A New Faith: Part 2: Chapter 23
It had been more than a month since Rachel’s conversation with Maya. She was sitting in a meeting where folks were providing updates on the Nordic proposal. Maya was leading the meeting. In reality, Maya and everyone else at the meeting were simply going through the motions. The updates, sometimes in the form of flashy presentations, seemed to indicate progress. But there had been no actual progress because it all boiled down to the question of funding. Invariably, each country representative managed to couch their support for the proposal in the form of vague ideas that were contingent on something or the other. They were, of course, taking their cues from the Nordic proposal.
In Rachel’s view, it was all quite depressing. She had devoted almost her entire attention to finding money for relocating millions of climate refugees to the Nordic countries. She had utterly ignored her boss during this period. She had done the bare minimum of what she was required to do as part of her various official commitments. She had met with practically every single country’s representative at the UN to finagle some cash out of them. She had met many of them multiple times. She had made numerous presentations and countless personal entreaties. She had tried to even manipulate some folks by digging up dirt on them. All to no avail.
She nibbled at her bagel as the presentations sped along at the periphery of her attention. She was thinking about her upcoming informal meeting with her contact in the Chinese delegation later that morning. China was her last major chance, really, to get something for the refugee resettlement.
When she showed up at the Chinese delegation’s office for her meeting, unexpectedly, her contact escorted her to the Chinese Ambassador Gang Zhao’s office. Rachel had not been prepared to meet the senior diplomat, at all. And there she was, sitting in Gang’s office sipping tea.
He was an elderly diplomat and had been representing China at various multi-national organizations for decades. He was unusually tall for a Chinese man of his age. His hair seemed naturally dark which is what tricked people into thinking that he was younger than he actually was. His skin was quite wrinkle-free and without any blemishes. The only thing that indicated his age being a lot more than it seemed were his eyes. They conveyed a calmness that could only have been attained through years spent in the trenches of international diplomacy and corridors of byzantine bureaucracy. His manner was relaxed and cordial. When he smiled, any sense of tension would melt away.
Gang knew that he had surprised Rachel even though she had not shown any sign of it. He smiled at her and sipped his tea pleasantly. He wanted to give Rachel a chance to marshal her thoughts. He sat quietly waiting for Rachel to finish her cup and then politely asked her if she would like some more. Rachel shook her head and thanked him. He poured himself another cup and then looked at her, expectantly. Rachel received the signal loud and clear. She was the one who was supposed to initiate the conversation.
“Your excellency, thank you very much for taking the time to meet with me,” she began formally.
Gang waved his hand.
“Let’s dispense with the formality, please. I know you had been meaning to have an informal conversation with my colleague. For the sake of this meeting, I suggest that you talk to me as if you were talking to my colleague.”
"Okay then!" Rachel thought, informal it is.
“Well, I am assuming that you are aware of the reason I had sought the meeting. I shall not beat around the bush. I am here to seek financial support from your country for making the Nordic proposal a reality.”
Gang smiled, again. Although, Rachel noticed that this smile had not reached his eyes. They were not wary. They were… sad?
“I am glad that you have chosen to be frank with me. Thank you. One gets quite tired of the usual diplomat-speak in this place,” Gang said with barely a trace of accent. He was known to be fluent in several languages. No one knew exactly which languages because he preferred to speak only in Chinese. This reputation of his had been established via the grapevine. In fact, Rachel realized, that he was speaking in an almost perfect Texan accent. Hill country Texas, at that.
“Before we get to my answer, may I ask the most obvious question - what financial support is the US ready to commit?”
Rachel’s shoulders involuntarily slumped. The answer to this question was, of course, a resounding no. Right after meeting with Maya, she had caught the train to Washington DC to see her boss. And her boss had not even bothered to answer the question. He had simply guffawed. Then he had dismissed her from his office. She had then tried to bypass him and tried to get a different answer from the Secretary of State. All that had gotten her was a reprimand from her boss. The Secretary, a childhood buddy of her boss, had apparently been even more amused as he had chided his friend for allowing staff to bypass him. As a last resort, she had tried to find someone sympathetic at the White House. No one had even bothered to respond to her query. She had tried the staff of the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and drew another blank. No one in the US government was remotely interested in that topic.
