Although only a short year has passed, to many people, it seems like a blink of an eye.
But the changes that have occurred in the Shizhu area may be greater than the changes in the past thirty years under normal circumstances.
The number of water-powered textile machines near the Yangtze River doubled to one hundred.
There are more factories, large and small.
The number of workers related to the textile industry in Qingcaoba Town, no, Qingcaoba City, has increased to one hundred thousand.
In the past year, it produced 200 million pieces of clothing, nearly one million pairs of shoes, more than 100,000 pieces of luggage and other products, bringing in gross income of more than 15 million silver dollars, directly and indirectly driving
Livelihoods for hundreds of thousands.
The net profit of Shizhu Clothing Company also reached a record-breaking level of more than 3 million silver dollars.
The per capita annual income of the nearly 400,000 people in Shizhu has increased from less than five silver dollars last year to seven or eight silver dollars per capita, which means that the per capita income has increased by at least 50%.
It is definitely not yet close to a moderately prosperous living standard, but among the five specific indicators, the goals of fifteen pieces of clothing per capita and three hundred kilograms of grain consumption per capita were successfully achieved last year.
That is to say!
The Shizhu area has solved the problem of having enough food. It can make everyone feel full every day, and they will never go hungry even for a day.
The people who live the most comfortable life are the tens of thousands of white-pole soldiers. Their monthly salary has increased from 2 silver yuan to 3 yuan. Their families have been given priority to work in Shizhu Clothing Company, which solves the employment problem of their family members, and Qin Liangyu
They also spent huge sums of money to build a 10,000-unit moderately prosperous model building with a standard of ten people per family and an average living area of 20 square meters per person. The cement, red brick and reinforced concrete support column structure was built. After all was completed, it was distributed to the white pole soldiers.
After that, they were allowed to take their families and live in these well-off buildings.
It can be regarded as a first step, allowing the white pole soldiers to enter a well-off society first.
And after this series of benefits are distributed.
The morale of the white-pole soldiers was extremely high.
Their loyalty and support for Qin Liangyu and the Ma family has reached an unprecedented level, and most of them are willing to fight to the death for the Ma family.
The ordinary people in Shizhu have only envy and support for this. After all, without a safe and peaceful environment, everything is nothing. This is the simplest truth.
The only dissatisfaction of the people is why the white-pole soldiers no longer recruit new soldiers, and why the number is not increased to 20,000 or 30,000, so that more families can enter a well-off society in advance... Of course, they are just sending out a few privately.
It's just a complaint. They all know very well how a small place like Shizhu can support an army of 20,000 to 30,000 people.
all in all.
Qin Liangyu is very satisfied and happy with the rapid development in the past year.
She also knows that Shizhu has made such great progress in the past year. On the one hand, the support provided by Xujiazhuang played a huge role; secondly, the Shu Brocade Chamber of Commerce in Sichuan and the Shu King behind the scenes were severely punished by the court and completely collapsed.
Finally, the development obstacles that stood in front of Shizhu no longer disappeared. Not only could raw materials be purchased without any restrictions, but Shizhu Clothing Company could also enter Sichuan's clothing market and the entire Ming Dynasty's clothing market, and would no longer be suppressed by any force.
, therefore it has also opened up many new markets, with sales revenue exceeding two million silver dollars, and will definitely increase this year.
but……
It is in this dynamic development momentum.
Recently, Qin Liangyu's brows were furrowed, his face was full of sorrow, and there was no trace of a smile.
By the way, what's going on?
Obviously all the obstacles in front of us are gone. Whether it is clothes, shoes, socks, bags and other products, as long as we can produce efficiently this year, we don't have to worry about sales anyway. If this year's income increases by another 50-60%, maybe Shizhu 40
A moderately prosperous life for millions of people will be realized ahead of schedule this year.
But this is only the best-case scenario.
However, Qin Liangyu saw a very scary thing in the numerous data and data analyses-the bottleneck.
