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’s nationality. 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 are so insistent, let's follow the boat to Zhoushan tomorrow... But what about the matter you just talked about?" Shi Diwen did not forget that Zhang Qu asked him about the salt agent.

Zhang Qu had already made a plan before he came, and was well prepared for this. He immediately responded: "State affairs come first, and I won't be greedy for such small profits."

These words are so righteous. People who don’t know what they say may think that Zhang Qu is some kind of patriotic and loyal minister, but they don’t know that this person just wants to hug Haihan’s thigh. Shi Diwen is secretly amused in his heart, but he is not satisfied with Zhang Qu’s words.

However, the person's evaluation was not very high. He was sent away immediately without any intention to verify whether the person's identity was true. Although Zhang Qu did not achieve his original goal, he at least got it.

The opportunity to go to Haihan for training is barely what I wanted.

Nowadays, as Haihan's 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 in the southern coastal areas

The public security situation 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 and have access to relevant information.

There is also more information about Haihan. They know that they can get better prospects and opportunities after going to Haihan, which is better than staying in the Ming Dynasty and struggling to achieve high and low results. Therefore, more and more scholars choose to go to Haihan to give it a try.

, and naturally there are also 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.

Shi Diwen has no obsession with his business, and Shi Diwen will naturally not lower his status to ask him. The loss of such a negotiating partner will not affect the future sales of Xiangshan Salt Farm. After all, salt is an urgent need, as long as the production cost and

With prices under control, 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 more and more obvious in this environment.

This change of situation is certainly within 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.

However, 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.

, simply thinking that such international relations can 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 Dynasty 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 construction of transportation and trade between the two countries provided Haihan with this kind of opportunity.

The possibility of making control public and converting it into economic benefits. Once this kind of control is made public, a default situation is formed. If the Ming Dynasty wants to regain control of these sea areas in the future, it can only count 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 the Ming Dynasty is unwilling to accept its own territory, it can only knock out its 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 recently visited

One of the purposes of Zhejiang's promotion of industrial construction is to contribute to consolidating its role as 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 pressure from within if it wanted to take back these places. You know

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 all have interests mixed in. This group is quite large. In Haihan

With the support of the emperor, it was even enough to resist the will of the imperial court.

Ironically, almost all of these Ming officials who truly understand the current situation between the two countries are vested interests in the previous smuggling trade. They know very well that the trade between the two countries can bring more benefits to themselves, so even if they know that this move will only

This will make the national strength of the two countries ebb and flow, making Ming even more passive in this situation, but they will still choose to side with Haihan. Regardless of their official position, they all believe in the two things that the Haihan people promised them.

One is that they will not go to war against the Ming Dynasty, and the other is 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 actions.

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, that is,

The interests of the Ming Dynasty were protected, and the various concessions made by the court now seemed to them to be for the same reason and purpose. Since the emperor and the court had similar views, these local officials would 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 negotiation. This is equivalent to Shi Diwen holding an investment meeting in Ningbo city on his own, and achieving quite 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 even thought that Shi Di Wen's main business should be doing business, and leading troops to fight is a part-time job, which shows the recognition of his performance.

The progress made in Zhejiang can be said to be the most significant progress made by Haihan in many control areas along the Ming Dynasty. Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian have long been riddled with holes by Haihan, and trade and official exchanges have long been made public. To be honest, it doesn't have much impact whether the diplomatic relations are established or not. The Shandong occupied area basically maintains the original status quo, and Haihan did not try to continue to expand the local occupation scope. It just made Ming Dynasty 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 is not substantial. 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 officials in Zhejiang. It can be said that this is almost the maximum achievement that the institution in Zhejiang can achieve. Even if Schneider went to Zhejiang in person, he might 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 very proud of Shi Diwen's achievements. Even Schneider, who has always been very demanding, was not hesitant to praise him. He praised Shi Diwen's performance as professional, and even half-jokingly asked the Ministry of National Defense to release him so that Shi Diwen's staff could be transferred to the Ministry of Commerce.

Naturally, such a proposal was 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. You can poach someone, but first find me a qualified fleet commander."

Schneider's staff are all civilian officials. Of course, it is impossible to have such a talent. He can only treat it as a joke. But Shi Diwen's performance really touched him a lot. He can get it by working part-time and talking about business. With such results, shouldn’t the full-time officials in the Ministry of Commerce also perform better?

Schneider has been busy with the affairs of the South China Sea Trade Alliance recently. Although this trade alliance has been in its third year since its establishment, the formulation of rules for cross-border trade has not yet been 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 by himself.

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 trade agreement with truly unified standards.

As the person in charge of commercial and trade affairs in Haihan, Schneider naturally hopes to promote the implementation of this standard. However, compared with political alliances, trade alliances and military alliances are often more loose. If these small countries that are still in backward social forms can It is almost an impossible task for Haihan to take orders from his arm. In the past year, Schneider has been traveling almost non-stop to countries in the trade alliance to discuss trade standards with politicians from various countries, but to be honest, the results are not obvious.

For these small countries, even minimal policy changes can easily cause social unrest, and adjustments to trade standards will directly affect the benefits of vested interests. Therefore, Schneider wants to promote new standards in these countries.

, it is naturally very difficult. People listened to Schneider's suggestions, but they would not follow them. Some countries even thought that his words were overstepping their bounds and purely troublesome. In such a situation, Schneider could only

Being able to laugh at oneself cannot 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 cannot be underestimated. Haihan worked hard to organize the South China Sea Trade Alliance. The ultimate goal is to control the standard-setting authority in international trade. And the scope of these industry standards is very large, such as the members of the alliance

Haihan can promote its own advantageous industries by formulating these industry standards, relevant laws and regulations, settlement methods, freight price calculations, etc., 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 of the coastal areas of Ming Dynasty, especially the prosperous Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. Its monthly circulation of money is larger than that of 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 the business of Haihan Bank into overseas markets, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions have provided excellent successful experience. Schneider sent Cai Jinmei to Zhejiang last time to participate in negotiations. On the one hand, Cai Jinmei was asked to standardize local operating procedures;

On the other hand, we also collect information and sort out the gains and losses of Haihan Bank's work in the local area. These compiled experiences 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 was definitely not enough. So at the end of the summer of 1636, Schneider proposed a new plan based on the current situation of the South China Sea Trade Alliance.
Chapter completed!