Corruption in China, Part 1

Jee-ing graduated from Yenching University in Peking (Beijing).  Contrary to her father’s wishes (Car-lo wanted her to go to graduate school first.), Jee-ing eloped with her long-time college boyfriend.  The young couple was married by the Ship’s Captain while sailing to America.  Jee-ing’s goal was a Master’s Degree in Child Psychology; while her husband, K.P. Huang’s ambition was to get a Doctorate in Philosophy.  KP wanted to be a Scholar-Official in the Chinese Government--a real Mandarin.  The University of Michigan housed them in the married students’ complex.  

Both wanted the prestige and honor of an advanced American Degree.  In 1935, Jee-in was among some of the first Chinese women to attend a university in America.  

When their son was born a year later, Jee-ing and KP returned to Shanghai to honor Car-lo with the birth of his Number One Grandson.  By this time, all of his objections to the marriage had been forgotten and forgiven.  Unfortunately, KP had to return to Michigan for the start of summer school.  Jee-ing elected to stay a while longer.  

A few short weeks later, the Japanese blockaded the coast and bombed Shanghai.  For four years, the family lived under the oppressive Japanese occupation.  Then everything changed on December 7, 1941.  Simultaneous with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese announced that all American citizen in Shanghai will be interned in Concentration Camps.  

Aware of the consequences, Car-lo instructed Jee-ing to burn any and all documents that indicated that his Grandson is a natural-born American citizen.  Jee-ing’s travel documents and her son’s birth certificate went up in flames.  To make doubly certain that his five year-old Grandson would never see a concentration camp, Car-lo arranged their escape from Shanghai.

Jee-ing only had a few days to prepare herself and her young son for their escape.  You are the youngest soldier in China, she said as she gently laid the cloth money belt on the bed.  Then she spilled out the contents.  These are gold coins and diamonds, she explained.  We will have to live on this money, so say nothing to anyone, understand?  Bo nodded as she gently wrapped the belt securely around his small waist.  Say nothing, she repeated seriously.  You will be following your Great Grandfather’s example, Jee-ing said with a smile.  

Mother and son boarded the coastal steamer.  They were immediately separated.  Males in one line and females in the other.  Jee-ing stood facing her son as the Japanese soldiers marched down between the lines.  They inspected the passengers’ papers.  When the Inspector got to Bo, he looked up at the soldier, smiled and handed him some Japanese occupation money exactly as he had been told to do.  Smiling in return, the soldier took the money, bent over slightly to pat Bo on the head, then moved on.

The ship reached Canton a few days later.  There, mother and son changed into worn and patched peasants’ clothing.  Properly disguised, they boarded a salt-laden river junk going west on the Pearl River Delta.  They hid in a secret compartment under the burlap bags of salt when the junk reached the outer limits of the Occupied zone.  

Here the Japanese made one last inspection.  They knew the junk owner.  This was just another one of the junk’s regular deliveries.  The Japanese let the harmless cargo junk pass.

The Chinese underground had assigned Jee-ing to be Governor-General Li’s his private Secretary/Translator.  Being bilingual, she would work with General Stilwell’s command.  

Governor-General Li of Canton Province had been befriended by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at the Whampoa Military Academy, the West Point of China.  The Generalissimo had ordered Li to protect the assets housed in the vaults of the Bank of Canton.  The gold, silver and paper currencies, both domestic and foreign, were packed into unmarked wooden crates, loaded onto heavy-duty Army trucks and driven inland ahead of the invading Japanese.  At this secret location somewhere between Canton and Chungking, Li built his headquarters.  

General Li’s war-time strategy was simple: protect China’s assets.  Li positioned his troops in defensive rings around his headquarters.  There, he sat and waited for the Americans to beat the Japanese.  Li also hoarded the drums of American gasoline flown over the Himalayas.  The precious fuel would be used to continue the fight against the Communists.  This strategy would allow the Generalissimo to use these resources to solidify his control of China after the war. 

The huge stockpile of 55 gallon drums was guarded by General Li’s long-time rickshaw driver.  Rickshaws were obsolete in an modern Army moved by trucks.  But, out of loyalty, the General gave the old man the job of protecting the Gasoline.  This is an important job you know, the Old Man said to anyone who would listen.  No one will sell one gallon of the General’s gas on the black market.  And no one did.  

Then disaster struck.  It was the old man’s habit to sit in his rocking chair in front of the gas-storage facility.  Between his feet was a small metal wash basin filled with chunks of bright burning charcoal.  The heat warmed his feet and legs.  Occasionally, he’d lean over and rubbed his hands over the fire.  One day, he dozed off in the warmth of the winter sun.  His rocking chair suddenly tipped backwards.  The movement shocked him awake and he inadvertently kicked the heating pan.  The hot coals spilled onto the gasoline soaked ground.  Within seconds, just as he shouted his warning, the stockpile of gas exploded sending a column of thick black smoke 1,000 feet into the air.  

Certain that the Japanese would send an observation aircraft over for a closer look, General Li ordered an immediate evacuation.  The first trucks scheduled to move out were the ones loaded with gold, silver and all of the General’s secret documents.  

Jee-ing personally loaded the General’s sensitive and secret papers in his truck.  In her haste, one of the boxes fell open to reveal the contents.  The documents caught here eye.   She had stumbled onto a file of Swiss Bank Account statements.  Knowing that she was on dangerous ground, Jee-ing closed the box and went about her business as if nothing had happened.  
(To be continued...)

