From the back of his mind had come a single word: Demographics. He presented it to the interest and growing excitement of the Politburo. It was the final piece of the puzzle.
The Politburo listened, accepted, decided. Now they were moving forward. Logistics was a challenge, but one that could be overcome.
He rose, walked to the doorway, turned off the light and left the room. Logistics were for others.
His idea, now his plan, had raised the estimation of him by members of the Standing Committee. More importantly, a solution now existed for China’s gender imbalance. There now would be wives for millions of young Chinese boys when they came of age, and for millions of young Chinese men needing women. Those who understood the issue knew that China would become old long before it would become rich and powerful. Now this could , and would change.
And that was a very good thing.
For those young Chinese men, ages 15-25, the issue presented more difficulties, and perhaps they could not find the 20 million required? Historically this difference, a large group of men unable to find women, he knew, resulted in war.
Well, he would do – had done – all he could. It now was up to the State.
4
Dallas
Tuesday, 12 March, 21:10 hours GMT (16:10 Local)
Tom Palmer watched as the last of his teams of men and their families boarded the third, and final, chartered China Air 747.
Each aircraft was configured for all First Class seating, with seats that could be laid flat to become beds for the overnight, 13-hour flight. The aircraft held 192 passengers and a full complement of attendants.
Tom’s team included the 87 men and women in his employ, his entire company. Adding their spouses and children made a total of 484 passengers. The first aircraft had loaded and departed LAX fifteen minutes ago. The second now was taxiing toward the runway. Once he boarded this 747, his company no longer would have a US presence, but would have moved to China, and a very lucrative and family-friendly multi-year agreement. An agreement and opportunity good enough that none of his employees had thought it advisable to reject.
Yes, they’d be leaving America, but as oil workers understood better than most, it had become a global economy staffed by people willing to accept global assignments.
He knew, as did every member of his team, that this was a gamble. But it also was a challenge, the kind his men liked. From what he knew of his men’s families, the women had married these men because they liked the challenges, too, and because they liked the kind of men willing to accept big challenges, to go out into the world head-on, take what it had to give, for better or worse, and move forward.
Tom and his employees and their spouses – the Chinese had understood the psychology of American families, and particularly wives, quite well, it had turned out – had made an escorted trip to a city similar to the one being built for them. “Their” city had not been completed at the time; now it was.
The city they had visited was the model for theirs. It had excellent proximity to a very good hospital in a quickly-growing urban area.
The school was first-rate, and the young teachers all smiling, happy and bilingual. Tom particularly had been impressed with the numbers of books on the shelves. Too many of the classrooms he had seen in America lacked good books – hell, they lacked any books once you got past First Grade where a teacher still read to her students. Maybe. Here the shelves were stocked with excellent books. At least he could tell the titles in English; he assumed the Chinese titles were of similar quality.
The school had excellent sports fields, too: soccer fields, even two baseball diamonds, a Little League-size and a High-School-size, he knew by looking at the basepaths. There were large grassy spaces on which to run and play and be kids, and an indoor gymnasium with a full field house, including basketball courts, handball and racquetball. Outside of school hours, the facilities were available to the families and workers whenever they wished.
Their hosts had put on a presentation at which the teachers introduced themselves, talked intelligently regarding their backgrounds and expectations, including their lesson plans for each year as the students progressed. It was evident that their children would receive a better education here than in the deteriorating public schools at home.
He – and the parents – liked everything they saw and heard.
The nearby city provided high-speed rail connections to Shanghai, Beijing and other Chinese cities, as well as shopping, theaters and other of the quickly-increasing varieties of Western conveniences that the Chinese enjoyed as they modernized, moving to cities from rural farms in the tens of millions over the past few decades.
Tom watched “his” families walk up the jetway, some hesitantly, others not, nearly all with some level of trepidation mixed with eagerness. They were on their way to a new place, a new opportunity, and a new challenge.
As he watched he thought back to that day - only eight weeks ago, he realized - when he first had met the Chinese man next to him.
“Let me get this straight,” Tom had said, intrigued, to the Chinese man across the table.
Sitting in a booth in a small coffee shop in West Texas, just down the road from Tom’s corporate HQ, the two men spoke. They had met 30 minutes earlier at the nondescript headquarters. Tom’s may not have been an impressive building, but his was an impressive record. He saw no reason to spend lots of money on fancy buildings and furnishings. Basically, he didn’t see how it helped him close business, execute contracts or pay his guys for their hard work in far-away places for extended periods, and he liked to pay his guys well. Consequently he had some of the top men and women in his industry working for him, and his record of successful projects far outweighed the occasional inevitable failure along the way.
“You want to hire my company, all of it, for an extended period of time. Years. You want me to bring my guys – and their families – to this location. You want us to develop prospective oil fields where initial research has shown them to be, but which have not yet been proved-up. And you want us not only to develop these fields, but teach your folks how to do our jobs, thereby working ourselves out of a job.” He paused, studying the man across from him. “Have I got that right?
The man nodded. “Working yourselves out of a job only in that particular location. We are quite sure to continue developing new fields. You and your men have perfected new drilling and extraction techniques, techniques far more productive than your competitors, and resulting in much less environmental degradation. With your teams teaching us, the cost of extracting oil will decrease, the price of energy will decrease, and tens of millions of people can advance more quickly. This is a very good thing, yes? That is why we want you.” The man took a sip from his coffee. “And, of course, for reasons that baffle the rest of the world, you are not allowed to use your techniques or men on oil resources here in America. This is unfortunate for America, but certainly good fortune for us, and it also can be for you.”
Tom considered this only briefly, knowing it to be true. Though the new president had talked about opening oil deposits in America, the usual environmental suspects made more noise every day about stopping any new oil extraction in America, a nation with, it was turning out, as much oil in the ground as Saudi Arabia. Why these “environmentalists” refused to see that not drilling under the extremely strict environmental and ecological regulations of America just meant that drilling instead was done where no thought at all was given to the environment – resulting in a totally trashed landscape where oil was drilled in the third world – only to be used in America anyway, with additional ecological damage in the inevitable occasional tanker wreck – continued to baffle him. But these policies were not something