Chapter 870 - Jiangnan General Office

As Zhao Yingong's work in Hangzhou gradually gained momentum, the External Intelligence Bureau's network across Jiangnan began taking shape. The land and sea route enterprises also established themselves in various locations—though this work progressed slowly. Opening branches in unfamiliar territory was no simple matter, let alone conducting actual business.

Of all the trading houses, the External Intelligence Bureau placed the greatest strategic importance on Qiwei's positioning. As the transportation and logistics arm of the land and sea routes, Qiwei Escort Bureau would play a crucial role in future refugee transshipment. Preparations had to be made well in advance.

Qiwei's expansion in Guangdong had been so aggressive that even after Sun Kecheng recruited every usable fellow villager and relative from his Jiangxi hometown, they still couldn't adequately staff every branch with sufficient clerks and escort guards. Running actual escort operations was even more challenging—training a qualified escort guard took many years, and only those who had practiced martial arts from childhood could handle the work. Such people were scarce to begin with. Under the direction of Zhang Xin, who effectively controlled Qiwei's business operations, the company had no choice but to open its doors wide for recruiting escort guards.

Most escort bureaus in Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta had been barely surviving under Qiwei's competitive pressure. Had Sun Kecheng not insisted on maintaining some measure of jianghu righteousness and refused to drive his competitors to drink the northwest wind—leaving some escort business for them—they would all have gone bankrupt long ago. Now, under Zhang Xin's command, this benevolence took on a different character: Qiwei extended an "alliance" olive branch to its competitors.

This so-called "alliance" was annexation—merely cloaking the merger in more palatable garments. Starting from the second half of 1630, riding the prestige of the great victory at Chengmai, Qiwei embarked on a campaign of absorbing its rivals.

After three or four months of integration, Qiwei had absorbed every escort bureau in the Pearl River Delta. Though the other bureaus' business names were all retained, without exception they had become "alliance branches." For Zhang Xin, the greatest acquisition wasn't the network of branch offices extending throughout Guangdong and reaching into Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi—it was the escort bureaus' most valuable asset: their escort guards.

Escort guards embodied the most concentrated expression of traditional Chinese social ethics. They were a remarkably reliable and loyal group. And their involvement in commerce meant they weren't as conservative and hidebound as Confucian pedants.

Such people, with just a little cultivation of loyalty, would become a dependable force at one's command. These were exactly the personnel most urgently needed by elders posted abroad. The elders required such individuals—skilled in martial arts, versed in worldly wisdom, knowledgeable about local conditions, and fundamentally trustworthy—to serve as attendants and field operatives for the Intelligence Bureau.

Zhang Xin first deployed massive numbers of Jiangxi-origin personnel from Qiwei's Guangdong branches to Jiangnan and the capital as advance scouts, deliberately creating a personnel shortage. He then used the opportunity of depleted Guangdong branches to rapidly integrate these new "alliance" forces, thoroughly dismantling the dominance of Jiangxi-origin personnel within Qiwei. Subsequently, he transferred in a batch of naturalized citizens who had previously engaged in commerce from Lingao, placing them in managerial and operational positions at the various branches.

After this comprehensive restructuring, Qiwei had fallen completely into the Elder Council's hands. Though Sun Kecheng still held half the shares in terms of equity, he no longer possessed any control over overall operations or personnel. The Political Security General Administration had previously been pulling "promising young people" from Qiwei to Lingao for "training," and now this program was entirely transparent. Zhao Manxiong had formulated a rotating training schedule for Qiwei personnel, aiming to complete registration, political vetting, and "training" of all Qiwei Escort Bureau personnel by the end of 1632—ultimately bringing Qiwei entirely under Elder Council control.

Simultaneously, Qiwei—as a critical piece on the land and sea routes chessboard—continued its expansion. Because escort guards were no longer sufficient, newly opened branches and outlets mostly appeared in the guise of inns, warehouses, and carriage and boat companies. Escort guards served only as security forces protecting their own facilities and transportation vehicles—the External Intelligence Bureau had positioned Qiwei as a transportation and logistics enterprise. Escorting was merely one of its business lines.

To prepare for the next phase of work, Jiang Shan and Li Yan of the External Intelligence Bureau, Zhang Xin of the Guangzhou Station, and elders from the Commerce Department and Planning Commission together made further adjustments to Qiwei's layout, equity structure, and organization.

The restructured Qiwei would retain the "Escort Bureau" name, reorganizing into Qiwei Escort Bureau United Limited Company. Besides the Elder Council and original Qiwei personnel shares, additional shares were carved out for the absorbed "alliance" bureaus. After intensive maneuvering, a new allocation emerged.

The new Qiwei Escort Bureau United Limited Company's shares were distributed as follows: Elder Council 51%, original Qiwei Escort Bureau personnel 40%, "alliance" personnel 9%. Of each year's net profits, fourteen shares would be distributed as dividends: Elder Council six and a half shares, development fund one share, charitable accumulation fund one share, all bureau personnel five and a half shares.

