Chapter 1935 - Women Cadres of the New Era

The Qiongya Detachment's first cadre selection roster for northward political takeover operations originally excluded Zhu Qiujing's name—she belonged to purely technical cadres, not immediately needed. However, establishing a Computing Center in Guangdong had been placed on the agenda.

With the South China Strategy's continuous advancement, plans to establish a new Data Center in Guangzhou had been explicitly scheduled. Though Senator personnel arrangements remained unclear, within the naturalized cadres deployment list, Zhu Qiujing's name ranked paramount due to her Guangzhou familiarity, excellent professional qualities, and sufficient management experience.

Since she was destined to shoulder burdens, Xu Laowu didn't include her on the cadre promotion list—with imminent external transfer and promotion, occupying a position here proved unnecessary. This promotion therefore focused entirely on technical cadres in "backend" departments, especially several apprentices following Feng Nuo "repairing computers."

Zhu Qiujing harbored no objections; instead, Du Wen arrived to champion justice. Two days prior, she'd dispatched a memo with stiff tone, reminding Xu Laowu that as a venue with dense female cadre and employee concentration, the Data Center should treat women's work as important core tasks, particularly strengthening women cadres' cultivation and appointment. Though no names were directly mentioned, Senator Xu recognized this as protest against his delay in further promoting Zhu Qiujing.

Leaving that aside, the memo's second half naggingly reminded Xu Laowu to "earnestly safeguard women's rights and interests and improve women's status." Xu Laowu personally supported this attitude, but such platitudes mixed into official documents made Xu Laowu cry out intolerably. After all, if she embedded it in official documents, he couldn't not read it—what if some actual business lurked within?

For extended periods, controversy had simmered within the Senate regarding women's status and policies in this timeline. Regarding the radical complete gender equality policy advocated by factions led by Queen Du and Ji Xin, many harbored doubts. Some even proposed advocating gender equality prematurely might not necessarily align with women's current self-positioning and identification on one hand, while on the other, could easily trigger backlash from forces traditionally centered on male power, detrimental to uniting and expanding the ruling base maximally. Yet on one hand, old timeline ideological influences remained, while on the other, more realistic needs—liberating productive forces, releasing human resources, expanding consumption demand—meant most Senators still recognized that in new society, women's status must improve. Regardless of how many explicit or implicit glass ceilings existed in reality, at minimum in laws and norms, gender equality should be supported, striving on this foundation for broader mass understanding and support.

As a certain male Senator from the Social Work Department who assisted drafting the "Instructions" stated during Senate defense: Gender equality constitutes an important symbol distinguishing new society, or modern society, from ancient, feudal societies. Moreover, old timeline experience clearly demonstrated the women's liberation process was simultaneously a process of liberating considerable productive forces. In numerous social positions, women could work better and more stably than men. Additionally, establishing gender equality principles definitely didn't mean factual inequality between men and women would immediately disappear. Even in the old timeline, in Nordic high-welfare countries where so-called equality had somewhat entered obsession's realm, those controlling power were actually mostly still men. What the Senate needed was pushing open this door, clarifying its determination as long-term national policy, leaving the remainder for history to accomplish itself.

Against this general backdrop, less than two years after the Second Plenary Session, the Senate successively passed multiple programmatic documents involving women's legal status, personal rights, social and economic rights, and female cadres' cultivation and appointment. The most important among them were summarized by later generations as "Three Regulations and One Instruction": the "Regulations on Establishing the Legislative Principle of 'Gender Equality'," "Regulations on Guaranteeing Women's Rights to Schooling, Employment, and Promotion," "Regulations on Ensuring Women's Personal Safety and Inheritance Rights," and the aforementioned instruction on strengthening women cadres' cultivation. This series of policies and regulations not only clarified gender equality principles at legislative levels but also proposed specific measure series in judicial and administrative practice while carrying out corresponding organizational guarantees.

Many years later, when global historians with conscience (not necessarily youthful ones) constantly unearthed numerous dark histories from the Senate's early days—the Maid Revolution, slave trading and usage, the Ziming Building Entertainment Group, and the Action in Dengzhou—no one dared deny the Empire's many pioneering contributions promoting human rights and equality. Regardless of Empire attitudes, historians had to admit: "Even with abundant shortcomings and limitations, what arrived globally simultaneously with the Empire's warships and bayonets were unprecedented 'rule of law, equality, and freedom.' Among them, gender equality was an absolute highlight. As renowned future female scholar Beauvoir Du praised unreservedly: (In gender equality fields) before the Senate, there was only eternal night. God said, 'Let the Senators come.' Thus, everything became bright."

