Chapter 207 The necessity of capital export

"It's a no-man's land!" When Wei Zongshi first came to the empire's sphere of influence in the East Indies, he couldn't help but be surprised to see that there were not farmlands and villages outside the bustling docks and cities, but swamps and wastelands.

"Senior brother, don't be surprised, senior brother, when I first arrived here, it was even more desolate, but it's just three small fishing villages, what use can a resident of more than 300 people be? If it weren't for the fact that my brother and I and many others in the same year gathered financial and material resources to build ports and wharves, how could Kolkata have begun to take shape today?

Those of you who are accustomed to the imposing harbors and wharves of the Empire's homeland cannot imagine the bitterness and sweetness of building a harbor on a barren shore. Hu Hai, as the leader of the team, explained to this group of Imperial University juniors who came to work in the East Indies.

"Who doesn't know bitterness and sweetness, isn't your father the deputy director of the Indian Department of the Indian Department of External Affairs? What kind of hardship will you endure when you come here to make a fortune, at most, you can run through the approval documents and trade quotas and import and export tax rebates in various departments. You don't have to leave Shenjing to get a loan from a newly opened Indian bank, and when you get the money, aren't you immediately surrounded by those construction contractors? Then it is the turn to personally come forward to engage in the construction of the wharf? A fellow descendant satirized his hypocrisy.

"Yes! That's true, but that's where I'm here, and it's always better than those risk-taking cowards who are hiding in their homeland and don't dare to travel abroad but want to get a little more dividends. The company's shareholding system is good, all positions are clearly priced, and the local regulatory and general affairs salaries in India are several times higher than those in the local area, and the affairs here are complicated. The climate is hot, there are many plagues, snakes and insects, who will work hard without money? If it weren't for the fact that you were all juniors in a club at school. Who's going to take you rookies to make a fortune gilded? ”

"I want to thank my predecessors for their support, but there are not many laborers here, and the land is barren, why did my predecessors choose this place to build a port? We are not waiting to die when we come here, what can we do without a developed port? A bespectacled junior asked what the others were saying.

"Originally, you didn't know about the heavenly order here before you came here, but the order from above has come down. I'm going to tell you about it today. Choosing Kolkata as the centre of his activities, the site was carefully chosen, with the Hooghly River to the west. There are river bays to the north and salt lakes four kilometres to the east, so they are protected. The hostile Hindu state is located on the west bank of the Hooghly River, so access to Kolkata by sea is not threatened. Not so in Port Hooghley. And. The Hooghly River flows through Calcutta and is wide and deep, with the only drawback being that the area has depressions and swamps, which are harmful to health. In addition, prior to our arrival, Indian traders who had moved from the silted up port of Sadgaon upstream had chosen to settle in three local villages. I chose Kolkata partly because of the presence of these merchants. By 1948, there was a rebellion in nearby Budwan. The provincial authorities of the Baltic dynasty became friendly to the growing colonies. Officials of the Imperial East India Company demanded that their trading posts or factories be allowed to fortify themselves, and they were generally promised to defend themselves. The rebels were quickly suppressed by the Baltic dynasty, but the brick and earth fortifications of the colonists were preserved, which was named the Imperial Fort (Old Tianwei Fort) in 1950, and in 1948 I was granted a power of attorney to purchase the ownership of the three villages mentioned above. ”

"But there are fewer people here, there is not enough labor to develop, is there enough agricultural and sideline products to supply and export nearby, how can there be any profit to support the long-term development here?" Wei Zongshi asked.

"This is the chance, and it was only last month that I received a letter of appointment from the Imperial Government appointing me as the Chief Executive Officer of the East India Company, overseeing all commercial and economic activities in the company's northeastern part of India. Although the East India Company was a large state-owned enterprise controlled by the government, it had a strong tradition of independent operation, and under normal circumstances, the imperial government would not interfere too much in the operation of the company; But this time it was different, the board of directors directly announced that it would accept a 200 million dragon dollar investment from the central government, and the East India Investment Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the module. The main indirect control of the East India General Bank and the Ganges Trading Group, at the same time, began to invest in the Ganges Delta agriculture and cash crop plantations in various upstream and downstream industries, frantically absorbing the labor of various villages and the land of the Baltic Kingdom.

