Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2199 Lian Wu's Combined Fist

The sky is blue, the red flowers on the ground are like fire, the brook is gurgling, and the air is mixed with the fragrance of green grass. It is a scene full of spring.

This is Qinzhou Port, Lianzhou Prefecture, one of the two major seaports currently under the jurisdiction of the Lianwu Pioneering Team on the east coast.In the southwest, there is a port town that has just invested a large amount of money from the navy and entered a state of rapid development, that is, Fangchenggang. The Southeast Asia Squadron of the Third Fleet of the East Coast Navy has just officially selected it as its home port.

Compared with Fangcheng Port, Qinzhou Port is almost a pure commercial port. It is the largest foreign trade port in the entire Lianwu Administrative Committee.Some of the terminals that have been built have also attracted many businessmen and enterprises to settle in. They took a fancy to the location advantages and future development prospects of Qinzhou Port, and came here without hesitation, which made Jiang Yunfan, director of the management committee, very happy.

As the largest enterprise in the Far East, Bank of Taiwan will naturally not fall behind.In fact, they came to Qinzhou Port earlier than anyone else, and established a fairly solid relationship with the management committee officials.This time, as soon as part of the port area of ​​Qinzhou Port was completed, they couldn't wait to rush over, opened a branch, and started shipping business with two steam engine sailboats.And the business they run undoubtedly pioneered modern shipping in Qinzhou Port, which is of great significance.

The pier occupied by the Bank of Taiwan is called Yanglou Wharf, named after a beautiful three-story western-style building nearby.Of course, this mansion does not belong to the Bank of Taiwan, but is an official asset of the Lianwu Management Committee. Currently, Qinzhou Customs and the Port Authority jointly work here, and it is the command center of the entire port.

There is also a wharf in Qinzhou Port that is under construction and is nearing completion, which is the port facility called the club wharf by local officials and people.There is a sailors club on the shore of this pier, which is also under construction, integrating leisure, entertainment, catering, and accommodation. Once it opens in the future, the business should be very good.

Of course, Qinzhou Port wanted to build a third wharf, but they had limited strength and a serious shortage of funds, so they had to give up in the end.In order to reverse the current situation of lack of funds, the local government of Qinzhou, under the order of the management committee, is preparing a government agency called China Merchants Bureau, intending to do its best to attract investment from the outside world, improve the local industrial and commercial conditions, and expand government fiscal revenue to reverse poverty. unfavorable situation.

It is worth mentioning that the Qinzhou Merchants Bureau is not a poor organization. In fact, it also owns a lot of land and real estate under its name.Especially those shops and warehouses, because of the low rent, have always been a sharp weapon to attract businessmen from all walks of life.And as long as there are more merchants, the commercial development of the wharf will almost pick up.

However, we should also realize that the current businessmen in Qinzhou Port are mainly foreign businessmen from the two pioneering areas of Ningbo and Denglai. Occasionally, there are some businessmen from Guangdong or Fujian, but the number is very small and cannot form the mainstream.In the long run, the capital injection brought by the businessmen is still of great benefit to Qinzhou Port. Although it may arouse local businessmen's resentment against the dominant position of foreign business monopoly, their own strength is too weak. Take the shipping business as an example. They really don't have the capital and technology to operate the business of steamship transportation, which is also impossible.

However, despite the fierce competition, the local traditional sailing and wooden boat transportation business in Qinzhou Port has not been mixed to the point of complete extinction.The reason for this is, of course, that the shipping demand of Qinzhou Port itself is huge, and the local ship transportation business run by the Bank of Taiwan is also in a difficult start. It will be impossible to quickly and completely squeeze out classical sailboats from modern commodities. distribution channels, which requires a process.

Local sailing wooden boats gather at a "wild pier", which is a spontaneously formed simple pier called "fish market pier" by local businessmen.This wharf gathers all kinds of sails or unpowered wooden boats, which are responsible for various transportation tasks including food, medicinal materials, wood, etc. The business is not bad, and there are many merchants. It can be seen that the traditional sails or rolling boats are still in Qinzhou. A vital force in the port transportation industry.

There are many tall and low buildings on the shore near the fish market pier.Most of these buildings were built by local people, and the quality is not bad, but there is no plan at all.There is no doubt that this is the mistake of the local government of Qinzhou Port. They paid too much attention to the construction of other wharves and commercial areas, and adopted a completely laissez-faire attitude towards the fish market wharf, which eventually made the place look a little messy and the environment is not very good. Well, it has become a gathering place for lower Riba people.