Of course, current Senator Xu knew none of this. For him, what required consideration presently was merely how to select naturalized cadres. Anyway, they were basically all women here, and every cadre promotion saw women comprise majorities, so no headache-inducing "sex ratio" problems existed. Moreover, Queen Du had always been at odds with him, and since she didn't name names, let her say whatever she loved to say.

Taking the record book from Team Leader Zhu's hand and chatting briefly, Senator Xu conducted another internal patrol. After checking original data materials constantly accumulating on ground floor shelves arranged like an old timeline library, plus the manual statistics hall where data was being synchronized to wall charts via ladders, Senator Xu confirmed current work progress was entirely normal. After departing less than an hour, he returned to his office, sat before the ThinkPad laptop brought from the old timeline, and continued his exploratory journey on the Senate BBS. This wasn't an outburst of Senator Xu's otaku attributes, but because in several threads recently discussed heatedly online, Senator Xu detected conspiracy scents, and even more unfortunately, he was actually named and involved.

Speaking of this, it related to Queen Du's positioning of Senator Xu—"a typical representative of the decadent and declining bourgeois forces in the Senate." Senator Xu graduated from a 985 university in the late 90s majoring in computational mathematics. Upon graduation, he caught the first internet bubble's favorable timing, successfully launched a startup with several senior classmates, secured some venture capital, sold to a listed company, and netted a modest fortune. Speaking frankly, as a successful person who possessed house and car at young age in the early 21st century, Senator Xu should have absolutely zero motivation or determination participating in the transmigration, nor did he fit most transmigrators' standard image.

However, fate embodied such an elusive entity. Currently high-spirited Senator Xu first married his university girlfriend. Though they didn't immediately have children, their years together were harmonious and happy. What followed was a typical third-rate television drama plot. During business dealings, he met a stylish, beautiful female client. Senator Xu, half a "phoenix man," uncontrollably had something transpire with her. But unfortunately, Senator Xu didn't possess the skill to keep colorful flags fluttering outside while the red flag at home didn't fall. His first wife resolutely divorced him, taking substantial family property. The subsequent plot was equally clichéd. Shortly after the mistress upgraded to fiancée, Senator Xu discovered he was never his future wife's only one; what attracted her was probably just his modest wealth.

Senator Xu, dealt a crushing blow, wanted to return and consume grass he'd left behind, but suddenly sadly discovered his first wife had already taken a step ahead: she'd married a former high school classmate. This time, Senator Xu felt somewhat like all hopes were dashed. For a while, he resorted to forums and gaming to amuse himself. Precisely then, by chance, he saw CEO Wen's recruitment post. If before, such a post would be merely another MLM advertisement form to Senator Xu. But to eyes of someone who'd just experienced drastic life change, if there truly existed chances to change time and space to live, it might prove quite interesting. Holding the mindset that worst case was a seaside trip, Senator Xu boarded the plane heading south and finally got on the Transmigration Company's pirate ship.

After surviving chaotic days following D-Day and acting as basic labor—which helped Senator Xu reduce his waist size by three increments—due to Senator Xu's information system design and management work experience in the original timeline, coupled with his older age and more mature work style, Senator Xu was chosen by the Planning Agency to establish the Planning Agency Data Center, mainly for data statistics and management. He could claim to have built this institution and team single-handedly, brick by brick. Though work couldn't be called completely satisfactory, seeing his efforts bear fruit still granted him considerable satisfaction. With the new Data Center building's completion and activation, work in all aspects showed even more flourishing momentum. As all this's promoter, Senator Xu's days during this period could be counted as smooth sailing.

But just these few days, a post by a Senator who'd long opposed the Senate's ruling system suddenly appeared on the BBS, targeting the longstanding Senator share dividend system. The Senators' shares issue was first clarified at the first Transmigrator Conference in the old timeline, the so-called "Training Ground Conference." Though later revised and detailed through two plenary sessions, with relatively clear methods for acquiring and calculating this one-fifth of the Senate, initial shareholding ratios and amounts didn't change significantly. That is, Senators' shareholding ratios were mainly calculated from funds and materials they provided in the old timeline, bearing little relationship to their new timeline performance. This post's main attack point was here, and unfortunately, Senator Xu was cited as an example and became a target.

(End of Chapter)