It's just that many of the big businessmen present don't know that the main target of the preferential loans promised by the Royal Bank is not these big businessmen here, but those small and medium-sized businessmen who have not been able to enter today's banquet venue, mainly hoping to provide development funds for those small and medium-sized enterprises and support a completed industrial system as much as possible, not to say that they want to support a super-large-scale fund, such as a company with assets of millions like Huisheng Textile Company, unless they are willing to accept high interest. Otherwise, it would not be possible to obtain a large loan from the Royal Bank.

As a part of the royal industry, the Royal Bank, like all royal industrial enterprises, is not only an enterprise, but also has a more important task, that is, to guide the development of domestic industry and commerce, and to invest in industries that private capital does not dare to invest or cannot afford to invest in, but the country must have, such as steel, coal, military industry, etc.

Then it is to guide the healthy development of the private economy, a few years ago it was to support the raw silk industry, and now they have changed to support all kinds of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Sometimes whether a country's industrial strength is strong or not is of course related to a small number of leading large enterprises, but it is not those large enterprises that really lay the industrial foundation of a country, but many inconspicuous small and medium-sized enterprises.

For example, there are so many proletarian immigrants in Shanghai now, they need to survive and work, and those large enterprises can provide hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs, but these jobs are far from enough for Shanghai, which has a population of more than one million.

Many of the jobs that really provide jobs for these immigrants are small and medium-sized enterprises with assets of several thousand or tens of thousands of yuan, and even those family workshop-type factories with assets of only a few hundred yuan also provide quite a lot of jobs.

In order to put Shanghai's industrial economy on the right track and develop healthily. On the one hand, the cabinet has made relevant regulations, and on the other hand, the royal industry has also made timely market guidance.

For example, let large enterprises in the royal industry such as Shanghai Shipyard and Linde Machinery Factory give up some non-core businesses. Outsourcing the manufacturing of less important parts and components can promote the development of hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises.

At the same time, Royal Bank will also provide concessional loans to these small and medium-sized enterprises. Let them get sufficient funds to upgrade their technology and improve the quality of their products.

After Lai Changying and others returned to Nanjing, Xiao Changzhong and the officials of Shanghai Municipality quickly began to carry out relevant economic guidance work.

First of all, the industrial zone planning in the north of Suzhou Creek, after the rapid acquisition of a large amount of agricultural land through administrative means, the government led the large-scale municipal construction, mainly road construction, wharf construction and other basic municipal facilities.

As the construction of the industrial zone has just started, it has long been trapped by the limited land in the business zone, and enterprises with high land prices have quickly launched a rush to buy land.

The first batch of more than 20 large-scale industrial plots in the industrial zone was immediately pocketed by major enterprises, of course, in order to avoid these enterprises hoarding land for profit.

Restrictions were already in place when the municipality introduced the land. For example, these plots can only be used for the construction of factories, not residential and commercial buildings, and it is stipulated that before purchasing the land, you must first submit the relevant investment plan, what type of factory you want to build, how the funds are prepared, when you can start construction, and when you can put into production There are relatively strict regulations.

After the formal purchase of the land, the relevant construction must be carried out in strict accordance with the investment plan submitted in advance. If you only buy the land and do not build a factory, the municipality will reclaim the land at a strict auction price and then enter into a separate sales process.

The first batch of industrial land for sale is very large and relatively expensive. Generally, only those large enterprises can afford to start.

However, the auction of the second and third batches of industrial land was planned in detail, the area was relatively small, and the price would naturally be lower. And these plots are naturally specially prepared for those small and medium-sized enterprises.

The sale of three batches of industrial land has directly recovered nearly one million funds from Shanghai's local finance. These funds, together with a loan from the Royal Bank, will be enough to support Shanghai to build an industrial zone on the north bank of Suzhou Creek. Completion of basic municipal construction.

Interestingly, the most valuable of them, the land near the Huangpu River, has not yet been sold to the public.

The main reason is that Shanghai also knows that the land along the river is the most valuable, and refers to the development of the riverside area from the south bank of Suzhou Creek to the county seat of Shanghai, so Shanghai does not simply classify the land along the river as industrial land, but uses it as commercial for development planning.

Nowadays in Shanghai, basically those enterprises or foreign companies that think they have a little strength want to buy land or real estate on the Bund Avenue along the river as their headquarters.

This phenomenon can be said to have become a way for enterprises to show their strength, if you talk about business, your company headquarters on the Bund Avenue, people will look at it.

However, now there is basically no vacant land on the Bund Avenue, and the people who bought these plots are some large commercial enterprises, which will definitely not change hands if they are not bankrupt, so it is difficult for many wealthy businessmen and enterprises who later entered Shanghai to find a place to build their headquarters in the existing Bund Avenue.

Now the north bank of Suzhou Creek has given them a new choice!

Even in Xiao Changzhong's heart, after the basic development of Suzhou Creek, it will be developed on the east bank of the Huangpu River, opposite the original business zone and the county seat of Shanghai.

Although the east bank of the Huangpu River is still a dime a dime, if a number of bridges are erected over the Huangpu River, supplemented by considerable policy support, there is still hope that a new Bund Avenue will be built on the east bank of the Huangpu River.

Just as Shanghai was carrying out a new round of industrial development on a grand scale, Nanjing, which was also part of the Cabinet Municipality, was also starting large-scale construction.

However, unlike Shanghai, which focuses on industrial development, Nanjing's construction is mainly focused on municipal construction, including road repair. Then the office buildings of a number of government agencies, as well as the reopening of the Royal Palace.

