Review | Book review: Beijing Smog - biting satire of corruption and repression in modern China

Beijing Smog
by Ian Williams
Matador

A biting satire of modern China, Beijing Smog takes just about every zeitgeisty theme imaginable, from fake news and civil disobedience to corruption crackdowns and Ferraris crashed by playboy sons of Party bigwigs, and weaves them into a twisting tale of espionage, cybercrime and high-stakes double dealing.

The debut novel of Ian Williams, a former correspondent for American television network NBC, Britain’s Channel 4 News and The Sunday Times newspaper who has been reporting on China for more than two decades, is a dark and cynical portrayal of an amoral, Kafkaesque system, but tight plotting, appealing characterisation and lively writing, including an ever-present acerbic humour, make it a great deal more fun than it might sound.

Beijing Smog tells the interlocking tales of three characters: Wang Chu, a geeky, entrepreneurial, video-game-addicted university student who lives his life online; Chuck Drayton, a bluff, mordant, distinctly undiplomatic US diplomat who has fallen into the job of cybersecurity expert only because everyone else knows less than he does; and Anthony Morgan, a British business fixer who is remorse­lessly Micawberish about the Chinese economy’s prospects in public but expresses his true feelings in a series of gloomy tweets via a VPN as @Beijing_smog. Well-connected, confident and wealthy, Morgan is also naive and a bit of a buffoon.

Starting with the assassination of an anti-corrup­tion official at a concert in Beijing, the labyrinthine plot has Drayton on the trail of another senior official, and he requests the assistance of Morgan, whose inquiries rattle the wrong cages. The action careens between Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Harbin, with an extended section set in Hong Kong and the usual casino shenanigans in Macau. Williams nails Hong Kong and its people, and Morgan is able to iden­tify Hongkongers in mainland China by their “rest­less fingers” constantly jabbing at the close button in a lift.