Xianqui

by Raghu Srinivasan

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Year: 2019. The world is falling apart. The temperamental President of the United States of America, facing a tough re-election and playing to populist voter sentiment, has imposed trade sanctions on a belligerent China. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens, reeling from a disastrous economic meltdown, have taken to the streets in revolt. Staring at the bleak prospect of being ousted from power after 60 years of iron rule in the wake of threats both external and internal, the leaders of the Communist Party in China initiate military action, drawing its rival superpowers Japan and the United States into a conflict that portends an all-out nuclear war. As nations across the globe switch to emergency mode, Japanese intelligence reveals that China’s aggression could have been fuelled by a singular circumstance: the development of a vaccine based on ancient tribal knowledge that could tilt military balance in its favour.But what is this secret weapon China possesses and how can it be stopped? The fate of the world now rests on the success of a quest undertaken by an eclectic team – a Japanese policewoman, an Indian ethnologist and a young Indian mountain guide, assisted in part by a devious Russian geologist – to unravel the only clue they have at hand, buried in a fable from a time long past, when the magic of the shamans guided the rulers of Tibet. Will they succeed? Or will the Chinese foil their attempts and trigger the ultimate, apocalyptic war?

Release date: September 25, 2020

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 416

Sample

PROLOGUE

1954

Taklamakan Desert, Western China

The captain from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) walked up to the campfire and sat down on the sand. He warmed his hands over the dancing flames, squinting at the older man sitting across him. ‘So, it is possible, Shi Dafu, that we will finally reach the treasure?’ he asked mockingly, calling the old man ‘gentleman-scholar’. In the time of the last Ming emperor at the turn of the century, it was a much-respected honorific, used only for high officials. Now, with the communists firmly in power, it was a derogatory term.

The archaeologist stared back blankly, ignoring the jibe. ‘Yes, we should reach the site by midday tomorrow,’ he mumbled through chapped lips. ‘But it is unlikely we will find any treasure. Objects of immense archaeological value, yes, but treasure? No.’

‘Nonsense, old man,’ the captain retorted sharply, spitting into the sand. ‘We will find the treasure! Everyone in Yarkand knows the stories. There is treasure, and not historical garbage, which drove your foreign devil master to enter this cursed desert. And it was this treasure that made the commandant of the Yarkand garrison give you a platoon for your quest.’

The captain’s eyes gleamed as he ranted on, almost shouting now, ‘It is not for manuscripts or pieces of broken pots that we have lost three men and 12 camels over the last 20 days. Do not deceive me, old man. You will give me my cut, the same as you are giving the commandant.’

The archaeologist glanced at the younger man and then looked away towards the fierce dunes rising a hundred metres on all sides, like monster waves about to swallow them. There was no point arguing with this bully, who was still the stupid peasant he had been five years ago – only now, he had a uniform and a gun. It was true they had lost men, but it was much better than the last time he had entered the Taklamakan with the Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin. Only three men from the original band of 30 survived that horrendous expedition.

Although, that was really to be expected. The Taklamakan Desert was a boundless ocean of sand a thousand kilometres long and four hundred kilometres wide with no reliable sources of water. It had always swallowed all who entered – caravans since the beginning of the Silk Route had warily skirted it, making their way along the fabled oasis settlements of Yarkand, Kashgar and Ürümqi along its fringes.

The next day, they reached their destination, a flat, dirty, dried brown lakebed, pockmarked with white gypsum and a clump of reeds in the centre.

‘Is this it?’ the captain asked, rubbing his chin, sounding disappointed.

The old man nodded. The captain ordered for the camels to be unloaded and the camp to be set up. That done, the men entered the reeds with digging tools and metal detectors. They still had four hours of daylight, and the captain saw no point in wasting time. For two days, they dug the sand without finding anything.

On the third day, an hour before sunset, a man from one of the digging teams gave a shout. The captain and the archaeologist rushed to them.

‘What is it? What have you found?’ the captain asked excitedly.

‘This, comrade,’ one of the men replied, handing him a gleaming short sword.

The captain took the sword from him, examined it and made a few feints in the air,

‘It is just a sword, made from common metal,’ the captain said, sounding disappointed, and handed it over to the archaeologist.

