My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 660 Only a Righteous Heart

This also shows why Wei Dong was able to steadily earn so much money in this era.

After taking a sip of his drink and thinking for a moment, he nodded and said, "It's possible, but we're not doing business. Instead, we'll import these secondhand crane ships from Hong Kong, refurbish them, and use them ourselves. We'll pay import taxes as joint venture equipment and then distribute them to our various branches along the Yangtze River. This will also help them increase their profits."

Who to sell to?
Right now, where would you find so many people with millions of dollars to buy heavy ships?

The key issue is that once a transaction is made, it involves reporting the sales profits of imported goods for taxation, and these huge profits could be enough to get you chopped off!
They might as well set up shipping and loading/unloading companies in various places for their own people. With just one ship supporting a bunch of people, they could make a living off the profits in various places.

The business was distributed across six or seven provinces and dozens of counties and cities along the Yangtze River, ensuring that even large wharves with crane equipment would have no shortage of customers.

This alone is enough to establish a home decoration and unloading group company.

Is Wei Dong's strategy solely for this loading and unloading business? "At this stage, crane ships are sufficient, but the next stage of development will definitely be the container era. We'll use this to train people and cultivate the market. Once there's a stable and substantial demand for freight in a certain area, we'll move to container terminals and install port machinery. When port machinery is deployed along the Yangtze River, Zhenhua will definitely be a world-class port machinery manufacturer, and our national container terminal will absolutely be able to help domestic enterprises achieve tremendous development!"

Zhong Zhenhua's hand, holding the glass of rice wine, froze.

He is a senior engineer in his fifties, an age when he should be nearing retirement, but he chose to go into business and start his own business, showing a kind of fighting spirit that ordinary people do not have.

Now it feels like a top student has emerged in the class, and it's a class of elite students who are all preparing for university entrance exams. This is a prodigy who is only a few years old.

We have no choice but to look up to them to the maximum.

Even he only focuses on making good products, steadily producing each port machine, using affordable and high-quality products to gain market share and global market recognition.

Look at these kids, they're already making moves across industries!

Using a pile of scrap metal as a foundation for development, the future multi-billion dollar port machinery projects are merely a part of this grand strategy.

This has led to a surge in freight capacity along the entire Yangtze River shipping route.

Guoji Group's strategy is to be rooted in the Yangtze River shipping industry and expand globally!
What makes a country that's decades behind compete on the world stage?

If it were just about shipping goods from ocean-going terminals like Shanghai Port and Pengzhou Port, other container giants could do the same. Perhaps, after weighing the pros and cons, ports like Shanghai Port would be more willing to cooperate with global giants.

However, if Guoji completes its layout along the entire Yangtze River, and all products along the river are directly transported to Shanghai for customs clearance and export, this is a unique capability that other container companies do not possess.

Furthermore, Wei Dong was informed that these major wharves in Jiangzhou were later converted into bonded ports, meaning that containers from these places could be directly declared for import and export and shipped out to sea from here, at most only needing to be transshipped at ocean-going terminals such as Shanghai.

In this way, the national container shipping company can basically monopolize the entire Yangtze River container shipping!
Since it already has state-owned enterprise backing, wouldn't doing this be like building something from scratch?

Anyway, Lao Geng, Chi Shiming, and Lao Zhang, who were sitting next to him, had the usual routine of taking care of the others.

After several seconds, Zhong Zhenhua leaned forward to clink glasses: "Now I believe that Pengzhen Wharf and Guojihui will shine brightly under Weidong's leadership. Indeed, the Yangtze River has a unique national-level inland waterway transportation status in the world. If you manage it well, it will definitely go global!"

This surprised Wei Dong: "The Yangtze is unique? Isn't the Nile the longest and the Amazon the largest?"

Zhong Zhenhua drank with him before sitting down and shaking his head: "We can't just compare length and water volume. We have to compare actual transport volume. The Nile is big, but it's shared by more than ten countries. And although it seems long, its water flow is less than one-tenth of the Yangtze River. The middle and lower reaches pass through the Sahara Desert, where evaporation is huge, so its shipping value is very low. A few million tons is less than a tributary of the Yangtze River. What's the use?"

The table fell silent.

Listening to him speak eloquently: "The Amazon River has a large volume of water and a wide coverage, several times that of the Yangtze River. However, it is difficult to manage and develop because it is shared by three countries. 99% of the basin is uninhabited. What use is a wild river? It only has tens of millions of tons of water."

Men love to talk about this kind of topic, especially after having a couple of drinks: "The Sulian River is well-developed, but it runs north-south at high latitudes, so it has no transport value and freezes over. India's Ganges has a large flow, but there are many shallows, making it difficult to increase cargo volume. It barely reaches the level of tens of millions of tons. The worst part is that its outlet to the sea is in Bangladesh."

"The only one that can be somewhat comparable is Citibank's Mississippi River. I remember it was 200 million or 300 million tons last year. We were 200 million tons last year, but you have to know that the year before last we were only 160 million tons, and in 1983 we were 130 million tons. Because private ships were only allowed to enter the waterway in 1983, so the volume has been soaring every year. If we could integrate container and loading capacity like Weidong... I don't even want to think about it!"

At this point, a group of men, easily aroused by alcohol, raised their glasses and said, "Let's toast to this dream!"

Wei Dong laughed heartily and raised his glass, saying, "To our dreams!"

That's right, it was that vehicle and boat policy in 1983 that allowed individuals to buy cars and boats. He took the opportunity to learn to drive and drove a big truck all over the country.

