Chapter 1587 Social Relations
For Xun Pengcheng, the life of a rich person should be based on enjoyment. When he was in Sanya, he had seen too many rich people enjoying all kinds of extravagant things, and he had always had a strong desire for such a leisurely lifestyle in his heart. Longing. Now that I have finally become one of the rich, I naturally have to find ways to improve my quality of life, rather than tire myself out like a dog just to make more money. So he just smiled at Lao Gao's opinions and had his own concerns.
Because of his business as a horse and carriage dealer, Lao Gao had many business dealings with the plantations in this area. According to Xun Pengcheng's request, Lao Gao took him to visit several plantations run by acquaintances. Xun Pengcheng had learned a lot about the plantation project before setting off from Sanya, and he was not completely a layman. Although he had no practical experience in agricultural technology, this was not a problem that he was worried about. Just let the brokerage company under the Ministry of Agriculture operate it. What Xun Pengcheng mainly wants to examine is which cash crops are most suitable for planting according to the local natural conditions, how long are the payback period and profit period, and whether the expected return can meet his expectations.
The first thing Xun Pengcheng visited was a sugarcane plantation about 20 miles north of Changhua Port. According to Lao Gao, the owners here were several Ming businessmen who jointly owned 1,200 acres of land here. Except for a few acres of land set aside for building warehouses and staff residences, they are all square sugarcane fields. This is the season when sugarcane is ripe for harvest. Hundreds of migrant workers are harvesting sugarcane in the sugarcane fields and stacking it in bundles.
Even though Xun Pengcheng was well-informed, this was the first time he saw sugar cane piled up like a hill. Outside the sugarcane fields, there were more than 20 large flatbed carriages waiting in line. When the carriage drivers saw Lao Gao, they all took the initiative to say hello. Lao Gao nodded in greeting and proudly showed off to Xun Pengcheng: "These carriages belong to our family."
Xun Pengcheng said: "This owner has hired so many trucks to transport the sugar cane to other places for processing? Why don't you squeeze the sugar yourself?"
Lao Gao responded: "Pressing by yourself is slow and not as clean as outside workshops. Nowadays, the workshops here send sugar cane to Changhua for processing."
Xun Pengcheng said curiously: "This sugarcane garden has more than a thousand acres of land, which is already quite large. How about building a better workshop by yourself?"
"We can't buy a steam engine." Lao Gao shook his head and said, "Everyone wants to buy good things, but we can't build many steam engines in a month, so we can only pay the money and wait."
"Then how come someone can buy it and open a workshop?" Xun Pengcheng asked puzzledly.
"It depends on the connections!" Lao Gao explained the mystery in one sentence: "Think about it, how could ordinary people buy something as precious as a steam engine in the first place? Even if you have the heart, you don't have the capital, and if you have the capital, you can't buy it. There is no way! After people bought the things, the workshop opened, and gradually other people realized that this thing was useful, and then they thought about buying one themselves. Only then did they realize that it was not necessary to buy it. You can buy it!”
Xun Pengcheng nodded thoughtfully. He knew that most of the steam engines produced by Haihan were used in fields called "industry" by the Executive Committee, and the number left for agriculture was relatively small. After the public discovered the role of this kind of machine in agricultural production, especially in the deep processing of agricultural products, it was almost inevitable that supply would exceed demand. As for those who used steam engines to make the first pot of gold, they relied not only on luck and vision, but most likely on their close relationship with the upper echelons of Haihan.
Of course, Xun Pengcheng has lived in Sanya for a long time, and he also knows that this kind of interest chain is not necessarily illegal. In the process of promoting steam engines, the government will inevitably have many support targets, and these people often cooperate most closely with the government and have different positions. The most consistent group of people. Being able to be the first person to eat crabs may not be as full of shady secrets as Lao Gao thinks, but he may not believe it even if he says it.
Not long after, one of the owners of the plantation appeared. This man named Gu Wenchong was from Guangdong and had been operating a plantation in Changhua for three years. It was said that it was earlier than Xun Pengcheng came to Haihan. . However, although Gu Wenchong has been in Hainan Island all year round, he has not acquired Haihan nationality and still retains his identity as a Mingren.
