Enigma of China

FOUR

Peiqin was home alone, hunched in front of the computer, reading a blog entry about toxic pork being sold in the markets. She tried not to worry about politics too much, but she was concerned about practical matters, minor yet relevant to her family.

The blog entry was entitled “The Pig Farmer Eats No Pork.” It revealed the shocking fact that most pigs were fed a so-called compound feed-in reality, it was an additive-laced feed, which included hormones to make the pigs grow faster, sleeping pills so they would sleep all day and gain weight faster, and arsenic to make them look pink and healthy. Among the various additives, one commonly used chemical compound was called lean meat essence: it consisted of ractopamine or clenbuterol, with which the farmers could both produce more lean meat and reduce the amount of feed. The pig farmers didn’t care about the consequences for the consumers. For their own use, however, they would keep one or two pigs raised on natural feed.

Knocking on the table in frustration, Peiqin wondered how reliable the information was. What she knew for a fact was that pork nowadays tasted different.

She had heard, however, that for high-ranking Party officials, there was a secret supply of pork and other meat raised on special organic farms. Such meat could be expensive, but it was all paid for by the government. It was beyond the reach of ordinary people like Peiqin and Yu.

It wasn’t only the toxic pork, Peiqin reflected, as she stood up to pour herself a cup of tea. The vegetables were sprayed with DDT, the fish raised in contaminated water, and even the tea leaves-at least some of them-were said to be painted green. She couldn’t help gazing suspiciously into the cup.

“What’s wrong with China?”

An article like that wasn’t going to appear in newspapers like Wenhui. In the official media, there was only the good and great news about China. The authorities wanted to present a picture of a harmonious society and didn’t permit any negative news or commentary. Like an increasing number of people, Peiqin felt she had no choice but to get more and more of her news online. In contrast to the official media, the Internet provided less-filtered information, though even it wasn’t free from government control.

Peiqin used the computer Qinqin left at home for her Web surfing. The campus computers ran much faster, and Qinqin studied there most of the time. He only checked e-mail or played games at home on the weekend, so Peiqin could use the computer as much as she liked during the week.

She heard voices and footsteps approaching the door. She rose and opened the door and saw, to her surprise, not just Yu but also Chen standing there.

“What wind has brought you over today, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“He was talking to me about a case,” Yu said, “involving Internet searches. I told him you’re a pro-”

“So here I am,” Chen said, holding high a bottle of Shaoxing rice wine. “A student’s gift to his teacher, a must in the Confucian tradition.”

“Don’t listen to him,” she said. “It’s dinnertime. You should have told me earlier.”

“I’m no stranger, Peiqin. That’s why I’ve come without giving you advance notice. We’ll just have whatever you’ve already prepared.”

“But there’s only one bowl of eight treasures hot sauce,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the table. “With Qinqin off at college, we sometimes have nothing but noodles with a spoonful of sauce on top.”

“The sauce isn’t bad,” Yu cut in, “fried with diced pork, dry tofu, peanuts, cucumber, shrimp, and whatnot-”

“So it’s called eight treasures,” Chen said with a grin. “I know. It’s a Shanghai specialty. Really delicious!”

“No, it won’t do for a distinguished guest like you. We can’t afford to lose face like that,” Peiqin said in mock dismay. “But have a cup of Dragon Well tea first and I’ll see what I can put together.”

In less than five minutes, Peiqin was able to put two cold dishes on the table: tofu mixed with chopped green onion and sesame oil, and sliced thousand-year egg in soy sauce with minced ginger.

“Something for your beer,” she said, putting a bottle of Qingdao and two cups on the table.

“Don’t go out of your way for me, Peiqin.”

“Let her have her way,” Yu said, opening the beer bottle with a pop.

She put the sauce of eight treasures into the microwave and a bunch of noodles into a pot of boiling water. While those cooked, she stir-fried several eggs into an omeletlike dish called super crabmeat and roe.

Chen helped himself to a spoonful of the omelet the moment it was placed on the table. “It tastes absolutely exquisite,” he declared. “You have to tell me the recipe.”

“It’s easy. You just need to separate the yolk from the white. Fry the white first, and then the yolk. Add a lot of minced ginger, Zhenjiang vinegar, and a generous pinch of sugar too.”

She ladled out the noodles, placed them into bowls, and poured the sauce on top of them.

