IN> The Many Chinas

[William Keith]

      People who ask whether Marc is dreadfully concerned about 
communism as an economic system often are working on the assumption 
that he is the Archangel of Capitalism, a notion of which his angels 
are glad to disabuse questioners.  Humans can select whatever form of 
government they want, and Trade isn't going to interfere with that -- 
angels meddling in affairs of rulership over humans is a very bad road 
to go down.  Marc's ideals in China are the same as they are everywhere 
else: his Word, opening channels of exchange and communication, and his 
Choir, upholding the sanctity of human life, bound together by a firm 
belief that each priority supports the other.  He's far more concerned 
that China integrate fully into the global economic system than he is 
that it adopt one or another form of government.  Not that he can't 
politic with the best of them, but politics is a means to an end.

      Thus, Trade's angels in China tend to be pragmatic, making 
connections and trying to influence humans -- sipping tea with party 
leaders or guzzling Tsingtao with local cadres, as the case may be.  
There are a *lot* of humans here, and the Middle Kingdom has an 
astonishing amount of inertia.  Outsiders (and that includes angels of 
Trade from the other side of the globe with more fervent political 
views) that push for speeding up change are often blithely reminded of 
the last time China tried a drastic modernization program.  That was a 
little project the locals called the Great Leap Forward.  
Incrementalism is, thus, the name of the game.  So is caution: openness 
and integration are the goals, but the Opium War resulted in both 
economic openness -- on unequal terms -- and a major Tether to Fate, at 
the Canton Customs House.

      Also advising caution are the lessons Trade learned from 
historical development patterns in the West.  China is at a delicate 
stage of economic development: rapidly advancing in technology, 
resource-hungry, and engaging in projects like Three Gorges, Han 
resettlement in Tibet, and African investment, all of which require 
willfully blinding the country to the harm done to millions in exchange 
for energy, raw materials, and geopolitical heft.  Ideally, Trade would 
be able to apply lessons learned from the damage done to, say, the 
American indigenous peoples and its resource layers, or the rapid 
growth of the urban laboring class in the Industrial Revolution in 
England, to issues in China.  It's hard going, though.

      First, Trade's long-term Roles with government influence in China 
are primarily on the borders: when the Nationalist government was 
chased to Taiwan in the civil war, most of Trade's established power 
base went with it.  This has been a great thing for Taiwan, where 
development has been following something much closer to Trade's 
preferred path.  Trade is a heavy influence on the island, with several 
Tethers and a number of angels in highly-placed Roles that can serve as 
Patrons to a younger party of angels.  Hong Kong and Macao, protected 
for decades by foreign control, are the places on the mainland where 
Marc's agents are most active -- and, frankly, their return to Chinese 
control has not exactly been a loss for him, as it has allowed him to 
penetrate further into the mainland government.  The Directorate of 
Special Purposes has taken an interest in his mainland Tethers in 
recent years, but he has a few feng shui experts of his own among the 
concentration of professionals that fled to Hong Kong after the civil 
war, and they have been able to defend themselves.

      Second, and far more worrisome, is that Trade's activities on the 
mainland seem to be stymied more often than they should be.  The 
Ofanite Angel of the Silk Road has been seriously challenged, but 
should have been able to survive more strongly than he has, in Marc's 
opinion.  Trade's analysts are beginning to form the dark suspicion 
that highly placed agents in the Chinese government are actively 
engaging in policies designed to serve Hell.  If there are indeed 
Hellsworn with this much influence on China's policies, it would be a 
serious blow in the War, and one of Marc's main priorities in China at 
the moment is penetrating the oligarchy and assessing such loyalties.  
Undercover missions to obtain information on high-ranking government 
officials are a frequent espionage op that Trade runs in China.

      This is in addition to mitigating effects on the ground, where his 
lower-ranking angels have plenty to do.  They are often assigned to 
deal with corrupt local officials, support the more transparent 
privatization initiatives and encourage local entrepreneurs.  Hell, 
Marc even feeds a few players in the electronic-piracy game, mostly 
those associated with the Wind -- besides spurring useful calls for the 
rule of law which can be parlayed into effective anti-corruption 
measures, the distribution network helps him get information past the 
government censors.  More than a few very respectable angels of Trade 
in China with very respectable Roles can be seen picking up a popular 
DVD from a stall in a local market -- just like everybody else in 
China, only theirs contains an Easter egg with some handy classified 
information encoded in the setup.

      Finally, there is one more top concern that Trade has in the 
region, and that is North Korea.  The policies pursued by this 
government are offensive to Marc on Word, Choir, and personal levels, 
and the integration of this isolationist state with the global 
community, combined with a vast and rapid improvement in the 
fundamental living conditions of its citizens, is something he deeply 
desires.  Marc has people in South Korea working for unification, 
agents in the Chinese government attempting to get it to apply pressure 
along its border, and Roles in North Korea trying to push this idea 
along.  The project is expensive, though -- famine and deprivation mean 
that the population's Essence tends to be spent on survival, and 
Tethers in North Korea are notoriously weak and rare.  Incoming 
celestials must often cross the border corporeally.   mission behind 
the closed curtains of this nation makes an excellent opportunity for a 
very different flavor of game for celestials used to Western openness 
and conveniences.  Such missions often center on information 
distribution, especially getting out word of this or that channel of 
communication: in the modern day, Marc is as often concerned with 
information flow as with money flow.  Given that this priority matches 
extraordinarily well with those of Lilith and Nybbas, both of whom want 
this nut cracked wide open, and that neither of these Princes has any 
love for Saminga, one of the few Princes that *does* do well off of 
Tether-Essence from around here, it's no surprise that the region is 
rife with rumors of collaboration.  The truth of these rumors is up to 
the GM, but it should be pointed out that Lilith and Nybbas would both 
be fairly happy with North Korea getting cracked open by means of a 
brand new Korean War, which is not something Marc would stand for.

William