The Lord of the World Begins from the Siheyuan

His brother was slow to think, so Ah Hai explained, "Boss Li is protecting us. Everyone in Hong Kong knows it."

"As long as we are caught by those foreign devils, they will go directly to Mr. Li to seek justice."

It's like this everywhere. If a younger brother makes a mistake, the boss must step in to settle the matter.

Huang Fuyi nodded and said, "That's right. You must be extra careful."

"It's risky. We'd rather destroy the goods than expose them."

Ah Hai said: "I will personally escort the goods when the time comes."

Huang Fuyi agreed, "It's better for you to go in person for the first time. You can arrange for someone reliable to handle it in the future."

The mainland is not closed. It has always been tracking the world's most advanced technologies and has always had channels to get things from outside.

Several computers in the DJS series developed in the early 70s were imitations of American computers.

In July 1972, computer expert Severo Ornstein (who participated in the development of the ARPANET) and six others visited the mainland as a private tour group.

The six computer scientists from the United States received a warm reception. They were invited to visit the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and Peking duck. They also visited universities, research institutes, and production workshops in Beijing and Shanghai.

What shocked these Chinese people was that the latest ACM and IEEE journals could be found in mainland libraries.

They also saw our most rudimentary circuit board assembly workshop, which was converted from a community factory that produced door and window handles, where housewives soldered integrated circuits onto printed circuit boards entirely by hand.

And our scientists also said very honestly, 'Don't use those things that have been published in journals, give us some practical information that you haven't published yet.'

Scientists in the United States used to have the stereotype that the mainland is very closed, but now their eyes have been opened.

But they also discovered a big problem for us.

Focusing on scientific computing, all computers were batch processing systems and made extensive use of paper tape input and output. They were extremely enthusiastic about developing ultra-high-performance mainframes, but did not pay attention to the application of computers in business and production management.

It’s not that I don’t care, but I don’t pay attention to it at all.

This is also determined by the actual domestic situation. There is no commercial application scenario, and computing is for research tasks such as missiles, nuclear bombs, and satellites.

Our computer technology has not developed much at this time. Other reasons are secondary. The key reason is that there is no demand for scale.

The lack of scale means that production costs cannot be reduced, and the high prices limit the possibility of product popularization, thus creating a vicious circle.

For civilian industrial products, cost and benefits ultimately determine the outcome.

The CT machine that Li Ming asked Zhou Xiaobai and others to study may provide some improvements to this problem. The image display of the CT machine requires a computer to realize.

If there is a breakthrough in commercial application scenarios, the vicious circle can be broken.

To this end, the Cambrian Laboratory in Hong Kong is discussing the development of a free "computer Chinese character information processing system".

Being able to input and display Chinese characters can reduce the difficulty of use.

Beijing.

Red Star Steel Rolling Mill.

Li Ming just attended a meeting to study a new document.

These are materials forwarded by the Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

"Xinhua Printing Factory's Experience in Resolutely Implementing **'Providing a Way Out' Policy in *****".

This material has been submitted to the higher authorities, and after two or three days it will be sent to all parts of the country with a comment added.

'It is recommended that this document be forwarded to various places for reference.'

'For those who commit crimes and make mistakes, we must pay attention to the policy, crack down on them on a small scale, educate them on a wide scale, attach importance to evidence, investigate and research, and strictly prohibit corruption.'

"We should do more education work for good people who have made mistakes, and liberate them in time when they have awakened."

There is a special comment: "Comrades like this are everywhere, and they should all be liberated and given jobs."

For many people, this is great news.

People like Zheng Tong and Yuan Jun now have hope that their parents can return home.

After the meeting.

Director Nie called Li Ming to his office for a talk. "How is the investigation of the ham sausage factory going?"

Li Ming didn't understand what Director Nie wanted to know, so he said in a conventional way: "Let the employees open up and talk about the difficulties they encounter."

"Nowadays, people are talking more and more, but there are fewer conflicts and contradictions."

Director Nie smiled and said, "After talking it out, a lot of misunderstandings have been cleared up, right?"

Li Ming continued, "Yes."

"They were all new colleagues and were not familiar with each other. They were polite on the surface but were guessing about each other in their hearts, which led to many misunderstandings."

"Now many misunderstandings have been cleared up, and production efficiency has been greatly improved."