“Laomian style,” she said before serving a soup of dried green cabbage.

“Wow, that’s the soup I’ve been missing.”

“The fresh cabbage was so cheap back in the early spring, I bought several baskets and dried it at home,” she said. She shook out several drops of sesame oil onto the greenish surface of the soup.

“When I was a child, my mother used to dry cabbage at home, too. She would boil the cabbage, then air dry it on a rope stretched across our small room.”

“Oh, we have not visited your mother for a while.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s doing fine for a woman her age.”

Chen changed the subject: “I hear you’ve become quite Web savvy, Peiqin. Yu told me about it.”

“She’s absolutely hooked,” Yu chipped in, adding another spoonful of the spicy sauce to the noodles. “She hurries to the computer the moment she gets home-before she even thinks of cooking or washing.”

“You’re always so busy with your work. What else can I do alone at home?” She turned to Chen. “I’m simply fed up with the newspapers. Just yesterday, I read about the exposure of another corrupt Party official. It served him right, but in the newspaper, it’s always due to the great leadership of the Central Party authorities that a rotten cadre is exposed and punished. As to why and how it happened, we are never told anything. The former premier made his famous statement about preparing ninety-nine coffins for corrupt officials and one for himself. It was an unmistakable and heroic gesture promising to fight corruption, no matter the cost. He got a five-minute ovation for his speech. But did he succeed in rooting out the corruption? No. The situation has been getting worse and worse.

“That’s why people rely on the Internet for detailed information on how these officials fatten themselves like red rats. The Web is also censored, but quite a number of sites aren’t run by the government. Consequently, one or two fish may still, from time to time, escape the net. These are commercial Web sites, run for profit, so the contents have to be eye-catching and feature information that’s unavailable in the Party newspapers.”

“Thank you so much, Peiqin. That was a very helpful overview,” Chen said. “But I have a specific question for you. What is a human-flesh search?”

“Oh, that. I hope you aren’t the target of one, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, with a teasing smile. “I’m just kidding. When and where the practice of crowd-sourced investigation started, I don’t know. Possibly in one of the popular, controversial Web forums, where users-or netizens-can post their own comments. They are called ‘netizens’ because the public space of Internet is a kind of nation, of which they are citizens. For many, it is the only space wherein they can act like citizens, with a limited freedom of speech. As for the term human-flesh search, it was originally used to describe an information search that is human-powered rather than computer-driven. The netizens-the most dedicated Web users-sift through clues, help each other, and share information, intent on tracking down the target information one way or another. But the popular meaning nowadays is that it is not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, one which plays out online but is intended to have real-world consequences. The targets of this kind of search vary, from corrupt government officials, to new Big Bucks who appear suddenly with surprisingly large fortunes, to intellectuals too obsequious to the authorities, or any other relatively high-profile figure you might imagine. However, almost always there is an explicit or implicit emphasis on sensitive political and social issues somewhere in the target’s background.”

“Can you give me an example, Peiqin?”

“Recently, there was one in Yunnan Province. An amateur hacker broke into a local Party official’s laptop, downloaded his diary, and put it online. That official, named Miao, was the head of the county tobacco bureau. He wasn’t a particularly high-ranking cadre, but he had a lucrative position. The contents of the diary proved to be very spicy. It included detailed descriptions of his extramarital affairs, his under-the-table deals done in the name of Party interests, his pocketing government funds, and his bribing others while others bribed him, all in a complex cobweb of connections. The diary reads like a novel, with the persons involved labeled only by initials-such as B, M, S, and so on-but with dates and locations too. You might think this would be no big deal, since no one could tell if the diary was true or not. But you know what? A crowd-sourced search started immediately. Netizens threw themselves into it wholeheartedly, like kids at a carnival. All the women mentioned as having been in a sexual relationship with the official were located. They even found photos of most of them. The same with the other Party officials connected to him. By relentlessly digging into the dates and locations, the forum members were able to establish the authenticity of the diary beyond question.

“Consequently, Miao was fired and jailed for being an official corrupted by the evil Western bourgeois influence.”

“So these netizens did a good job of sorting out a rotten egg,” Chen said. “On the other hand, who gave them the right to invade others’ privacy?”

