Kingdom of Corrosion

Shipping container fortresses could take to the sea for survival, while sawmills could retreat deep into the mountains for rigorous training. After all, with just over a year left, those two bases should be sufficient for everyone’s amusement.

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During this day, Lin Wu came to understand more about the reserved cadre, Dashuang. In ancient terms, Dashuang was the epitome of a virtuous wife and loving mother. She did more, spoke less. Without any unified planning, she took action whenever she saw things that needed to be done.

Dashuang worried greatly about her younger sister and shared their story with Lin Wu. They weren’t sisters raised by the Public Supporting System, their parents were just ordinary people. At first, there were no problems, after all, the government provided a monthly stipend. But after starting school, their parents realized they might have made a huge mistake.

Within the concept of Blue Star, Dashuang and her sister were considered ’people caught in the middle.’ Their parents were neither nobility nor wealthy, and couldn’t afford the high costs of private education. They weren’t part of the upper 5%, and could only be at the bottom in city schools. The remaining 95% like them could enjoy a collective life with comprehensive plans in public upbringing communities.

Overall, there were pros and cons.

The good, of course, was that Dashuang and her sister had the love of their parents as they grew up. But their parents were from ordinary families and didn’t have much time to spend with them. As people caught in the middle, whenever they encountered problems, their parents would tell them what to do. No one told those from the Public Supporting System what to do, and in the absence of danger, they were even encouraged to act on their own thoughts.

Simply put, those caught in the middle were raised in captivity, while those raised publicly were free-range. But the captivity wasn’t by professionals; it was by their biological parents. On the other hand, those responsible for the free-range public upbringing were social workers who had undergone strict examinations—consisting of professional psychologists, counselors, and teachers.

Why did the government make such great efforts and establish the Public Supporting System with such vast human and material resources? A very important reason was that many parents were unwilling to lower their quality of life due to the birth of their children. Government money couldn’t solve the problem because some aspects of quality of life are unrelated to money and relate instead to time and energy.

Wealthy people would hire nannies to look after their children, but nannies weren’t professionals; their main function was to keep the children alive. Thus, someone was inspired to propose the Public Supporting System. After its formal implementation, the birth rate started to shift from negative to positive.