Sail across the sea

Chapter 468 Want to have dinner together?
Gao Fan wasn't worried at all that Yuan Xiaoyan was also a time traveler. According to the regulations of the Time and Space Administration, each plane can only have one time traveler; dual or group time travel is not allowed.

Excluding the possibility of time travel, being able to come up with the idea of ​​foreigners using rare earth elements to reclaim land from the sea simply by having a vivid imagination is genius.

Then again, weren't all those later anecdotes about coal filling the sea and oil-paper packaging fabricated by people? Yuan Xiaoyan simply brought that process forward by a decade or so. Perhaps, in a time before Gao Fan, Yuan Xiaoyan would have been a media mogul who wrote those kinds of anecdotes.

“This is a great idea.” Gao Fan immediately gave Yuan Xiaoyan a thumbs up. “We can say that the country is Japan. We can say that Japanese companies buy large quantities of cheap rare earth from China, pack them in plastic buckets, and store them in Tokyo Bay. When China runs out of rare earth, they can take out the stored rare earth and use it.”

"Gao Fan, you've dealt with Japanese companies before, do you think this is possible?" Yuan Xiaoyan asked curiously.

She remembered that when she was chatting with Gao Min, Gao Min mentioned that Gao Fan was selling chemical cleaning agents to Japan, and that Gao Fan had a business partner in Japan.

Yuan Xiaoyan had never interacted with Japanese people. Her understanding of Japanese people came entirely from the anti-Japanese war movies she watched when she was a child and the Reader's Digest she read after she went to university. The images of Japanese people obtained from these two sources were contradictory.

Gao Fan nodded decisively and said, "They are fully capable of doing such things, and even more shameless things. Otherwise, they wouldn't be worthy of being called economic animals."

"However, if we write an article saying that Japanese companies are despicable and shameless, using such methods to seize China's mineral resources, I'm afraid many newspapers won't publish it," Yuan Xiaoyan warned.

Gao Fan laughed and said, "Why write it like this? We can praise Japanese companies for their foresight and strategic thinking. Think about it, Chinese companies are short-sighted, don't cherish their own resources, and sell rare earths cheaply. Japanese companies, on the other hand, are farsighted, assess the situation, and buy large quantities of rare earths from China to store on their own seabed. How noble is that image?"

"It really is true!" Yuan Xiaoyan suddenly felt enlightened; she realized that public relations articles could be written like this.

The mainstream opinion of that era was to admire foreign countries. If you were to write an article criticizing foreigners, people would definitely say that you were rigid in your thinking and refused to learn from advanced foreign experiences. Newspapers would absolutely never publish such an article.

However, if you praise foreign companies while taking a jab at Chinese companies, many people will enjoy watching it, saying that you have a spirit of self-reflection and an international perspective.

Gao Fan's advice was to praise the foresight of Japanese companies, saying how smart they were to buy your valuable possessions cheaply and store them for future use. Meanwhile, you foolishly sold your treasures as garbage for a pittance—don't you need to reflect on your actions?
This kind of article caters to the media's tastes and would be highly sought after by various digest publications. However, anyone with a modicum of sense would notice its inappropriateness; it's blatantly inciting hatred towards Japanese companies.

It's true that many Chinese people in this era admire foreign things, but most are fundamentally patriotic and don't want their country to suffer losses. If they knew the Japanese were using our rare earth elements for land reclamation, it's no wonder they were furious.

"Gao Fan, I believe you now too. You are truly insidious!" Yuan Xiaoyan said sincerely.

"I think you're praising me, am I right?" Gao Fan said.

Yuan Xiaoyan nodded vigorously: "Absolutely right, I was just praising you."

"Then, I'll leave the rest to you. Is that alright?" Gao Fan asked.

Yuan Xiaoyan blinked her beautiful big eyes and pretended to be cute: "But, Mr. Gao, you haven't told me about the compensation yet. Sister Minmin told me that business is business, and she even said that you taught her to say that. Even if I admire you a lot, you can't exploit me, can you?"

“Talking about compensation is too hurtful,” Gao Fan said. He wasn't afraid of anyone trying to flirt with him. He said, “There's a research project on the development strategy of the rare earth industry, with a budget of 2 yuan. 20% can be allocated as research personnel fees, and the remainder is for necessary costs. Yuan Xiaoyan, are you interested in leading this research project?” “What are the goals of the project?”

"Get the message to the ears of the people who should hear it."

"give it to me."

Yuan Xiaoyan responded with a chuckle.

Among the Class of '82, there were already rumors that Gao Fan had hired his dormmates to do research projects, paying them a monthly stipend. While the exact amount of the stipend was unknown, the daily expenses of the students in Dorm 449 could provide some insight.

Students who can earn their own money and those who rely entirely on their families for living expenses behave differently when it comes to money.

Yuan Xiaoyan had previously talked about this with her classmates and jokingly said that she wanted to get to know Gao Fan and see if he could assign her a research project as well.

Who knew that the opportunity would actually fall into her lap?

Compared to helping Gao Min, Yuan Xiaoyan preferred the job Gao Fan assigned her. Aside from the fact that the work itself was more prestigious, the way Gao Fan arranged it made her feel a great sense of accomplishment.

Gao Fan had contracted this matter to her as a project, which meant she would have more autonomy in it. Of course, necessary consultations and reports were still unavoidable, but Yuan Xiaoyan was confident that she could handle it in a way that Gao Fan couldn't find too much fault with.

Gao Fan trusted Yuan Xiaoyan completely. Someone who could earn a reputation as a talented woman on the Peking University campus must have an exceptionally high IQ. Gao Fan's previous concerns about Yuan Xiaoyan were simply that she was too bookish and out of touch with reality, and that her values ​​clashed with his own.

In retrospect, this girl is very adaptable and has sound values, making her someone you can entrust with tasks.

"Mr. Gao, would you like to have dinner together?"

As she left the archives, Yuan Xiaoyan smiled and extended an invitation to Gao Fan.

"Never mind, I have other plans for tonight," Gao Fan said dismissively. He didn't even bother to analyze whether Yuan Xiaoyan's invitation was genuine or a joke.

"By the way, if you're going to invite Huihui to dinner, I'm afraid you'll have to reschedule. Huihui went out with her advisor to work on a project last week, and she said it seems like she'll be away for quite a while," Yuan Xiaoyan said.

"You mean Xia Shihui?" It took Gao Fan a while to realize what the nickname referred to. He smiled wryly and said, "What nonsense are you all spreading? My relationship with your Huihui is just a cooperative one between upstream and downstream processes."

(End of this chapter)