After all, he is also a high-ranking official now - a formal member of the Senate. Guo Yi actually values the latter point more. Now that a high-ranking official sounds majestic, he will no longer be interested in it in the future: no matter how useless a senator is, he will be appointed as a colonial governor in the future.
It’s not a problem either. In comparison, being a veteran is the most valuable status.
"These two things." Guo Yi ignored this sad incident, "I know your plan, prepare for peaceful evolution." He said and pulled the rope holding the bell, and the carriage immediately started.
This carriage is a high-end luxury carriage specially manufactured by the vehicle factory for Guo Yi. It adopts a four-wheel structure, leaf spring shock absorption, and the interior decoration is extremely luxurious. As soon as they met on the road, everyone knew that this was Dongzhu Guo.
Hong Huangnan's enthusiastic plan to use the horse-drawn carriage 4S shop as a cover to build a pre-set logistics supply point in enemy-occupied areas was aborted due to strong opposition from the Planning Institute and the military. However, the commercial part of it was picked up by Skade.
.
Si Kaide equipped Guo Yi with such a carriage just to use him as a living advertisement.
The carriage quickly left the busy city and headed for "Guo's House" on Weifu Street.
Along the way, from time to time you can see neatly dressed people of various colors standing respectfully on the roadside, welcoming Dongzhu Guo's carriage as it passes by. Si Kaide knew that these people were related to various families affiliated with the Zi Group in Guangzhou Station.
Employees and partners of the company. He feels that Guo Yi is now becoming more and more like a Japanese chaebol-like figure.
The residence on Huifu Street has been renovated since they returned to Guangzhou. In order to fully reflect the power and wealth of "Dongzhu Guo", Zheng Shangjie renovated the residence on Huifu Street to be magnificent. Not only all the building materials, plumbing and hardware were ordered from Lingao
Since then, all kinds of high-quality building materials that can be obtained locally have been piled up without hesitation.
The two sat down in the gorgeously decorated "smoking room". This was the place where Guo Yi entertained "distinguished guests". It was very quiet. He took out two bottles of iced kvass from the cabinet, and the two of them smoked cigars.
While continuing the topic just now.
The core topics were money and food. It was for these two that Si Kaide came to Guangzhou specially.
A Southeast Asian business group from the Ministry of Colonial Trade left Lingao not long ago. Their mission was to explore the waterways and trade conditions in Siam, Cambodia, Vietnam and other places, and to check whether there were any local partners. Rice in Southeast Asia has always been
It is the coveted goal of the Planning Institute.
"...Guo Si
, although we sent business groups to Southeast Asia, establishing food channels is not something that can be accomplished overnight." Skade said, "Since we made an agreement, the Dutch have shipped us a lot of rice from Southeast Asia.
But it all has to be bought with real money..."
Generally speaking, the trade between the senators and the Dutch was outstanding. The Senate used Guangzhou as a window to purchase large quantities of various specialties of the Ming Dynasty and then resold them to the Dutch. The types of goods sold by the Dutch to the Senate were relatively limited.
In addition to spices, the Senate was mainly interested in bulk commodities, that is, rice, wood and industrial raw materials - these were far from being able to offset the payment for the Senate's export goods, so the Dutch had to pay a lot
A sum of precious metal currency.
It is precisely with the large amount of silver paid by the Dutch that Lingao can currently pay for the costs required for such a large-scale operation as Operation Engine. However, fiscal revenue from exports alone is always limited, compared to the huge development of Operation Engine and industrialization.
Appetite, the Dutch and British paid far more for Chinese goods.
In order to export to the Dutch and British, the Department of Colonization and Trade had to establish a commercial network on the mainland, and operating this commercial network took up a lot of funds. In Leizhou alone, at its peak, the amount of circulating funds occupied was as high as
Three hundred thousand taels. Moreover, as Wentong continues to expand the sugarcane planting area and expand cane sugar production capacity in Leizhou, the amount and time of funds occupied by Leizhou Sugar Industry are constantly increasing. This further exacerbates the funding gap.
If the Senate is currently superior to European merchants, then the Senate is completely inferior to the Ming Dynasty.
There is no doubt that, except for a small part of Lingao's exports to Guangdong, which are re-exports from Southeast Asia, the rest are self-manufactured industrial products, while the goods imported from Daming are almost all industrial raw materials and agricultural products -
―Primary products. Judging from the types of traded goods and profits between the two parties, the Lingao-Guangdong trade is simply a typical "post-colonial trade system", with an astonishingly large scissor difference.
The problem is that the industrial system and new social system that Lingao is building have such an appetite for primary products that they have completely swallowed up the huge profits brought by the scissors gap.
Lingao's industrial production capacity is relatively small, and its own demand is too large. It cannot produce enough production capacity to produce cheap consumer goods for export, and the market demand in Daming is very abnormal, and the overall demand is relatively small. This has restricted further exports to Daming.
