issue letters of marque to various pirate gangs for a cut of the spoils. Most states are puppets of various PacRim megacorps, and so this often extends to corporate sniping as the various megacorps try to cut into each other’s profit margins.
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East China Sea privateers aren’t as flamboyant as those in the Carib League, or even the Koreans in the Sea of Japan, but they do carry a bit of swagger. A lot of local privateers make ample use of air support: surveillance mini-blimps, aerial com- bat drones and an occasional armed helicopter or single- engine craft.>
ZoomZoom>
The two best privateers in the region are the Black Kestrels and the Fortune Hunters. Intense rivalry between the two derives from the relationship of the two leaders: Anastasia “Nasty” Swann of the Kestrels and Na’tang Zakli of the Hunters. They’ve had an on- again, off-again romance, and relations between the gangs tend to reflect the leaders’ volatile personal chemistry.>
TitaniaShanghai
Sitting at the mouth of the Yangtze where the river emp- ties into the Pacific, Shanghai has always been a major port city. In the 1990s the Chinese government promoted a major mod- ernization campaign for Shanghai, and by the turn of the mil- lennium it had become a cosmopolitan metropolis rivaling Hong Kong in glamour.
The Republic Civil War dimmed a bit of Shanghai’s luster, but the city soon found fame in another arena. With all the pira- cy along the Chinese coast, Shanghai has become a pirate haven, a modern-day Tortuga. Some businesses set up shop in the territory (Transys Neuronet, for example, has its regional headquarters here), but the spoils of privateering are the real moneymakers in Shanghai.
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Because of its strategic location, Shanghai is generally regarded as neutral territory: it has no extradition treaties with other nations or megacorps, and the pirates observe an unwrit- ten code of not attacking one another. Consequently, pirates and privateers can walk the Shanghai docks with relative free- dom while acquiring supplies, fencing loot or seeking letters of marque from various sponsors.>
China Hand>
So if you’ve got a beef with another pirate, you resort to spy- ing and then hire deniable shadowrunners to stab your rival in the back.>
GraniaShanghai’s sudden ascent to stardom has provoked bitter rivalry with its southern neighbor, Hong Kong. Both locales are modern, Western-oriented city-states, but they have significant cultural differences, from dialect to cuisine to customs. The quickest way to start a fight in Shanghai is to flash your Hong Kong credentials around.
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The Shanghai-Hong Kong rivalry can get intense, and parties on both sides have plotted spectacular pranks to make the other side look bad. During the last Chinese New Year, a cou- ple of Hong Kong shadowrunners sneaked into a popular run- ner hangout in Shanghai and set off a quickened stink bomb spell. The Shanghai runners retaliated by redirecting the SAN for Hong Kong’s Shadowland node to take deckers into the host for Renraku’s Kuala Lumpur arcology.>
Hei YuShandong
Ever since Lung took up residence on T’ai Shan, Shandong has garnered serious attention. Prior to the dragon’s arrival, influence peddling in Shandong’s government tilted between two megacorps: Mitsuhama and Eastern Tiger. Lung’s arrival threw a spanner in the works, and many a megacorp puppet has since disappeared (no doubt after Triad “persuasion”). Local politics have stabilized somewhat, with some of the neighboring microstates seriously considering rapprochement or even reunification.
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The dragon’s influence has many corps concerned. Shandong is an important piece in the Coastal Provinces jigsaw puzzle. It contains the port city of Qingdao, the terminus of the New Silk Road transcontinental line. Qingdao also specializes in sea trade, and quite a few oceanographic centers are located there.>
Nien TingWESTERN CHINA: WILD, WILD WEST
When Sichuan, Shaanxi and the Confederation withdrew from China, the remaining western outlying provinces (Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai) found themselves polit- ically isolated. Once cut off from Beijing, most of them went their own way. Mongolia absorbed most of Inner Mongolia, except for the Huang He valley, which Shaanxi annexed. Most of Qinghai and Gansu degenerated into bandit country. Gansu Province has a semifunctional central government, and so politically the area is recognized as Gansu. Beyond the capital of Lanzhou, however, local warlords hold the real power.
