Chapter 942 – Center and Locality (Part One)

Under this propaganda blitz, Liu Xiang knew a large batch of tenant farmers and hired hands would certainly head to Lingao. He gloomily recalled a television drama segment he'd seen years ago, depicting how foreigners in Guangdong had tricked Chinese laborers into the "pig trade." San Francisco had been puffed up as a land paved with gold back then too.

Practically the same tune, he thought darkly.

He watched the lively scene for a while and decided there was nothing more worth seeing. He left the congee distribution point and returned to the County Office compound.

The compound's large conference room—formerly the Provincial Administration Sub-Commissioner's great hall—now served as the disaster relief work team's makeshift office. Naturalized citizen workers went in and out constantly. Stacks of forms and registers were continuously being dispatched and returned. The courtyard was filled with the clatter of Chinese typewriters and Mandarin spoken in strange accents.

Judging by today's turnout, at least two or three thousand refugees would be taken away. He made a rough calculation—he had a general idea of the refugees' composition. Landless tenants and their families made up more than half. Now that the Executive Committee was employing such bewitching methods, the appeal to refugees who had seen little and whose bellies were empty was self-evident.

Earlier, Yang Yun had conveyed the Executive Committee's intentions. They wanted to draw grain and population from Qiongshan. Liu Xiang didn't oppose this—what the Senate needed most was precisely these two things; there was no reason to occupy territory without enjoying the spoils. But the current approach seemed excessively hasty, and Liu Xiang had strong reservations. In his view, this was classic Great-Leap-Forward thinking. After several months as "county magistrate" in Qiongshan, he understood local conditions well and knew the Executive Committee's thinking sometimes contained an element of wishful fantasy.

Generally speaking, Qiongshan wasn't an overpopulated region. Although it was the most densely populated county on all of Hainan, by mainland standards its population of just over 100,000 was at most a medium-sized county. The population was far from saturated. In the long run, Qiongshan was itself a place that needed population input for major development.

On his desk, the Fujian tea brewed by Guo Ling'er that morning had lost its warmth, but it suited his taste. He took a large gulp and flipped through the classified documents just delivered by the Archives Section. One bore a red "urgent" stamp from the Central Administrative Council.

The dispatch had arrived early that morning. By regulation, urgent documents were delivered around the clock. After nearly a year of construction, only a basic mail route and telegraph system connected Qiongshan and Lingao. Communication between the two places was generally by telegram, while longer documents traveled via the postal system. Since all of Hainan had fallen into the Senate's hands, the Ming Dynasty's dilapidated courier station system had also been absorbed by the Post Office. Stations were repaired, and the nearly starved station couriers had become postal employees. Using this old-bottles-new-wine approach, the Central Administrative Council's Postal General Office had opened an island-wide mail route system. However, to date only the northern Hainan routes were delivered by road; in southern Hainan, the engineering required to restore the courier routes was too extensive, so for now there was only sea mail.

Liu Xiang knew this document was no small matter and hurried to open it.

The document was an instruction regarding Qiongshan disaster relief work. It didn't differ much from what Yang Yun had discussed the day before, except that today's version included an appendix: Compilation of Lingao County Typhoon Disaster Fighting and Post-Disaster Remediation Experience. Ma Qianzhu had even written a note on the back cover—something like "strengthen learning." Connecting this to the actions of the Propaganda transmigrators who had arrived the previous day, Liu Xiang—as a former project manager skilled in client requirements analysis—quickly grasped the real meaning of this hint.

If this is really how they're going to do it, it looks very ugly, he thought, staring at the dispatch in his hand.

When we first arrived, we didn't play revolutionary party but construction party; now that we've scooped up a big mess, we're turning around to play revolutionary party. On the political spectrum, Liu Xiang leaned left, but he was a pragmatist—of course, if Du Wen were in front of him, he would certainly be criticized as an "opportunist," or slapped with even nastier labels like "right-deviationist capitulationism." He'd heard plenty of Director Du's rhetoric from Liu Yuefei.

This Liu Yuefei with his rather feminine name was a peculiar character. Despite strongly disagreeing with Du Wen's political views, he was full of feelings—indeed, one might even say adoring feelings—for her personally. A few times when Liu Xiang chatted with him, he actually got goosebumps.

