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Free Web Novel,Novel online - All in oicq.net -> Historic -> New World 1620 Text Chapter 42 Guangdong Trade Agreement (1)
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- March 20, 1646, Tuesday, the fourth day of February in the second year of Longwu in the Ming Dynasty, the Spring Equinox.
Today¡¯s Fucheng in Guangzhou is particularly lively. A large number of people in the city have flocked to the largest market street in the city to watch the opening ceremony of a large business.
A newly built large-scale loft-like store appears proudly in the most prosperous area of ??Guangzhou City. At the moment, a huge plaque hung with fiery red satin is being carefully hung up on the eaves of the main entrance by seven or eight men.
The red silk was opened, several strings of firecrackers were lit, gongs and drums sounded, and among the fireworks, a plaque with four gilt characters "Guangfu Company" could be seen.
?? Canton Fook Bank, registered in Huamei Hong Kong, will be officially renamed Guangfu Company after the spring of this year, and its headquarters commercial building in Guangzhou City will be opened.
Although the term "company" has long existed in China, this should be the second business name in Guangdong to be made public in the name of a company. The first one was Nanhai Company, which was renamed two months earlier than Guangfuxing. Now the latter's headquarters in Qiongzhou, Nanhai Restaurant, has a plaque of "Nanhai Company" on it.
Nanhai Company is the largest conglomerate of landowners and gentry in Guangdong that has been operating for almost 20 years. Although it suffered suppression from the Governor-General's Office of Guangdong and Guangxi last spring and summer, it is still the leading industrial and commercial company in Guangdong, with shops and stores all over Guangdong and Guangxi, and even more so in Qiongzhou. There are many squares.
Guangfu Company is a rising star. Its shareholders are mainly small and medium-sized maritime merchants and there are very few local gentry. It has only been established for a year. Currently, it only has branch stores in a few counties under the jurisdiction of Guangzhou Prefecture, except for Gaozhou Coal Mine, Dongguan County Tea Factory and Xin'an County. The cotton mill has few large-scale physical workshop industries.
However, Guangfu Company¡¯s supply trade routes have expanded rapidly in the past year, especially relying on Luo Huide¡¯s family relationship in Wuzhou, Guangxi, which quickly squeezed out Nanhai Company¡¯s considerable market share in the local area. It is said that in the spring of this year, Guangfu Company also shared Huamei's general agent qualification in the Daming area with Nanhai Company, quickly revealing its growth potential that cannot be underestimated.
This time the headquarters commercial building was completed and opened, Guangfu Company also publicly received a plaque personally written by Zhao Youheng, the governor of Guangdong, which aroused the jealousy and envy of many large businessmen in Guangzhou who had been waiting on the sidelines, and they all found connections to join the joint venture.
A group of small and medium-sized businessmen in Guangzhou who were forced to unite now stand in front of the main entrance as board members or shareholders of Guangfu Company, and they all bow to the onlookers of Guangzhou City.
"Hey. Shopkeeper Chen, please come inside, please come inside!"
"Hey, it's Shopkeeper Bai. Oh, thank you for your support!"
Local businessmen, large and small, were invited to be guests. Luo Huide, who was in charge of the reception, was smiling and saluting frequently. A group of followers of the company's small shareholders stood in front of the store with their breasts or big bellies puffed out and shouted hello to their colleagues who came to congratulate them.
While he was busy, Luo Huide suddenly found himself in the crowd of common people opposite. A middle-aged man with a long beard dressed as a scholar was looking at him with a smile, and not far away, there was a gorgeous and American-style luxury carriage that looked high-status at first glance. However, the windows and door curtains were closed tightly, so it was not possible to tell what was inside. who.
¡°Please continue to greet the distinguished guests, I¡¯ll be right back!¡±
Quickly pushing away, Luo Huide pushed his way through the crowd, breathlessly came to the long-bearded man, and bowed directly to the ground: "I didn't expect Mr. Zhao to come in person, Luo almost missed it. It¡¯s really poor etiquette!¡±
"Haha, Mr. Luo is so polite. I also came to Guangzhou to visit Governor Zhao for the Eastern Economic Forum after the Dragon Boat Festival. I stopped by this time and it coincides with the opening of your company's headquarters, so I should come to congratulate you."