Even now, they're actually going to gather all the Yangtze River freight resources in the world!
How could one not feel a surge of pride?
The woman shook her head: "After drinking a little bit of wine, they don't even know who they are anymore."

Dong Xueqing certainly wouldn't say that he's still her brother-in-law if he doesn't force her to drink; she just sighed, "I just can't be like you, flaunting yourself in front of so many people. It's like I was born to hide behind him."

Qin Yuye said smugly, "It's probably because of my personality. It's okay. With our family working together, we'll definitely be able to do well in our business."

In fact, Fengchu had already noticed: "Since he came out, he has basically not returned to my room. Doesn't he realize that this is abnormal?"

Qin Yuye was immediately delighted: "So you're considering my feelings?"

Dong Xueqing spat, "He just thinks it's troublesome! Don't hang out with me like this anymore, it's annoying too!"

Hong Kong girls don't need to adjust their mindset; they've been used to it since childhood: "Then you have to promise that you'll let him come to Shanghai or Hong Kong alone, and I won't bother you."

Dong Xueqing finally gritted her teeth and said, "Okay, the coastal area is yours."

Qin Yuye chuckled to himself. This was truly difficult. Well, he'd let it slide this time.

Xiao Die, who had been eavesdropping all along, finally yelled "Wow!" She turned around, climbed off the chair, and wobbled over to climb into her father's arms, refusing to associate with the two who were marking off their territory.

Dong Xueqing only revealed the details of the agreement to Rang Weidong on the flight back to Jiangzhou.

Wei Dong retorted, both verbally and physically, "What nonsense is this?!"

Fengchu saw right through him: "Sigh, I can't control you either. Anyway, I won't be going to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen together anymore. Hmm, you didn't mention going abroad. That's fine. I'll go abroad next year... I want to go to Hans to see my sister."

While saying this, she secretly observed the child's father's reaction. The weakness had now become a major weakness.

As expected, Wei Dong didn't give him a good look: "Go wherever you want..." He was only able to hold back the second half of his sentence because of the child.

Dong Xueqing immediately pouted: "Okay, okay, I'll go with you to see other places first. I'm just curious."

Wei Dong felt like he was lecturing his daughter, and he spoke with a lot of earnestness: "Our family can afford to go on vacation abroad now. An overseas company can just issue a business letter and we can get the paperwork done. But the key question is, do we have the time? Shouldn't you be using your young age to work and boost production? Look at how much work we have on this trip..."

Fengchu squeezed into his arm and covered his ear with her arm, laughing. She really loved this fatherly nagging and even pushed Xiaodie away a bit.

That's right.

Zhong Zhenhua did not sign the contract for the crane ship; Qin Yuye and Chi Shiming went to Hong Kong to arrange for the scrapping and acquisition of the crane ship.

We shouldn't even buy the used tower crane from that small dock in Pujiang.

With such an inexpensive crane ship to take over the work, what more could you ask for?

Because once the construction of the high-end hotels here begins, a large amount of building materials will need to be transported to the Bund.

Imagine how efficient it would be if there were a crane ship right here on the shore.

Wei Dong even put Liu Xiaoyong into the high-end hotel design team from Citibank, so that he could learn from them. The only requirement was that the building's exterior must be made of black and white stone.

Wouldn't it be great to just transport them directly from Jiangzhou and land them there?

There were benefits to Zhong Zhenhua and his local gang joining in, as the relocation of the state-owned hotel building had indeed been somewhat bumpy.

The city agreed to lease the building to a joint venture hotel company. The state-owned enterprise that owns the building will receive tens of millions of yuan in rent. Even if most of it has to be handed over to the state, it will still have a substantial profit and certainly won't have any objections.

But state-run restaurants are definitely unhappy, as some positions are always affected, and they feel angry that foreign businessmen from other places are bullying locals.

It just so happened that Lao Zhong and his group went to step in.

The working class in industries such as shipbuilding, heavy industry, and port machinery still wields considerable influence in Shanghai.

The biggest weakness that Wei Dong and his team had in Shanghai was the lack of reliable local partners. In this historic port city, they could only rely on the city's support and couldn't handle everything.

Previously, it was just a place that existed in the suburbs.

The electronics industrial park is alright, but the international community is already overstepping its bounds by trying to steal business from them, and the construction of the Pudong Building is even more of a nuisance.

The three buildings of the budget hotel chain directly stirred up a hornet's nest.

Therefore, some people have already begun to subtly resist.

In the days following the departure of the hotel tycoon, Wei Dong and his team's work did not proceed smoothly.

Now it's just right that Lao Zhong and his team have come to fill in.

The problem was solved immediately.

In less than a week, the relocation and compensation work, including the land behind the hotel building, was quickly completed.

Previously, they were unwilling to relocate to the suburbs of the electronics industrial park. Now, the port machinery and shipbuilding industry has a factory in the North Bund area that has been restructured and rebuilt, exploring real estate development.

We asked Wei Dong and his team to provide manpower and financial resources to assist shipbuilding, port machinery and other companies in establishing ship-related real estate development companies, helping them build new residential communities for workers and construct high-rise residential buildings to solve their housing problems.

While we're at it, we'll also relocate the hundreds of households that were relocated here to that area.

Although that area is in a less desirable corner of the Bund, it is still within the city center.

In addition, each household will retain a future employment quota for a hotel catering to foreign guests, and the rental costs during the construction phase of the community will be subsidized.

Finally, this area was cleared out, and before the hotel tycoon decided to make a grand move across the country, this landmark was secured.

(End of this chapter)