Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2099 North Manchurian Pattern ([-])

348 Northern Manchurian Pattern ([-])

Shao Rujie returned to his villa in Vladivostok.

This villa is located at the southern tip of the Golden Horn peninsula, facing south and facing the sea on three sides.The nearby sea water is very clear. Whenever the sun rises and the fishing sails are dotted on the sea, Shao Rujie always likes to open the balcony, sit on it and make a cup of coffee, while enjoying the boundless scenery, while reading various favorite books.

There is a privately built path in front of the villa, and many flowers and fruit trees are transplanted on both sides of the path.In his spare time, Shao Rujie rides a horse on this seaside path, sometimes takes a walk here, and listens to the work reports of his subordinates. This is his favorite way of working.

At the end of the path, there is a beautiful Chinese-style pavilion. In front of the pavilion, there is a small wooden trestle bridge, where you can park your boat, or sit and fish here, and spend an afternoon casually.

There is a small forest behind the villa, which is connected to a larger forest in the distance, where many animals live.Sometimes Shao Rujie, accompanied by the villa guards, would go deep into the forest to experience the fun of hunting.However, with the acceleration of urban development, it is estimated that this forest will be slowly cut down and replaced by various buildings for human use.Sometimes Shao Rujie planned to apply to the municipal government for money to buy the forest, but firstly the funds were not enough and it was too eye-catching, so he had to give up.

The villa covers a large area. Besides Shao Rujie, there are more than ten people including guards, chefs, grooms, and servants. Most of them are children from poor families in the southern Ningshao area. Only a few guards are from Japan. The recruited ronin or wild samurai, introduced by acquaintances, have good professional ethics and are relatively loyal to the master.

It can be seen that maintaining such a stall requires a lot of money, which is difficult for ordinary people to bear.But for Shao Rujie, who was born in Shaw Brothers, it was not a big problem.He is now the agent of the Shaw family in the Far East, a director of the Bank of Taiwan, and is responsible for acting on behalf of the rights to the 15% shares held by the Shaw family.

His father, Shao Zhengguang, is a well-known art investor on the east coast. He runs large-scale commercial enterprises such as galleries, auction houses, antique shops, and pawn shops in many big cities, and has a lot of money.His uncle, Shao Yaoguang, was the captain of the New China Pioneering Team and was about to be by-elected to the Central Executive Committee, becoming one of the few members at the top of the power pyramid.

Such a prominent family background is obviously enough to support him to do anything in the Far East.What is it to buy land and build a villa in Vladivostok? It is enough to raise a small guard.In addition, regardless of his family background, he himself is also an executive of the Bank of Taiwan. He is now fully responsible for the daily operations of the two regions of Manchuria and Heishui. His salary alone exceeds 1000 yuan. Business commission and so on (in fact, the biggest income is business commission), the income is extremely high, and there is no problem at all to support such people, not to mention that the Bank of Taiwan will reimburse part of the expenses for them. Life is a joy.

Shao Rujie just attended a banquet in the city today.The banquet was held by the Ningbo Chamber of Commerce in Vladivostok. Among these people were some wealthy and powerful masters with a lot of energy. Even Shao Rujie, who was an executive of the Bank of Taiwan, did not dare to underestimate them too much.He once remembered that when Captain Lu Xiaofeng wanted to urgently import a batch of grain from North Korea to use in the newly occupied areas in the north, but he couldn't get the money for a while, so he asked the Ningbo Chamber of Commerce for a loan. As a result, these people raised more than 10 in one night. Yuan in cash is jaw-dropping.

It is worth mentioning that although the Chamber of Commerce in Vladivostok has the word Ningbo in front of it, in fact their relationship with the local businessmen in Ningbo in the south is not very harmonious.The reason is probably that the main founders of the chamber of commerce were so excluded in Ningbo that they had to travel across the ocean to do business in Manchuria and Mongolia.Fortunately, Mongolia is vast and rich in resources, and these businessmen are also very smart and capable. They quickly accumulated a lot of money through foreign trade, and then took over the children of the family who were still in the south one after another, and thus took root. .

