Chapter 1805 - Self-Justification
"The concept of revolution is neither a foreign import nor a modern invention—its historical lineage reaches far back through Chinese history, though I won't belabor the etymological details. In the modern ideological sense, revolution represents a profound qualitative transformation occurring within the developmental processes of nature, society, or human thought. Everything we've undertaken since entering Guangzhou constitutes revolution in this fundamental sense."
Zhang Yunmi found herself suddenly overwhelmed by this cascade of abstract political vocabulary and nodded involuntarily, somewhat defensively.
"Revolution is an extraordinarily complex social movement, inevitably filled with tactical measures taken according to principles of expediency, urgency prioritization, and strategic delay. There will be setbacks, even outright errors. In the final analysis, governing a city or administering a country is decidedly not a pleasant dinner party, nor is it composing a refined literary essay. Everything must be evaluated from the hard realistic perspective of actual social environmental constraints and one's own institutional capabilities."
Zhang Yunmi gazed at him with an expression of sincere but incomplete understanding, which only served to make Liu Xiang feel increasingly self-satisfied with his impromptu lecture.
"We possess two distinct but complementary purposes in comprehensively rectifying the prostitution industry. One motivation is indeed fiscal—by systematically governing and regulating this sector, we capture an enormous gray financial revenue source currently wandering outside the formal economy and render it institutionally 'transparent' and taxable. The second purpose is genuinely, sincerely to advance 'women's liberation' as a social cause." Liu Xiang continued with evident conviction, "Juxtaposing these two motivations side by side might superficially seem self-contradictory or cynically opportunistic, but they're actually organically connected at a deeper structural level."
The comprehensive agenda of women's liberation wasn't some decision Liu Xiang had made impulsively under Du Wen's ideological influence during late-night political discussions. In Liu Xiang's pragmatic assessment, women's liberation meant first and foremost the liberation and mobilization of an enormous untapped labor force—doubling the available human capital. Secondly, systematic women's liberation would inevitably accelerate the structural collapse of traditional Confucian patriarchal society and its ossified hierarchies. Both consequences were extraordinarily beneficial to the emerging Australian Song regime's consolidation and thus must be promoted decisively without hesitation or apology.
But this profoundly transformative work had to proceed gradually, in carefully calibrated stages—not only because the inevitable resistance from deeply ingrained social customs and vested male interests would be enormous, but also because the new Guangzhou municipal regime currently suffered from acute cadre shortages, especially trained women cadres capable of implementing such sensitive policies. Thus he could realistically begin only with the comparatively manageable project of rectifying the commercial prostitution industry.
"Is the core strategic logic that rectifying the prostitution industry encounters the least organized resistance within traditional conservative society, yet simultaneously yields particularly large tangible benefits across multiple dimensions?" Zhang Yunmi ventured analytically.
Liu Xiang nodded with visible approval. The student shows genuine aptitude after all!
"Exactly correct. Even within deeply traditional Confucian society, mainstream elite moral concepts have historically taken profoundly negative views of the commercial prostitution industry as inherently degrading. However superficially corrupt and sexually debauched late Ming urban social atmosphere may appear to modern eyes—with the celebrated Eight Beauties of Qinhuai feted among scholar-official circles in seemingly remarkable openness—at the level of overall normative social morality, prostitution has always occupied gray-market status at best, never achieving full legitimacy."
Therefore, the Senate's campaign to ban and systematically rectify the prostitution industry could legitimately claim the powerful rhetorical banner of "Confucian moral righteousness" across virtually the entire social spectrum. The upper and middle classes would absolutely refuse to leap forward to oppose such reforms openly—doing so would immediately and irrevocably blacken their own public reputations and social standing.
