"Looks like it's a real game this time!" Xuan Hao, who was standing on the side of the wharf of Shenmu Port, looked at the suddenly deserted street market, and suddenly felt a little uncomfortable, and even more uncomfortable, for the future of Jianning County, but also for the future of himself and his children.

Jianning County is a newly established county in the middle of last year, is the 124th county-level administrative unit in the country, under the jurisdiction of Jianning Township, Shenmu Township, Phu Thanh Township, Phu Chang Township, Phu Duc Township (located in the vicinity of the later Khamsai Sang town on the bank of the Makab River), about 15,000 or 6,000 people (excluding non-national laborers), the economy is dominated by fishing, logging and tropical plantation industry, belonging to the Hue region.

Together with it, Yanle County, the 125th county-level administrative unit in the country, was established. The county has four settlements under its jurisdiction, namely Yanle Township, Weisai Township, Yuyang Township, and Xingtang Township, with a total population of about 10,000 people, and its economy is also dominated by fishing, logging and tropical plantation industries, but it is inferior to Jianning County, probably because of its small coastal plain, dense forests, and small suitable space.

All in all, the economic models of Hue, Kien Ninh and Yen Le districts under the jurisdiction of Hue are similar, with fishing, logging and tropical plantation industries as the main industries, although the focus is different according to the actual situation of each county. Among them, Jianning County has a relatively developed fishing industry because there is a small fishing ground nearby, and secondly, because there are some plains along the coast, there are also some grain planting and plantation industries; Because of the steep mountains, the narrow area of the coastal plain, the dense forests and other factors, Yanle County focuses on the development of forest industry, that is, logging, wood processing, furniture, hoop barrels, wood and even musical instrument manufacturing, and the open space formed by cutting trees begins to plant plant dyes, tobacco, cane sugar, coffee and other tropical plants, and develops the tropical plantation industry, but it seems that the scale is not large enough.

Compared with the two "little brothers" of Kien Ninh County and Yanle County, which are still developing tropical plantation industries, Hue County is much stronger in this regard. This is undoubtedly due to the rich heritage left by the Portuguese, who have developed here for more than 100 years, built countless estates mainly for tobacco and sugar cultivation, and at the same time, the small urban population is also mainly engaged in the deep processing, refining and sales of the above two products, and is generally relatively prosperous.

When the East Coasters took over the city, they took over the estates, plantations, and even the tools of labor and the black slaves left behind by the Portuguese. The poor slaves, who had hoped that the new arrivals from the East would liberate them, found out that they were the same as the Portuguese, and that they were also trying to enslave them. The only difference is that the people on the East Coast will set a deadline for this slavery, after which they will be promised freedom, and then find a way to send them to live in the Free State of North America, and at the same time they will be paid about two dollars a month, which is not bad.

In other words, the Portuguese laid a good foundation in Rio de Janeiro, and the people of the East Coast carried forward on this foundation, and also invested heavily in the reconstruction of the city for many years, building public infrastructure such as public baths, toilets, water and sewer pipes, hospitals, etc., renovating the city and providing the necessary foundation for the great prosperity that followed.

Later, even merchants from Italy and the United Provinces were attracted by the better conditions in Rio de Janeiro, and began to invest heavily in the construction of Rio de Janeiro, and hired many indentured slaves from Ireland, Germany and Italy from the Old Continent as labor to start plantations. Their investment was undoubtedly encouraged by the government of the East Coast at the time, because they could open up large tracts of wasteland for the people of the East Coast, saving an unknown amount of effort and money, so the rent of the 50-year land lease granted to them at that time was very cheap. Even in the middle of the reign of President Qi Wangping, because these people came from the Old Continent for free, the East Coast government also benefited from the Brazilian Rural Financial Cooperatives to lend to these foreign investors at low interest rates (on the premise of collateral), and the support was not small.

It is under such circumstances that the tropical plantation industry in Hue began to flourish slowly, and because of its proximity to the mainland, it is more convenient to obtain capital, technology and talents, and at the same time, if the target is positioned as the local market, the logistics and sales costs are relatively low (the cane sugar of New Huaxia Island needs to pay tariffs when sold to the mainland), so the return on investment is still quite good, so that many people are shouting that another tropical plantation industry area in the East Coast Republic of China has begun to rise, which has been from the "Kommersant" at that time This can be seen from the news about the heavy damage to the sugar industry on New Huaxia Island.

It's a pity that the re-election of the Executive Committee ruined everything! The newly appointed members of the Executive Committee, who are all "antiques," "brainless," and "persecutors," have gone so far as to take advantage of the continuous wars in Europe and the large backlog of sales of tropical commodities such as sugar, coffee, and cocoa as an excuse to adopt a series of policies aimed at the bottom of the kettle for the tropical plantation industrial areas in Hue and Jiao Ha, such as reducing loans, reducing the number and rationing of non-national laborers, and reducing investment in infrastructure construction.

There is no doubt that these policies have had a very direct impact. In Jianning County, where Xuanhao is located, for example, the government has set a three- to five-year exit time for many state-owned plantations, reducing the number of non-national laborers, and at the same time intends to use the plantations as a basis to resettle migrants, gradually transform the plantations into villages, and restore normal agricultural order.

Considering the huge scale of the state-owned plantations, which have always been the benchmark and weather vane for other investors, both local and foreign investors have doubts in their hearts, and the investment has suddenly decreased. By the middle of this year, there were even small plantation owners asking if anyone had taken over, and these people looked like people who were less courageous, confused, less able to resist the wind, and destined to not make a lot of money, and Xuan Hao had always despised them.