"It's mainly for the convenience of doing business." Gu Wenchong, whose accent is obviously Chinese-Chinese, readily explained the reason why he retained the nationality of the Ming Dynasty: "70% of the sucrose produced here is sold to the Ming Dynasty, so there are still many times If you want to move around the Ming Dynasty, it will not be so convenient if you change your Haihan nationality.”
Although the current influence of Haihan in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty is very strong, and there are almost no obstacles for Haihan personnel to land and enter the Ming Dynasty, but after entering the inland areas, people with Haihan status will not be able to travel across the state. Convenient. Therefore, although many Ming businessmen have deep interest entanglements with Haihan, and even live in Haihan for a long time like Gu Wenchong, they still retain Ming nationality for emergencies.
Xun Pengcheng himself came from the Ming Dynasty and had a relatively clear understanding of the situation between the two countries. He nodded and said: "Brother Gu's words are reasonable, but now that the two countries have established diplomatic relations, personnel exchanges have been relaxed a lot. I don't know what happened in the Ming Dynasty. What’s the current situation? ”
Gu Wenchong shook his head and said: "The establishment of diplomatic relations will not be effective so quickly. If nothing else, just the business tax issue, I don't know how many years it will take the two sides to negotiate before it is finalized."
The shipping tax in the Ming Dynasty is a wonderful system. How much and how to collect it are almost all decided by the people in the shipping department. The trade volume between Haihan and Ming Dynasty is huge, and a shipment of goods is often worth a lot of money. If the tax is one cent more or less, the difference is a lot. In the past, there were obvious differences of opinion between the two sides in this regard. However, due to the strong military force of Haihan, no shipping company anywhere had the courage to collect this money, so the main targets were Ming merchants engaged in cross-border trade.
Of course, there are policies from above and countermeasures from below. Ming merchants, especially well-informed maritime merchants, will not be easily stumped by the small shipping department. Smuggling has become the most common method of trade in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty after the rise of Haihan. Even powerful merchants such as Furifeng only transport some relatively low-value goods through the open door. Guangdong and Guangxi also pay taxes, while goods of higher value are almost always smuggled into the country.
When it comes to issues involving economic interests, there will inevitably be disputes. Businessmen and officials in coastal areas have made a lot of money from the limelight of smuggling, while their counterparts in inland areas are not so lucky, so many Even if Haihan merchants had unimpeded access to coastal areas, they would still encounter specific difficulties once they entered the interior. Although the two countries have announced the establishment of diplomatic relations, the high-level governments have only reached some framework agreements. When it comes time to implement them at the local level, there are still many specific issues that require further negotiation between the two sides. The Ming Dynasty now attaches great importance to the security of the northern border. It no longer pays much attention to these border trades in the Lingnan region. Of course, it is essentially beyond the reach of the imperial court and cannot exert much influence on the south. And this kind of negotiation linked to interests will eventually become a transaction, and the winners are those who have the power of life and death in their hands.
Regarding the topic of diplomacy, Xun Pengcheng did not want to discuss it too deeply, so he took the initiative to change the subject and discuss the management and profits of sugar cane plantations with Gu Wenchong.
Gu Wenchong's answer was quite frank: "The larger the planting area, the lower the average cost of development and operation, and the greater the income. I heard that there are larger sugarcane plantations in other places, and the costs are probably lower than here. 20%, which is quite impressive. But if Brother Xun cannot build such a large scale, the income will certainly not be too high. Based on the scale of 1,000 acres, he can recover almost 50% to 70% in three years. Get involved.”
Xun Pengcheng calculated in his mind that the funds he currently had were not enough to cultivate a plantation of more than a thousand acres, and he also had to consider setting aside three years of operating expenses. It seemed that it was far from the level assumed by Gu Wenchong. However, he was still a little reluctant. He remembered that he had heard Wang Hao say in Sanya that there was also a lot of cheap land in Xuwen County across the strait that had been developed into sugar cane plantations, so he asked Gu Wenchong for information about this.
Gu Wenchong shook his head and said: "It is not easy to get land in Xuwen County. Almost all the people who open plantations there are big families like Fulifeng and Zhan. Their plantations start from a few thousand acres, and the land price can naturally be obtained." It has to be cheaper. Nowadays, the sucrose production on both sides of the Qiongzhou Strait has doubled, and the competition has become more and more fierce. To reduce costs, we can only continue to go bigger. For example, we plan to invest all this year’s profits and open another We will release three to four hundred acres of land and try to lower the cost next year.”
