Chapter 1296: Changes

"Greetings, comrades.

This time, the five hundred personnel assigned by the state, the five hundred and fourteen who chose their own employment, and the sixteen Jin Ling natives who returned to build their hometowns have all arrived, totaling one thousand one hundred and thirty people. Even the comrade who arrived latest has already been working for a week.

Everyone has settled into their housing, adapted somewhat to their work, and attended several evening school sessions on ideology. However, the time has ultimately been too short; the comrades are still strangers to one another and have not thoroughly adapted, lacking a clear understanding of our cause. Taking this opportunity today, I will chatter a few words to explain to the comrades what we in Jin Ling are actually doing, how far we have progressed, and what heights we aim to reach."

In the small canteen, over a thousand people, along with the factory leaders and canteen staff, packed the modest space to capacity.

On a small platform in the center of the canteen, Wang Yan stood holding a wired microphone, surrounded by workers gazing at him...

He swept his gaze around, meeting pairs of inquisitive eyes, and continued speaking. Speakers strategically placed around the room carried his voice clearly to everyone's ears.

"First, let us clarify what we are doing: we aim to truly realize socialism in Jin Ling, achieving a great unity society where the young are raised, the elderly are cared for, the sick receive medical treatment, the working population enjoys light and comfortable labor, material resources are abundantly rich, and spiritual civilization is vastly enriched.

The Instructor told us that when undertaking tasks, the first thing to determine is: who are our enemies, and who are our friends? Our friends must be those with firm stances, lofty ideological awareness, dedication to their posts and respect for their professions, diligence and friendliness, altruistic good people.

Who are our enemies? They are bureaucracy, capitalism, egoism, human greed, the vermin within our own ranks, and all reactionaries attempting to sabotage our collective achievements.

Therefore, we must overthrow all enemies who destroy the collective. On this point, comrades must study our ideology courses diligently, read our factory regulations thoroughly, fear no personal connections, and harbor no concerns about leaders. When problems are discovered, point them out; everyone must work together to find solutions. Only thus can our cause endure.

That covers the preceding matters; next, I will explain the overall situation of our county.

At the end of last year, another census was conducted. Our county's registered population exceeds two hundred and seventy thousand, while the number of employees in the Jin Ling Group has now surpassed one hundred thousand. The average wage for employees is sixty-five yuan, with the minimum wage at forty-six yuan...

Our goal for this year is to continue expanding our industrial chains and developing new products. This heavy responsibility falls upon the shoulders of you comrades. Chemicals, chemical fibers, textiles, machinery, steel and iron...

We need better fertilizers, better alloys, better agricultural machinery, better mechanical equipment. Our people must wear better clothes, enjoy more food, and have better medical conditions. Our children must have sufficient nutrition and receive better education...

The comrades present here specialize in agriculture, machinery, chemistry, medicine, teacher training, mathematics, law, and so forth. As the saying goes, one lives and learns; people cannot stop learning or progressing, otherwise they will only fall into nihilism and stray onto the wrong path. Therefore, I hope comrades will fully exercise their subjective initiative, maintain self-learning and self-improvement, and foster an atmosphere of scholarship within our factory.

High wages and high benefits require high contributions. This is the most basic distribution principle of our factory, written as the third article at the beginning of our factory regulations. Individual genius cannot be erased, but a single tree does not make a forest, and the power of the collective cannot be ignored. Comrades must guard against arrogance and impetuosity; under no circumstances should you become complacent.

Comrades have already been working for some time, and since no one has applied for a transfer, I assume you have all accepted your positions. Next, the factory has an arrangement for everyone.

You all know our factory has an evening school and numerous primary schools. Because the county implements twelve years of compulsory education, teaching staff are severely scarce. Now that you comrades have arrived, all being highly educated university graduates, you must take up this burden.

In the coming days, the factory will arrange schedules for everyone. Some will teach students during the day, while others will attend evening classes after work. There will be fixed times each week requiring comrades to teach.