Since the beginning of this year, the Anglo-French coalition invaded China. The Chinese Empire, for its part, stopped the construction of roads in Nanjing, government office buildings, and even the Zhonghua Palace.

Now the Anglo-French alliance is no more, although the military has launched a new round of the Northern Expedition. But to be honest, the pressure on the military is not too big, and the pressure on the military is not great, so the pressure on military spending will naturally be small.

After the fiscal situation was somewhat relaxed, the cabinet naturally did not sit idly by and let the office buildings of the ministries and the Chung Hwa Palace, which were halfway under construction, be suspended, and had already begun to reallocate funds for reconstruction.

According to the plan of the Construction Office, small-scale restoration construction has begun, and at the end of the year, farmers in the surrounding areas can complete the autumn harvest, that is, when the farming is slack, and can hire cheaper rural labor on a large scale to work, providing a certain income for the farmers who are idle and greatly reducing the construction cost. It is expected that by the end of this year, it will reach a construction climax.

Some of the buildings that are relatively small in scale and have a relatively high degree of completion in the early stage will be completed before the Spring Festival, including a number of office buildings of various cabinet ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance building and the Ministry of Civil Affairs building.

At the same time, the large square in front of the China Palace will also be completed.

At the same time, in addition to the main building of the Xinhua Palace, the others will be completed at the end of the year, as for the Xinhua Palace, it will not be able to be preliminarily completed until next summer, and the interior decoration is estimated to take about half a year, which means that the Xinhua Palace will not be put into use until the end of next year at the earliest.

Nanjing's municipal construction is different from Shanghai's. In Shanghai, the local government is the main force, and then raises its own funds, such as loans from the Royal Bank.

However, the local fiscal revenue in Nanjing is quite small, and these municipal constructions basically require central investment. Local finances can only support a small fraction of the total.

Seeing the resumption of large-scale construction in Nanjing, there are dusty scenes everywhere, and everyone sees the prosperity of the empire!

Instead of being halfway through the construction site as in the first half of the year. It looks dilapidated.

Nanjing has been revitalized, and even Li Hongzhang, who has been under house arrest for a year, can detect it. Ascending to the top of the attic of the courtyard, he could see the dust on the street hundreds of meters away. Many workers are moving the construction.

After standing and watching for a long time, Li Hongzhang suddenly sighed!

In the past few months, he could occasionally hear from the officers and soldiers guarding the situation in Shanghai that the situation in Shanghai was very tense, but it didn't take long for him to hear that the attack of the foreigners had been blocked in Shanghai, and last month he personally heard from a military police major who guarded him that the empire had achieved a great victory in Shanghai, not only completely driving the foreigners to the sea, but also killing tens of thousands of enemies and capturing more than 10,000 prisoners.

Speaking of military prowess, this Chinese empire is proud enough.

But what has always been difficult for Li Hongzhang to understand is how the Chinese Empire supported hundreds of thousands of troops, and there were 100,000 new troops among them, how did they make guns and artillery that foreigners did not have? Where did they get their military spending?

Why did they carry out large-scale industrial construction while they were at war?

That's what he wants to know!

In the past year, he read a lot of books, and at Li Hongzhang's request, the military police brought books to Li Hongzhang twice in three days, but the books he brought were basically new-style books, and there were also some miscellaneous talks depicting foreign affairs, etc., so that although Li Hongzhang could not leave this small courtyard after arriving in Nanjing, he learned a lot about the Chinese Empire through books.

But the more he knew, the more he wanted to know!

In the past year, he has basically studied physics, chemistry and other books through self-study, and at the same time, he also insists on reading the Shanghai Business Daily published in Shanghai, which is a newspaper that specializes in publishing business information, such as daily quotations of various goods, supply and demand information, etc., which is a newspaper that businessmen must read every day.

At the same time, the newspaper will also publish some interesting anecdotes of foreign foreigners, and briefly introduce foreign geography and scientific knowledge.

This business newspaper can be regarded as the first large-scale newspaper published in China, one issue a day, sponsored by Xinde Foreign Bank and the Royal Bank, basically the model of the Western newspaper industry, it is not only large-scale distribution in Shanghai, its newspaper is also dispersed to Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and other cities through various communication channels, the daily circulation has reached as many as 5,000 copies, in order to print so many newspapers every day, Shanghai Business Daily also set up a printing house.

Every day, a large number of newspapers are sent from Shanghai to Nanjing on regular passenger ferry flights, mainly to various official institutions and some large enterprises, etc., Lin Zhe basically reads this newspaper every day to understand the development of industry and commerce in China.

Of course, for ordinary people, there is little interest in these industrial and commercial information, they are more interested in the various interesting facts published on it, especially the introduction of foreign relevant knowledge, the popularization of scientific knowledge, and some domestic policy information.

Due to the popularity of these contents, in order to cater to the public and expand sales, Shanghai Business Daily also specially increased the content of the anecdote supplement, expanding the previous one page to two pages.

Although Li Hongzhang was a prisoner under house arrest, the Chinese Empire did not treat him harshly, and still maintained enough respect for him, after all, this Li Hongzhang was also a high-ranking official in the Manchu Qing Dynasty before, and some small requests would still be met, such as buying books for him, sending him newspapers, etc.

I have read more books and newspapers, and Li Hongzhang is more curious about the Chinese Empire, and he is more curious about Lin Zhe, who created the Chinese Empire! (To be continued......)