Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 599
Both the Ming and the Qing knew that the source of the Zheng Group's power was the huge profits from maritime trade.One of the main measures to combat the Zheng Group is to block the export of goods from the mainland, especially after Zheng Zhilong was killed in Jiangqing, the Manchu Qing implemented a strong sea ban measure, imposed a trade blockade on Zheng Chenggong, and implemented a sea ban. "Slabs are not allowed to enter the sea." ", the export of goods is prohibited, but Zheng Chenggong can still continuously obtain a large number of goods for overseas trade from the mainland relying on Taiwan and Jinxia.This all relies on the business-intelligence network established by Zheng's Group in the mainland, which is the so-called "Shan Hai Liang Road, Five Merchants and Five Elements System".

The operation of this system was very successful. It not only continuously provided the Zheng Group with various sources of goods on the mainland, but also provided intelligence and logistical support for Zheng Chenggong's military operations on the mainland. In 1659 when the Zheng army attacked Zhenjiang, the businessmen of the Zheng group bought a large amount of rice and stored it in the Jinshan Temple in Jiangkou. When the Zheng army ships arrived, they could supply the army food on the spot.Zheng Chenggong's Ministry reported Huang Wu's defection to the Manchu Qing, and then reported this system. However, during the entire Shunzhi period, only twelve so-called Zheng's spies were cracked, and most of them were unclear, and the people involved were only five or six people. .Apparently not much damage was done to the system.

Zheng Chenggong's system is to operate commerce by mountain roads and material distribution by sea.There are five commercial firms in each road, and they are not in contact with each other.

Now the system that Jiang Shan, Skaide and others want to establish is basically to imitate its mode of operation.

Shanlu is in charge of crossing the group's continental trade and purchasing supplies.The five merchants are code-named "gold, wood, water, fire, and earth".Wanyou received the "golden" font size; the "wooden" font size was reserved for the Runshitang system, and the rest were left for use.

Several purple-brand enterprises in Guangzhou and South China Sugar Industry in Leizhou, the Intelligence Bureau and the Colonial Trade Department think that they are too important to the Crossing Group, and it is best to keep them as they are for the time being.

Hailu established the Five Elements to operate cargo and population transportation, inns, and finance.Equivalent to the logistics financial services industry.With the code name of "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith".Among them, the name of "Ren" is the Qiwei Escort system, and the name of "Yi" is the system of Delong Bank.

The Five Merchants and the Five Elements of the Shanhai Road and the Five Elements all adopt vertical management, and there are only commercial contacts with each other, and no intelligence contacts.Keep each other's actions secret.Except for a few key figures, most of the shop assistants and shopkeepers are unaware of their secret mission.

The Five Merchants and Five Elements mainly collect local public information, and are also responsible for logistics, transportation and communication support.

In addition to the people from Shanhai and Shanhai, there is the "Black Dragon Club" system directly under the system of the Foreign Intelligence Service.This system is all composed of intelligence personnel, and they conduct investigations in important locations in the form of a reconnaissance network.These personnel will use various identities for cover, including landlords, peddlers, small businessmen, buddies, monks, Taoist priests and the like.When necessary, it is also possible to use the model of occupying mountains as kings or forming village braves to operate small-scale local armed forces as future mainland armed forces.

There is no horizontal connection between the Black Dragon Club and Shanhai Road. They mainly engage in dangerous illegal activities. Members of the Black Dragon Club are not allowed to work in the Shanhai Road store to avoid being caught in the dark. When being implicated in the arrest, when the other party's cooperation or support is required, a special token or an instruction with a coded letter must be presented.

Establishing a large-scale commercial network in the mainland is a large-scale investment project.This project not only invested a lot, but also invested a lot of people. It caused a lot of controversy during the third reading of the Senate, and a hearing was held for this.

At the meeting, personnel from the financial, trade and industrial sectors explained their current situation and problems.

