Chapter 2287

Zheng Zha believes that the collapse of the Ming Dynasty is actually just around the corner. If Haihan is willing to take action, then with the help of Haihan, Annan, North Korea, Portugal and other countries, and with the help of Xu Xinsu from Fujian, it is not a problem to at least carve up the southeastern region of the Ming Dynasty. If Haihan

If they are willing to take a step back and agree to send troops together with the Manchus in the north, then the fall of the Ming Dynasty is basically a certain outcome. As the main ally of Haihan, Annan is bound to get a share of this situation.

But Haihan seems to have no such intention at present, and is even opposed to Annan's plan to encroach on the territory of Ming Dynasty's Yunnan and Guangxi regions to the north. Zheng Zha's plan to carve up the Guangdong and Guangxi regions proposed to Haihan's senior officials in Sanya this time was once again

He was opposed. He actually didn't quite understand what considerations were based on such a contradictory approach, as Haihan continued to occupy the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty through colonial means and obtain population and wealth from the Ming Dynasty, while at the same time maintaining the shaky rule of the Ming Dynasty.

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Zheng Zao, accompanied by You Yihan, visited the military base in the south of Hong Kong Island yesterday. Haihan's garrison on Hong Kong Island is not large, mainly the navy. According to You Yihan, there are only about a thousand people. Zheng Zao

Although it is not certain whether the troop strength reported by You Yihan was an ambush, I guess it should not be too different.

Although the size of this garrison is small, its defense area also includes the Pearl River Estuary. With such a small force, it can control such a large area of ​​​​sea. There are not even pirates within a few hundred miles. This shows that Haihan

The prestige here is great.

From Zheng Zha's point of view, the nature of this force is more like a symbol of force than a combat force, representing Haihan's control of this area, rather than really intending to use this force to eliminate

Who. Moreover, judging from the current situation, there should be no forces in this region that would take the initiative to oppose Haihan. Doing so would be tantamount to seeking death.

Zheng Zha was only thinking about the military significance of the Pearl River Estuary and Hong Kong Island, while Li Nai and Zhang Jinbao were obviously more inclined to focus on the commercial value of this area. After the fleet entered the Pearl River Estuary, the number of sailboats on the water increased significantly.

Except for some fishing sampans, most of them are merchant ships and passenger ships plying this water area.

Li Nai introduced to the two of them: "In the past, both sides of the river were mostly wasteland, but in recent years, more and more people have escaped from the war in the interior and come to Guangzhou. One of their livelihoods is to work as sharecroppers in the river plains south of Guangzhou.

Land reclamation. The places you two can see are basically plantations that have been built in recent years, and most of them are properties under Haihan's name."

Zheng Zha asked: "If Haihan State wants to purchase land here, I'm afraid it will have to find another cover, right?"

"Of course." Li Nai nodded and admitted Zheng Zha's guess: "These lands were purchased in private names and then developed by Haihan's subordinate institutions. In fact, it is not that the local government is unaware of these things, it's just that

Interest comes first, and no one is willing to take the initiative to expose this trick, so they just turn a blind eye and let Haihan continue to operate like this. When there are more such plantations and people who make a living from them, the government will not dare to control them.

, otherwise these tens of thousands of people will lose their livelihood and become refugees, and the Guangzhou area will inevitably be in chaos, which will definitely affect the officialdom."

The labor gap has always been accompanied by the history of Haihan's fortune, and the Lingnan area has become more and more peaceful in recent years, and it has become increasingly difficult to recruit immigrants who voluntarily settle overseas. However, compared with Haihan, the labor cost in Daming is still much lower

There were many, so Haihan also began to invest in the opposite direction, setting up many plantations and farms in the Pearl River Delta in a private name, and hiring local people to cultivate farmland.

There are obvious differences in the planting projects between Haihan's plantations along the Pearl River and the plantations invested by Ming merchants in Haihan. Most of the plantations in Haihan's own territory are mainly cash crops that can be further processed.

The return on output is relatively high, but the farmland operated within the Ming Dynasty basically grows the most common food crops, and the economic value is relatively low.

Moreover, after harvesting, most of the grain will not be transported back to Haihan, but will be supplied to the nearby grain merchants and rice banks in Daming to meet the survival needs of the tenant farmers. The economic benefits of this approach are actually relatively large.

