Mr. China by Tim Clissold Read Free Book Online Page B

with the West. Ai had sensed that this might be his one chance to get off the sidelines and out of the dismal backwater that the cadres had thrown him into. So, despite
his nerves, the first meeting went well and he was in a state of great excitement after Pat had left.
    It was understandable. Pat was in a league of his own. I had come across the odd career banker who had learnt the ropes in Hong Kong, but there was no one else who was remotely as convincing
when it came to talking about financing China’s growth. Pat would talk about raising the odd hundred million and consolidating whole industries in a manner that most of us might use to
comment on the weather. This lack of pretentiousness only made his story more compelling. Years later, when recalling that first meeting, Ai had said, ‘I had spent years hoping to find a
chance to do something big. Searching and searching – and then, suddenly, it was as if a film star had walked into my life!’
    Pat was an enormous personality. His blue eyes, swept-back hair and J.P. Morgan nose gave him a presence that soon dominated any conversation. He was the archetypal Wall Street adventurer, full
of the financial bravado of the 1980s when Wall Street pushed deal-size to the limit and reputations were made or lost purely on how far one dared to go. He even came packaged up with the pink silk
handkerchiefs and blue pinstripe, an ear-splitting laugh and an insatiable appetite for oysters, champagne and Cuban cigars. Late into the evenings, he would sit around after dinner in clouds of
smoke, with wineglasses strewn about the table, bantering and howling with laughter, all the time fiddling with the enormous red rubies on his gold cuff links. He knew how to have a good time, that
was for sure, and preferred an audience to a good night’s sleep. But it wasn’t just a carefully cultivated image; this was the real thing. An American icon: the steelworker’s son
risen from the bottom rung to the top of the ladder through his wits and force of personality, with plenty of guts and hard work thrown in. By the time that we met him, Pat had become a man with a
mission, a pioneer on a single-minded quest to create a machine – a machine for bringing money from Wall Street to Asia. And like me, but for a thousand different reasons, his focus was
China.
    At first I was puzzled. How had this man summoned the courage to uproot himself from everything he knew? Why had he left the security of the top rung on Wall Street, with all the comforts of a
high position, to attempt another and much more hazardous ascent in a totally alien environment? He had certainly aroused my curiosity; and he had my admiration. I could see the drive and
determination, the tremendous optimism and thirst for adventure. But it seemed that the trappings of Wall Street had not been enough. I knew that Pat had money; I guessed that what he wanted next
was fame.
    Pat had told Ai to work the phones. ‘I want to see every project you can find,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to think big on this one. There are whole industries
out there that need a ton of money and we’ve got to get there first. In a few months, the whole of Wall Street’s gonna be crawling all over this place, so I want power stations, toll
roads, phone systems, steel, all of that kind of stuff, anything that’s big, and I want it now.’ With that he got on a plane back to the States, and told us he’d be back in two
weeks.
    While he was away, Ai called every ministry that he could think of. Although China had started reforming its system of central planning, back in the early 1990s most of the economy was still
controlled by the ministries in Beijing. The Government had a much greater role in running industries than was the case in any Western country at that time, so it was the right place for us to
start. Ai had such a brass neck that he sat for days in his dingy office, cold-calling government officials all over Beijing, pestering