Tag: A

Chapter Seven – Passage Six

“After Jack left the company last year,” Li says as she slices come carrots, “he really hasn’t been the same since then.  It was a big blow being so publicly ousted from the very company his own father had built.  They didn’t share much else but the company was one of the few things that was solely and truly theirs.”

“Was Jack and his father not close?” I ask.  “I thought Weibook was a tightly controlled family affair.”

Li chuckles.  “Weibook was a tightly controlled Yun Bao affair.  Jack’s father had, let’s say, a very strong sense of direction of what Weibook should be and where it was destined to go.”  Li finishes with the carrots and moves on to the onions.  In the skillet, I smell the eggs and spinach already beginning to sizzle.

“You know,” Li continues, “while I know it was always reported in the media that the CCP wrested control of the company from Jack.  But that’s not exactly how it happened.  If Yun hadn’t set up the line of succession the way he had, Jack would’ve never lost control the way he had.”

“Why?”

“Despite all of his tussles with the communist regime over the years, Yun Bao was very much a man traditionally molded in the way of the old guard.  A typical story of poor boy from a fisherman’s family in the rural provinces who rose from nothing to obtain everything.”

I chew on some butter toast and mull over what I’m hearing.  Of course, I knew the broad strokes of the legendary Yun Bao story.  Any technologist worth his salt knew at least the general outline.  It was very much your typical rags to riches tale.

“But what you don’t hear in the oft-repeated tale,” explains Li, “is that in China, without the right help form the right people at the right time, Yun would’ve and could’ve never done it.  Sure, part of it was luck.  But it was also partially that he fit the right profile.  Weibook happened at a time when the Chinese economy was finally beginning to slow.  Having relied on rock-bottom wage labor to propel its massive double-digit rise in GDP year over year was unsustainable.  If Xi was going to take China to the next level to the next level of economic prosperity, he could no longer do it on the back of knitting together Nike soccer balls and Abercrombie sweaters on the backs of, essentially, slave labor.”

I slowly put the pieces together in my head.  In all fairness, if I hadn’t been feeling like a puddle of garbage run over by a cement truck at that moment, I probably would’ve been a bit sharper on my feet.

“So you’re saying,” I manage slowly, “that Jack had different ideas then.  About cooperating with the CCP.  And that was the source of the rift?”

Li pours the bowl of diced carrots and onions into the skillet and stirs around the egg yolk.  The entire omelet slowly congeals, looking and smelling delicious.  I get the feeling that she’s choosing her words carefully.

“Sure, Yun was certainly determined and possessed a tremendous work ethic,” Li finally says slowly,  “there is no doubt about that.  But he also caught China at an inflection point.  Xi wished to shed China of its image as a predominantly manufacturing economy.  The joke for generations had been that ‘Made in China’ was a sign of cheapness–” 

“–Value,” I interject.  “Let’s be gracious here.”

“Sure,” Li says.  And while her expression remains unchanged, I can literally hear the eyerolling in her voice across the kitchen island from where I sit.  “Value, let’s call it.  And sure, poor people in developed countries who shopped in your bargain basement stores may have loved China for its value.  But Xi dreamed big.  He wanted China to be a country known for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany’s.  Not as the choice, go-to supplier of cheap goods sold to impoverished masses the world over.”

I thought about my own story growing up.  With Devana when we were little, my mother would always take us shopping at the local Walmart in Ressler, the small rustbelt town we’d grown up in.  When that Walmart Supercenter had arrived, it’d positively steamrolled everything in its path and within a year, all of the smaller mom and pop shops had been absolutely devastated leaving that single Walmart Supercenter as the sole shining beacon of hope in Ressler.  As children, Devana and I had adored Walmart though.  Everything was cheap!  And because we often went in the evening, after mother had finished her second shift, the nice Spanish grandma, Louisa, who worked the hot bar always gave Devana and I extra-large helpings of the mashed potatoes and corn sides when we’d get our dinner there.  (Which was literally every time we went.)  Bless her heart, Louisa may have spoken maybe only five words of heavily-accented English but she was always so kind to us.

“And so Jack doesn’t want China to move up in the world?” I ask.  “I’m still not seeing where the conflict happened.”

“So you’re skipping ahead a bit,” Li says.  She serves me the now-finished omelet on a blue porcelain plate and I dig in.  It’s delicious.  “First, before you can persuade billions of Chinese citizens that luxury brands are actually something that they want, you need to convince them that paying four times for essentially the same thing is actually worth it.”

“Ah,” I say.  “So therein lies the rub.”

“Exactly,” Li says.  “There’s currently a giant wealth divide in China.  The well-to-do are all westernized carrying around their $1,000 handbags and wearing their $2,000 wristwatches, in particular in the big cities.  But the rest of China in their rural towns are plenty happy with their $10 Timex watches.  And so there’s currently a battle over the soul of the country.

