not only China but the whole world would be in for terrible trouble. He even had a certain sense of mission, a feeling that he must stop such people from coming to power.

He Dongsheng knew for certain that the opponents of the present leadership group came from both the left and the right, but the most dangerous threat was from the ultraright. The “Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis” was a continuation of the market-economy policies of Reform and Openness, and it had offended many powerful people and created many enemies. The Old Left and the New Left both opposed the privatization of agricultural land; many large state-operated enterprises were unhappy with the challenge posed by private businesses, where they had long enjoyed a monopoly; and, finally, abolishing official control and encouraging competition had decreased the scope for collusion between bureaucrats and businesspeople, as well as the officials’ opportunities for graft. For a Party in which deeply rooted corruption was endemic, the current leadership’s attempt