The Plan

by John Francis Kinsella

Kennedy had not chosen a good time to cross the border. Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to cross the border each day during the four day Autumn Festival, the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar after their New Year. That day the traffic peaked with nearly eight hundred thousand on the road into or out of Hong Kong.

  Pat revelled in the idea of being an anonymous European traveller in the Chinese throng. He felt it like a unique experience, as though he was some kind of an adventurer, a modern day Marco Polo, entering a strange and incomprehensible foreign world. That weekend hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents were heading for Shenzhen, a Chinese Special Administrative Region, and Canton, and some eight hundred thousand mainlanders were heading in the opposite direction to Hong Kong.

  Equipped with his passport, visa and an overnight bag Pat had made his way to the Hung Hom MTR East Rail Line station, a short walk from his hotel, where he took the metro in the direction of Lo Wu, a journey of about forty minutes. Kennedy, unlike Fitzwilliams, who would not be seen dead on the underground, was not averse to using public transport, it offered him a view of the real world, the world unseen by those who travelled first class or in chauffeur driven limousines.

  The MTR surprised him, by its cleanliness, modernity, and apparent efficiency, in comparison to the antiquated District and suffocating Piccadilly lines he used in London.

  On leaving Hung Hom there were few passengers, but as the distance from down-town Hong Kong increased and the border crossing approached, more and more passengers piled on, loaded with bags, presents and foodstuffs. He had been forewarned the trains would be crowded and had waited until ten in the hope the rush would have died down. His effort was in vain and in spite of the warning he was surprised by the crowd.

  Arriving at the terminus, he was pushed, shoved and elbowed by the crowd as they piled off the train and rushed along the platform towards the exit. Pat parked himself to one side as best he could waiting for the bustle to die down; he was out of luck, looking to his left another train already pulling into the station. Reluctantly he joined the throng pressing up the stairway to the footbridge that crossed a muddy stream, which marked the border between Hong Kong and the rest of China, and in the direction of the frontier control hall.

  He was propelled by the crowd towards immigration, where with some effort he bifurcated to a channel marked foreigners. First came the Hong Kong passport control for those departing, then that of the Peoples Republic for arrivals. Twenty hectic minutes he found himself outside, in front of the Railway station in Shenzhen. He was in China, and for the first time.

  Finding his way to the metro station and after puzzling over the route map, he took the Luobao Line to the Convention and Exhibition Center station, a short walk from the Ritz-Carlton on Fuhua San Road. If he liked to rub shoulders with the crowd he did not like sharing their hotels, as for their restaurants his cast iron stomach was his passport to culinary adventure.

  It was midday and being in no particular hurry Kennedy armed with a city guide headed for the Mixc shopping mall, which seemed a good starting point for his tour of discovery. The greatest surprise was Shenzhen itself; apart from the absence of hills, it was not that different from Hong Kong, newer and brasher, with gridiron planning, though with less foreign faces. The pavements were broad and thronged with people going about their daily business. A closer inspection told him they were for the most part different from those of Hong Kong, less stylish, more uncertain of the world around them.

  He paused, there was a metal cage on the ground, like a bird cage, but box shaped, it required a double-take to confirm it contained a very large rat. Its owner accosted the passers-by with a continuous stream of incomprehensible spiel. In his hand he held a plastic wire and what looked like a table lamp switch. Seeing Kennedy’s curiosity he pointed at the rat, then pressed the button, the rodent leapt violently into the air, as the crowd continued on its way as if nothing had happened. The panhandler’s trick was to send an electric shock through the animal in an effort to draw the attention of the indifferent crowd.

  Kennedy paused, not knowing whether to be amused or shocked, then continued his visit marvelling at the roads, traffic, office towers, apartment buildings and hotels that recalled the familiar images of Shanghai. The giant Mixc shopping mall in itself was essentially no different from those he had seen in the Hong Kong; luxury boutiques as far as the eye could see: Cartier, Dior, Louis Vuiton, Prada, Tiffany & Co and Balenciaga, amidst an incomprehensible kaleidoscope of Chinese signs, no doubt encouraging shoppers to spend.

  How could those millions ― and millions there were ― buy Vuiton handbags and the like? Shenzhen with a population of eight million had already surpassed Hong Kong in numbers, a staggering transformation, considering it had been a small, poor, village, when Mao departed for his Communist heaven. There was no visible trace of the global financial crisis, and if there was a Chinese bubble in the making, it was definitely not visible in the Mixc Shopping Mall; the doomsters’ predictions of a Chinese slowdown for 2011 seemed greatly exaggerated.

  If anything, Kennedy was a realist when it came to money and everything he had seen up to now belied the imminent eventuality of a crunch of any kind in China. Perhaps their banking system was flawed, perhaps there was a mass of bad debt out there, but given the country’s massive reserves and its single party government, its leaders would ensure that the right levers were pulled. Deep down Pat, like many of those who succeeded in life, was an authoritarian and could not help admiring a system that was unfettered by the kind of endless squabbling of politicians back home, which inevitably led to the kind of situation in which Britain and many other Western countries found themselves in.

