With more than 20 years of history, the Phantom Club in the South End of Manchester City has maintained its original wooden structure on the original site, and a seven-storey high-end hotel building stands behind it.

Over the years, the Phantom Club, once favored by seafarers and small clerks in the capital, has become a meeting place for high-class officials and nobles, and has gradually drifted away from ordinary citizens.

Unlike the so-called high-end stone buildings made of cheap artificial marble (terrazzo) made of a large number of concrete, gypsum, coal ash and stone scraps, the Phantom Hotel is almost entirely made of pure natural marble and granite, which is the most valuable real estate of Yunling Group and one of the top landmarks in the south of Manchester except for the Houses of Parliament.

With a metal fence and a steam-powered retro elevator like a cage to the top, Deng Mingquan tidied up his expensive handmade woolen trench coat and wiped his oiled hair as he walked out of the elevator, and then motioned to the hotel attendant to open the high-end business room opposite for him.

The spacious business room is covered with red carpets, the walls and roofs are decorated with classic and elegant, and there are several mahogany wine cabinets of different heights in the corners.

There are already many acquaintances sitting in the sofa, but as the years go by, the acquaintances are no longer in their prime, and some of them have white sideburns and white hair.

After handing over the trench coat to the attendants and saying hello to a few people with the best relationship, Deng Mingquan felt a trace of bad eyes fall on him.

Looking for the feeling to look sideways, I saw a richly dressed lady sitting in a corner with a smile in her eyes, with a subtle sneer and mockery in her eyes.

Without waiting for Deng Mingquan to speak, Zhang Li got up and walked towards a small door on the side, where there was a smaller private room dedicated to more intimate topics.

When Deng Mingquan followed into the private room. As soon as Zhang Li, who was sitting firmly in the main seat, raised her hand, the attendant beside her picked up the wine bottle and poured two glasses of Jin Liang's wine, and then quietly withdrew.

"Hehe, Sister Zhang looks good today, I'm not at home with your family Lao An on New Year's Day, but I came to participate in this kind of flashy party. By the way, I heard that your second daughter gave birth to a big fat grandson for you last month, and it seems that I have to prepare a big gift! ”

They are all business partners for many years, or old comrades-in-arms of the same camp and faction, and Deng Mingquan is not polite. grabbed the wine glass and sat down opposite Zhang Li with a big grin.

"Old Brother Deng, don't pretend to be stupid, have a glass of wine here alone, as a sister, you naturally have something to ask for advice......" Zhang Li snorted coldly, tilted her head to the side, and then threw a document that came out of nowhere on the wine table, "We have said it before if it is not kind, but your old Brother Deng has not stopped all year round about unkind things." ”

Deng Mingquan seems to have known that this competitor has been staring at him, and he doesn't look at what the other party threw at this time. just smiled and spread his hands: "I said Sister Zhang, isn't it just hundreds of tons of oil nanmu oil, and it can't even splash a single oil flower when it is thrown into the domestic market, and it only makes some small heads." Why are you scheming with your old Brother Deng again? ”

The document is a business intelligence sent back by a representative of Standard Oil Group's Far East operations, and the content is that Huamei Wood Group secretly distributed several hundred tons of oil from the Far East to domestic oil agents last month.

"Careful? If I really care, I wouldn't have invited you to drink today! Zhang Li's face changed. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the wine glass, and rubbed his fingers against the surface of the glass, "You have the ability to ship it to Europe." I don't object, everyone turns a blind eye and forgets it, why do you have to target the domestic market? Why didn't you do what was agreed? ”

As soon as these words came out, the wine in Deng Mingquan's cup rippled slightly, and a trace of anger gradually appeared on his face.

……

……

The conflict between Standard Oil and Huamei Wood in the fuel oil production and sales market has only been pitted against each other in the last year or two, and although it has not been for a long time, it has quickly become a long-standing topic within the liberal faction.

Since the 16th century, when expensive whale oil production has been scarce, the demand for fuel for lighting in Europe has been rising, and many merchants and even alchemists have been looking for ways to extract combustible fuel from other substances.

