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An airplane with the Edenian flag on it was on final approach to Beijing airport. It was given priority clearance, skipping the line as other planes were sent to maintain altitude.
The plane landed without any problem, then was directed to one of the VIP terminals that had been prepared to welcome the people in the plane.
After coming to a full stop, the ramp extended and the door opened, revealing a red-carpeted walkway that was lined by members of the People’s Liberation Army’s ceremonial guards standing at rapt attention.
A few seconds after the door was opened by the flight attendant, a man walked out of it wearing a clean suit. He strode forth with confidence in his steps and a smile on his face. He walked down the walkway and met the leader of the welcoming team. He extended his hand and, in Mandarin Chinese, said, “We are very honored to welcome your arrival to China.”
Just as his translator was about to translate it to English, the guest replied, also in perfect Mandarin Chinese, “Thank you very much for your warm welcome. I am happy to be here.” The translator was surprised by the dignitary’s clean Chinese. He sounded no different from a Chinese native who had studied Chinese literature. Everything from the tone to the sentence structure was perfect.
The surprise wasn’t only visible on the face of the translator, but on the face of Wang Yi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China as well. He was the one who was welcoming his Edenian counterpart. “I didn’t know your Chinese was this good,” he said with some pleasant surprise.
“I learned it during my free time, as I knew it would be needed one day. It seems I was correct,” replied Gabriel de los Estrada, Eden’s Minister of the Exterior.
“If you mastered it just by practicing during your free time, it means you are truly blessed with a gift for language,” Wang Yi said as they started walking to the VIP immigration checkpoint, where they were quickly cleared and directed to a waiting luxury car convoy.
Moments after they got in their assigned cars, the convoy left with the sirens of their police escort blaring. It ensured that they wouldn’t be stopped anywhere during their journey, since they were going to visit a few events before their first official meeting to present the Edenians’ diplomatic credentials to Zi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China.
…
A few hours later, the two people who had met at the airport were in a meeting room with a few secretaries to record the minutes. They obviously didn’t include translators in their discussion, so after a short bout of polite small talk, they went directly to the main subject.
“Although we can import oil from your country, the quantity we need is triple the amount your nation is pumping from the ground,” Wang Yi said.
The main thrust of this private meeting was to negotiate an oil import contract. Saudi Arabia was China’s second-largest source of crude oil behind Russia, but Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the president of Saudi Arabia, had been growing too close to the US and China feared that the newly sworn in President Trump would make trouble for them. Since he was so unpredictable, Zi Jinping had directed his foreign affairs minister to begin laying the groundwork to replace as much of their oil imports as possible. The deadline he was given wasn’t a firm one; it would depend on if and when Trump began throwing tantrums and biting at random people to compensate for his tiny “hands”.
Saudi Arabia, though, was constantly increasing the amount of oil they exported to China, and it wasn’t expected to be long before they completely overtook Russia. Thus, any instability in American politics that bled over into any of the OPEC nations—four of which supplied oil to the communist republic, namely Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Venezuela—would affect the market and lead to wild fluctuations that could negatively impact Chinese industrial growth. Especially in the industrial production of petrochemical products like plastics, rubbers, synthetic cloth, and resins like those used to produce motherboards.
So the probability of President Trump affecting China through the oil market was enough for President Zi to consider stabilizing their imports in advance as a high priority. While relations between China and the US had been warming over the past few decades, the Chinese nation was historically slow to adopt changes and their insular nature had been fostered over many, many generations. Thus, the Chinese Communist Party felt a pressing need to settle things in advance, much like a spouse would often begin separating assets before filing for a divorce from their “other half”.
“You don’t have to worry about that. During the construction of the oil rigs, we built them with enough spare capacity to compete with any of the OPEC nations. Currently, we’re only limiting the production because, as they say, too much is as bad as not enough,” Gabriel said in a measured tone.
Wang Yi was a little surprised, as he had planned to use the modification period together with the construction of new oil wells as leverage to make the deal lean in their favor. He hadn’t expected that the Edenian oil production wasn’t at capacity and had thought they would definitely have been working at full power, given the number of barrels of crude the country was currently producing.
“That’s good, that’s good,” he said, expertly hiding his surprise and disappointment at missing the chance to take control of the negotiation.
After about half an hour of back and forth, they had some agreements and some disagreements, but it ended with them agreeing to sign a contract for Eden to sell about two million barrels of crude oil per day to China, or roughly about 25% of their overall amount of imported oil. They would finalize the agreement a few days later, after their respective staffers negotiated some final details. The official signing would take place after Gabriel presented his credentials to Zi Jinping.
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