Two Peasants and a President (57 page)

The admiral’s face visibly reddened as he struggled to control himself.  Minutes from a historic moment, both for the PLA Navy and for himself, he was being ordered to come about.  He did not know what the 7
th
Fleet’s i
n
tentions were, but by traversing the Taiwan Strait they would of necessity be close to the Chinese coast.  He could not conceive of the Americans mounting an attack literally from under the Chinese guns or that they would dare to attack the offshore oil rigs in their path.  Their actions made no sense whatsoever.  It had to be a bluff and now he had been ordered to respond to it.  Only a fool would order such a move and he knew who that fool was. 

Li has panicked and ordered Admiral Chen to recall his destroyers.  Chen would have recognized it for what it was and called the Americans’ bluff.  That fool Li is once again playing with his military toys, of which he understands nothing.  Idiot!
 

“Order the frigates to challenge the convoy and sink them if unheeded,” he said to his first officer.  Then to his exec he said:

“Bring the ship about.”

Admiral Wu was angrier than he had ever been, but unlike his pres
i
dent, he was a man with steel nerves and the professionalism to follow orders.  He would intersect with the 7
th
Fleet
,
in what they claim to be international waters
,
and they would proceed on their course, a blatant display of their contempt for China‘s declaration of sovereignty over the South China Sea.  Li would not have the guts to order his ships to force the Americans to turn around and thus he would once again be shamed, and shame his navy as well.  Only the frigates and submarines would get any glory this day.  The admiral clenched his jaw as he began a return trip that would take hours, all the while allowing the Americans a lengthy, unopposed cruise along China’s southern coast.  

67

It was one of the rare moments when Lee Ming had the apartment to herself.  In less than an hour, her mother would arrive home and tell her to get started on her studies.  Then it would be help with dinner and clean up a
f
terward and then more studies and so on until the evening was over and it was time for bed.  Until recently her mother didn’t get home till almost six, but with the factory’s shorter hours she felt lucky just to have a job at all.  Her father drove a truck and his hours, like those of his wife, had been cut. 

But Ming was young and carefree and, as any sixteen year old girl, was happy to be able to enjoy a moment of privacy.  She slipped her favorite DVD into the player and began to dance, feasting her eyes on the extravagant and suggestive graphics that accompany most 21
st
century music videos.   Ten minutes later, having just completed, at least in her mind, a wonderful dance sequence with one of the sexiest boys in school, she was still deep in the moment as she awaited the next track. 

In her pleasant reverie, she at first equated the unusual sound as the untimely arrival of her parents and started to snatch the DVD out of the player.  Then she realized that the sound had come not from the front door, but from the speakers themselves.  Intrigued and puzzled by this unexpected occu
r
rence, she watched as a conservatively dressed female, seated behind a desk as a newscaster might, suddenly appeared on the screen and began to speak:

“Dear fellow citizens, there is nothing wrong with your television or your media.  You are watching a file that has been deliberately hidden until this moment and is now being revealed to you in a desperate plea for your help.  You do not need to be told that many Chinese citizens are in deep trouble now, with factories closing and millions being laid off.  In fact, you may be watching this because you are unemployed, wondering if you will still have a
place to come home to in the coming months
.”

“You are not alone, and you are not at fault.  The actions of a few in your governme
nt are responsible for the trouble
in which we and our beloved nation find ourselves.  In the second century of freedom for much of the world, we in China still suffer under the repression of a group of old men who would return us to the days of emperors, a time when citizens could be i
m
prisoned or even killed for the crime of speaking their mind
s.  President Li
Guo
Peng
can
n
ever be allowed to become an emperor because China
is no longer the Middle Kingdom.  I
t is no longer isolated from the rest of the
world so that its bloodthirsty rulers can brutalize and enslave its people in secret.” 

“Our leaders fear the truth
be
cause it
shines its light into their dark corners, exposing the lies they tell to keep themselves in power.
They
i
m
prison thousands
of us in secret prisons for the
crime of speaking the truth.”

“Dear fellow citi
zens, the truth cannot
be a crime, anymore than an emperor can say the sun is not the sun or the moon is not the moon.  The sun and moon are in the sky for all to see
,
and not even an emperor can hide them.  Only those wh
ose motives are evil
hide the truth.  Only those who are afraid of what it says about them attempt to conceal it.”

“Today we find ourselves at a juncture.  America and the
rest of the
world are telling our leaders that they can no long
er rule by deceit and fear.  T
hey must allow us to speak freely
as
enlightened nations do.
W
e must trade fairly and prosper due
to hard work and ingenuity, not
dishonesty. 
Li
Guo
Peng
has
re
sponded with
force, sinking other
nations’ ships, murdering sailors
and simple fishermen.” 

