Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [122]
“Then, when the Politburo was studying the ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis,’ one of the standing members was worried that the crackdown was going to make the people depressed and passive. That would have a negative impact on the people’s enthusiasm just when we were trying to implement the second set of our new economic-reform policies. He wondered if there wasn’t some substance that would make people feel good and positive, but without any violent tendencies that would disrupt our harmonious society. There was a spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security at the meeting who had trained at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He had been studying the American drug problem, and he jokingly said that we could have that sort of effect on society only if everyone in China took methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine, or MDMA—Ecstasy.
“That’s how it started and the more we discussed it, the more we thought it might just work. One standing member said he’d never imagined there was anything like it in the world. The chief ingredient for the manufacture of MDMA Ecstasy is sassafras oil, or safrole. You know what country produces the most safrole in the world? China. What a perfect coincidence.” He Dongsheng would have slapped his thighs, but his hands were still tied up. “Both Western and Chinese researchers have found that ingesting a small amount of MDMA is not harmful to human health, and they have not discovered any dangerous long-term side effects either. Since we could use it to make everyone in the country happy and thus improve our national stability, why shouldn’t we do it?
“Didn’t I say ours is a government that can accomplish big things? Once we said we’d do it, we did it. We built a well-managed high-spec factory in Hebei to turn out a product of scientifically guaranteed quality. Then we added MDMA to all our drinking-water reservoirs and to cow’s milk, soya milk, fizzy drinks, fruit juice, bottled water, beer, and rice wine. Except for some very isolated areas, we covered over ninety-nine percent of the urban population, and over seventy percent of the rural population. Everyone drank such a small amount that it was totally undetectable in a standard urine test. People would never know they drank it, and it would only make them experience a mild euphoria. This was only a small supplementary program in support of our economic-reform project. The real success of our ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis’ was due to the correctness of our overall grand strategy.”
As the others listened to He Dongsheng, they broke out in a cold sweat.
“No wonder we’ve all been feeling a small-small high!” exclaimed Lao Chen in a burst of relieved enlightenment.
“Exactly,” said Fang Caodi, “over ninety-nine percent of people in the cities are high all day, every day!”
“How could you do this to the people without letting them know?” asked Little Xi a little disingenuously.
“Almost everything the Communist Party does, it does without informing the people,” replied He Dongsheng. “It’s always been that way. Many other countries put chemicals in their drinking water. In Hong Kong they put fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. It’s all for the people’s own good.”
“Your policy,” said Little Xi, “is designed only to keep the people ignorant so they won’t complain and just let you get away with everything.”
“That was precisely our goal.”
“Once you’d achieved your goal,” asked Lao Chen, “why didn’t you stop?”
“With things going