Yan Ba had reached the section of his lecture in which two words would dominate: one was ‘threat’ and the other ‘necessity’. The biggest threat came from the gap in living standards — while those who lived in the coastal cities could see their lot in life improving, the rural peasants found that nothing had changed, and they could barely make a living from their agriculture. The only course open to them was to migrate to urban areas in the hope of finding work. The authorities encouraged this, especially in the industries that made goods for the West, toys and clothes. But what would happen when these industrial cities, these seething building sites, could no longer cope with the influx? How would it be possible to prevent hundreds of millions of people, who had nothing to lose but their poverty, from rebelling? Mao had said it was always right to rebel. So why should it be wrong if those who were just as poor now as they were twenty years ago were to rise up in protest?
Yan Ba knew that many of those listening to his lecture had spent a long time thinking about this problem. He also knew that a few copies had been printed of a plan incorporating an extreme solution. Nobody spoke about it, but everybody who was familiar with the Chinese Communist Party’s way of thinking knew what it contained. The events that took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989 could be seen as a prologue proving the plan’s existence. The party would never allow chaos to break out. If it came to the worst, if no other solution could be found, the army would be called in. No matter how large the confrontation — ten or fifty million people — the party would retain its power over the citizens and the country.
‘The question is ultimately very simple,’ Yan Ba told them. ‘Is there any other solution?’ He provided the answer: yes, but it would require the highest level of strategic thought in order to bring it about. ‘But, ladies and gentlemen,’ Yan Ba continued, ‘these preparations have already begun, even if they appear to be concerned with something quite different.’
So far he had only spoken about China, history and the present. Now, as the third hour approached, he left China and discussed Africa.
‘Let us now travel,’ said Yan Ba, ‘to an entirely different continent, to Africa. In recent years, in order to secure sufficient supplies of raw materials, not least oil, to meet our needs, we have built up increasingly strong relationships with many African states. We have been generous with loans and gifts, but we do not interfere in the internal politics of these countries. We are neutral; we do business with everybody. As a result, it makes no difference to us if the land we are dealing with is Zimbabwe or Malawi, Sudan or Angola. Just as we reject any kind of foreign interference in our internal affairs and our legal system, we acknowledge that these countries are independent and that we cannot make any demands with regard to the way in which they are run. We are criticised for this approach, but this does not worry us because we know that behind such criticism is envy and fear, as the USA and Russia begin to realise that China is no longer the colossal nonentity they have imagined us to be for so long. People in the Western world refuse to understand that African nations prefer to cooperate with us. China has never oppressed them, nor colonised them. On the contrary, we supported them when they began to liberate themselves in the 1950s. Our friends in Africa turn to us when the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank rejects their applications for loans. We do not hesitate to help them. We do so with a clear conscience because we are also a poor country. We are still a part of the so-called Third World. As we have worked increasingly successfully with these countries, it has become clear that, in the long run, it may well be there that we find a part of the solution to the threat I talked about earlier this morning. For many of you, and perhaps also for me, my explanation for my thinking will be a historical paradox.
‘Let me suggest a parallel to illustrate what it was like in those countries fifty years ago. At that time Africa was made up almost exclusively of colonies suffering from the oppression of Western imperialism. We stood shoulder to shoulder with these people; we supported their liberation movements by supplying advice and weaponry. Not for nothing was Mao and his generation an example of how a well-organised guerrilla movement could overcome a superior enemy, how a thousand ants biting an elephant’s foot could bring it down. Our support contributed to the liberation of one country after another. We have seen how the tail of imperialism began to droop more and more. When our comrade Nelson Mandela was released from prison on the island where he had spent so many years, that was the final blow that defeated Western imperialism in the guise of colonialism. The liberation of Africa tilted the axis of the earth in the direction we believe indicates that freedom and justice will eventually be victorious. Now we can see that large areas of land, often very fertile, are lying in waste. Unlike ours, the Dark Continent is sparsely populated. And we have now realised that it offers us at least part of a solution to the circumstances that threaten our own stability.’
Yan Ba took a sip of water from the glass standing next to the microphone. Then he continued talking. He was coming to the point that he knew would lead to animated discussions not only among his listeners, but also within the Communist Party and the politburo.
‘We must be aware of what we are doing,’ said Yan Ba, ‘but we must also be aware of what we are not doing. What we are proposing both to you and the Africans is not another wave of colonisation. We are coming not as conquerors, but as friends. We have no intention of repeating the outrages that were inseparable from colonialism. We know what oppression means because so many of our forefathers lived in slave-like circumstances in the USA during the nineteenth century. We ourselves were subjected to the barbarity of European colonialism. The fact that on the surface, like reflections of the sun, there may appear to be similarities does not mean that we shall impose colonial regimes on the African continent for the second time. We shall simply solve a problem at the same time as we provide assistance to these people. In the deserted plains, in the fertile valleys through which the great African rivers flow, we shall farm the land by moving there millions of our peasants who, with no doubt at all, will begin to farm land lying fallow. We shall not be getting rid of people; we shall simply be filling a vacuum, and everybody will benefit from what comes to pass. There are lands in Africa, especially in the south and south-east, where enormous areas could be populated by the poor people from our own country. We would be making Africa fruitful and at the same time eliminating a threat that faces us. We know that we will meet with opposition, not only in the world at large where it will be alleged that China has shifted from being a supporter of liberation movements to becoming a coloniser itself. We will also come up against resistance within the Communist Party. The reason I am delivering this lecture is to clarify this opposition. There will be many divergent opinions among the leading lights of our country. You who are gathered here today have the good sense and insight to realise that a large part of the threat undermining our stability can be eliminated in the way I have described. New ways of thinking always arouse opposition. Nobody was more aware of that than Mao and Deng. They were brothers in the sense that they were never afraid of new ideas and were always on the lookout for ways to give the poor people of this world a better life, in the name of solidarity.’