Chapter 324: Emerging Problems

The subsidy amount would be roughly the average price of a common female slave between the ages of 16 and 25 in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, with the market price in Guangzhou’s human market as a guide. Special “goods” like the “Slender Horses” would not be considered.

Those who intended to buy a slave after receiving the subsidy would pay the cost to the organization, entrusting the caretaker cabinet to make a unified purchase. Those with no intention to buy could do whatever they wanted with the money. Those who didn’t want to buy a native girl now could save the money to buy a Slavic foreign woman later.

“The company I used to work for organized summer tours. Originally, it was a unified route, and the company paid for it, but everyone was still dissatisfied. In the end, they switched to directly issuing a travel allowance and organizing several high, medium, and low-end routes with clear prices. You could go for a cheaper one if you wanted, or you could pay the extra for a more expensive one. It was also fine if you didn’t want to go. Everyone was satisfied.”

This approach had several benefits. First, it catered to those transmigrators who were inconvenient or unable to enjoy the benefit, ensuring everyone received the same public welfare. The act of buying a slave became a personal act. You paid for as many as you bought, and you paid the price for whatever kind you wanted. If the goods weren’t available now, you could wait until they were available later, fully satisfying everyone’s needs.

Second, it made it easier to draw a line under past issues.

“The women who have already been distributed, including those like Chang Shide’s, would be impossible to sort out if we continued to dwell on it. It would only hurt our comrades’ feelings and affect unity. With this plan, we can declare that those who have already enjoyed a life secretary, whether assigned or purchased with public funds, will not receive the maid subsidy this time. Those who own an excessive number of female slaves can just pay the difference to the caretaker cabinet, and the matter will be settled.”

“A complete monetization of distribution,” Ma Jia summarized. He hadn’t expected the perpetually gloomy Ji Xin to have such a broad mind.

“Yes, only in this way can we quantify ‘people’,” Ji Xin said. “Of course, the supply of goods must also be organized. Having money but no goods would be an empty promise. I suggest we forget about Japanese women. Not only is the distance great, but the shogunate would not support the export of women. In contrast, Vietnamese women are not difficult to obtain. We might as well have the Leizhou station purchase a batch—I hear the quality of women in northern Vietnam is quite good. If no one wants to buy them, they can be sent to the textile factory as slave labor.”

“Good,” Ma Jia said. “Organize your plan and send it out immediately.”

After online discussions and collecting written proposals, several rounds of discussions and votes, the life secretary distribution plan was finally decided in early January 1630. Ji Xin’s plan won the approval of the majority. People were skeptical of others’ aesthetic tastes when it came to women. Some who had wives and girlfriends had not yet successfully persuaded their families and were already distressed at the thought of giving up this opportunity. The cash distribution at least left them a glimmer of hope.

Among the five hundred, the only one who held a clear opposing view was Du Wen. Hearing that the maid issue was being discussed so openly, Du Wen stormed into the Executive Committee compound and pushed open the door to Ma Qianzhu’s office.

“Commissar! What is going on? How has our organization become so vulgar—so obscene…” Tears welled up in Du Wen’s eyes, on the verge of falling.

Ma Qianzhu continued to organize the materials on his desk, ignoring her.

Du Wen didn’t care and sat down in the rattan chair opposite him. Wiping her tears with a handkerchief, she said angrily, “As a key leader, how can you remain silent on this matter? This trampling of women’s dignity and human rights is too much!” Once she started, she couldn’t stop listing her grievances: how some cadres treated their assigned female secretaries as concubines, working during the day and sleeping with them at night; how women were never considered when promoting native cadres; how there was no special care for women among the native laborers, and on the contrary, many heavy and tiring jobs were assigned to women… Finally, she also mentioned that there should be a quota for female transmigrators in the second Executive Committee.

In short, it was a summary of the problems in the Transmigration Group’s women’s work at the current stage. Du Wen strongly demanded that the Executive Committee rectify this. Of course, this plan to buy and distribute female slaves should also be cancelled. Her proposal was to let people “fall in love freely,” giving native women full freedom of choice, rather than being judged and purchased like objects.