“Umm… we are working on formulating our response to that question,” she answered neutrally.
Gang shook his head, “…and here I was thanking you for being frank with me. Come now Rachel, just tell me the truth.”
“No one in the US government has even dignified this question with an answer,” she said as her head drooped down sadly.
“Good. I am glad that you are getting back to being frank with me. I was aware of what the answer to that question is even before I asked you, of course.”
Rachel sighed softly and waited for the senior bureaucrat to speak further. Gang took a few moments before he continued.
“This is off-the-record. I had them switch off all the recording devices in this room before you came in. I wanted to speak with you, candidly, if I may.”
He paused again for a few moments. This was obviously an effort for him. Although, Rachel couldn’t figure out why it would be so. He had the upper hand in this conversation. He had effortlessly put her in her place. So why this circumspection and all the cloak-and-dagger?
Gang said, “I can see you are confused. That off-the-record aspect is more important for my sake than yours.
What I am about to say to you cannot be repeated by you anywhere else. Do you promise me that? I don’t need anything else except your solemn word. In any case, if you do refer to this conversation, I will simply deny ever having it with you and I know that my word carries far more weight than yours.
But still… do you promise me that you will not repeat a single word from this conversation elsewhere?”
“You have my word,” Rachel was intrigued by the strange direction this conversation seemed to be taking.
“Good. Thank you!
Officially, the answer to your question is no. But - unofficially, I, personally, admire what you are attempting to do, Rachel. And I would like to help you in whatever way a bureaucrat like me can do without drawing any attention to it.”
Rachel perked up a bit at the praise. She looked hopefully at him. He noticed that. He shook his head.
“Let me be clearer. My answer is no BECAUSE the US is not providing any help. If that were to change, then China will do its part.”
He could see that Rachel was crestfallen. The largest economy in the world - the US - had laughed her out of the room. And now the second largest economy was saying no, too. This was depressing.
See her reaction, Gang tried to reassure her, “I can assist you in provision of in-kind support, though.”
She nodded. She realized that that was the best he could do. She was getting ready to take his leave, when he said something puzzling, “even if we - as in China - wanted to provide funding, we wouldn’t be able to do so because we are broke.”
He had said this as he looked out the window. Rachel decided to stay put. Gang, obviously, wanted to expound on that last statement of his.
“This is why all the recording devices are off. This is not our official position. For the purposes of external communication, China is racing to overtake the US in terms of economic and military might. But that is all untrue.” He turned to look at her again.
He knew from the extensive dossier that the Chinese intelligence had on Rachel, that she was not an economic or military expert. They had characterized her as a fairly middle-of-the-road bureaucrat who appeared to be spending most of her time in coordination activities at the UN.
“You see, that official version was not far off from the truth a mere decade ago. We were indeed making huge strides - never before seen in the history of humanity - in an absurdly short period of time to re-take our position at the top of the world. We are indeed an ancient civilization and we were the most powerful nation for millennia before the west usurped us in the last few centuries.
But our progress ran into a couple of major errors that we had made. And a couple of corrections the Americans and Europeans made. Our rapid growth in the last two decades of the twentieth century that continued into the first three decades of the 21st century was largely a consequence of the western capitalists exploiting our cheap labor instead of their own not-so-cheap labor. Actually, let me correct myself - we were not really exploited because we used the western capitalists to get rich, too. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. If at all there were any victims, they were the poor and middle-class folks in the US and Europe. Although, that is debatable because they did enjoy consuming all the cheap goods that we manufactured.”
Rachel was listening carefully. This all sounded about right to her. She had spent enough time at conferences and meetings at the UN to be at least superficially aware of how globalization had evolved since the second world war. She vaguely remembered people citing an important chart that captured the phenomenon Gang had mentioned. What was the catchy name of the chart? It was some animal. Oh right, elephant. The “Elephant chart” that had been created by some development economist.
Gang continued, “the problems began with Covid-19. The fragility of global supply chains and the rise of anti-China sentiment in the US to score cheap political points created an impetus for moving a whole bunch of manufacturing out of China and back to the US.”
The obvious question rose in Rachel’s mind, if there was no cheap labor in the US in the 80s and 90s, then most certainly there was none in the last decade.