‘Yes,’ the old man replied, weighing the sword in his hand and then holding it out so he could see it clearly. He peered at the intricate engravings on the hilt. No! he thought, holding back the excitement building up inside him. It was best not to raise one’s hopes. It cannot be!

The archaeologist placed the sword down and took a well-thumbed leather-bound notebook out of his jacket. His hands shook as he flipped the pages until he came to a page with a photograph pasted on it. It was an image of a fat snake intertwined with a thin snake. The image in the photograph matched the engraving on the hilt!

‘What is it?’ the captain asked.

The archaeologist looked up and saw the younger man looking curiously at him. ‘This is a major discovery!’ he replied breathlessly.

‘It is?’ the young man asked, sounding unconvinced.

‘This is older than anything ever found in this desert! Look at how it gleams without a spot of rust. There is a legend about such a sword, a legend from before written history.’ The archaeologist’s voice choked up. ‘And now, we know the myth to be true.’

The captain stared at the old man and shrugged. ‘Keep the sword, Shi Dafu, if it makes you so happy – I have no use for it. But at least now we know – there is gold and silver buried in this sand as well.’

11 March 2011

Fukushima, Japan

Susi Mamoto furtively pulled on a cigarette as she stood outside the guard room at the entry of the inner perimeter to the plant. Her team had set up office in two rooms half a kilometre from the reactors and about the same distance from the tsunami wall. When they had arrived in the mid-afternoon, despite the overcast sky and rain, they could clearly see reactors 1, 2 and 3 – the ones that they had been told were perilously close to melting down. But now, in the late evening with the light failing and the rain being replaced by fog, the visibility was less than fifty metres.

She had looked through the window to see if any of her team was looking out for her but realized she needn’t have bothered; all of them were either checking their phones or were glued to TV screens running a continuous news update. Most of them had been with her since she had taken over as chief of prefectural police in the Keisatsu-cho, the Japanese National Police Agency, and were quite used to her disappearing periodically to smoke. But today, she felt a little guilty – she had just lectured them on keeping their hazmat suits and respirators on, and she was the first to break the diktat. In her own mind, she wasn’t worried, she knew she would die of lung cancer long before anything else. She needed the cigarette – it had been a rough day so far, with nothing to suggest it was going to get better any time soon.

It had definitely been a bad day for Japan. Three hours ago, at exactly 2.43 p.m. Japan Standard Time, measuring on the Richter 9, an earthquake with its epicentre approximately seventy kilometres from the Japanese coastline at a depth of approximately thirty kilometres had rolled across the country. The fourth-most powerful earthquake in recorded history, it had shifted the island of Japan eight feet to the east and the earth 10 inches on its axis.

No country in the world was more vulnerable to earthquakes, and none was better equipped or organized to detect and mitigate them. However, none of their protection measures accounted for the monster tsunami that had been unleashed from the depths like the kraken. An hour later, waves over forty metres high struck the Japanese coastline, sweeping over specially constructed tsunami barriers and high grounds, inundating areas 10 kilometres inland. Unlike most of the other response teams dispatched by the Keisatsu-cho, Mamoto’s unit was not coordinating relief and rescue operations – their job was the security of the Fukushima nuclear plant. And the situation was quickly spiralling out of control.

As per procedure, Mamoto was in charge and had complete jurisdiction over all the agencies at the nuclear plant. She had given instructions that everyone moving into the site needed to log into a database at the command centre that they had established and have a security pass made. But she knew that there was no way it could be enforced just then. There was just too much happening too fast. Let things stabilize a bit, she told herself.

She heard the drone of a helicopter overhead, looked up but couldn’t see it through the fog, and decided to get back in. She threw her cigarette into a puddle and for good measure, she stepped on it awkwardly with the boot of her hazmat suit. It was a size too big, but she hadn’t the time to try on another. She began walking towards the command centre and had just reached the door when she heard the explosion.

‘Kuso! Shit!’ she cursed, turning around and peered through the fog in the direction of the reactors. Unable to make out anything, she yelled at her colleagues, ‘What was that? Are you picking up anything on the radio?’

‘There’s been an explosion at Reactor 4!’ a member of her team shouted back at her.

Reactor 4! That was switched off! How could there be an explosion in Reactor 4?

