1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2169
It is not an easy operation for ordinary people to use official channels to obtain business information and other convenient conditions. However, when Yin Changxing was in Seogwipo, he once resold seafood to the logistics department of the Haihan Army under the instructions of Yu Chengli. Recently, he followed Yu Chengli's side to visit the local government everywhere, but he has become more aware of how to seek commercial benefits by cooperating with officials.

If Xiu Nian could provide him with some convenience in Baiquan Town, Yin Changxing felt that it would not be difficult to squeeze out the market share of these country peddlers—maybe it would take a month or two, or maybe even shorter.And this kind of business seems to be more suitable for Yin Changxing's own conditions than those big business with high threshold, or small business with meager profit.

After running around the villages and towns on Zhoushan Island, Yu Chengli only sold a dozen bolts of silk cloth, which was still far behind his expected results.However, Yu Chengli was not discouraged by this. After all, he managed to meet many local officials in the process, and some of them even became brothers. Even if the deal was not concluded this time, there would still be other opportunities for cooperation in the future.

Yu Chengli did not give up on this, but set his next target on other islands under the control of Haihan near Zhoushan Island, such as Qushan Island, Liuheng Island, Daishan Island, Zhujiajian Island, Jintang Island and other large islands. On the island, there is also a management agency at the township level, and the population density is not much different from that of the towns on Zhoushan Island.Yu Chengli believes that because these islands are farther away from the commercial center of Zhoushan, the competition may not be as fierce as on Zhoushan Island, and he should be able to find more room for operation in the local area.

Yu Chengli wants to expand the scope of business activities, and Yin Changxing can only continue to follow suit.Although he has his own selfish intentions, he is really grateful to Yu Chengli for bringing him out of Seogwipo and imparting a lot of business methods and social knowledge to him, and these things can't be found even if you spend money. The ability to learn.

Yin Changxing finally chose to repay his kindness first, and then do his own thing.He specially took a long time to go to Baiquan Town again, and told Xiu Nian about his situation, saying that the business of starting a business had to be postponed later, so that Xiu Nian should not think that he had given up on this plan.

Xiu Nian is not in a hurry about this, he is now learning and familiarizing himself with various grassroots government affairs, and it is actually very difficult to distract himself from Yin Changxing's affairs, since Yin Changxing will leave Zhoushan Island with Yu Chengli to travel abroad recently, Then he just happened to concentrate on his own work first.As for the matter of cooperation in business, it would not be too late to take advantage of the situation when things come to fruition.

And the fate of these little people, when gathered on the desk of Shi Diwen, the highest official in Zhoushan, is just a series of abstract numbers.

According to the latest statistics compiled by the civil affairs department, more than [-] Japanese immigrants who were assigned to the Zhoushan colonial area after the war have completed the isolation and education links in the immigration camp stage, and all of them have been assigned to the villages of the towns in the area. resettlement point.During this period, only two people died of sudden illness, and the funeral has been properly handled.

As for the group of foreign businessmen and their family entourages who evacuated to Zhoushan with the East China Sea Fleet, more than half have already selected a place on the island and are planning to stay permanently and continue to operate transnational trade.

Yang Yun, the chief commercial officer of the Zhoushan colonial area, prepared some preferential conditions for these foreign businessmen, such as tax relief, low-interest loans, preferential land purchases, etc., coupled with Zhoushan's local superior trading environment, it is indeed very beneficial to the businessmen. strong attraction.

But at the same time, Yang Yun also pointed out some potential problems in the report. For example, most of the projects these businessmen operated in Hirado coincided with some of the most competitive industries in Zhoushan, such as porcelain, silk, tea, etc., and even It also includes some industrial products produced by Haihan.

After all, the number of commodities that can be transported across the sea from Daming to Hirado is limited, so the competition these industries face in Hirado is not too fierce. The operation of some commodities is monopolized by individual merchants. It is not necessary to make money from the local market. too easy.But in the environment of Zhoushan, their operations may not be so easy anymore. Regardless of the scale of operations, local businesses have been in business for longer, have a better understanding of the market, and have relatively mature purchase and sales channels. It is difficult for the latter to narrow the gap in these fields in a short period of time.

