Chapter 367: New Planning

Feng Zongze bent over, studying the sand table, moving small flags around on it. Zhu Mingxia watched him with great interest.

The deafening shouts from outside the supervisory camp kept coming, interspersed with the impassioned, high-pitched, almost blood-curdling slogans of a female voice. However, Feng Zongze couldn’t understand them; they were shouted in Korean. The only words he could understand were “Manse!” “Manse!”

A struggle session was being held in the square outside the supervisory camp. The prisoners brought back from Suwon-dong a few days ago were being “struggled against.”

After routing the main force of the righteous army outside the fortress, Xue Ziliang took advantage of the chaos and ordered all units to advance directly on the estate, ignoring the camps outside the city and letting them disperse on their own.

Sure enough, under the fanatical “boar rush” of the Badao Team, the camps outside the city fell into disarray without a fight and scattered. The Badao Team pursued them right up to the gatehouse of the estate and captured it after a few minutes of fighting.

The White Horse Team then charged in. They were even more brutal towards their own countrymen than the foreign Badao Team. The Badao Team were all strictly trained soldiers. Not harming women and children and not killing prisoners were basic disciplines. But the White Horse Team, composed entirely of the lowest class of people from Jeju, was filled with hatred for the entire Joseon system and its elite. When they rushed into Master Kim’s residence, their spears and machetes spared neither women, children, nor even cats and dogs. The entire estate was filled with cries and screams. Bodies lay everywhere, inside and out, and blood flowed freely. Some even began to set fires. Xue Ziliang had no choice but to send in the Jeju Advance Column to take over the residence to prevent greater destruction. It took a great deal of effort to restore order.

After the Suwon-dong estate was taken, the power of Kim Man-il, the number one local strongman on Jeju, was declared to have collapsed. However, the spoils of war were slightly disappointing to Xue Ziliang. Although the confessions of the captured steward and the confiscated account books showed that he had countless horses, cattle, and land under his name, his liquid assets were not outstanding, only at the level of a few of the powerful landlords they had taken down in Hainan. This also included a considerable amount of property deposited by local powerful families who were dependent on him.

The confiscated money totaled only three thousand taels of silver and forty thousand strings of copper coins of various quality, as well as six hundred bolts of various silks.

In terms of daily necessities, they seized over five thousand bolts of coarse and fine cotton and linen cloth, and over a thousand shi of various grains—mostly local coarse grains like barley and buckwheat.

However, the haul of livestock products was very rich. In the estate alone, they found seven to eight thousand tanned hides of various cattle and horses, as well as a large amount of by-products such as horns, tendons, hooves, fur, and manes. In addition, they also found a large amount of salted and dried meat from livestock. Xue Ziliang estimated the total amount to be three to four tons. After questioning the prisoners, Xue Ziliang learned that the masters did not eat this meat. When livestock on the pasture died, it was specially provided to the herdsmen-slaves for their meals, and the leftovers were made into dried and salted meat.

Most of the masters in the estate were captured alive, and some were hacked to death by the White Horse Team before the advance column could rescue them in time. Xue Ziliang was not interested in them and handed them over to the Planning Commission’s “special search team” for “extortion.” They had received special guidance from Zhou Dongtian in “interrogation” techniques.

According to the plan, Xue Ziliang used the Suwon-dong estate as his base of operations to carry out “security strengthening.” Since most of the powerful local families on the island had gathered at Suwon-dong and were basically wiped out in one fell swoop, the next step was to quickly take over and inspect their estates.

While he was busy with his next plan, Feng Zongze arrived at Suwon-dong with a group of naturalized citizen cadres to hold a “struggle session.”

Seeing that Xue Ziliang had won a beautiful battle right from the start, Feng Zongze was very anxious. To fully demonstrate his “ability,” he decided to push his “good at mass work” characteristic to the extreme and fully “mobilize the masses.” Furthermore, he also wanted to settle a personal score—because Master Kim’s layout in the city had made him lose a lot of face.

Feng Zongze led a work team to conduct a struggle session in Suwon-dong, “airing grievances,” “digging up roots,” and “digging up hidden wealth.” After a tumultuous seven or eight days of fully “mobilizing the masses,” a batch of prisoners were “struggled” to death. Then, he brought their heads and the other half of the prisoners, who were already scared half to death, back to Jeju to continue the “struggle” in order to further educate the people of Jeju.

Another purpose of Feng Zongze’s mass movement was to coordinate with Xue Ziliang’s security strengthening campaign to further promote the “New Administrative Demonstration Zone” plan for Jeju.

The Executive Committee had already decided to build Jeju Island into a “New Administrative Demonstration Zone.” In this demonstration zone, the civil administration system would be configured entirely according to the Yuanlao’s ideal state.

Specifically, it was to implement “standard villages” throughout the island.

Some standard villages composed of immigrants had already been built in Lingao and other counties of Hainan. But there had never been an entire administrative region built entirely according to the standard village model.