Xun Pengcheng felt half cold when he heard this. It seems that the path of this sugarcane plantation is not that easy. People who have entered the industry early are already taking the route of large-scale operations to reduce costs. If he cannot do a certain amount of business, scale, then the competitiveness must be one or even several levels behind. Of course, this does not rule out that Gu Wenchong is deliberately alarmist and wants to use such an introduction to make Xun Pengcheng retreat and reduce a potential competitor.
After leaving the sugar cane plantation, Xun Pengcheng asked Lao Gao whether what Gu Wenchong just said was true. Lao Gao didn't expect to get the intestines in Xun Pengcheng's belly, and he didn't doubt him. He responded honestly: "Your Majesty, In fact, what Mr. Gu just said makes sense. In recent years, Changhua and Danzhou have opened forty or fifty sugarcane plantations. Although the cane sugar produced in the end can definitely be sold, they still have conflicts with each other. There is competition, right? Those with large output can slowly control the pricing power and squeeze out their smaller peers in the market, so everyone is getting bigger and bigger.”
Xun Pengcheng praised: "I didn't expect you, Lao Gao, to know these business methods. Being a coachman is really an incompetence!"
Lao Gao waved his hands and said: "How can I understand those profound truths? This is what my son-in-law said. He is a smart man."
When Xun Pengcheng heard that Lao Gao mentioned his son-in-law again, he stopped talking at all, so as not to bring up the topic that he most avoided if the conversation continued. He took the initiative to change the topic and said: "But to expand the scale of plantations, there must be so many labor forces! These places originally rely on immigrants to move in, and the country must give priority to Changhua's smelting and mining industries. These plantations Can the park recruit enough immigrants? ”
Lao Gao responded: "Of course immigration alone is not enough. How many immigrants are allocated to Changhua every month now? Sometimes it is less than one or two hundred, and sometimes it is more than three or four hundred. Then remove half of the old, weak, women and children, and the remaining half will be It’s labor force. The iron and steelmaking jobs in Changhua have been exhausted. There is no leftover for these plantations! If they want labor force, they basically have to find their own way.”
"Find a way by yourself?" Xun Pengcheng rolled his eyes and remembered something: "Is it possible to buy slaves from Nanyang?"
"That's the method." Lao Gao nodded and said, "How else can we get so many laborers by the hundreds? Sometimes there are more slaves bought from nearby plantations than there are new immigrants."
Xun Pengcheng did not ask why the country did not care about this kind of thing, because he had been exposed to related fields in his work as a reporter in the past, and he knew that the country turned a blind eye and acquiesced to the slave trade. Because otherwise, the numerous plantations on Hainan Island simply would not have enough labor to maintain operations. Portugal and the Netherlands would send several ships of foreign slaves to Haihan every month, from the long coastline from the South China Sea to East Africa. Sometimes there could be two to three thousand people a month.
Of course, these slaves did not have the same opportunities as Han immigrants to obtain naturalization. The purpose of their coming to Hainan Island was all kinds of manual labor, and most of them could only spend the rest of their lives on plantations. Only a handful of lucky people might get the chance to join the army because of their special skills or outstanding physical condition, thus breaking away from slavery and changing their destiny.
Because there is no need to pay salaries to these slaves, the cost of purchasing them will be very cheap compared to the cost of hiring a Haihan citizen for a long time, and there is no need to take too much into account of their feelings, as long as they are given the most basic living conditions That's fine, so plantation owners are generally more willing to purchase large quantities of these slaves who can exploit their labor without any bottom line. From a certain point of view, the treatment of these people is not much different from that of the prisoners in the Shilu Mine hard labor camp, or even worse than those prisoners. After all, many prisoners only need to serve their sentences before they can be released, and these slaves want to regain their freedom. Freedom, the time required is hard to say.
Haihan officials have issued some regulations in the past, specifying the maximum service period for slaves, after which they must be given freedom from slavery. However, the actual implementation of these regulations was not smooth, because the slaves were often exhausted from the high-intensity work before the time limit was reached.
(End of chapter)