The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 828 Canned Food and Harvest
this day.

Liu Tao went to the countryside to inspect with the provincial government.

The mountains in the countryside are full of fruit trees.

Now many areas in Yunnan Province that are not suitable for growing crops or vegetables have all been converted to growing fruit trees.

There are canning factories in many places in Yunnan Province, specializing in the production of canned meat and canned fruit, and nearly half of the output is exported.

This is like a microcosm of China's canned food industry.

Even though China's canned food was subject to various anti-dumping measures from Europe and the United States last year, more than half of the canned food produced each year is still exported.

The domestic market is becoming increasingly narrower. After all, with the increasing abundance of fresh fruits, who would still want to eat canned food to satisfy their cravings?
On the contrary, in many Western countries, people like to eat canned food, and the per capita canned food consumption is much higher than that in China.

At present, China's canned food industry has initially formed several canned fruit brands, specializing in canned fruit, which are sold well both at home and abroad.

The cost of canned food in China is much lower than that in Europe and the United States, which has led to the bankruptcy of many foreign canning factories.

They came to DH State, where the mountain villages no longer grow rice and vegetables as they did before, but instead grow goat milk fruit.

The mature fruit of the goat milk fruit is bright red to purple-red. The fresh fruit is edible, with 91% of the fruit being edible. It is moderately sweet and sour, delicious, rich in moisture, and brightly colored. It can be made into juice, canned food, preserves, and other foods.

It is currently in bloom and looks pretty nice.

Liu Tao and his colleagues chatted with the farmers to understand the situation.

Most areas of Yunnan Province are not suitable for growing crops because of inconvenient transportation and low yields. Farmers can barely feed themselves by farming. This is because Yunnan Province has built a large number of reservoirs and hydropower stations in the past ten years, and its ability to resist drought and floods has greatly improved compared to before. Otherwise, farmers would suffer in years of disaster.

But the situation is different when planting fruit trees. The government guides through policies and provides subsidies on a per-acre basis for planting fruit trees. It also guides canning companies to set up canning factories. Part of the fruit is used in the market as food, and part is used as canned food, juice, candied fruit and other foods.

In this way, farmers have more income and can work outside during the slack season and return to the countryside to work during the busy season. The government can also obtain taxes through these food factories.

Of course, compared with taxes, the government values ​​​​the employment opportunities provided by food factories and the increased income they bring to farmers more.

Now Yunnan Province has initially formed a fruit area, such as Zhaotong apples, DHzhou goat milk fruit, Mengzi pomegranates, Mile grapes, Pu'er and Dali sour papayas, Yuanmou tamarind, Xishuangbanna jackfruits, Huaning oranges, Mengzi crackles, Yuanjiang mangoes, Fumin bayberries and so on.

At present, Yunnan Province attaches equal importance to the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and its development speed ranks among the top in the country.

Especially after the railway and shipping are opened up, Yunnan Province's foreign trade capacity will be greatly enhanced, and there will still be great development prospects in the future.

And this time only takes a few years.

I inspected the rural areas of various counties for two days, walked around, chatted with the local people, and got to know the real situation.

There are inevitably some problems or contradictions here.

Buyers always want to lower prices to make greater profits, while farmers always want to sell at a higher price to increase their profits.

Some agents use a contract signing method. There have been cases where farmers signed the contract but then went back on their word, and there have also been cases where the agents went back on their word and did not pay.

All of these can only be left to time, or to the market to adjust.

What the government can do is actually quite limited. If it has something in black and white, it can still be mediated or the case can be brought to court.

If it is just verbal, then it really is a case of each person having his own reasons.

Hong Kong.

There are a lot of traffic, bright lights and wine, and it is very noisy.

Hong Kong is becoming more and more prosperous. It is a paradise for the rich and a hell for the poor.

Hong Kong is probably the place with the largest number of rich people in the whole of China. It is difficult to count how many billionaires, multi-millionaires, and millionaires there are in Hong Kong.

The Peninsula Hotel, Ballroom.

A cocktail party was being held and all the prominent figures in Hong Kong were present.

Whether you are considered a celebrity in Hong Kong depends on whether you appear in this occasion.

They drank and chatted happily.

Those who can bring genuine products will undoubtedly choose the genuine products.

There are only some who are not married yet, and they are surrounded by celebrities and supermodels.

Many wealthy people in Hong Kong bring their children here to see the world.

Everyone will involuntarily focus their attention on a middle-aged man with a smile on his face.

It is the organizer of today’s cocktail party—Liu Tao!
Liu Tao rarely appears in Hong Kong media reports, and the media seem to have a tacit understanding to avoid reporting on him as much as possible.

So ordinary people actually know very little about Liu Tao.

But once they reach a certain level, everyone knows Liu Tao and his enormous power.

The heads of wealthy families, who were unattainable in the eyes of many wealthy people, were now very humble and complimented Liu Tao.

Liu Tao, holding a wine glass in his hand, walked casually in the banquet hall and chatted with the guests.

The reason for coming to Hong Kong this time is naturally because the previous layout has come to fruition.

In the second half of 1992, Finland's economic difficulties worsened, and its foreign exchange reserves dropped sharply, which was no longer enough to support the exchange rate of the Finnish mark, which was in a very weak position. On September 9, the Finnish government was forced to announce that the Finnish mark would be decoupled from the German mark and allowed to float freely, which was actually a devaluation of the Finnish mark.

From September 9 to 11, there was a trend of selling Italian lira and buying German marks in the market, which became the first peak of this currency crisis. The lira exchange rate plummeted and soon broke through the floating limit stipulated by the European Monetary System.

At the same time, the exchange rate of the pound sterling continued to fall, approaching the lower limit of floating.

In order to save the lira, the Italian central bank intervened in the market on a large scale, throwing out tens of billions of German marks to buy up the lira. The German central bank provided strong assistance.

However, the speculative momentum has already been established, and it is still difficult to resist the further spread of the speculative trend.

On the 15th, a sell-off swept across Britain, marking the second peak of the crisis. The pound sterling plummeted, only slightly above the lower limit of 1:2.778.

The deteriorated lira fell below the prescribed lower limit again. At the same time, the French franc, Spanish peseta and others also began to fall.

On the 16th, the British government announced two interest rate hikes, two interest rate hikes in one day, which is unprecedented in British history. Central banks of various countries took joint action to inject a large amount of funds to support the pound, but still failed to stop the pound's decline. Within one day, the pound depreciated sharply again.

On the 17th, weak currencies such as the British pound and the lira stabilized, and the week-long sell-off gradually subsided. On the 20th, the currency crisis came to an end.

As part of the international hot money, Liu Tao naturally made a lot of profit this time, and it can be said that he was the one who earned the most.

By now, overseas funds have been smoothly flowing into Hong Kong through various channels, and it is naturally a time of harvest.

In order to celebrate the capital feast after two years, Liu Tao specially held a cocktail party at the Peninsula Hotel.

In the past, Liu Tao seldom organized cocktail parties himself. Most of the time, it was people like Ho Ying-tung who organized the cocktail parties and Liu Tao attended.

This is his fifth cocktail party in Hong Kong, which means he holds one cocktail party every two years on average.

(End of this chapter)