January 2, 1636
As the first New Year since the "Gregorian Calendar of the Song Dynasty" was officially promulgated in Guangzhou, the Guangzhou Municipal Government of the Song Dynasty spared no effort to promote the Gregorian New Year. On the occasion of "New Year's Day" on January 1, public offices and schools were announced to be closed for five days.
Various shops and workshops in and around Guangzhou have also followed suit. They will have holidays starting from New Year's Day and will not open until the God of Wealth is received on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year.
Some trading shops are reluctant to part with the best business opportunity of the year, so they ask their clerks to take turns to rest. Although the Australians did not issue any official document about "implementation by soldiers and people as one body", everyone thought it would be better to follow suit.
After the Australians arrived, the people in the city were stunned by thunder, rain and dew. In particular, most of the wealthy gentry households were terrified. Hundreds of wealthy gentry families outside the city and outside the city were destroyed by the witchcraft case; not long after the plague ended, the "new tax system" was implemented.
Since ancient times, countless people have been killed because of tax collection. Although Australians are not bloodthirsty, the frequent "exile" in several major cases not long ago has frightened them. Because Australians are not exiled alone, but often as a whole family. Although you are allowed to take away all the property and people, the places where they are exiled are the "evil soldiers from far away states" that everyone has never heard of. It is said that they are exiled, but in fact they will never return.
It seems that the Australians have also realized that the recent killings have been too harsh. Last year, there was another plague that seriously damaged Guangzhou's vitality. Therefore, starting from December, they consciously downplayed the atmosphere of purges and began to prepare for various activities. Kind of a celebration. There are lights and colors everywhere. On New Year's Eve, large-scale fireworks were also set off in Baietan and other places. All kinds of large-scale fireworks were played for more than half an hour. All kinds of fireworks lit up half of the sky, and the whole city went crazy.
The Guangzhou Federation of Industry and Commerce also held a group visit on the second day of New Year's Day. For members of the Federation of Industry and Commerce, although the group visit is just a formality, it is also a "reassurance". It also made the industrial and commercial people who had been disturbed for a whole year feel relieved.
At the group visit, Lin Baiguang, who came to preside over the meeting, and Liu Xiang, who came here specially, not only made some remarks, but also specifically mentioned a series of "industrial and commercial promotion projects" of the Senate. Including the "Nanyang Company" plan that has become popular recently.
In addition to the Nanyang Company's stock offering and bond issuance, there were also a series of specific industrial investment projects. Liu Dafu personally gave speeches and took the trouble to do so. Of course, as the mayor of Guangzhou, it was his consistent purpose to spare no effort to promote industry and commerce. In addition to the planning institute's plan to relocate and build new enterprises. Encouraging local industrial and commercial entrepreneurs to set up entities is also a common idea of all colleagues from the Planning Institute and the municipal government.
The Planning Institute and the Guangzhou Municipal Government are not the only ones who are interested in "diffusion of production capacity". The agriculture and light industry departments are also gearing up for this hot land of Guangzhou and are ready to do something big. Wu Nanhai is also tinkering with a "patent transfer", preparing to transfer a batch of civilian technologies in the form of patents to large companies in Guangzhou for a fee, allowing them to invest in setting up factories.
Although these projects have not yet been issued in the form of formal documents, Liu Xiang has disclosed the general contents to the big players in today's PPT.
There may seem to be a wide variety of projects, but in fact they all belong to "agricultural products processing", among which the largest and most important project is "cotton spinning".
Cotton spinning was an industry that the Senate paid little attention to in the past. The reason was simply that the Senate did not have a stable source of cotton and had to face competition from cheap Indian cotton and Songjiang cotton. Therefore, although the Senate has operated yarn mills and textile mills in recent years, they are not large in scale and are mainly used to produce certain special textiles. Most of the bulk cotton fabrics were imported from India and Ming Dynasty.
After occupying Guangdong and Guangxi, the cotton supply problem has been basically solved. Secondly, various departments have criticized the existing "homespun cloth", whether it is the Indian Cotton Department or Songjiang Cotton. From an application point of view, cotton textiles are widely used in industrial and civilian fields. However, the small number of spindles under the current industrial control of the Senate makes the special textiles of the Senate always hover at a low production level, regardless of Is it output, variety or technology.
Expanding the production scale of cotton textiles was quickly put on the table. In accordance with the Senate's established policy for setting up industry, the establishment of such light industries has always been carried out using the model of "attracting private capital investment". Therefore, the "Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Promotion Case" was launched.
After Lin Baiguang hosted the group meeting, he also hosted a dinner for members. It was very lively with people drinking and drinking. Everyone seemed happy. After drinking and eating, Wu Yijun said goodbye to his acquaintances and got on the sedan chair back home, thinking about Kun Ren's motives along the way. He was not in the cloth business, but a businessman who bought dried fruit bags, but the sandy land to the south belonged to him, and Kun bought it. He also heard that Zhen Kun went there for a spin, which made him Smelled a business opportunity. He had long been interested in Gao Li, and since he came into contact with the Kun people, he quickly became one of the top big players. However, before the "liberation" of Guangzhou, he had no interaction with the Kun people's industry. Originally it was just a matter of advancing and retreating with the class, so I came here to order a meal.
