Chapter 180: New Labor Force

Yang Yun was not deaf to the probing nature of the question, but he couldn’t very well respond—after all, Governor Ma’s official document had only hinted at it. So he deliberately pretended not to hear.

Since Qian Shuiting of the Otaku Party had been elected Speaker of the Senate, the situation in the Executive Committee had become complex and delicate. Yang Yun coughed, trying to find a new topic.

“Reporting to the chief! Director Lu has sent an urgent message!” Suddenly, a messenger from the county office delivered a file bag.

Liu Xiang looked at the red wax seal on the file bag and thought to himself, “Didn’t I just see her? What’s so urgent?” He took it with one hand and signed the receipt.

In a quiet room in the Taoist temple, Liu Xiang opened and read the secret urgent message, and his heart was greatly comforted.

“The work on the secret front has also yielded results!” He quickly called Yang Yun over.

“A few thousand more able-bodied laborers,” Liu Xiang said to Yang Yun with a smile, while Yang Yun was completely confused.

The document was about the final solution for the Baisha Naval Base and the Haikou Chiliarchy.

These two places had maintained a relative independence after the peaceful stationing of the Fubo Army. However, after the retreat of He Zhen’s remnants, Tang Yunwen was in a situation of being besieged in an isolated city. Although his troops had not suffered many casualties after the defeat at Chengmai, their morale was low, and most of their equipment and supplies had been lost. The ships of the Baisha Naval Base were mostly destroyed or lost during the siege of Qiongshan, and the remaining ones were old and dilapidated ships that were unusable.

Tang Yunwen’s entire force now consisted of less than two thousand land and water soldiers and a few hundred military households in Haikou. The more distant garrisons were either taken over by the Senate or had their lines of communication cut. Not to mention fighting, even self-preservation was difficult to sustain. He had neither the strength to fight nor the courage to abandon his post and flee. He could only watch as the Fubo Army entered Qiongshan County, then occupied key points, followed by a large-scale security war… Throughout this series of activities, the officers and soldiers of the Haikou Garrison and the Baisha Naval Base remained indifferent, so as not to bring trouble upon themselves.

But this situation had to be broken eventually. Especially under the premise of promoting a new social system throughout Hainan Island, if retaining the old government was a stopgap measure, then there was no need to retain the old army at all. Under the instigation of the General Political Security Bureau of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, a comprehensive takeover and cleanup of the entire military household garrison system on Hainan Island began.

As for the military core of the Ming army on the entire island, the soldiers of the Haikou Garrison and the Baisha Naval Base became the key to the solution.

In terms of military force, it was an easy matter for the Fubo Army to deal with these Ming troops, but what Liu Muzhou wanted was manpower and material resources, especially manpower. So a rather circuitous policy was adopted. The specific implementation was instigated by the General Political Security Bureau. After the end of the Chengmai campaign, the captured local military households and garrison soldiers of Tang Yunwen’s troops were released in batches. Among these released prisoners, many “moles” who had already surrendered to Lingao were planted.

After these people were released along with other captured personnel, the political security department immediately used these lines to launch a counter-insurgency work against Tang Yunwen’s troops, inciting dissatisfaction in the army and secretly establishing organizations. Tang Yunwen had heard of this, but since the defeat at Chengmai and He Zhen’s retreat, the generals had either died or fled, and the remaining generals and officers did not dare to make any moves, for fear that the slightest move would trigger a mutiny. The only force Tang Yunwen could ensure loyalty from was his personal retainers and household troops, a team of less than a hundred men. It was already difficult to maintain order with just these few people, let alone carry out a purge with the risk that the “Kunzei” outside the city might intervene at any time.

This typhoon was a disaster for Liu Xiang, but for some people, it was an excellent opportunity. It was a great opportunity to solve the core of the government army on Hainan Island—and from this, to completely disintegrate and take over all the government troops on the island. Under this instruction, the organization of the General Political Security Bureau immediately went into action.

Liu Xiang did not know that Wu Mu, the director of the General Political Security Bureau’s office, had secretly arrived in Qiongshan three days ago and was personally directing the overall work from a workstation outside Haikou. When local assistance was needed, Lu Cheng, the local special commissioner, would come forward.

With the help of these “moles,” the granary of Tang Yunwen’s troops was “destroyed by the wind disaster,” completely shattering the psychological defense line of the ordinary soldiers who were still waiting and watching. In the past, Haikou could still ask Qiongshan County to “supply grain and fodder,” but now they had no other way out. Outside the garrison and the main camp was the territory of the “Kunzei.” Without the Australians’ approval, not a single grain of rice or a single leaf of vegetable could be transported in.

A few days later, the Haikou Garrison and the Baisha Naval Base, which were beginning to lack food, had completely collapsed. The soldiers and military households one after another left the garrison, demanding to “surrender.” The treatment Liu Muzhou had prepared for them was: those who were willing to be soldiers, after passing the physical examination and political review, would be incorporated by the Fubo Army’s training directorate; those who were unwilling to be soldiers and the families of the military households would be “purified” and then assigned to work or farm by the civil affairs department.

