Chapter 1556 After the establishment of diplomatic relations
Zhang Qu quickly stood up and thanked him. Shi Diwen waved his hand and said: "Boss Zhang, don't worry, please listen to what I have to say first before thanking you. If you want to join our country and stay as an official in our country in the future, then you must You have to give up your Ming nationality first and join our country. I don’t need to explain this, right?”
Zhang Qu responded quickly: "I have admired your country for a long time, so I naturally know this rule. I am willing to give up my identity as a citizen of the Ming Dynasty, and hope that the general will fulfill my wish."
"Since you insist so much, let's follow the boat to Zhoushan tomorrow... But what about what you just talked about?" Shi Diwen did not forget that Zhang Qu asked him about the salt industry agent.
Zhang Qu had already had a plan before he came, and he was already prepared for this. He immediately responded: "State affairs come first, and I will not be greedy for such small profits."
These words are so righteous. People who don't know what he said may think that Zhang Qu is some patriotic and loyal minister, but they don't know that this person just wants to hug Haihan's thigh. Shi Diwen was secretly amused, but his evaluation of Zhang Qu was not very high. He dismissed him immediately and did not want to verify whether this person's identity was true. Although Zhang Qu did not achieve his original goal, he at least got the opportunity to go to Haihan for training, which was barely what he wanted.
Nowadays, as Haihan's national power becomes stronger and stronger, more and more people in the southern coastal provinces have begun to take refuge in Haihan, and the proportion of scholars among them has shown an increasing trend year by year. This is because the public security situation in the southern coastal areas is improving year by year. Most farmers who are accustomed to relying on the land for survival are unwilling to leave their hometowns in peacetime and go to foreign countries with uncertain futures to make a living. Scholars are more knowledgeable and knowledgeable than the peasant class. , they have access to more information about Haihan. They know that they can get better prospects and opportunities after going to Haihan, which is better than staying in Ming Dynasty to achieve high and low results, so they choose to go to Haihan to give it a try. There are more and more scholars in the country, and naturally there are many official fans like Zhang Qu among them.
Shi Diwen actually doesn't care what kind of treatment Zhang Qu will get in Haihan. He will definitely not go to the human resources department for such a person with not outstanding qualifications. Since he had no obsession with his business, Shi Diwen would naturally not lower his status to ask for help from him. The loss of such a negotiating partner will not affect the future sales of the Xiangshan Salt Farm. After all, salt is an urgent need. As long as the production cost and price can be controlled, it is only a matter of time before the salt market in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is squeezed.
There are actually many business opportunities like salt brought about by the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. If the smuggling trade in the past opened a gap in the country of Ming Dynasty, then now that the two countries have officially established diplomatic relations, this is equivalent to completely opening the door to Haihan. The technological and economic advantages of industrial society over agricultural civilization have become increasingly obvious in this environment.
This change of situation is of course in Haihan's calculations. In fact, Haihan has spent several years promoting the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries with the purpose of benefiting from it. It can be said that he is promoting this with a very strong purpose. thing. But the Ming Dynasty obviously did not have such a deep understanding of this. Relevant departments, including the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Household Affairs, hardly realized how much impact Haihan's trade methods would have on Ming Dynasty society after opening the country. He believed that such international relations could help Haihan help his family against Houjin.
Only those few Ming officials who had really had in-depth contact with Haihan and had a clear understanding of Haihan's development methods and the situation in the southeast of Ming Dynasty could understand what the change in the relationship between Haihan and Ming meant.
At present, almost the entire southeastern coastline of the Ming Dynasty is under the control of Haihan, but in the past, the economic benefits Haihan derived from it were actually relatively limited. The establishment of communications and trade between the two countries provides Haihan with the possibility of making this control public and turning it into economic benefits. Once this kind of control became public, a default situation was formed. If the Ming Dynasty wanted to regain control of these sea areas in the future, it would probably have to rely on Haihan to break up and destroy the Great Wall - this is of course an impossible situation.
