Section 45 Mountains and Seas

Whether it is the Ming or Qing Dynasty, they all know that the source of Zheng's Liliang is a huge profit from sea trade. One of the main measures to crack down on the Zheng clique was to work hard to block the export of goods from the mainland, especially after Zheng Zhilong was killed in the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu Qing Dynasty implemented strong measures to ban the sea, imposed a trade blockade on Zheng Chenggong, imposed a ban on the sea, and banned the export of goods, but Zheng Chenggong was still able to obtain a large number of goods for overseas trade from the mainland by relying on Taiwan and Jinxia. This is all due to the business-intelligence network set up by the Zheng Group on the mainland, which is the so-called system of mountains and seas, five merchants and five elements.

The operation of this system was very successful, not only providing the Zheng Group with a steady stream of various commodities on the mainland, but also providing intelligence and logistical support for Zheng Chenggong's military operations on the mainland. In 1659, when the Zheng army attacked Zhenjiang, the merchants of the Zheng group bought a large amount of rice in advance and stored it in the Jinshan Temple at the mouth of the river, so that they could supply the army with food on the spot as soon as the Zheng army's ships arrived. Zheng Chenggong's ministry betrayed Huang Wu to the Manchu Qing Dynasty before reporting this system, but during the entire Shunzhi period, only twelve so-called Zheng spy cases were cracked, and most of them were very unknown, 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 business by mountain road and material distribution by sea. Each road has five commercial banks that are responsible for each other and are not in contact with each other.

Now the system that Jiang Shan and Skade and others want to build is basically to imitate the way it works.

Yamaro is responsible for the trade and procurement of supplies across the group's continent. The five merchants are codenamed according to "gold, wood, water, fire, and earth". Wanyouling "gold" name; The "wood" font number is reserved for the Runshitang system, and the rest is ready for use.

Several purple enterprises in Guangzhou, as well as the South China Sugar Company in Leizhou, the Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Colonial Trade considered them too important to the Crossing Group and it was better to leave them as they were for the time being.

The sea route set up five elements, operating goods and population transportation, inns, and finance. It is equivalent to the logistics financial services industry. With the code name of "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith". Among them, the "Ren" font is the Qiwei Dart Bureau system, and the "Yi" font is the Delong Bank system.

The five merchants and five elements of the mountains and seas all adopt vertical management, and only commercial contacts occur between them, and there is no intelligence contact. Keep each other's actions secret. With the exception of a few key figures, most of the shopkeepers and shopkeepers are unaware of their secret missions.

The Five Merchants and Five Elements are mainly responsible for collecting public information on the local area, and are also responsible for logistics, transportation, and communication support.

In addition to the mountains and seas, there is the "Black Dragon Society" system that directly belongs to the Foreign Intelligence Bureau system. This system is composed entirely of intelligence officers, who use the model of a reconnaissance network to conduct reconnaissance in important locations. These people will use a variety of identities to cover up, including landlords, hawkers, small merchants, associates, monks, Taoist priests, and the like. When necessary, it is also possible to adopt the model of occupying the mountains as kings or forming village warriors to operate small-scale local armed forces as future mainland armed task forces.

There is no horizontal connection between the Black Dragon Society and the Shanhai Road, mainly to engage in more dangerous illegal activities, and the members of the Black Dragon Society are not allowed to serve in the shops on the Shanhai Road, so as not to be arrested and implicated in the incident, and when they need the other party's cooperation or support, they must show special tokens or instructions with coded letters.

Building a business network on a large scale on the mainland is a large-scale investment project. This project not only has a large investment, but also a considerable number of personnel, which caused a great controversy during the third reading of the Senate, for which a hearing was held.

At the meeting, officials from the financial, trade and industrial sectors presented their respective presentations on the current situation and the problems they faced.

At present, the scale of investment in industry, civil affairs and infrastructure construction in Lingao is expanding, and the expansion of production capacity and population has greatly stimulated imports. The self-sufficiency rate of raw materials in Lingao is very low. As a result, Lingao's dependence on foreign trade has deepened. Lingao's finance department finally began to encounter a problem: a 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 expansion of industrial and mining enterprises, administrative institutions, the army and the police, the large number of personnel, and the huge administrative expenses combined with industrial investment caused the physical silver reserves of the Financial and Financial Commission to fall to near the warning level by April 1630.

If we look at the book figures, Lingao's trade has always been in a position of excess, and the number of silver reserves is more than enough, but most of the reserves are only in the accounts receivable of the Guangzhou station, and the number of liabilities under the payable column of imported materials of the Guangzhou station is also quite large. If it weren't for the approaching first collection date of the Dragon Boat Festival in May, the state of silver reserves that crossed the group until the end of the summer would have become ugly.

