“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 to put into effect a “sunshine law”—mandating that officials reveal their overall financial worth in order to uncover the discrepancies between their legal incomes and their actual wealth—so angered many corrupt officials that they resolved to work together to overthrow the current party-state leadership.
Ambitious factions within the Party always looked for the current leadership’s weak spots. The two weak spots of this current one were none other than their alliance with Japan, and their postponement of border disputes. Anti-Japanese sentiment had widespread popular appeal that united several generations. Suddenly signing an oath of brotherhood with the Japanese was quite unacceptable to many, even though it was in accord with China’s core national interests. It was also easy for joint development of border areas to be interpreted as a humiliating forfeiture of Chinese sovereignty. The ambitious faction within the Party knew that all they had to do was fan the flames of nationalist sentiment and accuse the leadership of pandering to the foreigners, hinting at surrender, or even treason, and the present leadership group might not be able to hold up. At the very least their reputation with the people would collapse, and when the rest of the world saw the ensuing violent upsurge of Chinese nationalist sentiment, they would also come to believe that China was an expansionist and aggressive new empire. They would be convinced that the “China menace theory” was correct, and they would prepare for mutual hostilities and cease to trust the Chinese government. To see the present leadership group damned from inside and outside the country would be just exactly what that faction had in mind. He Dongsheng feared that if this went on for very long, Chinese popular opinion would be hijacked by the ambitious fascist faction.
He even began to reflect fondly on the now-defunct liberal faction of intellectuals. Without them as a target, all the antiliberal forces—the Old Left and the New Left, the nationalists, populists, traditionalists, and ultraright—directly concentrated all their attacks on the present leadership group. Unfortunately, when the global economy went into decline and China’s Age of Prosperity officially began, the liberal faction, accused of being pro-Western, sharply declined, and the market for their ideas dried up. After a period of reflection, most of the members of the liberal faction came to support the present pragmatic authoritarian leadership. They now believed that China could not follow the path of the Western nations, and that the present Chinese model was the best option in the world as it really exists. Those few well-known liberals who stubbornly refused to change their minds were effectively forbidden to voice their opinions—they could not appear in the media, publish, lecture, or teach. There was now only the occasional small fry, like Little Xi—his eyes met hers—who went on the net and carried on a very weak guerrilla resistance.
Heaven save the Communist Party
This was certainly a long, slow night. As Lao Chen, Little Xi, and Fang Caodi listened to He Dongsheng bombard them with information, their emotions went on a roller-coaster ride; they were totally exhausted, and yawning continuously. Zhang Dou had already dozed off several times, the tiny camera dandling on his knee.
By contrast, the more He Dongsheng talked, the more energized he became. It was as though he had been hosting a one-man marathon talk show, and he didn’t have to hold anything back, he could say whatever he wanted. It’s great, he thought, to be able to say whatever I want; I haven’t felt so happy in a long time. He also realized that he was saying things tha
t he normally could not say, but if he didn’t say them today, he would probably be measured for his coffin before he’d ever have another chance to talk like this. He was also fully aware that he had never before drunk Beijing tap water, but today he had downed several glasses and he was bound to have an unusual reaction to it.
He Dongsheng thought of a strange thing that had recently transpired and he just had to talk about it, would not feel right if he didn’t.
“I’m going to tell you,” he said to his captors, “a state secret. Last month a terrorist organization infiltrated a top-secret state-run chemical plant and tried to blow it up. Luckily our security forces were tipped off in advance and killed them all on the spot. The astonishing thing was that those six terrorists were all members of a fascist cell centered on Beijing—they were all students from the elite Peking and Qinghua universities. After we learned their identities, we kept it a secret and reported that they had died in an automobile accident, but not being given access to their bodies, for a while their parents raised a fuss. I’m telling you all this so you will understand that real fascism already has a firm foothold in China. For these university students to know about this secret chemical factory, they would have to have accomplices in the Party, the government, and the army. And these people have their own agenda; they have not been true Communist Party members or socialists for some time, and only ‘fascist’ can describe them.”
“Was one of the dead students named Wei?” asked Little Xi slowly.
“Wei? No,” answered He Dongsheng.
“Are you absolutely certain?” she pressed him.
“You don’t need to doubt my memory,” said He Dongsheng, “and besides Wei is not a common surname. If there was a Wei, I would definitely remember.”
Seeing that Little Xi looked relieved, Lao Chen knew she was thinking of her son, Wei Guo. His heart went out to her.
“How did you come to have advance warning?” Lao Chen asked randomly to change the subject.
“Lao Chen, you shouldn’t underestimate our security apparatus,” said He Dongsheng. “We have eyes and ears everywhere. In general, wherever people gather, we have informants … but then, how the fuck did we miss you three?”
“Why did they want to blow up that chemical factory?” Fang Caodi suddenly asked in all seriousness.
Since he had already told them about the “Prosperity amid Crisis” and the “Ruling the Nation and Pacifying The World” plans, and the nation’s grand international strategy, what else was there that He Dongsheng could not talk about?
