148: Chapter 148 The CEOs Bow Their Heads

Da Biao pressed his broken alloy baton against his chin and sneered. He suddenly jerked the baton downward, smashing it into a floor tile nearby. With a muffled thud, the tile shattered.

"My boss said to clear the area," Da Biao said, lifting his eyelids to scan the three black-clad bodyguards. "Are you going to get lost on your own, or should I break your legs for you before you go?"

The three bodyguards were drenched in sweat and kept retreating, not daring to utter a word.

General Manager Zhou Haitao pressed his back against the car body, his eye twitching uncontrollably. He turned his head to look at the group of CEOs outside the police cordon on the right service road, trying to grab onto a final straw.

"CEO Wei! President Wang!" General Manager Zhou Haitao shouted at the top of his lungs. "You all heard the nonsense this kid just spouted. He dares to threaten our entire manufacturing industry with a few broken machines. Our East China Chamber of Commerce should issue a joint statement right now and completely cut off his lifeline. No one is to accept his orders!"

The air was silent. Only the rustling sound of the money counting machines from Warehouse No. 1 could be heard.

No one responded to General Manager Zhou Haitao's bluster.

Chairman Wei Jianlin held the full production line integration agreement with both hands, his gaze locked firmly on Lu Chen. He knew this was the only opportunity for the entire Chinese business world to get on board.

Chairman Wei Jianlin squeezed his way out of the queue of CEOs. He strode forward, jogging towards Lu Chen's back.

His expensive leather shoes stepped into the muddy water, splashing dirt all over him, but he didn't care.

"Director Lu, wait!" Chairman Wei Jianlin was out of breath and came to a sudden stop two meters behind Lu Chen.

Lu Chen, with a cigarette between his fingers, stopped and turned to look at him.

Chairman Wei Jianlin held the thick document with both hands, bent over, and bowed at a perfectly standard ninety-degree angle to this young man in his twenties.

"Director Lu. All 150,000 registered employees under Great Wall Motors will have their base salaries raised to 6,500 by 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. All temporary workers will be made permanent immediately. Social insurance and housing funds will be paid in full at the highest local tier."

Chairman Wei Jianlin's voice was loud and clear, audible across half the factory area. "The two-day weekend policy will take effect tomorrow. We will strictly prohibit overtime. If there is any forced overtime, Great Wall Motors is willing to pay Chenguang Electronics ten times the penalty. This is the supplementary contract; I have already signed it. Please take a look."

When these words landed, General Manager Zhou Haitao's mouth fell open, his jaw practically hitting the floor.

He stared with wide eyes at Chairman Wei Jianlin's back. The Chairman of Great Wall Motors, an industry giant worth hundreds of billions, was actually bowing at a ninety-degree angle to the director of a nearly bankrupt foundry.

"Chairman Wei Jianlin, have you lost your mind!" General Manager Zhou Haitao shrieked. "You have 150,000 people under you. Raising the base salary to 6,500 means you'll be paying out billions more each year. You're taking so much money to subsidize these stinking peasants. What are you hoping to gain?"

Chairman Wei Jianlin completely ignored General Manager Zhou Haitao. He maintained his bowing posture, holding the document steady with both hands.

President Wang of BYD, outside the cordon, became anxious. He shoved the bosses in front of him aside, broke through the blockade, and ran over.

"Director Lu, BYD will follow suit." President Wang ran to Lu Chen, also bowed at a ninety-degree angle, and handed over the document with both hands. "We will raise salaries to 7,000 by tomorrow morning. Regardless of the job type, we will pay the highest tier of social insurance. We will absolutely not have overtime. We are willing to pay the full one-year OEM contract fee in advance and keep it in Chenguang Electronics' account. Even if you only give us one-tenth of the production capacity, we will accept it."

When this was shouted out, the dozen or so CEOs behind them panicked.

There was only so much production capacity for 20,000 chips. If Great Wall Motors and BYD gobbled it all up, their production lines would have to shut down tomorrow. With Morgan cutting off overseas raw materials, if they couldn't buy goods from Chenguang Electronics, everyone would go out of business within three months.

The dozen or so big bosses, each worth hundreds of billions, swarmed forward, crowding the edge of the police cordon, scrambling to thrust the folders in their hands forward.

"Director Lu, we'll raise it to 6,800! Choose us!"

"We will implement room and board overnight. Absolutely no overtime, we just beg Director Lu to give us 2,000 units of capacity to keep us alive."

"As long as we can get the goods, you can set the workers' treatment terms however you like. We will issue a notice to the entire factory tomorrow."

More than twenty industry titans, all sweating profusely, shouted at the top of their lungs. Their usual high-and-mighty, suit-and-tie demeanor was completely gone. For the sake of production capacity and survival, they had completely abandoned their bottomless exploitation of low-level profits.

General Manager Zhou Haitao leaned dully against the Rolls-Royce. His brain had completely crashed. He simply could not comprehend the scene before him.

"Old Zhou." Lu Chen flicked the ash from his double happiness cigarette.

Old Zhou, clutching a briefcase, jogged over, his forehead covered in sweat. "Factory Director, I'm here."

Lu Chen pointed with the hand holding his cigarette at the custom Rolls-Royce next to them, whose hood had been smashed in by Da Biao.

"Stamp it here." Lu Chen's tone was calm, without any ripples.

"Understood." Old Zhou unzipped the bag and took out the red official seal of Chenguang Electronics Factory and the inkpad.

Chairman Wei Jianlin reacted extremely quickly. He walked to the Rolls-Royce in a few strides. Glancing at the huge dent on the hood, he laid the agreement flat on the intact edge of the hood and smoothed out the paper with his hand.

"Director Zhou, sorry to trouble you." Chairman Wei Jianlin nodded politely to Old Zhou.