Even in the mid-19th century, the price of crude oil was extremely high at the beginning of the modern oil industry in North America due to the backwardness of resource extraction technology. Converted to the Chinese dollar value of this era, a ton of crude oil is more than $100, and in some areas it is even close to $200.

In the mid-19th century, American oil merchants made a lot of profits from refining fuel oil and selling it to Europe, and even if other by-products were not counted, the windfall profits in the early days of petrochemical development can be seen.

Zhang Li relied on the pillow wind that blew An Shaoqing at the beginning, and was the first capitalist in China to invest in the petrochemical industry. While cheaper oil is not really available within the national territory, oil shale and coal tar processing have allowed Zhang's Standard Oil Group to grow like a fattening pig.

Standard Oil of North America has become the number one oligarch in Huamei's fossil fuel oil production, but no one will watch Zhang Li's family monopolize Huamei's fuel oil market 100 percent.

Therefore, in the past 20 years, both the state-owned energy and mining group with deep pockets and the Xinhua Chemical Group, which has strong technical strength, have all intervened in this industry. It was only by virtue of her good communication skills and the advantages of being one step ahead of others that Zhang Li established the market monopoly position of Standard Oil Group in North America.

With the current petrochemical processing technology, the cost of extracting, processing and processing oil shale raw materials is too high, so the total annual output of shale oil and coal tar to refine fuel oil in China and the United States has just exceeded 10,000 tons, of which the North American Standard Oil Group accounts for 60%, and the remaining Xinhua Chemical Group and the state-owned energy and mining group each receive half of it.

This total output is completely insufficient for Huamei, which is highly urbanized and has developed by leaps and bounds in modern industry. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry of the People's Republic of China, last year, all kinds of fuel in China were not counted as industrial consumption, and the consumption of local ordinary households and municipal public lighting, as well as coastal lighthouses, had exceeded 8,000 tons.

The vast majority of China's locally produced fuel oils, especially mineral oils, which are mainly refined from shale oil, are supplied to the domestic market, and not many can be exported to Europe. In recent years, there have even been records of export interruptions.

According to the marketing agreement signed privately between Standard Oil Group and Xinhua Chemical Group many years ago, the former completely gave up the export of lamp oil to Europe, while the latter did not allow a single milliliter of lamp oil to be sold in Huamei.

Sticking to the monopoly position in the domestic market is Zhang Lilei's unstoppable position, which is why Zhang Li has been very wary of any competitors in private, and spends huge financial resources and energy to consolidate her monopoly position and strive to improve the production efficiency of the enterprise.

Just last year, Zhang Li teamed up with Zhou Junting, Lin Youde and others to use the means of influencing the National Assembly and the Binzhou local assembly, citing "the current domestic small thermal or hydroelectric power stations are too costly and have too much impact on the environment under the rigid demand of non-industry". The start of public electric lighting projects in several Binzhou towns, including Gangneung, the second largest city in Binzhou, was forcibly postponed.

The real reason behind the scenes is that the electric lighting projects in these big towns will greatly affect the sales of lamp oil in Binzhou. In short, I am not producing enough lamp oil, and I will not allow large-scale replacement of lamp oil at this stage.

The scene of coachmen in Europe and the United States desperately slandering and stopping the train was also dramatically staged in Huamei.

In order to repay the support of Lin Youde and others, or to make up for the loss of NORINCO in the production of power generation equipment, Zhang Li also generously injected a large amount of research funds into NORINCO Group to develop internal combustion engines with strong demand for oil in the future for a long time.

Deng Mingquan is the person who is most unaccustomed to Zhang Li's family in private, and his ambitions are not small. As a result, we have successfully developed a large-scale planting industry in the Far East and Southeast Asia, in order to enter the domestic fuel oil market.

Although it will take at least a year for the large-scale harvest of oil from Hainan Island in Lanfang and the Ming Dynasty, the thousands of acres of oil experimental forests that Huamei Wood Group has taken on Pearl Island are already producing, and nearly 1,000 tons of oil were sold in the Far East and Europe last year. Profit a lot.

