As China's runaway economy flourished and the government allowed free enterrpise, many Chinese entrepreneurs were fast becoming millionaires. Others moved from the eroding rural areas to the cities, where the millionaires would hire them for as little as forty cents an hour. Capitalism - Chinese style - was, in some ways, dramatically different; if other ways it was appallingly similar to capitalism - U.S.A. style. The rich got richer; the poor remained so. Government leaders somberly advocated that their great nation would do things differently the the United States and early European powers did. There would not be a 'special class' of individuals whose wealth, power and influence would overshadow those of lesser means and fewer opportunities. China insisted that it would not become the behemoth government that the U.S. had become, where all power was centralized in Washington. In some ways, Chinese leaders seemed to recognize what Thomas Jefferson had warned about centuries ago when he said of the United States: "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will....become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated".
Even in its foreign policies, China claimed to maintain a separation between politiics and business. Beijing, China publicly pronounced, would not become the "center of all power". In some respects, it was true: legally, all land in China belongs to federal government. However, local municipalities can sell "land-use rights". More than half of all local governments raise the moneies they need to operate their communities by acquiring land at artificially low prices from peasants and 'selling' it at artificially high prices to those companies and entreprenuers who want to start a business in newly-approved "development" areas. In other respects, it was a lie: everyone knew (wink, wink) that China's financial support to North Korea, Zimbabwe and the Sudan were not just humanitarian gestures. Second only to the United States, China was the largest polluter on the globe, and its increasing demand for oil and other natural resources escalated daily. Since the U.S.A. pretty much had tied up the vast oil reserves of Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Iran (through either peaceful or warring means, whatever it took), China was obliged to look elsewhere. The Sudan had large oil reserves; though not as easily-accessible as Middle East oil, China found it to be convenient to condone - and finance - the rapes, displacements, wholesale murders and torture in Darfur in exchange for oil from the Sudan government. China's financial and political support of these radical countries could in no way be considered a contribution to world peace and global stability; but, then, neither could the United States' political and financial 'support' of a new puppet government in Iraq be construed as contributing to world peace or global stability. In actuality, China and the United States were both willing to rip the world apart in pursuit of their own interests.
So, just as greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians and pompous American elitists and celebrities thought of themselves as more important than the 'common' people, a burgeoning social class of wealthier, more powerful, and more influential citizens was also developing along with China's race to prosperity.
And, just as all of the richest, prime farmland in the U.S.A. was being paved over to make room for new shopping malls and glitzy office buildings, China's vast acreage that for centuries produced more rice, pears and wheat than any nation on Earth other than the U.S., rural farming areas were being forsaken and turned into cities full of air-poluuting assembly plants that manufactured everything from plastic bra rings to buttons and umbrellas that eventually were distributed all over the globe.
And as the business community expanded, new manufacturing facilities replaced old, inefficient factories that were left to deteriorate and become nothing more than slum properties. Both countries were on similar paths to total abandonment of their respective agricultural domains. Both China and the United States had been "bread baskets" to the world for generations - within a nother generation or two, it was higly likely both countries would become asphalt jungles full of abandoned factories without sufficient food to feed themselves, much less the rest of the world. All the more reason for the Chinese and Americans to get together and inspect the technological marvel of agricultural ingenuity Phil and Janie Baker had set up on the Double B pig farm in central Iowa. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was making the arrangements for such a meeting of the minds.