Chapter 423: Fengqing
The article was not long, about six or seven thousand words. It roughly recounted the story of the Ogura repelling the attack by the terrorists. Although the article was filled with excessive praise, this was the custom of the propaganda department: the deeds of the Elders had to be lauded to highlight their “greatness.”
Other than that, the article was factual and didn’t contain any fabrications—at least, it was no different from the articles in the Weekly Reference.
Lu Xuan pondered for a moment, then once again called the data room and asked for all the recently published periodicals.
The Senate didn’t publish many periodicals. He noticed that all of them—except for the scientific journals aimed at Elders and naturalized technical personnel—had reported on the Ogura incident, and with considerable space. Some journals even published background articles. For example, the popular science magazine Gewu published three articles: “The Construction of the Sailing Dinghy Ogura,” “The Revolver,” and “Rapid Pistol Shooting.”
Tianshui Living Weekly - Lingao Edition, a leisure magazine mainly for Elders and high-to-mid-level naturalized citizens, published an article by Qian Shuiting titled “Hunting with Duoduo in the Australian Appalachian Mountains.”
Zhiyin, a literary magazine for naturalized citizens and natives, published “How a Teenage Girl Became a Righteous Anti-Terrorist Heroine.”
…
Lu Xuan returned to the BBS. He used “Ogura,” “Qian Duoduo,” and “young Elder” as keywords to search all posts since the terrorist incident.
The result was unexpected. In the past half-month, there had been more than twenty posts containing these three keywords. He read them one by one, weeding out three posts from the “young Elder” search results that were clearly unrelated to the Ogura incident and Qian Duoduo.
Then he began his detailed analysis of these posts.
Among the remaining posts, some expressed dissatisfaction with the attack on the Ogura, which then led to discussions about the “dereliction of duty” of the Political Security Bureau and the “loopholes” in the Elder security system. Some questioned the details of the Ogura incident—someone had written an entire article arguing that it was impossible for Qian Duoduo to achieve such a result with .357 Magnum rounds, to which Qian Shuiting had responded that she had used .38 caliber ammunition. Others used the incident to discuss the “differences in Chinese and American education.” And of course, some used it to demand a comprehensive “quality education” for underage Elders, reducing “book-based education”…
A variety of topics surrounded the Ogura incident. But Lu Xuan noticed that in all the posts, regardless of the theme, the attitude towards Qian Duoduo was consistently positive and appreciative. Among the members of the “female sailor team” on the endangered Ogura, her name was mentioned the most. In contrast, Lin Ziqi and Zhang Yunmi were mentioned infrequently, and mostly in passing when recounting the event, generally commented on as part of the group. As for the names of Dr. Zhong’s adopted daughter and Lin Hanlong’s female slave, they were mentioned even less, with only a few posts mentioning their names.
“Interesting. Very interesting.” Lu Xuan stroked his chin. From the statistical data, these posts showed no specific inclination. Neither the posters nor the repliers had any obvious factional traces. But, objectively speaking, Qian Duoduo’s fame within the Senate had risen sharply, and her image was very positive.
“A perfect combination of wisdom, courage, and calmness,” Lu Xuan muttered to himself, looking at the statistics on his notepad. “Well, let’s see how the situation develops.”
The next day, Lu Xuan went to Maqiao Fort, completed his five-day training work, and returned to his routine of monitoring the discussions on the BBS. He hadn’t been on the BBS for a few days, and the situation had changed again. The discussion on systemic reform had reached a fever pitch. More and more people were participating, the long-winded arguments were becoming more numerous, and the tone was becoming more heated. However, thanks to the real-name system, it hadn’t escalated to personal attacks yet. But compared to the various meetings constrained by the rules of procedure for sock puppets, the discussions on the BBS were much more colorful, a true display of the subtleties of the Chinese language.
He noticed that, according to the latest statistics, the frequency and intensity of attacks on the once-criticized powerful departments like the Political Security Bureau and the police had dropped significantly. The approval rating of the Executive Committee system, once widely questioned, was beginning to recover. Posts began to question the meaning of setting up new committees under the current conditions, and some analyzed the technical difficulties of implementing such committee supervision.
“It seems the two sides are starting to become evenly matched,” Lu Xuan said, looking at his latest statistical results. Although the overall trend was still skewed towards criticizing the Executive Committee and the powerful agencies, the calls for large-scale reform had decreased. Only the establishment of the Secret Service received almost one hundred percent support. The keyword “Elder welfare” was appearing with much greater frequency. Words like “disposal of female captives” and “Lingao Ziminlou” were starting to appear. The topic of “disposal of female captives,” in particular, had spawned several threads, and the replies to these discussions were in the thousands, even more heated than the discussions on political reform.
