Homo Sapiens

While eating, Wang Haoran downloaded the Ye Mei app.

The app was similar to WeChat back in Huaguo and was a communication software developed by Ye Mei Company, a subsidiary of the Qingye Group.

When he opened the Ye Mei app, he found that he could not only add contacts from Ye Mei but also people from two other messaging apps.

The other two messaging apps were the Light Ray Communication Software, which belonged to the Hongsawaddy Development Group, and the New World Communication Software, from the Hongshawa United Group.

In reality, all three apps used the same codebase; only their user interfaces were different. Moreover, the other two companies shared an office with Ye Mei Company, with their programmers and management simply split into three separate groups.

This was something only insiders at the Qingye Group knew; the outside world was largely unaware.

This included new hires like Wang Haoran and Mu Ziying. They had assumed the three companies were merely partners and had never imagined the collaboration ran so deep.

On the Ye Mei interface, Wang Haoran saw four sections: [Family], [Friends], [Company], and [Services].

Opening the ”Company” section immediately brought up the Qingye Group’s page, where he could find all the company’s various subsidiaries and sub-subsidiaries.

For instance, he could find the Nantian Farm Restaurant he was currently in either by searching for it directly or by following the path: Qingye Group → Cyan Leaf Catering → Mandalay Branch → Nantian Farm Restaurant.

He browsed the Nantian Farm Restaurant’s page. Besides introductions to its business and products, there was also a review section and a complaint mailbox.

The review section had comments in both Burmese and Chinese. It was filled with not only sarcastic remarks and personal, name-and-shame tirades but also announcements of how matters were handled internally.

Apparently, the company took complaints seriously.

Curious, he clicked the complaint mailbox and was immediately redirected to the official website of the Qingye Consulting Company.

Wang Haoran read the subsidiary’s description and learned that it specialized in handling internal corporate problems. Its business model was to profit by fining other subsidiaries. If they caught you, you’d be skinned alive, even if you survived the ordeal.

As he looked at the rows of case files on the Qingye Consulting Company’s website, he saw more than a few instances where employees had been ”sent to the shooting range.”

At this, Wang Haoran once again gained a profound understanding of the Qingye Group’s terrifying power in Hongsawaddy.

If you messed up at a private company elsewhere, they had to go through legal channels. But if you messed up at the Qingye Group, the company could strike hard and fast according to its own corporate law. That was the most terrifying part.

This made Wang Haoran worry about his own future.

Given the Qingye Group’s methods, he figured that if he ever got involved with company secrets and then tried to resign, it would be incredibly difficult to get away.

Previously, he had thought the 20-year non-compete clause was just for show.

Now, it seemed the Qingye Group was dead serious.

But when he thought about the benefits, he was reluctant to give up. After all, according to his contract, his starting base salary was 15,000 gold yuan a month.

Qingye Group employees were divided into four major grades—A, B, C, and D—with each grade further subdivided into four minor levels.

Engineers, researchers, and technicians started at Grade B-4, which paid 5,000 gold yuan per month.

As an aerospace engine specialist, Wang Haoran was currently an intern, so he was only receiving Grade B-4 compensation.

Once he became a full-time employee, he would be eligible for a Grade B-2 salary.

In the future, if he could be promoted to Chief Engineer or Senior Researcher at Qingye Aviation, he would reach Grade A-2. This level came with not only a monthly salary of 150,000 gold yuan but also dividends from technology patents and bonus dividend-paying shares from the company.

Although Wang Haoran felt that reaching the level of Chief Engineer or Senior Researcher was difficult enough—he didn’t even dare to dream about dividends—he figured the company was most likely just making empty promises.

But then again, he felt that Qingye Aviation must be short on talent. He was just a fledgling rookie in his field. If he stayed now, perhaps he could eventually coast by on seniority.

With this mindset of just getting by, Wang Haoran decided to stay and work here for a while to see how things turned out.

...

After breakfast, Wu Fei led them to the company’s work area.

Their workplace was the Mandalay Branch of Qingye Aviation, which primarily focused on developing crop-dusters, tourist sightseeing planes, firefighting aircraft, agricultural remote-sensing aircraft, and civilian drones.

This branch primarily developed and produced various types of civilian aircraft.

However, Qingye Aviation’s true core business—military drones, fighter jets, and launch vehicles—was not located in Mandalay, but over in Kachin State.

Until they completed their internships and their entire families immigrated, Wang Haoran and the others had no way of entering these core sectors.

They arrived at the workshop.

De Ye, the engineer in charge of this assembly workshop, was a Soldier specializing in aviation. He explained to the group:

”This production line comes from the largest drone manufacturer in Transvaal. The company needs to design a batch of drones for mountain remote sensing, so our mission is to design and manufacture a terrain remote-sensing drone.”

Wang Haoran surveyed the area and found that the infrastructure was quite complete, but the equipment was somewhat dated. It was obviously second-hand.

Still, it was more than adequate for producing civilian drones.

Transvaal had a decent aviation industry and was one of the few countries in the world capable of independently producing civilian jet aircraft, propeller planes, and drones.

The Qingye Group had acquired this drone production line in exchange for test strips and new medicines.

Both sides were very satisfied with the deal. After all, the production line was already quite old, and the Qingye Group had also placed a custom order for a significant number of aircraft, making it a mutually beneficial exchange.

Through similar means, the Qingye Group had recently acquired quite a few things from around the globe, such as an old automobile production line from the Nitra Duchy in Eastern Europe, rocket launcher and train production lines from Lucia, and an aerospace-grade aluminum alloy production line from the Redwood Federation.

Although it was all second-hand equipment, some of it was practically antique, dating back decades.

But the price was right, and for Hongsawaddy, which lacked an industrial base, these acquisitions were a massive boost.

After all, the priority now was to solve the problem of having something versus having nothing, not to pursue the most advanced and sophisticated technology.

Things like Boeing’s aircraft production lines, Huaguo’s high-speed rail production lines, Toyota’s automobile production lines, or Intel’s chip production lines were simply too high-end for Hongsawaddy.

Not only were their infrastructure requirements demanding, but their costs were also terrifyingly high. In short, they were completely out of reach.

Given the current state of Hongsawaddy’s railways, building a high-speed rail network would be insane. Simply increasing the average operating speed across all tracks to 80-100 kilometers per hour would be a monumental improvement.

It was a similar story for the automobile industry. Hongsawaddy was currently only developing agricultural vehicles, while importing all other types from Huaguo and East Japan.

The long-term plan was to establish the automobile industry in Siam, as that region already had some of the necessary supporting infrastructure.

The shipbuilding industry, meanwhile, was planned primarily for Luzon.

The executives at the Homo Sapiens Company were well aware that neither Hongsawaddy nor Luzon could independently develop a complete industrial chain. Their domestic markets were too small to support it, and the competition in foreign markets was too intense.

However, if they could integrate the entire Southeast Asian market and then gain access to Oceania and the South Asian Subcontinent, the resulting population and market size could just barely sustain a complete industrial chain.

However, the Homo Sapiens Company possessed another advantage. The initial stages of modern industrial development often depend on locally abundant resources, and the company’s bio-enrichment technology could effectively solve many resource shortages.

Furthermore, the Homo Sapiens Company had no intention of simply copying the development paths of other industrial nations. Instead, it planned to fully leverage its advantages in biotechnology to establish an industrial chain with its own unique style.