The Hongse Spider: A Novel of Tremulous Political Intrigue Set in Present Day Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China.

By George H. Stollwerck

The year is 2005. The worlds worst modern catastrophe is visiting itself on China. Avian Flu (H5N1) is estimated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to kill up to 150 million people, worldwide. The deadly virus has only to complete its leap from fowl, to human cross-contamination.

China has already killed millions of domestic chickens, ducks, and geese. But the slaughter was a double-edged sword. They have killed the poultry earmarked to keep Chinas citizens from starvation during the 2005-2006 winter, which has been forecasted, to one of the most ferocious in five decades.

China also is convinced that the United States new ballistic missile defense program is targeted at neutralizing her minuscule nuclear deterrent, relegating her to lifetime servitude to the Americans, the worlds last remaining superpower.

Beijing party leaders vow that will never happen. The Peoples Republic of China must become a modern superpower. Only then will she be able to demand the outright monetary grants she needs to survive. Modernization of her army will cost 100 billion US dollars. Beijing knows that sum resides in the coffers of Hong Kong. Thus Operation Hongse Spider is born.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 8, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465317896

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Copyright © 2006 by George H. Stollwerck.

First American Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. While it is history-based and contains references to historical events, personages, organizations and locales, they have been included solely to lend historical content to the fiction.

Events, conversations, media product and sequence may have been created and/or modified to make the narrative flow more interesting to the reader.

Characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relationship whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. The characterizations were not inspired by any individual known to or by the author.

Names, characters and incidents, as well as dialog and the storyline, are wholly products of the author’s imagination, research, training, and experience. The overall scenario has been interwoven with the documented history of East Asia.

A resemblance to actual persons, either living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

SUGGESTED LIBRARY

CROSS REFERENCING

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CREDITS

CHINESE PROPER NAMES

ORIGIN OF THE TERM

HONGSE SPIDER

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

AFTERWORD AND SUMMARY

GLOSSARY

REFERENCES AND SOURCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Peter Stollwerck who resides in

Mukilteo, WA, and Eric Stollwerck, Sr. who resides in Anacortes,

WA. You would have to search the world over to find a pair

of brothers as fine as these two guys.

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"Let China Sleep. For when she awakes,

let the Nations tremble."

Napoléon Bonaparte

1769-1821

SUGGESTED LIBRARY

CROSS REFERENCING

[1. People’s Republic of China—Fiction. 2. Hong Kong—Fiction. 3. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region—Fiction. 4. Macau Special Administrative Region—Fiction. 5. Hong Kong Police—Fiction. 6. People’s Liberation Army—Fiction. 7. Forensic Pathologist—Fiction. 8. Asian Poisons—Fiction. 9. Military weaponry—Fiction. 10. Forensic Science—Fiction. 11. Margaret Thatcher—Fiction. 12. Ling Po—Fiction. 13. Mystery and Detective stories—Fiction. 14. Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction.] Title.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The last time I was in Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China was shortly before June of 1997. The PRC, per their 1984 Agreement with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, was preparing to resume administrative control of Hong Kong. Hong Kong would no longer be a Crown Colony. Overnight it would morph into the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

As I window-shopped on Hong Kong’s Nathan Road I observed that the scurrying residents appeared terrified. The tension that seemed to ooze from each person I encountered, was so thick that you could reach out and slice a chunk off it with a knife. The laughter, shy smiles, and overheard Cantonese insults about the big Gweilo that I had enjoyed on previous visits, had all but disappeared. Their eyes were downcast as they quickly went about their chores, not even taking time to stop and chat with their neighbors, perhaps all too aware that their freedom was fleeting.

Fortunately Mrs. Thatcher, who reputedly even then was called the ‘Iron Lady’ behind her back, had the foresight to insert language into the 1984 agreement that prohibited China’s from seizing access to Hong Kong’s substantive stock market and financial institutions until the year 2047.

International Bankers and the US State Department will tell you that the People’s Republic of China has been trying to overturn that particular clause of the agreement ever since their signatory left power. This novel will explain why China is totally committed to making that happen—but now, not in 2047.

