The China Paradox

By Gerard Shirar

Walter J. Lummis is a freelance newsman, an American expatriate, who has spent his life covering the news in Asia. Now in his later years he has develop information about a plot involving China and North Korea, with Russia and Iran cooperating. A plot to destroy the US’s democracy from within, eliminate its’ influence in world affairs, and alter the world order by creating a single nation, comprised of all the nations of the world ruled by China. His’ journey takes him to a number of Far East countries as he seeks out sources with knowledge of the plot, all the while being pursued by agents of North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, MSS, who are out to kill him, before he can get the story on the front page of a leading US newspaper and earn a Pulitzer prize.
Will Lummis reach his objective of publishing the story or will the MSS kill him before he reaches his goal? The fate of Lummis, the United States, and the world order hang in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663241993

Gerard Shirar

Gerard Shirar is a Purdue University graduate, a US Army veteran, a former director of security of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a former attorney who practiced in Everett, Massachusetts. Now retired, he resides in an assisted living community amid pleasant surroundings and company. This is his sixth book.

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Copyright © 2022 Gerard Shirar.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4197-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4198-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4199-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912320

iUniverse rev. date:  07/05/2022

CONTENTS

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Part Two

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

Dedication: To my daughter Suzanne for her encouragement,

and to those who seek the facts and uncover the truth.

"Remember… democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and

murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit

suicide." -John Adams, the second president of the United States.

PART ONE

CHAPTER

ONE

The sound of a metal door shutting, followed by a latch closing. Then heavy breathing and the sound of a toilet seat being lowered, followed by more heavy breathing.

A man has just entered a toilet stall and is muttering to himself, fear reflected on his face. Christ! Can’t believe what just happened. His voice is on the edge of panic. Saw Koreans in the terminal earlier…could have been North Korean MSS…fit the description…late twenties… early thirties…athletic looking…arrogant acting. Shit! If MSS, they could be behind it… would have seen me greeting him.

The man is thinking now. Calm down, God dammit… and stop talking to yourself; someone’ll hear you. Think, God dammit…think! If it was the MSS they’ll have their whole fucking organization looking for you and if they find you, they’ll kill you for sure, just like they did him. It must have been the North Koreans. Who else would want him dead? He’s been a thorn in the Supreme Leader’s side for years. Got to prepare for the worst, can’t just let them get away with it. Can’t let what I’ve learned die with me. Got to get the word out… tell someone. So think… God dammit, think…think... That’s it!... Your tape recorder. It’s in your pocket. Record what you know.

Beginning of recording.

Testing...one, two, three.

The voice recorder plays back, the sound just above a whisper, Testing one, two, three...

Hope you can hear this. Got to talk softly. I’m in a toilet stall in one of the men’s rooms in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I just witnessed Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the ruler of North Korea, being murdered—I think by the North Korean MSS. The restroom stall’s not the safest place to hide, but it’s the first place I could think of. What I’ve just witnessed has put my life in danger. Legs are shaking; I’m sweating out of fear. To put it bluntly, I’m scared shitless. So bear with me.

It’s February 13, 2017. I was at the airport to meet Kim Jong-nam, the exiled half-brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader. He had just arrived on a Japan Airlines flight from Macau to tell me what he learned about a plot North Korea is a party to, a plot masterminded by China to end the economic and political dominance of the US and form a one-nation world in China’s image.

Two young women approached Kim as he walked across the airport concourse toward me. They rubbed their hands on his face, giggling as they did it. It looked like a prank, something dreamed up for a TV program… a dare or something. You probably know the type of TV program I’m talking about. A second or two later, just as I had my hand out to greet him, he slumped to the concourse floor. The way his body convulsed and went limp, they must have smeared his face with something like Venomous X, VX. There’s an antidote, Atropine. If the women took Atropine, they would have been immune to VX’s lethal effects. If it were VX, he would have died almost instantly.

The women had hurried off by the time Kim’s body hit the concourse floor. They might have been dupes, picked at random, tricked into doing it, or they could have been MSS agents. The MSS are known to use women agents to do their dirty work...who knows? At this point I’m just guessing.