  Kennedy did not linger any longer than was necessary to grasp the message and after consulting his guide headed for the Hong Fa Temple. That evening after a visit to Shekou where he ate a reasonably good steak he returned to his hotel for an early night.

  The next morning Pat took a taxi to the Shenzhen Railway Station. There, a high-speed shuttle service departed every ten or fifteen minutes; destination Canton’s Guangzhou East Station. He was shown aboard the train by a neatly uniformed hostess and took his place in the first class wagon. Opposite him was a Chinese girl engrossed in her iPhone.

  As the train pulled out of the station, the girl looked up and was almost surprised seeing Kennedy, the only European in the wagon. She smiled and placed her phone on the pull down table.

  ‘Are you going to Guangzhou?’

  ‘Yes, Guangzhou East,’ he replied mangling Canton’s Chinese name.

  There was a pause.

  ‘How long does it take?’ pursued Kennedy.

  ‘About one hour. Where are you from?’

  ‘Ireland.’

  ‘Oh. Aierlan.’

  Kennedy nodded. The girl was attractive, dressed in a light grey costume, with a Vuiton brief case and handbag on the seat beside her.

  ‘Are you on business?’

  ‘Yes, two or three days, then Shanghai.’

  ‘I see. What’s your business?’

  She doesn’t beat about the bush, thought Kennedy, a little surprised by her directness.

  ‘Banking.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m going home. To see my family for the Autumn Festival holiday.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘No my parents. They live in Guangzhou.’

  Kennedy glanced out the window as the dreary landscape marked by factories and housing developments flew past.

  ‘What do you do?’ asked Kennedy.

  ‘I work for a law firm in Hong Kong. We help foreign firms with Chinese business law.’

  ‘Is it a good business?’

  ‘Very good. Chinese law is complicated.

  They continued to chat and the girl presented Kennedy with her business card.

  ‘Lili is my first name, Wu is my family name.’

  Kennedy obliged with his own card. />
  ‘Pat Kennedy,’ she said reading his name aloud. ‘INI Banking Group. That’s in London.’

  ‘Yes. London, Moscow, Amsterdam, Dublin….’

  ‘Where are you staying in Guangzhou?’

  ‘I'm booked at the White Swan Hotel.’

  ‘That’s nice. Is it your first visit?’

  ‘Yes, my first visit to China.’

  ‘Huanying, huanying. That means welcome,’ said Lili.

  ‘Is it in the centre?’

  ‘There are many centres in Guangzhou. But the White Swan is on the banks of the Pearl River.’

  The hotel was situated in an historic area of the city on an exclusive, which had once been the home to rich merchants.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In a district called Ersha Dao,’ she replied. Then seeing his blank look added, ‘On the Pearl River, not too far from Shamian Island.’

  It meant nothing to Pat.

  ‘Do you know anybody in Guangzhou?’

  ‘No. To be honest I’m discovering China.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said perplexed, wondering why a City banker like Kennedy knew nothing about her country and what he was doing travelling alone.

  Before she could continue the speaker system her train of thought was interrupted by the announcement they would be arriving in Guangzhou in five minutes. Kennedy checked his watch surprised at how fast the time had gone. Looking outside he saw they were already travelling through the suburbs of the city.

  ‘Are you taking a taxi?’

  ‘No I’ll take the underground.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, the city is big and complicated. Take a taxi. I’ll show you where.’

  Kennedy nodded in approval.

  Lili was quite tall compared to many the girls he had seen in Hong Kong. She was attractive in a way he was not used to and her directness intrigued him. It was a pity he couldn’t talk with her more.

  She guided him through the crowd and quickly put him in a taxi with instructions to the driver.

  ‘Zaijian,’ she said. Then after a pause added: ‘If you’d like me to show you the city tomorrow I’ll can you a call?’

  Kennedy nodded approvingly and waved goodbye as the taxi pulled out in the traffic.

  As Lili had told him the hotel was situated on the banks of the Pearl River and from his twenty fourth floor suite he had a splendid view over the river and the south of the sprawling city.

  After lunch a quick lunch in the coffee shop he set out for to explore. The hotel was situated on Shamian Island, clearly a very exclusive residential district dating from pre-revolutionary days, and visibly it had recovered its past status. The weather was fine as he strolled along the tree lined streets past elegant town houses, an obviously very smart restaurant and one or two fashionable boutiques. Arriving at a river or canal that defined the northern limit of the island, he crossed a stone bridge to a broad nondescript traffic laden avenue. He checked his map whilst waiting for the red light, then crossed entering what was obviously a more ordinary residential area where the architecture consisted of irregular, grimy unremarkable, rather run-down, buildings and a busy street market.