At present, the scale of investment in Lingao's industry, civil affairs, and infrastructure continues to expand, and the behavior of expanding production capacity and increasing population has greatly stimulated imports.And Lingao's local raw material self-sufficiency rate is very low.The result is that Lingao's dependence on foreign trade is constantly deepening.Lingao's financial department finally began to encounter a problem: lack of foreign exchange.

The so-called foreign exchange is of course the most widely used hard currency in this time and space: silver.

The ever-expanding industrial and mining enterprises, administrative agencies, and military police employed a large number of personnel. The huge administrative expenses and industrial investment made the physical silver reserves of the Finance and Finance Committee drop to a level close to the warning line by April 1630.

Judging from the book figures, Lingao's trade has always been in a super-excessive position, and the amount of silver reserves is more than sufficient, but most of the reserves are only in the accounts receivable of Guangzhou Station. Similarly, Guangzhou Station's import materials are payable. The number of liabilities under it is also quite a lot.If it weren't for the first collection day of the Dragon Boat Festival in May, the silver reserve situation of the Crossing Group until the end of summer would become ugly.

As for Leizhou, the largest source of silver for the Transverse Group, not only could it not contribute financial resources, but it also required a large amount of financial investment.Relying on the Leizhou Sugar Industry Association, the South China Sugar Industry Company is organizing a "sugar industry association" locally, similar to the "agricultural cooperative" system in Japan.Adopt a unified supply of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides; unified planting guidance, and unified purchase; the most important thing in this system is to provide a large number of small low-interest loans to farmers, so that they are free from the control of local rural usury.This system is currently only being implemented in Xuwen, but it needs to invest at least 5 taels of capital. In addition, it will need to invest 30 million taels of silver in the autumn to meet the acquisition needs.This makes the financial situation in the second half of the year very serious.

"Since the financial situation is so severe, why should we increase investment in the mainland?" Qian Shuixie, a member of the Standing Committee of the Senate, questioned, "It is impossible to recover the principal of the funds invested now, let alone obtain sufficient profits. .”

"First of all, this system is a gradual construction process, not a one-step process." Sitting on a lonely chair in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped table is Skade—although this system is a dual system of business and intelligence, it mainly serves business. The principle of whoever benefits the most will answer the question can only be played by him.

"This system mainly uses existing mature industrial and commercial enterprises, and we take the lead to guide them to make expansion investments." Skade pointed out that whether it is the upcoming "Wanyou" or Runshitang, which is planning to build "Daming Watsons" Pharmacies are all private joint-stock companies, and the funds for external expansion are mainly borne by them.

"But we also have an investment, don't we? And it's not a small investment."

"Of course. Although our nominal investment amount is relatively large, the actual silver capital investment is limited..."

"Do you mean to say: Our investment is just an accounting exercise?"

Skade hesitated a little, and returned after dozens of seconds: "If you are talking about the method of transferring funds, then it is indeed." He then added, "But we also need to invest a part of silver. It's just the amount It's limited."

"No matter what, the total investment of Wanyou and Runshitang will not be less than 5 taels, right? Just discount it in half according to your contract investment amount. How long will it take to recover the cost of this money—— Not talking about profit."

"I think even Buffett can't say when he will definitely make a profit." Skade said, "But the time to return to capital is very fast. For example, the business of universal North-South goods."

According to historical data, naval calculations, and commercial department estimates: traditional sand ships were used to transport goods from Shanghai to Tianjin from the north to the south, and a round-trip transaction could be completed in about two months. The cost of 5 taels of silver, after deducting the expenses, the net profit is about 6000 to [-] taels, which is very considerable.

"It's impossible to withdraw profits to Lingao immediately. Since we want to expand our business, we need to accumulate capital."

"Yes, that's it," Skade said, "but it's just that the investment is relatively large, and there is no need for additional investment in the later stage-even if the additional investment will be limited, it can rely on the company's own profits to maintain operation and development. With our It’s quite a bargain for the investment.”