She turned to take one last look at the reactors before running into the command centre, when she saw a person in a hazmat suit coming out of the shroud of fog. The figure was some forty metres away, approaching them in a stumbling run, and from his limping gait the person appeared hurt. Susi called out to her team and began jogging towards the figure, hoping that she would not lose sight of the person in the swirling fog.

All of a sudden, the figure disappeared. She broke into a run, and as she got to where she had last seen the figure, she realized what had happened. The person had fallen into a trench half-filled with seawater that hadn’t been visible. As she looked down she realized it was a man, now lying face down in the water, and he wasn’t moving.

She jumped into the trench; it wasn’t very deep, and the water just about reached her knees. Susi worked her hands under the man and began pulling him upright. There must have been a tear in his suit since the helmet was now full of water. Better to risk possible contamination than certain drowning, she thought as she began taking off his headgear. She then pulled her own off in case she needed to administer mouth-to-mouth.

‘Kare no chikakuniikuikemasen! Karewaosorakuosensa rete imasu! Don’t go near him! He is probably contaminated!’

Susi looked up and saw two security personnel looking down at her. From the insignia on their suits, she could tell they were from the Japanese defence forces. The man who had shouted was waving a rifle. She also saw her own team anxiously looking down at her from the other side of the trench.

Susi went back to what she was doing; she knew the soldier wouldn’t shoot, and she knew that if she stopped now, they would have a dead man in that trench. With some effort, she pulled the man up so that he was sitting with his back propped against the wall of the trench. She wrenched the helmet off, held the man’s head and began slapping his back. He was white and had a long, pinched face. In a few moments, he coughed and spluttered, retching out the water he had ingested. Susi cradled him in her arms, and gradually he stopped retching and opened his eyes, his breathing laboured.

He looked up at Susi and gasped. ‘We’ve got to do something! Quick! It’s the Elephant’s Foot! Do you, for the love of God, understand English at all? Waruidesu! Hijo-niwaruidesu! Bad! Very bad!’ It was clear from his accent that he was American.

The Elephant’s Foot! They had taught Susi about that in the orientation training before this assignment. But that was the stuff of movies. That was a nightmare they didn’t need! Without betraying her alarm to the man, she put her hands under his armpits and helped him get up. ‘It’s okay, I’m Susi Mamoto from the Japan national police. I’m in charge; I understand what you are saying – we’ll take care of it.’

‘Thank God!’ the older man said with a gasp, sounding relieved, holding his chest. After a moment, he put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out two items; one was a standard-issue dosimeter and the other a digital camera. By now, more soldiers had assembled at the mouth of the trench. They had managed a rope ladder, and two of them had lowered themselves in. Casting a furtive glance at the soldiers, the man hurriedly pressed the devices into Mamoto’s hand. ‘Everything’s in there. Do something – fast!’ he urged. Then, he got up and stumbled towards the soldiers who began helping him out.

‘Yakuinteishi! Officer, stop! You cannot move him,’ she commanded angrily, grasping at the older man, but was prevented by a soldier who came in between them.

‘Who are you?’ Mamoto called out in English to the man.

He turned his head and said, ‘Believe me, lady, you don’t want to know.’

Susi Mamoto stood watching as he was led away by the soldiers, disappearing into the fog as dramatically as he had appeared.

The Elephant’s Foot was the ultimate catastrophe at any nuclear plant – the only time it had taken place was during the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. The Elephant’s Foot was a name given to the volatile mix of incandescent nuclear fuel and concrete that the uncontrolled fuel rods had melted through. It was a mass of self-perpetuating, insatiable and unquenchable energy which had no parallel in the physical world. Its name was derived from the resemblance the fissile material had to a thick, wrinkled columnar stub, resembling an elephant’s foot. If the white man was right, then the hot fuel rods had burnt through a thousand tons of the six-inch stainless-steel reactor protection vessel and were now eating through seven metres of concrete containment. It would be cooled when it hit groundwater; but the environmental consequences of that happening on Japan’s largest island were too cataclysmic to even think about.

She fumbled with the small digital camera the man had thrust into her hand and quickly ran through the photographs, which were dark and unclear; except for two which clearly showed the pooled wrinkly molten mass – it was distressingly similar to the photograph taken at Chernobyl three weeks after the meltdown. She looked at the photographs very closely, twice over to make sure that she had got it right, and then turned and strode determinedly back to the command post and stood in front of the young policeman on communication duty. He glanced up from the consoles in front of him, quickly shedding his earphones.