Liu Yuefei was a member of the Social Work Department, holding the title of Researcher. Since the great victory at Chengmai in the summer of last year, Researcher Liu had been dispatched from Lingao by the Social Work Department—first to Chengmai, then Qiongshan—becoming a "wanderer." He had conducted social research work in both counties, performing extensive preparatory documentation work for bringing political power to the villages. Because he was out in the countryside almost every day doing research, the danger was extremely high. He had been ambushed by bandits and local strongmen once in Chengmai and four times in Qiongshan. Though he escaped unscathed each time, he had still eaten plenty of hardship.

Liu Xiang sometimes wondered what exactly kept this fellow clansman of his persisting on the front lines. He didn't even have a life secretary—a true model among transmigrators. Once, out of goodwill, Liu Xiang had suggested that Liu Muzhou officially appoint Liu Yuefei as deputy director of the Qiongshan County Office. But before Liu Muzhou could even respond, Liu Yuefei firmly refused:

"I still have to go back to take a post in Lingao."

But when he would return to Lingao, nobody knew. Liu Xiang had vaguely heard that Liu Yuefei had been "exiled." He found this somewhat hard to believe—transmigrators had great political protection; even the Executive Committee didn't dare openly pull tricks in this area. He felt there must be some other factor involved.

Unfortunately Liu Yuefei wasn't here today—he had gone to the countryside again to inspect relief work. Otherwise, they could have had a good discussion.

He began carefully studying the documents and telegrams that had been delivered. Correctly understanding the central spirit was the primary job of a local official.

The center's line was very clear: provide more favorable treatment to relieve the proletariat, attract them to the core area to work and train them into industrial workers; purchase land at better prices from middle peasants, rich peasants, and small landlords willing to sell, turn them into proletarians, and retain them as a reserve army for industrial labor.

From current actions, there was no indication of attitude toward the major landlords, local strongmen, and clan powers who had some capacity to resist disasters. None of the dispatches mentioned how to handle this stratum, but considering Ma's political leanings and related circumstances, it was likely some ugly measures would be adopted.

Although the Nine Elders talk about unifying China, taking all of East Asia, dominating the globe and such, in practice their vision really isn't very broad, Liu Xiang thought, leaning back in his chair with eyes closed, his right-hand fingers constantly tapping the huanghuali-wood computer desk.

Pulling everything to Lingao, doing this to the peripheral administrative regions—how can the localities develop this way!

Capitals always absorbed a nation's entire essence. Liu Xiang felt Lingao was now showing the same tendency, especially when the Senate's rule was limited to a mere island—this tendency was especially pronounced. War spoils and captives from everywhere were continuously shipped to Lingao; all construction revolved around Lingao...

After his external posting, when considering problems, Liu Xiang increasingly leaned toward developing the localities rather than endlessly bleeding them for Lingao. In his heart, he believed the transmigrators' various grievances and contradictions toward the Executive Committee were merely symptoms of the territory being too small—too many carrots, too few holes. Once the territory expanded and transmigrators were posted outward, with the actual work handed off to naturalized citizen cadres, these contradictions would disappear. What he needed to do was get ahead by training a large batch of capable naturalized citizen cadres, governing a locality well, building a solid base, establishing a network of relationships, and laying the groundwork for becoming a major regional official in the future.

He called in his orderly and had the strapping young man pedal the power-generating bicycle. This task had previously been done by Guo Ling'er, but after news spread that Tang Menglong had a son, he had assigned most of this duty to the orderly, while Guo Ling'er only pedaled for half an hour after her afternoon nap for exercise. This time Liu Xiang was preparing to write several articles, and his habit from writing papers meant each one took considerable time—he needed to consult lots of data and references to make his arguments persuasive.

First, he consulted historical data on land transfers after typhoons. This intelligence was a product of integrating Qiongshan County's own records, intelligence reports, and interrogations of the former county yamen clerks to obtain the most realistic figures possible. Using analysis software he had written himself, combined with data from previous years, he discovered that under multi-layered exploitation by landlords and old officials, peasants' attachment to their land remained undiminished. Many peasants would rather dig wild vegetables and eat chaff than give up their land. This was especially pronounced among poor and middle peasants—the less land they had, the more attached they became. Rich peasants with more land might sell a small portion to survive famine—though under various pressures they had to pay even more for the privilege.

After comprehensive simulation, he generated a projected ratio. He then inputted into his simulation analysis tool the list of people who, under the Propaganda Department's influence the previous night, had expressed willingness to sell land to the Australians in exchange for worker eligibility—data that had been rushed through overnight. He ran calculations using various weighted indices and probability estimates, and finally marked out on a map of Qiongshan County the "land likely to be sold to Australians."