Chapter 116: Wartime Planning for Various Industries (1)

The nine American spies were all under the command of the top-secret operative known as Jin San. Only three were of pure American descent; the remaining six consisted of two Taiwanese-Americans, two Southeast Asian-Americans, and two Chinese nationals.

Minister Jin received reports from several defectors who offered to use their assembly point as proof of their sincerity. Using the need to verify information and mobilize personnel as a pretext, Minister Jin delayed the operation until 4:00 PM the following day. When Jin San’s peripheral sentries detected suspicious activity, he fled with his team.

Minister Jin only managed to capture one late arrival. The man immediately changed his story, claiming he had intended to scout the location to confirm if it was truly an assembly point before defecting. Minister Jin ordered him sent to the basic labor reform brigade for forced labor until death.

At the Special Committee headquarters, housed in the Beijing Hotel’s grand conference hall, a meeting was underway. The large projector displayed the meeting’s theme: Wartime Industry Planning.

"The rumors about the endless meetings are true," complained a member of a democratic party. A botanist by trade, he had been appointed Minister of Forestry and felt he had attended a lifetime’s worth of meetings since the apocalypse began.

With industries paralyzed by the end of the world, experts in various fields argued that their plans could not be drafted in a short time. They hinted that it would take at least six months, preferably a year, to carefully consider infrastructure, industrial equilibrium, and interdependent requirements—such as how coal production is inextricably linked to steel production; insufficient coal would hinder steelmaking, while over-mining would waste human and material resources. They also hinted that improving the experts' status could potentially accelerate progress.

Upon hearing their response, Li Fengyi ordered all national Five-Year Plan documents to be collected, instructing the experts to revise them as a foundation.

"When the country was first founded," Li said, "it was truly destitute, far worse than today. Following the First Five-Year Plan through to the current one—we must have had eleven or twelve by now—you should revise based on that industrial construction process, accounting for all usable factories and mines. You have at most one week... or you can report to the basic labor brigade."

This final remark spurred the experts into a frenzy of activity. Integrating the Special Committee’s strategy of defending southward and developing northward, they produced a development plan based on those existing Five-Year Plans. It could hardly be called a "plan," however, as even the territory was not fixed. Who knew where a zombie horde might attack next, or where a Special Committee lacking weapons and ammunition would have to retreat?

"At best, it’s a guerrilla zone." This was the consensus among all survivors, and Li Fengyi had no choice but to accept it.

The Armed Forces Department was renamed the Ministry of National Defense, structured according to pre-apocalyptic standards with a General Staff, a General Political Department, and a General Logistics Department. They were the source of the current phase’s requirements, proposing military needs that other departments then used to draft their own plans; nothing mattered if they could not hold their own ground. Ultimately, all departmental plans had to align with military requirements while ensuring the basic living needs of the survivors.

The Ministry of National Defense proposed an ambitious plan to manufacture large quantities of cannons, machine guns, and barbed wire. The latter had proven unexpectedly effective in the Tianjin encirclement; it was simple to deploy, resilient, and impossible to breach. Zombies had to fill every layer with corpses to advance, and besides the armored trains, this wire had been instrumental in holding the Ziya River defense line.

They also required large amounts of plate armor. Faced with the zombies' "hugging" tactics, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology tested personal defense methods, concluding that full-body plate armor was most effective. A suit of 2mm-thick plate armor weighed only 25 kilograms—lighter than chainmail. Lacking steel mills to stamp out these items during the liberation of Dongba, they had only been able to use knitting machines, forcing the Special Committee to rely on chainmail. With the new plate armor produced, the troops began the process of replacing their chainmail in batches.

The barbed wire came in mobile and fixed versions. The material requirements were low—galvanized iron wire sufficed. Each section was 2 meters in diameter and 10 meters long, covered in spikes. Standing significantly taller than the 70–90 centimeter obstacles of the cold-weapon era, vast amounts of mobile barbed wire began to crisscross the Haihe River basin toward Beijing, as well as the exits of the western and northern mountains, lying across the land like long, steel dragons. Key areas were further reinforced with caltrops and fixed steel-wire nets.

"They've practically brought back all the defensive methods of antiquity," Li Fengyi thought to himself while reviewing the weapon designs.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology restored the network, fully recovering wired and wireless communication methods. Servers were established in Beijing and Tianjin, and the OA system was debugged, allowing for automated office operations across departments.

Radio communication was strictly controlled, managed solely by the Propaganda Department. The Ministry of National Defense, the United Front Work Department, and the Ministry of State Security also participated in this oversight—though, in reality, the State Security Ministry had surveillance in every corner, they only publicly identified a few sensitive areas.

The Special Committee instructed the Propaganda Department to broadcast the committee's order, regulations, and measures in a positive light to increase its appeal, hoping to achieve victory without a fight when expanding to other survivor bases. The Propaganda Department requested more professional translators for military and industrial matters, explaining that while their current translators were fluent in daily conversation, they struggled with technical jargon, causing foreign bases to repeatedly ask for clarifications after broadcasts.

The Special Committee waved their hand and approved the assignment of several primary school Chinese teachers. "Instead of assigning a translator to every foreigner, we’ll just teach them Chinese."

The Ministry of Science and Technology had made some progress in their research on zombies, but faced with their massive stack of documents, the Special Committee requested they hold a dedicated meeting another day, as today was reserved for comprehensive inter-departmental planning. Minister Liu could only pout and take his seat.

The Special Committee also demanded the commencement of National People's Congress (NPC) elections. They wanted to establish a brand-new, functional NPC to serve as a system of checks and balances; Li Fengyi, Sun Xiaoshan, and Li Qiang were all terrified of being inexplicably purged one day, so they were very strict about this requirement. In the future, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the NPC would undoubtedly become places to house disgruntled officials. One could not expect these individuals to vigorously defend the interests of others, so they would be sidelined, with the majority of the body consisting of grassroots-elected representatives.

The NPC was tasked with the heavy responsibilities of legislation and oversight, and they proceeded to stage a series of remarkable performances.