George H. Stollwerck

OTHER BOOKS

BY THE AUTHOR

The Battlefields of Pax Americana!

2004

Terrorism: America’s Incurable Disease!

2003

The Vanishing Hero!

2002

Nine lives Minus One!

2001

CREDITS

Cover Photos

Eleanor Poppe

Catering Director

Alan ‘Putzy’ Todd

Computer Technology

Heather McCormick

Cover Design

Alice R. B. Johnson

Optical Advisor

Stuart B. Adams, O.D.

Security Consultant

Frank Skuse

Transportation Manager/Historian

Russell Juckett

CHINESE PROPER NAMES

Traditional Chinese Sequence

Family name comes first,

followed by the given name.

(I.E: Hung David)

Westernized Sequence

Given name come first,

followed by the family name.

(I.E: David Hung)

It is not unusual for

an individual who wishes to westernize

his or her proper name, to select

a nom de guerre which

the western tongue finds easier

to pronounce.

(I.E.)

Traditional name: Leung Kwok-hung.

Westernized name: Harry Ling

ORIGIN OF THE TERM

HONGSE SPIDER

Chinese citizens from the northern part of the People’s Republic of China, especially those involved in the upper-levels of the communist party and government, generally speak Mandarin Chinese, either as a native language, or as an acquired second language. On the other hand, most Chinese immigrants, legal and illegal, that find their way to Hong Kong are almost always from the southern part of China, where Cantonese, among other dialects, is spoken, written and read. The people of Southern China come from families that have been involved in fishing or other maritime activities for centuries. These people tend to be more superstitious than their neighbors in the north.

The first documented use of the term Hongse Spider (red spider) is unknown. ‘Red Spider’ is not a reference to the plant-eating Tetranychinae class of spider mites, which also is referred by that name. That species is less then one-quarter-inch in length, and has a total life span of three weeks.

Asian historians believe the Hongse Spider term may be a reference to the Arthropod class Merostaomata, a group of large, scorpion-like aquatic invertebrates that flourished during the Silurian Period—438 to 408 million years ago. The largest of that species was the Pterygotis rhenanius, which measured nearly ten feet in length.

These creatures first lived in shallow coastal areas and estuaries, such as the backwaters of the Zhu Jiang River Delta. Later the species moved on to freshwater environments. Superstitions passed down from generation to generation suggest these creatures would rise up and strike without warning, and showed no mercy to the organisms and creatures that existed in their food chain at that time.

Regardless, peasants in rural Southern China still use the term today to describe bizarre plots by their corrupt authoritarian government to further the illicit goals of communist party leaders in Beijing, regardless of international consequences.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Hong Kong—Special Administrative Region

Tung Chee-hwa: HK-SAR Chief Executive.

Geng Xioping: HK-SAR Councilperson.

Oui Wei: HK-SAR Councilperson.

Wong Cao: HK-SAR Councilperson.

Hong Kong Police

John Russell: Assistant Chief of HKP Personnel.

Deng Shan: HKP Chief Inspector—Homicide.

Edward August Fox: Lieutenant—HKP Homicide.

Du Ming: HKP Homicide Squad Lead Detective.

Wan Zhenming: HKP Homicide Detective.

David Kan: HKP Homicide Detective.

Martin Chen: HKP Political Affairs Detective.

Xueguang Laoxi: Inspector—HKP Crime Lab Manager.

Lu Dong, M.D.: HKP Assistant Medical Examiner.

Elizabeth Guan: HKP Assistant Medical Examiner.

Political Dissident

Leung ‘Long Hair’ Kwok-hung: Leader of Dissident Faction.

Others

Peng Lige: Lt. Edwin Fox’s Lady Friend.

Edward Pham: Mandarin Hotel General Manager.

Zhou Bing: Captain of the yacht Taipan.

Arthur Picklefork: Captain of the yacht Shenzhou.

Yin Ping: Daughter of the owner of the yacht Meiguo.

Guan Di: Overall Leader of the South China Sea Pirates.

