What makes Van Dimen jealous the most is not the current booming trade between Haihan and Daming, but Haihan's achievements in port infrastructure. When he first arrived in Sanya www.biquge.info he was also amazed by the scale and standard of the construction of the local port and wharf, but at that time he thought that since this place was the façade of Haihan, he naturally had to do his best to make it beautiful so as to leave a good impression on foreign merchants. However, after visiting a number of ports on Hainan Island, Fan Dimen found that each port of the Haihan people has implemented standardized construction, although the scale is different, but the port facilities, entry and exit procedures, operation mechanism, etc. are completely consistent, which also shows the maturity of Haihan's business strategy in maritime trade.

In contrast, the East India Company's operation in Nanyang is more like a grass platform, except for the port in Batavia, which is a bit of a look, and the construction level of other places is not even comparable to the ports of Hainan Island. This disparity is not only due to the difference in the level of financial investment, but also due to the overall backwardness of the East India Company in terms of overall planning, staffing, and engineering capabilities.

The impact of the gap in port construction and operation on trade is obvious, and the operation efficiency of Haihan port is obviously much higher, and the entry and exit procedures of ships, the loading and unloading, warehousing and even sales of goods do not require too much work on the part of shipowners and cargo owners, who can arrange these affairs without even getting off the ship, and the time saved can be used for the round-trip voyage. If you make a few more trips to Haihan's port in a year, the profits you can get from the time saved will naturally be considerable.

Although Van Dimen believes that geography and ethnicity are the main reasons for the gap between the two sides in terms of trade operations, he also has to admit that if from the perspective of merchants, Haihan Port with perfect service facilities and unified management measures is obviously a better choice. After the Haihan base in the Strait of Malacca is put into operation, it is not difficult to imagine that the entire South China Sea, or the maritime trade between the East and the West, may be subtly changed.

If you have to let Fan Dimen find a little fault in it to comfort himself, it is probably only the shortcoming that Haihan's current maritime capacity is still relatively limited. In order to rapidly expand its territory, Haihan has put most of its resources on the construction of ships for military purposes, and the Haihan Navy already has six "Majestic-class" main warships, but in order to build these six large warships and many warships supporting them, the Ministry of Shipping can only greatly reduce the number of civilian and commercial ships. This makes Haihan currently very dependent on the sea capacity from other countries, especially Daming, and more than seventy percent of the ships that travel between Hainan Island and Daming all year round are not Haihan.

But this shortcoming can limit Haihan for a long time, and after this investigation, Fan Dimen saw the shipyards under construction in Danzhou and Haikou. Judging by the speed at which Haihan is building military vessels, the frequency of civilian ships launching from various shipyards will only increase in the coming years. Maybe a year or two later, a merchant fleet with the flag of Haihan can be seen on the sea surface of the South Seas.

During the last half day of his visit to Haikou City, Ning Qi went to the new resettlement area east of the Nandu River. From 1631 to the present, nearly 20,000 new immigrants have been settled in this area, with the Ming Dynasty as their main source. The migrants were resettled in 10 planned villages and towns, and their livelihoods were based on collective farms where food crops were grown.

The basic organization of the Ming Dynasty's rule in the countryside was the Lijia system, which was based on 110 households as a li, with the 10 households with the most grain serving as the lichang, and the remaining 100 households being numbered as 10 jia. The government assigns conscription on a lijia basis, including the collection of taxes and grain, the transportation of tribute, and the public use of the government. However, because this system does not select meritocracy to manage the grassroots, and there are no perfect supervision measures, the lieutenant chief can use public power for private purposes when arranging conscription, and enrich his own pockets. By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, after the implementation of a whip law, the original system of changing the governor for ten years was gradually abandoned, and the control over the peasants became weaker and weaker.

After Haihan took over this area, he did not follow the Ming Lijia system, because the immigrants who settled here were all immigrants with no roots, so the civil affairs department actually adopted the commune system based on the village unit, that is, all the means of production were publicly owned, and the people's income mainly came from wages and rations obtained from labor. And the village committee cadres of each village are all appointed by the Haihan Ministry of Civil Affairs, and they have to be supervised while eating the imperial grain.

This form of collective ownership is more suitable for an agrarian society, and Haihan tried to achieve a cemetery of agricultural workers through the advantages of the system, and relied on the accumulation of agriculture to achieve the foundation of industrialization. The advantages of this system are obvious, first of all, there is a ready-made model to follow, Haihan only needs to apply the successful experience obtained by the ancestors in the original time and space in practice, and the management system and operation mode are very mature, and there is no need to do a long time of experimentation and exploration. Second, this system can effectively organize the peasants and use the productive forces of the people to build farmland and water conservancy infrastructure on a large scale, saving the official investment that Haihan needs to make in agricultural development. The most important point is that the wealth produced by agricultural production can be effectively concentrated, and the government can invest it in the more important military, industrial and other fields at present, so as to promote the rapid development of social productive forces.

However, the Haihan-style commune system also learned the lessons of its ancestors, and did not blindly emphasize public ownership, and also provided a channel for immigrants who wanted to abandon agriculture and business or enter other industries to work, but there was a necessary premise that they could first obtain Haihan nationality. And if you don't have a skill or choose to enlist in the army, you can now get a chance to become a naturalized citizen by simply doing simple manual labor in the countryside. Because these resettlement areas near Haikou City have not been established for a long time, most of the immigrants are still in the observation period, and the proportion of naturalization has not yet exceeded half.

Of course, after a certain stage of development in the future, the collective ownership system implemented in these places may once again become a shackle to the productive forces, and there will certainly be timely changes in the grassroots organization system, but that will be the business of the next generation at the earliest.