"Despite the ritualistic moral disdain habitually directed at the prostitution industry by respectable society, the actual economic profits involved are genuinely impressive. Since ancient times, it has been recognized as a coveted piece of lucrative meat." Liu Xiang explained with the air of someone imparting hard-won practical wisdom. "Consequently, any commercial prostitution enterprise necessarily requires some form of external protection to operate sustainably. Consider this parallel—in the old timeline's modern China, most women working as professional escorts maintained so-called 'boyfriends' on retainer. These boyfriends functioned actually as disguised 'bodyguards' providing security. Scale this individual arrangement up to a substantial commercial organization like a traditional brothel establishment, and the protection problem immediately exceeds what one or two hired muscle thugs can adequately handle. The necessary institutional backing must encompass both 'black' elements—local organized criminal gangs—and 'white' elements—baojia neighborhood officials, yamen functionaries, powerful local gentry with political connections.
"Yet even with such elaborate dual backing firmly in place, the brothel proprietor still cannot be guaranteed operational safety and legal immunity, precisely because the underlying business model itself is inherently morally unconscionable and legally vulnerable. It inevitably involves explicitly criminal acts: 'forcing respectable women into prostitution through debt bondage,' 'employing private illegal torture,' 'participating in human trafficking networks,' 'driving desperate women to suicide or death through abuse'—even judged by feudal dynastic legal codes, these practices blatantly violate statutory law. So the protection required becomes even more powerful and expensive, extending to higher levels of authority. From a certain analytical perspective, their operational environment is considerably more treacherous and legally precarious than that facing ordinary legitimate merchants. More powerful 'immortals' and corrupt officials must receive regular 'offerings' and tribute payments, and their appetites naturally grow larger over time. Fail to manage bribery relationships properly, and virtually anyone with minor authority can manufacture trouble and extract additional payments. Within the brothel industry specifically, then, the hidden interest distribution channels operating behind the public facade are extraordinarily complicated and politically entangled."
Zhang Yunmi absorbed this with an expression hovering between comprehension and confusion, so she simply nodded agreement to avoid revealing ignorance.
"If we genuinely want to systematically purge the various entrenched 'immortals' and corrupt power brokers parasitically feeding within Guangzhou's walls, we absolutely must cut off their established financial revenue sources at the root. Not merely cut them off passively—this accumulated wealth must be actively redirected to our institutional use, because we fundamentally cannot afford the enormous funds required for comprehensive social transformation otherwise. Additionally, brothel establishments naturally function as shelters harboring various categories of criminals evading justice, so we must decisively take down this notorious disaster zone of urban social governance as our initial priority target."
Having labored through articulating these half-sincere political principles and half-fabricated post-hoc justifications, visible sweat had appeared on Liu Xiang's forehead despite the room's comfortable temperature. But judging objectively by the rhetorical effect achieved, he appeared to have successfully impressed and intellectually intimidated the idealistic young woman seated before him.
"It truly seems that serious administrative governance work isn't remotely simple or straightforward. The decision-making calculus is so dauntingly complicated!"
"Precisely so," Liu Xiang confirmed with the satisfied air of a teacher whose lesson has landed. "Competent decision-making must carefully consider not only the ultimate policy goal but also one's own realistic institutional capabilities and current political positioning. Even goals themselves must be analytically distinguished and prioritized as short-term tactical objectives, medium-term strategic aims, or long-term transformative visions."
Unable to sustain the impressive theoretical bluster any longer without risking exposure of the limits of his own understanding, Liu Xiang hurriedly buried his attention back in the remaining stack of mundane documents awaiting review.
Having systematically processed more than half the incoming and outgoing correspondence piled on his desk, Liu Xiang had noticed with satisfaction that Zhang Yunmi's documentary work was becoming increasingly proficient with each passing day. Not only were her content summaries growing more analytically concise and precisely targeted, but she could now intelligently categorize documents by thematic content and arrange them in logical priority order, creating substantially better conditions for his efficient review. Judging from the current documentary flow, submission contents still didn't fundamentally stray beyond the traditional three bureaucratic themes: claiming credit for achievements, complaining bitterly about operational hardships, and requesting additional resources or personnel.