People in the Standing Committee made a commotion, as if they were not very satisfied with this answer.

Skade continued: "As for funds, there is another channel that can be supplemented. Everyone knows where the deposits of Delong Bank in Guangzhou come from, right? It mainly depends on the deposits of rich local people absorbed by Zi's enterprises. We After the formation of the mainland commercial network system, the same method can also be used to absorb funds."

"In addition, the Colonial and Trade Superintendent's Department invited Comrade Yu Eshui, a first-level historical data researcher in the historical data research group of the Great Library, as our witness."

"agree."

Yu Eshui submitted a testimony. According to historical records, next year, the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Ming army will block Guangzhou Bay and prohibit the Portuguese from entering and leaving trade.This has abolished the practice that the Portuguese can come to Guangzhou City twice a year to purchase goods, which has lasted for many years.

"The Portuguese can no longer purchase Chinese goods directly. They will inevitably look for Chinese agents to buy goods. Guangzhou Station can take advantage of this opportunity to directly sell a large amount of Chinese goods to the Portuguese, and we can obtain a huge amount of silver foreign exchange reserves. If we can Establish a commercial network in the mainland before next year, and through this network, you can purchase goods cheaply and then export them—whether it is directly sold to the Portuguese in Macau or shipped to Southeast Asia.”

The main origin of raw silk, the favorite product of the Portuguese, is in the south of the Yangtze River.The first-grade raw silk variety "Lankij n" (Nanjing) for export is produced in Jiangnan.

The proposal to form a mainland business network was finally passed by the Senate for the third reading, but the Standing Committee added an additional condition to it, that is, additional funding for these enterprises must be approved by the Senate.

In addition, the Senate also approved the Department of Colonial and Trade Directors to conduct one or two tentative trade inspections to Southeast Asia and Liaodong to see if there is any possibility of setting up a business house or agency in the local area.

At the same time, the Senate also ordered the Manufacturing Director Department to develop more export products as soon as possible to ensure a superior position in the foreign trade field.Increase foreign exchange reserves to ensure the continuous import of raw materials and population.

The Ministry of Colonization and Trade had all the authorizations they wanted.However, the manufacturing director department seemed very unhappy-they didn't get any benefits from this hearing, but they were even more pressured.Developing new export products is easy to say, but it is actually very difficult.

Most of the products of the various departments and enterprises under the Manufacturing Director Department cannot be exported - even if they are willing to export, Lingao itself is not enough.Orders for machinery and equipment, which accounted for most of the production capacity of the Director of Manufacturing Department, had been placed in 1633, all of which were to be used in various industries, mining and agriculture in Lingao and the future Sanya area; The incredible figure of 5000 sets of various clothing per month is still unable to cope with the growing population.Sometimes, the decontaminated immigrants did not even get the standard of two sets of clothing per person, so they had to use clothing vouchers to owe them first and then collect them later.As for shoes, they have never been able to really meet the demand. The army can barely keep soldiers from training barefoot by making "advanced straw sandals" mixed with rags. Only wear it when going out.

Even the production capacity of many light industrial products has been digested internally - such as soap, its own production capacity is affected by the lack of oil, and the large internal demand for soap makes most of the soap directly consumed in Lingao, only a few high-grade soap and transparent Soap was exported as a luxury item.

"Mo Xiao'an, this is up to you to consider." Zhan Wuya said, "As we all know, the only possibility for heavy industry to export is arms and machinery. Now the executive committee disagrees with all of them, so the important task of exporting industrial products is It falls to your Ministry of Light Industry."

He sighed: "I know you are in a difficult situation. The raw materials of many products are 'controlled' materials. Even if they can sell well in the market, you will not be able to mass-produce them. But you should work hard."

"I'll try my best to find a way." Mo Xiaoan said with a bitter face, "Can you submit a report to the executive committee? Allow some grains to be exported? This way I can at least develop sweet potato products in large quantities."