As for Tang Yunwen himself and his personal troops, it didn’t matter whether they surrendered or not. If they were willing to come, they would be treated equally. If they were unwilling to come, it didn’t matter. He could continue to maintain the Baisha Naval Base with those few men and a not-so-good “flagship” as a nominal coastal defense commander. Of course, the soldiers’ pay and provisions would no longer be supplied—the subsidies from the mainland could still be issued as usual.

A large part of the reason why these people were willing to “surrender” was the lack of food. The secret message required the Qiongshan County Office to try to mobilize three to five days of rations to supply the surrendered personnel of the Haikou Garrison.

Therefore, Liu Xiang sought out Yang Yun and asked him to take over this matter—the grain he could mobilize in Qiongshan County was really not much. He also had other considerations in mind. With the population of these military households, the Executive Committee’s pressure on Qiongshan’s population would probably not be so persistent.

After hearing the situation, Yang Yun first said some correct nonsense like “congratulations on the major achievements on all fronts,” and then the two began to have an “active dialogue” on the relief of these military households. After all, these suddenly appearing thousands of people were also a surprise to Yang Yun, and he had not prepared such standard relief supplies for them in advance.

The grain problem was actually Yang Yun’s second goal in coming to Qiongshan. Wu De had given him instructions before he set off, asking him to try to get some “surplus grain” from the local area of Qiongshan. But after he arrived in Qiongshan, he realized that Liu Xiang had obvious resistance to the collection of surplus grain. His cooperation in the collection of labor force already showed a sense of reluctance. He probably wouldn’t cooperate at all on the issue of surplus grain.

Liu Xiang was prepared to resist the purchase of surplus grain. No matter how much grain the landlords of Qiongshan had in stock, he opposed the use of means to seize this part of the private grain reserves in a disaster year. First, this would endanger social stability. Second, to recover from the disaster, they could not just rely on the relief from the Planning Commission and the People’s Committee for Civil Affairs; they still had to rely on local savings. As for how to force the large households to take out their grain, this should be an economic problem.

Just when almost all the work was revolving around disaster relief, early this morning, an unexpected guest arrived in Qiongshan County town.

“Old Tang, we’re so close. You didn’t even send some red eggs over when your son had his one-month celebration!”

“Hehe, I’m a man who rolls in coal all day. Where would I get red eggs? They’d be black even if I boiled them!” Tang Menglong took the opportunity of seeing his child to return to Lingao for some activities. He wanted to be transferred back to Lingao and then sent to another place, but he hadn’t been able to do so yet.

Liu Xiang and Tang Menglong sat in the office. Guo Ling’er brought them each a glass of freshly squeezed mixed fruit juice.

“What brings you here today?” Liu Xiang asked.

“Hmph, don’t mention it. We finally got the wired telegraph line to the mine connected, but a few sections were washed away by the rain, and I don’t know which bastard took the iron wire while it was raining.” The wired telegraph network from the Jiazi Coal Mine to Qiongshan County had been open for less than a month.

Tang Menglong took a big gulp of the drink and caught his breath. “The Planning Commission said that Qiongshan is a security zone and doesn’t need a radio station, so they made me hand over the radio at the mine. I had no choice but to come here to send a telegram.”

“We need to repair it quickly!” Liu Xiang could clearly see that he hadn’t finished his sentence. “A security zone is a security zone, but the local work is not yet fully in place.”

“Of course, I’m preparing personnel and applying for materials. We’ll start rush repairs as soon as the rain stops,” Tang Menglong said. “But we have some things at the mine that we need your help with, Little Liu. You have to help me.”

“Hey, why are you being so polite! Your Jiazi Coal Mine is a unit directly under the central government. We in the local area will definitely support it vigorously.”

“Don’t talk about being directly under the central government. The day before yesterday, they said the weather was bad and the ships carrying food and supplies couldn’t set sail,” Tang Menglong said. “The food stored at the mine is only enough for 4 days. The workers eat four thousand calories of food every day, and the food I have stored there is being consumed very quickly! In the past, they would have prioritized the mine no matter what!”

“The sea conditions have been bad these past few days, and several places have been involved in using ships recently, so the transport capacity is relatively tight,” Liu Xiang’s heart tightened—I don’t have much food here either. He had no choice but to laugh it off.

“Alas, the production task of the Jiazi Coal Mine has been increased again. But they won’t give me more manpower or machines. How am I supposed to increase production? As soon as the typhoon comes, the shipping on the Nandu River has to stop. The coal that’s been mined can’t be transported out, and it’s not good to pile it up by the river,” Tang Menglong continued to complain. “We use small barges to transport the coal, but many of the towboats are broken. I only see them being sent out for repairs, but I haven’t seen many sent back as replacements. This inland river transport team is really becoming like Wang Xiao’er (a character in a story who gets worse and worse).”

Although the quality of the Jiazi Coal Mine was not good, far from the high-quality anthracite coal transported from Hongji, the coal from the Jiazi Coal Mine belonged to the Changchang coal series and had the advantage of low sulfur content. It was more suitable for making metallurgical coke. At the current stage, it was the only supplier of coke for the Maniao Iron and Steel Complex. The high-quality iron ore transported from Sanya needed the coke refined from the lignite of the Jiazi Coal Mine to maintain production. And the demand for coke from blast furnace No. 1 was 30,000 tons per year. Blast furnace No. 2 was still under intensive construction, so one can imagine how huge the shortage of coking coal was.