And Leizhou, the largest source of silver for the crossing group, not only cannot contribute financial resources, but also requires a large amount of financial investment. Relying on the Leizhou Sugar Association, the South China Sugar Company is organizing a "sugar association" in the local area, similar to Japan's "agricultural cooperative" system. adopt a unified supply of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides; Unified planting guidance and unified acquisition mode; The most critical aspect of this system is to provide large quantities of small, low-interest loans to farmers so that they are not controlled by local rural loan sharks. This system is currently only carried out in Xuwen, but the capital that needs to be invested is at least 50,000 taels, and the purchase money of 200,000 taels of silver will be invested in the autumn to meet the purchase demand. This makes the fiscal situation in the second half of the year very serious.

"If the fiscal situation is so severe, why do we need to increase investment in the mainland?" Qian Shuixie, a member of the Standing Committee of the Senate, questioned, "It is impossible to recover the principal in the current year, let alone obtain sufficient profits." ”

"First of all, this system is a gradual construction process, not a one-step process." Sitting in a lonely chair in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped table was Skader, a system that was a dual system of business and intelligence, but it was primarily for business, and he was the only one to answer questions according to the principle of who benefited the most.

"This system is mainly based on the use of existing established industrial and commercial enterprises, and we take the lead to guide them to make scaling investments." Skede pointed out that whether it is the soon-to-be-established "Wanyou" or the Runshitang Pharmacy that is preparing to engage in "Daming Watsons", they are both private joint-stock enterprises, and the funds for external expansion are mainly borne by them.

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

"Of course. Although our nominal investment is large, the actual investment in silver is limited......"

"Do you mean that our investments are just an act of accounting?"

Skader hesitated a little, and only returned after dozens of seconds: "If you are talking about the way the funds are allocated, then it is. He then added, "But we also need to invest in some physical silver." It's just a limited number. ”

"No matter what, the total amount of investment from Wanyou and Runshitang will not be less than 50,000 taels, right? Just discount it according to the amount of your contract investment. How long will it take for the money to pay for itself - I don't talk about profits. ”

"I don't think even Warren Buffett can say when he will definitely make a profit." "But the payback time is very fast. For example, the business of the north and south goods of Wanyou. ”

According to historical records, naval calculations and estimates of the commercial department, it takes about two months to complete a round-trip transaction using traditional sand boats to transport goods from Shanghai to Tianjin. The cost of 50,000 taels of silver, excluding expenses, the net profit is about 3,000 to 6,000 taels, and the profit is very considerable.

"Profits can't be withdrawn back to Lingao immediately. Since we want to expand our operations, we need to accumulate capital. ”

"Yes, that's right," said Skader, "but the investment is relatively large, and there is no need for additional investment in the later stage - even if it is added, it will be limited, and the business can be maintained and developed by its own profits." It's quite a good deal for what we've put in. ”

There was a commotion among the members of the Standing Committee, who seemed not very satisfied with such an answer.

Skade continued: "In terms of funding, there is another avenue that can be added. Everyone knows where the deposits of Delong Bank in Guangzhou come from, right? It mainly relies on the deposits of local wealthy people absorbed by Zi's enterprises. After the formation of our continental business network system, we can also use the same way to absorb funds. ”

"In addition, the Colonial and Trade Directorate requested Comrade Yu Eshui, a first-class historical researcher of the Historical Materials Research Group of the Grand Library, to be our witness."

"Agreed."

Yu Eshui submitted a testimony that, according to historical records, next year, in the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Ming army would blockade Guangzhou Bay and prohibit the Portuguese from entering and leaving trade. This abolished the long-standing custom of allowing the Portuguese to come to Canton twice a year to purchase goods.

"The Portuguese can't buy Chinese goods directly, they will inevitably look for Chinese agents to buy goods. The Canton station could take advantage of this opportunity to sell a large amount of Chinese goods directly to the Portuguese, and we could gain access to huge foreign exchange reserves of silver. If we can establish a mainland commercial network by next year, we will be able to use this network to buy goods cheaply and then export them - whether directly to the Portuguese in Macao or to Southeast Asia. ”

The main source of raw silk, the favorite commodity of the Portuguese, is in Jiangnan. The first-class variety of raw silk for export "Lankijn" (Nanjing) is produced in Jiangnan.

The proposal to form a mainland business network was finally passed by the Senate in its third reading, but the Standing Committee members added a subsidiary condition to it, that is, the additional appropriation of these enterprises must be approved by the Senate.

In addition, the Senate also approved one or two exploratory trade visits to Southeast Asia and Liaodong to see if there was any possibility of setting up a merchant house or agency there.

At the same time, the Senate also instructed the manufacturing director department to develop more export products as soon as possible to ensure a superior position in the field of foreign trade. Increase foreign exchange reserves to ensure the sustainable import of raw materials for production and the population.

The Ministry of Colonies and Trade was given all the mandates they wanted. The manufacturing director department was very unhappy - they did not get any benefit from the hearing, but were under increased pressure. Developing new export commodities is easy to say, but it is actually very difficult.

