1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2430
Tao Donglai wants to make the children of salt merchants identify with and get close to Haihan, and even work for Haihan. Although the idea is good, it is not easy to realize.A person like Dai Chengrong has a superior family background and has been in business for generations. He has been cultivated as a human being since he was a child. Before coming to Zhoushan, he was repeatedly told by his elders in his family.In the eyes of Yangzhou salt merchants, the cooperation with Haihan is not a one-sided trust. Even if there is a need for Haihan at this stage, it is only a business in which both parties get what they need.

However, Tao Donglai had never dealt with Yangzhou salt merchants before, so Shi Diwen had to spend more saliva to explain the whole story to him.The transaction between the Zhoushan authorities and the Yangzhou salt merchants was that Haihan provided personnel training and weapons and equipment to assist the Huizhou salt merchants in forming a militia. Salt, and if necessary, hand over the command of the militia to Haihan.

"This is roughly the condition... the salt merchants think that they have already paid the corresponding money in exchange for our support, so they only think that this is a business." After Shi Diwen explained, he paused and continued: " The children of salt merchants are different from the military talents we recruited in the past. For them, choosing to cooperate with our country has not yet reached the point of last resort. "

Among the military talents recruited by Haihan in the past, many of them joined Haihan after being captured. These people have relatively strong abilities. Battle exploits.For example, Takahashi Minami, who was born as a samurai, and Wu Sen, the surrendered general of South Vietnam, all belong to this kind of situation.The other is immigrants who choose to enlist in the army in order to become naturalized as soon as possible, and then slowly work hard in the army. A considerable number of active officers in the Haihan Army have such backgrounds.

These two types of people are forced to survive, and joining the Haihan Army was their best and only choice at the time.The children of salt merchants obviously do not have similar pressure to survive. The reason and purpose of them coming to Zhoushan to study is for their own family, so naturally they will not regard allegiance to Haihan as a necessary option.

After listening to Shi Diwen's explanation, Tao Donglai looked pale, nodded and said, "It seems that I don't know enough about the situation here... Since the salt merchants regard this kind of cooperation as a transaction, you must There will be no mercy for them.”

Shi Diwen replied with a smile on his face: "Of course, since they are willing to spend money, there is no reason for me to stop it, right?"

Shi Diwen's quotation for providing weapons and training services to Yangzhou salt merchants is definitely the highest among Haihan's foreign military aid.However, the salt merchants are rich and powerful. As long as they believe that what Haihan brought out is worth the price, they will pay for it without hesitation.It's just that the executive committee has restricted the military aid provided to the salt merchants, otherwise Shi Diwen would be very interested in playing a cameo role as an arms tycoon and scraping some oil from the salt merchants.

Tao Donglai asked casually, "Then how much did you sell them for the rifle?"

Shi Diwen said: "The 40-style flintlock gun is a model that has been eliminated in the army. If you sell it to them, you can sell it for [-] taels of silver. Paper-wrapped lead bullets, three shots for one tael of silver. You think this is good Where else can I find a deal?"

Even if Tao Donglai was mentally prepared, he couldn't help being secretly surprised when he heard the offer.In the early years, this type of rifle was exported to An Nanguo and Xu Xinsu, and the price of a single rifle was only about 20 taels of silver. Shi Diwen was able to raise the price so high.

But Tao Donglai thought about it, this is just a small business after all, after all, the salt merchant formed a militia instead of an army, even if it was made by a Haihan, there would be only a few hundred guns in the top of the sky, probably That is to say, it was an extra ten thousand taels of silver, which was not too heavy a burden for the very rich salt merchants.

Tao Donglai nodded and said, "The price is good, but the quantity is a bit small..."

"The quantity is not small." Shi Diwen shook his head and denied Tao Donglai's statement: "As long as we are willing to sell, they will accept as much as we have. It's just that the executive committee has restrictions on this, so this business has stopped."

"Huh?" Tao Donglai was startled when he heard the answer, and immediately understood the mystery: "We sell it so expensively, and these salt merchants still want to buy in large quantities. I'm afraid they didn't buy it for their own use?"