“Let me put it this way,” He Dongsheng said. “At China’s present stage of development, the difference between our government and those fascist elements is that we want the people to have a loving and compassionate nature, not a martial spirit. But the fascists want to promote a martial or combative spirit. The chemical manufactured in that factory makes the Chinese people happy and full of love and compassion, and for that reason the fascist elements wanted to destroy it. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He looked directly into Fang Caodi’s eyes.
“Is it the chemical factory near Happy Village in the Mount Taihang region of Hebei?” Fang Caodi asked, following a sudden intuition. “The one that has its own airport?”
“You seem very well informed,” He Dongsheng said, his eyebrows raised. “It seems that there’s been a leak in our security system.”
“What does that chemical factory make that causes the people to feel happy?” asked Fang Caodi, pressing his line of inquiry. “Professor He, you agreed that you would answer whatever question we asked.”
“There’s no harm in telling you,” said He Dongsheng, “and anyway, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If you have never heard of MDMA, surely you have heard of Ecstasy. We manufacture ‘generation N’ of MDMA. It’s mild, nonaddictive, and has no bad side effects. After you take it, you feel really great, you feel like the world is full of love, you want to hug other people and tell them everything, but you’re clearheaded and don’t have any hallucinations, just like I am now.”
“What do you want such a big factory to make Ecstasy tablets for?” asked Fang Caodi, looking puzzled.
“It’s not making tablets,” explained He Dongsheng as though Fang Caodi should know, “there aren’t any tablets at all, and it’s not to sell Ecstasy to other countries. China is a big country, we’re not North Korea, so don’t get the wrong idea. We’re merely producing this chemical for our own use.”
“Just as in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World?” interjected Lao Chen, happy to contribute a literary reference.
“I know what you’re trying to say,” said He Dongsheng a little defensively, “but we were not at all influenced by him. We have an Office of Stability Maintenance staffed by specialist scholars who conduct research on ancient and modern techniques for maintaining stability both inside and outside China. One of the scholars was working on British materials. You know that young people in Western countries like to drink and party wildly on New Year’s Eve, and when they get drunk they often cause trouble. Just look at their soccer games—the British fans are very unruly. For the last few years of the twentieth century, though, when Ecstasy became popular, New Year’s Eve violence suddenly decreased. It turned out that after those British youths took Ecstasy, they just wanted to dance around bobbing their heads, to listen to music, embrace each other, love everybody, and pour out their hearts to everybody around them. This is the effect MDMA or Ecstasy has on people, and it’s very different from the effects of alcohol or other hallucinatory drugs. Alcohol messes up people’s minds, and releases their animal instincts. Psychedelic drugs cause hallucinations and interfere with normal social communication. Our Office of Stability Maintenance had the Harbin Institute of Technology make up some pure samples of MDMA. At first they didn’t know what it would be good for; they just wanted to experiment.
“Then, when the Politburo was studying the ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis,’ one of the standing members was worried that the crackdown was going to make the people depressed and passive. That would have a negative impact on the people’s enthusiasm just when we were trying to implement the second set of our new economic-reform policies. He wondered if there wasn’t some substance that would make people feel good and positive, but without any violent tendencies that would disrupt our harmonious society. There was a spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security at the meeting who had trained at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He had been studying the American drug problem, and he jokingly said that we could have that sort of effect on society only if everyone in China took methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine, or MDMA—Ecstasy.
“That’s how it started and the more we discussed it, the more we thought it might just work. One standing member said he’d never imagined there was anything like it in the world. The chief ingredient for the manufacture of MDMA Ecstasy is sassafras oil, or safrole. You know what country produces the most safrole in the world? China. What a perfect coincidence.” He Dongsheng would have slapped his thighs, but his hands were still tied up. “Both Western and Chinese researchers have found that ingesting a small amount of MDMA is not harmful to human health, and they have not discovered any dangerous long-term side effects either. Since we could use it to make everyone in the country happy and thus improve our national stability, why shouldn’t we do it?
“Didn’t I say ours is a government that can accomplish big things? Once we said we’d do it, we did it. We built a well-managed high-spec factory in Hebei to turn out a product of scientifically guaranteed quality. Then we added MDMA to all our drinking-water reservoirs and to cow’s milk, soya milk, fizzy drinks, fruit juice, bottled water, beer, and rice wine. Except for some very isolated areas, we covered over ninety-nine percent of the urban population, and over seventy percent of the rural population. Everyone drank such a small amount that it was totally undetectable in a standard urine test. People would never know they drank it, and it would only make them experienc
e a mild euphoria. This was only a small supplementary program in support of our economic-reform project. The real success of our ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis’ was due to the correctness of our overall grand strategy.”
As the others listened to He Dongsheng, they broke out in a cold sweat.
“No wonder we’ve all been feeling a small-small high!” exclaimed Lao Chen in a burst of relieved enlightenment.
“Exactly,” said Fang Caodi, “over ninety-nine percent of people in the cities are high all day, every day!”
“How could you do this to the people without letting them know?” asked Little Xi a little disingenuously.
“Almost everything the Communist Party does, it does without informing the people,” replied He Dongsheng. “It’s always been that way. Many other countries put chemicals in their drinking water. In Hong Kong they put fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. It’s all for the people’s own good.”
“Your policy,” said Little Xi, “is designed only to keep the people ignorant so they won’t complain and just let you get away with everything.”
The Fat Years Page 27