Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

At seven o'clock in the evening, although the sun was still shining brightly in the cloudless sky, people were already reluctantly leaving the beach and starting their journey home. By eight o'clock, the sun had turned a deep red and soon sank below the horizon, but the temperature did not drop. People wearing sunglasses were still drinking beer outdoors, and the waiters at the restaurants without balconies could only play with their thumbs. Then came midnight. The night was extremely hot, and people returned home from the restaurants and bars, lying awake in bed, letting sweat soak their sheets.

On Hankou Road, with the deadline fast approaching, the editors sat down for a final discussion of the front page. Reporters who had spent the entire day hadn't uncovered any new information about Qingniao Publishing House. Therefore, some believed Qingniao's success was merely a beautiful accident, a fleeting stroke of luck, and their numbers were certainly already declining. Many others began to doubt whether such a hastily assembled organization had any news value at all.

......

Around the same time, the phone rang in a house in the Central Villa District of Shunyi, Beijing. The house, with its red brick and cultured stone exterior, presented a typical North American country style, and next to it was a small cherry orchard. Fang Jing stretched an arm out from under the covers, wondering if her mother, who lived downstairs, would be woken up by the phone ringing.

"Feed".

"Mr. Fang? Are you sleeping?" a deep voice asked.

"Not yet." Fang Jing didn't understand why she was lying.

"Mr. Fang?"

"Hmm, what's wrong?"

A moment of silence followed. Han Fei's voice seemed very distant from Fang Jing, but it wasn't due to the telephone line. Then, Han Fei's laughter came from the other end of the line.

"Mr. Fang, this private jet you gave me is supposedly a direct connection channel for the Mobile Strategic Development Department, reserved for emergency use, right?"

"Hmm." Fang Jing sat up on the bed.

"The number I'm calling now should be the switchboard for the headquarters' strategic department, or your secretary's 24-hour hotline, or some closely monitored, recorded landline. But you're answering the phone yourself in the middle of the night; you didn't give me your private number, did you?"

Fang Jing coughed a few times: "You called me in the middle of the night just to confirm this?"

"No. I can't sleep."

"Do you want me to lull you to sleep?"

"Need not."

Another silence fell.

Hearing the click of the lighter, Fang Jing took a breath and said, "I gave you the phone so you could reach me quickly in case of an emergency. Being transferred around at the switchboard wastes your time and headquarters' patience. Are you satisfied with this explanation?"

"Hmm...that makes sense."

"Han Fei, give it a try. I guarantee that next time you call, my secretary will answer the phone, and she will tell you that President Fang is in a meeting and to leave a message if you need anything."

"No, no, no, Mr. Fang. I've got it. This number is like a nuclear button; you can't just press it randomly."

"It's good that you know," Fang Jing said. "I've been observing your data these past few days. With 2 million posts pushed out, the conversion rate has remained consistently above 15%. And according to user profile analysis, your data isn't driven by a few top-performing viral articles, but by the consistent output of mid-tier content. This shows that your content production has begun to form a system. It's not just a matter of one or two viral hits getting lucky; the overall quality has been solid. That's far more valuable than any single article reaching 100,000+ views. Also, there hasn't been anything from Tencent these past few days..."

"Mr. Fang, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Yesterday... oh, now it should be the day before yesterday, which was Monday afternoon, a reporter from the Morning Post called the publisher looking for me."

"Well, it's normal for you to attract media attention. With your abilities, dealing with or even manipulating reporters shouldn't be a problem for you, right?"

I wasn't there at the time.

"Did an employee of your publishing house leak information that shouldn't have been disclosed to a reporter?"

No, not at all.

"oh."

Fang Jing heard Han Fei take a breath, hold it, and then slowly exhale before saying, "President Fang, what I want to say is that the reporter gave me some inspiration."

"What inspiration did you draw?"

"I've figured out how to solve the problem of the pilot programs in the two provinces."

"real?"

"Um."

"How do we solve this?"

"To deceive the heavens and cross the sea."

......

At 8:25 a.m., Chen Yuanshan, accompanied by Zhao Guoqiang and Liu Zhenhua, entered a quiet, small, secure conference room on the top floor of the China Mobile headquarters building. This conference room had no windows, and the metal lock on the soundproof door could only be accessed via fingerprints of a select few. The room was sparsely furnished, containing only a small conference table, a few comfortable leather chairs, a whiteboard, and a monitor without internet access used for displaying internal documents. In short, this conference room was designed specifically for discussions of sensitive topics by the core leadership of headquarters, ensuring that conversations could not be eavesdropped on by technical means.

Fang Jing was already waiting inside. She paced back and forth in front of the screen, a smile flickering in her eyes, like a restless butterfly.

"Deceive everyone?" The three of them sat down in the leather chairs and repeated Fang Jing's words in unison.

"Yes," Fang Jing said, "a very Han Fei-esque idea."

"Han Fei style?" Chen Yuanshan crossed his legs, put his hands behind his head, and looked at Fang Jing with an expectant smile, as if he were watching a magic show, waiting to see how she would conjure a little white rabbit out of a hat. "President Fang, stop keeping me in suspense and tell me, what great idea has that kid come up with after holding back for days?"

Liu Zhenhua leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands on his stomach: "Fang Jing, tell me quickly."

"Okay." Fang Jing smiled slightly. "Han Fei's suggestion is to have Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces take the initiative to release the news and publicly tender for cooperation on high-quality content-based SP business. Then Qingniao can openly bid and, after winning the bid, can legitimately launch the pilot project, turning the headquarters' support into the provincial company's market-based procurement."

Fang Jing sensed the three high-ranking headquarters officials silently gasp. They opened their eyes wide and looked at each other.

Chen Yuanshan clicked his tongue a few times, pondering repeatedly: "Open bidding? You mean, let our own provincial company bid for the pilot units we support?"

"Hmm, it does sound a bit convoluted," Fang Jing said, "but Han Fei's reasons are very sound. Let me briefly outline his logic."

Fang Jing took a marker from the recessed area under the whiteboard and quickly wrote down keywords such as Tencent, pilot projects in two provinces, information fog, and procedural justice. She said, "Han Fei's analysis is that the fundamental contradiction we face is that we need Qingniao to get running in the two provinces to acquire performance and data. However, once Qingniao gets running, Tencent can immediately deduce, through the differences in number location and content delivery regions, that Qingniao has received support from China Mobile headquarters. Once this conclusion is confirmed, Tencent will no longer have any illusions about investment and will immediately launch Plan B, focusing on building its own platform and entering the competition."