Chen Lau: Boat boy who stole the yacht Meiguo.

PROLOGUE

Invasion of the creatures.

It was approaching dawn when I awoke knowing something was very, very wrong. As I lay there immobile, consciously struggling to maintain the slow and deep rhythmic respirations of sleep without flinching, my mind was racing a million miles an hour through all the possibilities of what had prematurely dragged me from my restful slumber, back to the cold frank world of the living.

God knows that in my line of work, there are literally hundreds of convicted murders that I have sent to Hong Kong’s infamous Victoria Prison over the past eight years on natural-life sentences. Any one of them would give their last farthing to buy a chance in a lottery in which the main prize was five minutes alone with me—Lt. Edwin Augustus Fox—in my bedroom in the early morning hours of what could well turn out to be the last day of my life.

Opening my eyes slightly, without moving my head, I carefully rotated my eyes peripherally towards the opposite side of the bed to catch a glimpse of Peng, who as usual had the covers pulled completely over her head, dead to the world. So it wasn’t a movement by Peng that had awakened me.

Our bedroom is ten-foot by twelve-foot. The floor space is entirely filled with a twin-sized futon, a micro-size bed stand with lamp, and boxes containing both our belongings haphazardly stacked between the futon and the yellow walls on both sides. This meant excellent agility was required to straighten the futon’s vivid blue silk bed covers each morning.

The fake bamboo bedside lamp was not lit, so the only illumination in the room came from light seeping through the rice paper window blinds. The window, behind the blinds, faced the street on which the apartment building fronted.

It was in this muted light that I attempted to slowly raise my head a micro-inch at a time so I could look around the remainder of the room, towards the foot of the bed, and the doorway that provided access to the remainder of our small apartment. As I forced myself to exercise extreme caution in moving any part of my body, I could feel what felt like several sets of little fingers crawling slowly, scurrying in spurts, up the bed spread from the foot of the bed towards the head.

When I finally raised my head high enough that I could see the remainder of the postage-stamp sized bedroom, at first my mind wouldn’t accept what I was seeing. I mean I am totally aware that there are hundreds of different species of creepy, crawling creatures in Hong Kong. After all, as a cop my job takes me into places of utter darkness, total filth, and even into underground tunnels of total depravity. In the performance of my job, I have seen creatures identical to these that were now crawling up the bedclothes, and frankly, they scared the hell out of me.

The crawly creatures, there were four that I could see, had hairy bodies and appeared to be black or red in the half-light of the bedroom. Each was the size of a small dinner plate, and had hairy legs—six or eight per creature. I racked my mind to remember what these were called in East Asia, but only could come with their American species classification—funnel web spider.

These were much larger than I have seen running wild in the city, indicating they had been raised in captivity. Someone had been bred them to be venomous super killers. They were more than capable to killing us in a way more painful than we could possibly imagine.

I remembered reading, that once spiders of this type attack, they flee the scene leaving their victims spasming, as the humans die screaming, peeing, and defecating in their death throes. The spiders would race for the open bedroom doorway and seek concealment in the living room until the first human arrived on the scene. The moment someone opened the exterior apartment door, the four angels of death would stealthily escape to kill another day.

Instinctively, certainly not part of any planned defense, I sat up suddenly and spread my arms, ripping the bed covers off both of us. Then I log-rolling towards the center of the bed entrapping what I hoped were all four of the hairy killers.

Peng by this time finally woke from her deep sleep, and was screaming so loud I knew the neighbors would think the gweilo—foreigner—had finally lost his mind and was beating his Chinese girlfriend to death. Only one other neighbor in the building other than ourselves had a telephone, but I knew that resident likely had already called for the emergency police. Hong Kong Police department’s infamous trigger-happy domestic-violence teams would be arriving shortly.

Then springing off the mattress faster than I have ever moved, I bundled the ends of the improvised sack and hastily dragged it into our front room. As I hauled the bundle, I could tell the spiders weren’t going down easily. It looked like I had a handful of large Mexican jumping beans entrapped in the fabric. In fact, I had to tip over our 19-inch black and white TV set onto the bundle to contain them, while I raced back into the bedroom for a shoe.