Yu Chengli, a textile merchant, is a good example. His business in Hirado is relatively stable, and he is the designated supplier of the local dignitaries. As long as he can ship a few batches of goods from Daming every year, he doesn’t have to worry about sales or profits.But after arriving in Zhoushan, he had to face the competition formed by more than 20 merchants dealing in various textiles on the island.

Although Yu Chengli is good at managing upper-level routes, he is a latecomer after all, and it is not easy to steal customers from other colleagues. Therefore, after staying in Zhoushan Island for more than half a month, he chose to find a place to consign the goods in hand. Instead of rushing to open your own storefront.

Yu Chengli is far from the only businessman who has encountered similar problems. Therefore, after withdrawing from Hirado to Zhoushan, some foreign businessmen realized that their long-term business prospects here are not optimistic. They can only use the local area as a trading market. After staying for a long time, I left.

Even Yu Chengli himself has not yet decided to stay in Zhoushan and cultivate slowly. If there is still not much improvement after visiting the Zhoushan colonial area, then he will probably give up his plan to take root in Zhoushan.

Yang Yun pointed out in the report that this group of foreign businessmen brought in from Hirado had mediocre ability to adapt to the local trading environment, so the current retention rate is not high. Nearly half of the businessmen have left Zhoushan, and the rest may not be all. will stay.

This situation is obviously quite different from Shi Diwen's original intention of bringing people back from Hirado. He spent a lot of effort to gather these foreign businessmen in Hirado and persuade them to follow the East China Sea Fleet to withdraw to Zhoushan. Of course, it was not purely for the purpose of protecting these businessmen. Instead, they hope that these businessmen can bring their wealth and business to the icing on the cake of Zhoushan's trade environment, and at the same time see if they can take this opportunity to open the door to trade with Japan.

Of course, after this war, Haihan and Japan are already at war. It may be very difficult to establish a trade relationship with the Japanese government in the short term, so Shi Diwen's idea is to use these people who have been doing business in Hirado all year round. Foreign businessmen, who acted as middlemen, imported the industrial products produced by Haihan to the Japanese market in large quantities.In Shi Diwen's view, if this business route can be opened up, it may bring Zhoushan a stable long-term trade partner.

But if you want to become the official agent of Haihan, then naturally not everyone can get this qualification, at least you must first get the trust of the official.And whether there is an operating industry in the area under the Haihan rule, and the size of the industry, are the conditions that the official will consider.For various reasons, those businessmen who do not want to stay in Zhoushan to manage the industry are equivalent to automatically giving up the opportunity to become an agent.

But as the top local official, Shi Diwen certainly hoped that more businessmen would stay in Zhoushan to prosper the local market, so that when choosing a trade agent with Japan, there would be more samples to choose from.

"If these businessmen fail to see hope and run away in the end, it will be a waste of work for us...Yang Yun, do you think we need to remind these foreign businessmen that they can consider returning to their old business?"

After Shi Diwen read the report, he called Yang Yun and asked him for advice.

Yang Yun replied: "General, it's not difficult to remind them, but we don't know their previous business conditions in Hirado, and we have no way of judging whether they can cooperate with us in conducting trade with Japan... In other words, we don't know the strength of these merchants. and character, we can only slowly confirm their abilities by observing their business activities after they arrived in Zhoushan. If they all run away, Beizhi thinks it can only mean that there are no suitable candidates among this group of people, although we will be busy for nothing field, but at least there will be no direct losses."

Shi Diwen had to admit that his subordinate's opinion was very reasonable. If he gave a clear reminder now, it would be equivalent to changing the open-book exam. As long as he is not a fool, he will naturally try his best to obtain the qualification of an agent. In fact, it does more harm than good.Although Shi Diwen wanted to open up trade routes with Japan, he still had to try his best to avoid inhuman situations. Therefore, it was necessary to conduct a secret investigation of these candidates for a period of time.