Taiwan Island was also one of the locations chosen for the “New Administrative Demonstration Zone,” but Taiwan’s current development level was extremely low, and its own economy and industry were almost a blank slate. So, in the end, the Executive Committee chose Jeju Island as the demonstration zone.

Feng Zongze knew that the Executive Committee was very interested in this plan. Wen Zong was an even more active advocate of this plan. The Jeju Island Forward Committee had already received a telegram from the General Office: Wen Zong would be coming to Jeju Island in the near future to “offer condolences and guidance.”

Wen Desi was the formulator of the standard village plan, and he also had a whole set of drafts for the administrative setup and operating model of the “new demonstration zone.” It was self-evident what kind of work he would be guiding when he came to Jeju Island.

A few days ago, the Jeju Island Forward Committee held its second enlarged meeting at Suwon-dong. Nick also unexpectedly attended—of course, it wasn’t too surprising, because the pastures and large number of horses near the Suwon-dong estate had long attracted him.

The theme of the meeting was how to implement the standard village system according to local conditions. Although Wen Zong was the formulator of the plan, he had only ever worked on it in a purely theoretical environment. For each specific region, there had to be a corresponding plan. And this method also had to be consistent with the Planning Commission’s economic development plan for Jeju Island.

After discussion, the forward committee reached a consensus: Jeju’s economy would be based on animal husbandry, and the construction of standard villages would be centered around “animal husbandry.” In other words, most standard villages would be “specialized animal husbandry villages.”

According to Nick’s idea, the animal husbandry on Jeju Island would adopt a “household ranch” model. That is, the Senate, as the landlord, would lease large tracts of pasture to specialized farming households, charging only a small amount of land rent. Each household would manage a relatively small-scale ranch, raising 400-500 horses.

The farming households would only be responsible for animal husbandry and feeding. Veterinary stations would be set up in each pastoral area, responsible for the health care, treatment, disease prevention, and breeding of the horses and livestock. In addition, a stud farm would be set up at the location of the veterinary station. The farmers’ mares would not be allowed to be bred privately.

Every year, a selection of horses would be conducted on each household’s ranch. Suitable horses would be purchased with cash or collected as a “horse tax” and sent to state-owned ranches for a period of centralized feeding and training before being allocated to various places.

However, Nick also admitted that this method relied on experienced herdsmen and sufficient veterinary technicians. Given the current level of the herdsmen-slaves on Jeju Island, it would probably be difficult to achieve good results. Therefore, he believed that the first step was to use the existing facilities to build several large state-owned ranches. First, to ensure the scale of the existing herds, and second, to serve as a demonstration and teaching model.

“But the layout of these pastoral standard villages should take into account the future setup of family ranches, including the area occupied by the stables, supporting pastures, and water sources,” Nick said.

Besides the pastures, some land would be developed to set up agricultural standard villages to grow citrus fruits, barley, buckwheat, oats, and potatoes. These crops, besides being used as fodder, could also support a portion of the population. Especially potatoes, which have a high yield. Although potatoes are not high in calories—four kilograms of potatoes are equivalent to one kilogram of rice—they are rich in vitamins and are a very suitable relief food. In addition, the Yuanlao had long been fond of potato dishes such as stir-fried potato shreds, potato cakes, and beef stew with potatoes.

Behind this plan was a complex population reallocation plan. Specifically, a portion of the Shandong immigrants would be left on Jeju Island, while the majority of the Korean people on Jeju Island would be moved to Taiwan and Hainan, thus completely changing the demographic structure of Jeju Island and forming a Han Chinese immigrant settlement in the southern Korean region, becoming an important springboard for the Senate on the Korean peninsula.

However, after witnessing the performance of the local collaborators these days, Zhu Mingxia decided to advise the Executive Committee not to transport a large number of Korean people south. After all, the Korean population on Jeju Island was only about forty to fifty thousand at most. Bringing in fifty thousand refugees from Shandong and Zhejiang would already create a fifty-fifty ratio.

Zhu Mingxia’s suggestion was to recruit a large number of Korean Public Security Army soldiers from the local Korean population and send them to Taiwan and Vietnam to perform missions. Although the Japanese troops performed well, their numbers were limited, and it was currently difficult to further expand the number of the Japanese Public anese Public Security Army. The more populous Koreans were the best choice.

Koreans and Japanese share some similarities in character, both having a similar “island nation mentality.” With sufficient training, their performance in combat would be commendable. Compared to the purely mercenary Japanese Public Security Army, the Korean people on Jeju Island belonged to the “deeply wronged” category. Having received great kindness from the Senate, their loyalty was more guaranteed.

Zhu Mingxia estimated that they could recruit a thousand Public Security Army soldiers from Jeju Island, forming ten companies. These companies could be used in Taiwan or Vietnam to greatly alleviate the current strain on the Senate’s military forces. Zhu Mingxia knew from the telegrams that the situation in both places was not very stable and they were in urgent need of public security reinforcements.

“The mobilization and recruitment work must be launched as soon as possible,” Zhu Mingxia said to himself. “We are too short of troops now.”