Shiguang Blog

On the Chinese internet, this sudden disaster was the first event ever to generate such unprecedented attention. Penguin ID, Penguin Tattle, and even the still-active Xiaonei Network were all flooded with discussion.

"Disaster relief" and "emergency warning texts" became trending topics.

Meanwhile, Huang Xiuyuan, who had quietly done good deeds without seeking recognition, had already erased all traces of his involvement. He instructed Lin Baijie to launch the blog software they had prepared earlier.

The software was called Shiguang Blog. It wouldn't have been easy to grow under normal circumstances, but Huang Xiuyuan had seized on a major opportunity.

On May 13, Shiguang Blog seemed to launch in a hurry, but two major news stories soon thrust it into the spotlight.

The homepage featured a number of news reports. One headline stood out: "Huang Xiuyuan to Donate 500 Million Yuan to Disaster Areas."

That report, together with the news that Suiren Company was organizing a disaster relief team, made Shiguang Blog an instant sensation.

It had 1.73 million downloads in a single day. However, because Shiguang Blog required real-name registration, only about 1.23 million people had opened blog accounts.

To head off doubts, Huang Xiuyuan pinned a post on his personal blog explaining why he was donating and how the money would be used. He ended the post with a link.

The link led to a Shiguang Blog subprogram called "Charity Home." Since it had been launched in a rush, it looked quite bare-bones for now.

Charity Home existed to ensure that every donation was put to proper and effective use. Everything had to be made public: what was purchased, what was built, and which places or individuals received the money.

The first batch of funds included 20 million yuan for emergency food supplies, 10 million for emergency tents, 10 million for daily necessities, and 10 million for diesel generators.

At first, people were skeptical. But as time went on, Huang Weichang and Chang Fuguo, who headed the procurement team, took the lead in organizing a special support group for Suiren Company. They began sourcing and commissioning supplies across the country.

One after another, photos, purchase lists, and contracts were made public.

This sent Shiguang Blog's popularity soaring. By May 20, it had accumulated 11.35 million registered users.

Under Huang Xiuyuan's personal blog:

[Why not open a channel for donations?] — Quiet, Peaceful Days

[If this is a marketing campaign, I hope they do it a few more times.] — Fifty Cents

[@Quiet, Peaceful Days, Charity Home is like a personal charitable foundation. It can't solicit donations from the public.] — Luo Xiang, Bar Exam

[I hope my family back home is safe and sound.] — Rongcheng User 1825...

[By the way, what kind of company is Suiren, the parent company of Shiguang Blog?] — North and South

[@North and South, Suiren Company has an official website with some information. It seems to be involved in garbage recycling and gas production and sales.] — Elementary School Monk

After more than a week, the concerted efforts of countless rescue workers had brought northwestern Sichuan back to normal, at least on the surface.

Huang Xiuyuan had been following the situation closely. When he saw some of the figures, he knew that his butterfly wings had already caused a tremendous change.

Thanks to the advance warning texts, the number of casualties so far was far lower than he remembered—only about one-thirtieth as high.

And for him and Suiren Company, putting 500 million yuan toward disaster relief was, in fact, more beneficial than costly.

Huang Xiuyuan's Huang's International company in Xiangjiang now controlled total capital of 320 million US dollars, through both overt and covert means.

As his investments grew and the company expanded, all sorts of shady characters might come knocking. This 500-million-yuan donation was a protective shield.

On top of that, he was an outstanding alumnus of Harbin Institute of Technology. As long as he obeyed the law, he would have little to worry about in China.

After ten days of ups and downs, Shiguang Blog, now with over ten million users, was gradually losing some of its initial buzz.

But Shiguang Blog had managed to establish itself, and at least the charity donations Huang Xiuyuan had put in were still being accounted for in daily updates.

A full 100 million yuan had already gone toward emergency supplies.

After reading Chang Fuguo's report, Huang Xiuyuan issued another directive: launch a work-relief program and allocate 200 million yuan from the donations to repair rural roads.

Suiren Company contracted construction companies in other parts of Shu Province to repair 200 kilometers of rural roads, at a rate of one million yuan per kilometer.

The contractors were required to hire local people, using the work-relief program to indirectly promote reemployment and the resumption of production.

This move sent Shiguang Blog's popularity soaring once again, bringing its total users to 18.34 million.

Huang Xiuyuan seized the opportunity to spin Shiguang Blog off from Suiren Company and establish a subsidiary, Shiguang Information Technology Company.

With an investment of 100 million yuan, the new company launched an aggressive expansion of Shiguang Blog. The many programmers who joined also helped further improve the platform.

Whether the future Sina Blog would ever take off was now a real question.

For Shiguang Blog, he added an intelligent screening system developed by the Software Laboratory, which greatly reduced the workload for human reviewers.

Having required real-name registration from the start also spared Shiguang Blog some trouble and avoided the difficulty of changing course once it had grown too large.

Huang Xiuyuan had a clear vision for Shiguang Blog: "The platform stays neutral, users' posts are authentic, and the content promotes positive values."

After these days of operation, he had noticed the activities of some shady characters, even without deliberately investigating them.

As a countermeasure, he instructed Jiang Miao, Shiguang Blog's general manager, to activate the screening system and open a brand-new section: Boku.

Boku was similar to Zhihu, which would emerge in the future, but also had some differences.

This new section would invite a number of professionals to join. Shiguang Blog would also establish its own Content Evaluation Studio to assess all user posts in the most rigorous and scientific way, determining whether they contained malicious rumors.

Clearly, the Content Evaluation Studio was aimed at "public intellectuals," "50-cent commentators," and "fake news." Bloggers with more followers and greater visibility would be more likely to have their content reviewed.

To combat the spread of rumors, Shiguang Blog, which required real-name registration, would permanently archive posts flagged as "problematic," mark them with specific tags, and explain what was wrong with them.

Less than three days after the Content Evaluation Studio was established, sixteen highly praised posts had been marked with conspicuous "problem" tags.

Several bloggers who noticed something was wrong quickly edited or deleted their posts. Unfortunately for them, Shiguang Blog's backend permanently backed up any content that had received more than 1,000 actual clicks. Editing it wouldn't help.

The blogs of more than a dozen publicly exposed bloggers now bore a "red name" label.

For example, the blogger known as Ai Dajin had been tagged as an "American" and a "fabricator of fake history." The man was hopping mad, posting one explanation after another.

But Shiguang Blog wouldn't budge. It refused to change the tags. Even if these people deleted their posts, the records would remain in their histories.

Shiguang Blog's message was clear: the internet was not beyond the reach of the law. Blogs were public spaces, where everyone had the right to speak—and everyone had to take responsibility for what they said.

Meanwhile,

After the charitable donations had been spent on real relief efforts, Huang Xiuyuan received praise from a number of state media outlets. Even the People's Daily published an article about it.

That meant the people at the top already knew who he was.

These days, Suiren Company's other businesses had not been affected. They were still progressing steadily.