Now Ningbo merchants on the land of Manchuria are mainly concentrated in three places.One is Temple Street, which is the first batch of cities developed in Manchuria and Mongolia. It is also the only port to the sea in the early days. The business is relatively prosperous, and all kinds of goods are gathered here. Therefore, many Ningbo businessmen choose to settle here, dealing in fur goods, Pearl, timber, medicine, food and seafood business.The second is Yaksa. Because of peace and trade with Russia, a large number of Ningbo businessmen settled here, and then went to the trading city to conduct trade, and quickly accumulated huge wealth.

The third place where Ningbo merchants gather is naturally Vladivostok, the city designated as the center of Manchu and Mongolian rule.This is a natural good port, which is naturally suitable for ocean trade, and the hinterland has been conquered one after another, the resources are relatively rich, and it is geographically close to North Korea and Japan. Businessmen from Temple Street, Khabarovsk, Harbin and other places settled here and gradually became a rising commercial star in Northeast Asia.

Of course, Ningbo merchants are not the most famous in Vladivostok.Because of geography, Shandong businessmen who come to Yantai are more common here. It's just that the total wealth of these people is not large enough, and the overall strength is slightly insufficient, but in terms of number and influence, they are even better. of.

But then again, whether it is a Ningbo businessman or a Denglai businessman, they have to stand aside when they encounter Taiwan banks on this land of Mongolia.You must know that this large-scale syndicate company has been deeply involved in the early development of Manchuria and Mongolia. It was not too much to borrow money, grain, boats, and even people to the local government of Manchuria and Mongolia, so now It is understandable to dominate the Manchurian-Mongolian trade.In other words, if any businessman here wants to develop well, he must establish a good relationship with the Bank of Taiwan, and this is one of the important reasons why Ningbo businessmen entertained Shao Rujie this time, flattering!

Shao Rujie is also quite satisfied this time.The Ningbo businessmen who attended the banquet have unanimously agreed that in the future they will gradually transfer the trade payments to the Bank of Taiwan. This is undoubtedly a large sum of money.Although this move is likely to offend a big bank such as the Northwest Reclamation Bank, it can't control too much in the face of huge interests. As the saying goes, a dead friend never dies. How did the Northwest Reclamation Bank build barriers in Sakhalin Island? Shao Rujie has heard many times from his predecessors that it blocks the Bank of Taiwan from conducting business.This time pulling the account of the Ningbo Chamber of Commerce in Vladivostok, it should be regarded as a small revenge.

Another thing that impressed him deeply at the banquet was the insight of these businessmen.Shao Rujie has only been in the Far East for more than two years, and he has been working in Fort Zeelandia before. He has been in contact with either company insiders or Dutch red-haired people all day long. He also left in a hurry and returned in a hurry, so the contact with the natives of the Far East in this era was not deep enough.

After being transferred to the Vladivostok port last year, half of his energy was spent on building villas and manors, and half of his energy was on how to manage relations with the government. Strictly speaking, it was the first time that he attended a purely private banquet.Therefore, Shao Rujie was a little moved when the people at the meeting had three rounds of drinking and talked about North Korea, Japan, treacherous red-haired businessmen, and stingy Portuguese businessmen.Even when some of them talked about what they had seen and heard in Luzon, Shao Rujie directly expressed his admiration, and at the same time he felt emotional: Dongan has been operating in the Far East for decades, and the changes brought about by explicit or covert are indeed quite large.Now more and more Chinese are used to sailing, ocean trade, knowledge and specialty products from overseas. This is actually a process of refreshing and changing concepts.

Undoubtedly, only when concepts are refreshed and changed more, and exchanges with overseas countries become closer, can people truly have an international perspective, can truly recognize the advantages and disadvantages of others, and can truly communicate with the outside world. Learn from each other and go one step further.Shao Rujie didn't know the situation in Shunguo and Qingguo, but he thought that there should be some people with some overseas experience, and these people would be valued by the government without exception, and they would be their guests.With the continuous influx of foreign goods, culture and technology, where the intellectuals of the land of China will go and what they will do is indeed a matter worth studying.

After returning to the villa, the servant came to the study to report to him that several guests from Japan were already waiting in the living room.Shao Rujie nodded, indicating that he knew it, and then he was not in a hurry to meet the guest, but asked someone to serve a pot of tea, sip it quietly, and think about things at the same time.

