A joke I heard while working in China a few years ago
A Chinese state-owned container ship is highjacked by pirates. A Chinese Communist Party official is sent to negotiate.
The pirates’ leader, waving his gun, shouted: “the ransom is TEN MILLION dollars! Or everyone on the ship will die!”
The official responded, calmly: “I will give you twenty million, but you’ll write me a receipt of forty million.”