Of course, the factory regulations clearly state: where there is contribution, there is distribution; where there is distribution, there must be contribution. The collective will not let anyone give freely without return, so the factory will add a teaching subsidy for everyone, ranging from ten to twenty yuan.

..."

Wang Yan gave the university graduates a thorough explanation of Jin Ling's affairs, clarified the goals of struggle, and simultaneously conducted ideological correction, though ideological issues cannot be resolved in a short while.

However, that is fine; the factory holds ideology courses, mainly taught by veteran cadres from the factory and the county, with Wang Yan and Secretary Xu occasionally giving lectures as well. The textbooks for ideological education were compiled jointly by the county's leadership cadres, and this book even received approval from Beijing.

Ideological awareness cannot be achieved overnight; it requires long-term persistence.

After addressing the university graduates in this manner, everyone began to eat. Wang Yan held a wine glass, wandered through the crowd, spoke affectionately with the graduates, winning their hearts and giving them the strength to persevere...

Today's meal served as a collective welcome banquet, unifying everyone's thoughts, offering encouragement, and painting a grand vision of a beautiful future.

The work for university graduates is truly not easy. Due to the long-standing shortage of personnel, now that these people have arrived, they were immediately filled into various needed positions without any extra time for reaction, with work intensity maxed out instantly.

As early as last year, after he requested personnel from Beijing, he had already sorted out various business lines and research projects. Once Beijing sent over the list of names, this side immediately allocated them according to needs and matching specialties.

After the New Year, when he escorted Song Yunping to Beijing, the more than five hundred people he recruited along the way also had their lists sent back in advance. According to his prior planning, they were assigned based on their academic majors.

All university graduates entered the factory; not a single one was assigned to the county government...

Of course, while the university graduates are indeed very busy, they are not actually overly exhausted. Because prior to this, Wang Yan had already sorted out the research projects requiring development, specifying clearly what to research and how to research it. All the graduates needed to do was execute, conduct various experiments, and make adjustments to details, and so on.

This work is certainly not as difficult as research, but without professional knowledge, it cannot be done; furthermore, during the process, one must still use one's brain...

The effect of the university graduates' addition is obvious.

Most intuitively, the research progress of various machinery has greatly accelerated. For other projects like chemicals, where work progress cannot be quantified, Wang Yan observed that the speed had also doubled.

The most conspicuous change is that Wang Mou himself has become much more relaxed; workers see him wandering around various places far more often than before.

Of course, this is how it appears to outsiders. In reality, during his wanderings, Wang Yan discovered and resolved many problems. His greatest achievement during this period of liberation was spending more time in the electronics factory, working on electronic watches for nearly a year, and finally successfully developing them.

This is not merely a matter of a watch, but involves everything related to a watch. From electronic components to batteries to casings, issues of manufacturing and production must all be resolved. It is essentially an entire industrial chain, which is why it consumed so much time.

Having resolved manufacturing, the next step is production.

Originally, the electronics factory did not have many people, but this time it was directly expanded by over a thousand workers to begin exploring mass production.

The business for electronic watches is quite good. Since it is only 1982 now, they can be sold until the new millennium. If linked with fashion, similar to the Japanese Casio, selling them until 2082 is also possible.

Undoubtedly, Wang Yan's aesthetic sense absolutely does not resemble crudely made children's watches. Even for children's watches, they must be made beautiful, exquisite, and fashionable.

Therefore, he opened multiple production lines: one for children's watches and another for adult electronic watches.

The children's watches are made of plastic and are very cheap. The adult watches are made of alloy, sturdy, durable, fashionable, and beautiful; of course, the price is also quite striking, more expensive than many mechanical watches.

However, apart from sanitary pads and toilet paper, nothing sold in Jin Ling is cheap.

Thus, everything developed rapidly and in an orderly fashion. More and more agricultural machinery was produced with increasingly stronger performance; textile machinery maintained stable output and sales; worker housing blocks rose one after another; the county's asphalt roads grew longer day by day; and more workers entered the city each day.

Thanks to the introduction of outside populations for labor, the construction speed of various projects in the county accelerated.

