Chapter 140: Li Qiang’s Expedition — Caofeidian (7)

Sun Xiaoshan smiled wryly. "There’s no other way. Those people at the Human Resources department are extremely proactive. They’re now scrutinizing every legal loophole, patching and correcting one after another. You have to admit, aside from this damn law, the rest have been amended quite well."

Li Qiang then complained to Li Fengyi, "Fifth Brother, how could you let the common people have the final say? The Special Committee should be the top authority. After all the effort to establish our foundation..."

When he was with Li Fengyi, Sun Xiaoshan, and their close circle, they increasingly referred to Li Fengyi as Fifth Brother.

The “Law on Missteps” successfully diverted the Special Committee’s attention away from the “Anti-Corruption Law.” They were completely unaware of the looming risks.

Sun Xiaoshan brought forth the pre-apocalypse development plan for the Caofeidian heavy industrial base. He intended to use it as a blueprint, modifying and implementing it according to the Special Committee’s needs. The goal was to fully restart the diverse industrial operations at Caofeidian, restoring production to pre-apocalypse levels while vigorously advancing industrial automation to free up manpower for information technology construction.

He also discovered numerous obsolete chip production line designs at various institutes affiliated with the Beijing Central Government. After careful selection, he planned to produce urgently needed chips whose performance would suffice for most information technology demands.

Before the apocalypse, these designs couldn’t be produced because more advanced and cost-effective chips were mass-produced on a grand scale overseas and along the coast, leaving no economic advantage. Now, with cost considerations moot, performance meeting standards was the priority.

In the chosen factory and mine zones for resumption, Li Qiang dispatched engineering troops to simultaneously construct defensive works, ensuring the safety of personnel mostly located in remote areas. The primary defenses included barbed wire, trenches, and earthen barricades created from trench excavation, with heavy machine guns as standard armament.

They established a 155mm heavy artillery cluster base with an effective radius covering a 70-kilometer area around the industrial bases to provide long-range fire support. The gunners had honed their skills through numerous artillery engagements; even rookies were seasoned veterans after firing thousands of rounds. Besides, education levels before the apocalypse were generally high, ensuring rapid learning.

Due to pre-apocalypse planning and construction, Caofeidian’s heavy industrial base had interconnecting railways between all enterprises. After the transportation department’s inspection confirmed usability, they retrofitted freight trains with reinforced steel plating on locomotives and installed heavy machine gun emplacements. After a few years, as existing locomotives wore out and power conditions improved, the Tangshan Locomotive Factory was expected to produce new electric locomotives such as high-speed and bullet trains, which had been flagship products before the apocalypse.

With the resumption of the Cangzhou chemical plant, the Science and Technology Department produced leather armor from mutant animal skins. After verifying safety by equipping condemned prisoners with the armor and exposing them to zombie hordes at observation bases, the Special Committee updated their protective gear once again.

This time, they replaced plate armor with full-body leather armor. Despite the zombies’ ferocious strength, the continuous output of armored vehicles from production lines greatly enhanced soldier safety. No matter how sturdy plate armor was, it was far safer to be inside an armored vehicle.

Some outdoor manual labor units still required plate armor since armored vehicles couldn’t traverse overly rugged or muddy terrain. Such tasks remained manual.

Given zombies’ astonishing speed and endurance, even those tens of kilometers from the front line needed to be equipped with protective gear and carry weapons at all times.

The widespread use of leather armor allowed operators greater agility, accelerating production efficiency.

By November 20, 2015, in the early winter season, with defensive works largely complete, Li Qiang led his forces northward to rendezvous with survivors at the Shenyang base. Meanwhile, Sun Xiaoshan continued work on resuming and optimizing the Caofeidian heavy industrial base, primarily focusing on automation upgrades.

Caofeidian had been home to world-leading electric vehicle technology before the apocalypse. Considering current oil extraction issues and long-term prospects, electric and chemical-fuel vehicles now stood on equal footing—unlike before, when chemical fuel vehicles had created high barriers to entry and lower costs hindered electric vehicle adoption. The Special Committee planned a decisive move: except for high-power military vehicles like armored cars and tanks, once existing chemical fuel vehicles were depleted, they would transition as extensively as possible to electric vehicles.

China possessed automation technology before the apocalypse. Although only about one in a hundred graduates proved truly capable, the sheer volume of annual university, graduate, and doctoral graduates was astronomical globally. Facing a foreseeable population aging problem in the next ten to twenty years, many companies and research institutes had accumulated automation technology reserves.

Private companies had mostly conducted practical testing on projects—they couldn’t afford waste; every penny had to yield results.

Research institutes typically proposed projects, applied for funding, which ended up in project leaders’ pockets. They then outsourced to companies to develop test equipment, paid a few corrupt experts for certification, wrote papers, secured more funding, distributed positions among the team, and then abandoned the project.

Despite this, China became a technological powerhouse in robotics. The main barrier to large-scale implementation was an abundant labor supply; mass unemployment could trigger social unrest. Only as population growth slowed would these technologies be fully deployed. For now, the focus remained on technology reserves.

By the apocalypse, with the population drastically reduced, large-scale automation became the sole method to maintain industrial levels. These pre-stored technologies were excavated from companies and institutes for use. The main gaps were large-scale application coordination and experience in maintaining and operating automated robots.

Ironically, China’s most advanced technologies rested in private companies before the apocalypse. The biggest challenge was that private firms employed a one-position-one-person model; with widespread zombification, assembling technical teams was difficult. Research institutes, however, were easier to staff, facilitating the gathering of required personnel.