Old Zhou took the official seal, pressed it heavily onto the inkpad, and stamped it directly onto the signature area of the agreement.

Thud.

The red Chenguang Electronics seal landed firmly on the white paper.

President Wang immediately handed over his own agreement, placing it directly on top of Chairman Wei Jianlin's. "Brother Zhou, please trouble yourself to stamp this as well. We will wire the money to the Chenguang Electronics public account this afternoon."

Thud.

Another red seal.

The CEOs lined up, one by one laying their thick agreements on General Manager Zhou Haitao's ten-million-plus luxury car to do business.

Old Zhou skillfully dabbed the ink, stamped, and filed the documents.

General Manager Zhou Haitao watched helplessly as this group of people used his car as a desk, completely turning him into an outsider.

He opened his mouth, but couldn't utter a single word. He finally realized that the five billion in life-saving money he thought he had was worth less than scrap paper in other people's eyes. The things these people were fighting frantically for were at a level that he, General Manager Zhou Haitao, would never be able to touch.

"Da Biao." Lu Chen threw the finished cigarette butt into the muddy water and crushed it with the sole of his shoe. "Clear out the miscellaneous people. Blocking the gate is affecting my workers who are queuing up to get paid."

"You got it."

Da Biao stepped forward and grabbed General Manager Zhou Haitao by his suit tie. With a single arm, he exerted force, dragging General Manager Zhou Haitao along.

"What are you doing? Let go of me!" General Manager Zhou Haitao kicked and flailed in the mud, his face full of terror.

Da Biao flicked his wrist, throwing him three meters away, where he fell heavily into a mud puddle on the side of the road. His high-end custom suit was instantly covered in black mud and foul-smelling oil.

"Get out of here with your people. Disappear within five minutes." Da Biao tapped the dented hood with his baton. "Otherwise, I'll smash you guys to pieces, stuff you into the trunk, and take you straight to the scrapyard."

The three bodyguards rushed forward, frantically pulling the mud-covered General Manager Zhou Haitao up from the ground and dragging him into the damaged Rolls-Royce. The driver started the engine frantically, and it emitted a harsh, strange sound. Not even daring to make a U-turn, he reversed the car and sped away from the scene.

On the left service road, the two-thousand-meter-long line of migrant workers was unusually quiet at this moment.

The loudspeaker was still playing the calling numbers on a loop. The money counting machines in Warehouse No. 1 were still rustling. But the two thousand people queuing outside had all stopped what they were doing.

They had heard the terms of employment shouted out by the dozen or so CEOs holding their files just now clearly and distinctly.

Base salary raised to 6,500. Full payment of the highest tier of social insurance and housing funds. Room and board provided, absolutely no forced overtime.

These capitalists, who usually treated them as assembly line consumables, were now crowding at the door of this dilapidated factory, humbly begging to get their documents stamped, establishing rules they wouldn't even dare to dream of.

The men in the queue hadn't read many books. They didn't understand what 28 nanometers meant, nor did they understand what foreign capital blockades were.

But they understood the facts before them.

That young Factory Director, standing in the mud in an old black jacket, was using massive multi-billion orders as a weapon. He had forcefully broken the spines of those big bosses, forcing them to spit out the profits they had exploited and share them with the lowly peasants at the bottom.

He had brought human dignity and placed it squarely in front of the rice bowls of these people at the bottom of the ladder.

In the middle of the queue, Li Tiejun, who had just received his 20,000 yuan relocation fee, gripped the fertilizer bag in his hand tightly.

Inside the bag were two hundred brand-new red banknotes. This was the life-saving money he intended to send back to his hometown for his mother's medical care and his child's tuition.

Li Tiejun, a rough man in his thirties, had eyes red and bloodshot. The veins on the back of his hand, which was gripping the bag, were bulging one by one.

He looked at the back of the figure in the distance who was preparing to turn back to the workshop, and then turned to look at several fellow workers beside him who also had red eyes.

"From now on," Li Tiejun gritted his back teeth, a hoarse, low growl emerging from his throat, "if anyone dares to insult Factory Director Lu to my face, I will tear their tongue out by the root, even if it costs me my life."

"Count me in." Old Wang, standing next to him, pressed the money he had just received tightly against his inner pocket, right against his skin, and wiped his eyes hard with the back of his rough hand. "Factory Director Lu treats us like human beings. From now on, this life belongs to Chenguang Electronics. We'll strike wherever he points. If anyone comes to trash the factory, we'll trash them to death."

"Tomorrow, I'll have my brother come to Jiangcheng to join Factory Director Lu. Even if there's no food to eat in the future, I'll stay here and gnaw on bricks until I die."

Fanatical emotions spread rapidly through the queue of two thousand people.

A burst of long-repressed, heavy breathing erupted from the queue. In these bodies that had spent years hunched over on assembly lines, enduring cold glares, a certain dormant loyalty had been completely ignited.

By the factory gate, Old Zhou was holding a tablet, checking the data of the newly hired personnel.

He was looking down, and just as his fingers were about to swipe the screen, he suddenly froze.

Old Zhou rubbed his eyes violently and stared fixedly at the top right corner of the tablet screen.

It displayed the core monitoring data of the backend system for all registered employees in the factory. At this moment, the string of green numbers representing "Employee Loyalty" was jumping frantically at an incredible speed.

The value box, which had previously stayed around eighty, was moving so fast it was creating a blur.

Eighty-five. Ninety-two. Ninety-seven. Maximum value.

In the data list of 50,000 registered employees, the loyalty progress bars behind thousands of names, within just a few seconds, all locked into the ultimate bright red maximum value state.

A sensation of extreme trembling gripped Old Zhou's heart.