After the critically important municipal departments had finally been reinforced with the judicial court system team led by the formidable Liang Xinhu, governmental operations had at last become reasonably complete and internally self-consistent, producing markedly improved administrative efficiency in recent weeks. The problem of aggressive beggar panhandling and organized extortion—which prosperous merchants had complained most bitterly about as damaging to commerce—had been substantially curbed after the police bureau strengthened daily patrol presence and conducted several high-profile public trials with harsh sentences. Regarding the proposed establishment of specialized "commercial petition police" to handle merchant grievances, Liu Xiang had strategically dropped hints at recent Federation of Industry and Commerce meetings, and major merchant houses and guild leadership had demonstrated great enthusiastic interest in partially funding such a force.
The intensive interrogation of several captured ringleaders from the violent criminal attack on the Chaoshan Guild Hall, combined with detailed questioning of detained former yamen runners with inside knowledge, had enabled the police intelligence system to master considerably more actionable information about the city's underworld. The intricate chains of corrupt relationships entangling Guangzhou Prefecture's original trade guilds with organized criminal elements had been systematically exposed through this investigation. Police Chief Mu Min was now keenly interested in launching a much broader "comprehensive crackdown on gang organizations and evil criminal forces" throughout the city. Today's correspondence included multiple enthusiastic documents from various police divisions simultaneously claiming credit for preliminary work and urgently advocating for expanded operations.
Documents complaining about severe operational hardships came overwhelmingly from administrative personnel deployed working in the countryside beyond city walls. The rural governance situation remained extraordinarily complex and resistant to reform. Though the National Army could collect Reasonable Burden taxation without particular difficulty wherever organized units passed through territory, and official requisitions for labor service and grain supplies generally met with sullen obedience, the civilian work teams tasked with deeper administrative penetration simply could not successfully "sink down" into village-level society.
Except for those specific villages violently purged and restructured during the Pearl River Estuary breakthrough military campaign, the remaining rural communities were still tightly controlled by traditional local power structures. Moreover, these entrenched local forces were predominantly organized around clan lineage organizations possessing extremely strong internal cohesion and mutual loyalty—rendering ordinary bureaucratic divide-and-conquer methods almost completely useless. Systematic social surveys attempted by work teams could scarcely be completed with any accuracy; even basic household registration census operations encountered enormous obstruction and resistance, with teams essentially forced to record passively whatever cooperative village elders chose to report as fact.
Security conditions between scattered villages and market towns remained dangerously poor, with numerous small bandit groups emerging opportunistically in the power vacuum. The overstretched National Army garrison forces could currently maintain real control only over county administrative seats, major market towns with economic significance, and critical transportation corridor hubs—merely securing "points and lines" on the map, utterly unable to pacify and govern the broader rural area between these nodes.
Serious constraints on the safe movement of both personnel and commodity circulation meant that many local agricultural products and craft goods couldn't be transported out and sold to external markets, while essential grain supplies couldn't be safely conveyed inward to deficit areas. Predictable food ration shortages and sharply rising grain prices had already begun appearing in some isolated localities. Destabilizing rumors proliferated wildly through the anxious countryside; popular sentiment was growing increasingly unstable and potentially explosive...
The frustrated work teams believed it strategically urgent to "seize several typical exemplary cases," deliberately employing overwhelming violent means to thoroughly purge and brutally suppress banditry as a demonstration, while simultaneously "killing the chicken to terrorize the watching monkeys" against recalcitrant local power structures. Work team personnel composing these reports pointedly noted that virtually all active bandit groups maintained collusion relationships with protective local elite forces who sheltered them.
Liu Xiang methodically drafted preliminary work action items in his administrative notebook as he processed reports: dispatch cooperative purchasing agents to the countryside as rapidly as possible to buy local products and transport grain inward, thereby stabilizing volatile markets; determine optimal methods to better coordinate the National Army's ongoing bandit suppression military operations with civilian governance objectives; urgently address the comprehensive reorganization and political rectification of semi-autonomous rural militia forces currently operating under ambiguous authority...
Just at that focused moment, with a sudden decisive thump, the office door was pushed open without warning or courtesy. Being alone in a room with an attractive young woman, Liu Xiang pragmatically hadn't bothered locking the door securely—and generally speaking, absolutely no one would be suicidally foolish enough to barge directly into Great Prefect Liu's private office without announcement. But "generally" emphatically did not include fellow Senators operating under assumptions of institutional equality.
