Chapter 537 - The Forestry Ministry
"Alright, I support you. Whatever else, we have freedom of association now," Ma Jia said, though not without a touch of regret. "Do you really want to work in the Education Ministry? You have a talent for handling cases. Going into education seems like a waste."
The Ministry of Education had become the default refuge for liberal arts graduates with few other options, but Hu Qingbai had little patience for such recruits. His critical shortages were in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Many of these humanities majors had long forgotten even elementary arithmetic, spending their days daydreaming about romances with female students rather than contributing to the curriculum.
"Yes," Ji Xin nodded. He shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed deeply. "Old Ma, I'm still at your service whenever you need me. No matter how difficult the task, if I believe it's right, I'll get it done—I'm not afraid of anything."
Hailin returned to his office at the Forestry Ministry's wood processing plant. His desk was piled high with documents, but he didn't spare them a glance, dropping heavily into a factory-produced rattan chair.
"The Arbitration Tribunal bunch are real busybodies," Hailin muttered indignantly. He pulled out his PHS, made a call, and recounted the situation at the hearing. Finally, he said, "It looks like the Tribunal clearly wants to suppress this matter."
He made a few sounds of agreement in response to the voice on the other end, then asked, "So we just let it go?" After listening for a moment, Hailin finally said with evident reluctance, "Fine, I understand."
Just as he hung up, a shout came from outside.
"Chief!"
"What is it?" Hailin asked impatiently.
"Chief Wang just called to ask when the production of ten thousand straw hats and five thousand safety helmets will be delivered," an indigenous clerk asked cautiously from the doorway, noting Chief Hailin's foul expression.
"Engineer Wang?" Hailin perked up instantly. "How many have we produced?"
"As of closing time yesterday, we were short six thousand straw hats and three thousand safety helmets," the clerk reported, checking his notebook.
"Starting today, extend working hours by four hours daily. The production plan must be completed on time!" Hailin ordered.
According to the transmigrators' labor regulations, a standard factory shift was ten hours. Enterprises requiring round-the-clock operation used an eight-hour, three-shift system. This was not out of respect for workers' rights, but because three-shift enterprises were mostly critical facilities where excessive fatigue could lead to catastrophic accidents. However, every enterprise leader had the authority to mandate overtime, provided the cumulative overtime did not exceed one-third of the normal monthly working hours. Overtime was paid at standard rates.
After the indigenous clerk left, Hailin called Wang Luobin and assured him the order would be delivered on schedule.
Then the crank telephone rang; it was Xi Yazhou. He asked when the one thousand bamboo hats allocated for the Expeditionary Battalion could be delivered.
Hailin shouted into the phone, "We're busy as hell over here; the delivery date for the bamboo hats will have to be pushed back."
Xi Yazhou presumably complained, for Hailin continued, "My production schedule is just too full. How about this: I'll try to arrange production to give you half before you set out. I'll fill the rest gradually."
He hung up and sneered. Outside the window, the tall chimney of the wood processing plant's drying kiln loomed in the distance. Since its construction, that chimney had been spewing smoke and fire day and night, pausing only for brief maintenance.
Hailin knew a large shipment of timber had recently arrived from Leizhou, and the processing plant was working around the clock to handle it—the timber industry was the transmigrated collective's most critical industrial sector. Given the shortage of steel, wood served as a universal substitute. It was widely used not only in construction and shipbuilding but also in mechanical equipment where tolerances were forgiving. Even I-beams were often substituted with wooden counterparts; the General Construction Company had even developed steel-wood hybrid structural materials to conserve precious steel.
Although wood was easier to acquire than pig iron, it was limited by total supply—Lingao's local timber resources were scarce. The mangroves at Bopu had been stripped bare by Wu Kuangming's logging teams. Only the southern regions near the Li area offered significant timber stands, but logging and transport there were logistically difficult.
Since the completion of the island circumnavigation and the establishment of Yulin Fortress, the timber supply problem that had plagued the Forestry Ministry had improved significantly. Ships brought a steady stream of timber from southern Hainan, and in the last six months, channels for obtaining timber from the Leizhou Peninsula and Vietnam had opened up. Ma Qianzhu continued to increase investment in the Forestry Ministry; steam-driven wood processing equipment was steadily replacing primitive water-powered machinery.
The timber industry bore the brunt of construction pressure, yet the transmigrated collective's industrial focus lay elsewhere. Both the original Industrial and Energy Commission and the Planning Commission viewed wood processing as a stopgap measure until the steel industry matured. Within the Executive Committee, the Forestry Ministry had little voice and received scant attention in resource allocation.
