Free Mr. China by Tim Clissold

north-east where China’s largest truck factory had just started a project to make passenger cars.
    First Auto Works had been set up jointly with the Russians in the mid-1950s up in Changchun in the north-east of China. The city grew with the factory and much of the
architecture still retains a strong Stalinist influence, particularly the government buildings and the huge solid hotels, with their endless corridors, high ceilings, dusty chandeliers and heavy
double doors that open in to enormous, draughty banqueting halls. I had taken a trip up to Changchun when I was at the university in Beijing, but that trip had been in the summer and there had been
a gentle breeze in the park at the centre of town. The children splashing about on the boats in the middle of the lake had reminded me of Hyde Park years before. There had been a relaxed feel to
the tree-lined streets, almost a holiday mood, with customers at the lively restaurants spilling out on to the pavements. But, when Pat, Ai and I went on that first trip northwards, it was still
cold with temperatures twenty below and the familiar icy blast howling in from Mongolia.
    A couple of officials met us at the airport. They had been sent by the Changchun Government to escort us around the factories and they went through the itinerary as we drove into town.
    The first visit was to First Auto Works, which sits in a suburb some way out from the centre. Just like the factories in the hills, it was vast and spread over several square miles with
dormitories, hospitals, kindergartens, even cinemas hiding behind the high walls that encircled the compound. The massive gates, with the guards standing to attention on little white platforms and
the familiar vertical signs strung up on either side led onto a broad avenue. Inside the gates, we found a perfect image of the decaying rust-belt factory. On either side of the broad street there
were rows of shattered warehouses, along with the familiar sight of smashed windows, heaps of coal, workers in oily blue overalls wandering about on bicycles, and pipework with torn lagging strung
up over the roads. The skyline ahead was dominated by a huge square boiler house, with blackened brickwork. On top, four vast chimneys, covered with fins and wrought-iron ornamentation,
periodically disgorged vast clouds of black smoke out of iron chimney pots that looked like fantastic spiky crowns at the top.
    At that time, the factory only had two products. They had both been designed in Russia in the 1930s and had been transferred into China before Mao had had his fight with Khrushchev. The first
was an ancient truck with a bulbous nose, a split windscreen and great round wheel arches. It had been introduced into China shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic, so it was
called the ‘Liberation Truck’. The other was a vast upright limo called the ‘Red Flag’, which was used to ferry around government officials who sat on lumpy back seats,
hidden from public view by thick brown curtains draped in the windows at the back. The trucks were always dark green; the limos were always black.
    When we visited the assembly lines in the brick factory buildings we started to have a sense that we might be homing in on something big. In contrast to the factories up in the hills, with their
scores of idle workers and offices crammed with people slurping tea out of big jam-jars behind well-thumbed copies of the People’s Daily, here all was activity. Workers in blue
overalls climbed all over the half-finished trucks as they moved along the production line. Engines and gearboxes came down on chains through the ceilings and were bolted onto the chassis. Arc
welders flashed as the cabs were attached to the front. At the end of the line, several hundred yards ahead, young girls with blue caps and pigtails drove the fully assembled trucks out of the
factory for testing.
    But even this was nothing in comparison to the new car plant being built