Van Dimen was interested in the grassroots management system promoted by the Haihan in the countryside, which was not only different from the feudal lordship system common in Europe, but also clearly different from the rural social structure represented by the Ming Dynasty in the Far East. Judging from the state of farmland infrastructure here, it is undoubtedly the most outstanding place he has ever seen in his life, similar to the water conservancy project that covers 10,000 acres of cultivated land in several villages and has unified regulations, but it cannot be made by relying on the small fights organized by the farmers themselves.

When the expedition arrived, the place called Dagan Village was organizing people to dig irrigation canals leading to the Nandu River, and seeing hundreds of strong laborers sweating in the field, Fan Dimen seemed to understand what Ning Qi had just told him about the meaning of "collective ownership". It is true that such infrastructure projects can only be organized by the government, and such low-tech infrastructure projects may not be implemented in other countries for several generations - for example, the Ming Dynasty, which ruled the region before, did not organize the construction of these water conservancy facilities as necessary projects during the reign of more than 200 years.

"Why did you only take two years to achieve what Da Ming didn't do in a hundred years?" Fan Dimen took the initiative to ask Ning Qi for an official answer.

Ning Qi thought for a moment before replying, "It's actually very simple, because we know how to do it the most correct way. ”

Fan Dimen was dazed when he heard this, and he didn't understand the meaning of Ning Qi's words. Seeing the question mark on his face, Ning Qi continued to explain: "These systems and methods we use in governance are relatively mature methods that have been practiced by our predecessors and improved from generation to generation. We have all seen and know what the final result will be like when it comes to Da Ming, or what you Westerners do, so we won't copy these wrong practices again. ”

Van Dimen asked with some disbelief: "So what you are doing is the best way? These are from your homeland east of the ocean?"

Ning Qi smiled and said, "Is it the best way, time will prove to everyone." As for the latter question asked by Van Diemen, he skipped it intentionally or unintentionally.

In order to fool the Ming people, the traversers made up a "east of the ocean" Haihan origin, which is okay to coax the Ming people who have implemented the sea ban for many years, but if you want to use the same statement to fool the Western colonists who have set foot on the main continents of the world, it is easy to be exposed, so in recent years, high-ranking officials of the Haihan Dynasty have rarely mentioned their origins.

Naturally, such an answer could not satisfy Fan Dimen, but after dealing with Ning Qi for so long, he also knew the characteristics of this high-ranking Haihan official, and he took the initiative to break the news all for external propaganda, but it was difficult to find out more information from his mouth through questioning. Even a few times when he drank too much at a banquet arranged by a local official, it was still airtight, so it is no wonder that he would be responsible for this kind of foreign affairs reception.

Due to the time constraints, Ningqi's investigation in the countryside can only stay on the surface, and the origin of the people in these resettlement areas under the rule of Haihan is very complicated, and it is unlikely that the people will really be as calm as they saw during the inspection, and there will definitely be many unavoidable contradictions and conflicts. However, from the point of view of production organization and infrastructure, the management effect of this area is still quite good, although it is not as good as the old development zone like Yazhou, but the social order and agricultural production are relatively stable, which is the most important part of the executive committee.

After completing the inspection in Dagan Village that day, Ning Qi and his party boarded a boat directly on the bank of the Nandu River and left, went south along the east coast of Hainan Island, and stayed overnight at Qinglan Port in Wenchang County. On the east coast of Hainan Island, there are four counties of Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning, and Lingshui, but these places are all agricultural counties, and there is no foreign trade port, and there are also inspection teams of the Ministry of Agriculture in these counties to guide the spring plowing work in the near future, and Ningqi does not plan to stay in this line.

There are only more than 100 nautical miles from Qinglan Port to Sanya, and Ning Qi calculates that the time for this trip is about the same, so he plans to fly directly to Sanya, and after going back, he will have a few days to rest and prepare for the next big event. The two warships that followed out from Haikou to escort the expedition went all the way to the sea off Wanning, and only turned back after completing the handover with their colleagues who went north to greet them, and then the relay warships escorted the expedition all the way back to Sanya.

On 25 March, Ningqi and his entourage's expedition around the island, which lasted about half a month, finally came to a successful conclusion at Shengli Port. After this trip, it was not Ning Qi who gained the most, but Fan Dimen, the governor of the East India Company, who followed him as a guest and watched all the way.

If it weren't for Haihan taking the initiative to open up these areas and take him to visit, Fan Dimen estimated that he would never have had the opportunity to see the real situation of the society under Haihan's rule in his life.

In the past, Van Dimen once thought that the Haihan must be a reckless force, and invested all the profits earned from commerce in army building, otherwise how could it have become the most powerful maritime power in the South China Sea in just a few years. But after coming to Haihan to see it with his own eyes, he realized that Haihan's strength is not only limited to military aspects, but also its industry, agriculture, soldiers, learning, business, and the development speed and level of each field far beyond his previous imagination.

It is difficult for Van Dimen to understand how such all-round strength can appear in an emerging force like Haihan, which has no roots, but the truth is so cruel, Haihan's strength in all aspects exceeds that of the traditional forces in the wider surrounding territories. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people in total, and no matter how much black technology there is, it is difficult to fully exert its effectiveness. In time, after the scope of Haihan's control reaches a certain size, it will probably be the time when this new star rises in the Far East.

And judging from the current international situation, it seems that no one can stop the rise of this new star. In recent years, the Ming Dynasty has been mired in internal and external troubles and has no time to look south, and Annan has almost become a client state of the Haihan, and the remaining surrounding small countries are not enough to see. As for the Western colonial countries that came to the Far East, they have all been planted in the hands of the Haihan without exception, and it seems that it is difficult to bargain for anything from them. (To be continued.) )