I didn’t expect that such a thing would happen during this group visit! This so-called "Industrial and Commercial Promotion Case" is the Senate's investment promotion conference.
Among the projects at the investment fair, he was most interested in cotton spinning. Because he has a lot of newly dried up sand fields in his hands, which are of little use at the moment except growing cotton. You can't make much money just by selling cotton. Only by spinning and weaving your own cotton can you make the biggest profit. And judging from the current Australian appetite for cotton, there is no need to worry about sales in this industry - both Liu Dafu and Director Lin have made it clear that the Senate will fully support the local industry.
However, in the past, local cotton spinning in Guangfu was not as strong as silk weaving. Most of the cloth on the market was Songjiang cloth, and many cloths were only used by farmers. In addition, after the arrival of the Australians, a large amount of foreign cloth was imported. The cloth shops in Guangzhou city have long been out of local cloth. There are still farmers' homespun cloth in remote counties. However, due to the war, it is not known how many weavers are still there.
There are three options in total given by Kun Ren. The first one is the simplest and is actually a variant package buyer. In the past, package buyers provided raw materials to farmers, and then waited for them to buy and resell them after weaving. The purchase process was also different. Some directly provided raw cotton and linen, some provided spinning yarn, and some large shop owners directly produced it themselves. They sell their own products, but the looms are basically owned by each shop. And Kun Ren has added a credit machine. In addition to buying the product package, every time the person who gets the machine sells a piece of cloth, Kun Ren will take another part of the profit, and it will be a permanent profit. This is much more ruthless than the big credit merchants like them. . Unless the "shares" in the hands of the Australians are acquired back, and the purchase price of the shares is more than ten times that of selling the machine directly, although the people who are bought into the shares can also accept the technical and management guidance of the Australians, and the profit will be determined by the amount of profits. Decision, but basically it can be said that I sold myself to the Australians.
As for the dividend distribution of corporate shares, in Wu Yijun's opinion, the "East-West System" has been renamed. The East is the Caidong, and the West is the shopkeeper. But in fact there are some differences. For example, the company that elects him as a legal person also needs to be a shareholder, but they do not do any specific business. He originally thought that Caidong was the young fake Kun, but to his surprise, it was not just one person who invested in the company, but another company. The shareholders of the company must be the real Kun. After thinking about it carefully, he felt that this Kun man was worthy of being a maritime merchant. Although he looked complicated, he could make money just by lying down.
Finally, there is a pattern. That is, the businessmen set up factories as sole proprietors or joint-stock companies. The Australians only sell equipment and technology to the factories, and do not intervene in other matters. The profits can be pocketed after paying taxes.
To say which one is best, it is naturally the third one. But for the third type, it goes without saying that this investment is not something that ordinary large households can afford. At least a few joint ventures are required.
Back at the house, he told the servant at the door: "Move everything in." Kunren distributed some samples to members who were interested in the cotton textile industry.
After returning to the study, he thought for a while and then asked someone to call his cousin Chen Lin. Chen Lin is a relative of Wu Yijun in Nanhai County. My family used to be a silk maker. Not long after the Australians came over, there was a riot between bandits and soldiers in the countryside. The Chen family was robbed first, and then suffered the disaster of Hui Lu, and the family was almost destroyed. So he fled to Guangzhou to seek refuge with him.
Originally, Chen Lin was going to go back to clean up his family business after the peace in the four villages. Unexpectedly, he encountered the plague again, so the trouble was delayed in the city.
A few days ago, Chen Lin came to say goodbye, saying that he would leave Guangzhou and return to his hometown some day.
From this point of view, it is just an opportunity.
Chen Lin came over to greet him - he was a handsome man in his early thirties. I used to work as a silk dealer in the countryside, and my face was darkened by the sun. After staying in Guangzhou for more than a year, I became much fairer and looked more like a scholar.
Wu Yijun greeted him politely and asked him how his luggage was prepared and whether the ship had been hired. He also asked his servants to prepare some local products from Guangzhou.
Finally he got to the point: "Your family has been living on looms for generations. How about taking a look at these pieces of cloth?" He handed a few samples to Chen Lin.
Chen Lin took it, looked over it several times, frowned, and said, "I wonder where uncle got these pieces of cloth."
"Don't worry about this, let's take a look at the quality first?"
He responded and said: "My nephew's family always makes silk. Although I know a thing or two about cotton, I am not an expert in this industry, so I can only speak nonsense."
Wu Yijun smiled and said: "If you don't understand, I don't understand even more. Just say you understand."
Although he was thinking about starting a cotton spinning business, he always felt that something was not right. Because the competition for cotton cloth in Guangzhou is very fierce, whether it is local homespun cloth, fine cloth from Songjiang, or cotton cloth of various colors from the West, they all firmly occupy the market, and there is not much room for price. If you really want to do it, the competition will be very high.
(End of chapter)
