Chapter 1176: Chapter 1174: Unexpected Situation

In the station lounge, Charlie (younger sister) looked at the empty room and the four people inside, and asked curiously, "There are only four of you?"

The Salesperson who had been talking to her smiled. "What are you worried about?"

Charlie (younger sister) didn’t hesitate. Right now she was the "client," she was paying, and she knew she was paying several times more than a normal order. After spending this much money, she wasn’t about to wrong herself.

Her forceful attitude began to rise again, within the bounds of safety. She looked at the Salesperson. "I don’t think you can protect me, not if there are only four of you."

The Salesperson glanced around. "Please rest assured, we are professionals..."

At the same time, in the conference room of the Ministry of International Affairs in Bupen, Mr. Truman curled his five fingers and knocked twice on the table with his knuckles. He reiterated, "Please rest assured, gentlemen, we are professionals!"

He paused as he spoke and looked at the gentlemen in the room. This was the sixth round of talks centered on the "World Development Committee." Gafura hadn’t stepped out to slow things down, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do anything.

In private they might have reached some agreements with certain countries, raised some objections and issues that needed to be resolved, in an attempt to increase the Federation’s workload.

In fact, whether it was them, or the Federation Government, or Mr. Truman himself, everyone knew these ugly little tricks were actually useless.

In the end it would still pass, but making people sick like this... it’s not just some perverse amusement; what it really satisfies is the "victim’s" psychological needs.

It sounds a bit confusing—what psychological needs could a victim possibly have?

Actually there are. In some of the cases already solved in the Federation, there is no shortage of victims who ultimately became accomplices of the perpetrators, or who habitually endured the harm inflicted on them.

This is a kind of psychological need. Through certain hints they can complete this process. Whether what they ultimately seek is a sense of security or something else, the whole process is astonishing, sometimes even a bit horrific.

Diplomacy works the same way. Creating trouble for the Federation may not be enough to stop the eventual establishment of the World Development Committee, but for the people of Gafura, just seeing the Federation people have a headache over them is enough.

The small countries share a similar stance. They won’t make things overly difficult for the Federation people. They just took some benefits promised by Gafura—trade orders and the like—and made a token effort to look out for their own interests, nothing more.

The main reason the World Development Committee still hadn’t been established yet was that many similar minor issues remained unresolved.

For example, some countries wanted the headquarters of the World Development Committee to be located on their own soil. There were at least four or five countries with such an idea.

Others believed that in the process of adding weight to Federation Currency, the Federation should also grant member states more benefits in mutual trade—for instance, lowering tariffs on both sides, increasing the number of devices that could be exported, and providing opportunities for the transfer or joint development of sensitive technologies.

None of these were real problems; they could all be resolved eventually. But there were too many items on the list, and there would always be more talks to sit through.

This time, they were dealing with the issue of some small countries hoping that the Federation would help them develop industry. So far, twenty‑three countries had expressed their willingness to join the World Development Committee, which greatly encouraged the Federation Government.

But what followed was a bunch of... begging problems.

For example, some small countries with no industrial base whatsoever also wanted to achieve basic industrialization. They had no way to do it themselves, so they could only turn to the Federation for help.

The bargaining chip was that they would agree to most of the terms in the "Treaty."

It was the kind of issue a single Consortium could solve, but it still had to be handled at the talks. As for these issues, Mr. Truman didn’t even need to think; he gave a firm yes.

And he wasn’t wrong at all: when it comes to helping other countries develop basic industry, people of the Federation really are professionals.

As for whether the basic industries they developed would have to rely on the Federation’s continuous blood transfusions, that was another question entirely.

After all, that wasn’t on the table in these talks. All the others wanted was the chance to realize basic industrialization, nothing more.

The representatives of several small countries wore satisfied smiles. Most of their nations were resource‑based or agricultural and pastoral countries.

Their main industrial goods depended on imports, which meant they lacked initiative in many situations and always had their weak points seized by others.

For example, a certain country had once put an international tender out for a thermal power plant. To this day, the core technology for this now‑outdated thermal power station was still in someone else’s hands.

Whenever problems arose at the thermal power plant, they had no choice but to spend large sums of money to invite the original contractor back to fix them.

Sometimes they would just tinker here and there without replacing a single part, and the bill would still be enough to scare people to death.

