The world was two years into the crisis. In London, as 2010 dawned, Gordon Brown’s day of reckoning approached. It was election year and Brown commenced with a pitifully amusing announcement to the press, he was ready ‘to fight for Britain’. The Prime Minister was forced to admit he would be the underdog in the forthcoming elections, an evidence to all but the most staunch of Labour supporters.
Britain would soon have a new government, but with the clouds gathering over the EU, optimism was not on the cards as Greek credit ratings fell for the first time in a decade to BBB+. Eyes were nervously turning towards Spain and Ireland as their economic prospects darkened. As for Iceland, its voters had finally woken up; nearly a quarter of them signed a petition asking their president to veto a bill to repay three and a half billion pounds to the British government. The payment was to compensate two hundred thousand brainless British savers who lost their money when the Icelandic online bank, Icesave, collapsed.
But disasters were however relative. On January 12, 2010, Haiti was hit by one of the world’s worst quakes in many decades, provoking a quarter of a million deaths. The country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was practically destroyed and the lives of millions of Haitians, already amongst the world’s poorest, took a turn for the worse.
Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain in spite of their economic woes were rich compared to Haiti and could count on the help of their partners in the EU and by the IMF. But the risk of contagion and multiple defaults due to excessive government deficits was real and fears for the euro were already being voiced.
As opposed to a Keynesian approach, austerity was becoming the fashion with the very same politicians; those had so recently spent as though there were no tomorrows, vociferously promising all round budget cuts.
Tony Blair resurfaced to testify before the Chilcot committee, adopting an almost evangelical tone as he defended his war in Iraq. ‘It had made the world a safer place,’ he said, and as for Saddam Hussein: ‘he was monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world.’
Blair’s decade, one which entangled Britain in one of the most morally controversial foreign policy decisions in modern times, had ended in economic disaster. On leaving the hearing it was no surprise the now discredited former leader was jeered by the public.
Far from the issues facing Britain, Tom Barton was fascinated by the tribulations of high ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party. It was a contradiction in terms that many of the Communist elite were prominent members of the China’s nouveaux riche. But when yet another scandal hit the web, with death of the playboy son of a high-ranking government official, it bode ill for the credibility of the country’s leaders as they jostled for leadership of the all-powerful Politburo.
Li Xiaolong, son of a leading Politburo figure, whom Barton had been introduced to on his visit to Beijing, had killed himself at the wheel of a red Ferrari Spider that had spun out of control in the early hours of the morning during the Autumn Festival holiday in Beijing.
In spite of the efforts by the police stage a cover-up, news leaked on the web informed the public Xiaolong had been killed instantly in the crash, which was not the case for his female passenger, who was seriously injured. Lurid details described the driver and his passenger as being naked at the moment of the crash, and, according to hospital reports, both had high levels of alcohol and cocaine in their blood.
All English language references to the accident were quickly removed by censors from online Blogs. However, news of the scandal soon resurfaced in Hong Kong and circulated freely on Chinese language Internet sites to the delight of scandal hungry surfers. Police, in a farcical effort to cover-up the scandal, even tried to convince Xiaolong’s room-mate at Peking University, he had left to pursue post graduate studies elsewhere.
High level corruption in China was nothing new, but in the past it had been relatively well hidden from the public view. But with the democratization of Internet, the wild behaviour of the privileged offspring of top China’s officials revealed the extravagant lives of those at the top. The question of how the sons and daughters of top officials attended high fee paying universities in Britain and the US, when their parents earned a few thousand dollars a year in their government jobs, could have puzzled Westerners, but in China few eyebrows were raised. That Xiaolong drove a Ferrari costing hundreds of thousands of dollars would have certainly shocked his revolutionary grandparents, real Communists, but not China’s new generation whose reaction was more often a knowing snigger.
Murder, skulduggery and corruption had become rampant at all levels of the Communist Party, in government ministries and state-run enterprises. The flaunting of privileges had become part of daily life in China. The trappings of power and corruption in the form of high priced luxury cars and extravagant watches were openly displayed. So called princelings and their offspring were openly accused of abusing their power and amassing fortunes through graft and corruption.
‘Westerners, who cosy up to powerful Chinese politicians are wed to their rise or fall,’ John Francis warned Kennedy. A piece of information which would not however prevent Pat from making questionable friends, as he always seemed to do.
‘What about censorship?’
‘If you’re asking does press and media censorship exist in China, the answer is yes!’
Kennedy was pleased; at least he had got that right.
‘But, you should remember that censorship exists almost everywhere. Take the UK, here you have your libel laws with court-imposed gags that prevent the media from publishing anything contrary to the interests of for example royalty and the top elite. Then there are restraints fixed by the establishment through what we usually call politically correct attitudes, for example those relating to religion or what may be construed as racist. On the other hand it’s always open season for sniping at politicians and celebrities, providing libel laws are respected and politically correct attitudes are observed.’
‘So what about the political class in China?’
‘The press is controlled by the state, so anything political is treated with kid gloves, on the other hand Internet poses a different kind of problem. English language sites are strictly controlled, but strange as it may seem Chinese language sites are freer, perhaps because many blogs have such a minute audience, though when there is a buzz rumours spread across the web like wildfire.’
‘Political rumours?’
‘Yes, one blog recently received over three hundred thousand comments on one of its politically related stories.’
‘Sounds free to me.’
‘Perhaps, but scandals rarely get aired by the media, though things seem to be changing. Inequalities are now visible to all, as is corruption. There are more and more angry clashes with authorities on a wide range of issues: the expropriation of land, pollution, injustice and so on.’
‘So what’s this I’ve heard about a Ferrari?’
‘You mean the accident in Beijing?’
Kennedy shrugged; he had no idea where the accident had taken place.
‘It was the son of a prominent member of the politburo.’
‘Politburo?’
‘It’s like the cabinet in the UK, the government core if you like.’
Chapter 50 A DRUNKEN BROKER