“No one did. But who gave the Party officials the right to do all those horrible things in the first place? China has a one-party system, with absolute power, absolute media control, and an absolute highway to corruption. People have to do something, right? No problem is really solved by conducting a crowd-sourced search like that. But exposing one Party official is better than none. These searches have now developed a pattern. When an official is first named on the Internet, he or she denies any wrongdoing, fights back, and threatens to take legal action against anyone posting about them online. The government, meanwhile, supports the targeted official while, it goes without saying, remaining in the background. But the ongoing search inevitably brings up new hard evidence, irrefutable, of corruption and abuse of power, much to the embarrassment of the government. The government then has no choice but to shuanggui the official thus exposed.”

“I’ve heard about the role played by these netizens in bringing the melamine-contaminated milk powder scandal to the nation’s attention,” Yu chipped in again. “The local government tried to suppress the stories because the milk powder company was important to the local economy, but once they were on the Internet, the stories spread like wildfire. There were statements and pictures posted online of some of the victims of the contaminated milk powder. Ultimately, the Party authorities had no choice but to put the head of the company in prison.”

“Back to these crowd-sourced ‘human-flesh’ searches, Peiqin,” Chen said. “Have you heard about what happened to an official named Zhou-and all because of a pack of cigarettes?”

“Oh yes, the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty. It was just the rottenest luck for that guy.”

“What do you mean, Peiqin?”

“Let me begin by telling you something about a small store close to my restaurant, Chief Inspector Chen. The store specializes in buying back and reselling expensive cigarettes and liquors. As you may know, Party officials of a certain rank usually are given one or two cartons of cigarettes per month for their so-called socialist business needs. The cigarettes they are given may not be as pricey as 95 Supreme Majesty, but they sell for at least five or six hundred yuan a carton.”

“Yes, I have to admit, I get a carton every month,” Chen said, “but I always finish it before the end of the month.”

“But nonsmoking officials also get them as a perk of their Party positions; they get cartons and cartons as ‘gifts.’ Because the gift isn’t cash, they have nothing to worry about. They could never finish all those cigarettes, even if they did smoke. Instead, they sell the cartons back to stores like the one next to my restaurant and pocket the cash. It’s no secret.”

Chen couldn’t think of a response. He, too, had such “gifts” pushed onto him occasionally, though he’d never tried to sell them back for cash.

“As expensive as 95 Supreme Majesty may be, it is not surprising or scandalizing in itself. The Chinese people have seen too much. You know the term socialism with Chinese characteristics, do you? A big shot like Zhou would have surprised people more if he smoked a less expensive brand.”

“Then why was Zhou chosen as a target for a crowd-sourced search?”

“The picture of the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty showed up after he spoke at an important meeting. Do you know what the speech he made that day was about?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “It was about the absolute necessity of keeping the housing market stable. What does that mean? It means prices cannot be allowed to fall. At present, a square meter at Lujiazui costs a 130,000 yuan. I would have to work for four or five years to earn enough to buy one square meter. Now, for our family, the present situation is not too bad. We have one and half rooms in an okay location assigned to us through the state housing quota, thanks to your help. But what happens to Qinqin after he graduates college? He will need an apartment for himself. How can people like us possibly afford a place to live if housing costs don’t come down? It’s more than probable that he will have to live like we did before we moved here. Remember, we lived with Old Hunter for years, with three generations squeezed together in one wing unit.”

“Don’t worry about the distant future, Peiqin,” Yu said, with a lame smile.

“You think only about your cases, but I have to think about our son. In today’s Shanghai, a young man with no apartment means no possibility of dating a young woman, let alone marrying her. People are all so realistic in this materialistic age,” she said, frowning, and turning back to Chen. “Back to your question, do you know why the housing prices keep rising?”

“Because of greedy developers.”

“No. Because of the even more greedy Party officials. The land belongs to the government. Under their control, it is sold off through a so-called auction system where the rights go to whichever developer has the highest bid. Rising revenue from the sale of the land keeps pushing up the city’s GDP, which the city officials point to as proof of their hard work-without mentioning that a substantial amount goes into their own pockets. Who gets the land, how, and at what price-it is all the result of shady dealings. Not too long ago, the premier made a statement about cooling down the overheated real estate market. Some developers, nervous about a possible downturn in the market, offered to bring prices down a little. Zhou, worrying about a snowball effect, highlighted the importance of keeping the market stable in his speech that day. He said that if some companies reduced prices irresponsibly, the government would punish them for causing economic trouble. Not only was this reported in several newspapers, they also ran a picture of him tapping a pack of cigarettes. That was the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty.

