Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

“I should mention that the Senior Official may have been telling the truth. Your official work didn’t give you many chances to interact with him, but quite a few times, you’d run into him in the hallways of the government building or coming out of a meeting, and he’d always be the one to come up to you to chat. He very rarely did that with lower-ranking officials, especially the younger ones. People took notice. He might not have said anything to help you at organizational meetings, but those gestures did a lot for your career.”

Song Cheng nodded again. He’d known all this, and had been immensely grateful. All that time, Song had wanted the opportunity to repay him.

“Then the Senior Official raised his hand and gestured behind him. Immediately, someone entered and quietly set a big stack of documents and materials on the table. You must have noticed that he wasn’t the Senior Official’s normal secretary.

“The Senior Official passed a hand over the documents and said, The project you just completed fully demonstrates those priceless assets of yours. It required such an immense and difficult investigation to collect evidence, but these documents are ample, detailed, and reliable, the conclusions drawn profound. It’s hard to believe you did it all in half a year. It would be the Party’s great fortune to have more outstanding Discipline Inspection officials like you…. I don’t need to tell you how you felt at that moment, I think.”

Of course he didn’t. Song Cheng had never been so horrified in his life. That stack of documents first sent him shaking as if electrocuted, then froze him into stone.

Bai Bing continued: “It all started with the investigation into the illegal apportionment of state-owned land you undertook on behalf of the Central Commission, yes….

“I recall that when you were a child, you and two of your friends went exploring in a cave, called Old Man Cavern by the locals. The entrance was only half a meter high, and you had to crouch down to enter. But inside was an enormous, dark vault, its ceiling too high for your flashlights to reach. All you could see were endless bats swishing past the beams of light. Every little sound provoked a rumbling echo from the distance. The dank cold seeped into your bones…. It’s a lively metaphor for the investigation: walking along, following that seemingly run-of-the-mill trail of clues, only to find yourself led toward places that made you afraid to believe your own eyes. As you deepened your investigation, a grand network of corruption spanning the entire province unfolded before you, and every strand of the web led in one direction, to one person. And now, the top-secret Discipline Inspection report you’d prepared for the Central Commission was in his hands! In this investigation, you’d considered all sorts of worst-case scenarios, but you never dreamed of the one that you faced now. You were thrown into total panic. You stammered, H-how did this end up in your hands, sir? The Senior Official smiled indulgently and lifted his hand to gesture lightly again. You immediately got your answer: The secretary of discipline inspection, Lu Wenming, walked into the room.

“You stood and glared at Lu Wenming. How—how could you do this? How could you go against our organization’s rules and principles like this? Lu Wenming cut you off with a wave of his hand and asked in the same furious tone of voice as you, How could you go ahead with something like this without telling me?

“ I’ve taken over your duties as secretary for the year you’re undergoing training at the Central Party School, you shot back. Of course I couldn’t tell you, it was against the rules of the organization!

“Lu Wenming shook his head sorrowfully, looking as if he wanted to weep in despair. If I hadn’t caught this report in time… can you even imagine the consequences? Song Cheng, your fatal flaw is that insistence on dividing the world into black and white, when reality is nothing more than gray! ”

Song Cheng exhaled long and slow. He remembered how he’d stared dumbly at his classmate, unable to believe that he could say something like that. He’d never revealed thoughts in that vein before. Was the hatred of internal corruption he’d shown in their many late-night conversations, the steadfast courage he displayed as they tackled sensitive cases that drew pressure from all directions, the deeply personal concern for the Party and the nation he’d expressed at so many dawns, after grueling all-nighters at work—was all that nothing but pretense?

“It’s not that Lu Wenming was lying before. It’s more that he never delved that deeply into his soul in front of you. He’s like that famous dessert, Baked Alaska, flash-cooked ice cream. The hot parts and the cold parts are both real. But the Senior Official didn’t look at Lu Wenming. Instead, he slammed a hand onto the table. What gray? Wenming, I really can’t stand this side of you! What Song Cheng did was outstanding, faultless. In that respect he’s better than you! He turned to you and said, Young man, you did exactly as you should have done. A person, especially a young person, is gone forever if they lose that faith and sense of mission. I look down on people like that. ”

The part that had struck Song Cheng the deepest was that, although he and Lu Wenming were the same age, the Senior Official only called him “young,” and emphasized it repeatedly at that. The unspoken implication was clear: With me as an opponent, you’re still nothing but a child. In the present, Song Cheng could only concede that he was right.

“The Senior Official continued on. Nonetheless, young man, we still need to mature a little. Let’s take an example from your report. There really are problems with the Hengyu Aluminum Electrolysis Base, and they’re even worse than you discovered in your investigations. Not only are domestic officials implicated, foreign investors have collaborated with them in serious legal trespasses. Once the matter is dealt with, the foreigners will withdraw their investments. The largest aluminum-electrolysis enterprise in the country will be put out of business. Tongshan Bauxite Mines, which provides the aluminum ore for Hengyu, will be in deep trouble too. Next comes the Chenglin nuclear power plant. It was built too big due to the energy crisis the last few years, and with the severe domestic overproduction of electricity now, most of this brand-new power plant’s output goes to the aluminum-electrolysis base. Once Hengyu collapses, Chenglin Nuclear Facility will face bankruptcy as well. And then Zhaoxikou Chemical Plant, which provides the enriched uranium for Chenglin, will be in trouble…. With that, nearly seventy billion yuan in government investment will be gone without a trace, and thirty to forty thousand people will lose their jobs. These corporations are all located within the provincial capital’s outskirts—this vital city will be instantly thrown into turmoil…. And the Hengyu issue I went into is only a small part of this investigation. The case implicates one provincial-level official, three sub-provincial-level officials, two hundred and fifteen prefectural-level officials, six hundred and fourteen county-level officials, and countless more in lower ranks. Nearly half of the most successful large-scale enterprises and the most promising investment projects in the province will be impacted in some way. Once the secrets are out, the province’s entire economy and political structure will be dead in the water! And we don’t know, and have no way of predicting, what even worse consequences might arise from so large-scale and severe a disturbance. The political stability and economic growth our province has worked so hard to attain will be gone without a trace. Is that really to the benefit of the Party and the country? Young man, you can’t think like a legal scholar anymore, demanding justice by the law come hell or high water. It’s irresponsible. We’ve progressed along the road of history to today because of balance, arising from the happy medium between various elements. To abandon balance and seek an extreme is a sign of immaturity in politics.