January 28, Pearl City.
The annual meeting of the Wanlonghui Group was held as scheduled.
This year, the venue was changed to the newly completed stadium—the same stadium that had hosted the finals of The Voice of Dragon Kingdom.
There was simply no other choice. Too many people were attending.
This year’s annual meeting attracted more than ten thousand employees. Nearly all the core members were present, and they alone accounted for almost half of the attendees. Holding the event in a stadium was therefore the most practical option.
Employees from other provinces and non-core members organized their own annual meetings. The group provided the benefits packages, all of which followed exactly the same standards.
On the day of the annual meeting, luxury cars filled the area outside the stadium. Mercedes-Benz vehicles were especially numerous, making up nearly ninety percent of the total. The sight was nothing short of spectacular.
The citizens passing by the stadium got a firsthand look at Wanlonghui’s strength and extravagance. The group bought luxury cars as casually as other people bought vegetables.
The massive impact of the scene inspired even more people to rack their brains for a way to join Wanlonghui Group.
After all, Wanlonghui’s employee benefits were simply too generous. Five types of social insurance and the housing provident fund were only the basics. Its income levels were especially impressive, standing far above those offered by companies in the same industry. Social insurance and provident fund contributions were paid in full, and holiday benefits were never an afterthought.
Wanlonghui also had an almost domineering mechanism for forcing its partners to raise their standards.
Because of Wanlonghui Group’s meteoric rise, every company that worked with it—from upstream suppliers to downstream distributors—had been forced to improve its employees’ benefits by a considerable margin.
Although their packages still could not match those offered by Wanlonghui Group, they were certainly better than what their competitors provided.
They had been forced to do this by Wanlonghui.
Want to work with us?
Then if you refuse to pay social insurance for your employees, or if you treat them too poorly, I’m sorry. No matter how good your products are or how competitive your prices may be, I won’t work with you. I’ll put you on the blacklist as well.
And if I really take a dislike to you, I may even take direct action against you, support a competitor of similar strength, and keep going until I drive you completely out of the supply chain.
Given Wanlonghui Group’s current size, it was absurdly easy for it to sanction its partners.
In truth, Liu Yutong’s logic had always been simple.
Only when employees’ incomes genuinely increased would consumption be stimulated and the market become more prosperous.
Wanlonghui Group could not force every company to adopt its own benefits standards, but any company that wanted to work with Wanlonghui had to follow these rules.
At present, Wanlonghui’s own employees, together with the various upstream and downstream partners in its network, represented an employment population of at least several million people directly affected by these policies.
In other words, in their respective regions, these millions of people enjoyed salaries, social insurance, and benefits that were reliably above the industry average.
Their families numbered more than ten million altogether. Because Wanlonghui existed, their quality of life and spending power had genuinely improved.
Once the annual meeting officially began, senior executives from all six business groups took their places.
Liu Yutong stood at the center of the stage as a massive screen behind her displayed the group’s key figures from the past year.
Over the course of the year, the number of Wanlonghui’s core members had grown from fewer than four thousand to more than six thousand, including the new members promoted at this annual meeting.
The more than one thousand new members had all passed rigorous legal and physical fitness assessments. Their average age was under twenty-four. The highest educational qualification among them was a bachelor’s degree, while the lowest was only junior middle school.
The gap in education was substantial, but it also reflected Wanlonghui Group’s willingness to recognize talent regardless of background.
The total number of official group employees had surpassed eighty thousand. Including full-time delivery riders and couriers, the overall headcount was approaching two hundred thousand.
The revenue figures for each business were then displayed on the screen one after another.
The Commercial Retail Business Group generated annual revenue of more than twenty billion yuan.
Wanlong Plaza currently had two operating locations: the flagship store in Pearl City and another in Dannan City. The two malls had maintained an average daily footfall of more than thirty thousand, with combined annual sales exceeding four billion yuan.
Apart from its presence in the home province, Wanlong Supermarkets had generally been opened alongside Wanlong Plaza malls. Following a strategy focused on carefully selected products and improved service, its expansion had not been fast. There were fewer than thirty branches in total, most of them concentrated in the home province and BS Province.
By the standards of any supermarket chain, this pace was exceptionally inefficient.
Even so, the company continued to refuse blind expansion. Every new store had to ensure that its operating team was fully in place, service quality was up to standard, and the supply chain was completely functional before it could officially open to customers.
The advantages of this approach were obvious. Customer satisfaction and word of mouth continued to rise, while the member repurchase rate had reached an astonishing seventy-eight percent. In other words, nearly eight out of every ten members returned to shop again.
In addition, the main structures of Wanlong Plaza’s projects in Jinchuan and Jingchuan, BS Province, had already been topped out. They were expected to officially open in the first half of 2010.
Nearly ten other Wanlong Plaza projects were also under construction in provincial capitals across the country. Land acquisition, design, and tenant recruitment were all progressing simultaneously, and the projects were expected to open one after another in the second half of 2011.