Expansion. Generally speaking, the revenue growth of Guangzhou Station has become weak in the future.
"Should we further expand the scale of import and export?" Guo Yi expressed concern, "Now it has almost reached its limit. If we can't directly set up factories in Guangzhou for production, I'm afraid it will be difficult to have much room for expansion."
Not setting up a factory locally means that goods and production raw materials still have to be transported thousands of miles in both directions, making it impossible to further reduce production costs.
"Of course, of course. The spread of light industrial enterprises to Guangdong must be done, but not now." Skade nodded, "You also know that now all departments work in shifts 24 hours a day, so this is the order.
The production tasks can’t be arranged yet, so it’s impossible to manufacture additional machinery and equipment.”
"Then what other growth points are there?" Guo Yi asked. The smoke-free industry is highly profitable: Ziminglou's profit margin is the highest among all enterprises directly under the Senate, but this kind of enterprise cannot bloom everywhere - the consumer group is fixed
of.
"salt."
Guo Yi was somewhat dissatisfied. It is true that salt was the main source of funds for the Senate in the beginning. At the beginning, it was by seizing Ma Niao's salt field that it opened up channels for bulk commodity exports and obtained stable economic income. Up to now, Lingao's salt
Exports are also a major source of income for the Ministry of Finance.
Since the salt trade is under the management of the Monopoly Bureau, the salt merchants who deal with Lingao also go directly to Lingao for transactions. The Guangzhou Station only handles some sporadic business, so he knows very little about the entire salt trade.
For now, all the table salt sold in Lingao is Si salt, and the profit is quite considerable. However, it suffers from limited sales channels. At present, except for Hainan, it is only sold in Guangdong province. Some of it also flows into Guangxi. Unfortunately,
Due to the suitable natural conditions in Hainan and Haibei, there are many salt drying fields and the competition for salt is also fierce.
After the victory of the second counter-encirclement and suppression campaign, the navy took advantage of the victory to actually control the Qiongzhou Strait, bringing the Leizhou Peninsula and other coastal areas of the strait into its sphere of influence, and essentially controlled the two main salt-producing areas in Guangdong, Hainan and Hainan. In this way, it controlled Guangdong.
The production and marketing of salt will become possible.
Starting a few months ago, the Ministry of Colonization and Trade regarded the sale of salt as an important breakthrough to increase exports. After some investigations, it was decided to export on a large scale to Guangxi and Fujian. Both of these places are salt-deficient provinces.
,si Salt trafficking is already rampant. It is easy to obtain high profits by breaking into these two markets.
"The quality of our salt is much better than that of other places," Skade said. "The profit from salt is very high. And now we have more than one salt farm in Ma Niao."
According to the calculations of the Ministry of Finance, once the channel is opened, the existing salt farm facilities can be used to ensure an annual income of 300,000 taels. If each salt farm is further improved, more labor and equipment are added, and new salt farms are developed, the annual income from salt will be 100,000 taels.
Even a thousand taels is not a dream.
The famous Tianjin Jiuda Refined Salt Factory in the history of old China used 50,000 silver dollars as its share capital and 2,000 acres of salt fields as its production facilities. It adopted modern salt production methods and produced 5 tons of refined salt per day. Its annual profit reached more than 500,000 to 600,000 yuan.
The initial capital of 50,000 yuan can pay dividends of 10,000 to 15,000 every year. The profit is very considerable.
The production level and technology of the salt factory located in Ma'an are more advanced than those of the Jiuda Refined Salt Factory in 1911. The salt and soda produced are of high quality.
The opinion of the Ministry of Colonization and Trade is to set up a salt sales center in Guangzhou and transport salt from Hainan Island and Leizhou here for sale. Through Guangzhou's port advantages, it will spread to the entire Guangdong and Fujian.
Limited by the production scale of Ma Niao Salt Factory, it is impossible to refine and reprocess the sea salt produced by all controlled salt farms, but this can also widen the distance between products.
"As you know, the so-called Monopoly Bureau under the Ministry of Finance is nothing more than an empty shelf, with only one veteran in charge. The specific sales in Guangzhou are still handled by the Guangzhou Station."
Guo Yi said: "But if it is located in Guangzhou, it would be a bit too much to openly wholesale salt. Besides, salt requires a large warehouse - it can't be hidden from anyone."
"It can be located on Hong Kong Island or a closer island. The government can't control it and dare not control it. You only collect money and issue invoices here. The salt dealers take the invoices to Hong Kong to pick up the goods - directly ship them and ship them away. We can still
Logistics agency…”
"What should the government and other salt dealers do? I'm afraid they won't leave so willingly."
Si Kaidexiong is confident: "There is no problem with the salt dealers. They are our customers and distribution channels, not our enemies. As long as we control the salt field, we cannot help but have them disobedient - otherwise they will cut off the supply of goods and they will still sell shit."
si salt. If you encounter a disobedient thorn, just click it and you’re done.”!.