I wear size-fourteen wingtip shoes. You can believe, that as a weapon, the shoe is more than ample for the task at hand. I rushed back into the living room, and proceeded to use the heel of the heavy shoe to puree the bundle’s contents.

Perhaps because of fear, or temporary insanity, Peng told me later than I continued curse and beat on the bundle with the shoe until the emergency police pounded on our door eight minutes later. If Peng hadn’t gotten up to unlatch the door, the cops would have knocked the steel security door down with their heavy battering ram. As soon as they got inside the room, and holstered their weapons, they dragged me off the now-mushy bundle of bedclothes.

Only because Peng grabbed my police I. D. off the dresser, and pushed it literally into one of the cop’s faces, did they forego handcuffing me, and administering the typical out-of-precinct justice with their nightsticks that they are infamous for.

As I lay on the floor gasping trying to catch my breath, the cops, disappointed at not being able to employ their nightsticks to teach this gweilo a lesson, took down all the pertinent information from Peng, who had gotten her emotions under control faster than I had.

As I lay there, soaked in sweat and emitting the stink of fear, one thing occupied my mind. Whatever I had done to warrant this attack, it was obviously that I had just graduated to varsity ball. I’d supremely pissed someone off—a person obviously high up in Hong Kong’s food chain.

I tried desperately to wake, but the nightmare pulled me even deeper into its grasp.

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Hong Kong Since July 1, 1997:

International tourists visiting modern day Hong Kong are smitten with the urge to splurge in its glitzy shopping centers, hole-in-the-wall shops along Nathan Street, in $500-day-room hotel boutiques, and specialty brand knock-off stores.

This urge to splurge often ignores the fact that Hong Kong is a powder keg, one with the likelihood of exploding into civil war at any time in the near future. On July 1, 1997 Hong Kong reverted back to rule under Beijing, the capitol of Mainland China and the country’s Communist Party.

Each day the concessions wrangled by brass-balled former British Prime Minister Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, edged China ever closer to conflict with the former colony.

America’s political and military leaders today were dangerously ignoring China’s long-term military goals. The current leaders of the world’s most populous Asian nation, including China’s President Hu Jintao, was obsessed with becoming a near-instantaneous world superpower, both militarily and economically. Complacency, which appears innate to the majority of American psyches, within twenty years may result in realization of the consequences of this inattention to business, when the United States is forced to accept lesser nation status, and finds it must come to heel to the commands of Red China. Never happen, you say?

Red, or Mainland China, as Americans now refer to it, currently spends between $60-90 billion on their yearly defense budget, far in excess of the $30 million they acknowledge. The United States’ defense budget is about $400 billion dollars annually. No problem, right, in terms of money spent, America is still the Big Dog.

However, China’s military budgeting has two little-known caveats. The first is that if China were to obtain immediate access to increased favorable financial lending sources, a great deal of the proceeds from any subsequent loans would go directly to upgrading of its military. Second, is that China is now committed to getting more bang for its buck by the changing the PLA’s—the Peoples Liberation Army—military emphasis. Decision makers at the top of the CCP—Central Communist Party—have locked in concrete their decision that China will no longer purchase equipment and training syllabuses to support low-tech warfare (guerrilla operations).

Instead, China today will invest their not-inconsiderable capital equipment acquisition budgets in high-tech equipment and training for conflicts of short duration and high intensity, similar to the United States’ campaign in the 1991 Gulf War. This translates to state-of-the-art aircraft, vessels, and other military systems. This will make the most populous country in the world into a major player as a military superpower.

Roger Cliff, respected special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, on August 15, 2005 reported that, The United States has downplayed concerns about China’s military, focusing instead on cooperation with Beijing’s counter terrorism strengths, to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons program, and to resolve other immediate issues.

