Agricultural giant since 1983

"Mr. Li, Mr. Sun can't help it. You know how difficult it is for township enterprises and private enterprises to get loans now, and Mr. Sun has a bad relationship with our local units. It is even more impossible to get a loan from a local bank. If we don't raise money from employees and ordinary people, our Dawu Group will not be able to continue! Besides, anyone who wants to withdraw the money we raised can withdraw at any time, and there has never been a single delay! How can this be called 'illegal deposit taking'?" Dawu Group employees begged on the phone.

In recent years, the business environment has indeed been much better than before, but some problems still exist, such as the difficulty of financing for private enterprises, and this problem will continue for a long time. Cai Chenggong said in "The Name of the People" that he has been in business for so many years, but he has not obtained a single loan through formal channels, which reflects such problems; although Li Lei has issued some loans to Dawu Group through Minsheng Bank, these loans are far from meeting the needs of Dawu Group.

In addition, in recent years, the four major banks have successively launched the township market, which has led to a further decline in the total amount of loans issued in the township market. Banks such as Xinhe alone are far from being able to fill this loophole. Therefore, it is even more difficult for Dawu Group to obtain the funds needed for enterprise development.

It’s not easy for Li Lei to help with this matter, but thinking that there are so many people in the Dawu Group, it doesn’t seem too good to let this company go bankrupt, so Li Lei provided them with some business help, first borrowed a sum of money from the Dawu Group, so that they can turn around, and then gave them some convenience in the supply of necessary materials such as breeders and feed, so that they can continue to live.

For these help, Li Lei did not publicize too much, and told the people of Dawu Group not to say too much. His attitude in this matter is relatively low-key.

The Dawu incident has become more and more fermented in the media. Many people have participated in the discussion of this matter. Everyone has different opinions. Some legal workers believe that the funds raised by the Dawu Group were not illegally used or squandered. Instead, the main funds were used to develop production. At the same time, they also built public facilities such as schools and hospitals to benefit the village. Moreover, the objects of this kind of borrowing are workers and villagers who have a mutual trust relationship with the company, not the general public, so it should be a legal private lending behavior.

There are also other legal workers who refuted the above point of view, thinking that his behavior is indeed illegal, and judging whether it is illegal to absorb public deposits is not based on whether it has caused harm, but on the process of absorbing deposits. His behavior itself is wrong.

Some people blamed the system for the cause of the problem. For example, the third prince Mao said that although Sun Dawu apparently violated the state’s regulations on financial control, in fact, instead of causing harm to anyone, he benefited many people. If such behavior is a crime, then it is questionable whether the system should be revised.

At first glance, this point of view seems to be fine, but think about it from another angle, if enterprises across the country learn from Dawu Group to absorb deposits, what will happen?This kind of situation is scary when you think about it, and it will indeed lead to serious consequences. Later generations of Li Lei often heard of cases where hundreds of millions of people were evaporated because of the collapse of private lending. The actions of these people are actually not fundamentally different from those of the Dawu Group.

Seeing such excitement, many bigwigs also began to leave, such as the Godfather Liu from Taishan, who sent a fax to Dawu Group to express his condolences and sent a loan of 1000 million;

A few months later, Sun Dawu was sentenced to three and four with a suspended sentence. He was convicted but did not go to jail. After he came out, he was still very stubborn. When interviewed by reporters, he said six words, "I obey the law and plead not guilty."

This incident reminded Li Lei of another similar case—the Wu Ying case. A few years later, Wu Ying was also arrested on suspicion of illegally taking deposits. The amount involved in the case was as high as 3.89 million yuan. He was sentenced to death at the first instance, but the sentence was changed many times.

Since then, the death penalty for committing economic crimes seems to be less and less, and it is hard to say whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Soon Li Lei didn’t have the time to pay attention to this small episode, because after a long preparation, the four major grain merchants finally made new moves. In August, one month before the U.S. soybean market, the U.S. Department of Agriculture suddenly announced that because of bad weather this year, the U.S. will reduce soybean inventory by 8.12%, which is the lowest point in more than 20 years. What does the reduction in inventory mean?It means that the production of soybeans in the United States will be reduced. Once the production is low, the price will naturally rise.

This news was quickly fed back to the futures market. International financial speculators on Wall Street began to speculate on soybean futures. The price of soybeans in the Chicago futures market continued to soar, pushing up the already high price again, all the way from 2300 yuan per ton to 4300 yuan per ton, almost doubling.

Driven by these news, soybean contracts on Dalian Futures Exchange also began to rise continuously, from 1700 yuan to 2899 yuan, but this still did not meet the expectations of the four major grain merchants. According to their plan, the price should be pushed up to more than 3500 yuan.

The Dalian Futures Exchange is the most important soybean futures trading platform in China. Price changes here can be quickly fed back to the market. Doubling the price here will inevitably cause panic among oil extraction companies and force them to buy soybeans from them at high prices.

