In a large open-pit mine in an unknown mountain range in northeastern Mindanao, Chen Mingshui's eldest brother, Xue Maoyuan, from Malacca, is welcoming an important person, Jiang Mingzhang, a core member of the Chiang family, a big chaebol from the mainland.

For Xue Maoyuan, known as the boss of Malacca, he inherited hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from his father Xue Foji, and happened to encounter the capture of Nanyang by the Chinese Empire, he took the opportunity to take refuge and became the pioneer of the empire. Today, his assets have reached more than 8 million Shengyuan, which can be regarded as a very successful success.

But for the Xue family, a big chaebol from the mainland, he was cautious and didn't dare to take the slightest shelf. The main reason is that when Xue Maoyuan abandoned sporadic commercial trade business in Nanyang and invested in plantations, because the plantations cost a lot of money to buy land and recruit laborers, the Xue family's family wealth of nearly one million saint dollars was not enough, and they borrowed money everywhere, and were introduced to the Industrial Bank opened by the Jiang family by the officials sent by the empire to Nanyang to serve as the magistrate of Singapore County, and borrowed one million saint dollars. It's an incredible thing. Therefore, although he has now returned the principal of one million Shengyuan and the interest of nearly 300,000 Shengyuan of the Industrial Bank, he still thinks of the good of the Industrial Bank and the Jiang family.

But in addition to this reason, another main reason why he valued and respected the Jiang family was that the Jiang family's huge wealth and astonishing asset growth rate frightened him.

Later, he specialized in the study of the Jiang family, so he had a special study of the people of the Jiang family, especially the head of the Jiang family.

Jiang Mingzhang, who came to inspect the investment project this time, can be regarded as one of the core members of the Jiang family, and more importantly, he is the younger brother of Jiang Mingqian, the head of the Jiang family and the boss of the Industrial Bank.

Now, when it comes to Jiang Mingqian, it can be said that among the businessmen of the entire Nanyang, and even most of the industrial and commercial circles of the Chinese Empire, everyone knows about it.

As early as the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the previous dynasty, their Jiang family was a wealthy man in Lizhou, Hunan and even northern Xiangbei, at that time, the Jiang family, in the Manchu Qing Dynasty large and medium-sized cities and commercial ports, set up ticket numbers and pawns, printed tickets, handled pawns, deposits, exchange and other businesses, set up a general pawnshop in Xiangxi in Aoshan, and became a huge rich man in northern Hunan with a fortune of millions of taels. However, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom attacked Changsha Yiyang Yuezhou, in order to save the defeat of the Qing army, the Jiang family urged the Jiang family and the squires of northern Hunan to donate more than 30 taels of silver to fund the Qing army's military salary.

But Jiang Mingtry is a powerful figure of the Jiang family, extremely shrewd, after the capture army occupied Changsha and Yuezhou, he saw that the situation was not right, he immediately abandoned the Manchu Qing Dynasty, defected to the Holy State, plus this person has a good temperament, excellent credit, and generosity, extremely willing, most of the Jiang family's land and property were sold, and donated 600,000 taels of silver to the captive army as military expenses for the Northern Expedition to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which was recognized by the captive army. Later, when the imperial court of the Chinese Empire set up a commercial bank, he met with Emperor Feng Yunshan, and in the context of supporting private investment in commercial banks, he obtained Feng Yunshan's personal permission to open the first private commercial bank in China, Industrial Bank, and participated in the Beijiang Railway Construction Joint Stock Company, set up his own textile factory and hardware factory, and embarked on the road of financial comprador and investment industry.

Moreover, Xue Maoyuan heard that the Jiang family led by Jiang Mingqian and the Industrial Bank alone have grown to the point of having assets of nearly 50 million Shengyuan after the drastic development in the past few years. Among them, the Jiang family accounts for more than 60 percent, that is to say, in the Industrial Bank alone, the Jiang family has a wealth of more than 30 million Shengyuan. And this is only half of the wealth of their Jiang family, and the other industries they have invested in have also grown rapidly in recent years by taking advantage of the industrial development and growth of the empire. According to their estimates, the total assets of the Jiang family are estimated to have reached about 60 or 70 million sheng yuan, compared with the original millions of taels, in less than ten years, the wealth has increased more than ten times!

Today's Jiang family, especially with the Industrial Bank as the medium, has become a big chaebol in Huguang, Guangzhou, Guangzhou, and Nanyang.

It is precisely because of this that Xue Maoyuan, who has always been arrogant and arrogant and thinks that he has some achievements, treats the characters of the Jiang family so carefully, even if it is not Jiang Mingqian himself.

