Chapter 86: The Fall of the Mu Family (1)
Everyone agreed to sleep until the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year and start recording the program at noon —— But this morning, no one could sleep peacefully.
When they opened their phones, they found that from Weibo to WeChat, from the official media to the private blogs, the same hot news was pinned on the screen.
This hot news was not only a national event, but also a trivial matter that was closely related to them!
An official media wrote —— 《EXP Corporation’s steel mills suspected of falsifying product data, the authorities have officially intervened in the case.》
News app wrote —— 《EXP Corporation counterfeit technology: poor quality steel involves 26 automobile brands》
A forum wrote —— 《The water is deep; this melon I dare not eat again. A commercial building under construction in the capital, isn’t the main steel supplier also EXP? [Original post 404]》
An entertainment magazine wrote —— 《”Made in China” into “Chinese system barriers”? American aircraft manufacturer, Thunder, defends rights.》
The four items that were inseparable from life were clothing, food, housing and transportation. However, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, a thunderbolt blew up the two items, housing and transportation, one after another.
EXP Mining Corporation, owned by the Mu family, was the largest privately owned mining group in China. Many people had misconceptions about the mining group, thinking that they were a group of Coal Bosses, mining and selling minerals. But in fact, EXP Mining Corporation’s business involved a wide range of ores. Their extracts would be further processed into synthetic steel, iron, aluminum, copper and other metal building materials, and supplied to various downstream companies.
Then, through reprocessing by downstream companies, they were sold to further downstream companies.
Many of the relationships between upstream and downstream enterprises were ‘one’ to ‘many’.
For example, the steel produced by EXP Corporation would be sent to Company A to manufacture vehicle chassis, Company B to manufacture bearings, and Company C to manufacture hydraulic rods. Company A partnered with 8 domestic car companies. B was a military enterprise. C Company specialized in foreign trade …
With such a one-to-many proliferation, the metal building materials produced by EXP Corporation had a very high market share in China, second only to the first two state-owned holding groups!
Maybe your new motorcycle, the bus you were taking, the steel bars in your house… were all branded with EXP Mining Corporation!
And now, the naked hard evidence was in front of them: All metal building materials produced by EXP Corporation had varying degrees of fraud. They modified the product production data without authorization, which couldn’t reach the extrusion embryo density of regular products. If the materials they provided were used, the safety margin of the whole product would be greatly reduced.
The person who blew the whistle on all this was a Weibo account signed by @Mid-levelEmployeeFoundConscience.
In his long confession, he repeatedly confessed that EXP Corporation had lowered the quality of its products in recent years. Driven by profit, and because they couldn’t afford the rising prices of raw materials and labor, they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to compete with other manufacturers!
At the same time, they bribed relevant personnel to open doors for their defective goods. These problematic metal building materials were difficult to distinguish by the naked eye, and thus grandly flowed into society, impacting a wide range.
On the morning of the New Year’s Day, this account published more than 100 pages of evidence on Weibo, forums, Tieba((the Chinese equivalent to Reddit)) and other social networking sites in one fell swoop. The main body of evidence was organized into a PDF document, with a clear table of contents, detailed and illustrated, and tables clearly listing the data before and after the modification. Not only that, the blogger also provided video and audio files. He secretly recorded evidence from the mouths of multiple lower-level employees and higher-level leaders before compiling them into the dozen GBs of evidence…
At the end of the document, he listed the names of more than two hundred downstream companies in one fell swoop, and many well-known companies were on the list.
Once this file was released, it immediately exploded all over social media!
On the first day of the New Year, which should be a day for a good rest after a busy year, what PR agency would work so early? Naturally, EXP Corporation’s opinion monitors missed this viral expose. By the time they realized and wanted to press the news, it was already too late!
This scandal was really too wide and too big. On that list, there were not only domestic companies involved, but also many foreign companies; not only privately owned companies, but also state-owned enterprises, military enterprises…
Even some netizens with marvelous abilities picked it out. In the bidding document published on the website of a high-speed railway group, EXP Corporation actually participated in the bidding! —— Fortunately, they didn’t win the bid. Otherwise, it would be a bloody catastrophe involving a wide range of people.
Before the smell of the New Year could fade, the wind and rain came crashing down on everyone.
In just one day, the matter fermented rapidly and immediately evolved into a major public security incident, which aroused the attention of all sectors of society and government agencies.
Every time a site was refreshed, more updated news popped up. The true and false rumors intermixed, making people’s moods rise and fall along with them.
Under such circumstances, who could still spend a good Spring Festival?
“Sister Su, have you heard?” Xiao Xia rushed to Su Jishi’s yurt and told her, “Zhou Jing has been arrested!”
Su Jishi asked, “She did? Why was she arrested?”
“EXP Corporation has fallen to such a major scandal, so none of the dozens of subsidiaries under it can escape. They’re all under investigation. The Second Uncle is also among them, and Zhou Jing is his mistress. Naturally, she can not get away with it. The police sent her a subpoena, ordering her to go to the police station to assist in the investigation. As a result, she fled by plane like a thief!” Xiao Xia danced around, “She was unlucky to have run into air traffic control. The plane had not yet reached the Pacific Ocean, and landed after a turn in the sky! As soon as she disembarked, the police arrested her!”
Good news traveled on crutches, while bad news flew on wings. As soon as Zhou Jing was taken away for investigation, everyone in the crew was also on edge.
It was the Director who made the decision and waved his hand, saying, “What are we afraid of? Zhou Jing only has taken a few shots. When the time comes, we’ll just delete her footage. We won’t be implicated!”
Only then did everyone in the crew feel relieved.
Peek-Aboo 
Leave a comment