Chapter 96 - The Jiangnan Headquarters

As Zhao Yigong’s work in Hangzhou progressively unfolded, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau began to establish its network in the Jiangnan region. The “Mountain and Sea” enterprises also gradually started opening branches in various locations, though this process was slow. Opening a new branch in an unfamiliar place was difficult enough, let alone developing business.

Among all the enterprises, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau placed the most importance on the expansion of Qiewei. As the logistics and transportation arm of the Mountain and Sea lines, the Qiewei Escort Agency was crucial for the future transport of refugees, and preparations had to be made well in advance.

Because Qiewei’s expansion in Guangdong had been so aggressive, even with Sun Kecheng recruiting every available kinsman and relative from his hometown in Jiangxi, they could no longer staff every new branch with enough clerks and escorts. This was especially true for the escort missions themselves—training a qualified escort took many years, and only those who had practiced martial arts from a young age were suited for the job. The pool of such individuals was already small. Under the operational control of Zhang Xin, who effectively managed Qiewei, the agency had no choice but to open its doors to recruit escorts more widely.

Most of the escort agencies in Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta were already struggling to survive under Qiewei’s pressure. If not for Sun Kecheng’s adherence to a certain “code of the martial world,” which prevented him from driving his competitors to ruin and left a small amount of business for them, they would have all gone bankrupt long ago. Now, under Zhang Xin’s command, this mercy took on a new form: Qiewei extended an olive branch of “joint ventures” to its competitors.

These “joint ventures” were, in essence, takeovers, merely dressed up in a more appealing guise. Starting from the latter half of 1630, riding the wave of prestige from the great victory at Chengmai, Qiewei embarked on a path of annexing its rivals.

After a three-to-four-month period of integration, Qiewei had absorbed all the escort agencies in the Pearl River Delta. Although the other agencies kept their names, they were now all “joint venture branches.” For Zhang Xin, the greatest gain was not the network of branches spreading across Guangdong and reaching into Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi, but the most valuable asset of any escort agency: its escorts.

Escorts possessed the strong, conservative social ethics of ancient Chinese society, making them a remarkably reliable and loyal group. Their involvement in commerce, however, meant they were not as stubbornly conservative as pedantic scholars.

With a little effort to win their loyalty, such men could become a dependable and easily managed force. They were precisely the kind of personnel that the deployed Elders desperately needed. The Elders required a group of highly skilled, worldly-wise individuals who understood society and could be trusted to serve as aides and field agents for the intelligence bureau.

First, Zhang Xin dispatched a large number of the Jiangxi-native personnel from Qiewei’s Guangdong branches to Jiangnan and the capital to act as pioneers, further exacerbating the personnel shortage. He then used the vacancies in the Guangdong branches to quickly fill the ranks with the newly acquired forces from the “joint ventures,” completely dismantling the dominance of the Jiangxi clique within Qiewei. Subsequently, he transferred a group of Guihua personnel with commercial backgrounds from Lin’gao to fill the management positions in the various branches.

After this thorough restructuring, Qiewei was firmly in the hands of the Council of Elders. Although Sun Kecheng still held a fifty-percent stake on paper, he no longer had control over the agency’s overall operations or personnel. The General Political Security Bureau had already been selecting “promising young men” from Qiewei for “training” in Lin’gao, and this training was now fully public. Zhao Manxiong established a rotation and training schedule for all Qiewei personnel, planning to complete the registration, political screening, and “training” of the entire staff by the end of 1632, ultimately bringing Qiewei under the complete control of the Council.

Meanwhile, as a key piece in the Mountain and Sea strategy, Qiewei continued its expansion. Since there were not enough escorts to go around, newly established branches and offices often operated as inns, warehouses, or transport companies. Escorts were primarily used as a security force to protect the agency’s own facilities and vehicles—the Foreign Intelligence Bureau’s vision for Qiewei was a logistics and transport enterprise, with bodyguard services being just one part of its business.

To prepare for the next phase, Jiang Shan and Li Yan from the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, along with Zhang Xin from the Guangzhou Station and Elders from the Ministry of Commerce and the Planning Department, further adjusted Qiewei’s structure, shareholding, and organization.

The restructured Qiewei still operated under the “Escort Agency” name, but it was reorganized into the Qiewei Escort Joint Stock Co., Ltd. In addition to the shares held by the Council of Elders and the original Qiewei staff, a new portion was created for the absorbed “joint venture” agencies. After a period of intense planning, a new share distribution was formed.

The shares of the new Qiewei Escort Joint Stock Co., Ltd. were allocated as follows: the Council of Elders held 51%, the original Qiewei personnel held 40%, and the “joint venture” personnel held 9%. The annual net profit was divided into fourteen shares for dividends: the Council of Elders received six and a half shares, one share went to a development fund, one to a charitable public fund, and five and a half shares were distributed among all agency personnel.