However, it was known as natural diesel in later generations, and it can be used as a direct substitute for diesel without any processing, and it is of excellent quality as a high-grade lamp oil. Adding up to all the production, operation and transportation costs, the cost of biomass fuel produced by Huamei Wood in the Far East adds up to only US$75 per tonne.

Although the planting and harvesting cycle of P. oleifera is on the long side. However, once it has a long-term scale, it can defeat any mineral fuel producer in China and the United States in this era.

On the other hand, Zhang Li and others did not really get the shallow oil resources in the western part of Binzhou. In order to solve the outrageously high cost problem of the shale oil and petrochemical industry, Standard Oil Group of North America has invested heavily in improving various production processes and technical processes over the years. Improving processing efficiency and digging deeper into the value of by-products, but even so, the domestic cost of mineral fuel oil is set to exceed $100 per tonne.

In other words, whether it is local sales or export to Europe, several local mineral fuel producers led by Zhang Li will have significantly lower product profits than Huamei Wood Group when the market price is relatively unchanged. The most serious thing is that in the next ten years, it is very likely that Huamei Wood will gradually lose its market dominance due to the continuous expansion of biomass fuel production.

For this reason, Zhang Li and Zhou Junting, who got the news, quickly joined forces, and in a secret negotiation last year, the two families reached an understanding agreement with Deng Mingquan. The two companies each ceded part of their monopoly share of the market, but clearly stipulated that Huamei Wood should not sell more than 300 tons of biomass fuel per year in China (including overseas territories) and Europe, and the rest could only be sold in other regions, or the sales agency rights were handed over to Zhang and Zhou.

In order to comply with the new market monopoly agreement, Zhang Li also honestly reduced the output and export of shale oil processing in the Far East. But the fact is that after Deng Mingquan used up the sales share in the agreement early last year, the export of the Far East was blocked because of the situation in Daming, so he privately transported another batch of biomass fuel oil to sell locally, and was caught by Zhang Li, who was staring at business competitors.

The amount is a small issue, and the rules are a big issue. This is probably the reason why Zhang Li is strongly dissatisfied, who dares to guarantee that Deng Mingquan will smuggle back hundreds of tons without rules today, and will he smuggle back thousands of tons in the future?

……

The atmosphere in the small private room was dull, except for the dull and hollow sound of a mechanical wall clock. Zhang Li is complexion is not good, and Deng Mingquan is also pale.

At this time, the door of the private room opened, and Zhou Junting, chairman of the board of directors of Xinhua Chemical Group, walked in with an elegant smile.

"Haha. Actually Brother Deng and Sister Zhang are drinking in such a small dark room? Let me find it for a while...... Why, Sister Zhang is still using Brother Deng as a punching bag? ”

After speaking, he glanced at Zhang Li meaningfully, and after getting some kind of feedback from the other party, Zhou Junting sat on the other side of the sofa near Zhang Li in a chic manner.

Zhou Junting's appearance and unexpected polite and polite performance made Deng Mingquan feel a bad premonition in his heart. Because he and Zhou Junting have become in-laws since the beginning of last year, it stands to reason that they are already extremely close allies. But in the current atmosphere, it seems that Zhou Junting is completely on Zhang Li's side.

"Huh...... I thought it was a big deal......" After a few minutes, Deng Mingquan sighed and drank the wine in his hand self-deprecatingly. then stood up, "Sister Zhang, Lao Zhou, if you want to talk about bad harmony, I definitely don't have this mind." But what I'm curious about is, why are you two just staring at me? If you want to say that the biggest competitor in the future, the state-owned energy and mining group is the biggest threat, right? ”

Saying that, Deng Mingquan also personally poured Zhou Junting full of wine, and deliberately patted the other party's shoulder jokingly: "Speaking of which, Lao Zhou and I are in-laws. The three of us are all comrades-in-arms in the same trench in the Oriental Union Group, but in other aspects, your old Zhou still crushes everyone to death. ”

After years of hard work, Zhou Junting knows almost every collaborator or competitor. quickly understood what Deng Mingquan was referring to.

