Chapter 830 Obscure Conditions
Xu Yuzhuo and Xu Jiaqi were equals in the family, and they both served in the Fujian Army, so they had a good personal relationship. Shi Diwen also knew that Xu Yuzhuo's tone of complaint was not serious, so he smiled and explained: "I just arrived in Penghu yesterday. I rested for one night and set out to come here today. How could your cousin have time to follow you?" Report.”
Shi Diwen's visit to Zhangzhou was indeed not a pre-planned trip. After arriving in Penghu for an interview with Qian Tiandun, he came here to explore the news on the spur of the moment. If it is a formal official visit, it must be informed in advance through the Ming Army. However, Shi Diwen does not want to make this kind of meeting too official, nor does he want to waste time on unnecessary Regarding the process, I came directly to Zhongzuo Institute. All Xu Jiaqi could do was to send people over with the ship to avoid the trouble of identity checks when Shi Diwen and his party entered the port in Zhangzhou.
Although Shi Diwen arrived suddenly, Xu Yuzhuo still prepared a reception banquet for him in the shortest possible time. Shi Diwen was not in a hurry to mention business on such an occasion, so he settled down to talk about old friendships with Xu Yuzhuo and other Ming army officers, and drank happily together. In the end, Xu Yuzhuo very informedly arranged for two women to help Shi Diwen go to bed.
Shi Diwen traveled all the way for many days. He didn't even get a good rest in Penghu before continuing his business trip. His body was already exhausted, so he slept until noon the next day and didn't wake up. After getting up and washing up, Xu Yuzhuo came to invite him to have lunch.
"It's okay to eat, but don't drink wine. After last night's meal, I'm still dizzy." Shi Diwen knew that Xu Yuzhuo was a person who would never be happy even if he didn't drink. If he followed his wishes, one day You can drink three meals in a row. Although he came here to meet Xu Yuzhuo in a private capacity, he actually had a lot of official business to discuss. Shi Diwen didn't want this kind of drinking party to interfere with the official business he had to do.
Shi Diwen insisted not to drink, but Xu Yuzhuo would not force him to persuade him. After lunch, Xu Yuzhuo ordered the banquet to be removed and replaced with hot tea, and then he began to talk about business with Shi Diwen: "General Shi's sudden arrival this time must have other missions besides visiting old friends. Body? ”
Shi Diwen nodded and said: "You and I are both old friends, and I won't hide it from you. This time I am transferred to Penghu to take over the fleets stationed in Penghu and Taiwan. I may stay here in Fujian for a while. Side. ”
Xu Yuzhuo said: "Okay, from now on in Zhongzuo Suo and Zhangzhou City, I will say hello to General Shi when he comes. I promise that General Shi will eat well and have fun. Everything goes well!"
Shi Diwen smiled and waved his hand and said: "Being an official in the Haihan Militia is not as leisurely as your Ming army. I only have two or three days to spare after I officially take office, so I came to Zhangzhou to visit old friends. After I take office, If you get busy, you probably won’t have time!”
Although Xu Yuzhuo likes to eat, drink and have fun, he is not stupid at all. He immediately heard the implication of Shi Diwen: "Your army...are you going to take action?"
Shi Diwen sighed and said: "You can't move without moving. You also know that we have recently taken over the island of Taiwan. If we want to develop this big island, we won't be able to spread our business without bringing in 100,000 or 80,000 people. With such a large population Where do they come from? We are not expecting some of the immigrants brought back from the north to be transported to the island. How long will it take to meet the requirements of the Executive Committee?
Xu Yuzhuo blinked thoughtfully and said: "Then the executive committee is planning to roll up its sleeves?"
"This is not the only way!" Shi Diwen said: "Just relying on dozens of ships from Fujian to the north every month, the number of immigrants transported back cannot meet the requirements of the Executive Committee, so the Executive Committee hopes to Let the Ministry of Shipping open up an immigration route to the north and put a hundred or so large ships in it to transport immigrants to the south. ”
"I am impressed by your maritime transport capacity, but if you want to organize such a large fleet to swagger across the market, there may be a lot of inconveniences..." Xu Yuzhuo considered his words as he spoke, trying not to offend Shi Diwen as much as possible: " Not every local government is as willing to cooperate with you as we are here.”