Taking Zhejiang as an example, the areas actually controlled by Haihan are concentrated along the coast of Ningbo, but he has not publicly claimed sovereignty over the occupied areas. However, after the two countries announced the establishment of diplomatic relations, Haihan decisively included the Zhoushan Islands and Shipu Port. Even if Ming Dynasty is unwilling to accept his own territory, he can only knock out his teeth and swallow it for the time being. Haihan will use Shipu Port and Zhoushan Dinghai Port as its trade center in the southeastern waters of the Ming Dynasty. Shi Diwen has recently promoted industrial construction in Zhejiang, one of the purposes of which is to contribute to consolidating the role of a regional trade center.
When businessmen in Jiangsu and Zhejiang began to accept this reality and believed that trade cooperation with Haihan could bring them more economic benefits, Ming Dynasty had to face internal pressure if it wanted to take back these places. You must know that the vested interests in trading with Haihan are not just businessmen. As long as officials of all sizes in the coastal areas do not stand up against Haihan, they have interests mixed in. This group is quite large. Haihan's support was even enough to resist the imperial court's will.
Ironically, almost all of these Ming officials who truly understood the current situation between the two countries were vested interests in the previous smuggling trade. They knew very well that the trade between the two countries would bring them more benefits, so even though they knew that this move would only make the two countries' national powers ebb and flow and make Ming Dynasty more passive in this situation, they would still choose to stand at sea. Han's side. Regardless of their official position, they all believed in the two things the Haihan people had promised them. One was that they would not go to war against the Ming Dynasty, and the other was to ensure their interests and future. As long as these two promises can be guaranteed, they will not think there is anything wrong with their approach.
These officials knew very well that it would be difficult for the Ming Dynasty to compete head-on with Haihan in terms of force. The Haihan army was much stronger than the Japanese pirates who also came from the sea. Once a war started, it would only be the Ming Dynasty that would suffer. As long as peace can be maintained, the interests of the Ming Dynasty are protected, and the various concessions made by the court now seem to them to be for the same reason and purpose. Since the emperor and the court have similar views, these local officials will have no worries. Only then did the prefects and magistrates in Hangzhou compete to cooperate with Haihan, even resorting to violent means to do so.
At the end of August, when local governments in Zhejiang posted notices from the imperial court regarding the establishment of trade relations between the two countries, Haihan held more than ten consecutive days of talks with local businessmen and achieved fruitful results. Only cooperation on industrial projects was agreed upon. More than 20 projects have been approved, and there are even more projects that require further consultation. This is equivalent to Shi Diwen holding an investment promotion meeting in Ningbo City on his own, and achieving very good results.
After just half a month, officials and businessmen in the entire Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions knew that General Shi, whom Haihan sent to Zhejiang, was not only able to lead troops in war, but was also a good hand in business negotiations. Some people even think that Shi Diwen's main business should be doing business, and leading troops to fight is a part-time job, which shows their recognition of his performance. The progress made in Zhejiang can be said to be the most significant progress made by Haihan in the many control areas along the Daming coast. Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian have long been riddled with infiltration by Haihan, and trade and official exchanges have long been open to the public. To be honest, whether the diplomatic relations are established or not does not have much impact. The Shandong occupied area basically maintained its status quo, and Haihan did not try to continue to expand the local occupation area. He just asked the Ming Dynasty to recognize Haihan's local rights and interests. Not to mention Liaodong, the Ming Dynasty has already acquiesced to Haihan's occupied area in Jinzhou, but Haihan now has no spare power to further expand the scale of the war with Hou Jin, so the scope of the control area in Liaodong has not been substantial. sexual changes.
Only Zhejiang has not only clearly assigned the Zhoushan Islands and Shipu Port to the Haihan territory, but has also achieved a number of trade results. It has also completed the integration of several industries and the acquisition of senior Zhejiang officials. It can be said that this is almost the maximum achievement that institutions in Zhejiang can achieve. Even if Schneider comes to Zhejiang in person, he may not be able to do better than Shi Diwen.