Indeed, to say that there is only one real industrial monopoly giant in China at present, Xinhua Chemical Group, even if the two industrial giants of North and General Motors are combined. may not be the opponent of Xinhua Chemical Group. Zhou Junting holds the monopoly of various chemical technology patents, which is currently the lifeblood of domestic industrial development.

"Lao Deng, today I invite everyone to come here for a gathering. It's not that you are embarrassed. Sister Zhang's attitude is not to cut off your old Deng's wealth. Looking carefully at the eyes of his in-laws, Zhou Junting put down his wine glass for a minute, "Zhang Li and Lao Deng are here today, so I'll make it clear: now we have reached a critical juncture!" ”

"Oh?"

probably didn't expect Zhou Junting, who has always been full of confidence, to be so cautious and serious, Deng Mingquan couldn't help but sit up straight.

"In another year, a large number of technology patents registered by my brothers and sisters in the early years of the founding of the People's Republic of China will expire one after another, and then the patents will be nationalized, including the coal tar patent in my hand and the shale oil patent in Zhang Li's hand." Zhou Junting frowned and pointed in the direction of the government office area, "According to the tone of Guan Ruzhong's cabinet before the holiday, they are ready to implement the policy of foreign commercial authorization or auction transfer of state-owned patents. In other words, once these production patents flow out, the good days of the three of us may come to an end......"

"Hmph, we're in control of Congress, it's not that easy for him to do, right?"

Looking at Zhou Junting and Zhang Li's unhappy expressions, Deng Mingquan suddenly felt a trace of happiness in his heart, but on the surface, he still pretended to be very attentive and very supportive of each other.

After all, doing my own biomass fuel industry is just a side hustle that I can eat for as long as I can, and I don't have any contact with these patents. Even if more capital is invested in the production of mineral fuels in the future, the petrochemical production technology of the present era will not be able to compete with its oil for at least ten years until there is a real cheap crude oil extraction.

"Don't you think it has a lot to do with you? Then I can also reveal that Xinhua Chemical Group's patents for wood dry distillation, wood tar, vegetable oil saponification, and paint processing will also expire, and I only authorized a few such as you and Sun Yang before, and what will happen after that, can you guess? ”

Probably knowing Deng Mingquan's heart, Zhou Junting's tone added a slight sneer: "If I guessed correctly, you only expanded the wood distillation production base in Haimen City, Haizhou last year." It is said that several companies, including Hong Changlin, are interested in setting up similar companies after next year. By the way, there are also several of your papermaking patents, which are said to expire next year and be nationalized, right? ”

"You mean that all of this will be publicly authorized by the state?" As soon as he heard it, he didn't care, and when he pondered Deng Mingquan's face again, his face was not good-looking, "It's still the same sentence, as long as we have the final say in the Congress, he will not think about messing around!" ”

"You're thinking too simply! As long as it does not involve legislation, Congress has long since lost the right to interfere in the government's day-to-day executive decisions! Guan Ruzhong is smart and clever, giving up the corresponding industrial legislation and promotion work, and formulating policies purely in accordance with the existing content of the patent law, there is no place for accusation at all. And. Who would prevent such a good opportunity to legally obtain state-owned patents and product production rights? ”

"After next year, everyone will rush to do industries that they couldn't get before. The three of us can sit here today and have a good talk, but what about the future? Or will I join the army of dry wood distillation and paper production in the next year? ”

Zhang Li also sneered, and directly cut off Deng Mingquan's idea of trying to stay out of the matter.

"Okay, Lao Zhou, Zhang Li, what do you say......

Glancing at the two super capitalists who were absolutely standing together, Deng Mingquan knew that he had little room to escape.