Xuan Hao, who has become the owner's confidant and steward, has always believed that even if the government now cools down the tropical plantation industry and guides more people to settle in the Pampa Plain, there will always be a domestic demand for products such as cane sugar. Especially when the standard of living has always been maintained at a relatively good level, the residents' love for sweets is obvious, and there is no reason to reduce the consumption of sucrose. Now it seems that because of the factors of the big decline in foreign market demand, there is some excess production, and business owners are some losses, but after a period of de-capacity, it may not be a good time to buy the bottom at a low price. You know, Xuan Hao's proprietor has been coveting the lucrative sugar market for a long time, and this industry was in a big bull market before, and he didn't want to buy second-hand plantations at a premium, so he has been waiting and watching, and this time he saw the opportunity to eat two adjacent small sugar cane plantations at once (he plans to connect them in the future), laying a good foundation for entering this industry.

Xuanhao's low-cost plantation is located in Shenmu Township, with houses, sugarcane fields, labor tools, and draft animals, but there is a shortage of workers, it is said that because the boss has no intention of operating, many workers whose contracts are about to expire have not been renewed (in fact, no one is willing to renew the contract), which will all go to the south to make a fortune, so this will generally lack more than three percent, which makes people scratch their heads.

However, this matter is not without a solution, Xuan Hao has been ordered to deal with this matter recently. He first approached Mendes, Batino, and Goshkin, and planned to pay them to collect people from the Old World; At the same time, he also managed to order some machinery and equipment in Hue Port through his old connections, and planned to open a sugar refinery.

It is worth mentioning that these cane sugar refining equipment are different from the old machines that have been used by many small refining workshops for a long time, which were born from Portuguese equipment, with higher efficiency, better stability, longer life, lower maintenance costs, and the operation is not much more complicated, and the price is not much higher.

Speaking of this, we can't fail to mention the various machinery manufacturers that have begun to invest in Hue County in the past year or so. These manufacturers aimed at the tropical plantation industry, which was greatly affected by national policies, and began to provide them with a series of machinery and equipment aimed at improving labor efficiency and reducing production costs, and are gradually beginning to gain a certain market.

In fact, when the profits of sugar were high in the past, people did not have much incentive to develop new equipment and improve old processes, just like the story of the capitalists of the British Empire who were not able to improve their technology because they could comfortably earn high profits, and were eventually surpassed by the Germans who did not have colonial ATMs. At that time, few people were willing to improve technology, and there was a lack of advanced equipment with high efficiency in the market, and the overall level of sugarcane refining was not much higher than that of the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch, and the Spaniards.

However, after years of development, new technologies, new machines, and new equipment began to mature day by day, and slowly put on the market, coinciding with the end of the bull market due to the European war, the trough began, and the profit margins fell sharply (and some even began to lose money) Investors realized that they needed to increase output, reduce costs, and can no longer operate too extensively as before, so these new equipment began to quickly become popular, and gradually cultivated several manufacturers of different sizes to settle in Hue County.

Similar to sugar refining equipment, all kinds of new machine tools, circular saws and other equipment for wood processing have also begun to sell well, but not as exaggerated as the sugar industry. Their industry, which is somewhat different from cane sugar, is not that the market demand is small, but that it suffers from a shortage of labor and has to use a large number of machinery and draft animals to reduce the demand for manpower.

In order to improve labor output and avoid losing orders due to delivery delays, many forestry farms and timber processing plants have introduced a complete set of gas lighting systems from East Coast Gas Company for night lighting. And in order to get the workers who had nothing to do as soon as it got dark to return to work, the bosses had to promise a higher level of overtime pay, so that they could work at night.

In addition, in order to retain people, the income of laborers has also increased to a certain extent, and the in-kind wage industry, which was hated by many people, has disappeared and has been replaced by a fixed payday on the last day of the month at the end of the month. For example, the store on the forest farm that Xuan Hao originally presided over was closed, and the wages paid every few months (which made the workers have little money and had to buy the store's inferior daily necessities on credit) were forced to be paid once a month, otherwise the non-national laborers would have moved their families to the south to hunt cattle or work in construction.

Of course, in addition to the above-mentioned measures to improve the profitability of the plantations, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Institute of Engineering and Technology have recently helped them to carry out research on the use of some by-products, such as the improvement of the production method of sugarcane shochu obtained from the Indians of the Caribbean, with the intention of formulating a spirit that can meet the preferences of mass consumption and have a certain market. These people insisted that the wine, made from the by-product of sugar extraction, would have a good market on the East Coast because of its low cost and special taste.

Xuan Hao had some doubts about this, but he did not rule out giving it a try. Anyway, those by-products such as molasses are not valuable, they can be found everywhere, and if they taste good in wine, they are really a hen that lays golden eggs. You know, the people of the East Coast are very fond of drinking, which can be seen from the fact that every county, township and even village has a home-made spirits brewing workshop, what a huge market it is, and what an amazing profit it can generate.

All of the above has basically happened in the last one or two years in the Hue and Jiaohe areas. The change of national policy has caused violent turmoil in the local economic order, and at the same time, it has also accelerated the reshuffle of the local industry, forced technological upgrading, and gradually walked out of a different path from the previous extensive management era.

For this change, Xuan Hao is actually happy to see it, and plans to keep observing it to see where it will come in the end. In fact, he felt very early on that the chaotic business mode of swarming in the past was not a long-term solution, and it was necessary to rectify it sooner or later, and now it seems that the rectification has finally come - "forced industrial upgrading", this new word that he recently learned from the "Kommersant", Xuan Hao is also very feeling, and deeply agrees.