During December, 1985, the pace of the world's descent into the abyss quickened perceptibly. In Africa the food shortages in the cities became more and more acute., in spite of a growing trickle of shipments from Western charities and even some official sources. As a result, several governments, usually the weaker and more liberal, were destabilized and replaced by military juntas who could only control the urban mobs by brute force. Their writ simply did not run into the rural areas, which reverted to traditional tribal rule. Some leaders of the overthrown elected governments fled to Europe and attempted, from UN offices in Geneva, to negotiate their way back into power even as the nominees of their former colonial masters. This encourage the belief, particularly in Whitehall, that Africa was on the point of surrender, and that if only people would grit their teeth so as to survive a week or two more of the inconvenience terror victory would be theirs.504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5AkifOHNVh
But the inconvenience terror stretched nerves and tempers to the breaking point. The interference with transport, which had begun in London, spread to West German cities which are less used to snarl-ups and muddle than Britain, and are ill-equipped to cope with them. The maximum disruption was caused in West Germany when the automatic signaling on autobahns and urban autoroutes was penetrated and made to malfunction erratically. But worst of all, production in the famously efficient Volkswagen works, with its long automated assembly lines, was brought to a halt by interference with its computer for two separate periods of 48 hours, with no guarantee that it would not happen again---maybe next time in Mercedes-Benz.
In Britain there was no similar attempt to cause chaos in the manufacturing industry (Private Eye commented that it would have been redundant); but the consumer was given a very hard time indeed. At the height of the Christmas shopping rush the Visa credit card central computer was penetrated, falsifying millions of cardholders' accounts and forcing Lloyds Bank to instruct stores not to accept Visa. Then the Black Hand introduced their "Cold Offensive." This involved placing the infective agent of the common cold in the more modern stores' heating and air-conditioning systems. About 40 stores a day throughout Britain were so treated by the Black Hand, whose public announcement of that fact explained why 90% of the population seemed to be sniffing and sneezing.
The British people were angry and frustrated beyond imagination, and they were beginning to ask where exactly was the Africa-West confrontation leading. Africa was said to be on the verge of collapse, but in fact black Africans seemed to be winning against whites in South Africa. The American official spokesman said that together the US and the UK had saved the world economy from disaster, but there was now a slump as bad as 1930, with 4 million unemployed in Britain and no North Atlantic boom in sight. America, far from acting in tandem with the UK, was in partnership with the Soviet Union to settle some of its own private scores in Africa and was evidently prepared to risk nuclear war to do so.
European public opinion had been so horrified by America's high-risk policies in Africa and shocked by the realization that if the superpowers acted together they could ignore their allies. On a governmental level, the Mediterranean group (or the "Sunbelt Socialists" as they were then known) had agreed, at the behest of Spain, to go ahead with proposals for renewing economic and political contact with Africa, if necessary independently of the Anglo-Saxons. The danger to world stability implicit in the Africa-West conflict was rendered quite unacceptable by the US-Soviet initiative in Africa.
Neither Britain nor the US was fully aware of how deep antipathy ran towards them in the Iberian peninsula. But the unkind realities were brought home to them at the regular mid-December meeting of the NATO high command. The US and Britain proposed that, in view of the hostile approach of sub-equatorial Africa and its unconcealed ambitions toward the mineral rich regions of the Congo Basin and the Witwatersrand Plain, the time had come to extend some military cooperation between member states from Europe to the Eastern and Southern Atlantic and Indian Ocean. No sooner had this been adumbrated by Casper Weinberger, the US Secretary of Defense, than the Spanish prime minister, Felipe González was on his feet threatening to resign from NATO if this were even formally suggested. Spain was joined by Italy, Portugal and Greece, with France nodding vigorous assent. After the US had said rather pointedly that it was, of course, used to having to do without support from its allies when its own interests were threatened, and after Britain had pledged full support to the United States, the issue was silently dropped, leaving the two countries even more isolated from their allies, and also from a large section of their own people.504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaD8b9mlKhA
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In Beijing the old men still at the head of Chinese affairs watched the outside world's descent into the abyss without surprise. The split between those in Europe who wanted to heal the breach with Africa and the hardliners who wanted to stick it out until Africa buckled was regarded as the natural misunderstanding of the real world by newcomers to civilization. The collapse of the speculative economy on Wall Street and the steady decline of American material wealth and well-being were predictable.