Jiang Mingzhang is a little short and fat little old man in his fifties, because he is well-maintained, he looks similar to Xue Maoyuan's age. In fact, this time he came to Mindanao to visit the copper mine controlled by Xue Maoyuan, the reason was that Xue Maoyuan wanted to borrow 50 million Shengyuan from the Industrial Bank controlled by the Jiang family to invest in mineral mining and the subsequent construction of a smelter, and the head of the Jiang family was an old fox, and he keenly smelled the opportunity to make a fortune, and immediately sent Jiang Mingzhang to check it in person, and also wanted to participate in it, and Xue Maoyuan was suffering from not having such a large amount of money, so he was naturally happy, so he took the owner to inspect a small copper mine he developed in Mindanao.

Xue Maoyuan stretched out his hand and pointed to the copper mining area in full swing, and said: "Brother Jiang, you see, this copper mine I named Dafa was applied for from the local government in Luzon four years ago, with a total investment of 5 million saint dollars, and it began to be put into production the year before last, and now it can produce about 60,000 tons of copper ore per year, and the output value has reached about 4 million saint yuan, which can make a profit of at least 2 million saint yuan in addition to the cost.

Moreover, this is still our investment is too little, the mining of copper ore is mainly manual mining, if the introduction of large steam engine mining machines and crushers, these ordinary copper ore into copper ore and then sold, the value can at least double. Even if there is enough money, build a railway line near here to transport copper ore to the port by the sea, and then transfer it or directly build a large smelter to produce copper by itself, and the profit is unlimited!

Brother Jiang should know that the empire is in urgent need of copper now, and a large amount of copper is needed for cables, coinage, etc., and the price of copper is rising every month. ”

"Not bad! What Brother Xue said is very true, my brother and Brother Xue have the same opinion! My brother is also very optimistic about mineral mining and smelting, especially now that the imperial court is very strict about the development of local minerals, and is very lenient or even encouraged for overseas minerals, therefore, the Jiang family also intends to enter this industry.

According to what Brother Xue just said, Jiang has a preliminary understanding of this copper mining. However, there are still some doubts about the success of mining minerals, especially the difficulty of smelting. Jiang Mingzhang said.

"Brother Jiang, let's put it this way. Brother, I plan to sell all the rubber plantations in this area of the South Seas and raise some money to run a larger copper mining site. If it weren't for the low production here, I would have planned to build a smelter here, and the mining of ore and the smelting of copper would be integrated, and the profits would be at least double compared to pure ore mining. Xue Maoyuan revealed.

"Is the new copper mine that Brother Xue is talking about, is it the South American continent newly occupied by the imperial court, the small country called Chile?" Jiang Mingzhang asked.

"Not bad! Brother Jiang has been eyeing it for a long time, and is ready to enter the copper mining industry in South America? Xue Maoyuan was not surprised at all, since the imperial court defeated the British expeditionary fleet in the Indian Ocean Fleet, it was slightly stable for more than half a year, and then began to expand strongly, probably because the territory was too much to manage, and did not directly use force for South America, but used the super financial resources of a newly formed company called Erma to carry out economic infiltration, and I heard that banks are currently being opened in South America to invest in industry. Among them, the most important thing, in addition to dumping goods, is the exploitation of mineral resources. Chile had already begun to mine copper during the Indian period, and after the secret prospectors of the Chinese Empire discovered a lot of copper ore distribution zones, the imperial court mainly focused on copper mining as a major goal. Therefore, it is natural for Xue Maoyuan and Jiang Mingzhang to focus on Chile's copper mines.

Hearing Xue Maoyuan say this, Jiang Mingzhang looked deeply affectionate, and said with a smile: "It's not our Jiang family that is eyeing it, but the businessmen of the entire empire, who doesn't know that the second horse company established by the imperial court is stationed in South America for great development, and it must be a good opportunity to make a fortune?" Small businessmen like us, if we don't follow the past to drink soup, how can we get rich?

In this way, our Jiang family is ready to cooperate with Brother Xue and you to jointly open a copper mine in South America. Your brother Xue has experience in opening copper mines, our Jiang family has a little financial resources, the two sides cooperate to open mines in South America, I heard that there are some places over there that are almost everywhere copper mines, we will build a new copper smelter nearby, and then ship it back to China for sale, what do you think? ”

Xue Maoyuan was surprised and delighted. What is surprising is that it seems that the Jiang family will definitely not simply lend to themselves, and the joy is that at least the other party agrees to invest, but it is just a joint venture. But if you go to raise funds by yourself, it is impossible to have such a large scale, so he hurriedly laughed: "That's true! According to what the imperial court said in the "Nanyang Daily", the northern desert called Chile is full of copper mines, which can be directly mined in the open pit, and the reserves and taste are much higher than our current Dafa copper mine in Mindanao.

Not only that, I heard that there are a lot of black slaves and local white-skinned natives over there, and the price of hiring is relatively low, especially the Paraguayan army has captured a lot of prisoners of war, and it is very cost-effective to buy them as soon as possible and train them to become miners. ”

"Okay, Brother Xue, in the eyes of us businessmen, the most important thing is the policy guidance of the imperial court and the encouragement of us to invest overseas!" Jiang Mingzhang revealed it in one word.

Xue Maoyuan couldn't help but nodded.