But I’m betting that somehow, they learned that Kim was asking his contacts in North Korea what they knew about China’s plot and the MSS killed him before he could pass on what he learned. If it was the MSS they now know that someone he was passing it on to was me. Kim was helping me with the story I’m writing about the plot, a story I began working on in 1995 when I first learned that Russia was providing North Korea with uranium isotopes, U235 and U238. Later I learned that China and North Korea were working together and that Russia and Iran were cooperating with them to end the US’s dominance in the world. As I continued working on the story I have since learned that China and North Korea are engaged in a plot whose ultimate objective is not only to end the US’s dominance in the world but to create a one-nation world with all the present countries merged into a single nation modeled after China’s form of governance and employing China’s Socialist market-oriented economy. I’m planning to sell the story to the New York Times or the Washington Post, maybe to 60 Minutes. That’s how I make my living—part of it anyway—uncovering newsworthy stories and selling them to newspapers. I’m a freelance reporter… been one all my adult life.

Met Kim Jong-nam in Macau. We’re both gamblers and frequented Macau’s casinos, mostly the blackjack and roulette tables. Since I speak Korean, we hit it off. As a reporter I’m always on the lookout for sources of information and while we were not bosom friends, you could say we were more than mere acquaintances. He agreed to find out what he could about the plot from the contacts he still maintained in North Korea, and we planned to meet in Kuala Lumpur if he learned anything. He telephoned me three days ago and told me to meet him at the airport.

Kim Jong-nam’s been a thorn in the side of his half-brother for a long time, so I’m sure his half-brother would have had no qualms about having him killed. A nerve agent is hard to detect. So if the MSS was behind it, and used VX, they’re probably counting on the Malaysian authorities treating Kim’s death as a heart attack. I had most of the story by the time I asked for Kim’s help, but since the source of most of what I’ve learned was someone I couldn’t identify, Kim Chong-nam would have served two purposes; possibly adding further information to what I already knew and allowing me to use him as the principle source for the story. The actual principle source, who I named Source X, was a general in the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, RGB, North Korea’s premier intelligence service. The North Koreans think he’s dead and I promised not to reveal his identity. I promise I’ll tell you the reason for that later.

If the two Koreans I saw on the concourse earlier were MSS they probably saw I had my hand out in the process of greeting Kim and are looking for me right now. If they killed him because of what he learned about the plot, they probably figure I was involved and it won’t be long before they’ll have my name, learn I live in Macau, and discover that I’m a journalist. I’m sure one of the first things they’ll do is search my apartment. They’re sure to find my computer and learn from it what I’ve learned so far about the plot. Then they’ll have their whole God damn organization after me. If they find me, they’ll kill me just like they did Kim. So I’ve got to plan for the worst.

As I said, I planned to sell the story to the New York Times, or The Washington Post. With one of those prestigious newspapers running the story, hopefully on their front-page, the American public will learn what China is planning and demand action from the country’s leadership. I’ve already tried to warn the State Department. Went to the US Consulate in Hong Kong and passed on some of what I had learned to the CIA and State Department and was treated as if I was some kind of nut. There’s a large element in the government that’s got its head in the sand when it comes to the Chinese and North Koreans and with the political and social divide as it is in the US, the country’s politicians are too busy fighting among themselves to do anything about it. So it’s got to be made known to the people directly, and the best way to do that is through the voice of the free press.

I know what I’ve uncovered, and what I’m about to tell you may seem hard to believe, but it’s all true. If the MSS learn who I am and discover my computer they’ll probably mount an all-out effort to kill me, so I’ve decided to record what I know on my portable tape recorder. When I’m finished recording, I’ll leave the recorder and tape someplace where it can be found. Since you’re listening to the tape, I’m already in the afterlife so... I’m asking you from the grave... do the right thing. Turn the tape over to the Washington Post or the New York Times as I planned... or maybe 60 Minutes. Do whatever it takes to see that the press gets the story so the American people and those in the US government who are willing to do something about it know what the Chinese and North Koreans are planning. It’s important that you give it to the press and not the State Department, the White House, the intelligence agencies, or Congress. You’ve got to take my word on that. Given the political situation in the country, with both Congress and the White House at loggerheads and the head-in-the-sand attitudes of the State Department and intelligence agencies, nothing would get done.

