6.5

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A disaster and a metaphor. What is presented by the government as “controlled” goes wildly out of control.

In a hilly city like Hong Kong, as Cheung points out, the class hierarchy can be literal: “the higher the altitude, the more expensive the apartments”. Both Lim and Cheung struggled with finding affordable housing in the city. The real issue is not how much land there is in Hong Kong but who owns it: the city’s real estate, as well as key sectors such as transportation and telecommunications, are controlled by a handful of family-owned conglomerates. The oligarchical system originated under British rule. Now Beijing relies on the tycoons to advance its agendas, and in turn provides policy conditions favourable to their businesses.

Near-term risk reduction through weapon procurement will provide a significant cost advantage to U.S. and allied forces. An Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer costs approximately $2 billion to build, not including its weapons or operating costs.12 It could be damaged, disabled, or sunk by a range of Chinese antiship cruise missiles or ballistic missiles. Conversely, a Chinese Type 52 or Type 55 destroyer could be disabled or sunk by a U.S. Long-Range Antiship Missile (LRASM) or a Naval Strike Missile costing approximately $2 million. The math for mines and torpedoes is of the same order of magnitude. While delivering these weapons requires costly assets, surface vessels are among the most cost-ineffective options.13

The time on pilot Norman Schwartz’s Rolex read just before midnight. He had slowed to just above stall speed, and was flying as low as possible over the pitch black forests of northern China, north of the Korean border at the Yalu River. On board his C-47 were CIA officers John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau. Their mission that night: pick up Li Chun Ying, a CIA agent. The CIA was then recruiting agents from anti-Communist guerilla forces, and training them in the use of small arms, radio operations, and demolition, and then sending them into the field to sow as much mayhem as they could.

In the early ’50s, China didn’t have radar-controlled anti-aircraft weapons. This gave covert operations pilots like Schwartz a big advantage because, on a dark night, their planes were largely undetectable. Pilots like Schwartz were accustomed to performing reconnaissance overflights, in addition to dropping propaganda leaflets, using the darkness of night as cover, but this recovery operation was by no means a routine observation mission. 

The C-47 was completely unmarked aside from the tail number, B813. This was a civilian plane. The tail number would identify it, to casual observers, as an everyday airplane, but everyone on board knew exactly who they were working for. Downey and Fecteau were on the CIA payroll, while Schwartz and co-pilot Robert Snoddy were hand-picked out of a crop of civilian pilots recruited to fly for the CIA. The pilots indeed had day jobs, ferrying cargo around Asia for Civil Air Transport (a civilian airline) but sometimes the cargo happened to be anti-Communist guerrilla units or nationalist agents. And you wouldn’t find the landing sites on any commercial aviation map.

The world’s cargo ships, which transport around 90% of global trade, do not always make it to their destination without incident. According to the Safety and Shipping Review by insurance company Allianz, 27 cargo vessels were lost in major incidents during 2021, and 357 during the past decade. They catch fire. They hit rocks, reefs and sand bars. They malfunction. But they don’t always sink. Whenever there’s a chance to rescue a large ship, their owners almost always take it because these vessels can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Doug Hitchcox, the staff naturalist at Maine Audubon, gets dozens of emails a day asking him to identify birds: What’s this bird? Can you tell me what this is? “And they’re robins. They’re almost all robins,” he says.