The Crown Prince’s Visit, Part 3
It was a fact known to the whole world that Saudi Arabia was rich beyond measure.
And yet no one would call Saudi Arabia a developed country.
Built on the ideology of Wahhabism, it was a nation where Islamic law stood above civil law, and where corruption was routine so long as a handful of royals held the reins of power. Women’s rights were worse than in most backward countries, and the level of education lagged far behind as well.
In the first place, the very idea of an absolute monarchy in the twenty-first century was absurd.
And yet the country had managed to function at all only because of oil. While other nations groaned under the oil shock, Saudi Arabia had been scooping up wealth from around the world.
But that kind of situation could not last forever.
The weakness of a resource-dependent economy was simple: when the resource ran dry, or the price fell, the system collapsed.
Saudi Arabia had muffled internal dissatisfaction with oil money for years. But with oil prices low, the money it could scatter to the public was shrinking by the day.
If there was no bread, how were they supposed to keep the people quiet?
“This is a time of rapid change. It’s no longer possible to maintain the country’s system the way it used to be. Saudi Arabia needs sweeping reform.”
In times of change, doing nothing was enough to leave you behind. In fact, Saudi Arabia’s national competitiveness had been falling steadily year after year.
Even to preserve the current political system of absolute monarchy, change was unavoidable.
A startled flicker crossed Prince Rashid’s eyes.
He probably found it absurd. A Korean man who had appeared out of nowhere was lecturing him on the Saudi economy.
After a moment, Prince Rashid spoke.
“Anyone can point out problems and complain about them. What matters is whether you have a way to solve them.”
He was right. I had seen my share of people who did nothing but talk without offering a single countermeasure.
But I was different.
“I do have a solution.”
“Then let’s hear it.”
There would be no shortage of economists with wildly different opinions, so what made me think I could offer the answer?
Because I knew what would happen in the future.
“You need to overhaul the resource-dependent economic model entirely. To do that, Saudi Arabia should invest in mining, tourism, and manufacturing, and raise the private sector’s share of GDP to more than sixty percent.”
He gave a faint, mocking smile.
“If that were as easy as it sounds, why wouldn’t we have done it already?”
If it really were easy, they would have done it long before I ever said a word.
“You can make use of female labor.”
Prince Rashid showed interest.
“You mean bringing women into the economy?”
“Yes. To make that possible, you’d need to allow women to drive, permit them to attend sporting events, guarantee them suffrage, and revise the laws so men and women can work together in the workplace.”
Unlike Prince Rashid, who seemed to find it amusing, Asher was visibly shocked.
“That’s absurd, Your Highness! Women driving? Women entering stadiums? And men and women working side by side? If you push through such radical, reckless reforms, there’ll be enormous backlash.”
“…….”
What exactly was radical, and what exactly was reckless?
A Korean would have been stunned by the whole exchange, but in truth that was a perfectly normal reaction for a Saudi.
To put it another way, what I had just said meant that in Saudi Arabia, it was currently illegal for women to get behind the wheel, impossible for women to enter sports stadiums, impossible for women to vote, and impossible for men and women to work together.
It sounded unbelievable, but it was true.
Saudi Arabia was a nation born from a bargain between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious establishment.
The Wahhabis supported the House of Saud’s rule, and in return the House of Saud made Wahhabism the state ideology and guaranteed the clergy’s status.
They placed Islamic law, Sharia, above civil law and institutions. And under Sharia, women were little different from the property of men.
Any attempt to raise women’s rights was a direct denial of that order, so it was more than enough to make Wahhabi clerics foam at the mouth in opposition.
“In addition, you should build future cities and nuclear power plants, establish a sovereign wealth fund, and expand overseas investment.”
I raised my head and looked Prince Rashid straight in the eye as I went on.
“But can the current crown prince really do all that? Crown Prince Khalid is only interested in preserving the existing system, not reforming it. I believe only Your Highness can carry these things out.”
Everyone knew Saudi Arabia needed reform.
But even if you knew a crisis was coming someday, people rarely moved unless it was right in front of them.
Who, then, could actually do it?
Crown Prince Khalid was already over sixty. He had neither the will nor the ability to push through reform. So what about Prince Rashid?
In monarchies, usurpation was usually treated as a crime, because it disrupted the order of the state.
But while inheritance required only blood, usurpation required ability.
If he pushed aside the current crown prince and took that seat for himself, it would mean he possessed that kind of ability.
Once Prince Rashid, who already controlled the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Energy as he pleased, also seized the crown prince’s power, he would effectively hold the core levers of government in his hands.
At that point, since the king was already old, Rashid would in practice be running the entire state.
