Gu Peijun hadn’t been thinking about anyone “reaping the harvest.” Right now, all he cared about was clearing the inventory and getting Nanting Lake Juice Factory back into normal production as quickly as possible.

What did catch him off guard, though, was Xiaoliang’s claim that the stockpile could be cleared within a month. He couldn’t help but ask, skeptical:

“You’re saying you can move all that inventory in one or two months?”

After leaving the army, Gu Peijun had worked at the juice factory for over a year, mainly handling sales. He knew the business inside and out.

Under Xiao Yujun’s deliberate sidelining, the original distributors had long stopped taking shipments from the factory—some were even implicated in Xiao Yujun’s case. The experienced sales staff had all jumped ship.

In short, they’d completely lost their market and distribution channels.

And now they were expected to clear mountains of inventory by sending out a few inexperienced salespeople to rebuild everything from scratch? Find new distributors? Open new channels? It sounded almost impossible.

“Yeah,” Xiaoliang said evenly. “I get it—we need to secure our footing first, and the faster we solve problems, the better. But honestly, one or two months is more than enough. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

Gu Peijun had known Xiaoliang for a while, but only in passing. His real impression of him had only formed over these last few days.

Normally, he would’ve dismissed such confidence as arrogance. But for some reason, when Xiaoliang said it, he believed him—at least partially. Still, he hesitated.

“Then… I’ll leave the sales side to you?”

“Are you even free to run sales yourself right now?” Xiaoliang asked with a faint smile.

Gu Peijun had just taken over village committee duties. His hands were already full, tangled in a mess of urgent matters. There was no way he could spare the time to run around the market.

He had to admit it—Xiaoliang was younger than him by three or four years, but in terms of capability and vision, he was clearly ahead.

Like most people of the era, Gu Peijun still held a certain reverence for top university graduates. In his mind, what Xiaoliang showed might simply be what such a “good student” was supposed to be capable of. That, in turn, made him slightly underestimate himself.

“All right then,” Gu Peijun said straightforwardly. “I haven’t really thought about the factory’s long-term direction—or this whole township enterprise reform either. Whatever ideas you’ve got, just lay them out.”

Xiaoliang didn’t keep him in suspense.

“Right now, the country is pushing hard for restructuring township enterprises. And soon, the same kind of reforms will extend to municipal and county state-owned enterprises. Corruption and profit leakage during restructuring are almost unavoidable. Collective assets get siphoned off, workers’ rights are often neglected—this is exactly why so many people oppose it, and why it’ll remain controversial for a long time.”

He paused, then continued.

“As for our juice factory, Xiao Yujun, Fan Chunjang, and Du Xuebing were already planning ahead. They were using ‘reform’ as a cover to turn the factory into Xiao Yujun’s private business and wipe away years of bad debt in one go. Whatever crimes they committed, and however much I’ve been dragged into this mess myself, I still support the idea of restructuring at a macro level.”

“Township enterprises boomed in the early 1980s for a reason. At the start of reform and opening up, demand was high, state-owned factories couldn’t meet supply, and private industry was still restricted—so township collectives had room to grow.”

“But after the State Council issued regulations opening up private enterprise, everything changed. Private companies began to emerge rapidly. Township enterprises, however, had no real technological edge. They couldn’t build barriers against private competitors.”

“On top of that, their management was limited to the local talent pool. Good people had no incentive to stay—private firms offered better pay and opportunity. Decision-making was rigid, slow, and tied down by local bureaucracy. In the end, collapse was only a matter of time.”

“Media still promotes a few successful township enterprises, but those are exceptions. Private businesses are growing at tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands per year. The gap in performance isn’t just one order of magnitude—it’s three, four, maybe even five.”

“That’s why the central government sees it clearly. They’re pushing restructuring of township enterprises, and the same reform will soon hit state-owned enterprises at city and county level. We can’t think about Nanting Lake Juice Factory without understanding that backdrop.”

Xiaoxiao, Xiaoliang’s older brother, who worked at the Municipal Economic and Trade Commission, listened in silence. He was deeply familiar with state enterprise reform pilot programs and even had access to some of the city leadership’s thinking. Yet even he had never heard anyone lay it out so clearly.

For a moment, he wondered if he had been too absorbed in his personal life lately—too focused on his relationship with Tian Wenli—and had missed how much his younger brother had changed over these past two years in Yunshe.

Gu Peijun frowned.

“You’re talking about pushing reform at the factory level right now… isn’t that a bit too ambitious? Not to mention opposition from the village—do you really think Secretary Wang and Director Liang would support it before we’ve even achieved results?”

“That’s exactly the difficulty,” Xiaoliang nodded.

“If we move too fast and show results too quickly, two young guys like us won’t be able to hold onto the gains. People will come in to ‘pick the peaches.’ But if we don’t show results, neither the village nor the township will support us.”

“So we need to move in stages. And from the very beginning, we must separate the achievements from the factory itself.”

“For example, we don’t start by taking over the entire factory. We begin with something smaller—like contracting out inventory sales first. Then we set up a new company, move sales and branding into it, while production stays with the factory.”

Gu Peijun hesitated.

“How is that any different from what Xiao Yujun and the others were doing?” he asked, uncomfortable.

Xiaoliang shook his head.

“It’s fundamentally different.”

“If Xiao Yujun had set up a legitimate sales company, let capable people handle distribution, kept production in the factory, and clearly settled profits between the two sides—or even formally contracted the entire factory and paid the village an annual fee—would you still have reported him for embezzling collective assets?”

Gu Peijun thought for a moment.

“…No,” he admitted.

“That’s the point,” Xiaoliang said.

“My initial plan is to form a sales team and contract out both inventory clearance and future sales. We can propose this directly to the township as part of the restructuring plan.”

“The factory’s biggest problem right now is inventory pressure and lack of cash flow. If we hand over inventory sales at no less than cost price to a contracted sales team, any profit above that becomes performance-based incentive for them.”

“As for branding, I won’t use Nanting Lake Juice Factory’s name for expansion. I’ll register a completely new brand and develop new products—but production will still be outsourced to Nanting Lake Juice Factory.”

The table fell into a brief silence as the plan settled in the air.