   

             

      

   

           

   

American Corporations in China

He was the Number 2 son in a farming family in rural China.  Number 2 grew up in the 1860’s during a time when the British Empire traded Opium, grown in India, for Chinese silk, tea, porcelain, gold and silver.  The drug money flowed freely to Europe.  This imbalance in trade drained China’s treasury and decimated her economy.  (It's taken China over 125 years to recover from this disaster.)          

Number 2 left his ancestral home to look for work.  Tied securely around his thin body was a homemade money belt.  In it were two small gold coins and a few coppers.  His father had told him that the money would last him a few weeks, more if he were frugal.  Head east, his father told him.  Find the fishing village where the Foreign Devils have landed and settled.  You are clever and smart, his father said firmly, I’m counting on you.  The farm can’t support all of us.

Number 2 was just eleven years old when he left home to find work. 

Upon reaching the fishing village of Shanghai, Number 2 looked for the money changer.  He found the white-haired banker in the village square.  The old man weighed the gold coin and declared it a worthless fake.  Hands trembling and shaking with shock and fear, Number 2 handed his remaining gold coin to the kindly, sympathetic old man.  This time the scale balanced.          

To conserve his small hoard of silver coins, Number 2 ate plain rice without any meat or vegetables.  At night, he slept in doorways.  After two weeks, he still couldn’t find a job.  Hungary and feeling desperate, Number 2 woke one morning on the doorstep of a grocery store.  He saw a broom leaning against the doorway.  With no job to go to and no prospects of any to be found, he shrugged his shoulders and began sweeping the front steps, then the porch, then the sidewalk.  Doing something was better than doing nothing.  It was against his peasant beliefs to waste his life in idleness.  

Satisfied with his handiwork, Number 2 replaced the broom and waited for the store to open.  He would spend his last few coppers on food.  He didn’t know what he would do after his money ran out.  But he would think of something.  Besides, he thought, the worst thing that could happen to me is that I’d die of starvation.   

When the grocery store opened, the Owner offered him a hot steaming bowl of congee mixed with bits of thousand-year-old egg and strips of finely diced pork.  “Eat,” the Owner said, “in return for your work.”

From that morning on, Number 2 swept the store inside and out before breakfast.  Then he helped the grocer display the stalls of vegetables that flanked both sides of the front door.  But his most useful function was in serving his customers.  He picked out the best and freshest vegetables for his clients, the ripest of fruits and the best cuts of meat.  Number 2 knew these things because he had helped his father slaughter and butcher pigs and chickens, and he had grown fruits and vegetables since he was seven.  

The customers adored this friendly helpful young boy.  The store prospered.

Number 2 was given a bed inside the store, so he had no rent; the grocer and his wife shared their meals with him, so he didn’t have to pay for food; and in time, he received a salary for his exemplary work and valuable services.

After sending half of his salary home, Number 2 saved every penny he made.  In time, he opened his own store.  But he never forgot the kindnesses shown him when he first arrived in this sea-side fishing village.  (During the New Year celebrations, he would bring gifts to his benefactors along with little red envelopes stuffed with money for their children.)  He treated his workers the same way he had been treated, with kindness and respect.  And he rewarded his employees as fairly as he had been.  

Number 2 prospered.  And as Shanghai grew, so did his grocery business.  By 1900, he owned and operated six grocery stores in an area that is now the heart of downtown Shanghai.  He also bought land and built housing for his employees.

My Great Grandfather and his wife had six children.  Car-lo Sun was his oldest.  Life in Shanghai taught father and son the power of western business practices.  The European powers had crushed and humiliated China by importing cheap opium in exchange for gold, silk, tea and porcelain.  And when China objected to this unsavory import, the European powers had used modern weapons to enforce their will.  China not only lost the Opium War, but she also lost a lot of precious territory. 

Like most proud people, Great Grandfather Sun wanted to modernize his country.  He decided to send his eldest son, Car-lo, to an American University.  China, like America, is a big country and he thought that a railway linking one end of China to the other would unite the land and facilitate commerce.  

Car-lo Sun graduated with a degree in Railroad Engineering from Cornell University, class of 1911.  Car-lo returned home to build a Railroad.  

Over the last hundred years, generations of Chinese students have returned to China with the hope and desire of restoring this once great nation to its former self.  Yet, since 1911, little had been accomplished to modernize this ancient land.  Only in the last twenty-five years has China made any real progress.  And this progress can be directly attributed to two things:  that American and European Multinational Corporations saw China as a teeming nation of 1.3 billion consumers; and that the Chinese, like Number 2, have long dreamed of building a modern China.  

But China demanded a price of entry to this huge marketplace.  Multinationals could only do business if they entered into joint ventures with Chinese companies by investing their hard currencies.  The upside for China is that the hard currencies allowed her to build the factories and that the on-the-job training of Chinese employees would transfer knowhow and best practices faster and more efficiently than generations of abstract book learning.  The upside for foreign Multinationals is that they would share in the profits.  (Today, the successful Multinationals are awash in cash.  GE’s revenue in China for 2009 grew at a rate of 12%.)  The days of trading drugs for gold and silver are over, at least in China.     

Now, all the world has to do is to find a fair way to achieve a balance of trade among nations.  Clearly, judging from the history of the Opium Wars, a one-way trade is economically and politically untenable.   Let’s hope we’ve learned something from our past.