And that is precisely what was happening one winter’s day in 2006. Early in the morning a number of black cars drove in at high speed through the gates in the wall, which closed again immediately. A fire was burning in the largest of the conference rooms. Nineteen men and three women were gathered there. Most of them were over sixty, the youngest about thirty-five. Everybody knew everybody else. As a group they formed the elite that in practice governed China, both politically and economically. The president and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces were absent. But delegates would report back to both when the conference was over and present the proposals they had all agreed upon.
There was only one item on the agenda for today. It had been formulated as a matter of great secrecy, and all those present had been sworn to silence. Anybody who broke that oath need have no doubt that he or she would disappear from public life without a trace.
In one of the private rooms a man in his forties was pacing restlessly. In his hand was the speech he had been working on for months, which he was due to deliver this morning. He knew that it was one of the most important documents ever to be presented to the inner circle of the Communist Party since China had become independent in 1949.
Yan Ba, who worked in futurology at Beijing University had been given the assignment by the president of China himself two years previously. From that day onward he had been relieved of all his professorial duties and assigned a staff of thirty assistants. The whole project had been shrouded in maximum secrecy and supervised by the president’s personal security service. The speech had been written on just one computer to which only Yan Ba had access. Nobody else had seen the text he was now holding in his hand.
Not a single sound penetrated the walls. According to rumour the room had once been a bedroom used by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing; after Mao’s death she had been arrested together with three others, the so-called Gang of Four, put on trial and had later committed suicide in prison. She had demanded absolute silence in whatever room she slept in. Builders and decorators had always travelled in advance to insulate her bedroom, and soldiers had been sent out to kill any dogs that might bark within hearing range of any temporary accommodation she was staying in.
Yan Ba checked his watch. It was ten minutes to nine. He would begin his lecture at precisely a quarter past. At seven o’clock he had taken a pill prescribed by his doctor. It was supposed to make him calm but not drowsy. He could feel that the nervousness really was ebbing away. If what was written on the papers in his hand became reality, there would be earth-shattering consequences throughout the world, not merely in China. But nobody would ever know that he was the person who had devised and formulated the proposals that had been put into practice. He would simply return to his professorship and his students. His salary would increase, and he had already moved into a larger flat in central Beijing. The pledge of secrecy he had signed would affect him for the rest of his life. Responsibility, criticism and perhaps also praise for what happened would go to the relevant politicians to whom he, like all other citizens, owed allegiance.
He sat by the window and drank a glass of water. Big changes do not take place on the battlefield, he thought. They happen behind locked doors. Alongside the leaders of the United States and Russia, the president of China is the most powerful man in the world. He must now make some momentous decisions. The people assembled here are his ears. They will listen to what Yan Ba has to say and make their judgements. The outcome will slowly seep out from the Yellow Emperor to the world at large.
Yan Ba was reminded of a journey he had made a few years earlier with a geologist friend. They had travelled to the remote mountainous regions where the source of the Yangtze River is located. They had followed the winding and increasingly narrow stream to a point where it was no more than a trickle of water.
His friend had put down his foot and said: ‘Now I am stopping the mighty Yangtze in its tracks.’
The memory of that incident had dogged him throughout the laborious months during which he had been working on his lecture about the future of China. He was now the person with the power to change the course of the mighty river.
Yan Ba picked up a list of the delegates who had begun to assemble in the conference room. He was familiar with all the names and never ceased to be astonished that they were gathering to listen to him. This was a group of the most powerful people in China: politicians, a few military men, economists, philosophers and not least the so-called grey mandarins who devised political strategies that were constantly being measured against reality. There were also a few of the country’s leading commentators on foreign affairs and representatives from the security organisations. All were part of an ingenious mix that made up the centre of power in China, with its population of more than a billion.
A door opened silently and a waitress dressed in white came in with the cup of tea he had ordered. The girl was very young and very beautiful. Without a word she put down the tray and left the room again.
When the time came at last, he examined his face in the mirror and smiled. He was ready to put down his foot and stop the river in its tracks.
It was completely silent when Yan Ba moved up to the lectern. He adjusted the microphone, arranged his papers and peered out at his audience, which looked shadowy in the dim light.
He started talking about the future: the reason he was standing there, why the president and the polituro had called on him to explain what major changes were now necessary. He told his audience what the president had said to him when he was given his task.
‘We have reached a point where a new and dramatic change of direction is required. If we don’t make the change, or if we make the wrong one, there is a serious risk that unrest could break out. Not even our loyal armed forces would be able to stand up to hundreds of millions of furious peasants intent on rebellion.’
That was how Yan Ba had seen his task. China was faced with a threat that had to be met by discerning and bold countermeasures. If not, the country could collapse into the same state of chaos it had experienced so many times before in its history.
Hidden behind the men and the few women sitting before him in the semi-darkness were hundreds of millions of peasants waiting impatiently for a new life, like the lives the expanding middle classes in urban areas were enjoying. Their patience was running out, developing into boundless fury and demands for immediate action. The time was ripe; the apple would soon fall to the ground and begin to decay if they did not rush to pick it up.
Yan Ba began his lecture by miming a symbolic fork in the road with his hands. ‘This is where we are now,’he said. ‘Our great revolution has led us here, to a point that our parents could never even have dreamed of. For a brief moment we can pause at this fork in the road and turn round and look back. In the distance is the destitution and suffering we come from. It is recent enough for the generation before ours to remember what it was like, living like rats. The rich landowners and the old public officials regarded the people as soulless vermin, fit for nothing apart from working themselves to death. We both can and should be astonished at how far we have progressed since then, thanks to our great party and the leaders who have led us along the right paths. We know that truth is always changing, that new decisions must constantly be made in order to ensure that the old principles of socialism and solidarity will survive. Life does not stop to wait; new demands are being made of us all the time, and we must seek out the knowledge to enable us to find the solutions to these new problems. We know that we can never attain an everlasting paradise to call our own. If we do believe that, paradise becomes a trap. There is no reality without struggle, no future without battles. We have learned that class differences will always manifest themselves, just as circumstances in the world keep on changing, countries going from strength to weakness and then back to strength. Mao Zedong said that there is constant unease under the skies, and we know that he was right — we are on a ship that requires us to navigate through channels whose depth we can never judge in advance. For even the sea floor is constantly shifting: there are threats to our existence and our future that cannot be seen.’