The chamber designated for the first meeting of the "Commission for Imperial Standardization" was an architectural embodiment of compromise and conflict. It was a Western-style boardroom, complete with a long, polished mahogany table and high-backed leather chairs, that had been awkwardly inserted into a traditional wing of a lesser palace. The walls were still adorned with delicate silk scrolls depicting serene mountain landscapes, which now looked down upon a scene of barely suppressed hostility.
At the head of the table sat Yuan Shikai, the new Supreme Overseer. He was the picture of calm, decisive authority, his tailored silk robes a stark contrast to the rigid military uniforms and stuffy Manchu court dress of the men surrounding him. He let the silence in the room stretch, forcing the disparate, resentful factions to stew in their own animosity.
The room was a microcosm of the forces tearing at the Qing Dynasty. To his right were his own men, a handful of sharp-eyed, ambitious industrialists and engineers, their faces alight with the promise of profit and power. To his left sat the Manchu nobles, a delegation led by a haughty, sour-faced cousin of Prince Chun named Zailan. They slumped in their chairs, their expressions a mixture of open contempt and boredom, making it clear they viewed this entire affair as a vulgar sideshow run by a low-born Han upstart. And scattered amongst them were the military officers, representatives from Meng Tian's command, their faces grim and unreadable. They were here on the Emperor's direct order, their duty to ensure the needs of the army were met, their suspicion of Yuan's corruption a palpable force field.
Yuan began without pleasantries. "Gentlemen," he said, his voice a cool, confident baritone that commanded attention. "Our task, by Imperial Edict, is to rationalize the industrial might of the Empire for the war effort. Our first and most fundamental task is to define a single, standard unit of measurement. We cannot forge an arsenal when the inch in Guangzhou is different from the inch in Beijing."
He gestured to an aide, who began distributing documents. "I propose the adoption of a new 'Imperial Inch.' It will be based on the British Imperial Unit for ease of trade and reverse-engineering of foreign technology, but it will be metrically divisible into one hundred parts for scientific precision and ease of calculation."
The battle began instantly.
"Preposterous!" Zailan sneered, tossing the document onto the table as if it were contaminated. "You would have us abandon the chi and the cun? The measurements handed down by our ancestors, measures used to build the Great Wall and the Grand Canal? You would have us bow to the barbarian's ruler?"
Another noble chimed in, his voice dripping with condescension. "The Minister's proposal lacks… philosophical grounding. The Shuowen Jiezi clearly delineates the proper and harmonious relationships between measures. This… this 'inch'… it has no history, no soul."
They were not arguing about engineering. They were fighting a desperate rearguard action to preserve their worldview, to protect a system where their classical education gave them authority. They were masters of bureaucratic obstruction, capable of bogging down any proposal in years of scholarly debate and procedural nonsense.
Yuan had anticipated this. He did not engage them in their esoteric arguments. He had no intention of debating. He intended to rule.
"Your erudition is noted, Lord Zailan," Yuan said, his voice polite but edged with ice. "However, this is not a philosophical debate at the Hanlin Academy. It is a matter of military necessity."
He nodded to his aides, who moved with practiced efficiency, placing a thousand-page, leather-bound technical manual in front of each commission member. The books landed on the table with a series of heavy, definitive thuds. They were filled with dense engineering diagrams, complex conversion charts, and precise technical specifications. It was a weapon of overwhelming, mind-numbing preparation.
"Adherence to the new Imperial Inch," Yuan announced, his voice now devoid of any pretense of politeness, "is not a matter for this commission to debate. It is an Imperial Edict, ratified by the Son of Heaven this morning. This commission's purpose is to oversee its implementation."
He fixed the sputtering nobles with a cold stare. "Any factory, workshop, or arsenal, public or private, that fails to re-tool and comply with these new standards within three months will have its imperial contracts permanently cancelled. Its masters will be imprisoned and its assets seized by the state for the crime of treason against the war effort."
He had used the Emperor's authority, and the urgency of the coming war, as a bludgeon. The nobles fell silent, their faces a mixture of fury and impotence. They could argue philosophy, but they could not argue with treason. The military men, for their part, looked on with a new, grudging respect. They might not trust Yuan Shikai, but they could not deny his terrifying efficiency.
While he was publicly steamrolling the opposition, Yuan was privately executing a far more subtle maneuver. "To ensure a smooth transition," he continued smoothly, "I have taken the liberty of establishing a number of sub-committees to oversee specific sectors. A sub-committee for railway standardization. One for munitions. One for textiles."
He read from a list, creating dozens of new bureaucratic bodies out of thin air. And the chairmen he appointed to each and every one were his own men—loyal industrialists, trusted aides, men whose fortunes were tied to his own. In a single stroke, he was using the Emperor's mandate to create a vast new shadow government within the state, a sprawling network of industrial control that answered only to him. He was creating order, but it was his order.
The meeting concluded. The nobles stormed out, fuming. The military officers left with thoughtful, troubled expressions. Yuan Shikai had won the first battle of the bureaucratic war.
Later that evening, alone in his opulent private office, Yuan reviewed a secret addendum to his own plans. A list of exotic materials and advanced industrial processes that he needed for his own secret projects—a new, superior formula for hardened steel armor, a more stable and powerful high-explosive compound. These were things he could not possibly source through the new, transparent, highly scrutinized official channels he had just created. His public task of building a rigid, orderly system made his private task of building a secret arsenal infinitely more difficult.
He walked over to a massive, detailed map of China that covered one wall. His eyes bypassed the developed coastal provinces, the industrial heartlands that were now under the Emperor's watchful eye. He looked instead to the west. To the vast, wild, and largely ungoverned provinces of Xinjiang and Tibet. Places of deserts and mountains, ruled by local warlords and tribal leaders, far from the reach of imperial edicts and nosy military commissars.
He needed new supply chains. Secret ones. Untraceable ones. He would have to build a new network from scratch, a clandestine industrial empire hidden in the far-flung corners of the realm. The official task of creating absolute order was forcing him to create a new, far more sophisticated level of chaos. And somewhere, out in the darkness of the port cities, a hunted American spy was being given the exact same impossible task. Their paths, though they did not know it, were beginning to converge.