Most of the products of the various departments and enterprises under the manufacturing department cannot be exported - even if they are willing to export, Lingao itself is not enough. Orders for machinery and equipment, which account for most of the production capacity of the manufacturing director's department, have been scheduled until 1633, all of which are to supply various industrial, mining and agricultural uses in Lingao and the future Sanya area; The production capacity of the garment factories has reached an incredible 5,000 sets of various clothing per month, but they are still unable to cope with the growing population. Sometimes, purified immigrants don't even get the standard of two sets of clothing per person, so they have to use clothing vouchers to owe them first and then collect them. As for the shoes, they were never really satisfied, and the army relied on their own "high-grade straw sandals" mixed with strips of rags to barely keep the soldiers trained barefoot - formal leather-soled boots were worn only during parades, drills, and outings.

Even the production capacity of many light industrial products has been absorbed internally - for example, soap, its own production capacity is affected by the lack of oil, and the large internal demand for soap has caused most of the soap to be directly consumed in Lingao, and only a few high-end soaps and transparent soaps are exported as luxury goods.

"Mo Xiao'an, this matter is up to you." Zhan Wuya said, "As we all know, the only possibility for the export of heavy industry is arms and machinery, and now the Executive Committee does not agree to it, so the heavy responsibility of exporting industrial products falls on your Ministry of Light Industry." ”

He sighed: "I know you are very difficult, the raw materials of many products are 'controlled' materials, and even if they can be sold in the market, you can't put them into mass production." But you better try it. ”

"I try to figure it out." Mo Xiaoan said with a bitter face, "Can you submit a report to the Executive Committee?" Allow a part of the grain to be exported? In this way, I can at least develop a large number of sweet potato products. ”

"It's basically impossible, and if it's not enough, I'll try again. You still pray for a bumper harvest of sweet potatoes this year, so many of them will rot, maybe there is still a possibility. ”

Mo Xiao'an thought that the problem was that the comprehensive utilization of sweet potatoes by the food factory was too powerful, and there was no possibility of waste.

I went back to my office and searched for a long time, but I still didn't come up with anything that could expand the export. He can now export quite a few products, from non-staple foods, snacks, medicines, cosmetics, sanitary ceramics, paper...... There are more than 40 varieties that are too low to be consumed locally, and those that are in the export control catalogue of the Executive Committee.

Among them, the largest sales are MSG and pickles produced by Tianchu, as well as needles and paper products. These four account for half of Lingao's total bulk export commodities.

Runshitang's exports of proprietary Chinese medicines have risen very fast, but the production capacity of manual manufacturing is not high, and the export output value is still relatively low due to the large amount of local self-use in Lingao. This situation will not change until the new mechanized pharmaceutical plant is put into operation.

Because monosodium glutamate requires sweet potatoes as raw materials, the production quantity is greatly limited; Pickles and the like can be scaled up - the yield of vegetables is always very impressive, especially in climates like Lingao, where all vegetables can grow all year round.

It's a pity that my own dried rice noodles Jihua can't succeed - the rice noodles mixed with a large amount of dried potato flour have been on the market in Lingao for a long time, and they have eaten a lot of them in the stomachs of the people and the natives. He had always hoped to sell this thing to the mainland, but the Executive Committee never agreed to export it.

Mo Xiaoan couldn't think of new products after thinking about it, there were a lot of ideas for new products, and the test sales results in Guangzhou were okay. But he needed a new product that could be shipped in large quantities. Zuihou He brought Xun Suji and Zhou Dongtian here.

Xun Suji has not paid much attention to work matters lately. Liu Youren was desperate for the possibility of him taking the initiative to propose marriage, so he simply asked Liu Guangbiao to propose marriage to him: he was willing to marry his "niece" Liu Meilan to him. Not only is the Liu family willing to marry his daughter to him, but he will also give Liu Meilan a dowry. As for the "man in the house" Jin Xishan next to Chief Xun, Liu Guangbiao said that Liu Meilan is by no means a girl who can't tolerate people.

This sudden good news made Xun So-je dizzy. This tall girl actually had some ideas, but he only had some ideas, and he never thought about how to put them into practice.

However, the Executive Committee has not made any specific statements about marrying an indigenous woman. Now I have a maid and a secretary. Suddenly proposed to marry a wife, I don't know if I will agree?

Xun Suji approached Wu Nanhai, and Wu Nanhai said that he was in favor with both hands:

"We should have integrated into the local indigenous community as soon as possible. If you marry Liu Youren's granddaughter, the Liu family will be on our boat, and they will be the basic masses in the future - is this girl good-looking? ”

"It's okay, good figure." Xun Suji said.

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

But Mo Xiao'an said it differently:

"Suji, it's okay for you to hire an indigenous woman to be a maid or something. Isn't it a bit too much to let the daughter of the Liu family be his wife? Mo Xiao'an said, "It seems that many people in the Senate are very taboo about private collusion between natives and senators." If you marry the Liu family, I'm afraid there will be many things that you can't explain in the future. ”

Mo Xiao'an is not alarmist, this is indeed the opinion of some of the patriarchs - marrying with the local indigenous powerful faction will inevitably create a new elite class attached to the patriarchs. If this elite class takes advantage of this in-law relationship to run amok, it will be much more tricky to deal with through the group than in the past: everyone has a selfish desire to take care of their relatives, and sometimes it is purely for the sake of face.