‘Madam Chief?’ he enquired politely.

‘Please put me through to the prime minister,’ she said quietly. Susi could feel the tension in the room as it went silent except for the squawking news channels and reports between rescue teams on the radio. Her staff began to mute out those sounds as well.

The young man looked at her with his mouth open and began to say something but looking at her face, he decided against it. His name was Jinko and he had been on her team for two years – long enough to know when not to ask his boss questions.

‘Yes, Jinko, the prime minister. I do not want to speak to anybody else; tell his staff that what I have to say is for his ears only.’

All it took was that phone call. The graduated response being advocated by the owners of the plant, Tepco, was overruled and Masai Yoshida, the plant boss was given a free hand to handle the emergency the way he saw fit, with all national resources placed at his disposal. Within an hour, helicopters carrying water were dropping water onto the plant, and by the next morning, fire trucks were spraying the reactors with seawater. The seawater quelled the monsters unleashed from the belly of the reactors; but they would never be commercially viable again.

1 October 2018

HQ Central Military Commission, People’s Liberation Army, Beijing

General Shi Luyi stormed out of his office into an anteroom, also a private living space, and sat down heavily on a sofa in front of the fireplace. ‘Drink,’ he commanded gruffly, loosening the top buttons of his uniform. ‘Quickly!’

The next moment, a steward had appeared with a decanter and glass. Another sat at his feet and began removing his boots. It had been a truly dismal day. What a fucking incident! He had seen them before; but never, ever civil disobedience on this scale! And on fucking Chinese National Day too! He downed half a glass of liquor in a single gulp. Thank God it was over, and he had managed to muzzle the media! An involuntary shudder ran through him as he remembered what had happened.

While the anniversary parade in the industrial city of Shenzhen was in full swing, thousands of civilians – men, women and children – bearing Party flags and carrying banners proclaiming their undying loyalty to the Party suddenly surged into the main street. The protestors were orderly, sat down in neat rows and would get up every 15 minutes to sing revolutionary songs in praise of the PLA and the Communist Party. Their only demand, when asked by the local police to clear the road, was that they may most respectfully be allowed to submit a petition by a member of the Politburo from the headquarters for consideration. Local authorities panicked, not knowing how to respond to this unprecedented request. The mayor called Beijing, asking whether he should accept the demands of the protestors or if he was allowed to clear the streets by force.

Shi Luyi, who took the call, could make out that the terrified man on the other end of the line had no stomach for the latter. An emergency meeting was called, where the president had decided to avoid confrontation and defuse the situation. Shi Luyi had been dispatched immediately to Shenzhen, and it was only after he had personally assured the protestors that their petition would be looked into did the crowd disperse from the streets.

The general’s eyes caught a movement. He looked up at the mirror on top of the fireplace and saw the door to the anteroom open – it was his aide-de-camp. She came in and stood behind him and began massaging his neck.

‘You have saved the day, Comrade General,’ Colonel Go Hai said in a soft, musical voice. He did not reply; he knew that it was a meek surrender that he had presided over. He took a big gulp of whisky from his glass.

He looked into his ADC’s strangely coloured eyes in the mirror. She was moistening her lips with her pointed pink tongue, which darted in and out of her mouth, quite like a snake. He noticed this about her, amongst other things, the first time he had interviewed her 10 years ago.

He had then been the commanding general of the Western Military Theatre, looking after the restive provinces of Xinjiang and Tibet. Go Hai was a young subaltern, an English interpreter with one of the field formations under his command. She had been brought to him as a convict on trial for the murder of two of her superior officers. In her defence, she pleaded that they had taken her to a private residence and repeatedly raped her. But it wasn’t self-defence; it was retribution of a fashion more diabolical than anything Shi Luyi had ever heard of.

She had drugged, stripped and chained the two officers. When they had come to, she had methodically burnt them with acid. Finally, when she had had her fill of sadistic pleasure, she had made the men, now crazed with pain, bite each other’s penises off. They died, bleeding to death with the other’s organ still in their mouths.

During her interview, Go Hai had offered her services to the general in return for a pardon. It had been a proposition that had found favour with him. She was smart, devoid of any moral scruples and malevolently ruthless. In addition, she candidly proffered her considerable physical charms for his exclusive amusement. He knew he would have her undying loyalty and use for her talents. He appointed her to his personal staff, and in all these years she had never once disappointed him.