The introduction of steam engine sailboats and even steamships—the Qinzhou Transportation Bureau has received funding from the Management Committee and intends to purchase a batch of 150-ton small steamships from the Heishui Shipyard to strengthen the offshore transportation business—undoubtedly makes the port of Qinzhou Substantial changes have taken place in commercial trade circulation channels, and a new shipping pattern has been formed in which modern steam ships and classical sail ships compete and complement each other.The people of Qinzhou Port also came into contact with the equipment and ideas of modern navigation and transportation for the first time, and their horizons were greatly broadened, which will have immeasurable benefits for the future development of the region.

The first benefit is that the steamship expanded the trade energy of the Qinzhou market.Qinzhou Port is not just a port. It also has a relatively vast hinterland. The shipments of various commodities such as grain, medicinal materials, wood, dried fruits, minerals, and handmade products produced in the inland areas will greatly increase. A large number of people promote the development of local industry and commerce.

The second advantage is to increase the speed of circulation of goods.Take the 150-ton offshore/inland river general-purpose small steamer as an example. If coal is added to Taiwan Island halfway, it will not be a problem to sail to Shandong.Of course, this may affect the cargo capacity, but if we rationally design the routes and stops to reach a balance point between coal burning and cargo loading, there are still big profits to be made.Moreover, the speed of steamships is fast, and it is not restricted by ocean currents and wind directions. Except for typhoons, it can sail back and forth most of the time, and it can reach Ningbo Dinghai Port in a week. This efficiency is indeed beyond the reach of traditional sailing ships. Circulation is a great stimulus.

A third benefit increases the ability to transport goods over long distances.With steam engine sailboats, the radiation range of Qinzhou Port has greatly increased. These ships can go north to Mongolia and Heishui, and can go south to Australia and Rabaul. Unfortunately, they can go west to India and east to the Japanese archipelago. The market scope has greatly expanded. Good news for local businessmen.

Of course, there is still a long way to go in order to realize these benefits on paper.Qinzhou Port and even the entire Lianwu Management Committee must develop industries with its own unique competitiveness, produce various commodities with strong market demand, and then gain a reputation in the external market. Only in this way can it bring a boost to the local economic development to facilitate.Otherwise, this might just be a commercial port with more imports than exports. For the Lianwu Management Committee area as a whole, a large amount of silver has flowed out, and it might be a blood loss.

Jiang Yunfan, director of the Lianwu Management Committee, was aware of this problem very early on.It's just that in the past few years he has been dealing with local security issues, reorganizing the local government system, strengthening positive publicity and education on the east coast, and a series of local transportation infrastructure construction, military downsizing and reorganization, etc. There is time to formulate an industrial development plan for the Lianwu area in the next few decades or even a century.

Fortunately, after several years of rectification, the appearance of Lianwu area has improved to a considerable extent.Several national highways are advancing steadily, and some local government powers controlled by traditional gentry and chieftains are slowly being taken back to the management committee. The crusade against bandits and bandits in the territory has also temporarily come to an end. It is time to turn part of our energy to the economy. Construction came up.

Just at the beginning of this year, Jiang Yunfan held a meeting of senior cadres in the entire jurisdiction in Wuzhou City, and established the policy of ending the military struggle and turning to economic construction in an all-round way.For this reason, a large number of private armies such as surrendered troops and bandits and bandits, which were incorporated during the war, entered the process of dismantling.This group of people was more than 4 people at the most, but now most of them are laid off, and a small part is enriched and digested by local public security, tax police, customs and other agencies.This alone can save more than 100 million yuan in expenses a year, which can be used to do many things.After all, Lianwu's finances are still beyond their means, and they need Ningshao, Denglai and other places to pay, and the Bank of Taiwan sometimes has to "sponsor" it, otherwise it will definitely not be able to sustain it.

The focus of economic construction, in addition to large-scale infrastructure construction, is to develop its own competitive industries.The fist industries have also been identified, namely timber, pharmaceuticals and mining.There is nothing to say about wood. There are many mountains and trees in Guangxi, and the wood resources are abundant. To a certain extent, they can be mined for processing and exported for profit. It is expected to create a lot of employment opportunities and fiscal revenue for the local area.