While Du Wen’s complaints flowed endlessly, Ma Qianzhu continued to organize the documents on his desk. Only after Du Wen’s complaints came to a pause did he speak:

“Ah Wen, your current tendency is very bad.” He leaned back in his rattan chair. “A leader must first be good at uniting the majority. Are these so-called problems you’ve raised a way to unite the majority?” His voice was not loud, and his tone was gentle, but the sternness it conveyed made Du Wen dare not speak.

“Think about it, how many women are there among these five hundred people? How many men? What is a basic principle of democracy? You should be grateful to the Party and the government for constantly instilling the concepts of gender equality and women’s rights protection in the masses for the past sixty years. This inertia has not yet disappeared from the minds of most men in this group, but people who want to do as they please have existed for a long time.” Ma Qianzhu’s tone became even more severe. “Do you want to give them a full opportunity to use democracy?”

Du Wen shivered. Seeing her most respected Commissar Ma speak so seriously, her original grand passion instantly diminished by ninety-nine percent. She twisted her handkerchief with her fingers. “Aren’t you a key leader of the Executive Committee?”

“The Executive Committee has been dissolved. I am now serving in the caretaker cabinet, and this term will end in less than thirty days.”

“That’s just a formality…”

“Whether it’s a formality or not, we must respect the will of the people,” Ma Qianzhu said. “You should focus more on your theoretical articles.”

Seeing that further words were useless, Du Wen had to leave. Before she left, she couldn’t help but say, “Commissar! Are you just going to let them do as they please?”

Ma Qianzhu did not answer her.

After leaving Ma Qianzhu’s office, Du Wen was still not reconciled and continued to canvass privately. However, to her disappointment, the women in the Transmigration Group seemed uninterested in this matter. Some said that their boyfriends or husbands would not want any “female slaves,” while others said that if they were just bought to do housework, they would also like to buy one.

There was even a girl who said that as long as her position as the main wife was not shaken, it was not out of the question for her husband to have a few concubines. “As long as the number is controlled within four, it’s OK, but I must have absolute leadership!”

Seeing this girl’s comments, Du Wen wanted to cry but had no tears. After leaving the dormitory, she could only curse to herself, “Backward! A disgrace to women!”

Finally, she found Li Mei. Li Mei had been on edge for the past few days, not because of the matter of distributing secretaries, but because of the news of the Executive Committee’s dissolution and the upcoming second general assembly.

Since Li Mei’s family was inexplicably involved in this transmigration and unwillingly became members of the Transmigration Group, they had done quite well over the past year and a half. Li Mei even felt that being drawn into the wormhole was a blessing in disguise. In their original time, she and her husband were already retired at home. Although her daughter-in-law’s career was smooth, she had no major backer, and her room for advancement was limited.

But in this time and space, her old man had become a naval consultant. Looking at his health, he could probably work for another ten or twenty years. When the navy department expanded in the future, he could at least become a vice admiral or admiral before retiring. As for her daughter-in-law, she was now the “Director of the Li District Affairs Office” and also a police station instructor. Li Mei estimated that whether she developed in the direction of ethnic affairs or public security, her daughter-in-law’s position would not be low. In the future, she could at least become a deputy ministerial-level official.

Her son’s situation was not very satisfactory, but her family’s basic position in the new world was stable. The next step was to work hard to improve the family’s social status and accumulate more wealth.

She had started a women’s cooperative, and business had been booming for the past year. Although strictly speaking, she hadn’t made much money—her goods, building materials, and even the labor for building the houses were all on credit. She had to use her income to offset these debts. After deducting these costs, she also had to pay the 20% net profit to the Finance and Economics Committee as agreed. She reinvested all the remaining profits.

Now, the financial situation of the women’s cooperative was far from satisfactory, but as the number of immigrants continued to increase and Dongmen Market became more prosperous, business was getting better day by day.

But the dissolution of the Executive Committee and the subsequent discussions about the second general assembly gave her a bad feeling. She didn’t frequent the internal BBS, but the discussion page her son showed her a few days ago worried her greatly.