All personnel listed in the company register would follow Lingao's salary system. Naturalized citizen workers operating outside the Green and Blue Zones, and simultaneously outside the circulation certificate currency zone, would be paid in silver and copper coins. All personnel would be compensated according to the Provisional Occupational Classification and Salary Guidance Standard 1630 Edition and Provisional Vocational Technical Rating Standard 1631 Edition promulgated by the Civil Affairs People's Committee. Since escort guard wasn't originally listed as an occupation in these documents, the Labor Management Bureau specially formulated professional categories and technical grades for escort guards.

Under the new system, every employee in the bureau would receive a salary slip on the tenth of each month, itemizing compensation components: monthly salary, night shift allowance, travel allowance, seniority allowance, and finally skill allowance. Liu Muzhou had assembled a team to create a Martial Arts Rating Table—the higher the level, the higher the skill allowance.

Besides payments, there were also deductions, primarily for welfare purposes. The financial sector had officially rolled out a social insurance system among naturalized citizens. Currently, two items were deducted monthly from compensation: pension and work injury insurance. Since the Elder Council wasn't yet prepared to establish an insurance company, insurance business was handled by Delong Bank.

Organizationally, Qiwei Escort Bureau United Limited Company established a Board of Directors and General Management Bureau in Guangzhou. Three general offices were created beneath it: Guangzhou General Office, Shanghai General Office, and Capital General Office. Each general office had one General Manager, with General Managers appointed from naturalized citizens dispatched by Lingao.

Each general office reported directly to the General Management Bureau and Board of Directors, conducting local business under General Management Bureau direction. In terms of specific jurisdiction, the Qiwei Escort Bureau General Management Bureau fell under the Colonization and Trade Department; the Guangzhou General Office was directed by the Guangzhou Station; the Shanghai General Office was managed by the Hangzhou Station; the Capital General Office was managed by the Beijing Station.

Under this new management system, the Guangzhou General Office was demoted to merely one of three general offices, effectively becoming a branch. It had completely lost its original influence.

For management convenience, the General Management Bureau Director and Board Chairman was Zhang Xin of the Guangzhou Station. Sun Kecheng held the title of Chief Escort and Vice Chairman, but effectively controlled no specific affairs.

Zhang Xin had done substantial work to transform Qiwei Escort Bureau into a large-scale transportation and logistics enterprise. Based on the social conditions of Guangdong in this timeline, he had formulated a comprehensive management system for Qiwei's transportation and logistics operations. This system had proven highly successful in practice. The network that Qiwei had established in Guangdong, particularly in the Pearl River Delta, was continuously refined through operation. In just three or four years, Qiwei had extended its reach throughout Guangdong province and into the adjacent, conveniently accessible regions of Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi.

In the Pearl River Delta, Qiwei Escort Bureau had achieved near-monopoly over the transportation and logistics market—with strong support from the External Intelligence Bureau and Commerce Department, of course.

Now, as the person in charge of the Shanghai General Office, Zhao Yingong was preparing to replicate this model in Jiangnan. This wasn't just preparation for the coming wave of refugee transport; it also aimed to control local economic circulation. Zhao Yingong knew the Elder Council would next "digest" Guangdong, thoroughly incorporating it into Lingao's new economic order, while simultaneously beginning to develop Jiangnan. Laying the groundwork beforehand was one of his essential tasks.

The Jiangsu-Zhejiang region was relatively stable in the late Ming, making it possible to establish large-scale logistics and transportation enterprises. So even before Zhao Yingong arrived in Jiangnan, the first batch of Qiwei personnel had already set out to develop the situation, laying groundwork for subsequently dispatched elder intelligence agents.

To ensure Zhao Yingong's work could proceed smoothly, Zhang Xin not only dispatched several of Qiwei's business veterans to establish operations in Jiangnan, but also requested that the Elder Council select willing-to-travel elders to go to Shanghai and personally oversee this work.

To ensure smooth progress, he also requested that several Special Reconnaissance Unit squads be dispatched to Shanghai to await deployment.

The first expansion initiative of Qiwei Escort Bureau in Shanghai was establishing a long-distance passenger transport company centered on the city.

In this timeline, long-distance travel already generated certain demands, especially in densely populated regions like the Pearl River Delta where population movement was very frequent. Wealthy people naturally had their own carriages, horses, and sedans. Ordinary people either relied on their own feet or hired boats or sedan chairs.

Sedan chairs and boats already had specialized sedan companies and boat companies throughout Jiangnan. But these operations were all small-scale, with low service levels. The sedans and boats they employed were old and worn, with poor sanitation. Most owners in this industry cared little about service quality, focusing only on exploiting customers and workers alike. Sedan and boat workers received meager compensation and could only seek extra income by extorting travelers en route. Inns and porters along the way similarly viewed travelers as meat on the chopping block. So ordinary common people universally dreaded long journeys.