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Eastern and southern Gansu are home to many exotic animal and plant species. Gansu is noted for its abundance of wild plants, many of which have medicinal uses. Talislegging and talispoaching have become pretty profitable venues for smug- glers who survive out here.>
Bizwatcher>
The abundant exotic plants in this area have attracted the attention of AG Chemie Europa, which wants to establish a facil- ity in southern Gansu near Min Xian. They’ve been advertising heavily for merc contracts in Lisbon and Macao; in addition to local warlords and wild paracritters, the corp has to contend with interference from eco-activists and Sichuan raiding patrols.>
TalisMan>
Be careful of abandoned camps and towns in the wastes of Qinghai. Back in the bad old days of the People’s Republic, China maintained forced-labor prison camps in Qinghai for political prisoners, particularly Tibetan independence activists. During the interim between Tibet’s secession and China’s col- lapse, the Chinese wardens at some of these prisons executed their Tibetan inmates to prevent a revolt. When the shedim started appearing several years ago, neighboring towns van- ished as the dead walked the ground of Qinghai.>
Moon LadyLanzhou
Any semblance of orderly civilization in what’s left of west- ern China exists in Lanzhou, capital of the region. The New Silk Road transcontinental railway passes through Lanzhou, linking it to Urumchi (and the rest of Eurasia) in the east and Xi’an in the west. This makes Lanzhou a key transit point for distributing Gansu’s natural resources (primarily nonferrous metals and petrochemicals) to European and PacRim industrial centers.
The corps invest heavily in Lanzhou’s governmental infra- structure to maintain a quasi-stable atmosphere where they can conduct business. Nucor, IFMU and Ruhrmetall all have significant industrial presence in Lanzhou. Ruhrmetall operates a massive engine yard building and servicing the train engines running along the eastern stretches of the New Silk Road, while IFMU runs many of the oil and ore refineries on the city’s outskirts. Nucor obtained many of the area’s nuclear produc- tion facilities and converted them from weapons production to regular reactors.
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Nucor’s Gansu reactors have brought it into conflict with Sichuan, which inherited the other half of China’s nuclear pro- gram. Sichuan raiding patrols often cross the border to incite unrest around Nucor’s facilities in southern Gansu. Nucor hires a lot of mercenaries out of Macao to protect these facilities and halt the cross-border raids.>
Johnny HotelNingxia
Once a part of the western Xia Kingdom, Ningxia under the People’s Republic was an autonomous zone populated by the Hui and other Chinese ethnic minorities. Relying on mining (particularly coal and natural gas), Ningxia has had to fight for its independence, warding off encroachments from Gansu war- lords and the Shaanxi monarchy. Its most pressing current problem is the accelerating desertification of its once-fertile northern reaches. This creeping desert has been accompanied by some unusual background count; many assumed it was related to the Year of the Comet, but unlike other phenomena, it has increased rather than faded since the comet’s passing.
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Nothing unusual about it. Ningxia’s abuse of the land has destroyed its fertility and poisoned its manasphere. Once our compatriots halt corporate exploitation, the land will heal itself.>
Deep Green>
Sorry, DG, but your eco-dogma doesn’t hold up. In almost all cases this unexplained desertification has occurred where there’s been no development of any kind: agriculture, mining or industrialization. Also, the astral hazing isn’t consistent with the background count from toxic or polluted areas. Something other than “corporate rape” is causing this.>
Magister>
Locals near the desert-ized areas report seeing individuals they call huangren (desert people) roaming the wastes alone. When they try to talk to them, disfigured desert spirits materialize to attack. Perhaps the huangren are some kind of toxic desert shamans expanding the desert for their own twisted reasons?>
Moon LadyHaiyan
Sitting a few dozen kilometers east of Lake Kokonor, the city of Haiyan recently gained renewed attention as the central headquarters for warlord Shin Qao Hien. Originally the site of the “Ninth Academy,” one of China’s secret nuclear research centers, Haiyan fell to Shin after his forces were repulsed from Tibet in the 2050s. From Haiyan the warlord has been quietly rebuilding and rearming his forces for an eventual return to Tibet, and with holes appearing in the Veil surrounding the country, the time looks right for Shin to make his move. Considering how he might significantly alter the regional bal- ance of power, a lot of parties, from Russia to the Canton Confederation, have sent scouts and spies to Haiyan to figure out which bets to hedge.