Beijing is taking a long look at the Hong Kong stock market and its international lending institutions as the most likely source for acquiring additional money for a serious upgrade of its military. Correspondent Roger Cliff went on to state, Twenty years from now China may be the dominate power in East Asia, and the United States (military) by then may be hard-pressed to defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan. America’s base closings, capital war equipment retirement, and troop reductions, of course support Cliff’s statement.

In reality, the only thing today that holds China back from growing into a world military power, perhaps the world power in the next two decades, is the lack of her borrowing ability. The World Bank certainly isn’t going to loan China money to greatly increase the size and abilities of its military.

So without a massive infusion of additional ‘found’ money, the aspirations of China’s rulers and her current-day military leaders could be forced back onto the ‘back burner’ for the next forty-three years. That situation will be unacceptable to the CCP and Beijing leaders.

In 1984, China’s Ling Po and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed what today is known as the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing that China would establish Hong Kong as a self-governing SAR—Special Administrative Region—under China’s Central government. Mrs. Thatcher managed to insert language into the document that specifically delayed China’s access to Hong Kong’s vibrant economic system. Under the 1984 agreement, on June, 1997 Hong Kong returned to Beijing’s rule, however Hong Kong’s current social and economic system is to continue, unchanged, for fifty years—that is, until 2047.

This hasn’t stopped Beijing from plotting to gain access to the billions of international funds that move daily through the Hong Kong stock market and banks, that otherwise would be unavailable to the PRC. Unconstrained by the banking restrictions and laws that govern the financial world elsewhere, Hong Kong lending institutions are highly active, very profitable, and only have moderate governmental oversight.

Beijing has no intention of letting the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration deny China access to funds it believes are rightfully theirs, now that Hong Kong is once again back under their control.

In fact, a ultra-secret meeting had been scheduled in Hong Kong to hatch a simple but ambitious plan to pave the way for Hong Kong’s economic system to revert to China’s control in a matter of months, bypassing the fifty-year provisos of the 1984 agreement, which the modern-day Beijing political machine has always considered to be illegitimate in the first place.

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0955 hours

Seventh Floor

Central HKSAR Government Building

Central District

Hong Kong Island

01 October 2005

It was a nasty, fall morning in Hong Kong on 01 October 2005, the Chinese National Day holiday. The weather previewed the typhoon to come. Freezing rain blew horizontally in off the polluted waters of Victoria Harbour; then inland south through the vertical funnel formed by the new Four Seasons Hotel and the International Finance Centre high-rise. As the venturi-accelerated gale exited the funnel it appeared to target the seven-story, glass-faced building that now is the seat of Government of the HKSAR—Hong Kong Special Administrative Region—located in Hong Kong Island’s Central district. Mother Nature apparently had been forewarned by her Higher Power of the villainous plans that would be concocted that day in room 703, 7th floor, West Wing, of the Central Government office located at #11 Ice House Street in Hong Kong, and she was really pissed.

With the British-built Government House no longer in official use, the new Central Government Offices (CGO) had grown large and important enough to rate its own postal zip code. However the CGO was but one of the office spaces in Hong Kong in-use by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in late 2005.

This morning’s meeting was being held on a Saturday under tight security in a high-tech conference room-within-a-room situated in the center of the CGO’s seventh floor. There was only a single entrance to the room. It was being guarded by armed PLA non-commissioned enlisted troops.

The only access to the room was through a solid-Kevlar door controlled by numerically key-coded locks, and then only after the individual seeking entrance had been successfully processed thorough thumbprint and retinal iris recognition devices. Then a white cardboard nameplate with a color’s name, printed in calligraphy using Mandarin script, had been issued and affixed with double-backed tape to each attendee’s garment over their left chest.

Today’s meeting was the most secret such session the guards had been privy to since 01 July 1997. The increased security requirements seemed to be excessive but no one questioned the orders. Each of the high-ranking individuals invited to attend today’s meeting would be addressed only by the name of a color, not their given or family names, or ranks.

One of those attending that morning was a high-ranking female member of Mainland China’s People Communist Party, a policy maker from Beijing. She had flown into the former Hong Kong airport at Kai Tak, which the public thought to be decommissioned, aboard a private jet not two hours before. She was accompanied to the meeting by a half-a-dozen, mufti-clothed PLA guards who would wait for her in an antechamber close by the conference room’s only entrance.