Zhao Mingchuan smiled slightly, and then avoided the sight of the crowd, not intending to be too high-profile.
"Don't worry, Mr. Zhao. I have invited friends from the industry in Guangdong and Guangxi. They will definitely be there when the forum starts." Luo Huide became even happier after hearing this and hurriedly patted his chest to assure him. "This time Eastern Union Group established the 'Oriental Economic Forum' in Guangzhou, talking about trade, it is really a blessing for the gentry and common people of Guangdong, and everyone in Guangfu Company will do our best to help!"
Finished. He also secretly glanced at the carriage not far behind Zhao Mingchuan, showing a hint of begging for advice.
"There is Mr. Luo Luo. I happened to be here today and didn't bring any gifts. I will make up for it later."
Zhao Mingchuan did not notice the other party's gaze, only seeing the other party's confident look. Knowing that the other party had been building momentum for a private business event led by Eastern Union Group for a long time, Zhao Mingchuan's initial worries were relieved by most of them. After some small talk, he returned to the carriage and continued towards the governor's office.
Not long after, the celebration in front of the Guangfu Company Headquarters entered the climax. On both sides of the store door, several clerks were holding two baskets of copper coins and throwing money to the crowd of onlookers, which attracted bursts of crazy applause.
As for the suburbs of Guangzhou, or even the prefectures and counties further away, it is a different scene. The chaotic north can be seen at a glance.The refugees and civilians are pitifully piled up in various huts, wilderness jungles, or on both sides of official roads, selling their children and daughters to the locals for a few life-threatening meals.
With only one or two taels of silver, Renyazi can drag away an entire family of men, women, and children from the refugee pile, and then package them up and sell them to some large maritime merchants waiting in the city a day or two later.
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Guangzhou City, Guangdong Governor¡¯s Yamen.
In the garden in the backyard, there were two cups of tea and a plate of cakes. On both sides of the Eight Immortals table, two men, one old and one middle-aged, were silent.
Slowly turning over the letters in front of him, Zhao Youheng's expression became increasingly ugly, perhaps mixed with some embarrassment, but in the end he couldn't help but sigh: "Brother Zhao, it turns out that you are here to collect debts this time. !¡±
Zhao Mingchuan also felt a little uncomfortable, but his expression remained unchanged, and he just bowed slightly: "My lord governor, this time Mingchuan came with a reminder letter from Oriental Bank, and it was out of necessity. However, if your lord governor has difficulty with payment, Mingchuan But after discussing with the directors of Oriental Bank, we can extend it for a while"
"I took the risk of being raped by ginseng to allow you to wait for the Chinese and American merchants to enter and leave Guangzhou City. That was the first step to let Tongwen go. Now the second step is to come to the door in person to ask for the account. Alas, the whole country of Huamei is united. Business is also serious."
¡°I don¡¯t know whether it was helplessness or irony, but when Zhao Youheng saw this serious business reminder letter from Oriental Bank that had been sent twice, with the same content each time, he secretly complained in his heart.
It should be said that before today, or before Zhao Mingchuan came in, Zhao Youheng was still immersed in several happy events.
The first happy thing is that Zhu Hengjia, the king of Jingjiang who claimed to be the "supervisor of the country" last year, has been escorted to Shaoxing. This internal strife scandal ended with the unrivaled combat effectiveness of the Guangdong New Army in Qionghai Town.
Even though the expanded Qionghai Town has some shortcomings in internal integration with Shanghai, its opponents are purely local chickens and dogs. The casualties in the counter-insurgency battle were minimal, and rebel property worth hundreds of thousands of taels of silver was secretly seized.
Suppressed a group of Guangxi rebels who followed King Jingjiang to cause trouble in Guilin. He rescued Qu Shichun, the governor of Guangxi, but Qu Shichun did not receive much love.