Conditions at the various enterprises under the Forestry Ministry remained extremely primitive. The Ministry provided building materials for the structures springing up all over Lingao, yet the state of its own factories was deplorable. The office of the wood processing plant, which suffered the worst conditions, was still the temporary wooden shack built right after D-Day. After a year and a half of exposure to the elements, it was cracked and warped. Its location was terrible, too—originally built compact for easy defense, the office sat too close to the drying kilns. It was sweltering in summer and smelled perpetually of creosote. Wu Kuangming's repeated requests to rebuild the office area had been consistently rejected.
Because conditions were so poor, almost no transmigrators were willing to work in the Forestry Ministry. In this wood processing plant, for instance, Hailin was the only transmigrator, leading over a hundred indigenous workers—he didn't even have a peer to talk to.
The factory he managed was a subsidiary of the Forestry Ministry. This enterprise was highly valuable at the current stage—Wu Kuangming and Mo Xiaoan had fought fiercely over its ownership. Ultimately, because it housed many specialized wood processing machines brought from the other timeline, it remained under the Forestry Ministry's jurisdiction.
The wood products factory contained not only specialized woodworking machines but also equipment for manufacturing rattan, straw, and bamboo wares. Most were copies produced by the machinery plant from prototypes and blueprints brought from the future. Some were simple—like the straw braiding machine, which was merely a primitive hand-cranked device, yet its efficiency was hundreds of times higher than manual labor.
The result was the total annihilation of Lingao's local straw, bamboo, and rattan handicraft industries. Not only did the few small artisans go bankrupt and end up in the factory, but even farmers who did it as a sideline gave it up. The processing plant gradually monopolized all raw materials.
Now, Lingao no longer exported red and white rattan directly; instead, it processed them locally into high-grade rattan, bamboo, and straw goods for sale to Guangdong. The factory's straw hats, in particular, swept across Hainan with their low price and high quality. "Lingao Straw Hats" became a suddenly booming local specialty. Not only did peddlers from neighboring counties come for wholesale, but merchants from as far as Yazhou and Wenchang came too.
However, this meant little to Hailin. The transmigrated collective operated a typical planned economy; he only had to produce according to the Planning Commission's directives. The tasks assigned by the Commission grew heavier, yet resource allocation was strict: procedures were cumbersome and requests were often slashed. Low status, heavy workload, poor treatment... these issues combined fuelled Hailin's dissatisfaction.
Naturally, his superiors and colleagues were also dissatisfied. Thus, an anti-Ma faction formed within the Forestry Ministry. Ma Qianzhu's removal as People's Commissar for Planning after the General Assembly reshuffle did not satisfy them—the Forestry Ministry's anti-Ma faction had hoped to use the Dugu Qiuhun incident to launch a fierce attack on Ma Qianzhu, aiming to discredit him if not topple him. They hadn't expected the Arbitration Tribunal to pull such a maneuver. Hailin thought: this will require long-term planning.
"This is the Arbitration Tribunal's recommendation for handling the Dugu Qiuhun case." Ma Jia submitted the proposal at the Executive Committee's working meeting.
The attending Committee members silently circulated the document. The recommendation was extremely severe: it proposed not only stripping Dugu Qiuhun of all administrative posts but also depriving him of his Senatorial seat for life. This practically announced that Dugu Qiuhun had no future in the violent institutions and, for the rest of his life, could not hold even a minor official post in any other department. He would spend his life as a "hatless Chief" receiving dividends—according to the Common Program, his Senatorial status could only be restored by his heir after his death.
"Isn't this too harsh?" Xiao Zishan began to speak after reading it, but Ma Qianzhu interrupted him.
"Not harsh at all. For someone who committed such a serious organizational error, not shooting him is letting him off easy. I find this verdict very appropriate. I suggest adding a clause: require him to write a profound self-criticism, then send him to the most arduous post to reflect for a year. After one year, consider assigning him other work based on his performance."
"Director! Dugu is still young; impulsive mistakes are inevitable for young people. Let's show some leniency," Zhan Wuya remonstrated. He bore Dugu Qiuhun no ill will and simply felt it was a pity.
"He didn't think about showing leniency to the masses when he wanted to enter the city to suppress the riot." Ma Qianzhu's face was stony. "His punishment must be severe—to serve as a warning to others!"
"Too much, too much." Cheng Dong, seeing Ma Qianzhu's livid face, thought he was acting out of a desire to "forge iron into steel"—fearing he might really ruin Dugu's political future. On the attitude toward Dugu Qiuhun, the feelings of the original Executive Committee members were completely different from those of the masses like Shan Liang. The masses saw Dugu's attempt to use violence to suppress democratic demands; the Committee members saw Dugu Qiuhun's loyalty to the Executive Committee and to order.