But the younger generation of Ye Jaichin, the Economics Minister, and his American-educated colleagues were uneasily aware that if the US economy collapsed the world economy would be imperiled, and the first to suffer, naturally, would be the destitute Africans. It seemed, therefore, to be in China's best interest to exert pressure on the West, to compromise by confronting them with an embittered and non-negligible Africa, while at the same time preparing a dignified line of retreat for the West which would lead to an economic revival benefiting the West, Africa, and, of course, China. The old men rather reluctantly accepted the need to save the American economy from disaster, and at the same time they kept a careful eye on the USSR to ensure that it didn't underestimate China's ability to resist any nuclear blackmail or, in the worst case, to survive an attack.
The US-Soviet ultimatum to South Africa deeply disturbed the Chinese leaders by its indication of a superpower alliance. In Beijing there was non-stop debate about how to ease the tension in the world; how to split any superpower alliance that might turn against China; how to ease the confrontation between the US and Africa without accepting the outdated system of consumerism and the market economy.
It was with very considerable doubts and some trepidation that these cautious old men in supreme authority accepted the view of the younger leaders that it was necessary for China to take a leading role in African affairs. But once it had been so decided the group of younger men and women who knew America best was given a free hand to devise the means of putting the message across. Ye Jaichin, who was in charge of the operation, decided to use China's new satellite system to broadcast in English a news presentation of Africa's complains and of China's policies to rectify them.
Nearly every station carried the now famous broadcast of December 23, 1985. Ye Jaichin's opening words were startling blunt and immediately captured the attention of his worldwide audience:
"The Anglo-Saxons who provoked the Africa-West conflict one year ago can see the success of the strategy. Africa cannot live on its own, it cannot even feed its own. It only remains for the leaders of those poor and now broken countries to surrender and return to the system---your system!" Ye Jaichin spoke with polite bitterness.
"But that will never happen for two reasons. First, it would be madness and indeed suicide. Your system is the problem that Africa faces, not its solution. It is a system that maximizes consumption in a world of limited resources, and which seeks to balance supply and demand only by restricting the number of high consumers to a very small proportion, about 1/5 of the world's population. If Africa were to come into your system, and were to be rapidly successful within it--as it should be---they would break the system and bust the global economy. Think of millions of Africans becoming two-car families, or consuming the amount of energy per head that an American, European, or even an Asian family does and has done for years....it would destroy them.
"Even today, as peasants gather sticks to cook their pitiful handful of rice they are consuming forests so fast that they are making a desert of Africa. The depredations of the forests are destroying Mt. Kilimanjaro's water machine, the life support system of more than tens of millions of East Africans.
"Thus, for the survival of not only Africa, but the other six continents as well, it is imperative that we enter a system but it will not be your system---of high consumption, of mining the earth's resources as if there were no tomorrow, as if there were no children to live on into the next century. The system that must come after Africa and the world have settled their differences will be harsh: it will seek to conserve rather than to consume; it will share more fairly according to need; it will seek for growth first among the poorest till their basic needs are met. It will not, as your system does, concentrate on increasing affluence as a prerequisite to decreasing poverty. First things will be first.
"The second reason that Africa will not re-enter your system is that it cannot any longer be forced to do so. Your ministers believed one year ago that when the nations of Africa could not go it alone, they would be forced to come in from the cold to your cozy economic system. But already you have begun to learn that when a ship is wrecked even the first-class passengers have to swim---or die. You cannot isolate yourselves from Africa because Africa is the world's largest continent and surrounds us all. We Asians, too, cannot live without Africa, and although there is far to go we have begun to work with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand on the problems of the continent that gave birth to Mankind. We wish the rest of the world to cooperate with our four countries to heal a broken continent."