The development of Shizhu Clothing Company is likely to hit a bottleneck this year. A 30% increase in external sales is considered good, but a 50% increase is impossible.
Why did she come to this conclusion?
At the company's high-level meeting.
Qin Liangyu said solemnly: "Transportation will become the biggest bottleneck restricting our development. If this problem cannot be solved, our company will soon reach the development limit. The maximum annual sales volume is 18 million silver dollars. There is no possibility of exceeding 20 million."
"Mom, why do you say that?" Ma Xianglin asked in surprise.
"Mom, more than 90% of our company's products are transported by water along the Yangtze River. The cost is extremely low. How can we get into a bottleneck in transportation?" My daughter-in-law Zhang Fengyi was also puzzled.
"There is indeed no problem in transporting to other countries, but there is a huge problem in transporting to Sichuan."
Qin Liangyu shook his head and said: "We are actually very dependent on Xujiazhuang. Not only are more than 80% of the orders provided by Xujiazhuang, our textile machines, sewing machines, some dyes, machine tools, metal raw materials and a large number of spare parts are also purchased from Xujiazhuang.
Although the purchase price of these materials was favorable, during the transportation process into Sichuan, there were some sections where it was impossible to take a boat upstream and had to be carried on one's back and over many mountains, resulting in an increase of at least 50% in cost, and because
With the development of the economy, labor costs are still increasing... If our scale continues to expand, the materials imported from Xujiazhuang will also increase. However, the logistics capacity of Shu Road is limited. Serious congestion has begun to occur in the past two years, and it will only increase this year.
If it is blocked, it will definitely have a huge impact on our development, and it may cause the factory to be under-operated or even shut down."
I heard this analysis.
Everyone's expressions finally began to change, and they all changed drastically.
The poet Li Bai's description of the Shu Road is that it is difficult to climb to the sky and can lead to and from Sichuan. There are not just one, but seven or eight roads. In addition, it is not as exaggerated as Li Bai's poems describe. Some Shu roads are not only
People are allowed to pass through, and large caravans and mule teams can also be used.
But one thing must be admitted, that is, all Shu roads are very narrow, and the wooden plank roads have limited passing capacity. The limit is to allow horses to pass, and it is extremely difficult for horse-drawn carriages to pass. Therefore, there is an upper limit to the cargo transportation capacity, and the amount of cargo is not
High ceiling.
The textile industry is an industry and uses a large number of machines and equipment, which may malfunction during use and require frequent replacement of parts. In addition, buttons, zippers, and various accessories used in manufacturing bags are all
It is a high-precision product. It is difficult to produce it with the technical level of Shizhu Clothing Company. It can only be imported from Xujiazhuang, which is a serious dependence.
Of course, we can find ways to get rid of this dependence, but we need to import advanced machine tools and various raw materials from Xujiazhuang, so it is impossible to completely get rid of dependence.
In addition, the increasingly serious congestion situation on Shu Road.
Maybe the development of Shizhu Clothing Company will really fall into a bottleneck, and it is imminent.
At this time, Qin Liangyu said again: "Last year, the company's profit was 3.35 million silver dollars, of which 2.25 million was used to improve people's livelihood, such as building roads, houses, schools and hospitals, and 1 million was planned to be returned to Tianxiatong.
The bank's repayment leaves only 100,000 silver dollars in active funds on the books that can be used at any time, and the loan we owe Tianxiatong Bank totals 9.6 million silver dollars. Even if we repay 1 million, there is still a shortfall of 8.6 million."
"The development of our company is now about to reach its upper limit. If this is the case, it may be difficult for us to lead the people of Shizhu towards a well-off society. The loan owed to Tianxiatong Bank must be repaid every year.
1 million will take more than eight years to repay, and we cannot save on various expenses, which means that it is difficult for us to use money for expansion. It is very good to maintain the current scale of operations."