  He wandered through the market stopping at the stalls overflowing with vegetables, fish, meat and unidentifiable foodstuffs. Then after a left and right he found himself facing a down-town Holiday Inn next to a clamorous arcade, which led to what was obviously one of the main shopping areas of Guangzhou, quite unlike the centre of Shenzhen or Hong Kong. Two or three storey buildings, shops and eateries of all kinds one after the other, but no flash Kowloon style brand name boutiques, although he noted many of the more popular brands, such as Adidas and Benetton, in the windows. A dense crowd of shoppers moved in all directions, carrying bags, eating carry-outs and sipping sodas. He was a head taller than most, surrounded by a sea of uniform black heads.

  Arriving in a large crowded plaza, where giant screens flashed familiar publicity spots and newscasts, he spotted a McDonalds, a KFC and other well-known American fast-food outlets. The façades of the buildings were covered by a wall of neon lights and illuminations, flashing in a chaotic competition to transmit their incomprehensible messages to the army of passing consumers.

  He found himself in a parallel world; it was a kind of Piccadilly Circus or Times Square, but at the same time totally different. He went into the McDonalds, joined the queue of exclusively young people and ordered in English, pointing to pictures set meals. He sat down to eat and rest his feet. The customers were very young, totally Westernised in their clothes, fashionably dressed-down, as would one would expect in a London fast-food outlet, and with the reserve of those gathered at a watering hole.

  Kennedy made his way back to the hotel and flopped down on his. He, like so many others before him, was dazed by the crowds, the continual movement and the difference. Hong Kong should have prepared him for his meeting with China, but it had not, it was too Western. His mind had been prepared for the difference and the crowds, but what he had not anticipated was the scale and how it was repeated, first Hong Kong, then Shenzhen and now Guangzhou.

  If he drew a circle, less than one hundred miles in diameter around the Pearl River Delta, not that much bigger than Massachusetts, it would contain Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Macau, Foshan, Dongguan and other cities. A megapolis of fifty five million people ― China’s leading economic powerhouse. A quick check on Wikipedia showed that the GDP of the Province of Guangdong was well over half of India’s. He wondered how many more cities like those of Guangdong’s were scattered across China; maybe hundreds.

  The economic power of Southern China was nothing new. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese had described Canton as rich in agriculture and fisheries, producers of rope, cotton, silks and pearls, possessing iron ore deposits for the manufacture of pots, nails, arms and metal hardware. Labour was skilled and abundant, with merchants exporting a profusion of manufactured goods under the watchful eyes of what was then the world’s most structured system of administration controlled by powerful mandarins.

  Kennedy had travelled across Europe, Russia, the USA, the Caribbean and South America, all different yet the same. In China the feeling was that of another world, a parallel world, the same yet so different.

  He dozed off and slept for an hour or more. When he awoke it was dusk and the lights of the city twinkled beyond the broad river, where boats and barges glided slowly past transporting their cargoes to and from the South China Sea fifty miles to the south.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, zapped on the television as he wondered what to do next. His mobile buzzed, he picked it up and checked the number, no name appeared.

  ‘Pat Kennedy.’

  ‘Hello. I hope I’m not disturbing you. It’s Lili. We met on the train.’

  ‘Oh yes. Hello Lili.’

  ‘I was wondering what you planned to do tomorrow. Perhaps I could show you some of the sights of Guangzhou?’

  The surprise was complete, then Pat found his voice.

  ‘Well, I’ve got nothing special planned apart from a little sight-seeing. Yes, that would be very nice.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby at say eleven. How does that sound?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘So, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good evening,’ she said and rang off.

  Kennedy's pleasure was immense; tomorrow he would have a guide and a pretty one at that. He bounded off the bed, suddenly feeling hungry. It was time to shower and explore the hotel’s eating facilities.

  Almost two years had passed since the G20 summit in London was convened to resolve the crisis. ‘Both banks and governments have problems,’ Gordon Brown had proclaimed. On that point at least he was right, as for finding a solution; he like every other leader had miserably failed. In the cacophony of proposal and counter-proposals, each and every nation with its own specific conundrum, only China emerged untouched, its exports quickly resuming their brash pre-crisis level.

  As far back as Francis
could remember, the trade balance between European nations and China had been, year in year out, hugely in favour of the Chinese. Ever since China had embarked on its own peculiar version of capitalism and mercantilism, not one single European leader had raised his voice against the manifestly grotesque imbalance.

  On the other hand, as the crisis grew, China had few qualms when it came to looking after its own interests. Diversifying its reserves, estimated at two trillion dollars, by investing in leading US businesses and spreading its risk through a basket of currencies and triple A euro debt. The country’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, was buying assets in the UK in a big way, acquiring infrastructure, utilities, property and businesses.

  China had pursued its mercantile policies by pegging its currency, the renminbi, to the US dollar at an artificially low rate of exchange, giving it a competitive advantage in world markets and assuring an extraordinarily long period of double digit growth. The consequence of this propitious conjuncture of factors resulted in a mountain of foreign reserves; equivalent to six percent of the world’s GDP, which reinforced its economic power and broadened its global reach.

  Chapter 70 LILI