Ye Jaichin paused and picked up some papers before continuing in the same quiet manner, which had already begun to persuade his audience.
He explained that China, itself a poor nation, had chosen to try and deal with Africa's problems of poverty and development through the World Bank and IMF institutions because they had been founded for exactly that purpose. The rich and the poor had to work together, and this again was what the Bank and the Fund had been carefully designed to make possible. China, as one of the founding members, therefore proposed that within one week's time the boards of both institutions should meet in Washington at ministerial level to plan a conference on the unchanged basis of 21 representatives for 140 member states, but with one big change---the United Nations Committee on Restructuring and Development for Africa (UNCONDA) should act as secretariat and host its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.
The agenda would be all-embracing, but in essence, simple: how to restructure the world's economy so as to help develop Africa at a rate that would at least eliminate extreme poverty on the continent by the end of the century; how to reduce the demand of the industrialized world on African metals and minerals so that they could be more equitably shared and more prudently used.
For those who would inevitably question the reason for such frantic speed and so little time for preparation Ye Jaichin was ready with his personal answer: "Suppose this were a crisis about military matters; suppose 1,000 American civilians had been taken hostage by the Africans, and their lives were in danger. Would you not expect your so-called leaders to drop everything and seek their release? Millions of Africans are hostages to poverty; millions of Africans die daily of poverty; and yet for decade after decade they have asked in vain for urgent action. During this Christmas season all of you in the West take time off from your work, and few of your leaders will have official engagements in the next ten days. We have been waiting for years to get started on a cooperative plan for defeating African poverty. If that does not seem urgent to you, remember that we all live on one earth which is fast being destroyed by human poverty. What is lost cannot be replaced."504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUI1OTQ5Vd2
Ye Jaichin went on to say that at a private Bank/Fund joint board meeting that morning in Washington Japan had warmly endorsed the plan, though it had asked that due attention be paid to the problems facing advanced industrial nations in their restructuring. Australia followed the Japanese line. Canada spoke strongly in favor of the Chinese resolution on Africa because, since their expulsion, Canada had represented the African nations at the IMF and World Bank. Spain, which officially represented its former African colony, Equatorial Guinea, had given full support on behalf of that country, and was followed in the same vein by the French executive director who claimed to speak also for Africa---"now so strongly disenfranchised."504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbMH932dZS9
The West Germans had expressed doubts, but were glad that China recognized the value of the Bretton Woods institutions and would surely send a minister to the Washington conference. The American and British representatives both said they must consult their governments and would try to respond as soon as possible in the new year. Eventually, over the Anglo-Saxons' protest, it was agreed that a joint Bank/Fund board meeting would take place in Washington on Monday, December 28, 1985, at which a decision about the proposed conference in Kenya would be taken.504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO0gDl7TNwt
Ye Jaichin looked up from his notes. "I tell you all this so that you can influence your masters, and prevent them from making decisions behind your backs and without your permission---as they did one year ago. They thought that they could starve Africa into submission without any harm to themselves. They were wrong on both counts.
"This above all: Do not underestimate the power of China. We have a considerable army, navy, and a nuclear and thermonuclear capacity, and more effective means of delivery than your intelligence services dream of. We are more than capable of coming to Africa's rescue should she ask it of us.504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmquPSfq8sC
"For centuries, our African comrades have been attacked and conquered from outside. There was the Moslem Conquest, the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century, the slave trade, the Zulu Wars and the mercenary invasion of the Congo in 1960. So far we have hardly flexed the muscles of our power because we are trying to build a continent, not destroy it. But be warned: if your masters refuse to negotiate they will destroy world community, fragile as it, and that will unleash violence against which your deterrents will be wholly useless. It has begun in South Africa; soon it will engulf the whole continent.504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL3TKLEVGox
"What is happening in Africa may ultimately destroy the world as you know it; it will surely destroy the Euro-American system; but it will not force the black race into your system, nor will you be rid of them, the founders of mankind."504Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEuIDv0wevd