Hearing a delicate cough, General Shi Luyi came back to the present. His eyes focused on her image in the mirror. Their eyes met, and he gave a short nod, granting her permission to speak.

‘This protest, the one you saw today, is a precursor to far worse ones in the future. We must act before it is too late,’ the woman said softly.

He turned in his chair and looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded gruffly.

‘Pardon my impertinence, General,’ she answered demurely, ‘but it appears a propitious time for the eagle to swoop down.’

He looked at her and saw her eyes gleaming as her pointed pink tongue slowly and seductively moistened her lips.

15 October 2018

The Hague

The Honourable Justice Riaz Mohammed Khan, member of the international tribunal adjudicating an island dispute between China and Japan, was going through his mail, methodically cutting open each envelope with a pair of scissors. Most were official correspondence, which he merely glanced through before placing them in one pile. Some were advertisements in Dutch, which he unceremoniously tossed into the basket under the table; others were bills, which he placed in a different pile. Mrs Tomas, his housekeeper, would deal with them the next day, getting him to sign the cheques at the breakfast table. He never got personal letters, except before Eid and New Year’s, when his brother and his American wife would write to him. He dreaded these reminders of how alone he was in the world.

Somewhere in the middle of these letters, he found a small white envelope with his name and address written in a neat, feminine hand. He flipped the envelope over; there was an address in Peshawar scribbled there, but no sender’s name. Ya Allah! It cannot be! he thought as he picked up the envelope, holding it against the light, seeing a single page inside. ‘It is her,’ he murmured to himself. ‘After so many years!’ He opened the envelope and took out the sheet of paper, on which a couplet in Urdu was written.

Ranjish hi sahi, dil hi dukhane ke liye aa,Aa, phir se mujhey chhod ke jane ke liye aa.

Come back to me, even if to cause me anguish and torture my heart,Come back to me, even if only to abandon me again.

He knew the rest of the poem by heart; it was, after all, written by one of the most illustrious products of his alma mater, the Edwards College in Peshawar. If Mrs Tomas had walked into the room at that moment, she would have been quite surprised; tears were flowing down the judge’s leathery face wetting his salt-and-pepper beard. In the two years that Mr Khan had occupied these quarters, she had never seen so much emotion on his hard, stern face.

The next morning, the judge recused himself from the bench, citing personal reasons. He flew out of the Netherlands for Pakistan the day after. The widow’s letter would trigger a series of geopolitical upheavals she could never have foreseen.

3 November 2018

Somewhere in Sikkim, India

Tashi scrambled on all fours over loose rocks on the trail, pulling at the yak, goading it to make the last steep climb to the hamlet, which was their destination. All the while, Angi, his grandmother, who was sitting astride the huge beast, heaped abuses on both grandson and animal.

‘Hurry, or it will be sunrise, you cursed offspring of bad luck!’ she screamed.

They made it to the crest in a few minutes, where about thirty people were patiently waiting for them, unmindful of the sharp predawn breeze blowing over the mountains. The head of the family greeted Angi by bowing low as she got off the yak, and was followed by all the others.

‘We are greatly honoured by your presence, O great Shamanka!’ he called out raising his hands in the traditional manner. Angi tapped him lightly with her kangling, a staff made from a human femur, the ceremonial accoutrement of a shaman.

‘Rise, Headman. Where is the baby?’

‘He is with his mother. Perhaps you will honour us by partaking in some refreshments – you have had a long and arduous journey.’

‘Later perhaps,’ the old woman grunted. ‘We have little time,’ she said, swiping at Tashi none too gently with her kangling. ‘The fool took too long getting here. Let us perform the ceremony.’

Angi, a magic woman or shamanka, was here to perform a special ceremony for a child who had been born in the hamlet 20 days ago. The infant had shown every sign of being holy or chosen by the gods. The rituals that Angi would perform in the ceremony would reveal what the gods wished to communicate to their devotees.

They all walked a distance in procession till they came to a swift-flowing mountain stream. Tashi could see that they had already prepared for the ritual; a bearskin had been spread on a grassy patch just next to the water. At the spot, two men who were integral to the ritual stood waiting, one holding a damaru drum and the other a long dungchen, a metallic Tibetan horn.