But if it continues like this, in the end, everyone may lose patience and choose to give up. Shi Diwen also finds it difficult to accept such a result. After all, there will not be a second military operation against Japan in the near future to obtain new candidates. .So he still hopes that Yang Yun can come up with a better solution to ensure that the government can find suitable candidates from this group of businessmen. Haihan's spokesperson for interests in Japan.

"Among the remaining businessmen, are there any outstanding ones who are proactive in doing things and can be used as candidates?" Shi Diwen continued to ask.

Yang Yun has been working under Shi Diwen for a long time, and he understood what his boss meant when he heard it, and replied after a little hesitation: "There are also two or three people who have asked me in private if they can continue to work with Japan. Buying and selling, but I haven’t given a clear answer for the time being, I only said that we need to observe the changes in the situation and confirm the attitude of the Japanese shogunate after the war.”

"It's okay to take the initiative to ask you for news...Then these people are all Han Chinese?" Shi Diwen asked.

"They are all businessmen from Daming." Yang Yun knew what Shi Diwen really wanted to confirm, and quickly replied: "And the family is all in the territory of Daming, and they don't have much to do with the Tian Chuan clan in Hirado and the Eighteen Zhiyu Party. .”

The main reason for Haihan to send troops this time is to eliminate the hostile forces hiding in the Hirado Domain, and Shi Diwen naturally does not want the future cooperative merchants to be one of them.In addition, all Western businessmen are excluded, even their ally Portugal.After all, it is impossible for these western businessmen to be loyal to Hai Han, and people who are not of our race must have a different heart, and in Shi Diwen's view, they are far less reliable than the Han people of the same ancestor.

"Then during this period of time, you should spend more time on this matter, select suitable candidates earlier, and implement follow-up measures." Shi Diwen did not ask Yang Yun about the specific situation of the target, as the commander As long as you point out the direction of attack, it will be too tiring if you have to personally give instructions on how to fight.

Yang Yun quickly responded that the trade with Japan had actually been in preparation several months before the start of the war.But because of this military operation, the original plan was completely disrupted, so we had to start from scratch again.

Before the war, there were already a lot of goods shipped to Japan via Zhoushan Dinghai Port.The Zhoushan authorities have no intention of competing with private merchants for the trade share of traditional commodities, but they intend to export Haihan industrial products to Japan and develop it as a new sales market.

Although private merchants will also transport some products produced by Haihan to Japan for sale, in the eyes of the Zhoushan authorities, the trade volume is too small, and the Japanese market should have greater potential to be tapped, so Shi Diwen is also interested in It is necessary to open up the Japanese market through Haihan's operation method, and hand over the matter to Yang Yun.

Yang Yun's original plan was still to use Hirado Port as a trade destination, and he had done a lot of preparatory work for this, but he didn't expect the situation to change suddenly this year, and Hirado Port would disappear as soon as he said it was gone.Therefore, Yang Yun could only modify the plan according to the military's suggestion, and made Nagasaki, the only remaining foreign trade port in Japan, as a new trade destination, and then selected qualified personnel from among the businessmen who moved from Hirado to Zhoushan to implement this plan. plan.

If the plan can be implemented, and the trade route from Zhoushan to Nagasaki is established through middlemen, and various commodities produced by Haihan are sold to Japan, then Yang Yun must have done the first job, and in his capacity, it is not difficult to get from this reap some practical benefits for themselves in the operation of a trade route.So for Yang Yun, even if Shi Diwen didn't urge him, he still has [-] points of motivation to promote the implementation of this matter as soon as possible.

But Yang Yun couldn't be too eager to avoid suspicion. When Shi Diwen asked about this matter, he had to explain the various difficulties in the operation process, so as to win Shi Diwen's support as much as possible.At present, everything seems to be going well, and the next step is to further screen the few objects he selected to confirm the reliability of these people.

Although Shi Diwen gave him a lot of power, he also had a lot of responsibilities. If something goes wrong in the future, he will be the one who is responsible for it. So even though he is fully responsible for the current plan, he has not lost his composure. The plan is still being implemented step by step.

(End of this chapter)