Shi Diwen nodded and said: "I know a little bit about the situation you are talking about. Some people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang don't want to see us appear there, right? In the past, we also sent many people to inquire about the news. , but almost always come back disappointed.”
Xu Yuzhuo responded: "Everything here is caused by interests. General Shi is a sensible person, and I won't hide it from you, so I will tell you about the process. If you go to the local area to deal with trade, immigration and other matters on your own, then Naturally, people who were originally engaged in these businesses can no longer make money from it. If they can't make money, the masters behind them will be unhappy, and there are some people with good eyes and hands among them, so they will try their best to block you from the door. It's not a big deal if you get in trouble. If you really plan to intervene on your own, maybe. You will also encounter more drastic measures.”
Although Xu Yuzhuo did not name anyone, he basically explained the actual situation in the north. In fact, a small amount of the industrial products exported by Haihan have been transshipped and flowed into the Jiangsu and Zhejiang markets since 1628. However, after so many years, Haihan's official commercial territory is still limited to Fujian Province, and has been in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the most prosperous areas in the Ming Dynasty. Didn't open up the situation. This is not simply attributed to the Ministry of Commerce's incompetence. The resistance they encountered in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was much greater than that of Guangdong and Fujian. The investment agency operation method that was originally implemented relatively smoothly in Fujian and Guangzhou actually had very few adopters in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The main reason is that the upper-class people who control the local market believe that the profit margins given by Haihan to agents are too small, which is far less profitable than the profits they made in the past when they switched from Fujian and set their own prices.
Originally, this situation could be resolved through commercial negotiations, but perhaps Jiangsu and Zhejiang did not have a clear and intuitive understanding of Haihan's strength, but treated them as ordinary merchants, pretending to be * *** Shangguo's airs are not willing to negotiate with Haihan on market issues. Although there were some people who wanted to imitate the cooperation model of Xu Xinsu, Li Jifeng and Haihan from Fuzhou and Guangzhou provinces, they were eventually forced to give up such an attempt due to pressure from the outside.
It would be easier to handle if we encounter a similar situation in Fuzhou and Guangzhou. After all, Haihan has armed forces stationed in these two provinces. If necessary, he can hold an armed parade to show off his muscles and scare those country bumpkins who are blind to the mountains. However, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas are outside Haihan's sphere of influence. Although the executive committee is dissatisfied with the local situation, it is powerless to resolve it through tough measures. Although the Fujian government has various interests with Haihan, officials including Xu Xinsu will not offend their colleagues in neighboring provinces for Haihan. The most they can do is to show Haihan the way, and they will never take it lightly. directly intervened. However, after Haihan took Taiwan and completely controlled the Fujian Strait, the Executive Committee no longer sat idly by and ignored this situation. There is a huge shortage of manpower needed to develop Taiwan, forcing the Executive Committee to once again put the expansion of the introduction of immigrants from the north on the agenda. And if Haihan wants to establish a transit base off the coast of Zhejiang and open a sea channel to Shandong, it is impossible to bypass the coastal areas of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Listening to Xu Yuzhuo's tone, Shi Diwen clearly said that the local forces in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were likely to take tough measures against Haihan's intervention. He then smiled and asked: "Do the drastic measures that General Xu mentioned come from the official or the government?" Folk? ”
Xu Yuzhuo hesitated for a moment before responding: "Maybe they are both, the interests are related, it's just about which side is more convenient to take action."
Shi Diwen continued to ask: "How do the naval forces in Jiangsu and Zhejiang compare with the Fujian navy?"
Xu Yuzhuo responded: "If my father had just joined the Navy a few years ago, his strength might have been between equals, but now, I'm afraid they have been separated by dozens of streets. Although Jiangsu and Zhejiang are rich, Expenditures for the military have always been very limited, especially for the navy. Most of them are old ships from the Wanli period. There are at most a few Franco cannons or bronze guns on board, which are incomparable to the gunboats you built. ”
Shi Diwen pretended to be suddenly enlightened and said: "That's true, otherwise, why would the pirates near Zhoushan continue to be suppressed? The root cause should be that the navy in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is not strong enough!"