The tape recorder is shut off.

The tape recorder is turned on again.

Testing…testing.

The voice recorder plays back, Testing…testing.

Good, it’s working. I just wanted to make sure. I’ve been in the men’s room for a while now, with people using the facilities, coming in and out, so I stopped recording for a while. So far, no North Korean MSS have turned up. I’ll wait here in the men’s room a while longer, until I think it’s safe. In the meantime, I’ll continue the recording.

So... where to begin? I think it’s perhaps best to start by telling you something about myself. My name is Walter J. Lummis. I was born in Boston in 1943 and raised in the neighborhood known as Dorchester. Since I’m recording this in 2017, I’m now seventy-four years old. I wear glasses and am just under six feet tall, with what some would call a portly build but I prefer to call ample. I’m told by those who know me that because I wear glasses, I’m studious looking and that I don’t show my age. I’m a walker, a couple of miles a day when the weather allows, and am in good physical shape—at least that’s what my doctor says.

By occupation, I’m what’s called a freelance journalist. You may have seen my byline, W.J. Lummis, in the Borneo Post, the Straits Times or South China Morning Post. I’ve also been a stringer for the Associated Press (AP), Reuters and the Chicago and Los Angeles Times. I’ve spent over fifty years in Asia, so I guess you can call me a Far East Hand, an expatriate.

My interest in Asia started when I was a kid. Growing up I read every adventure book about Asia I could get from the library and became fascinated with Asian culture and people. For my eleventh birthday my mother gave me a set of Berlitz Cantonese language records and I spent hours after school listening to the records and learning all I could of the language. After I had the rudiments down, I spent hours with the Chans, the Chinese couple who owned and ran the laundry in our neighborhood. With the Chans’ help I practiced my Cantonese, improved my dialect, and expanded my vocabulary, while also learning about their early years in China before they immigrated to the US. From them I learned something about the country’s customs and way of life. In high school, after school three days a week, I washed dishes at a Chinese restaurant called the Ming Palace on Tyler Street in Boston’s China Town, where I used my Cantonese, expanded my vocabulary, and learned more about China from the Chinese immigrants who worked there. In my high school senior year, the teacher who oversaw the school’s newspaper asked me to write a column for the paper called Scuttlebutt about school happenings, a sort of gossip column. That launched my interest in journalism.

The summer between high school graduation and the start of college I spent in Hong Kong studying Chinese culture, working on my Cantonese, and learning Mandarin. My college major was journalism, with a minor in Asian studies. The summer breaks during my college years were spent in Taiwan (the Republic of China), Hong Kong, and South Korea studying the languages, absorbing the local way of life, and writing notes on what I saw and the people I met. During those summers I sent articles about my experiences to one of my college professors, whose brother worked for the Quincy Times. The brother passed them on to the editor, who ran them in the paper’s travel column, earning some nice comments from readers. By the time I graduated from college in 1965, I’d fallen in love with Asia and focused on a career as a foreign correspondent. Because of my knowledge of Cantonese and the other Asian languages I’d picked up along the way, I landed work as a stringer for Reuters, in their Hong Kong bureau.

In 1968, along with a Vietnamese photographer partner, Sonny Hung, I began covering the War in Vietnam for Reuters, reporting from the front lines, filing stories, and capturing photographs that found their way into US newspapers. What I wrote and the pictures we took, along with the work by the other journalists covering the war and the graphic TV played over the major TV networks, brought the war into American living rooms and drove people into the streets to demonstrate against a war that was unnecessary and unwinnable.

I witnessed the last of our troops as they pulled out of Vietnam in 1973 and stood among the crowd of abandoned South Vietnamese outside the gates of the American Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975, with North Vietnamese army units moving into the city, watching the last of the Marines assigned to the embassy leave by helicopter from the embassy rooftop on their way to a Navy ship waiting offshore in the South China Sea.