"Definitely not." Shi Diwen had a better understanding of the situation in this area, and immediately told the truth: "They only need to hand over the weapons they bought to the government, and that's a great achievement!"

Tao Donglai suddenly said: "After all, it's all a cover-up!"

The biggest potential buyer of Haihan at present is neither old allies such as Annan and Xu Jiajun, nor North Korea, which is clangingly poor, but Daming.

Although Daming also has the ability to manufacture muskets and cannons by itself, its power is significantly lower than that of Haihan's weapons.Haihan's record against the Qing army in Liaodong Jinzhou and North Korea over the years also fully proves this point.If Ming Dynasty wanted to change its declining situation when facing the Qing army, it might be a better solution to switch to more lethal weapons.

As a nominal ally, Daming can of course purchase weapons from Haihan, but the types and quantities of weapons that Daming can buy through official channels have been strictly supervised by Haihan, which is far from meeting the needs of the Ming army for combat.

This kind of control is of course easy to understand. Although Haihan's weapons are powerful, his military strength is much lower than that of Daming. Once the level of weapons and equipment is reduced, Haihan has little possibility of continuing to suppress Daming.If Daming uses Haihan weapons to arm 20 million Musketeers, then Haihan's interests in the coast of Daming will probably be damaged.

It was precisely based on such worries that Haihan implemented control over the weapons and equipment sold to Daming, even if he came with money, he would not even think about buying more weapons.If you can't buy it through open channels, there will naturally be some gray areas, similar to the practice of Yangzhou salt merchants buying at a high price, in fact, they intend to pay part of the state subsidy out of their own pockets.

The benefit of doing so to the salt merchants is nothing more than spending money to buy peace. Maybe the big shots in the court are happy to see it, and then they will be promoted to rank.If you can make the emperor remember you by spending one hundred and eighty thousand taels of silver, then these salt merchants are still willing to give it a try.

Of course, all the weapons and ammunition sold by Haihan are sent from the arsenal in Sanya, and they have been counted before leaving the factory, and then the arsenal will record the original data of the batches and quantities of these weapons and ammunition.How much has been sold here in Zhejiang is all accountable, and a pair of stocks can be known, even Shi Diwen can hardly hide the report.So even though he knew that selling the arms to the middleman, the salt merchant, made a lot of money, Shi Diwen still didn't make his own way to make this money.

As for whether this weird status quo will be improved in the future, it depends on whether the relationship between the two countries can be further strengthened.Tao Donglai's mission to go north this time is also partly related to this, but it has not been started yet, so it is inconvenient to talk too much about Shi Diwen.

Tao Donglai took the initiative to change the topic and said: "It is indeed necessary to proceed with caution when conducting arms trade with Ming Dynasty... and the Tiandu Arsenal's arms production capacity is limited. The most urgent thing is to focus on our own military construction. You take me to base four Let’s take a look, so I can pass on your construction experience to other places.”

Naturally, Shi Diwen would not refuse such a request, so he immediately led Tao Dong to visit some important facilities in the base.Zhoushan’s financial situation is good, the budget is sufficient, and the construction standards of the hardware facilities in the military base are also quite high, basically in line with the standards of Sanya.

"Some of these barracks were completed last year. The stone and wood used are all produced on the island, so the cost is actually good. As long as daily maintenance is maintained, these barracks should be fine for the next century." Shi Di Wen introduced Tao Donglai as he walked.

These barracks are all made of stone walls, log beams, roofs covered with gray tiles, and drainage ditches dug under the eaves, it looks very solid indeed.Most of the more than 2000 Haihan troops stationed in Zhoushan all year round live here.

Tao Donglai thought of another thing when he saw these barracks, and asked Shi Diwen: "Recently, you should have received a lot of refugees from Shandong, right? Are they all settled?"

Shi Diwen said: "To be honest, Zhoushan has limited arable land. It mainly relies on shipping, fishing and service industries to provide employment opportunities, and its ability to accept refugees is relatively limited. Therefore, I have to screen all the people here first, and I have to make a living. Talented people will stay and resettle. The number is actually not too many. I will only keep 2000 people here, right? Most of them will be sent to Taiwan Island. There is a spacious place there, and people who don’t know anything can go there. Cultivate wasteland and grow food, don't worry about not having enough to make a living."

