Cornucopia
Page 124
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When the great day arrived Pat and Lili found themselves amongst a dazzling collection of guests: royalty, diplomats, ministers, politicians and a handful of celebrities, stars and outstanding business personalities.
At the glittering banquet Pat and Lili were seated between high level government officials and representatives of the Chinese business world; members of President Xi’s delegation.
It was part of the Chinese President’s four day state visit to the UK, which according to some was supposed to open a golden era in London’s long-standing and often controversial relations with Beijing.
The Wu’s enjoyed connections with Xi’s sister thanks to her husband, also a Wu. In this way Lili had met Peng Liyuan, the wife of Xi Jinping, on several occasions. Peng, his second wife, often compared to France’s former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy - Nicholas Sarkozy’s French-Italian wife, was a national star. Peng, who according to the Chinese government had been brought up in abject poverty, had risen to fame as singer. After starting out as member of a local choral troupe in the People’s Liberation Army, at the age of eighteen, she became a popular star, singing in the Chinese New Year Gala and travelling the country in the green army uniform of the People’s Army.
Peng Liyuan’s popularity as a singer continued and her Red Army patriotic style records and videos were still top sellers, which earned her the rank of major general.
Behind the royal flim-flam of the state visit was a list of multi-billion-pound deals, notably the construction of nuclear power stations: Hinkley Point in Somerset, Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex, designed to replace the UK’s aging plants, in partnership with France’s EDF.
It was a significant victory for China to see its president hailed by British crowds as he rode beside the Queen of England in the golden state coach towards Buckingham Palace. For the occasion The Mall was decorated with a dazzling display of China’s red flags, a triumph for the Middle Kingdom one hundred years after its humiliating defeat at the hands of Queen Victoria’s army and Imperial Britain’s allies and the barbaric sack of Pekin.
Xi was given the works with all the pomp and circumstance that only British royalty could offer, it was such that a casual Chinese observer could have mistakenly thought that an Emperor still sat on the throne of the Middle Kingdom … chosen by heaven.
Amongst those who waited in the palace for the arrival of the imperial couple was Pat Kennedy, whose mind was now firmly set on a knighthood.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without the data and information published on the Internet and in the daily press collected over a period of nine years starting when the very first signs of the sub-prime, sovereign, euro, debt crises appeared in early 2007. I have trawled numerous British, Irish, US, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Israeli newspapers, news blogs and specialist Internet sites, and books (authors’ cited). And of course Wikipedia.
During this period I have collected information during my visits to the USA, China, Hong Kong, Panama, Colombia, Macau, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Thailand, Cambodia, Libya, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Mali, Morocco, Mexico, the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy. To this I have added my experience in other parts of the world, notably Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Burma, Switzerland, Algeria, Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltic Countries, Poland, Hungary, the countries of ex-Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Egypt, the Caribbean, Central and South America.
I present my thanks and excuses to all the willing and unwilling contributors to the information included in this book, the information from this information world. I have tried to verify the fictitious facts but this is an impossible task. In my humble opinion most data reflects real events and the opinions of the vast majority of persons affected directly or indirectly by the multiple crises.
The is a story, a novelised account of the events leading up to and relating to political and economic events, where the fictitious characters are fictitious, and where the real characters such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are real.
Readers will forgive me if I have rearranged the dates of some factual events to fit in with the narrative and its factious characters.
The stories of 2000, 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 are recounted in the other tomes of The Turning Point saga.
With my very sincere thanks to all contributors,
direct and indirect, knowing and unknowing,
willing and unwilling
John Francis Kinsella, Paris, May 2016
Other books by the author
Fiction
Borneo Pulp
Offshore Islands
The Legacy of Solomon
The Prism
The Lost Forest
Death of a Financier
The Turning Point 2007-2008
The Plan 2009-2010
Non-Fiction
An Introduction to Early
20th Century Chinese Literature
Translations
Le Point de Non Retour
The Sorrow of Europe
The Temple of Solomon
Jean Sibelius - A biography
Understanding Architecture
L’Île de l’Ouest