The Bank of Taiwan has wanted to directly intervene in Japanese trade for a long time.Since the establishment of the Blackwater Management Committee and Lan Fei as the director, the three major colonial trading companies in the Far East have strictly divided their spheres of influence and no cross-border behavior is allowed.For example, the East Coast Korean Company monopolized trade with North Korea, the East Bank Japanese Company monopolized trade with Japan, and the Bank of Taiwan monopolized trade with the Dutch East India Company. Others that were not clearly regulated were open markets, and anyone could compete freely.However, for the specific market clearly defined above, if any businessman wants to engage in trade in this area, it is not impossible, but he needs to go to the three major companies to apply to become an agent, that is, pay money, and trade after obtaining permission.

The new regulations also left a back door for the Bank of Taiwan, which allowed the company to trade in Ezo - in exchange, the Japanese company on the east coast could buy grain from the Dutch East India Company - so the guests who came to Vladivostok today mainly From the feudal lords in the northeast of Japan, more precisely, the forces headed by the Sendai vassal.

The Sendai clan has always been a powerful clan in Japan, and the Date family has also traded with people from the east coast for a long time. In the early days, there was a trade in copper coins, which later expanded to various aspects.However, although the shogunate was not afraid of such a powerful local tyrant, it was also worried about causing riots, so it just reprimanded and settled the matter, and the Sendai Fan also temporarily tightened trade to avoid the limelight.

However, how can things like trade be suppressed?No, it hasn’t been a few years, and the trade of the Northeast vassals has slowly picked up again. A large amount of goods flow into Japan. In addition to some Japanese specialties, there are also a large amount of gold, silver, and copper pieces, which allow Japanese companies on the east coast to earn money. earned a lot.With jealousy, the Bank of Taiwan also wanted to directly intervene in trade, so there was an invitation to visit Vladivostok.

In order to strengthen his "convincing power", Shao Rujie, who is fully in charge of the affairs here, also plans to give these Japanese guests some gifts: a large number of armors, swords, muskets and even cannons produced in the Heishui Arsenal, and even war horses. The Japanese don't think it's troublesome to ride.

Strictly speaking, Shao Rujie's behavior is actually very taboo.It's fine to do some business quietly outside the control of the shogunate, but the nature of this matter has changed when exporting a large amount of arms to Sendai and other feudal clans.What's even more frustrating is that the Date family in Sendai didn't reject these arms at all, and they didn't mean to hide their strengths and bide their time. The balance between powers, and asking the Dongan Renxing teacher to blame, completely cut off the trade between the two sides, and everyone will be unlucky. The Dongan Japanese company may even have the intention to kill Shao.

Of course Shao Rujie scoffed at this.The East Coast Japanese Company openly armed the Matsumae clan, and helped Masahiro Matsumae, the illegitimate son of Wei Boqiu, form the new military box hall team. Isn't this a taboo?Don't use Hokkaido as an excuse for Japan's alien land, the shogunate really wants to pursue it, and there is still a reason to punish them.Not many years have passed since the inspector of the shogunate, Nemoto Mashizo, went to Ezo for an unannounced visit. It is impossible for the shogunate to be ignorant of the situation here. Make things big, and really tear faces with the people on the east coast.

After all, the Edo shogunate did not want to see the "cruising" and "watching" of the archipelago by the large fleet.If that is the case, their fishermen will not be able to go out to sea to fish, and the originally very prosperous offshore trade (trade within Japan, transported by boats to the sea) will also be greatly affected, and the Dutch merchants may not be able to come. This is really A very troublesome thing.Considering the strength of the navy on the east coast, if they occupy an offshore island and then use a large number of speedboats to block the offshore area, Japan is an island country after all, and many materials still cannot be separated from water transportation. Affected, even local stability will probably encounter difficulties.

Therefore, Shao Rujie did not intend to worry too much at all, but prepared to conclude a very detailed and in-depth trade agreement with the people of the Sendai Domain, allowing the Bank of Taiwan to extend its tentacles to northeastern Japan.As for the opinion of East Coast Japan Company, let him go, what can he do?You are allowed to compete with the Dutch to sell weapons to the Satsuma clan, and we are not allowed to hook up with the Matsumae clan?

(End of this chapter)