Reckless Challenge, Overwhelming Retribution
The investigation into the overseas financial accounts where Chinese hackers had stashed the profits from their cracking crimes was complete. If criminal charges could be proven, the accounts would be seized; if not, the freezes would soon be lifted. On the massive LCD television that dominated one wall of the opulent conference room, President Al Gore appeared with a smug, self-satisfied expression, announcing the freezing of thousands of overseas accounts. It was not a live broadcast. Given the gravity of the matter, the White House had released the full video of President Al Gore’s statement rather than the summarized or edited versions shown in the media. It had been easy to find. The White House website offered both streaming and downloadable versions of the official presidential address. The download speed was so fast that even the high-quality HD version, despite its large file size, took less than ten minutes to retrieve. The real problem lay in the content itself.
“This is not the end,” Al Gore declared. “We have only taken initial action against accounts where we could establish clear evidence. There will be a second phase, and a third.”
“We await China’s sincere response.”
The number and total value of the frozen accounts were staggering, but what truly grated was the implication that this was merely the beginning—that a second and third round would follow.
“Wangbadan!!!”
President Hu Jintao, normally a man of measured temperament, could not contain his fury. The first list of frozen accounts struck directly at China’s most festering wound: corruption. At the very top of the list appeared Hu Jintao’s own overseas account. It was not his only foreign account, nor did it contain a particularly large sum—only about a million dollars in a Bangkok bank, little more than pocket change. Yet the fact that the United States had frozen it was what mattered. The account was not registered under his real name, of course. And, infuriatingly, the American claim that the funds’ origins were suspicious was entirely accurate. In Chinese politics, large sums of money were essential. Even more galling was the realization that nearly everyone seated in the room shared a similar situation. Hu Jintao’s cabinet was hardly a model of integrity. The situation was even worse among the Communist Party elders who had preserved Jiang Zemin’s influence; their level of corruption existed on an entirely different plane. Everyone who mattered knew it, yet no one had dared to touch it—until the Americans drove straight into the heart of the problem.
“Is there no countermeasure? Why is no one speaking?”
The video had long since ended, yet only Hu Jintao voiced any reaction. That was inevitable. The leadership compound and the Politburo’s inner strategic circle had been holding daily emergency meetings, and measures were already being implemented, but nothing had yet proven capable of halting the American offensive.
War was impossible. Whether limited conflict or full-scale nuclear exchange, China’s chances of victory stood at zero percent. Moreover, unlike a decade earlier, China now had far too much to lose. War was never an option. Any response short of war had also proven ineffective. Every card China played was met with a far heavier American counterstrike. When China attempted to demonstrate that peace on the Korean Peninsula was impossible without its consent by goading North Korea into announcing a space development program disguised as intercontinental ballistic missile research, the United States responded by freezing Chinese offshore slush funds under the plausible pretext of cracking-crime proceeds. Now rumors had crossed the Pacific that the U.S. was even considering strengthening military cooperation with Taiwan.
China regarded Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory that must be reclaimed as soon as possible. The “One China” principle was aimed squarely at Taiwan, not Hong Kong. Any strengthening of Taiwan’s military capabilities was therefore cause for alarm among the Chinese leadership.
“I will immediately order the Nanjing Military Region Navy to pressure Taiwan! At the same time, I will direct the Rocket Force to conduct live-fire exercises demonstrating our missile capabilities!”
In response to Hu Jintao’s urging, the Minister of National Defense of the Central Military Commission spoke in a loud voice. True to his military background, he proposed the classic hardline strategy of meeting strength with strength. Hu Jintao responded with a single, blunt question.
“In the event of an actual clash… can we win?”
He was not referring to Taiwan. The question was whether China could prevail against the United States, which Taiwan would inevitably draw into the conflict. The minister’s earlier bravado instantly deflated. Had the current year been 2020, the answer might have been different. The modernization of the People’s Liberation Army would have been complete, the navy’s surface fleet and missile forces would have been significantly upgraded, and China’s economic power would have closed the gap with the United States to the point where a genuine contest of strength might have been possible. But the year was 2002, not 2020. While reform and opening had improved China’s capabilities, it still lagged behind the United States in every critical domain. Even in the most important strategic asset—nuclear warheads—China possessed barely more than five hundred, while the United States maintained several thousand, and that was after successive rounds of reductions under arms-control treaties. The qualitative gap was even more pronounced. The number of Chinese missiles capable of reaching the American homeland was far smaller, and their accuracy remained questionable. Even the vaunted Dongfeng missiles inspired little confidence among Hu Jintao and the rest of the leadership.