"There is no way, just see the move, but we need to resolutely cooperate together." At this time, Zhou Junting finally showed his usual confident smile. "The establishment of industry alliances and industrial alliance agreements, in other words, standard 'cartel' monopolies. Of course, for the sake of sounding good, this kind of industry alliance will be packaged as an 'industry association' on the surface. ”

The cartel was officially born in Germany in the mid-19th century, but its predecessor can be traced back to the 15th century before the handicraft league of European cities. As one of the capitalist monopoly organizations. Cartels take the form of trade alliances to monopolize the production of goods, market prices, and market supply.

Even after the advent of anti-monopoly, cartels were the most prominent industrial conspiracy, "above board" in the pursuit of expanding and safeguarding the interests of the industry as a whole, such as OPEC, the most famous oil exporting organization in later generations. But the consequences are also more serious. It will turn a competitive market into a monopoly market, which is a typical oligopoly market, and it is also a monopoly enterprise alliance that will be resolutely resisted by the anti-monopoly tide in later generations.

However, Huamei has long been a tacit monopoly in the field of industrial manufacturing and related markets, and it is not very competitive. Therefore, even if the cartel appears on the stage, it is only an exclusive monopoly to a monopoly in the same industry after the expansion of the industrial scale.

"Each of the three of us has its own strengths, but only in terms of fuel production. As long as the three of us first establish the 'Huamei Fuel Industry Association', then with the production scale, commercial channels and market share that we have now, whoever wants to do this business again in the future will have to join in. If you don't want to join in, we can also use the easiest way to break it down at the start......"

The elegance and extravagance that Zhang Li has cultivated over the years and the domineering spirit of the shopping mall are combined at this time, and the straightforward words she said made Zhou Junting's back a little chilly.

"Hehe, since it's good for everyone, then I can't wait for it. But how? Deng Mingquan pondered for a while, feeling very reliable, and then stared at Zhou Junting with a smile, "Old Zhou, why don't you be the president?" ”

"Haha, I have more trouble to deal with there, I'm just a small head in the fuel trade, this will be up to you to discuss who is the best. You say yes, Sister Zhang? As for me, there are still a few brothers outside to talk about, so let's trouble the two of you to come up with a result here, I will resolutely cooperate! ”

Zhou Junting is not modest, but he will face many more industrial competition problems in the future than the other two. Perhaps this time he led the peer briefing, he will be the busiest one.

"That's it, since Lao Zhou is so thoughtful and arranges for everyone to get together, then I also have to think about my other business plates. The president of this fuel association, I think it's up to Sister Zhang to do it. Whether it is to control production in the future or fight a price war, I firmly support it! ”

After being educated by Zhou Junting and Zhang Li, now all Deng Mingquan's thoughts have been on how to maintain his old business as a paper and wood processing overlord, and he has no energy to continue to intrigue with Zhang Li in the fuel business.

"The two old brothers believe in me Zhang Li so much, I will definitely guarantee to protect everyone's interests and reduce everyone's burden."

Seeing that the goal had been achieved, Zhang Li finally showed an elegant smile.

……

The gathering organized privately by Zhou Junting during the New Year's Day in 1646 was the prelude to the large-scale private tandem of the industrial capitalist group in China and the United States.

In the following month or so, the heads of various large industrial enterprises, including the two industrial groups of North and General Motors, began to communicate with each other in various forms one after another.

Strictly speaking, Guan Ruzhong's disclosure that he will gradually open up the commercial authorization of state-owned patents in the coming year is not a real anti-monopoly, and it cannot shake the position of domestic crony monopoly capital, and its main purpose is to break the artificial closed development idea of various crony monopoly capitalists.

Although this line of thinking can be regarded as a helpless move by Guan Ruzhong, although it will intensify the monopoly of various markets in a certain period of time, it has also expanded the industrial scale of Huamei in disguise, so that more ordinary private capital can have a place, can legally enter the field of large-scale industrial production in Huamei, and improve the national industrialization process of Huamei.

Perhaps, in Guan Ruzhong's view, the exclusive monopoly at this stage is not as good as the monopoly of industry, at least the latter can also promote industrial scale.

As long as the industrial monopoly oligarchy that can influence Congress thinks they are ready, the long-awaited Industrial Scale Promotion Act may be less of an obstacle. (To be continued......)