"This is basically impossible. If it's not enough, I'll try again. You still pray for a bumper harvest of sweet potatoes this year, so many that they will rot. Maybe it's still possible."

Mo Xiaoan thinks the problem is that the food factory's comprehensive utilization of sweet potatoes is too strong, and there is almost no possibility of waste.

I went back to my office and thought about it for a long time, but I still couldn't think of anything to expand the export.He can now export quite a lot of products, ranging from non-staple food, snacks, medicines, cosmetics, bathroom ceramics, paper... all kinds of things, removing those varieties that are too low in production capacity and can only be consumed locally and the varieties included in the export control catalog of the Executive Committee. There are probably more than 40 varieties.

Among them, the most sold are monosodium glutamate and pickles produced by Tianchu, as well as needles and paper products.These four accounted for half of the total volume of Lingao's bulk export commodities.

Runshitang's export of Chinese patent medicines has increased very rapidly, but the production capacity of handmade products is not high, and coupled with the large amount of local self-use in Lingao, the export value is still relatively low.This situation will not change until the new mechanized pharmaceutical factory is put into operation.

Because monosodium glutamate needs sweet potatoes as raw materials, the production quantity is greatly limited; pickles and the like can expand production-the production of vegetables is always very impressive, especially in the climate of Lingao, all vegetables can be produced Year-round growth.

It's a pity that my plan of dry rice noodles can't succeed - rice noodles mixed with a lot of dried potato powder have been on the market in Lingao for a long time, and the transversal people and the indigenous people have eaten a lot of them.And he has always hoped to sell this thing to the mainland, but the executive committee still does not agree to export it.

Mo Xiaoan couldn't come up with a new product after much deliberation. The new product has a lot of ideas, and the test sales results in Guangzhou are not bad.But he needs new products that can be shipped in large quantities.Finally he found Xun Suji and Zhou Dongtian.

Xun Suji has not been paying much attention to work recently.Liu Youren was desperate for the possibility of him proposing marriage, so he simply asked Liu Guangbiao to propose marriage to him: willing to marry his "grandniece" Liu Meilan to him.Not only is the Liu family willing to marry their daughter to him, but they will also give Liu Meilan a dowry.As for Kim Hee-sun, the "houseman" next to Chief Hoon, Liu Guangbiao said that Liu Meilan is definitely not a girl who can't tolerate others.

This sudden good news made Xun Suji dizzy.This tall girl actually has some ideas, but it's just some ideas, and he never thought about how to put them into practice.

However, the Executive Committee has never made a specific statement about marrying an indigenous woman.Now I have a maid and secretary.Suddenly proposed to marry a wife, do not know if you will agree?

Xun Suji approached Wu Nanhai, and Wu Nanhai said that he agreed with both hands:
"Should we integrate with the local aborigines as soon as possible? If you marry the granddaughter of Liu Youren's clan, the Liu family will be on our boat, and they will become the basic masses in the future. Does this girl look good?"

"Not bad, good figure." Xun Suji said.

"Then seize the opportunity." Wu Nanhai said, "I'll arrange the Liu family's agricultural technology promotion activities for you a few more times."

But Mo Xiaoan put it another way:
"Suji, it's okay for you to have an aboriginal woman as a maid or something. Isn't it a bit too much to let Liu's daughter be a wife?" Mo Xiao'an said, "It seems that many people in the senate are against the aboriginal and Personal collusion between elders is very taboo. If you marry the Liu family, you may not be able to explain many things in the future."

Mo Xiao'an is not alarmist, this is indeed the view of some elders - getting married with the local aboriginal powerful faction will inevitably create a new powerful class that is dependent on the elders.If this powerful class takes advantage of this kind of in-law relationship to run amok, it will be much more difficult for the Transmigration Group to deal with it than in the past: everyone has a selfish desire to take care of their relatives, and sometimes it is completely out of face considerations.

(End of this chapter)