The pharmaceutical industry also basically adapts to local conditions.Guangxi is still rich in herbal medicine resources, and there are countless treasures hidden in the [-] mountains.Therefore, it is also a way to develop a suitable Chinese herbal medicine planting and processing industry according to the proven and effective herbal prescriptions in the East Coast medical classics "Song Medical Records" and "Ming Medical Records".Jiang Yunfan still has great hopes for this point, because if this industry becomes bigger and stronger, it can not only be exported to Denglai and Ningshao, but also to the mainland, where the market demand and people's consumption capacity are not the same as in the Far East It can be compared here.

Finally, there is the mining industry.People from the east bank have not done enough exploration of the area under the jurisdiction of the Lianwu Management Committee. So far, they only know that there are relatively rich kaolin resources that can be used in Qinzhou and Hepu.The director of the management committee, Jiang Yunfan, can't control that much anymore. He directly instructed the local government to seize these resources, and then set up a local state-owned Qinzhou Porcelain Factory that specializes in mining kaolin and making porcelain.

The management of Qinzhou Porcelain Factory is already in place, and the factory buildings are under construction in an orderly manner, but there is a serious shortage of technical personnel.In desperation, Jiang Yunfan had no choice but to instruct the people below to attack everywhere, and recruited porcelain technicians in Jiangxi with a lot of money. At the same time, he also wrote a letter to the local area, requesting to send some teachers and students from the porcelain school and workers from several ceramic factories to help them. The shelves of the Qinzhou Porcelain Factory are set up.

In the porcelain industry, although the price has dropped a lot in recent years due to the efforts of the people on the east coast and the progress of the local porcelain industry in Europe.But no matter what, the quality of the porcelain produced in the East is still high enough. Porcelain of the same quality, produced in the East Coast and Europe, cannot be sold at a high price, but the East can be sold at a high price, so there is a Jiang Yunfan couldn't help not paying attention to the huge profit margin.

Jiang Yunfan is not young anymore. He has worked in Denglai for so many years, served several commanders, and then ran the East Coast Korea Company and the East Coast Japan Company.Therefore, he is also ambitious, and he also wants to take a chance at the first-line chance of joining the executive committee, and wants to taste the thrill of the pinnacle of power.But all of this requires him to show convincing results in his tenure as the director of the Lianwu Management Committee, and then add a little luck, so that he can be promoted to the Executive Committee and become one of the "Nine Elders" in the country .

Therefore, he is definitely very concerned about the development of Lianwu's local economy, and he is very pure.For this reason, he really can use any method, anyone can use it, and dare to use it!It's not that no one approached him, asking him to increase spending on security and defense, but he refused all of them.Jiang Yunfan didn't believe that Shunguo, which had financial difficulties and was extremely dependent on the East Coast's equipment, dared to send troops to attack the East Coast control area?Hao Ping's silver gun Xiaojie army has already gone to Yunnan, just relying on the tens of thousands of people under Wang Wanchun?Does he dare?Jiang Yunfan's confidence comes from the huge fleet on the east coast of the Far East and the warlike army. He naturally has—and must have—such courage!

Based on this understanding, Jiang Yunfan believes that instead of using precious funds to support those troops that have not yet been retrained, it is better to save some money and improve people's livelihood. This is the key element of sustainable development.Lianwu must have its own manufacturing industry, otherwise they will not be able to achieve financial independence.

Of course, trade with neighboring Guangdong Li's and Fujian's Zheng's can also be done, which can also provide part of the tariff revenue.But in the long run, this is actually not worth the candle.The manufacturing industry in the Lianwu area is weak, and the local handicraftsmen are already very difficult. If there is a massive influx of foreign goods, it will inevitably cause a small amount of silver to flow out. This is what Jiang Yunfan does not want to see—if the silver flows out It's fine in Ningshao and Denglai, but he still can't accept it if it flows into the hands of Li Shi and Zheng Shi.

Therefore, the future of the Lianwu Management Committee's jurisdiction depends on the success of his combined punches.If it is not successful, I will not talk about it. If it is successful, silver will continue to flow into the Lianwu area, so not only Denglai and Ningshao can breathe a sigh of relief, but it will also be of great benefit to Lianwu itself, otherwise it will always be like Manmeng. Be Denglei's vassal?Then I still want to make progress!

(End of this chapter)