The four major grain merchants have used these strategies many times in other countries and other grains, so Li Lei reminded COFCO, China Grain Storage and other relevant departments very early on, and personally ended up investing a lot of money to suppress the soybean contract price of the Dalian Futures Exchange, so the four major grain merchants did not get their wish.

Without these efforts, the price of soybean contracts on the Dalian Futures Exchange would have broken through 3500 a long time ago. Now the price of soybean contracts has been reduced to 2899 yuan, but it has not been allowed to break through 3000 yuan. Since then, there is still panic in the market, but the degree of panic is undoubtedly much smaller.

In addition to these, Li Lei also confronted the four major grain merchants in public opinion. Zhang Xiu once again wrote an article according to his ideas and was interviewed by reporters, exposing the lies of the four major grain merchants, claiming that the reduction of soybean production in the United States was an out-and-out lie, a lie told by them to raise soybean prices.

The reporter was a little puzzled, so he interrupted Zhang Xiu, "Mr. Zhang, the announcement of the US soybean production reduction this time is not from the four major grain merchants, but from the official statement of the US Department of Agriculture. US officials will never lie, right?"

"Hehe, don't the U.S. officials tell too many lies?" Zhang Xiu sneered disdainfully, "The U.S. serves the big capitalists, and they will say whatever the big capitalists want them to say! You haven't read my "Food War"? It's clearly written in it!"

"The four major grain merchants have strong political lobbying capabilities. They use political donations and other means to promote the introduction of laws that are beneficial to them. In agricultural services and agricultural products, beer and wine, agricultural interests, food and beverage and other related fields, their lobbying expenditures are absolutely dominant." Zhang Xiu picked up a copy of "Food Wars" and quickly turned to the corresponding charts to show the reporter.

And he also gave an example, "Do you know why there are fewer and fewer animal oils on the market in recent years, such as lard and tallow, while more and more vegetable oils such as soybean oil and peanut oil?"

"Uh, it seems that vegetable oil is healthier and more balanced than animal oil?" The reporter frowned and thought for a moment, then answered with a vague impression from his mind.

"The U.S. government did say so. In 1993, the U.S. and Canadian governments announced that the people of the two countries should reduce the consumption of animal fat. For this reason, they produced a large number of research results of nutritionists to endorse their decision! But are these research results really scientific? If you study carefully, you will find that most of these research results were born in research institutions funded by the four major grain companies. So this change is the victory of the vegetable oil industry over the animal oil industry, not the victory of science over habit!"

"There are more and more vegetable oils, and less and less animal oils, not because vegetable oils are more nutritious, safer, and tastier, but because vegetable oils can bring higher profits. First of all, it is easier to obtain vegetable oil than animal oil. If you want lard, you have to raise pigs, and then slaughter and refine the pigs when they grow up.

"It is almost impossible to monopolize the animal oil market, because the farms are too loose; but it is much simpler to monopolize the vegetable oil market. You only need to control the soybean seeds and the purchase, storage and transportation channels. For seeds, the four major grain merchants have reached an agreement with seed companies such as Monsanto, and they have already mastered the acquisition of storage and transportation channels! The four major grain merchants together control more than [-]% of soybean sales in the world. Oil mills can only go bankrupt."

"Now they are releasing fake news to artificially create scarcity shortages, thereby raising the price of soybeans; the USDA said that this year's weather is bad and soybean production will decrease, but according to the information I collected, this is not the case. This is a photo taken by my friend on a road trip in the United States. He went all the way from Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, to Ohio, and then to North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri. These states produce More than [-]% of the soybeans in the United States!"

"From these photos, it can be seen that some places in the main soybean producing areas of the Midwest of the United States have indeed been affected by abnormal weather, but the proportion is very small, and most places are still in good weather." Zhang Xiu showed the photos one by one. "This was taken in Indiana. Look at how well these soybeans are growing. This was taken in Ohio. Quietly, the plump pods, does this seem to be about to reduce production?"

"Everyone thinks that the United States is far away, and it is very troublesome to verify, but it is not difficult in fact. Take a plane, rent a car and run around the route I mentioned, and everything will be clear! If you think the self-driving is too slow, you can also rent a small plane to fly around, and see it more clearly from the sky!"

"It will cost a lot of money, right?" the reporter said subconsciously.

"It will definitely cost money, but if you are running an oil mill or trading soybean futures, whether the U.S. soybean production will be reduced or harvested will be related to your entire net worth. As long as you have accurate information, it is still a good deal to spend tens of thousands or 10,000+ for a walk around the United States?" Zhang Xiu spread his hands.

After the program was broadcast, it did attract some people's attention. Many bosses with relatively large businesses also felt that what Zhang Xiu said was reasonable. Wouldn't it be clear if the Americans were telling the truth or a lie?As long as you can figure it out, what is tens of thousands of dollars?