Haihan's purpose is not to make much money through these industries, but to try to control as many employed people as possible in this way, and then it will be relatively easy to absorb immigrants from these people.

The merchants of the Ming Dynasty who invested in Haihan were accustomed to eating big fish and meat, so they naturally disdained to go back to drink this bowl of gruel with little oil and water. Therefore, the merchants had no intention of competing with Haihan when it came to farming grain in the Pearl River Plain.

As for local landowners, large and small, their business scale is far less than a fraction of Haihan's development model, and the cost of grain production is much higher than that of Haihan's subordinate farms. As long as Haihan does not take the lead in lowering grain prices.

Thank God. How can I dare to compete with them?

Zheng Zha and Zhang Jinbao both heard about these things for the first time. Although Li Nai didn't explain it in detail at the moment, they still listened with interest.

In the past, we only knew that merchants from the Ming Dynasty invested in and opened many plantations in Haihan, but we never thought that Haihan would quietly invest in agriculture in the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, this differentiated business model avoids the confusion with investing in Haihan.

The Ming Dynasty merchants in agriculture had a conflict of interest and achieved the purpose of increasing the source of immigrants. Such an operation could only be accomplished by the omnipotent Haihan Executive Committee.

Of course, not everyone can imitate this method of operation. In addition to investing a lot of money and having more advanced agricultural technology, you also need to have enough hard power to deal with all aspects. Otherwise, no matter how large the farmland you operate is

, it will only become a fat sheep in the eyes of the powerful.

So even if the Guangzhou government knows about Haihan's little tricks, it can only pretend to be deaf and mute and dare not openly intervene. As for the invisible population loss caused by this, the government actually won't care too much. After all, if there is no Haihan

If these job opportunities are created, these people will probably gradually become a security risk, and the government will have to spend more resources to resolve them. If these people are willing to join the Haihan in the future, then it will be up to them.

Anyway, they are just a bunch of idiots.

Zheng Zha suddenly said: "If one day in the future, the entire Guangzhou, or even the wider area, is controlled by Haihan more and more in the food supply, wouldn't it be easy to influence the people of Guangzhou?"

Li Nai did not shy away from this bold hypothesis, and still responded calmly: "If the Haihan Executive Committee wants to influence the hearts and minds of the people in Guangzhou, it may not need to wait until that time, because they have many other ways to win people's hearts.

.But I don’t think they necessarily want to do this because the turmoil in Guangzhou is not in their interests.”

Zheng Zha was slightly moved when he heard this reply. He suddenly realized that when he was communicating with Haihan's senior management, he had not really considered how much interests the other party had in Guangdong, and whether the method he suggested was really in line with Haihan's.

Han interests.

Haihan was not uninterested in Guangdong, but he did not take the reckless approach proposed by Zheng Zao and directly use force to seize the area. Haihan's approach was obviously more peaceful and less likely to stimulate local officials to take resistance measures.

This is the so-called boiling the frog in warm water.

Haihan is quietly and gradually controlling the key resources in this area, and food may be just one of them. As long as it takes advantage of its advantages in military, trade, finance, etc., Zheng Zha believes that Haihan will have no problem dealing with the Guangzhou government.

.But precisely because Haihan has invested a lot of resources in the Guangdong area, once the current peaceful situation is broken, Haihan himself may also face the result of killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred to himself, and this is obviously not the result of the Executive Committee

A situation that I would be willing to accept.

It can be said that Zheng Zha's original proposal did not take Haihan's real interests into consideration at all. He believed that as long as the richest areas in Guangdong and Guangxi were handed over to Haihan, he could get Haihan's cooperation. Little did he know that Haihan had already been involved in the project.

To develop in this direction, it is just that the methods used are somewhat special.

If the information currently obtained is indeed what Zheng Zha speculated, then he can only be "convinced" by Haihan's clever methods. Although this approach seems time-consuming and labor-intensive, the effect is indeed much better than launching a war.

Besides, if the goal can be achieved without launching a war, then even Zheng Zha would be willing to choose this seemingly complicated method.

As we go upstream of the Pearl River, the river gradually narrows, and the density of sailing boats on the river is also increasing, reaching the point where it is necessary to slow down the speed of the boats. Zhang Jinbao heard that it is still more than 20 miles away from Guangzhou City.

, I am also secretly surprised at the prosperity of Guangzhou.

