JC DENTON: Can I ask you something?

ISAAC: What do you want to know?

JC DENTON: Despite all I've read about the Triads, I wasn't prepared to see them operating in the open, on the streets, and wearing uniforms. Doesn't the Chinese government care?

ISAAC: The Chinese leave Hong Kong alone. They barricade the roads to control trade to the mainland, but they know how business is done.

JC DENTON: I would think the secret smuggling operations of the Triads would disturb the Chinese government.

ISAAC: Maybe the Luminous Path, but China knows that the Red Arrow are business owners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and that they protect the city from outside influences.

JC DENTON: You said "outside influences." What does China fear?

ISAAC: China is the last sovereign country in the world. Authoritarian but willing -- unlike U.N.-governed countries -- to give its people the freedom to do what they want.

JC DENTON: As long as they don't break the law.

ISAAC: Listen to me. This is real freedom, freedom to own property, make a profit, make your life. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power.

JC DENTON: Our governments have limited power by design.

ISAAC: Rhetoric... And you believe it! Don't you know where these slogans come from?

JC DENTON: I give up.

ISAAC: Well-paid researchers -- how do you say it? -- "think tanks," funded by big businesses. What is that? A "think tank"?

JC DENTON: Hardly as sinister as a dictator, like China's Premier.

ISAAC: It's privately-funded propaganda. The Trilateral Commission in the United States, for instance.

JC DENTON: The separation of powers acknowledges the petty ambitions of individuals; that's its strength.

ISAAC: A system organized around the weakest qualities of individuals will produce these same qualities in its leaders.

JC DENTON: Perhaps certain qualities are an inseparable part of human nature.

ISAAC: The mark of the educated man is the suppression of these qualities in favor of better ones. The same is true of civilization.

JC DENTON: I'll get a drink later.