Into the Fire

CHAPTER EIGHT

The leaders of China’s state-run businesses typically chose to meet with foreign delegations in one of their opulent headquarters. These venues were more suited to the court of Louis XIV of France than to a country with hundreds of millions of peasants still making barely subsistence wages. For these mostly male, middle-aged bureaucrats, it helped establish a superior image and usually resulted in their being able to broker a business deal that was to their advantage.

This meeting with the North Korean delegation was not held in one of those buildings but in a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Beijing — a location with underground parking and shuttered windows that was selected with secrecy in mind. The meeting was not just about a business deal but about national survival. While the Chinese leaders wanted to have the upper hand in the negotiations, they also knew the North Koreans they were negotiating with lived in a nation burdened by wretched hardship. For once, the Chinese needed to plead poverty. It was not the time to show off gilded, Versaillesesque buildings.

The Chinese delegation was standing at the entry of the large meeting room when their North Korean counterparts arrived. They had performed this ritual over a dozen times in the weeks-long negotiations with their North Korean neighbors. In any other culture, this ceremonial dance would have been dispensed with long ago. But the heads of both the delegations were under strict orders from their leadership: Secure a deal — or else. Easy to say, much more difficult to execute as the national leaders of both nations had given their chief negotiators almost equally strong expectations as to how hard they should bargain.

Qiang Weidong, leader of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, stepped in front of his dozen fellow Chinese delegates and said, “Welcome, comrades, we look forward to another day of fruitful negotiations.”

“We do also, Comrade Qiang,” General Lee Kwon Hui replied with a neutral bow. “Shall we begin again?”

The delegations were a study in contrasts, the dozen Chinese all civilians, the half dozen North Korean all military. Qiang had extra motivation to make this the last day of negotiations and secure an agreement: China’s premier had broadly hinted if there was no deal by today, Qiang’s deputy would replace him as head of the group.

The respective delegations sat down on either side of a long table. There was no preliminary chitchat and no small talk. This was all business.

With the world’s largest economy and still one of the fastest growing, the world’s largest population, and a rapidly growing military, China’s leaders — and especially those leading China’s increasingly lucrative state-run businesses — were accustomed to having the upper hand in virtually all negotiations they undertook. But that was not the case on this blustery Beijing morning. China needed what North Korea had, and they needed it desperately. They knew it, and they sensed the North Koreans knew it, too.

China’s double-digit economic growth began at the beginning of the millennium and lasted for over a decade. It made China the envy of the world, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and completely changed the character of the nation. China was no longer a country centered on small agricultural communities dependent on subsistence farming but one marked by massive, world-class cities that dominated global manufacturing. And that growth had managed to at least mostly obscure China’s increasing list of ills — wretched air and water pollution, widening class divisions, restive minority populations, rampant corruption, and the like. As long as a booming economy lifted all — or at least most — boats, the nation’s leaders could keep a lid on most other problems.

But that growth was slowing and threatening to all but grind to a halt over one issue: energy. China’s manufacturing economy was straining its oil and gas supplies to the breaking point, and significant renewable-energy sources were still a future dream. Worse, the forced urbanization of hundreds of millions of Chinese from small farms to high-rise apartments in China’s growing cities created its own spike in energy demand. Turmoil in the Middle East and the whims of sheiks or mullahs meant depending on the Arabian Gulf as the main source for its fossil-fuel supply was becoming bad business and worse strategy. In addition, the fact that this oil and gas had to make an eight-thousand-kilometer journey and pass through waters China’s enemies could easily choke off made China realize this was not only a short-term challenge but also a long-term strategic conundrum.

But a new source of energy — and one that was much closer to China — offered a solution and maybe even salvation. While North Korea’s claims regarding the extent of these undersea gas resources had not yet been verified by China’s government, there were grave concerns other nations would outbid China for these resources. Qiang had his orders — negotiate hard, caveat the multiyear agreement to buy this natural gas with the requirement for verification by China’s Ministry of Land and Resources, and do whatever else it took to get the upper hand — but in no case lose this deal.

The morning dragged on into afternoon, and then into evening. At 2230, Qiang rose and addressed the North Korean delegation. “Comrades, in the spirit of mutual cooperation between our two nations, I believe we have an agreement.”

General Lee rose but said little. “My nation accepts your terms.”

The two men shook hands, and the delegations filed out without another word.

Qiang Weidong had done what he was told to do — get the deal. But as he made the short walk to the bus that would take them back to central Beijing, he reflected on a brief conversation he had had with a member of his delegation’s support staff on the second day of this extended negotiation. The young woman, a lawyer and an expert on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, had pulled him aside and told him much of the water and seabed North Korea planned to extract this gas from was either claimed by South Korea or was clearly international water owned by no one. He had waived aside her concerns — that was not something their delegation was supposed to worry about, he had told her a bit roughly. Now he wondered.