Director Nie urged: "The cadre work of the branch factory must be strengthened, and ideological work must not be neglected."

Li Ming first criticized himself, "I have a great responsibility."

"They were given labor competitions every month, and before they had established a loving and friendly relationship with each other, they had to face the pressure of competition from their colleagues too early."

"Some of the new employees are not quite used to the pressure."

“That’s a lesson I’m going to learn from in the future.”

The subordinates at the ham sausage factory may not be aware of this problem or may not dare to raise it.

The big man at the steel rolling mill really didn't understand, and it was Zhou Xiaobai who reminded him.

Only then did he realize that he was partly to blame.

Director Nie said disapprovingly: "This has nothing to do with the labor competition."

"They missed the 'help' part in their competition to learn from each other and help each other."

"The most fundamental problem is that their ideological awareness is not good enough. They are selfish and have lost the class friendship among workers."

What he said seemed to make a lot of sense. Li Ming followed suit and said, "Director, you have a deeper understanding of the problem and point directly to the key point of the problem."

Director Nie then stated the purpose of the conversation, "It's good if the situation gets better."

"The city has given us a task. The ham sausage factory needs to recruit 500 female workers this time."

The ham sausage factory was in a mess before, so Li Ming pushed back on this task, "Have you agreed?"

Director Nie actually didn't want to answer the call, and said helplessly: "Even Director Li called us, hoping that we can consider the overall situation and overcome the difficulties."

Everything has been said from the perspective of the overall situation, so you have to agree with it even if you don't agree with it.

Li Ming agreed: "It seems that we can only recruit more people."

Director Nie would definitely not let his subordinates get upset at work, so he helped come up with an idea.

"You don't have to worry about the factory being difficult to manage. For the extra people we hired this time, arrange for them to attend a one- to two-month training course to improve their ideological awareness."

"Once they have finished their training, other employees will be rotated to continue the training." "It will take almost a year to complete the training."

Li Ming could easily think of such a solution. He asked a key question, "Didn't the higher-ups approve funds for us to expand production this time?"

"The finances are very tight and we really can't squeeze out the money. We'll expand the production of the ham sausage factory once we have accumulated enough funds." Director Nie made an empty promise.

Li Ming finally understood that the higher-ups actually wanted the 3500 employees of the ham sausage factory to help support these 500 people.

There are more people living off the fat of the land in the factory, so their welfare benefits will be reduced. For example, in terms of basic housing, some four-person dormitories will be changed into eight-person dormitories.

"It seems that there is no hope of expanding production. Our factory's money must be saved to build a machinery branch and staff building."

After being pointed out, Director Nie had nothing to be embarrassed about, "The staff building is quite expensive."

"But it has to be built sooner or later. The sooner it is built, the sooner the problem of factory workers having difficulty getting married can be solved."

Li Ming agreed: "That's right. Let's solve the problem at hand first."

This was because the bad advice he gave to Deputy Director Chen Guodong worked.

The city government, unable to bear the constant inquiries from employees of the steel mill who had no housing but wanted to get married, approved the solution proposed by the steel mill and used the mill's own funds to build a new staff building.

In the past, some bold employees would also ask Director Nie to solve their housing problems.

Director Nie also had a headache, so he took the opportunity to complain a little, "Housing is a big problem!"

"We have solved this batch, but we don't know what to do with the next batch."

Li Ming said, "When you get to the mountain, there will be a way out. By then, there may be money to invest in infrastructure."

Director Nie was not very optimistic. "I hope so!"

People in Beijing are worried about housing.

There will also be a shortage of houses in Broome, Australia.

The port city will soon be transporting many people to Australia, and they will only be able to live in simple houses such as tents for a while.

Broome Mining, a joint venture of several subsidiaries, has been operating for some time.

The first 21-year iron ore mining rights were also obtained.

A group of executives from Star Corporation were wearing safety helmets and pointing at a large piece of wasteland.

My brother-in-law really enjoys the feeling of giving orders. "The 'royalty' for mining has been set. We need to start mining the iron ore as soon as possible."

Dai Mingkai, the Australian deputy manager of Indo-Ocean Investment Company, said, "Mr. Li wants to use more workers and less machinery, so the output will probably not be very ideal."

Guan Lihua, manager of Bloom Mining, explained: "Using more workers and less machinery does not mean not using machinery."