Xu Yuzhuo sighed and said: "It's not just a lack of force... To tell you the truth, there are also people in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang naval forces who colluded with pirates to make ill-gotten gains. Whenever the government sends troops to kill pirates, they will inform them in advance. Let them avoid the edge. Once the officers and soldiers retreat, they will come back again, so they will continue to stop them. ”
The situation Xu Yuzhuo mentioned was consistent with the information Haihan had collected before. However, when Shi Diwen continued to ask for details, Xu Yuzhuo refused to talk about the specific person. He just warned Shi Diwen: "This The pirates in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are actually similar to those in Fujian. Many people are usually fishermen, but they may turn into pirates after going to sea. Some people are usually pirates, but when they get ashore, they become sea merchants, and they are brothers and sisters with the people in the government. Close. The reason why they did not form a local separatist force like Shibazhi is because they lacked a leading figure like Zheng Zhilong. But it is not easy to completely wipe out the local pirates. If you plan to use it. Solving problems by force may not achieve good results.”
"Then what good suggestions does General Xu have?" Shi Diwen thought to himself. These issues mentioned by Xu Yuzhuo coincided with Qian Tiandun's worries. As an outsider, Haihan really couldn't find anything better than force. There are better ways to solve it. Even if they knew that there would be various problems, if there was no other way, the military would have to bite the bullet.
Xu Yuzhuo was silent for a long time this time, and Shi Diwen did not rush him. Knowing that he might have something important to weigh clearly, he held the tea cup and slowly sipped the tea in silence.
After a long time, Xu Yuzhuo said: "Actually, my father also had a lot of business dealings in Zhejiang in his early years, but later he entered officialdom, and it was inconvenient to handle some matters personally... In the past few years, many businesses have slowly stagnated. , or it is a pity that it was taken over by local people..."
Shi Diwen frowned. Although he could understand every word Xu Yuzhuo said, he didn't quite understand what the words meant. But now that Xu Yuzhuo had spoken, he decided to continue listening patiently.
Then I heard Xu Yuzhuo continue to say: "My father's wish in the past two years, in addition to defeating Shibazhi, is to restore the previous business scale so that the Xu family can expand maritime trade to every sea frontier in the Ming Dynasty! It's just that my father is Being an official for the imperial court requires you to do many things yourself, which is very troublesome. If you want to realize this wish, you need to rely on external help..."
Shi Diwen finally came to his senses when he heard this. He dared to admit that Xu Yuzhuo had gone through such a big circle and was changing the terms he was asking for. Having said so much, in fact, to put it simply, Haihan is asked to help the Xu family in their plan to go north, so that the Xu family's business network can also expand northward.
Xu Xinsu, a senior official in Fujian, is like this. Shi Diwen believes that this also reflects that the market in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is indeed not easy to enter. It is obvious that local powerful people do not want businesses with strong capital like Xu to enter, because this is extremely difficult. It may affect their vested interests. Xu is Haihan's largest agent in Fujian. If it enters the Jiangsu and Zhejiang markets, the merchants currently distributing Haihan products locally will no longer need to do so. Although almost all Haihan products sold in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are transferred from Fuzhou and Guangzhou, local marketing channels and market pricing are controlled by powerful local people. Although Xu Xinsu has an official position, he has no control over it. Going over there, one can only be anxious about such a situation.
As for what Xu Yuzhuo said about restoring the previous business scale, Shi Diwen didn't take it too seriously. Xu Xinsu was also an armed smuggler in his early years, and his business was somewhere between legal and illegal. Even the piracy industry was somewhat different. Touched a little bit. If he hadn't acted quickly and bought an official position in the Fujian government first, and if Zheng Zhilong had taken the lead, maybe the big pirate doing evil in the Fujian Strait would have been Xu Xinsu instead of Shiba Zhi. To say that Xu Xinsu had many legal businesses and industries in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the past, Shi Diwen really didn't believe it.
Xu Xinsu wanted to enter the market in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but the local powerful people refused to let go, and he could not use his official status to suppress these people. However, if the Haihan people who were fearless wanted to take action, they could indeed choose the opportunity to take advantage of them. A smooth sailing ship. After all, Xu Xinsu and her party members know very well how strong the Haihan people are. As long as they can help the Haihan people achieve what they want, Xu's business can follow Haihan's footsteps and expand northward. This mutually beneficial trading pair For the Xu family, it is worth taking the risk.
(End of chapter)