Among the few topics of discussion at the general assembly, half were about the women’s cooperative. Many people were questioning the legality of this enterprise and whether it infringed on public rights. More seriously, some accused the women’s cooperative of “embezzling public property and being a tool for corruption by certain individuals in the Executive Committee.”

“This is a great injustice,” Li Mei complained to her family at the dinner table. “I just took the spoils from Gouzhuang on credit from the Executive Committee to sell at the beginning. I’ve already handed over all the income from selling those spoils to the Executive Committee. Besides, I’ve already settled the accounts for some of the unsold inventory. I just made a little profit from the price difference as a sales service fee. How can that be considered corruption?”

“I never approved of you starting a company. See, trouble has come,” Ming Lang said, dissatisfied with his own bystander status and now even more dissatisfied with his mother’s meddling. “People don’t care if you’re wronged or not. You can’t escape the label of ‘infringing on public interests’ now.”

Ming Qiu also said, “You were indeed thoughtless in this matter! It’s true that you seek profit in business, but your actions, to put it bluntly, are official profiteering, and monopolistic official profiteering at that. Making a profit from the Transmigration Group’s spoils of war, a business with no capital—how can people not be envious?!”

“If I don’t make a profit, how can the cooperative’s debts be repaid?” Li Mei was unconvinced. “Building houses, hiring workers, decorating, all cost money. It’s not free. Besides, don’t all the transmigrators own a 20% stake? I’ve handed over every penny of that profit to the Finance and Economics Committee.” She chattered on, “As for taxes, there’s no tax bureau right now. It’s not that I don’t want to pay.”

Mu Min, who had been silent, also spoke up: “Mom, I think you should just hand over the cooperative. Keeping it is a hassle. You’re willing to come out and work, why not be a cadre in the Commercial Committee? They are very short of people there now. It’s so much trouble to do this, and you don’t make much money, yet you’re accused of corruption. Is it worth it?”

Li Mei thought to herself that although she wasn’t making much money now, in the future, it could be at the level of Walmart. She was really reluctant to let it go.

However, what happened next worried Li Mei even more. Ding Ding suddenly came to the cooperative’s office and asked for the application form that Pan Pan had filled out when she became a shareholder. He also returned the share certificate and the 1628-1629 annual financial report that the cooperative had distributed to its shareholders.

Ding Ding refused to explain why he was suddenly withdrawing his shares, only saying that he and Pan Pan should “focus on their main jobs and not be distracted by other things.”

Li Mei, having been through political storms, knew that Ding Ding’s move was called “drawing a clear line.” This panicked her. Ding Ding was the head of the propaganda department. Was his proactive move to draw a clear line a sign that the Executive Committee was going to take action against the cooperative? Or was the pressure of public opinion so great that Ding Ding had to quickly withdraw?

She had been worrying about this for the past few days. She was reluctant to hand over the cooperative. She had put a lot of effort into expanding it to its current scale, and she was sure that the commercial prosperity of Lingao was just beginning. As the power of the Transmigration Group grew, her cooperative would eventually become a commercial empire.

But if she didn’t hand it over voluntarily, when the mass movement came, not only the cooperative, but even her entire family might not be safe—she had witnessed the fury of mass movements. Even if her old man was a naval admiral, it would be useless.

While she was hesitating, Du Wen came in a huff—she had just seen Mu Min, and to her surprise, Mu Min had laughed at her words, saying that men were just impatient animals, which was not surprising. Even if Ming Lang really wanted to get one, she wouldn’t mind. After all, it was just a concubine, who could be used to cook, take care of the children, and do laundry. If she dared to be disobedient or sow discord between husband and wife, she would “beat her until she obeyed.” Mu Min said, “Let her know the power of the main wife.”

When Du Wen suddenly visited, she thought she was here to discuss this matter with her—after all, Du Wen was also a shareholder and had been one of her most ardent supporters at the beginning. To her surprise, when Du Wen sat down, she started talking about “life secretaries” and “women’s rights being violated,” which was very annoying. But Du Wen was a cadre, and Li Mei couldn’t just ignore her. She had no choice but to make a cup of tea and chat with her.