I was young and idealistic then, but life and its realities… the way things really are... have changed me. Vietnam was a war where we mistakenly supported a corrupt government and fought on the assumption it was to stop the spread of Communism. A war that, when it became evident victory was not possible, we continued and escalated out of misguided pride. A war that grew out of miscalculations regarding the viability of Communism and Socialist economics.

A war the people of North Vietnam saw and fought as an issue of nationalism, the rejoining of a people split by the decisions of others, made at a conference table in faraway Switzerland at the end of World War II, decisions based on mistaken assumptions and little concern for reality...the reality of how things are on the ground.

Since my writing hasn’t always paid the rent, I’ve also taught English. I’ve taught it at the Harrow Boarding Schools in Hong Kong, and Beijing, the British School in Tokyo, and the Jingo Language Center in Macau. I’ve also taught English courses for adults in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Thailand. Teaching English, however, is not what I want to be remembered for... I’m a freelance journalist, a reporter... heart and soul… and that’s the way I want to be remembered.

There are other things you should know about me... not all of them good. I’m a drifter by nature and move often. I’ve been teaching in Macau recently, at a boys’ Catholic school, and writing articles for The Macau Daily Times and Post Daily. Although Macau is a Special Administrative Region of China, as is Hong Kong, they allow the press some freedom, so long as it’s not critical of China, its policies, or leadership.

I speak fluently, but write poorly, Korean, Japanese, and both Mandarin and Cantonese. Asian languages have always come easy to me. It’s something I don’t have an explanation for, maybe something like an Idiot Savant’s ability for mathematics, but it’s opened doors and given me access to people and information that has resulted in at least two stories which, if they had appeared in an American newspaper, would have earned me a Pulitzer. Oh, I almost forgot… I also speak and understand enough Portuguese to find my way around the baccarat, poker, twenty-one, and roulette tables at the casinos on Macau’s Cotai Strip.

As for the women in my life, the relationships have been of short duration. One resulted in a daughter now in her early twenties, who lives with her mother in Seoul, South Korea. Since her mother and I broke up, my daughter, Kyung-Soon, hasn’t shown an interest in seeing me, and to tell the truth, I don’t blame her. There was a lot of fault there, most of which rests on my shoulders.

To be honest... I’m someone who can’t be counted on when emotional support is needed, with the result that long-term relationships haven’t been my thing. Then... there’s also the fact I’m a loner by temperament and suffer from the Irishman’s curse: I like my liquor. All of which contributes to short-term personal and romantic relationships. There have, however, been three women in my life who have left their mark. My mother was my confidant and the one who actually raised me despite the presence of a father, a father who treated me as if I was a total stranger. My sister, a year younger, was my best friend growing up, and the last was a teacher named Ms. Dall who taught me to base my opinions on facts. There might be another one, a woman I never actually met, a movie star I first saw on the screen at a Yokohama movie theater in a film called Roman Holiday, a woman who inspired young Japanese women to cut their hair in her style… the actress Audrey Hepburn. Of course, Hepburn’s merely a fantasy since I never met her… but then we all have our fantasies.

Someone’s just come in. His voice is now lower than before. They sound like they’re Malaysians, so I’ll shut off the recorder until they leave.

The recorder is shut off.

CHAPTER

TWO

Recording resumes.

Testing...testing.

The voice recorder plays back. Testing…testing.

Seems to be working okay. I was right; they were Malaysians. They’ve left, so I can start recording again. Since you now know something about me, I think it would help to review some of the conditions in the world and in the US that have a bearing on what I’m about to tell you.

The world is a dangerous place, a place in turmoil. War is raging in the Middle East, people are dying in Syria, and there is a civil war in Yemen. Famine is rampant in the world’s poorer countries and a mass exodus of refugees from the Middle East and Africa into Europe has set off a resurgence of nationalism in Italy, France, and Germany.

Muslim radicals are setting off bombs, killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, Africa, and the US, but thanks to our FBI and intelligence services, so far, these incidents have been confined to the 9/11 Twin Towers and isolated incidents committed by radicalized home-grown terrorists.

Iran is making