“That speech was like kicking a hornet’s nest. Zhou was supporting the interests of the city government, or the Party officials, but not those of the ordinary people. That picture of the 95 Supreme Majesty pack, once it was posted online, provided a perfect excuse for people to vent their anger and frustration.”

“Well done, Peiqin,” Chen said, raising the cup of Qingdao beer, “I’ll drink to that. Please go on.”

“Now, according to the official propaganda, a Party cadre is the ‘people’s servant’ and earns about the same as an ordinary worker. For one in Zhou’s position, the monthly salary would be about two or three thousand yuan. But a carton of 95 Supreme Majesty costs more than that. A photoshopped version of the picture showed up on the Internet with the retail price of a pack written underneath. It was posted as the evidence of an official living extravagantly beyond his means. It was both a legitimate criticism and an implied question: How could Zhou, if he wasn’t corrupt, afford that pack?

“The original post drew a flood of responses in no time. As if responding to a call to arms, the offers to help with a crowd-sourced search swamped the Internet. If Zhou could afford the cigarettes, what else?

“It seemed justifiable for people to approach the search from this angle. Before Zhou could come up with an explanation for the cigarettes, another picture popped up. This time he was wearing a Cartier watch. Then, in breathtaking succession, more and more pictures were posted online as irrefutable evidence of Zhou’s decadent lifestyle. Those were shots of the three luxury cars registered in his name-two Mercedes and one BMW-and of his son studying at Eton, a private school in London, and driving an Audi there. There were also more than five properties in the city under his name. Some capable hackers even managed to get hold of copies of the title deeds to his properties. Soon it was impossible for Zhou to defend the wealth he had amassed in the last five or six years.”

“I’m beginning to understand, Peiqin. It was a master stroke, that crowd-sourced search.”

“Yes, it really backed the government into a corner. They knew only too well why Zhou was being targeted. But with so many people protesting, without a legitimate excuse for his sudden wealth, and with the irrefutable evidence of it all, they found it hard to shield him anymore. They realized it was more important to protect the Party’s image, so they put Zhou into shuanggui-over a pack of 95 Supreme Majesty.”

“Thank you so much, Peiqin. You’ve thrown much light on the background of the situation.”

“So it’s a case you’re investigating?”

“No. Not exactly,” Chen said with a wry smile. “Shuanggui is not the territory of the police. It’s believed that Zhou committed suicide while under detention at a hotel. I’m simply serving as a consultant to the team investigating the cause of death.”

“Zhou’s dead?”

“Yes. It will be announced in the newspapers soon.”

“This will cause another storm on the Internet. Suicide while under detention. How will people online react?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“You’ve been talking so much about Internet searches, Peiqin,” Yu said, changing the subject, “but what I’m searching for is the dessert.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Peiqin said, rising in haste. “A friend from Beijing brought me some green bean-paste cakes, supposedly from Fangshan, the Forbidden City.”

“That restaurant in the North Sea,” Chen said, “on the island where chefs used to prepare all the delicacies for Dowager Empress Cixi toward the end of the Qing dynasty. The name of the restaurant alone, Fangshan, is more than enough to evoke the imperial majesty complex and its privileges from China’s collective unconscious. It’s just like the brand name of 95 Supreme Majesty.”

“Don’t worry, Chief. I’m not a Party official. The green bean cakes are just a gift from an old friend.”

“I know who it is,” Yu said with mock seriousness. “He was a secret admirer of Peiqin from the days when we were educated youths during the Cultural Revolution. He’s not an official, just an ordinary clerk in the Beijing Travel Bureau, otherwise I would be really worried.”

“But I am worried,” Chen said, putting a tiny cake in his mouth. “If the government is anxious to conclude that Zhou’s death was suicide, then why was I chosen to consult on the investigation?”

“You’ve conducted several high-profile anticorruption cases, which a lot of people know,” Peiqin said, putting the remaining green bean-paste cakes into a box for the departing guest. “So if you’re involved, people will believe the official report.”

“Having you on the case is an endorsement of their conclusion,” Yu cut in again.

“Thank you, Peiqin and Yu, for the meal, for the cake, for the lecture about the Internet and crowd-sourcing, and for everything else,” Chen said, rising. “Now I have your endorsement, I think, for what I’m going to do next.”