After all, he is now also a senior official - a formal member of the Senate. [Read the latest chapter] Guo Yi actually attaches more importance to the latter point. Now that officials in the field sound majestic, they will no longer be interested in him in the future: No matter how useless the veteran is, it will not be a problem to find a colonial governor in the future. In comparison, elders are 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 started immediately.
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 establish a pre-set logistics supply point in enemy-occupied areas was aborted due to strong opposition from the Planning Academy and the military. But 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 all colors standing respectfully on the roadside, welcoming Dongzhu Guo's carriage as it passes by. Si Kaide knew that these people were employees and partners of various related companies under the Zishi Group in Guangzhou Station. He felt that Guo Yi was 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 are all kinds of building materials, plumbing hardware, and hardware ordered from Lingao, but all kinds of high-quality building materials available locally are also piled up without hesitation.
The two sat down in the ornately decorated "smoking room." This is the place where Guo Yi entertains "distinguished guests". It's very quiet all around. He took out two bottles of chilled kvass from the cabinet, and the two of them continued their conversation while smoking cigars.
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 had 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 the coveted target of the Planning Institute.
"...Sir Guo, although we have sent business groups to Southeast Asia, establishing food channels is not something that can be done overnight." Skade said, "Since we made an agreement, the Dutch have shipped us a lot of food. There is less rice from Southeast Asia, but it all has to be bought with real money..."
The trade between the senators and the Dutch was generally successful. The Senate used Guangzhou as a window to purchase large quantities of various specialties from 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 Senate's exports. As a result, the Dutch also had to pay a large amount of precious metal currency.
It is precisely with the large amount of silver paid by the Dutch that Lingao can currently pay for the expenses required for such a large-scale operation as Motive Action. But fiscal revenue from exports alone is always limited. Compared with the huge appetite for motivational action and industrialization, the payments paid by the Dutch and British to obtain Chinese goods are far from enough.
In order to export to the Dutch and British, the Department of Colonization and Trade had to establish a commercial network on the continent, and running this commercial network took up a lot of money. In Leizhou alone, the amount of working capital occupied at peak times was as high as 300,000 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 in favor of European businessmen, then the Senate is completely in a state of intrusion toward 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 product. Judging solely from the types and profits of the traded goods between the two parties, the Lingao-Guangdong trade is simply a typical "post-colonial trading system", with an astonishingly large scissor gap.
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. There is not enough production capacity to produce cheap consumer goods for export, and the market demand in Ming Dynasty is very abnormal, and the overall demand is small. This has restricted the further expansion of exports to Daming. Generally speaking, the revenue growth of Guangzhou Station has become weak in the future.
"Do we want to 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 jurisdiction of the Senate, but this kind of enterprise cannot bloom everywhere - the consumer group is fixed.
"salt."
Guo Yi was a little disapproving. It is true that salt was the main source of funding for the Senate in 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 export is still a major source of income for the Ministry of Finance.
Since the salt trade is under the management of the Monopoly Bureau, salt merchants who deal with Lingao also go directly to Lingao for transactions. Guangzhou Station only handles some sporadic business, so he knows very little about the entire salt trade.
For now, all the salt sold in Lingao is sī salt, and the profits are considerable. But it suffers from limited sales channels. At present, sales are only limited to Guangdong province except Hainan. Some of it also flows into Guangxi. Unfortunately, due to the suitable natural conditions in Hainan and Hainan, there are many salt drying fields, and the competition for salt is also fierce.
After the victory of the second anti-encirclement and suppression campaign, the navy took advantage of the victory to actually control the Qiongzhou Strait, bringing the Leizhou Peninsula and other strait coastal areas into its sphere of influence, and essentially controlled the two main salt-producing areas in Guangdong, Hainan and Hainan. In this way, it will be possible to control the production and sales of salt in Guangdong.
Starting a few months ago, the Ministry of Colonization and Trade regarded the sale of salt as an important breakthrough in increasing exports. After some investigation, it was decided to export to Guangxi and Fujian on a large scale. Both of these places are salt-deficient provinces, and salt trafficking is already rampant. It is easy to obtain high profits by entering 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 calculations by the Director 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 we further improve each salt field, increase labor and equipment, and open new salt fields, it will not be a dream to earn an annual income of one million taels from salt.
The famous Tianjin Jiuda Refined Salt Factory in the history of old China had 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 had a daily output of 5 tons of refined salt. Its annual profit reached more than 500,000 to 600,000 yuan. The initial capital of 50,000 yuan can generate dividends of 10,000 to 15,000 per year. The profits are considerable.
The production level and technology of the salt factory located in Ma'an are more advanced than those of the Jiuda 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 the port advantages of Guangzhou, it spreads 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 just an empty frame, 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 might be a bit too much to blatantly approve salt. Besides, salt requires a large warehouse - it can't be hidden from anyone."
"It can be set up on Hong Kong Island or a closer island. The government can't control it and doesn't dare to. You just collect money and issue invoices here. The salt dealers take the invoices to Hong Kong to pick up the goods - ship them directly 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." sī salt. If you encounter a disobedient thorn, just click it and you’re done.”! .