“W
e cannot expect other nations to do for us what we must do for ourselves.  Only the Chinese people can change China.  In 1989 we came very close to democracy.  It was only at the last minute that the government chose to crush us in order to save themselves.  But today is different.  Today the world watches.  Today the world opposes force with trade sanctions, sanctions that are working.  Our leaders know they are running out of time, yet they choose violence in a last desperate attempt to stop the inevitable.”

“The government can no longer
crush us as they did in Tiananmen Square because America and oth
ers would further curtail trade
.  A cour
a
geous United States senator
speaks nobly and courageously
,
and our go
v
ernment responds by attempting to assassinate him.  With that brave sen
a
tor’s
help and with the help of the internet, cell-phones, camcorders and computers, we can
and will be heard
.  A million
censors cannot silence
our voices.  But we must first lift those voices.  We must mingle them into a chorus that
rises over
the very thunder and lightning in the sky.”

“I urge you to go into the streets and join your fellow citizens in peaceful repudiation of tyranny.  You will find other citizens already there who will instruct you in how to first contain the police and army and then convince them that they are us and we are them.  We must take great care not to injure or kill them in spite of what they do to us.  Otherwise we will b
e
come like them and we will have lost our way.” 

“Victory is in our hands.  Go forth and claim it, dear citizens.  Love each other.” 

Lee Ming was stunned. 
One minute she was expecting to hear the next
track of her fa
vorite group; the following
minute her world was turned on its head.
 
Was the video created by the police
?
Could they somehow know who had listened to it?  She glanced at the door, a
knot of fear twisting in the stomach of a
simple sixteen year old girl whose innoce
nt pleasure had somehow
trapped her. 
She began to shake uncontrol
lably as her mind raced, struggling to understand how she had suddenly been caught up in the da
n
gerous world of the dissident movement. 
The image of the
dreaded police forced its way into her mind. 

There are
more than
2 million police in China, the result of the a
u
thorities’ bid to maintain ‘stability’ at any cost.  The largest and most feared police force is the PAP (People’s Armed Police), who wear a green uniform similar to that worn by the army.  In times of unrest they are frequently called to assist the army in putting down demonstrations.  They are greatly feared by the population for the beatings and torture they inflict.

Lee Ming
looked down at her feet;
they
were frozen in place
.  She could never remember being so afraid.
She looked over at the DVD player
.  It had seemed
like
a friend before,
the images and music emanating from it
provid
ing joy, escape from the dreary
, allowing her to dream of wonderful things, exciting people.  Now she wondered if it had always been an i
n
strument of the government,
just
waiting for the opportunity to entrap her.
She didn’t know what to do, but something inside her needed to share her misery.

With
trepidation, she
opened the apartment door and peered down the hall, first one way and then the other. 
It was empty, no one there to point the finger of guilt at her. 
One of her closest friends lived on the third floor and
she desperately wanted to learn if her friend had used her DVD player r
e
cently and, if so, what had happened.  She almost wet herself
as she stood trembling in front of the elevator
, hoping that when it opened there would be no
police officers standing there. 
They had already come to her apartment block
though not to her floor.  A young person on another floor had be
en dragged away in the middle of
the night, terrifying everyone in the building. 

The elevator contained only an old man
with a small carry bag,
obv
i
ously on his way to market.  He stared at her for a
moment and her heart raced.  But when she got off on her friend’s floor he did not follow.  She told herself she was being silly, but the fear did not budge. 
Pausing
at her friend’s door to lis
ten, but hearing nothing,
she knocked and waited
.  N
o one came. 

Ming Lee now knew that she would have to go out onto the street. She simply
had to know if there
were others who had watched the message.  As the elevator descended to the lobby, she was breathing in short fast breaths
watching the numbers – 9,8,7 . . . 3,2,1.  The doors parted
,
revealing only a
woman with her hand in a mailbox and a man in front of the next elevator.
Again she told herself that she was being silly, but the words were hollow. 

On the other side of the thick glass doors t
he traffic and the people seemed to be going on their way as usual, cars honking, people on bicycles weaving in and out, buses puffing oily
black
smoke into the air.  It all seemed so normal and yet there was
still
something about it that she dreaded in
tensely, as if it were all a play, designed by the government to lull people into a false sense of security until they could be ferreted out and captured. 

Finally, she took a deep breath and opened the door.

******

The sudden change was startling, not only for
Admiral
Wu who was now heading north at battle speed to meet the 7
th
Fleet, but for
Captain
Geng
Huichang
aboard the
Yulin
, one of the two Type 0
53H3 (
Jiangwei
-II Class) 375 foot
missile frigates that had been accompanying the destroyers.  Five minutes ago he was expected to b
ack up the admiral’s destroyers.  N
ow he
must
complete the mission with only the help of his sister ship, the
Yuxi
.