“More importantly, Comrade President, should we not prevent this news from circulating indiscriminately and causing misunderstandings among the people?”
The Minister of Public Security’s suggestion drew nods from around the table.
“You mean to blind the people’s eyes and ears? With a second and third round already announced, do you truly believe that is possible?”
Hu Jintao shook his head. In 2020 such a measure might have seemed laughable; by then the Chinese media would have been little more than state mouthpieces, capable of shaping public opinion at will. But in 2002, even after reform and opening, the Party’s control remained incomplete. The internet, in particular, lay beyond the reach of perfect censorship.
“At the very least, we must deal with our own corrupt officials first and make the announcement ourselves. We cannot allow the United States to dominate domestic opinion as well.”
Each account the Americans had frozen contained tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The label of “U.S.-certified illegal funds” had been attached, and it was accurate. More than half the account holders were high-ranking Communist Party officials. Yet a closer examination of the list revealed a curious pattern. The accounts containing the largest sums appeared later in the list, and the majority of those belonged to members of the Shanghai Clique—Hu Jintao’s political rivals. Based in the most economically developed region of China, the faction had apparently received correspondingly large bribes. The amounts were staggering.
“Hmm.”
Hu Jintao immediately understood the subtext in his trusted public security minister’s words. The American freeze could be used as a pretext to purge his political enemies. The optics were perfect: striking down corrupt officials who had preyed on the people and returning their ill-gotten gains to the populace. If handled skillfully, the move could eliminate the core of the Shanghai Clique, which still claimed to be the legitimate successor to former President Jiang Zemin.
“Very well. Proceed at once.”
One thing continued to trouble him, however: the true intent behind the Americans’ carefully curated first list. The thought made Hu Jintao’s throat feel parched, as though filled with sand, and his stomach burned. The frozen accounts the United States had publicized resembled a meticulously prepared death list—containing precisely the individuals he himself most wished to remove. It almost seemed as though the Americans were extending a hand, suggesting that matters could be settled at this stage.
Is there a mole inside who is colluding with the United States?
Without knowledge of Yoo Jae-won’s extraordinary abilities, such a suspicion was inevitable. The Americans were under the same misconception. President Al Gore and officials at the CIA and NSA believed the list had been compiled through their own intelligence-gathering capabilities. While monitoring the international financial network in real time was indeed within American power, the precise extraction of the Shanghai Clique’s slush-fund accounts had been made possible only by Yoo Jae-won’s intervention.
Yoo Jae-won had obtained the list with remarkable ease—directly from the internet. The United States declassified documents after several decades; among the files released around the mid-twenty-first century was a list of overseas slush-fund accounts belonging to high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials. Given China’s enormous population, the scale was immense. The documents released in three batches contained tens of thousands of accounts whose combined value exceeded trillions of dollars—not yuan, but U.S. dollars. By the time of their release, the accounts had long been closed and most of their owners were deceased. Even after declassification, the revelation caused no immediate repercussions. Now, however, every name on the list belonged to living, active officials.
While Hu Jintao and the leadership struggled to decipher American intentions, the intercom suddenly rang with urgent insistence.
“What is it?”
Mr. President! An emergency has occurred. Japanese Self-Defense Force vessels have violated the Diaoyu Islands and seized Chinese fishermen and their boats!
“What? Japan?”
Just as Hu Jintao had been savoring the prospect of using the American sanctions list to eliminate the Shanghai Clique, another bomb detonated.
The islands known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku were an uninhabited archipelago of islets and reefs in the southwestern East China Sea, lying between Taiwan and the Okinawa Islands. China, Taiwan, and Japan each claimed sovereignty; Japan exercised effective control. China regarded the islands as territory that would one day be reclaimed. Chinese fishermen, finding depleted waters near their own coast, frequently ventured into the Senkaku area. Japan stationed Self-Defense Forces to drive them away. The situation was structurally prone to collision, and the current incident was particularly severe.