Gang correctly read her expression and answered, “the problem of not having access to cheap labor was solved by bringing in cheap labor to the US under a visa arrangement that neatly hid the bonded slave labor aspect of it. That and the liberal use of AI enabled the US to re-shore the vast majority of its manufacturing.”
He became wistful, “and that gutted our economy which was already struggling because of our rapidly aging population. Add the economic pressure of having to build up our military to counter the American belligerence to this mix and it is not surprising that we are broke.
The endless flow of dollars resulting from the gluttony of the US consumer rapidly shrunk. Worse, even other countries started buying from the US instead of us. And our society never really got a hang of this whole consumption business. We continue to be frugal even if our savings accounts are loaded. This left our massive manufacturing capacity increasingly stranded.”
He sighed then straightened up again as he continued his monologue, “the west is self-sufficient in terms of the most important natural resources - energy and food. In fact, the re-shoring of supply chains has further saved the west on their oil bill. The cost of transportation has, practically, vanished for them. You should see the vast number of beached oil tankers, coal tenders, and cargo ships dumped on the beaches all across southeast Asia and Africa. They are useless. Even the containers are now being sold off to be repurposed for cheap housing in poor countries.”
Rachel was stunned to hear this admission. How could this have happened in such a short period of time and almost no one knew about it? Gang read the question on her face and answered, “it happened fast and anyway we have always been an extremely opaque nation, especially, to western eyes.
For all practical purposes, we have locked down our population to discourage any social instability. The silver lining is that joblessness is less of an issue because our working age population is shrinking. We are drawing down our immense savings to keep the elders happy. Luckily, as I said before, their needs are few and they see it as their duty to sacrifice their present for the future of the young. We are girding ourselves to be a country that grows smaller over time in every way starting with our population and then eventually our economy. Hopefully, we shall eventually stabilize into a middle-income economy. Ideally, without any major social unrest.”
He paused for a moment to let all this sink in.
“So now you must be wondering, why I am telling you this?”
Rachel waited.
“Climate change has hit us hard, too. Not much gets reported outside of China about it. But we have been severely affected. The heat wave tragedy spared us. We didn’t have any casualties because of that. However, floods, cyclones, and dust storms do leave a trail of destruction.
The point is that we are affected but relatively less so than some of the other countries. In other words, we have something that will be of potential value to other countries - habitable land. We have lots of it in the interior parts of our country.”
Rachel felt like she was getting a glimpse of where this all was going. But, Gang was being maddeningly slow to get to the point. She held her impatience in check. Gang was carefully watching every expression on her face.
“We can see an outcome where we are able to see our land becoming an economic resource for us in the future. We just don’t see the pathway to it, yet. Which is where the Nordic proposal comes into the picture.”
Huh… what the hell is he talking about now. Yet again, Gang correctly read her expression. He raised his both his hands to indicate that he meant no offense.
“We are willing to lease our land to refugees for a healthy revenue stream that we need to continue growing economically.”
This was not making much sense to Rachel. Had the old guy lost his marbles? The climate refugees are poor. They had nothing. Where would they get the money to pay rent from? Infuriatingly, again, Gang precisely guessed what she was thinking.
“I know that the refugees have no money whatsoever. That is why some folks like me in China are curious to see how this experiment in the Nordic countries would play out. Would it be a socially stable refugee camp? Would it generate any economic activity?”
Aah… this was what he was getting at. He wanted the Nordic proposal to become a reality so that he could study it and learn from it. Wow! This perspective had simply never crossed her mind. She was not sure if it had crossed anybody else’s mind either. Except for Gang, of course.
“Umm… well… your excellency, if we don’t raise any funding then there will be no experiment for you to observe and assess.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“All the best in your effort, Rachel. As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, my nation is ready to provide in-kind assistance. For example, we could re-purpose all those cargo ships sitting idle right now for use as refugee transport. We could provide robots and other equipment for construction of the infrastructure at the camp. We could provide other things that our manufacturing prowess, much of which is sitting idle, can deliver in a short period. But we cannot provide any funding. Unless, that is, the US steps up. Then we may be forced to offer some funding to show that we are not far behind the US. The optics matter a lot to my government.”
This was quite a lot to process for Rachel. She thanked Gang and told him that she would circle back to him with updates at a later time.