Liu Xiang glanced up sharply; Zhang Yunmi turned her head with startled curiosity. They both stared at the figure dramatically framed in the doorway almost simultaneously.
It was an unexpectedly rare visitor: Senator Ding Ding. Following the recent upper-level Senate organizational reorganization, unfavorable rumors and critical gossip about Ding Ding circulating within the Senator corps had suddenly multiplied in volume and viciousness. Malicious speculation suggested that catty gossip originally circulating exclusively at maids' informal tea party gatherings had gradually infiltrated upward into the Senator class proper through various social channels.
This embarrassing phenomenon had naturally attracted the new government leadership's concerned attention and prompted several defensive institutional countermeasures. All Senators had been issued formal guidance "strongly discouraging palace intrigue games and pillow talk political maneuvering." Meanwhile, certain indiscreet public remarks attributed to Ding Ding's wife Penny had also begun circulating through gossip networks, causing considerable dissatisfaction and resentment among many tradition-minded Senators who viewed her comments as inappropriate.
Ding Ding himself, finding himself directly employed as the primary target in all this unpleasant political drama, had possessed absolutely no desire to remain in Lingao conspicuously attracting negative attention and whispered speculation. After a brief telegraph exchange, he had strategically fled to Guangzhou to ostensibly "supervise and provide expert guidance for propaganda work in the newly Liberated Guangzhou Area." His actual substantive main responsibility was organizing and launching the new Yangcheng Express newspaper as the regime's primary propaganda organ.
Ding Ding had impulsively barged into the office and, suddenly registering the scene of Liu Xiang and the attractive Zhang Yunmi working together in private proximity, displayed a rapidly shifting sequence of transparent reactions: initial stunned surprise, then visible excitement as if stumbling upon potentially scandalous news, then palpable disappointment at failing to catch any genuinely compromising behavior, and finally something uncomfortably resembling personal jealousy. In mere seconds, his facial complexion had traversed virtually the entire emotional spectrum.
Liu Xiang was acutely aware that among the several dozen Senators currently stationed in Guangzhou, many privately discussed and speculated about his obvious interest in "feasting on tender young grass" with younger women. Liu Xiang remained studiously indifferent to such provincial gossip. He calmly set down the administrative documents in his hand and rose courteously to welcome his unexpected visitor.
"Minister Ding, what an unexpectedly rare pleasure!" Liu Xiang extended his left hand in greeting for a handshake—Ding Ding was awkwardly clutching some document folders under his right arm, rendering that hand obviously inconvenient for the gesture. "What important instructions does the esteemed Minister bring today? We're genuinely all ears and eager to learn!"
Having his conversational initiative so smoothly seized and redirected by Liu Xiang's practiced bureaucratic courtesy, and acutely conscious of Zhang Yunmi's observing presence as a witness, Ding Ding found himself with little choice but to follow Liu Xiang's diplomatic prompt and settle somewhat stiffly onto the guest reception sofa.
"How would I possibly dare presume to deliver instructions to the mighty Lord Liu!" Ding Ding shot back with barely concealed irritation. "Xiao Qiu from the Municipal Propaganda Section is a genuinely capable officer I personally selected and dispatched to your administration. Yet not only do you consistently refuse to approve the propaganda campaign plans his section produces and submits, but you actively strangle their operational capacity and explicitly forbid the mobilization of propaganda materials and resources. Old Liu, did Xiao Qiu personally or our entire Ministry of Culture and Propaganda institutionally somehow grievously offend you? Just give me a direct straight answer!"
After venting his accumulated anger and frustration in this pointed outburst, Ding Ding placed the document folders he'd brought prominently on the coffee table beside the guest sofa and pushed them deliberately toward Liu Xiang across the polished surface: "I know you claim to address substantive issues rather than attacking people personally. I directly supervised the team while they completely redrafted this propaganda plan from first principles. Examine it carefully first, then tell me honestly if you still harbor any legitimate operational concerns!"
(End of Chapter)