The waters around Puerto Blanca in April are hot.

A large number of fishing boats, ranging in tonnage ranging from 100 to 300 tons, carefully weave between the many small islands in Blanca Bay from time to time, and then bring a large number of catches to the docks. On the wharf were a large number of new Ming immigrants from Taixing, Yangzhou and other places in Jiangbei, all dressed in uniform cotton overalls, and hoisted buckets of fish from the deck of the ship through two steam booms. On the other hand, the employees of the Nanhai Fishery Company wrote on paper words such as "On a certain day, a certain fishing boat brought back a barrel of cod (1,000 fish), and the quality was of high quality (all large cod)."

Most of these vessels were operated by the South China Sea Fishery Company, including 2 squid fishing vessels, 12 cod fishing vessels, and 2 processing and supply vessels. Squid fishing boats, cod fishing boats, which are staffed twice as many as sailors, send the catch of cod, squid, sea bream, mackerel and other catches to the processing vessels, where they are cleaned and salted by the sailors on the processing vessels, and then packed into barrels and transported back to Port Blanca for further processing, or canned food, or directly waiting for the passing large cargo ships to be transported back to the country for sale.

Of course, there are also some private fishing vessels among these vessels, which is a clear proof of the gradual growth of domestic private capital. Some wealthy people (mainly returned soldiers) bought a modern sail-powered fishing boat of about 100 tons, and then either found a way to hire fishermen at a high price or went into battle themselves to catch fish (during the off-season). They can go out to fish for about two months in the summer and autumn, and even longer in the winter and spring. If you are lucky, you can catch about a dozen tons of cod and a small amount of slippery fish and sea bream a month, which is already worth more than 1,000 yuan.

Of course, this is only the market sale price. The actual purchase price is often only 50-60% of this, because the subsequent cleaning, pickling, transportation, and sales also require costs. However, these fishing boats can still earn about 2,000 yuan in the waters around Puerto Blanca in the autumn of the fishing season. Excluding the taxes, ship repair costs, marine fuel, fishing nets and other costs, the net profit is also about 1,200 yuan, and if everyone on the boat is divided equally, it is almost exactly more than 80 yuan per person.

It can be seen that in the East Coast Republic, where fishing products are extremely scarce, getting a boat to fish is definitely a very profitable business. Perhaps the only obstacle is that a 100-ton fishing boat can cost 5,000 yuan on its own. Coupled with taxes, recruitment, and the cost of buying fishing nets and tackle, you can't afford to make a 6,000 yuan upfront investment. In today's East Coast, in addition to crossing the strength of the investment. Even those returning soldiers with bulging pockets had to raise funds and shares to buy the last one.

Of course, the upfront investment is large, and the profit that can be expected is also amazing. If you're a full-time fisherman, there's such a boat. If you're lucky, you'll be able to recoup your investment in just two or three years. Therefore, it attracts some veterans who do not know where to invest their money.

At this stage, the fishermen are mostly veterans themselves - and they are mostly farmers, with a small number of Irish and Scottish labour hired by labour brokers. It is worth mentioning that a while ago a policy was introduced within the government to remove some legal obstacles, which allowed these people to go out to sea to fish.

Behind the introduction of this policy is another fierce confrontation between several political forces in China. First of all, the military department, which was the representative of the conservative forces, strongly opposed the peasants in the towns and villages to go fishing in the open sea, on the grounds that "it would affect the safety of food production." Because once these farmers taste the sweetness of fishing profits. So who still goes farming? The current food prices in the country are strictly controlled, and to put it bluntly, the agricultural subsidy industry is being squeezed in an economic environment of high inflation. The profits from industry are invested in resettlement, the development of new land, and the construction of infrastructure. The farmers themselves have not been fed much back.

Workers can still raise their wages in the face of inflation, but when food prices are firmly controlled, farmers' real incomes are declining, which will inevitably reduce farmers' willingness to cultivate the land, which in turn will lead to a decline in domestic food production, affecting food security.

The peasants are the basic foundation of the military department, and the rural grassroots units are also the places where the military department has the strongest strength, and more than 95 percent of the officers and men come from the vast rural areas. The government's control of food prices and the exploitation of agricultural subsidies for industry have already aroused the dissatisfaction of the military leaders, and now they have to ask the countryside for labor to go to sea to fish.

Although they organized some people to invest in plantations overseas through the soldiers' committees in Guò counties, in the final analysis, it was only to cooperate with the national policy to export capital overseas, reduce domestic inflationary pressure, and by the way, to gain some benefits for these soldiers who had made contributions to the country. The soldiers were only the funders, they were the shareholders of the plantation, and the large amount of labor required for the plantation still had to be found by the local people. But now going to sea to fish is tantamount to directly asking the countryside for labor, and it is pumping the blood of the countryside, and besides, if you go to sea today you can ask for labor from the countryside, and tomorrow someone discovers another very profitable business, will you also ask for labor from the countryside? If this continues in the long run, won't the sheep cannibalism that emerged during the industrialization of Britain be repeated?