The Technology Business Group was still in its investment phase. The Longxin Semiconductor 90-nanometer production line had maintained stable mass production throughout the year. Thanks to cooperation with companies such as Qiming Electronics, its revenue had approached 1.2 billion yuan. It had already begun generating enough cash to sustain itself and no longer needed unlimited funding from Liu Yutong.
The Digital Business Group’s Weibo had surpassed three hundred million registered users, with daily active users holding steady at more than fifty million. It firmly occupied the leading position in the social media sector.
As an aside, Big Goose’s Weibo had been operating for nearly half a year by then, but had already fallen into a development bottleneck.
Riding on the explosive success of the first season of The Voice of Dragon Kingdom, the Entertainment and Media Business Group had generated more than three billion yuan in annual revenue, becoming one of the group’s strongest sources of cash flow.
In addition, toward the end of the year, the Entertainment and Media Business Group had incubated an entirely new video website—Long Dimension.
The platform was built around a bullet-comment video format and targeted younger users. Its content covered anime, games, fan-made film and television edits, music, and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from The Voice of Dragon Kingdom. It also opened a creator submission system, allowing users to upload original videos of their own.
Just one month after launch, the platform had already surpassed three million registered users, with daily active users holding steady at more than four hundred thousand. Although it could not yet be considered a major platform, its growth had been astonishingly rapid, and user engagement had far exceeded expectations.
The Supply Chain and Logistics Business Group had established four regional hub centers across the country, covering East China, South China, and Southwest China. Both delivery times and fulfillment rates had entered the industry’s top five.
After the data report concluded, the lights throughout the stadium dimmed slightly for a moment. Everyone’s attention focused on the slender figure dressed in black at the center of the stage.
Liu Yutong took two steps forward and swept her gaze across the audience. Then she suddenly announced something that no one had expected.
“I’m planning to organize an internal group competition once our core membership surpasses ten thousand.”
The moment those words left her mouth, everyone’s interest was piqued. They began discussing excitedly, wondering what kind of competition the Young Lady had in mind.
She revealed the answer soon enough.
“Longguo has been known as the home of martial arts since ancient times. All of you are always boasting about how tough you are, so why not put your real abilities to the test? You’ll form teams according to your respective districts and compete in combat, physical fitness, and legal knowledge. I’ll personally present awards to the top three teams and individuals. We’ll call it—the Dragon Soaring Cup!”
“The total prize money will be no less than fifty million!”
Boom!
The core members sitting below, who had been wearing stern expressions just moments before, instantly erupted with excitement.
They hadn’t done anything major in the past six months, and no one had dared to provoke them. They were practically unused to the peaceful routine.
Now, at last, they had a chance to show what they could do.
Ma Da, seated in the front row, was especially excited. He sprang to his feet, the flesh on his chubby face trembling as he shouted, “This is great! Pearl City has to take first place!”
“Absolutely!”
“…”
“Besides the Dragon Soaring Cup, I’m also planning to establish an organization-wide Health Management Fund. Those who keep exercising and continue studying legal knowledge will be assessed based on changes in their body-fat percentage, physical fitness test results, and progress in preparing for the bar exam. Anyone who meets the standards or shows significant improvement will receive a special bonus. The fund will start with one hundred million yuan, and additional money will be added every year.”
“That’s all I have to say. I hope that at next year’s annual meeting, every one of you will present a report card more impressive than this year’s. Meeting adjourned!”
There was no emotional appeal, nor any long-winded motivational speech.
As soon as she finished speaking, she walked straight off the stage.
But her announcement completely set the entire room ablaze.
In the days that followed, the core members of the Wanlong Association seemed to go completely mad. Those studying law worked even harder, and the legal study rooms were packed every day. The intensity of physical training also shot up by an entire level. From dawn until late at night, the track was always filled with runners, while people in the strength-training area lifted weights without pause.
The money wasn’t what mattered.
What mattered was the honor—and the chance to earn the Young Lady’s approval.
Being personally presented with an award by the Young Lady, having her remember your name— that sense of honor was worth more than any amount of money.
There were still roughly six months left in the current lull. At the current rate of expansion, the number of core members would exceed ten thousand by the middle of the year at the earliest, and certainly no later than the third quarter.
That didn’t leave them much time.
At first, the ordinary employees thought the Dragon Soaring Cup had nothing to do with them. But once they heard the rules of the Health Management Fund, they too sprang into action as if injected with adrenaline.
Body fat too high? Train!
Don’t understand the law? Study!
From top to bottom, the entire group was swept up in an unprecedented frenzy of self-improvement.
For a while, Pearl City became home to a remarkable sight.
People stopped taking cars to work. Many didn’t even ride bicycles. Instead, they ran to and from work, turning the streets into a sea of young people in sportswear, panting as they jogged along.
The study rooms of the city’s major law firms were packed as well. The materials normally used to prepare for the bar exam were borrowed until not a single copy remained, and the lights in those rooms stayed on deeper into the night than those in the libraries.
The spring of Year Ten quietly passed amid this feverish atmosphere of restlessness and determined effort.