“Damn it, they still care most about their own little plot of land. This bunch of baboons!” Lu Xuan cursed. But strangely, although Cheng Yongxin had been typing away furiously recently, he hadn’t seen any long articles from her on the BBS, only some comments and replies related to “systemic reform.” Besides questioning the current system, many of her comments also talked about “supervision by public opinion”—which was nothing new, as this was her usual tune. She had written many similar articles during the maid case, and one had even been published in Qiming, but to no avail. Lu Xuan’s public opinion analysis at the time had shown that her ideas had very few supporters.
Since it wasn’t very effective, and she hadn’t published any long articles, what had she been working on so hard these past few days? Lu Xuan guessed that she must be preparing a rather important article, most likely for a heavyweight print medium like the “two journals and one newspaper.”
What kind of article could it be? Lu Xuan was very curious. However, given the current hot topics, it could only be about systemic reform or the Youth League. Then, in descending order of popularity, were “disposal of female captives,” “Elder rights and welfare,” and the “Ogura incident.”
The discussion about the Youth League was heating up the fastest. As an Elder military and political proposal, the main thread had over a thousand replies, and there were many related threads. Lu Xuan made a trend chart of hot topics. Overall, systemic reform was still ahead of the Youth League by a dozen percentage points, but it had reached its peak and was starting to trend downwards, while the latter’s trend was rising.
“Wei Aiwen’s proposal, it didn’t come early, it didn’t come late. The timing is a bit strange,” Lu Xuan said, looking at the pile of statistical data on his desk. “Is this creating a new hot topic? That’s not very clever…”
If the goal was to create a new hot topic to divert the Elders’ attention, how to deal with the “female captives” would be more appropriate. First, the majority of Elders cared about it. Second, it was closely related to the terrorist case itself. In comparison, the Youth League matter seemed a bit abrupt. Lu Xuan realized there was more to it.
“Sir, internal publications!” The confidential courier appeared at the office door.
Lu Xuan signed the receipt and took a thick envelope. It was Saturday, and the envelope contained the “two journals” of the “two journals and one newspaper”: Weekly Highlights and Qiming.
“Where’s today’s Lingao Times?” he asked. Compared to the BBS, articles in the print media had more practical significance for the direction of the Senate.
“Sir, they are all together.”
Lu Xuan nodded, opened the newspaper. The front-page news was “Commendation Conference for Anti-Terrorism Activists Held in Lingao.” The content of the article was nothing more than official boilerplate. Lu Xuan quickly skimmed through the summary of the event, the explanation of its significance, and the sections on the awarding of medals and titles, his eyes firmly fixed on the commendation content.
He quickly took out a red and blue pencil and began to circle names in the article.
More than twenty individuals were mentioned and commended in the article. Only six had separate descriptions of their deeds. Besides three naturalized cadres from the powerful departments and the Elder from the East who had reported a possible danger, one was the local primary school student who had escaped from Nanbao to report the hiding place of Zhuo Yifan and Si Maqiu. The other was Qian Duoduo.
The members of the “female sailor team” who were with her were all commended, but their deeds were “synthetically described.” There was no separate section for them, nor was there any published transcript of their conversation with Wen Desi when they received their awards on stage.
Lu Xuan silently tore open the sealed envelope and pulled out the journals. His eyes fell on the “Weekly Review” column of Weekly Highlights.
The title was “Absorbing the Fresh Blood of the Elders.” At first glance, the article was nothing special, just a discussion of the “successors to the Elders’ cause.” A large part of it was about the education of underage Elders, talking about the problem of “cramming” in the current academy education, “not going out into the wide world to receive education, having no practical social and work experience,” a completely “bookish education.” At the end of the article, it called for “letting the young Elders go to a wider world to train and learn.”
These arguments were not new; he had seen similar tunes on the BBS many times. But this time, being published in Weekly Highlights gave it a completely different significance.
Lu Xuan looked at the byline: Fengqing. Who was this? It was obviously a pen name. According to the usual practice of the Senate’s propaganda department, the more important the article, the more likely it was to use a pen name. This article was clearly hinting at something.
“Fengqing… Fengqing…” he repeated to himself. “…Fengqing—’The cry of the young phoenix is clearer than the old phoenix’s song’?!”
In an instant, he understood completely. This was propaganda to prepare the way for underage Elders to take on official posts! Lu Xuan immediately connected it to the rising heat of the Youth League discussion and the recent “prominent reporting” on Qian Duoduo.