Tao Donglai said with a smile: "It's so complicated, isn't it that you go through the candidates here first, keep the ones you need, and send the ones you don't need to Taiwan."

Shi Diwen also smiled, and didn't make much excuses.His approach is not uncommon. As the only big port between Shandong and Taiwan Island, most of the immigrant ships heading south will choose to replenish here. It is also a customary habit for the Zhoushan authorities to use this opportunity to screen immigrants. .Although Tao Donglai lives in Sanya, he is actually very clear about these methods in the immigration process, and he doesn't mean to blame Shi Diwen for this.

And having said that, Zhoushan is not the first checkpoint to be screened. In fact, immigrants who go south have already been screened by the local area before they board the ship in Shandong.Some occupations that are relatively scarce in the northern colonies, such as construction craftsmen, doctors, teachers, etc., will be intercepted by Chen Yixin and placed nearby.The ones selected here in Zhoushan are mainly fishermen and sailors. These immigrants can just meet the special labor needs of Zhoushan.

Of course, the more the population, the better. Shi Diwen doesn't really think that the local population size has reached the level that needs to be actively controlled. It's just that the executive committee has given clear instructions on the southward migration of refugees from Shandong to take Taiwan Island as the main settlement area.Moreover, after Haihan raided the Hirado clan last year, Zhoushan digested nearly half of the captive population. This time, Shi Diwen couldn't ask for how many refugees to allocate to Zhoushan.

But even so, he still left around 2000 people.About half of them are urgently needed nautical personnel in the local area, and they are divided up by various agencies.The rest of the refugees were distributed to various villages and towns on the island. The local social system had initially taken shape, and it was not difficult for each village to digest a small number of refugees.In fact, the population composition of many villages and towns on the island, most of the people are immigrants, so there is not much rejection of the immigrants.

Shi Diwen said: "The population composition of Zhoushan is relatively complicated. Among the thousands of residents on the island, only about one-tenth are people who lived here when we occupied Zhoushan, and then there are people from Liaodong, Shandong, People from North Korea, Japan, locals from Jiangsu and Zhejiang... There are also people from South Asia and Western countries who have also settled here. Sometimes I feel that this place is really similar to Sanya, and it is an international trading port."

"The trade environment here is actually better than Sanya." Tao Donglai said with emotion: "Look, here is across the sea from Ningbo, and the most affluent area in Ming Dynasty is a few hundred miles away. Sanya is much lower. If it weren’t for the lack of natural resources in this place, it might have been chosen here for crossing.”

"Choosing this place must be a difficult start!" Shi Diwen shook his head again and again: "Mr. Tao, have you forgotten what it was like when we occupied this place? This place is a pirate's den! Before we settle down, we have to first To suppress the bandits, at least two or three months before they can settle down, who can bear it!"

Tao Donglai said with a smile: "You are right. But now that we have occupied this place, we have to make full use of it. Whether it is a trading port or a military port, in short, we must let Daming realize that , Whether it is fighting wars, doing business or governing the country, our level must be far superior to that of Ming Dynasty, so that Daming can spontaneously feel awe of our country from officials to people."

The two chatted and watched, and passed in the base for half a day before they knew it.Seeing the meal time, Shi Diwen invited Tao Donglai to the officer's canteen in the base for dinner.Although Shi Diwen did not announce Tao Donglai's identity to the public, several military officers who had participated in the Sanya military parade recognized Tao Donglai's identity, and were immediately excited. They put down their bowls and chopsticks and stood up to salute.Seeing this, Tao Donglai had no choice but to stop and return the salute. Shi Diwen asked the adjutant to tell these people not to discuss the news of Tao Donglai's appearance in Zhoushan outside, otherwise he would be punished by military law.

Although it is inevitable that the hundred secrets will be neglected, Tao Donglai is not disgusted with this way of exposure. This at least shows that although he seldom shows up overseas, his reputation is still very high. The officers regard him as a member of the executive committee. And a symbol of national power, which made him quite relieved.

(End of this chapter)