With Jin Ling in full operation, the beneficiaries were not limited to Jin Ling alone; the entire city benefited. Regarding the supply of various construction materials, Jin Ling could no longer bear the burden alone. Relevant factories in the city sent materials truckload by truckload to this side, which also drove development in other areas.

Although they provided various preliminarily processed basic materials, lacking further processing links and unable to command higher prices, Jin Ling nevertheless offered them a good price, again bypassing the planned economy. In this regard, Jin Ling has always been very generous.

Thus, by July, the second batch of five hundred personnel assigned by the state, along with twenty-three local university graduates who voluntarily returned home, had arrived, further enlarging Jin Ling's talent pool and accelerating Jin Ling's development...

On the mountaintop, Secretary Xu gazed down at Jin Ling County town below, filled with deep emotion.

More than four years ago, when he first arrived in Jin Ling to serve as county head, he had come to this small hilltop to view Jin Ling. At that time, there were few people on the streets, and the city was not very large. He never expected that now, more than four years later, the streets would be surging with crowds, the city would be too vast to take in at a single glance, and buildings would stand in great numbers...

"Truly, the world has changed..." he remarked with considerable emotion.

"It is all due to the leader's merit," Wang Yan said beside him with a smile. "Without the leader's support, how could Jin Ling have achieved today's results?"

"I know my own weight quite well; do not put a tall hat on me. I am merely benefiting from your light."

"The leader is scolding me again. What do you mean, benefiting from my light? What merit or ability do I possess? It is because the leader holds the people of Jin Ling in his heart. We, the people of Jin Ling, are giving the leader our return; we are good people."

"You..."

Secretary Xu pointed vaguely at Wang Yan, shook his head with amusement, and then asked, "Now that we have talent and you have developed the electronic watches, how do you plan to develop next?"

"We will still follow our previous plan: rural populations moving into the city, land becoming state-owned, agricultural mechanization, maintaining our existing lead in the textile industry while continuing to expand our advantages, comprehensively developing current industries, vigorously developing semiconductors, continuously increasing investment in the county's infrastructure, and accelerating the construction of our worker housing."

"I am asking about the longer term."

"As for the long term, it is what I reported in Beijing: we will undertake industrial upgrading and industrial transfer, eliminating heavily polluting and labor-intensive industries within the county.

Semiconductors are one of the futures; they are the industry our Jin Ling has pinned its hopes on. There is also automobile manufacturing; currently, our bicycle factory has already begun producing motorcycles. With gradual development, we will later build four-wheeled sedans. However, car manufacturing is also labor-intensive; once our technology matures and the quality of our people improves, it too will be transferred to other regions.

"Thus, step by step, we develop our technical industries, transferring the relatively backward ones to other regions, using the labor of other regions' people to earn profits that feed back to our Jin Ling people."

"Just like the United States?"

Wang Yan raised an eyebrow, nodding with a smile: "A leader is a leader; you cut straight to the heart of the matter. The affluent life in the United States relies on hegemony and technological superiority, extracting resources from all over the world. We are largely the same; after all, resources are limited. If others live well while we do not, how can that be acceptable?"

Secretary Xu nodded, let out an 'Ai,' and asked: "The housing for all workers in the county has been fully allocated; when will the housing for government civil servants be distributed?"

"Over there." Wang Yan pointed a finger at a construction site. "However, the rules must still be set clearly: just like the group's workers, they must obey assignments; there absolutely cannot be the mindset that once a house is allocated, it belongs to them."

"Even without saying these things, who would dare to be so presumptuous? Do not treat them differently; they are also part of the Jin Ling people. Everyone must strive to ensure the Jin Ling people live good lives."

"What the leader says is correct."

"I took a look yesterday; the group now has over 132,000 workers. Truly, almost all the labor force has entered the city. In the county's plain regions, half have already achieved mechanization, and in the mountainous areas, nearly a quarter has been advanced. It seems that achieving full agricultural mechanization across the entire county will take just two or three years. You said five years to achieve mechanization; that was quite conservative."