“Yun Bao was aligned with CCP in trying to move China towards a wealthier cultural attitude.  But Jack disagrees.  He thinks that China’s identity is rooted in its ‘everyday-ness’– the very quotidian nature of the average Chinese citizen may be modest.  But he believes that China should embrace it instead of fleeing from it.”

https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/mayflower

Chapter Four – Passage Eight

Addressing a systemic and perpetual racism that’s been endemic to America since even before its founding is not a particular battle I’m currently in the mood of waging so I’m eager to change the subject.  Also, speaking from personal experience, I’ve found that this particular conversation– a well-off, privileged white male who’s been spoiled and sheltered his whole life (me) speaking to an aggrieved black person who’s probably faced implicit bias his entire life and likely at least a few bouts of outright discrimination growing up (Coleman) is, in all likelihood all my lived life experience would empirically suggest, not a winning argument for me.

In Coleman’s defense, my white ancestors way back when who arrived on the Mayflower or whatever weren’t exactly model citizens by 21st century standards.  Slavery in America got its start in 1619 in Jamestown and chances are you’ll find one of my ancestors of the ancient Fletcher name among the ranks if you reach back far enough.  Put succinctly, we’re certainly not proud of the human trafficking and whip-cracking that Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Fletcher most definitely engaged in on those slave ships crossing the Atlantic during the early 1600s.  Let’s just say it wasn’t a topic of conversation around the dinner table when Devana and I were children at home growing up.

But, to be fair, in my defense, Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Fletcher was five generations ago! That’s literally, I kid you not, nearly half a millennia! I’ve never met the guy!  And I most cateorically, unequivocally in the strongest language possible, don’t condone any of the many crimes against humanity and outright contraventions of the Geneva Convention (which obviously didn’t exist back then) that he partook in!  In my experience, I’ve only met black people at college and at work.  The only black folks I’ve ever known were either fellow engineering classmates back at university or were fellow data scientists on consulting gigs that I’ve worked at.  They were all super-smart, well-spoken, competent, and highly professional.  Honestly, really, the only generalizable observation in my own personal experience that I can make about black people is that they –at least the folks I’ve met– do speak with a very specific cadence and lilt in their speech that seems to be uniquely black (similar to how many American southern folks speak with a distinctive twang and regional accent in their voices).

Anyway, nothing I say at the moment is going to placate Coleman.  So my best move now is to find a way to extricate myself from this deepening conversational sinkhole that I’ve suddenly found myself in. 

Luckily for me, Katherine saves the day.

A little after one o’clock in the morning, we reach the hotel and I walk across the tall, handsome atrium of marble and glass in order to check in.  A giant, glittering chandelier hangs overheard that likely costs the amount of a small house.  As I’d done so at the airport at Customs, all I needed to do was swipe my phone and verify my thumbprint on the biometric pad at the counter to complete the check-in process.  After a brief moment, there’s a ding! that confirms my identity has been successfully verified.

“Welcome to Shanghai, Mr. Fletcher,” the receptionist says to me, smiling.  “If there is anything you require, at any hour, please do not hesitate to call us here in Concierge.  For the duration of your stay, please use your phone to swipe in and out of your room and note that breakfast is served starting at seven o’clock, running until ten.  You can likewise swipe in on either of our dining floors, the 13th or the 47th, for entry into the dining area.”

“Thank you,” I say and give a small smile back.  The receptionist is attractive but as I look around the lobby, I notice that the receptionists actually all look quite eerily similar in appearance– the same raven-black hair, high cheekbones, and red lipstick; the same sleeveless, silk crimson uniforms.  It’s a bit unnerving.

Inside the elevator, I need to swipe my phone again, which automatically directs the elevator carriage to the 43rd floor, where my room is located.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government had built an entire surveillance state predicated on tracking every single citizen electronically.  From your birth, every Chinese citizen is assigned a “National Identification Number,” very similar to the “Social Security Number” that all Americans receive.  But for the Chinese, the NIN is literally your digital key to your entire life.  You need an NIN to open a bank account.  You submit you NIN when you apply for a job or home loan.  And if you ever run into trouble with the law, your criminal record is likewise forever attached to your NIN.

What exists in China, which doesn’t exist in America, is a National Citizenry Registry that is all-knowing and comprehensive.  Every apartment you’ve ever rented, every house you’ve ever lived in, and every job you’ve ever held.  The elementary, high school, and college that you attended.  Every time you’ve departed and entered the country by boat, train, or plane.

All of this is child’s play though, basic information that any authoritarian regime would wish to know about its citizens.  Where the Chinese NCR system really shines is its granular tracking of all consumer transaction history.  The key thing to understand about China, especially if you’re visiting from the west, is that beginning in 2037, the country went entirely cashless.  There is literally no longer any physical currency.  No coins, no bills; it’s all now virtual. You swipe to pay for everything and the debit is automatically deducted from your bank account.

Now that I’d used my phone to land in Shanghai and to check into the hotel, the Chinese government would know exactly where I was and when I’d arrived. In fact, as I headed to my room now, on the 43rd floor, the CCP –if it so cared– even knew about that too.