I have made a preliminary estimate that the Baltic Kingdom has 30 million acres of high-quality paddy fields, 70 million acres of ordinary paddy fields, the entire Ganges Delta is fertile tropical fertile soil, and the mangrove forests along the coast are more than 2 million mu. ”

"Shhh Many of the people present gasped.

"No wonder the locals sent us here, it's a paradise for trade! I heard that when my senior brother returned to his hometown to visit relatives the year before last, he brought back a New Year's gift worth 200,000 yuan, but we didn't believe it, thinking that my sister was bragging about it, but it turned out to be true? A fellow villager sighed.

"That's it! I'm also a business elite who has been here for many years! At least this number of transactions are handled each year. Hu Hai stretched out his left hand, and the five fingers of his palm rotated back and forth 180 degrees.

"Isn't it a million dollars?" A small man asked.

"It's a joke! Brother, how can I get 200,000 out of a million. The total amount of trading every year is at least 10 million dragon yuan. ”

"How so? This is less than a large trade zone on Dongyi Island, how can it make a net profit of 10 million? (The Baltic Kingdom only opened one-third of Bengal's coastal area to the empire for free trade investment, and the rest was delayed until a decade later.) At this time, the cross-border bulk trade was basically more than 100% profit, and if the profit was too low, it would have to be scaled, which was a problem for the empire's tight transportation capacity. Is the purchasing power of this place so high? ”

"How is that possible! The consumer goods we ship are basically not sold locally, how big is the consumer goods market? Almost 90 per cent of imports are locally produced means of production and building materials for infrastructure development and investment. For example, nails, hardware consumables (saw blades and various fasteners), high-standard cement, glass and paper, etc. All the exports are tea, rice, wheat, sugar cane, jute, mahogany, miscellaneous wood, leather and cotton, but they are not as good as the ports of Bagan and the southwest region. It would be nice to have a shipload of rice shipped from here to the mainland without losing money. Although a large area of mountainous and hilly land along the coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang has been returned to forests to grow fruits and bamboo, it is impossible to digest the rice here. So a lot of our rice was shipped to the Arab Century in the West and the coastal areas of Dongxuanzhou to exchange local goods! The substitution effect in the South Seas is so strong that it is obviously not cost-effective to develop specialized and commercial tropical agriculture here, so we have devoted almost all of our company plantations to sugarcane and cotton. It was very cost-effective to hire a large number of local laborers to harvest and process the sugar and textiles that were shipped to the West in exchange for gold, silver, and minerals needed by the empire. ”

"Is this the legendary Indian triangular trade route? Investing here is to obtain goods for trade between ports outside the country? This kind of investment purpose is really powerful! Wei Zongshi sighed. This structure of trade in the extracorporeal circulation was the best option given the limited transportation capacity and limited market of the empire, and it was also the fastest means of obtaining gold and silver, luxury goods (ivory, precious stones, furs, etc.), and many other precious imports of light and heavy value.

"Yes, I found out first. Awesome! It was the Indian Ocean Trading Company headquartered in Colombo that was established after I discovered this trade route and the East India Trading Company headquartered here! The Empire actually gave me the title of Viscount for life because of this. Although I didn't get many shares, the annual 2% share dividend plus a fixed president salary of 200,000 yuan can be regarded as stepping into the upper echelons of the empire! Hu Hai proudly said the origin of his title.

"Transporting development materials and equipment from the mainland to the East Indies. Sugar and textiles were transported from the East Indies to the Arab world, and gold and silver minerals and valuable goods such as ivory, precious stones, frankincense and myrrh were transported from the Arab world to China. You can run three big trips a year, and you can earn 40 times the profit in a year! Wei Zongshi counted with his fingers.