"For our Jin Ling, production is never the problem; we possess a comprehensive industrial foundation and diligent, dedicated people. As long as agricultural machinery can be researched and developed, production will be very fast. The plains are easiest to solve; the terrain is good, the operational scope for machines is large and unrestricted, allowing for straight-forward movement.

One pass over, and the land is plowed; one pass back, and the seeds are sown. Coupled with the water conservancy projects we first perfected in the plains, it is very convenient. The difficulty lies only in researching and developing large-scale agricultural machinery for every link of the planting operations.

Our production capacity is sufficient; by the end of next year, the county's plains are expected to achieve complete mechanization. The mountainous areas are more complex and require more agricultural machinery..."

Wang Yan paused, then continued, "I am wondering if we could abandon some land that is difficult to cultivate and instead develop it into plantations. I see that in the last ten years, grain output has increased year by year, and the quantity of grain we import is also growing. I believe that in a few years, our grain and oil will no longer be rationed. Our Jin Ling has money; we can fully afford to buy grain."

"That idea of yours is very dangerous. I remember what you say most often: 'What others have, we must have; what others do not have, we must still have,' insisting that we hold our own rice bowls in our hands."

"Times are different now, and furthermore, grain is another issue. If we slightly increase grain output in our plain regions, it can cover the mountainous areas. Primarily, it is an economic calculation; operations in mountainous areas require us to invest more manpower, especially since some plots are extremely uneven, increasing operational difficulty. Even with agricultural machinery, many hands are still needed.

Those on slopes are easy to handle; we have specifically designed agricultural machinery capable of operating on inclines, solving that problem. It is these extremely uneven, fragmented plots that are hard to deal with. Previously, I asked comrades from our county's Agriculture Bureau to compile statistics; there are over 40,000 mu of such land, though less than 50,000 mu.

After deducting arable land occupied by the county town's expansion, as well as arable land encroached upon for other operations, our county's land can still be maintained at over 250,000 mu. The reduced 40,000-plus mu should be counted toward plantations. The remaining tens of thousands of mu should be counted toward our county's economic development. Overall, we have still ensured balance."

Secretary Xu pondered for a while, then said: "At least for now, we do not yet possess such conditions; you must continue to push forward regardless. As for waiting until conditions are met in the future... that will no longer be under my jurisdiction. Don't say it, but I truly am reluctant to leave."

He sighed again.

"The leader's achievements are remarkable; it is under your leadership that Jin Ling has reached its current situation. Going to a higher position to exert your influence is truly making the best use of one's talents. Moreover, the leader is being transferred directly from a local post to the central government; how wonderful is that? Once the leader prospers, please do not forget to look after Jin Ling; these are all your old comrades-in-arms."

"You are flattering me again," Secretary Xu said with amusement. "Wherever I go, I am from Jin Ling. What Jin Ling does is unique in the entire nation; as long as you all work hard, I will certainly do my best to fight for our Jin Ling.

However, having said that, you young fellow know more leaders than I do; your connections in Beijing are broader than mine. Do you really need my care?"

"Each generation has its own tasks; you are still young, leader; your room for advancement is still very great."

"You ah..."

Secretary Xu laughed again.

He spoke no more, merely gazing down at the county town of Jin Ling below; he looked for a long time.

Finally, he patted Wang Yan on the shoulder, offered no extra words, and simply repeated once more: "Work hard..."

Half a month later, Secretary Xu was relieved of his duties as an official of Jin Ling County; amidst a farewell by the main leading cadres of Jin Ling County and the Jin Ling Group, he departed Jin Ling and returned to Beijing.

Chen Pingyuan was relieved of his duties as a political and legal official and promoted to County Head of Jin Ling, concurrently serving as Deputy Secretary of the County Committee.

Three days later, the city dispatched an old man who looked as if he were nearing retirement to serve as an official of Jin Ling County.

This old secretary was quite interesting; apart from handling daily affairs, he conducted research in the rural areas or fished by the river. He greeted everyone with a beaming smile, and regarding proposals from the county or the factories, he basically agreed very readily.

Undoubtedly, the city had dispatched a good leader to Jin Ling...