So when Zhejiang's progress was sent back to Fort Victory every three to five days, the people on the executive committee were all proud of Shi Diwen's achievements. Even Schneider, who has always been extremely demanding, did not hesitate to praise Shi Diwen's performance as professional, and even half-jokingly asked the Ministry of National Defense to release people so that Shi Diwen's establishment could be transferred to the Ministry of Commerce.
Such a proposal was naturally regarded as wishful thinking by the Minister of Defense Yan Chujie: "Shi Diwen's current position is the commander of the East China Sea Fleet. If you want to poach someone, you can find me a qualified fleet commander first."
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Schneider's staff are all civilian officials. Of course, it is impossible to have such talents. It can only be treated as a joke. But Shi Diwen's performance really touched him a lot. People can achieve such results by talking about business part-time, so should full-time officials from the Ministry of Commerce also perform better.
Schneider has been busy recently with the affairs of the South China Sea Trade Alliance. Although this trade alliance is in its third year since its establishment, the formulation of rules for cross-border trade is still not completed, and trade agreements between countries have been continuously negotiated. and changes, even if Haihan is the initiator and leader of this alliance, it will be difficult to make these Southeast Asian countries obey his arrangements on his own.
Although the member countries in this trade alliance are in awe of Haihan, each country has its own national conditions, and Haihan cannot force all countries to follow his lead. Therefore, although the South China Sea Trade Alliance has been established for so long, in reality There is no truly unified trade agreement.
Schneider, as the person in charge of commercial affairs at Haihan, naturally hopes to promote the implementation of this standard. However, trade alliances tend to be looser than political alliances and military alliances. It is almost an impossible task for Haihan to control these small countries that are still in backward social forms. In the past year, Schneider has been traveling almost non-stop to countries in the trade alliance to discuss trade standards with political leaders, but to be honest, the results have not been obvious.
For these small countries, even minimal policy changes can easily cause social unrest, and adjustments to trade standards will also directly affect the benefits of vested interests, so Schneider wants to promote new standards in these countries. , the difficulty is naturally extremely high. People listened to Schneider's suggestions, but they didn't follow them. Some countries may even think that his statement is overreaching and purely meddlesome. In such a situation, Schneider can only laugh at himself for being unable to educate these primitive people.
However, Shi Diwen's achievements in Zhejiang also gave Schneider some inspiration on what attitudes and measures should be taken towards trading partner countries to make them accept the industry standards proposed by Haihan in international trade.
This kind of standard should not be underestimated. Haihan had worked hard to organize the South China Sea Trade Alliance, and his ultimate goal was to control the authority to set standards in international trade. The scope of these industry standards is very large, such as ship standards prevailing in alliance member states, relevant laws and regulations, settlement methods, freight price calculations, etc. Haihan can promote its own advantageous industries by formulating these industry standards. , such as convenient financial settlement methods and reliable institutions.
Although the offices of Haihan Bank have spread to every country in the South China Sea Trade Alliance, the actual business carried out is far less than that in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty, especially in the prosperous Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. Its monthly currency circulation is larger than that of the Haihan Bank. The combined annual circulation volume of Han Bank in all member countries of the South China Sea Trade Alliance is larger.
How to expand Haihan Bank's business into overseas markets? Jiangsu and Zhejiang have provided excellent successful experience. The last time Schneider sent Cai Jinmei to Zhejiang to participate in negotiations, on the one hand, he asked Cai Jinmei to standardize local operating procedures, and on the other hand, he also collected information and sorted out the gains and losses of Haihan Bank's work in the local area. These experiences compiled will be promoted and implemented after making corresponding adjustments based on the specific conditions of Southeast Asian countries.
Now in the South China Sea Trade Alliance, only Annan, the Netherlands and Portugal have relatively frequent trade exchanges and considerable trade volumes. This kind of achievement is very important for Schneider, who is determined to deploy Haihan's business district around the world. It is definitely not enough. So at the end of the summer of 1636, Schneider proposed a new plan for the current situation of the South China Sea Trade Alliance.
(End of chapter)