Yan Sù, a representative of the military department, pointed out that if the peasants want to leave their land and go out to work, it is necessary to relax the price control measures in the grain market at the same time, and readjust the grain purchase prices in light of the current market demand, the domestic inflationary environment, and other factors, so as to accurately protect the interests of the peasants.

Most of the people who invested in the fishing industry were some crossers, and unlike those soldiers who made a small fuss and bought a boat, the wealthy crossers had a much larger amount of money, for example, Bai Swen himself ordered five boats and one processing boat in a joint venture, and the total cost was more than 40,000 yuan.

These are the advocates of the so-called "emancipation of rural labor". Bai Siwen's Bright Candle Factory has been unable to effectively release its production capacity due to the insufficient number of workers, which has made him depressed for many years. Now, taking advantage of the liberalization of domestic policies and the outpouring of capital, what are we waiting for if we don't take the opportunity to open up the rural labor market at this time? What the? Going abroad to the Old World to work as a laborer? Bah, how much does that cost me, and it's too late!

Now that the fishing industry is so profitable, if you don't take advantage of this opportunity to take the lead and occupy a favorable position, will you wait until you are not so profitable to enter later? Moreover, this time the Executive Committee is really playing big, not only will the rural labor market be impacted, but even some factories in the cities with low incomes will also be severely affected. Either the factory owners will raise their wages to counter the attractiveness of the new lucrative industry to their workers, or they will simply close their factories and go fishing, there is no third way! Raising wages is always a problem, which will reduce the profits of factory owners, increase the cost of the industrial system on the east coast, reduce the competitiveness of products, and erode a lot of profits, which will have a negative impact on the entire national industrial system.

That's what happens when you take a shortcut! Originally, according to the normal path, agriculture should be the first field of commercialization and capitalization, and the capitalists (who could also be organizations such as the government) who completed the primitive accumulation in agriculture began to gradually enter the field of light industry, which was more lucrative. When the productive forces have developed to a certain level and the industrialization of the whole world has deepened, they will gradually enter the field of heavy industry. However, now that the economic development of the East Coast has obviously taken a shortcut, with agriculture and light and heavy industries going hand in hand, and the domestic market being very small and dependent on external maintenance, and then encountering the devastation of war, and the fact that the members of the Executive Committee have a very average level of governance, it is normal for the domestic economic system to be full of loopholes.

It was also at this time that the bureaucrats of the Executive Committee suddenly discovered that in order to solve the hyperinflation caused by the war in China, they had started the process of private capital entering various fields, but this obviously brought new problems. The profit-seeking nature of private capital makes them accustomed to entering the most lucrative industries, and in order to obtain profits quickly, they will take advantage of all kinds of loopholes by any means.

For example, this time the competition for rural labor, the peasants whose real income levels are rapidly declining under inflationary conditions, and the high income of the fish industry, as well as the workers of some industrial enterprises with low profit margins (such as building materials companies, seafood processing factories, etc.), have also attracted a large number of people, and for the first time, private capital has had a strong impact on the system established by the Executive Committee with a predominantly public-owned economy.

If this behavior is allowed to continue, these state-owned enterprises will have to raise workers' wages, which will inevitably reduce the amount of profits they can pay. In other words, the fiscal revenue of the government of the East Bank Republic will be reduced, and most of this reduced fiscal revenue will be used to vigorously emigrate from the Far East, and if this situation continues, the living standards of the native people on the East Bank will indeed improve, but the number of immigrants from the Far East will become smaller and smaller.

In other words, the East Coast is now a world of people sacrificing their standard of living to emigrate from the Far East (including preparing houses, livestock, seeds, and daughters-in-law for new immigrants), but they don't know it. But in the long run, once the East Coast government is controlled by capital decades later, the plan to migrate from the Far East will inevitably come to an end. After all, for the capitalists, it is cheaper to bring in blacks, Indians, Malays and even Europeans than the Ming, and it is only at a great cost to immigrate to the Far East because of their brain diseases!

Decades from now, the Executive Committee will not think about it for the time being, and it will not be able to control it. So they eventually came up with a compromise that would allow fishing vessels to be licensed, while also encouraging boat owners to recruit labor abroad, as was the case for other industries that require a lot of labor. In addition, they have also liberalized some controls on domestic food prices, allowing wholesale prices of wheat and other commodities to fluctuate by up to 20 percent above and below the Ministry of Agriculture's guidelines. This typical policy of harmony is, in the words of some, an apt indication of the level of governance of the bureaucrats of the current Executive Committee. (To be continued......)