After finally arriving at the river bank outside Guangzhou City, we saw that the docks here stretched for miles, and we couldn't see where the end of the upstream was. There were more than a thousand boats of various sizes docked on the shore, which made Zheng Zaohe

Zhang Jinbao was secretly speechless.

In Zheng Zha's opinion, places like Danzhou Port and Sanya Port are already extremely prosperous, but the number of ships docked at these large ports seems to be less than that of the Pearl River Wharf outside Guangzhou.

However, if you observe carefully for a while, you can still see that the hardware facilities of the wharf here are obviously not comparable to those under the rule of Haihan, and most of the ships are small in size. Most of them are not sea-going ships, but use rivers as their activity areas.

sailboat.

"What a lively place, we really came to the right place!" Zhang Jinbao was very excited when he saw the scene in front of him. The city of Guangzhou is more prosperous than he imagined, and the more prosperous a place is, the demand for labor should be the same.

The bigger the country, the more it opens a branch here, there should be no need to worry about the employment of students.

As the largest merchant in Guangzhou, Fulifeng naturally has its own pier here. After berthing at the shore, Zheng Zao and Zhang Jinbao saw several carriages parked on the shore. Zhang Jinbao had ridden in Fulifeng's car more than once.

Special cars, one look at the appearance can confirm that these cars are also standard models ordered from Haihan.

"Before we set off from Hong Kong, I ordered someone to send a telegram to the local area to inform us of the approximate time of arrival in Guangzhou, so that accommodation can be prepared for the two of us." Li Nai took the initiative to explain why there was a carriage prepared in advance.

This welcome.

The two of them quickly thanked Li Nai. They already knew before they came that Li Nai would arrange their accommodation during the inspection period, so they did not have to carry large and small bags around to find a hotel after arriving in Guangzhou.

"I have prepared a courtyard for each of you outside the city as a temporary residence for the two of you while you are in Guangzhou. It's just that the place is a bit rough, so don't dislike it too much." Li Nai continued to introduce his arrangements.

Li Nai said that the place was shabby, but both of them didn't believe it. How could the place where Furifeng used to entertain guests be so shabby? They couldn't even explain it at the moment.

When they arrived at the place and took a look, it turned out that Li Nai's words were true. The courtyard arranged for Zhang Jinbao and his party was an exquisite one. Although there were only two entrances, it was decorated in the style of Jiangnan gardens. Each step has a scene, which is very beautiful.

There have even been several servants prepared to serve them in daily life.

Zheng Zhuo and his party had a large number of staff, including staff, attendants, guards, and cooks. There were more than a dozen people in total. If the place they arranged was too small, they would definitely not be able to accommodate them. They had stayed in Hong Kong for a day before, and Zheng Zhuo and his party were the guests at that time.

Went down the entire floor of an inn.

Therefore, the courtyard Li Nai prepared for Zheng Zha and his party was much larger to ensure that they could all live in it. At the same time, he also prepared a large amount of food for them. It seemed that he planned to provide all-inclusive food, accommodation and transportation.

Regarding such a comprehensive arrangement, it is difficult for Zhang Jinbao and Zheng Zha to find fault. They can only secretly admire Fulifeng's meticulousness in doing these things. It is no wonder that it has become the number one store in Guangdong.

What they didn't know was that after Li Nai experienced the reception at the Guest House in Sanya in his early years, he suggested that Li Jifeng set up a special service organization under the name of Furifeng to be responsible for daily reception of foreign guests. In order to achieve better service

Li Nai also specially sent people to Sanya for training to ensure that they can provide authentic Haihan-style services.

It is not possible to build a guest house like Sanya in Guangzhou. It would be too ostentatious, but it is not a problem for Furifeng to build several courtyards outside Guangzhou to entertain distinguished guests. Zheng Zha

The two courtyards where Zhang Jinbao and I stayed were specially used to receive distinguished guests.

And Li Nai's reception work does not end here. In the evening, Li Jifeng will personally host a banquet to welcome them both.

Locally speaking, this is no longer a treatment that ordinary people can enjoy. Li Jifeng is now very well-known in Guangzhou. You must know that if local officials want to meet with him to discuss matters, they must make an appointment in advance. As for

There were only a handful of people who could be given a banquet by Li Jifeng, and he might not be able to gather even ten people in a year.
Chapter completed!