Free The King of Shanghai by Ian Hamilton Page A

lag and wine are not a good combination,” she said.
    “I am sorry. I forgot about that,” he said.
    “I’ll survive.” Ava shrugged. “Now tell me — before we started to eat you said you weren’t Triad.”
    “Not in the strictest sense, not in the Hong Kong fashion. We call ourselves Yan Yee Tong.”
    “The people’s justice group?”
    “Yes, that is a reasonably accurate translation.”
    “But you have to have an affiliation with 14K or Wo or Sun Yee On.”
    “We are completely independent.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “The gangs you mention are all Hong Kong–based. My father kept our interests tied to Shanghai. Once in a while the others have tried to stick their noses into our business, but we have more than four thousand loyal, active members, and interlopers were quickly discouraged.”
    “So you have nothing to do with other Triads?”
    “Of course we do. We are part of the international infrastructure, and we work with them when businesses intersect and mutual interests can be served. But those are loose and flexible arrangements. In fact, our relationships with the Shanghai government and the government in Beijing are far more structured.”
    May shot a nervous glance at Ava. “That would worry me as much as the Triads,” she said to Xu.
    “What would?”
    “The kind of government ties you’re hinting at.”
    “It is not what you think.”
    “And what do I think?”
    “That our government relationships are greased by bribes, that we corrupt officials.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, in my opinion that would be a stupid, almost suicidal thing to do. There may be some short-term benefits, but that is all they would be — short-term. And whatever good that might accrue would be wiped out, and us along with it, if and when the government decided to act. And in this country, as you know better than just about anyone, they always find out, and eventually they act.”
    “So how do you maintain these relations of yours?”
    “We build factories, we own shopping complexes, we employ tens of thousands of people, and we pay our taxes in full. We contribute to the economic well-being of Shanghai and the country as a whole. And we try never to embarrass or bring grief to any level of government or the officials who work there.”
    “But you’re making knockoffs,” Ava said. “Are you saying the government condones that?”
    “We prefer to describe it as parallel manufacturing.”
    “A knockoff is a knockoff, no matter how you spin it.”
    “The government is quite comfortable for now with the term parallel manufacturing .”
    “You aren’t serious,” Ava said.
    “Of course I am,” Xu said, reaching for the wine bottle. “Would you like more?”
    Both women shook their heads. He poured some wine, took a deep sip, and then refilled the glass.
    “I have a factory about sixty kilometres north of here, just outside a town that has a population of twenty thousand and close to three or four villages that among them have another ten thousand residents. There was once a steel mill in the town; it closed five years ago. The villagers used to eke out a living farming, but as the population grew there was not enough arable land to employ everyone. Three years ago a delegation of government officials, farmers, and former steel-mill workers came to Shanghai to meet with me. The meeting was arranged by my man Suen — you both met him in Borneo, did you not?”
    “We did.”
    “He is from the town, and they approached him first. He came to me and I made some phone calls, including several to some senior people in Nanjing, since the district is within their jurisdiction. They made a simple request: could I find a way to employ these local people? Within a year a factory was built. It now has forty-seven hundred workers making cellphones.”
    “Knockoffs?”
    “iPhones.”
    “Knockoffs.”
    “Parallel manufacturing.”
    “What does the government say about that?”
    “They now have a happy