All registered personnel were placed on the Lin’gao payroll system. Guihua staff working outside the Green and Blue zones, in areas where coupons were not in circulation, were paid in silver and copper coins. All personnel were compensated according to the “Interim Professional Classification and Salary Guidance Standard, 1630 Edition” and the “Interim Professional Technical Grade Assessment Standard, 1631 Edition” issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Since escorts were not originally included in these documents, the Ministry’s Labor Management Bureau created a special professional category and technical grading system for them.

Under the new system, every employee of the agency would receive a payslip on the tenth of each month, detailing the components of their remuneration: monthly salary, night shift allowance, travel allowance, seniority allowance, and a final item, the skills allowance. Liu Muzhou and a few others had developed a “Martial Arts Ranking Table”; the higher the rank, the higher the skills allowance.

In addition to payments, there were also deductions, primarily for welfare benefits. The Ministry of Finance and Finance officially implemented a social insurance system for the Guihua population, currently deducting for pension and work injury insurance each month. Since the Council was not yet ready to establish an insurance company, these services were handled by the Delong Bank.

Organizationally, the Qiewei Escort Joint Stock Co., Ltd. established a new board of directors and a general administration office in Guangzhou. Under this were three main headquarters: Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. Each headquarters was led by a general manager, a Guihua official dispatched from Lin’gao.

Each headquarters reported directly to the general administration and the board of directors and conducted its business under their command. In terms of jurisdiction, the Qiewei General Administration was overseen by the Ministry of Colonies and Trade. The Guangzhou Headquarters was directed by the Guangzhou Station, the Shanghai Headquarters by the Hangzhou Station, and the Beijing Headquarters by the Beijing Station.

Under this new management system, the original Guangzhou headquarters of Qiewei was demoted to one of the three main headquarters, effectively becoming a branch and losing its former influence.

For ease of management, the position of General Manager and Chairman of the Board was taken by Zhang Xin of the Guangzhou Station. Sun Kecheng was given the honorary titles of Chief Escort of Qiewei and Vice-Chairman, but he had no real power over specific affairs.

Zhang Xin had worked extensively to transform the Qiewei Escort Agency into a large-scale transportation and logistics enterprise. Based on the social and civil conditions of Guangdong at the time, he had developed a comprehensive management system for Qiewei’s logistics operations. This system proved highly successful in practice. The transport network established in Guangdong, particularly in the Pearl River Delta, was continuously improved, allowing Qiewei to extend its reach throughout Guangdong province and into the neighboring, accessible regions of Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi within three to four years.

In the Pearl River Delta, the Qiewei Escort Agency had achieved a near-monopoly in the transportation and logistics market—of course, with the strong support of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Commerce.

Now, as the head of the Shanghai Headquarters, Zhao Yigong prepared to replicate this model in the Jiangnan region. This was not only in preparation for the future transportation of refugees but also aimed at controlling the local economic circulation. Zhao Yigong knew that the Council’s next steps were to “digest” Guangdong, fully integrating it into Lin’gao’s new economic order, while simultaneously beginning operations in Jiangnan. Laying a solid foundation beforehand was one of his key tasks.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the Jiangnan area (Jiangsu and Zhejiang) was a relatively stable region, making it feasible to establish a large-scale logistics and transportation enterprise. Therefore, even before Zhao Yigong’s arrival, the first batch of Qiewei personnel had already set out for Jiangnan and the capital to lay the groundwork for the Elder intelligence officers who would follow.

To ensure the smooth progress of Zhao Yigong’s work, Zhang Xin not only dispatched several of Qiewei’s key operational personnel to set up the network in Jiangnan but also requested that the Council of Elders select several willing Elders to go to Shanghai to oversee the work.

To further ensure a smooth start, he also requested the dispatch of several Special Reconnaissance Teams to Shanghai to be on call.

The first expansionary move made by the Qiewei Escort Agency in Shanghai was to establish a long-distance passenger transport company centered in the city.

In this era, there was already a certain demand for long-distance travel, especially in densely populated areas like the Pearl River Delta, where the movement of people was very frequent. While the wealthy had their own horses, carriages, and sedan chairs, ordinary people had to rely on their own two feet or hire boats or sedan chairs.

In the Jiangnan of this time, there were already specialized sedan and boat guilds. However, these guilds were small in scale, had a very low level of service, and used old, poorly maintained boats and sedan chairs with poor sanitation. The owners of these businesses were mostly uninterested in management, focusing only on exploiting their customers and workers. The sedan carriers and boatmen received meager pay and could only supplement their income by extorting travelers during their journeys. Inns and porters along the routes also often treated travelers like a “Tang Monk’s flesh” (an easy target to prey on). As a result, for the common people of that time, long-distance travel was a dreaded ordeal.