Qu Shishu neither recognized the court of the Lu Dynasty in eastern Zhejiang nor responded to the solicitation of Emperor Longwu of Fujian. He always believed that only the current King of Gui, Zhu Youlang, was the legitimate heir to the Ming Dynasty. After all, he was not someone Zhao Youheng could join forces with
Zhu Youlang is still taking refuge in Yongzhou, which borders Guangxi. Like the current King of Lu, Zhu Yihai, Zhu Youlang's father and brother both died of illness. Now he is succeeding King Gui. Judging from the blood relationship between the emperors, he is the most qualified person to inherit the throne of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Youlang¡¯s family fled from Hengyang to Yongzhou like a bereaved dog. He is also accompanied by some northern officials who have retreated south, and are currently receiving political assistance from Guangxi Governor Qu Shishu. No matter how bold Zhao Youheng himself was, he did not dare to take any action against Gui Fan supported by Qu Shishu for the time being.
It seemed that Qu Shichun's Guangxi faction could not reach an agreement. In desperation, after searching for some loot, Zhao Youheng ordered the Guangdong soldiers and horses to withdraw from Guilin and draw the military control line in Wuzhou, Guangxi.
Now Qionghai Town has been stationed in Wuzhou, guarding the water and land of Xijiang River, and controlling a large area between Zhaoqing and Wuzhou. It can be regarded as holding the entire Guangdong Province and a few Guangxi territories in its hands.
But this way. It also affected the original social ties between Guangdong and Guangxi, especially the Qiongzhou Nanhai Company, which had already reached Guilin in its commercial expansion. This time it had to follow Zhao Youheng's political retreat and abandon a considerable number of Guangxi trade routes.
After falling out with Zheng Zhilong and choosing King Lu together with the former Fujian governor Xiao Yifu, Zhao Youheng knew that he had no way out because he had made up his mind to safeguard Guangdong's hard-won new industrial and commercial policy.
Although these are currently only of a certain scale in Qiongzhou, given time, the entire Guangdong will definitely usher in the prosperity and development after the fall of the two capitals, preparing a rear force for revival of the Ming Dynasty's remaining destiny. .
The second happy event is that Ding Chukui, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, ran away. In the name of patrolling eastern Guangdong, he suddenly ran away to Fujian with his wife, concubines, and property, and went to Zheng Zhilong.
Ding Chukui ran in such a hurry that the soldiers and horse messengers sent by Zhao Youheng stopped a small boat on the way to transport Ding Chukui's family wealth, and found tens of thousands of taels of silver belonging to Zhaoqing's treasury from it!
And there are three officials from Guangdong who have a good reputation. He also escaped from the Longwu court controlled by Zheng Zhilong and returned to Guangdong.
They are Chen Zizhuang, Chen Bangyan and Zhang Jiayu. When the Qing Dynasty moved south to Fujian and Guangdong, the three were among the few Ming Dynasty officials who fought desperately. In later generations, they were known as the Three Loyalists of Lingnan, and they all died heroically.
historyThe butterfly wings are so wonderful, the dim and greedy Ding Chukui ran away from Fujian, and the three more capable Lingnan heroes returned to Guangdong.
With so many outstanding people returning to Guangdong, Zhao Youheng naturally went to visit them without stopping.
"Promote the three industries of Guangdong Province. Renovate the old to support the king's administration in times of crisis. Raise strong troops from Lingnan to support the emperor's Ming Dynasty."
Zhao Youheng was a well-known Southeast doer from the Chongzhen Dynasty to the Hongguang Dynasty, and he was older than the three of them. When they talked about the Northern Expedition to restore the territory with one province, the three of them boiled with tears in their eyes.
Zhao Youheng is originally from Shandong, but he has stayed in Guangdong longer than the three locals. In addition, most of the children of the Zhao family married from this province, so the three of them regarded Zhao Youheng as a native of their hometown, and they were particularly cordial in their chats.