He would know better than anyone that I wasn’t just tossing around plausible-sounding nonsense, because what I was describing were, in the end, the very things he would actually do once he became crown prince.
But that was only my view of things. I still didn’t know what he was thinking right now.
After a brief silence, Prince Rashid spoke slowly.
“If we expand overseas investment, where do you think it should be directed?”
If someone asked me to name industries that would take off within the next ten years, I could reel off dozens at once.
But if I had to pick just one among them...
“I think you should focus your investments on the IT industry.”
“I see. Some people do say this market is beginning to look a lot like the dot-com bubble.”
If you compared today’s internet environment with what it had been ten years ago, the difference was on the scale of a sea change.
That made it easy to assume the industry had already developed enough—but...
“Things were different then. Right now, we’re still only at the beginning of a new era.”
“Hasn’t everything worth investing in already gone up too much?”
“If you look carefully, there are still plenty of sectors and companies with huge room to grow.”
“Since you mention IT, that’s a broad field. Where do you think the most promising opportunities are?”
“Data and content. So I’d recommend concentrated investment in cloud computing and games.”
“Is that why you acquired Snow Crash?”
“Yes. Data will only grow more important, and it will end up changing the world.”
Progress did not always move in neat, incremental steps.
The singularity was not that far away.
When that time came, industry would again grow explosively. The companies and countries that rode that wave would survive, while those that failed to catch it would collapse.
And I knew exactly which would survive.
There was one important principle behind overseas investment by resource-rich countries. They had to invest in industries with little relation to the resources they held.
The same was true for oil producers like the Netherlands and Norway.
Prince Rashid had a deep interest in the IT industry, and that would be clear in his future moves as well. The best example was his investment of billions of dollars into the Insight Fund run by Chairman Song Gazuki of Softbox.
Prince Rashid seemed to sink into thought for a moment, tapping the armrest with his finger.
“Did you learn that while working at DA Securities?”
He had apparently finished digging into my background in that short span of time.
I didn’t particularly mind. It was only natural to learn as much as possible about the other party before meeting them. I had done the same and looked into every scrap of information available on him.
“No. It’s just something I’ve always thought.”
He then asked the important question.
“If we stimulate the domestic economy and increase overseas investment... it sounds like a good plan. But how do we raise the funds?”
There had once been a time when Saudi Arabia’s treasury overflowed. But that was a thing of the past now.
The country’s finances were tied directly to oil prices. In other words, when crude rose, it ran a surplus; when crude fell, it ran a deficit.
And oil prices were still sliding.
Because of the recent drop, the country had posted a fiscal deficit of more than thirty billion dollars last year alone.
If they had saved during the era of high oil prices, there would have been no problem. But they had spent that money long ago and were now covering the shortfall by issuing government bonds.
If that state of affairs continued, even the nation’s survival would be at risk. Prince Rashid would know that well enough.
“Every country has a good plan for economic development. The trouble is that they don’t have the money to carry it out. Talking without a way to secure funding means nothing.”
This was the key test point.
He cared more than anything about securing the necessary capital. If I failed to answer properly here, I’d be sent packing.
Fortunately, I had brought a funding strategy with me.
“First, Aramco should be listed, and part of its equity sold to the market.”
The market cap of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, was number one in the world.
The market’s estimate was at least 1.5 trillion dollars. If they went public and sold a stake, they could secure a tremendous amount of capital.
For the record, rumors about an Aramco IPO had been circulating for a long time. The actual listing would only happen after he became crown prince, but still.
Prince Rashid leaned back against his armrest and stroked his beard.
“Since Aramco is a state-owned company, you can’t sell it off entirely. Even if you sold ten percent, that would only secure around 150 billion dollars. That won’t be enough to execute all the plans you just described.”
I nodded.
“There’s one more way to raise hundreds of billions of dollars in a short period of time.”
Prince Rashid smiled with obvious interest.
“What is it?”
I said it without hesitation.
“Arrest every corrupt politician, bureaucrat, and businessman or tycoon who colluded with them, then recover all the illicit wealth they’ve hoarded and return it to the state treasury.”
“…….”
Prince Rashid, who had been smiling, widened his eyes in shock, and Asher, standing behind him, dropped his jaw. His face seemed to say, This bastard’s crazy.
I was genuinely relieved this was Korea. In Saudi Arabia, I’d have had no defense if they cut off my head the moment I said that out loud.
Prince Rashid’s eyes went wide as he slammed his fist into the armrest.
“What did you say? Do you even hear what you’re saying?”
It sounded like a perfectly good idea: making the country clean, without corruption or collusion between politics and business. Why was he so angry?
There was a reason.
Those corrupt politicians and business magnates were all relatives of the king.
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