"How can there be so many! Is it possible to exchange a shipload of metalwork for a shipload of ivory? At most, a shipload of nails for half a boatload of sugar, and half a shipload of sugar for 400 ivory tusks is remarkable. There is still a possibility for several ships. After the scale. It's only 10 times the profit at most! Hu Hai argued.

"You haven't counted the profits from the increase in the value of the investment and land occupation in the ports of India and Dongxuanzhou! These real estate businesses are counted as entering, and the profit in a year is not more than 40 times. Wei Zongshi retorted.

"Brother Affection just sees the East Indies as a transit point! At most, this is a second-class cargo origin and distribution center that obtains more exports than the South Seas tropics! It is no wonder that the import and export volume of a small port of Kolkata reaches 39 million a year.

The reason why most of the buildings here are not factories or common residential houses in the country, but warehouses is determined by the imperial government's development strategy for the East Indies. A shrewd junior said, pointing to the warehouses behind the dock and the warehouse site that was under construction.

"You guessed it! But there is no reward. Although I, Hu Hai, am not a real government official, it is no problem to give each of you a position of real power no less than 8 grades. I will assign to you more than 400 estates and villages contracted by the company, and you will be in charge of the right to collect taxes and the finances of expenditure. In three years' time, as long as the rate of development of your settlements exceeds the requirements of this table, I will promote you to the head of the newly opened trade outlets and ports in the interior. Well done, it's no problem to make 100,000 a year. There is also the opportunity to give priority to the general affairs and management of the newly developed colonies of the empire (the general affairs are the transitional governors of the military and government of small settlements subordinate to the governor, and the managers are the big compradors who monopolize the import and export of certain commodities in a region). What do you think? ”

"Long live Brother Hu!" Many juniors excitedly shouted a unified slogan.

"Everyone is ready to prepare, have a meal together tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow we can go to various villages to show our strength." Hu Hai looked at Wei Zongshi and the others and said happily.

A week later, many high-achieving students who felt deceived gathered at the office building of the East India Company in Calcutta, where Hu Hai worked, to protest, because the infrastructure was extremely backward, and there was no chef who could cook, and eating food without oil and salt every day was simply a punishment. The taxes collected were all in kind, there was no gold, silver and money, and there was an extreme shortage of building materials, engineering and technical personnel, and so on. Hu Hai can only say that the conditions were worse when he came, he was completely self-made, and there were many merchant ships when he came late, and sometimes he couldn't even eat.

Many juniors have no choice but to go back to endure hardships and use their brains to improve their lives. Fortunately, the people of the Baltic Dynasty saw that the new masters of the empire were very cooperative (the abolition of labor and all kinds of excesses and taxes naturally cooperated), and the improved seeds and new homemade fertilizers made it possible for everyone to at least have enough to eat. It doesn't matter if there is less oil and salt, the key is that the sanitary conditions have greatly improved after the Empire settled. These university students are not obsessed with cleanliness, but at least they know how to build public toilets and septic tanks that every village needs, promote drinking water filter towers and control parasites. Planting a large number of insect-repellent plants in residential areas and filling up garbage sinks that breed mosquitoes and flies. Most endemic diseases such as malaria, cholera, and typhoid fever have been basically eliminated, greatly increasing the life expectancy and effective working time of workers. In disguise, the labor force and consumers have increased.

A year later, when news of war broke in the Himalayan foothills, the flood-ravaged villages and wastelands along the Yokogawa Delta had long since been developed into fertile farms, with warehouses full of agricultural and sideline products such as rice and various oils, and a large number of peasants had spare money to buy cotton cloth and various industrial products from the newly opened textile mills in Calcutta. A large number of ships dedicated to inland waterway shipping were also prepared, which became the mainstream means of transportation in the delta region, and at the same time, these ships could transport a large amount of materials and labor for the northern war during the slack season.

A distress letter also reached Wei Zongshi's desk along with the news of the war, and an old classmate from junior high school actually wrote a letter to ask for advice. It has really played a big role in the association in western Zhejiang to distribute the alumni list to all alumni who have left the country. (To be continued......)