Courtyard House: From Deputy Division Commander to Civilian, Progressing All the Way

"Yangzi, isn't this a big step? The wind direction up there..." Lin Fan said in a worried, low voice.

"The wind direction is shaped by people." Lin Yang sneered. "The highest level has already tacitly approved it. We will not only buy, but we will buy with a clear conscience! Brother, starting next month, your Factory 101, except for retaining the core military production line, will transfer all other production capacity to the production of heavy foundations and extra-large steel structures for factory buildings."

"I want you to level a large industrial park in the mountains of Southwest China in the shortest possible time, capable of accommodating the world's most advanced petrochemical equipment! As soon as the Western machines arrive, we must immediately install and put them into production. We need to elevate our country's backward civilian industry by a full twenty years!"

Hearing his younger brother's resolute voice on the phone, Lin Fan's long-suppressed enthusiasm for building was instantly ignited.

"Alright! Yangzi, wherever you point, I'll go. As long as the approval comes from above, I'll personally lead the men to clear the mountains and level the land!"

Let's turn our attention back to Beijing.

At the end of 1971, heavy snow once again covered this ancient capital.

Inside the Minister's spacious and solemn office at the Ministry of Heavy Industry.

The military combat map on the wall has been replaced with a huge national heavy industry and transportation network plan.

Lin Yang, dressed in a well-tailored black Zhongshan suit, sat behind his desk.

Opposite him sat three members of a Western industrial delegation, dressed in suits and with blond hair and blue eyes. This was the first time the Chinese government had received a Western heavy industrial equipment supplier in a secret and high-level manner.

The atmosphere at the negotiating table was tense and delicate.

"Minister Lin," a representative from the West German Krupp Group said in broken Chinese, "the complete set of synthetic ammonia equipment you requested, with a capacity of tens of thousands of tons, is technically extremely complex. We cannot make significant concessions on price. Moreover, your infrastructure may not be able to handle such a massive system in a short period of time."

Lin Yang leaned back in his chair, his long, slender fingers toying with a Parker pen. He wasn't angered by the other person's arrogance; his eyes remained calm and composed.

"Mr. Hans, you may have some misunderstanding about China's execution capabilities."

Lin Yang gently pushed a thick Chinese infrastructure assessment report in front of the representative.

"Three months. As long as your equipment arrives at a Chinese port, the supporting factory buildings, power supply, water network, and the most skilled installation workers will all be in place within three months. If the equipment commissioning is delayed due to reasons attributable to the Chinese side, the Ministry of Heavy Industry will bear the full amount of the penalty for each day of delay."

Lin Yang leaned forward slightly, his gaze pressing down on the three people opposite him as if it were a physical force.

"As for the price, in this world, apart from China, no other market can absorb your dozens of large-scale industrial production lines in one go. You are not giving away our technology; you are trying to save your own shrinking heavy assets. My bottom line is non-negotiable. If you don't sell, I'll go talk to the French and Japanese tomorrow."

Domineering, precise, and hitting the nail on the head.

The three Western representatives exchanged bewildered glances, beads of sweat forming on their foreheads. They had expected to face a bureaucrat unfamiliar with modern industrial economics, but they hadn't anticipated that this Chinese minister's insight and tactics were even more astute and ruthless than those of Wall Street's top negotiators.

Ten minutes later, the three representatives sighed in frustration and signed their names on the memorandum.

Lin Yang stood up, buttoned up his Zhongshan suit, and did not reach out to shake hands with the other person, but simply nodded slightly.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you. Chen Feng, see the guests out."

After the foreign guests left the office, Zhao Lichun strode in, his eyes filled with undisguised elation.

"Minister! We've got it! With this equipment, our country's agricultural fertilizer production can triple! This is an astonishing achievement that saves countless lives!"

Lin Yang turned around and looked at the swirling snow outside the window. In his eyes, which had seen countless deaths on the battlefield, the industrial blueprint for this country's imminent rebirth was now reflected.

"Achievements?" Lin Yang sneered, his voice echoing in the spacious office.

"When I, Lin Yang, do things, I never look at political achievements. I only look at whether the backbone of this country can stand even straighter."

Lin Yang picked up the red secure telephone on the table and dialed a number.

"Notify the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Transport."

The green channel for the import of bulk equipment officially launches today.

Amidst the wind and snow, a brand new era of rapid industrial advancement for China began.

The curtain was raised abruptly in that one phone call.

In the early summer of 1972, the sun in Beijing was already quite hot.

With the Ministry of Heavy Industry's swift and decisive acquisition of the West's most advanced large-scale industrial production line in a secret negotiation that shocked the world a few months ago, the entire country's heavy industry system has been injected with a powerful stimulant, and is undergoing a radical transformation in the deep mountains of the southwest and the plains of the northeast.

The sudden reduction in external pressure has created the most valuable strategic window of opportunity for this transformation.

At this critical juncture when the overall situation was beginning to stabilize, Lin Yang did not linger in the comfortable minister's office. He handed over the daily operations of the ministry to Zhao Lichun to oversee, and then changed into a training uniform without any rank insignia, boarding a military transport plane bound for the Northwest.

This time, he didn't go to the 211 nuclear weapons base, but flew directly to the heart of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

Go and see the border defense field troops equipped with the latest weapons from the Ministry of Heavy Industry, and go and see the Lin family members who have been fighting on the Gobi Desert for three years.

Inside the spacious and somewhat empty cabin of the Y-8 transport aircraft, the roar of the engines was deafening.

Lin Yang sat in a paratrooper folding chair by the window, holding a data report on the cold-resistance test of a new tank engine, his gaze focused.

Sitting next to him was Li Yunlong, who had begged and pleaded with him, even going so far as to bang on the table in the Military Commission compound, before finally managing to get on the special plane with him.

Today, Li Yunlong was unusually dressed in a clean military uniform, with all the top buttons fastened tightly. He was holding a chipped enamel mug filled with thick, blackened tea leaves, and as he drank the tea, he complained loudly to Lin Yang.

"Yangzi, you have no idea, I'm practically rusting from being on the front lines in Fujian! Ever since the US-China relations eased, those bastards in Taiwan haven't even dared to take off their reconnaissance planes. All they do every day is look at coastal defense maps, look at coastal defense maps, what kind of life is that? I've led troops my whole life, I feel restless if I can't smell the gunpowder!"

Li Yunlong slammed his teacup down on his lap, his eyes gleaming with barely concealed excitement: "I heard that your trip to Xinjiang isn't just about inspecting the troops, but also about watching that division-wide armored combat exercise that Kong Erlengzi is putting on? I'm going to have a good look today and see if the new tanks your Ministry of Heavy Industry has produced are any better than the American Pershing tanks we captured on the Korean battlefield!"