This made Ma Xianglin's face paler: "Mom, doesn't this mean that it is impossible to lead Shizhu people to a well-off society?"
Zhang Fengyi murmured: "In the Oriental Times, they often say, 'If you want to get rich, build roads first'. I didn't think so much of it before, but I didn't expect this to be so correct, because the road to Shu is not good.
Even if we don’t get rich, we will have to pay off our debts in ten years.”
"Everyone's life is so busy, how could it become like this?"
Nephew Qin Yiming looked at Qin Liangyu and said, "Auntie, what do you think we should do? Do you want us to spend money to build a better Shu road?"
"Just fix it!"
Qin Gongming patted the table and gritted his teeth and said: "As long as it doesn't stop us from getting rich, we are willing to spend two to three million silver dollars to build roads!"
Ma Xianglin nodded and said: "Yes! Problems that can be solved with money are not big problems. The worst case is that I will take the white soldiers and recruit tens of thousands of road builders to build a good road!"
"You think road construction is too simple."
Qin Liangyu, who was sitting in the chair, shook his head and said: "I have consulted the transportation experts in Xujiazhuang. They said that it is meaningless to build traditional ancient roads. It will not improve the logistics volume much. At least the 6-meter-6-wide Xujiazhuang medium-standard road must be built.
The stone road must be able to run heavy-duty four-wheel carriages. The current cost to build one mile of such a road is 2,000 silver dollars. We went from Shizhu to Chongqing, then passed through the Three Gorges of Tangxia, Wuxia and Xilingxia, and finally arrived at Shuishi
The distance to Yidu County, which is flat and can be used for counter-current shipping, is more than 800 miles, but most of it is in steep mountainous areas. The cost of road construction has increased at least three times. The construction time is only three to five years, and it is impossible to build this road.
, the total cost will be between five and six million silver dollars, no more, not more."
Three to five years.
Five to six million silver dollars?
These two figures made Ma Xianglin and others feel a sense of pessimism and despair.
First of all, they definitely can't come up with so much money. Shizhu's foundation is too weak. It has only developed slightly in the past few years. They also owe Xujiazhuang a lot of debts. Although they don't need to pay interest, it doesn't mean they don't have to pay it back.
Long-term friendship and cooperation, those loans must be repaid before new loans can be borrowed.
As for time, they can wait for two or three years, but not for four or five years. No one can tighten their belts and persist for such a long time. After all, the people of Shizhu want to live a well-off life, but they fail to live a well-off life.
Even though we have to cut back on food and clothing, and the quality of life has deteriorated, if we build this road to wealth, I am afraid that most people in Shizhu will never be able to bear it, and they will have countless complaints and grievances, and lose a lot of public support.
It’s difficult!
It’s so difficult!
Ma Xianglin and others felt a bitter taste in their mouths and felt extremely disappointed. The land of Sichuan was originally a prosperous land of abundance. It should be easy to achieve prosperity, but how could it become like this? Everyone was obviously full of confidence and motivation, but the result was
Because of road traffic problems, pour a basin of cold water on them?
God, what have we done wrong? Why treat me so poorly?
Everyone's hearts were filled with endless sorrow.
"You don't have to be so pessimistic. In fact, experts from Xujiazhuang have provided me with a more ambitious infrastructure plan. Not only can it solve the traffic problems we encountered in Shizhu, but the traffic problems in the entire Sichuan area can also be completely solved through this road.
, but I feel that this project is too huge and may involve hundreds of millions of silver dollars. I am asked to be the general person in charge in Sichuan... I am afraid that I cannot handle it, so I want to ask for your opinion."
At this time, Qin Liangyu changed his words again and revealed some important key information.
"Mom, what's the plan at Xujiazhuang?"
Ma Xianglin's eyes lit up and he asked immediately.
Everyone was refreshed and looked at Qin Liangyu with hope in their eyes. This chapter has been completed!