"Machinery will still be used extensively, but we will try to use as many workers as possible."

Guan Lihua was previously the deputy production manager of a steel company in Gangcheng. When he heard that Xingchen Company was recruiting a manager to be in charge of its Australian mines, he immediately jumped over.

Although there is no iron ore in Gangcheng, there are a lot of shipbreaking yards. Even many warships from the countries of Magnesium and Britain were sent to Gangcheng for dismantling. Gangcheng also has several steel mills.

Guan Lihua's main role is to help supervise the work of other professional deputy managers.

My brother-in-law stared at the planning map and said casually, "We can do as much as we can. Anyway, we don't expect the mining company to make much money. As long as we don't lose money, it's fine."

Guan Lihua did not come to Australia to live a lazy life. "As long as the price of iron ore does not drop to a very low price, it is impossible to lose money."

Dai Mingkai, who invested in India, was a little depressed that such a large project was led by the Magnesium branch. "If we don't make money from investing $1500 million in this, the loss will be quite large."

"The interest on $1500 million alone would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

Guan Lihua added: "Japan's demand for iron ore is huge, and the possibility of iron ore prices falling is small."

My brother-in-law said generously: "It's okay, hundreds of thousands of dollars is nothing."

"Our Xingchen Group is a humane company. We take good care of our employees' food, clothing, housing and transportation, and help the miners settle down and start their own businesses."

Li Ming's primary purpose in opening an iron mine was to provide jobs, not for a small profit. If he wanted profit, he would do other businesses that could make money faster.

Ni Xiu, who happened to be in Australia inspecting the Red Bull beverage market, said, "Boss Lou, is Australia going to set up a construction company?"

My brother-in-law responded: "It has been brewing for so long. If we want to push it forward, we should also start planning and building it well."

"The completed houses are sold at cost to employees of farms, ranches and mining companies. Those who don't want to buy or don't have the money to buy can rent them, and the rent is deducted from their salary."

Ni Xiu smiled and said, "Those who come here are so lucky. We have already taken care of their food, clothing, housing and transportation."

Food is supplied by farms and Mars Trade; houses are provided by construction companies; clothes and daily necessities are provided by Mars Trade; and commuting is provided by Bloom Mining.

Not only food, clothing, housing and transportation, but even the massage business is operated by Hairong Labor Service Company.

Anyway, Star Corporation has already taken care of all matters in Bloom for the miners who are about to arrive.

The miners who came here were from the mainland, and their lives were well planned, so there was nothing they couldn't adapt to.

Li Ming spent tens of millions of dollars to build railways and open iron mines, so he was not worried at all about not making any money back.

As long as there are people, there will be consumption, and Xingchen Company can make money back through various links.

This model is not only used by Xingchen Company, other mining companies also have similar operations.

The last time Lou Xiao'e visited Australia, she saw a modern town developed by other mining companies in the Gobi Desert.

Dai Mingkai of Indo-Pacific Investment reminded, "Mr. Lou, the dinner welcoming you to Bloom County will start at 6 o'clock. We should go back."

My brother-in-law was very helpless. "Since I came to Australia, starting from Perth, there have been banquets all the way. I am fed up with it."

Deming said comfortingly: "Our company has invested a huge amount of money to help the ruling conservatives solve a big problem."

"This is what the workers said, and it is impossible for them to say that our company is wrong."

"It's only natural that both of them would rush to entertain you."

The eldest brother-in-law looked pleased, "They are just some minor characters."

"In Magnesium, I can meet the newly elected president directly."

At the beginning of the month, on November 11, US time, Nixon won 5 electoral votes with 43.4% of the votes.

Although the current Vice President Humphrey of the Democratic Party received 42.7% of the votes, he only received 191 votes; Wallace, who ran away from the Democratic Party, received 13.5% of the votes, 46 votes.

Nixon's victory was both a landslide and a narrow one, and he would not be able to take office until January 1th of next year.

Xingchen Company placed its bets early on and made a lot of efforts, and the transaction of money will naturally pay off.

There are rumors that early next year, the Magnesium Congress will relax controls on capital inflows and outflows.

From now on, the profits of Xingchen Company's various businesses in Magnesium Country can be legitimately remitted back to Hong Kong City.

There is obviously more good news than that.

Before get off work in the evening.

Li Ming in the capital received another piece of good news. (End of this chapter)