Authors: Tim Clissold
Pat’s powerful dynamism, his self-confidence and undeflectable optimism all came across clearly in his manner and gestures and the officials liked what they saw. As he spoke, he seemed to
work himself into the story, growing with it, almost as if by the strength of his own feelings he had set about convincing himself as well as those who were listening. He seemed to have a knack of
explaining overwhelmingly complex situations by reducing them to a simple set of economic forces. He could explain trends in whole industries in a couple of sentences that seemed so simple that we
were all left wondering how we could have missed something so obvious in the first place.
As I sat absorbed in those meetings in the Chinese ministries, I had my first clue of how simple the world might seem, viewed from those towers on Wall Street. From there, everything seemed so
straightforward, just another enormous case study like they do at business school. It was the simplicity that made it all so convincing. On Wall Street, everything came down to relative power: eat
or be eaten, buy or be bought. And the key to survival was capital. Without capital, businesses die. The winner in the endless struggle for capital was the one who got biggest first, the one who
dominated a market or managed to get to the stock market before the others. It all came down to capital; and to get it, you needed to speak the language of Wall Street. At this, Pat was the master.
He took the whole of China and reduced it to a couple of growth trends so powerful that they would transform the whole country into an economic superpower within a decade. The officials loved what
they heard; Pat thought that investors back home would feel just the same.
We were almost always invited back by the officials for follow-on meetings with their bosses, and we steadily worked our way up the hierarchy. Pat’s message was so compelling that it
seemed at the time that we hadn’t needed the inside connections, the Chinese
guanxi,
that most foreigners thought underpinned Chinese business. In about six weeks, we were meeting with
deputy ministers for the industries that we had targeted.
Over the weeks, as we pieced together the story we got from each visit, reassembling our scribbled notes back in Ai’s tiny office, an overall picture of China’s economy seemed to
come slowly into focus. There were some industries, like telecommunications or power generation, that were so basic that it was probably a safe bet that they’d grow quickly. But often, in
those areas, the government restricted foreign investment, so we couldn’t get in. Then there were other areas that looked much more tricky, like consumer goods where local tastes and brands
were almost impossible to understand. How could we ever contribute to a marketing campaign for cans of ‘prickly hawthorn juice’, for example? Or come up with a best-selling brand name
like ‘Golden Bean’ for upmarket leather handbags? No, consumer goods were clearly too difficult.
But some industries did seem to make more sense, like the automotive industry. With the economy expanding, it seemed like a safe bet that there would be more and more trucks and buses and cars
needed to move people and goods around the country. One of the ministries we visited had been spun out of the vast Chinese military complex some years earlier. They were busily converting their
factories from the manufacture of military products to civilian use. Many of them were making simple parts for China’s big truck-makers. It sounded as though it might be an interesting area
so we arranged to take a look.
emong
Over the next three months, we were on the road continuously, visiting almost every part of China. We started in the south-west, in Sichuan, accompanied by two officials from
this Ministry. Later we moved on to the central regions of China, Hunan and Hubei, ending up in the frozen oilfields in the extreme north-east near the Russian border by Qiqiha’r.
The first trip started in the south-west in Chongqing, China’s largest city. Together with the surrounding counties, Chongqing has a population of nearly thirty million. I could scarcely
imagine it: this vast city hidden right in the depths of China, little known outside, with a population bigger than that of many countries. As we came into town from the airport on that first trip,
I noticed that, unusually for China, there were few bicycles in the streets. This vast city sits in a steep-sided valley at the confluence of two mighty rivers, the Jialing and the Yangtse. The
winding stone-flagged streets there are much too steep for riding. The density of people was staggering: millions and millions swirling in the roadways, passing through from the surrounding
countryside, all in faded blue overalls and with piles of baggage, blocking the gates at the station, crammed into buses, milling about on the pavements. Even late at night, around the quayside, at
the point where the two rivers meet, wave upon wave of porters in identical blue overalls struggled up the steep-sided hills, carrying heavy loads on the end of bamboo poles, staggering up the
stone steps towards the city centre. Early next morning, I noticed that the natural foggy, damp climate in Sichuan combined with the smoke from the hundreds of factories in the hills around the
city to create spectacular colours at sunrise. But by mid-morning, the air was almost opaque and the taste of diesel fumes was never out of my mouth.