The woman was just barely five feet tall, wore a deep red silk suit, matching shoes, and carried a Gold Dunhill lighter in her pocket she was continually playing with, as if she had recently given up smoking. She was very solidly put together like the gymnast she’d once been. Ironically, the color scripted on her nameplate was Red.

Another of the individuals queuing up for entrance to the meeting was the HKSAR’s Chief Executive, who had replaced the ailing Tung Chee-hwa in April of 2005. The CE’s office was located at the LegCo—HKSAR Legislative Council building—located at the site of Hong Kong’s former Supreme Court. The LegCo is the nearest thing Hong Kong has today to a parliament, with its east side facing Chater Garden, that last had been utilized by the Hong Kong Cricket Club in the mid-1970s.

The Chief Executive was an impressive six-foot tall, distinguished gentleman about sixty or so who today wore an immaculate crème-colored suit and a royal blue silk tie. His upper-crust Asian bearing and bountiful wavy hair reminded the guards of the movie star of American television’s Perry Mason. His hands, fingernails, and the polish of his shoes were impeccable, but the nameplate with which he had been presented, only identified him as Blue.

The CE lived in an expensive townhouse in Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak district. A widower whose wife had died recently under suspicious circumstances, and whose children were away to University in the United States, lived alone with his small but formidable security force. The man had a maid service, which came in three days a week, and special days at his request. He didn’t have a cook, and either dined out or prepared small meals for himself. He had the usual bells and whistles expected for a man of his importance consisting of secure phones, secure telex and fax machines. If there was a message from the CGO, it was messengered to his home.

Another individual whose presence at the meeting had been requested rather than invited, was a tall, good-looking, Expat (Australian) of the Hong Kong Police force, who today was representing his force’s aging Chief of Police. Due to the secrecy surrounding today’s meeting, the Assistant Police Chief had been directed to wear mufti instead of his customary metal-bedecked white uniform. Before being permitted to enter the room, but without any noticeable scene, the police officer quietly handed over his firearm to the guards. In place of the firearm, he’d sworn years ago never to give up as long as he was alive, he was given a nametag scribed with the color Green.

Also attending was a high-ranking but publicly unknown official of the BOC—Bank of China. Despite the fact that the banking Taipan was rarely seen in the local branch of the Bank of China, having his home office in Beijing, the bank had never taken any significant action since 1997 without the express permission of this influential, politically attuned official.

When in town, the man who stood a little over 5’ 6" and today was wearing an off-the-rack brown, square-cut silk suit with matching leather shoes, had an obscure office in Hong Kong’s new Bank of China headquarters, designed by the Chinese-American architect Mr. Im Pei, which had opened in 1990. Without having to kowtow to the constraints of other bankers in the free world, subterfuge has become an important part of every Hong Kong bank’s modus operandi, and thus of its managing director.

But in Hong Kong, the BOC wanted its showpiece headquarters to reflect China’s goal of reaping the benefits of the modern world, thus its elegant, dynamic, asymmetrical geometry, resembling black, triangular building blocks, presenting an unmistakable aspect from each angle of its forty-seven floors. The bank official was given a nameplate with the color Yellow scripted in slightly larger symbol characters than the other three, indicating a subtle difference in his importance.

At 10:00 a.m. exactly, the room’s only door was closed and secured both from the inside and outside. There were only the four attendees were present. No notes would be kept documenting the morning’s discussion.

In the improbability of a fire beginning in the room, the guards had been ordered to not release the locks on their side of the door unless their fire protection monitors showed that the room’s fire extinguishers had reached sufficient temperature to discharge the Halon fire suppressant. What none of the attendees were aware of, was that such was Beijing’s paranoia, that the type Halon used to charge the fire suppressant system, was that which would ensure that all the occupants inhaling this particular formulation of the chemical, would be swiftly and terminally overcome. Despite the remote chance of a internal fire, Beijing couldn’t risk having any of the four attendees suffer only non-fatal injuries, and have to be transferred to a local hospital where they might inadvertently disclose state secrets under the influence of pain killers or anesthesia.

