A Case of Two Cities

In the old days, they manufactured products in accordance to the state planning, without having to worry about profit or loss. Now they had to struggle for survival in the market economy. Shanghai Number Six Textile Mill was such a factory. Its products were poor quality, and it could not obtain the raw material at the state price as before. Most of the workers, iron-bowl holders, were hardly in a position to help. Still, they clamored for the same socialist pay and benefits, desperate as ants crawling on a hot wok.
     
    According to the People’s Daily, the problems might be insignificant, “inevitable in the historic transition.” But these factories became an increasingly impossible liability. So with a new government policy, a state-run company was allowed—for the first time since 1949—to go bankrupt. Interested entrepreneurs were encouraged to buy them at a discount, and even enjoy a further reduction by retaining its workers. That, too, was considered contributing to the political stability. The buyer for Number Six Mill was none other than Ming, who, without revealing a specific plan, promised to keep five hundred employees and so got the factory at a “symbolic sum.” No one knew anything about Ming’s coup until after the deal was done. He razed the factory for residential property construction. The location turned out to be close to a not-yet-announced subway route, so it attracted a number of investors the moment word got out. The value of the land proved to be five times more than what he had paid for the factory.
     
    To meet the government requirement for keeping the factory in operation, Ming set up a small workshop of about ten people for equipment maintenance. He reached a housing development agreement with a construction company, through which he was able to retain the ex-state employees as temporary construction workers. Upon completion of the project, he would own one-third of the apartment complex.
     
    In an inside report to the city government, Ming’s maneuver was described as one arrow that killed three birds. It helped the state stop losing money through a bottomless hole; it kept ex—state employees holding their rice bowl—though no longer made of iron—for a couple of years; and it met the housing needs of the city. Of course, the report did not touch on the profit Ming had walked away with. He did not pay a single penny out of his own pocket. With an official copy of the factory buying-over document as the mortgage, he had acquired a low interest loan from the government bank. In short, it was like “capturing a white fox empty-handed.”
     
    Nor did the report mention a snag hidden in the operation. It was against government policy to turn a factory into a commercial construction lot. Otherwise Ming would have not gotten the land at such an incredibly low price.
     
    Everything had been achieved through his connections, or rather, through Xing’s. The large network of corruption worked. The PR service provided by An also contributed: among other things it represented the small workshop for equipment maintenance as the factory’s continuous operation, a claim accepted by Dong for the Shanghai State Industry Reform Committee, and it obtained the land development permission from Jiang for the City Land Development Office. All this was not difficult, as An put it, just offering incense to every god in sight. She knew the doors, both the front and the back.
     
    “Perhaps not simply because of your knowledge about the doors,” Chen said, casting another glance at the pictures on the table. But the deal was big: even with all her connections, it was probably too big for the sweet words she had whispered on the phone or in the bedroom. Still, there was no denying her part.
     
    She did not respond to his remark.
     
    He said simply, “Now tell me more about Ming.”
     
    “Ming keeps a low profile. He stays in the shadow of Xing. As far as I know, he’s focused in Shanghai, and Xing takes good care of his little brother. They are much closer than ordinary stepbrothers. Xing does whatever his mother says, and Ming is her favorite son.”
     
    “Really!”
     
    “Xing is not a monster throughout. A filial son in his way, like you,” she added in hurry. “Of course, I’m talking about you as a monster.”
     
    “No one is good or evil a hundred percent. You are right about it.”
     
    “But they didn’t tell me everything. Like the inside information about the