No matter what, both Chen and Yi come from Guangdong, a city with a strong commercial atmosphere. Although the three people may not fully accept Zhao Youheng's ideas on local governance and will need to get along with each other in the future, the well-informed Guangdong officials and gentry breathed a sigh of relief, especially Zhao Youheng, who had been worried about conflicts with northern bureaucrats at the governance level.
The third happy news is that Zhao Youheng has recently obtained a new army and is currently intensifying its training.
In order to prepare for the second phase of the Qing Dynasty's upcoming southward invasion, and to consolidate the territory of Guangdong, Zhao Youheng selected a group of soldiers from the surrendered Guangxi rebels, and mixed in a few backbones from Guangzhou Town and Qionghai Town to build new ones. He established a Xijiang town and would be stationed in Shaozhou in the future, responsible for the defense of Huguang and Jiangxi. He also systematically sent people to the small court of King Lu in eastern Zhejiang to request an order for establishment.
Before these three happy events could be digested, Donglian Group sent three reminder letters within a month. Even this third time was personally brought by Zhao Mingchuan, who supported him the most.
Now in Guangdong, there are nominally three new armies in Qionghai Town, Guangzhou Town and Xijiang Town. Each town organized six battalions. There are three infantry battalions, one horse battalion, one artillery battalion and one baggage battalion, with a total of more than 12,000 people.
However, due to the serious lack of horses and artillery in the horse and artillery camps in the three towns, the current establishment is only on paper. However, the total number of new troops in the three towns exceeds 36,000 officers and soldiers, not counting the purchase expenses for military supplies such as grain, grass, ordnance, and uniforms. Theoretically, one year's salary expenditure alone is five hundred thousand taels of silver!
The two capitals were destroyed, people's hearts were divided, capitulation factions and resistance factions from all over the Yangtze River were mixed together, and civil and foreign wars became a mess. Regardless of the small court, Nanming as a legal regime has essentially lost its normal operation. In Guangdong, which is relatively stable. Zhao Youheng stepped up the household registration and tax clearance work, but because there were too few trustworthy people, the administrative progress was very slow. He relied entirely on the work of his wife and brother Liu Yaoyu, and the local tycoons of Qiongzhou from the Nanhai Company helped maintain various military and political expenses.
But after all, businessmen¡¯s money is not stolen or robbed. Who can afford the government¡¯s expenses? After being hit by Qiufeng with hundreds of thousands of taels of silver one after another, even Qiongzhou Nanhai Company no longer has a good look on the messenger sent by Zhao Youheng.
In order to feed the elite new army and help the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the north who migrated to Guangdong, Zhao Youheng had almost spent all the money and food he could find, and even sold a lot of his property. The only thing left is the final step of forcibly imposing heavy taxes on farmers in Guangdong.
In the end, Zhao Youheng had to borrow money from Huamei Donglian Group again through the personal relationship between his wife's brother Liu Yaoyu and Zhao Mingchuan. It was also a huge special commercial loan, totaling 800,000 taels of silver, equivalent to 1.2 million Huamei silver dollars.
Strictly speaking, according to the authorization act of the Chinese American Congress, if the Eastern Union Group lends to the governments of sovereign countries in the Far East, the maximum limit is only US$1 million.
Zhao Youheng was just a representative of the local government of the Ming Dynasty, and there was no question of lending from a sovereign state. If Eastern Union Group lends money to the Guangdong governor's office represented by Zhao Youheng, it will theoretically be prohibited by the relevant legislation of the Huamei Congress.
In order to legally avoid domestic laws. To achieve procedural legitimacy, with the consent of the Eastern Union Group headquarters and Zhao Mingchuan's suggestion, Zhao Youheng reached a secret assistance agreement with Qiongzhou Nanhai Company and Eastern Union Group last summer.
Zhao Youheng appeared to stay out of the matter. Liu Yaoyu, his wife's brother, provided unlimited liability guarantee and opened a loan account in the Hong Kong branch of Oriental Bank in his private name. Then the account successively received remittances of US$1.2 million.