Another country supplied a kind of rough‑processed component to the international market. In its assembly line there were some consumables, and the manufacturing technology for these consumables had always been firmly controlled by the technology exporter.

Every so often, they had to spend a lot of money to purchase these consumable spare parts, which were actually not worth that much, just to keep the line running.

A huge portion of the profit was taken away by foreign companies. They loathed these foreigners, yet at the same time they were desperate to push forward basic industrialization.

At the very least, they wanted to be able to manufacture some simple things themselves, instead of relying on foreigners for everything.

Lynch sat in the back seat, looking at some documents in his hands. He figured that by around October, everything could be negotiated and the committee could be established.

Watching the Diplomats who were still voicing all kinds of demands, Lynch raised his wrist and checked his watch. It was almost eleven.

Once the weekend ended, the strike across the Federation would end with it. This strike was actually more of a show of force; labor and capital had not yet turned irreconcilably against each other, and there was still room to ease tensions.

And that was exactly what the Union needed.

The working class could not realistically give up their current jobs, and the capitalists could not realistically let the factories shut down. The renewed boom in the real economy meant they couldn’t afford prolonged work stoppages by the workers.

So, just like in the best of times in the past, the Union representatives put on suits, carried briefcases, and showed up in offices or workshops.

They were responsible for negotiating with the capitalists on behalf of the working class, then taking the results back to the workers to discuss together. In this process, the Union once again demonstrated its role and value, and in return reaped plenty of invisible benefits.

There were intangible perks, such as prestige and renewed recognition of the Union by the workers.

And there were tangible perks—cash, cars, houses...

On the surface the strike was over, but in fact, negotiations entangled with interests had only just begun.

That said, strikes and demonstrations weren’t all bad. At the very least, after the strikes and marches ended, public order in various cities improved to a certain extent.

Some sociologist had specifically studied this phenomenon: wherever marches had taken place, public security improved somewhat once the marches were over.

In that scholar’s report, the main trigger for this was that in demonstrations, the police tended to appear rather powerless, which produced a very subtle psychological shift.

To compensate for their own awkwardness and incompetence during the demonstrations, they would increase their crackdown on all kinds of public order and criminal cases afterward.

There really were more police on patrol in the streets these two days, and those who liked to make trouble were all hiding, waiting for the police to cool off before coming back out.

As the meeting time was about to run out, Lynch had already started packing his things. The core of the talks now was haggling and asking for benefits; he wasn’t very interested in that.

But the issue just raised, helping some small countries build basic industrial facilities, was bound to attract someone’s interest.

This was another huge order. The Consortiums’ support for the Federation Government was fully reflected in the process of pushing for the World Development Committee.

Even Congress, usually known as "the best at making trouble," had not uttered a single useless word throughout this entire affair, let alone summoned Mr. Truman or any officials to Congress to explain and give them a hard time.

The capitalists of the Federation could see the obvious benefits. As long as it was good for them, they wouldn’t stand in the way—and whoever did would become a common enemy.

Gafura had used the wrong strategy from the very beginning. Their approach of getting those small countries to cause trouble for the Federation was too childish. They would have been better off directly handing the benefits to some major Consortium.

Then let the Consortium move through Congress—hold twenty or thirty hearings, and who knows, maybe they could have dragged these talks into next year.

Lack of experience, that’s all!

Sitting at the head of the table, Mr. Truman saw that Lynch had already packed up his briefcase. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. He should have been angry, but when he saw Lynch so lazy and indifferent, he almost burst out laughing.

Just then, two people walked in. One of them went over to Lynch’s side, bent down, and whispered in his ear.

The other went over to Mr. Truman and whispered in his ear as well. It seemed they were reporting the same matter.

"Just now... there was an armed shootout at the ... City train station..."

Mr. Truman and Lynch exchanged a glance. He frowned and announced an early end to the talks.

The two of them then left quickly. Watching their backs as they walked out, many Diplomats didn’t know what had happened and were asking each other about it.

They didn’t go back to Mr. Truman’s office, but headed straight for the President’s Mansion. The reason this incident had interrupted the talks was that it had alarmed the President himself!

The President was in a very foul mood now, and a bit uneasy; more than anything, though, he felt it was a loss of face.

With so many foreign diplomatic missions gathered in the Federation, something like this happened. The first thing he thought of was his own image.

He didn’t even dare imagine how people would judge him. This could very well become a major scandal of his administration!