Angi alighted and sat cross-legged on the bearskin. She closed her eyes and began to chant, slowly at first and then louder. The men played their instruments in accompaniment and the silent mountains reverberated with the sound.

Suddenly Angi stopped and opened her eyes. ‘Bring the child,’ she commanded.

Tashi watched the headman approach the young woman, who was really still a girl, and take a tiny bundle swathed in a blanket from her. The girl seemed frightened of letting go of her baby, but the older women standing next to her gently convinced her to. Tashi grimaced. Poor thing, he thought.

The bundle was handed over to Angi, who removed the blanket, picked up the naked, wailing baby and began to mutter into his ear. Then, she got up and knelt by the water and immersed the infant until he was below the water. Tashi watched in horror as the pale, skinny body turned blue.

The old woman held the infant under water for what seemed like eternity; Tashi cast a glance at the young mother. She was standing still as stone, watching the shamanka silently, tears streaming uncontrollably down her face. God, this has to stop! The child will surely die!

But that, Tashi knew, was exactly what Angi was doing; she was sending the soul back to the spirit world. The soul would ask the gods to speak through its present body.

Finally, Angi pulled the baby out. The infant’s body had turned a dull grey-black. Angi held the baby close to her and began whispering in its ear. After a few minutes, the child let out a tiny whimper. The village people crowded around the shamanka, fell on their knees and began praying loudly, the joy on their faces evident. The two musicians began to play raucously. Tashi looked at the mother and saw a small smile on her face for the first time since the ceremony had begun. Angi kept whispering to the baby, and the baby gurgled back at her. It appeared they were talking. Soon, Angi handed the baby back to the mother.

‘Take care of him – he will do great things and bring honour to your family,’ she told the young girl, tapping her bowed head with her kangling in blessing.

‘What is the prophecy, O Shamanka?’ the headman asked Angi. The others crowded around to hear what the shaman would say. Tashi knew what was being asked; it was believed that through the child, the god Mara would reveal the future.

‘Ah yes, the prophecy,’ Angi replied softly, looking away, seemingly lost in thought, her eyes clouded. Then she turned back to look at them and said, ‘All will be well; the harvests will be good and good health will prevail,’ Angi replied almost perfunctorily. There was much cheering in the crowd again. There would be a celebration in the village that night, with much drinking and dancing.

After breakfast, Angi and Tashi set off for their own village, Tashi walking beside the yak. When they were some distance away, he asked her, ‘What really was the prophecy?’

‘What do you mean?’ the old woman replied stiffly, staring ahead. ‘You heard me tell them.’

‘I know you well, Angi. There was something that you did not tell them’

‘You know nothing!’ The old woman cursed angrily. She then goaded her animal into a gallop until she was much ahead of Tashi. She could not tell him what she had heard. Through the infant, Mara the god of death had spoken to her. There were many earth and sky spirits who had spoken to her in previous ceremonies but never Mara. He foretold great danger in the times to come. His icy breath had smelt of the ashes of last night’s fire.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Fight We Really Don’t Need

By Charlotte Fiskers

Jan. 7, 2019

I traveled to Beijing over the new year to attend an international-relations seminar, an annual event by a Chinese think tank, and one to which I have been invited for the last six years. Following a time-honored format, the organizers hosted a cocktail party every evening where, apart from the participants, the guests were an eclectic crowd of Chinese entrepreneurs, government officials and foreign diplomats. However, this time, in view of our president’s proposed trade sanctions, I wasn’t very popular with the Chinese. Even to old friends, camaraderie with whom had survived many tumultuous years of US–China relations, I was the ugly American. The sanctions, they pointed out, were punitive action against China for ‘spreading the China Virus’.

I parried that as best as I could and deflected the conversation to the re-election of Wen Hongju, the president of China. Wen is currently in the fourth year of his second five-year term, and has given strong indications that, in a sharp departure from tradition, he will be running for an unprecedented third term. For those of us familiar with the intrigues of the Communist Party, this announcement is a clear indication of the godlike power Wen wields in China. Here, I think, for our president and his advisers, who, in such cavalier fashion, have declared this trade war, it would be a good idea to know with what and more importantly with whom they are messing around.

Let’s start with the Communist Party. The casual visitor to Beijing today might not experience the specter of rigid communist control he mig