¡°But this money can only be deposited at the account level and cannot be withdrawn, and then used exclusively by Zhao Youheng to purchase relatively cheap Nanyang grains and Chinese and American weapons and equipment from Hong Kong.
The total principal and interest of this batch of special assistance loans reached US$1.5 million. According to the secret aid agreement. Zhao Youheng, who had enjoyed two months of interest-free treatment, had to repay the principal and interest in 30 months starting from January 1646, with an average monthly repayment of US$50,000.
Years ago, in order to repay Donglian Group for its recognition of his personal credit, Zhao Youheng allowed Donglian Group toIn the future, business representatives can be sent to and from Guangzhou and Qiongzhou freely to engage in private economic and business activities. But now that Zhao Mingchuan came, he started to collect debts from himself as the general manager of the Far East Branch of Donglian Group. It hurt the self-esteem of scholars and officials of the Ming Dynasty.
The treasury of the Guangdong Governor¡¯s Yamen is running out of money. Not to mention the monthly repayments of tens of thousands of taels of silver to Donglian Group, even the daily food and salary expenses for the new army in the three towns can hardly be sustained. And until now, the money to purchase the ordnance, chariots and horses required by the new army in Xijiang Town has not yet been obtained!
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"Mr. Zhao, to be honest, the current situation is urgent. The Manchu Qing Dynasty is about to move south. The people of Guangdong are on the verge of war. They are spending a lot of money on food and salary. It will take a few more months to repay the money If you can't tolerate any delay, then you See if there are any valuables left in my house, just take them!"
After drinking a cup of tea, Zhao Youheng touched his beard and sighed slightly, struggling to explain his lack of money. It was quite like a scholar's arrogance that if I don't go to hell, who will go to hell.
The tragedy of forcing a hero to death for a penny is about to come true in the Guangdong governor's office.
Strictly speaking, this is just a strategic investment in Guangdong by domestic capitalists led by the Eastern Union Group. Even if Zhao Youheng can no longer afford it one day, follow-up assistance will still continue.
Looking quietly at the governor of Guangdong, whom he had known personally for many years, the gray hair on his temples made Zhao Mingchuan feel an indescribable sadness in his heart. However, these processes are probably necessary, otherwise we will not be able to usher in the rebirth of our homeland, the Ming Dynasty, right?
"The governor has worked hard and shouldered the crisis with his own efforts. Mingchuan is not as good as him. To be honest with the governor, Mingchuan's visit this time is secondary to collection." Seeing that the time was almost up, Zhao Mingchuan finally took a long breath and started again. He took out a letter from his sleeve, "This is an official document from the Chinese and American Ministry of Foreign Affairs, certified by the official seal of the state government. The foreign ministry of the state government wants to have a formal talk with the governor. Now that the speaker is outside the government, can Mr. Zhao condescend to see him? ?¡±
Zhao Mingchuan¡¯s words were such a shock that Zhao Youheng almost jumped up!
Currently, there is no real official diplomacy between the Ming Dynasty and China and the United States. They all rely on indirect contacts between a group of landowners, squires or maritime merchants in Qiongzhou. Even the Donglian Group, which had long been famous on the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty, lent an astronomical sum of silver to Zhao Youheng, and Zhao Youheng only interacted with Zhao Mingchuan in private.
The political limit is crucial for a Ming Dynasty bureaucrat, especially a person like Zhao Youheng who is determined to do things but also cares about his feathers. Zhao Youheng would not touch it personally without a legitimate political reason.
When the Governor of Huamei Hong Kong wanted to negotiate the renewal of the Hong Kong Concession, it was Zhao Mingchuan and Liu Yaoyu who handled the matter, and Huamei officials really stepped into the door of the Guangdong government.
¡°Could it be that the Huamei officials have come to complain about the fact that I haven¡¯t paid back the money I owe?
Zhao Youheng had mixed feelings at this time. (To be continued.) - Didn't finish reading? Add this book to your favoritesI'm a member and bookmarked this chapterCopy the address of this book and recommend it to your friends for pointsChapter error? Click here to report
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