Hong Kong Read Online Free PDF Page B

frozen them. Those funds belong to this bank! Make them available for us to pledge and we will borrow the cash we need locally."
    "I am sorry, Mr. Genda. The government has decided to offset the bank's assets against the amounts the bank owes the government."
    "You can't do this," Genda protested. "This isn't the way things are done. You are violating the banking regulations!"
    "The decision has been made."
    "Have you discussed the failure of the bank with the governor of Hong Kong or the Chinese government in Beijing?"
    "We have. Since the bank is not Chinese, they did not choose to guarantee its debts."
    Genda continued, almost pleading, trying to make the bu-
    reaucrat see reason. "This is a Japanese bank! Many of our senior people are former Finance Ministry officials. We have close ties with the government, extremely close ties."
    "I am sorry, Mr. Genda," the civil servant said politely. "As I said, the decision has been made. We here in the Ministry expect you to take personal responsibility for the condition of your institution. Good-bye."
    The assistant minister hung up, leaving Saburo Genda standing with the telephone in his hand, too stunned to hang it up, too stunned to speak to his subordinates standing around the room waiting for a report. He felt as if his head had just been separated from his body. In two minutes of conversation, the civil servant at the Finance Ministry had ruined him: He could never work in a bank again; his whole life had just been reduced to rubble.
    "Open the bank," General Tang said in Chinese. "I order you to open the doors of the bank."
    "The bank is ruined," Saburo Genda told the soldier, his lips barely able to form the words. 'Tokyo refuses to guarantee our borrowings of cash to pay the depositors."
    Tang Ming tried to understand. Foreigners! "But this is a bank. You have much money in the vault. Give it to the people who want it, and when you run out, tell them they will have to come back another day."
    "Then the riot will occur in our lobby."
    "You must have money!" Tang gestured to the crowd. "What have you done with all of their money?"
    Genda had had it with this fool. "We loaned it out," he said through clenched teeth. "That is the function of banks, to accept deposits and make loans."
    Tang Ming stretched to his full height. He looked at Genda behind his great, polished desk, a whipped dog, and his two colonels and Genda's secretary and the crowd beyond the window.
    "Come," he murmured at the colonels and strode out.
    CO                                                                  •i> r m ...-  
    The tangible anger of the crowd made Jake Grafton uneasy. He sensed it was high time for him to be on his way, time to be out of this group of angry Asians who were working themselves up for a riot.
    Still he lingered. Curiosity kept him rooted.
    Although he spoke not a word of Chinese, he didn't really need the language to read the emotions on people's faces. A few people were openly crying, weeping silently as they rocked back and forth in sitting positions. Others were on cellular phones, presumably sharing their misfortune with family and friends.
    The number of wireless telephones in use by the crowd surprised Jake—China was definitely third or fourth world. There was money in Hong Kong, a lot of which had been invested in state-of-the-art technology. Still, most of the people in this square existed on a small fraction of the money that the average American family earned.
    As Jake sat there with two thousand American dollars' worth of traveler's checks in his pocket that he could get cashed at any bank in town, the vast gulf between the comfortable, middle-class circumstances in which he had lived his life and the hand-to-mouth existence that so many hundreds of millions—billions—of people around the world accepted as their lot in life spread before him like the Grand Canyon.
    He was no bleeding heart, but he cared about people.