Hu Jintao’s fury flared, then abruptly cooled. The suspicion that the United States stood behind Japan was too strong to ignore. China’s navy could certainly push Japan back; the geographic proximity compensated for any disparity in tonnage or armament. Yet doing so risked drawing the United States directly into the fray. America’s rapid rapprochement with Taiwan, the suspicious movements of Japan and South Korea, and even the dispatch of former President Clinton as a special envoy to North Korea all pointed to the same ominous development: the construction of an anti-China encirclement in the Pacific.
A shared realization settled over the room: the vicious cycle had to be broken before it was too late. Hu Jintao’s sense of crisis was especially acute. If he responded with another hardline measure, the second sanctions list would almost certainly include himself and the principal figures of his own faction, the Communist Youth League. He knew better than anyone that the Youth League’s level of corruption was no different from that of the Shanghai Clique. This was, in effect, America’s final ultimatum.
June 2002 arrived. From the beginning of the month, major world news stories poured forth.
The NBC acquisition had begun with Rupert Murdoch’s withdrawal, which collapsed the momentum of the Universal-GE consortium. Naturally, Yoo Jae-won was named the top-priority negotiating partner, and Remington Sting, Chairman of Time Warner Nextcom, acted as his representative to begin the acquisition process. The listing of ID Technology, pursued to secure acquisition funds, was also proceeding smoothly. The Securities and Exchange Commission had conducted rigorous due diligence and granted approval without a single blemish. The IT bubble’s aftershocks had cast doubt even on major technology companies; Apple itself would have suffered severe damage without the iPhone and iPod. ID Technology, however, was an exception. The listing process had effectively earned the quasi-judicial recognition of the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company’s fundamentals were exceptionally solid.
Rupert Murdoch, the power behind the Universal-GE consortium, had finally been forced to step down. The consortium itself was crumbling. GE had dragged its feet, and the major investors who had pledged funds began withdrawing once victory seemed unlikely.
“I should have returned the favor to Mr. Gates as well.”
Yoo Jae-won clicked his tongue as he scanned the monitor filled with NBC acquisition articles. With his excellent memory and meticulous nature, he had not forgotten that Gates had participated in the Universal-GE consortium. Yet Gates’s involvement had been minor, making any direct retaliation awkward. Still, the episode had confirmed Gates’s personal grudge, so Yoo Jae-won simply added his name to the intelligence team’s watch list for the time being.
The Sun, the British tabloid that had embodied yellow journalism, ceased publication. Having lost both his wife’s shares and his son’s succession, Murdoch prepared for a lengthy legal battle in Britain. It would have been satisfying if a conviction followed immediately upon the revelation of his crimes, but British courts typically required two or three years to reach a final verdict. The same was true in most countries; final judgments took considerable time. For a moment, Yoo Jae-won found himself missing the pre-regression Korea, where artificial intelligence had assisted judges and prosecutors.
In Korea, the Nationality Law amendment had passed with little controversy. There had never been any real debate over taxation; Yoo Jae-won had paid tens of trillions of won in taxes across both personal and corporate accounts. Military service obligations were likewise satisfied. As a result, he no longer needed to renounce his Korean citizenship, though the taste remained bittersweet. His original plan had been to receive an honorary citizenship certificate from the National Assembly while still alive.
“Well, life never goes exactly according to plan.”
Yoo Jae-won brushed the matter aside and moved on.
The Chinese developments were the most satisfying of all. China had ultimately surrendered, accepting every American demand. Although repayment would be spread over ten years, the decision to honor the Qing Dynasty bonds added a massive new burden to the Chinese economy—at least sixty billion dollars annually. China had also agreed to full cooperation in the investigation of the hacker groups. What was officially termed a “joint investigation” was, in practice, little different from direct oversight by a combined task force.
For Yoo Jae-won, who vividly remembered China’s swaggering confidence in the mid-twenty-first century, the outcome carried profound significance.
“We’ve probably set China’s potential back by roughly a decade.”
President Hu Jintao’s leadership had been severely damaged. The Senkaku incident had inflamed extreme nationalism within China—an especially dangerous development in a country with numerous ethnic minorities. Moreover, the purge of the Shanghai Clique had been an overreach. Those who had lost both wealth and lives now harbored deep hatred toward Hu Jintao. Even as China dreamed of a single unified nation, the seeds of internal division had begun to sprout.
“Now I can finally watch the World Cup in peace.”
From Murdoch to China, every reckless challenge had been met with overwhelming retribution. The heavy tension that had weighed on Yoo Jae-won’s mind finally lifted, leaving him light as a feather as he awaited the opening day of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.