Hemmed in by the two rivers, until recently Chongqing only had two bridges strung high across the waters. The traffic congestion at these bottlenecks was quite unbelievable. On bad days, it
could take three hours to drive a couple of miles across the city; it was much quicker to walk. In the late 1990s a third bridge was built but it collapsed shortly after it was opened, sending
forty people down to a watery death. Several officials were arrested and at least one was executed afterwards. It was one of China’s recurrent corruption cases, which all seem so drearily
familiar; another contractor using sub-standard materials to save money and officials turning a blind eye in return for bribes. We soon set into a routine that spring, travelling hundreds of miles
a day in our small bus, marvelling at the scale of the countryside around us. Sichuan is a vast and fertile province and, towards the west, it rises up into the foothills of Tibet. It was a
towering landscape and many of the factories that we visited were tucked away in narrow gullies near the mountain passes, hidden from the densely populated valleys far below. As the bus laboured up
the hillsides, I rested my head against the window and stared down over countless steps of rice terracing down to the valley floors. I could see a distant coloured patchwork of fields far below:
squares of bright yellow rape set amongst the emerald shades of the first shoots of rice. Higher up, in among the withered trees and the damp mists, there were little groups of houses made from
rammed earth and with stooping eaves and thatched fences at the front. Groups of scruffy schoolchildren ran out and chased after the bus, shouting as we passed through the tiny villages. Back down
in the valleys, the narrow roads and stone bridges were often blocked by great jostling flocks of ducks running towards the streams while all around, visible only in the distance, the peasants
toiled in the fields, squelching barefoot in the thick fertile mud.
In the following weeks, we visited about twenty factories in Sichuan alone. It was exhausting work. Every day we rose at six, complained that there was no hot water, went down to a breakfast of
fried dough sticks and hot water-buffalo milk and were on our way by seven. Then it was three or four hours on the bus to the next factory where Pat would go through the pitch, with Ai translating.
We’d do a quick tour of the factory, interview the management and then pause for lunch. Unfortunately, we were often the first foreigners ever to have visited the factory so it was
‘party time’ for the locals. Lunches normally involved fifteen or more courses and at least a crate of beer. Then it was back on the bus – with a thick head – for another
three hours and the next factory tour. The evenings normally ended at one or two in the morning in the upstairs room of some awful karaoke bar with cracked mirrors and faded Christmas tree
decorations sellotaped to the walls. I often had a splitting headache and a sore throat from the clouds of cigarette smoke. And all that with nothing else to look forward to except the alarm at six
and no hot water in the next hotel.
Most of the factories that we saw were vast, more like towns than manufacturing plants, with populations of many thousands hidden behind high walls and gateways with their own hospitals,
kindergartens, cinemas and shops. The size of these facilities was startling enough, but it was the choice of location that struck me most. The factories were in the most incredibly remote
locations, far from the cities, out at the edge of the world, hidden right up in the highest mountain passes. Several times we drove for an entire afternoon up a dirt road through steep-sided
ravines to find a vast factory at the head of the valley, churning out red smoke and dirty, foaming water. In one particular place, called Tianxing, the factory with its three thousand five hundred
souls was set in a valley so narrow that there was direct sunlight for only a few hours a day. I remember the translator at the factory attaching himself to us with a desperate ardour. He literally
ran to the bus as we stepped down. We were the first foreigners ever to come to the factory and he had almost never heard English spoken by a native speaker. With the valley sides so steep and so
high, there was no chance even of listening to radio broadcasts so he clung limpet-like to me right through the factory tour.