Yellow began the meeting with the short ideological speech that stressed the importance of Beijing’s Central Communist Party’s economic goals and the ways that the Hong Kong and the Macau Special Administrative Regions were expected to contribute to those goals.

He disdainfully touched briefly on the terms and effects of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which had become effective on July 1, 1997, as signed in 1984 by Beijing’s political headman at the time, Ling Po and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yellow testily acknowledged that according to the terms of the agreement, the Chinese had agreed to establish a self-governing SAR—Special Administrative Region—under China’s Central government. That same agreement stipulated that Hong Kong’s current social and economic systems were to remain unchanged for fifty years or until 2047.

Blue, the new HKSAR Chief Executive, still uncomfortable with the restrictions Beijing was placing on his decision-making, which according to the 1884 declaration he alone was fiscally responsible for, as had been his predecessor who had been driven from the job two years prior to the end of his term by ulcers, interrupted to say, "If that is the case, Yellow, why the banking crisis here in Hong Kong? That crisis has been directly caused by the Chinese Government’s demand for loans from Hong Kong banking institutions at nominal interest rates—loans Beijing has no intention of ever paying back. You and your friends in Beijing have created this drain of assets that is causing the non-governmental stockholders in our banks to take their money out, and clear out, which is the root cause of bank failure in Hong Kong today."

When Yellow just stood there with his disgust evident on his face, not replying to Blue, everyone in the room suddenly realized that today’s meeting was not a democratic forum to determine how to cure the current banking crisis as they had been led to believe, but rather a Come-to-Jesus-meeting with the Beijing’s Central Communist Party. A meeting, because of the stakes involved, that could mark the falling from grace of one or more of the parties present. Since 1997, they all knew what happened to individuals who lost Beijing’s confidence.

Red took over the meeting’s facilitator function from Yellow. "As we all know, China has taken amazing strides to improve the economy and well-being of our billions of citizens. Unfortunately, all this costs money, and while some help has been forthcoming from the World Bank, it is but a drop in the bucket—and it continues to humiliate our leaders to have to apply to the International Community for aid. Aid that should be ours by the fact that we are the most populated country in the world. Why must we continue to suffer this humiliation when, by rights, we should demand grants we would not have to repay, not loans we are unable to pay back."

She pointed a manicured finger at Blue, and continued, Last year, we spent the equivalent of billions of US dollars in responding to the SARs epidemic, and the coming Avian Flu pandemic. Millions of poor Chinese farmers and their families will die of starvation this year because the World Health Organization forced us to slaughter millions of chickens, ducks, and geese on which our people’s survival depends. Did the rest of the world offer to replace the birds, or do they just see it as a another opportunity to decrease their trade deficit to our struggling country?

Raising her voice even further now, Red proceeded, The answer, the only answer to China’s dilemma, is that we must immediately gain control over Hong Kong’s stock market and financial institutions before the end of this year, not in 2047 as promised by the weak-willed traitors who originally crafted the agreement.

"Blue is correct in the fact that bumbling by some of our minor functionaries in Beijing has resulted in the current banking crisis in Hong Kong. Only by the takeover of Hong Kong’s economic system will we be able to enact legislation that prevents the non-governmental stockholders traitors from cashing out their holdings in Hong Kong banks, and leaving Hong Kong." Now Red in her fervor was almost yelling, "That treasonable action must be prevented at any cost—do you understand me! At any cost! Before it causes the bankruptcy of Hong Kong’s entire economy, even though it still is worth trillions and trillions in US dollars. Money which by rights belongs to China."

Yellow, took his feet again, and began to speak calmly. He said, "Red and I have been discussing this at considerable length during the past week. The only thing that stands in the way of setting aside the timetable as established on that particular portion of the 1984 Sino-British agreement, is the time-specific date itself."

"CCP lawyers assure us that an emergency referendum, if called for by the HKSAR’s legislative Council,