I found seeing so many people marooned in these artificial encampments up in the hills troubling, even a little frightening. There was something grotesque about them being stranded up in these
godforsaken places. It made me feel nervous, jumpy, and almost a little guilty when we left the factory. Why were they there? These heavy industrial plants, with their old buildings, the broken
windows and piles of rusting machinery, the chimneys and the heaps of coal next to the boilers were all set in scenes of the most spectacular natural beauty.
During lunch at the third factory – a gearbox plant, I think – I cautiously asked our host how he had ended up in the mountains. The factory director was away so a Mr Che, the chief
engineer, had shown us around. He was a real rough diamond, quite unfazed by the sight of these two foreigners in suits and ties walking gingerly between the heaps of raw castings and the rows of
ancient machining centres in his battered workshops. After the tour, he took us for lunch and sat at the huge round table in the workers’ canteen, a flat cap on his head and an oily measuring
gauge sticking from the pocket of his factory jacket. As soon as we sat down, about a dozen different dishes arrived. Sichuan food is my favourite: fiery sauces and pungent flavours, ideally washed
down with a couple of crates of the local beer that comes in big green bottles.
After the small talk, during which I asked Mr Che whether he’d been abroad and he said there wasn’t any point because the food was so bad, I asked him about the factory’s
location. I figured I’d probably get a straight answer from him, but at first he wouldn’t be drawn. The beer flowed and the atmosphere relaxed slightly, so I had another go. He sighed,
took off his cap, placed it on the table and, after a few moments staring into the middle distance, said, ‘It won’t make any sense to you, of course. You foreigners, you’re not
clear about our China. I was in Changsha, but our work unit moved to the mountain valleys. Now it all needs to be changed, of course. But back then, it was just Mao’s Third Front.’
‘Third Front?’
‘Don’t you know? The third line. The third line of national defence,’ he said. ‘After Liberation, in the 1950s, Russia was our Big Brother. After so many years of civil
war and the fight against the Japanese, Russia helped us set up our New China. They sent us hundreds and hundreds of advisers, and all the designs and materials to build factories all over the
country.’
Mr Che sighed and, after pausing for a moment, took another long silent draught of beer.
‘But after Stalin died, Mao and those new Soviet leaders, they just couldn’t get on. Mao Zedong said Khrushchev wasn’t a good communist. All that “revisionism”
– no one felt surprised when they rose up in a fight.’
His mood suddenly changed and he grinned, ‘You know, I’ve heard it said that one time, when Khrushchev came to China, Mao forced him into his swimming pool. Mao knew Khrushchev
couldn’t swim, of course. Made him look a fool and lose face in front of all those officials, floating around in a rubber ring!’
Mr Che went on to explain that the relationship became worse and worse until, one day, Khrushchev lost patience and recalled all the Russian advisers.
‘You think about it,’ Mr Che said. ‘Thousands of ‘em, all gone in one day. Bridges and dams and power stations and tractor plants all half-built right across China and
the Russians just patted their arses and went off home. All home in a week. The drawings and blueprints all taken with them. We were really at sevens and eights, a whole mass of
confusion.’
‘Right,’ I said, wondering why Chinese always went a step further than English, even with an expression to describe utter chaos.
Mr Che went on and told me that by the mid-1960s Mao thought that things had got so bad that there would be war, so he ordered all the military factories to move out of the towns and the coastal
areas and go up into the hills. In the next few years, hundreds of factories were all relocated into the steep-sided valleys in the remote hills out of sight of the bombers.
One of the officials from Beijing joined in. ‘Yes, it seemed to make sense in those days. We had such a low base to build from. After Liberation, there was such a strong spirit, it felt
like we were all together. So all the factories moved up into the hills. We were all willing to go to help defend the country. But now there are sixteen million people hidden up in these mountain
valleys and no one knows what to do.’
‘Sixteen million! Is that really true?’