Chapter 974 Productivity Gap

After the carriage entered the city, Fan Diemen noticed that the street market here was not as lively as Sanya city. There were not many pedestrians on the street, but the streets unique to Haihan's rule were kept clean. From time to time, five people could be seen on the street.

The team of black-clad security policemen, this prepared posture may be related to the visit of the big shot Ning Qi.

"It seems that there are not many residents in the city." Van Diemen said casually.

Ning Qi responded: "Most of the people living in Yacheng now are local officials. There are representatives of commercial banks operating projects here, as well as our personnel stationed in Yacheng. As for the immigrants working in plantations outside the city, they

They all live in resettlement villages outside the city, and they usually only go to the city when they need to go to official agencies for business."

Van Diemen thought that this situation was similar to Batavia. The local social structure was that the rich and powerful people lived in the city, while most of the fishermen, farmers and other craftsmen lived outside the city.

The settlement of Ning Qi and Fan Diemen in Yacheng was the courtyard of the Cliff Resident Office. However, due to the improved institutional functions, the scale of the Cliff Resident Office has expanded a lot. It is not just the small courtyard they bought originally.

Later, a large piece of land was bought nearby and a new office compound and residential area were built. The small courtyard where the first generation of Cliff Office staff originally lived is now only used as a storage warehouse and archives center.

The Residential Office has specially prepared two upper rooms, which are only provided to the chiefs who come here for inspection. Although these two upper rooms may not be used once a year, this kind of special treatment is not an economic issue, but a political issue.

So it has been retained. As a "distinguished guest" invited by the executive committee, Van Diemen also enjoyed this special treatment.

The ceramic bathroom ware, hot water supply, bedding, and furniture decoration used in this room are all customized products that cannot be bought on the market. There is even a socket connected to the battery in the room to allow the head of the room to stay.

Conveniently use the laptop they carry.

Although Van Diemen doesn't quite understand the pursuit of material comfort among high-ranking officials like Haihan, he can still see the quality of these things, such as the complete set of blue and white porcelain sanitary ware made by Haihan in the bathroom. If you get it from Batavia

At auction on the market, it is estimated that one hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy slaves can be exchanged. What he personally likes most is the uninterrupted hot water supply in this room. You can enter the bathtub and take a comfortable bath at any time.

, which is really a good enjoyment in the hot and humid Southeast Asia.

There were also several special desserts on the coffee table in the room. Van Diemen picked through them for a while, and finally chose a nougat. However, this kind of sweet seemed not suitable for him, and he felt like he had two tastes before he finished eating.

One of his molars began to hurt. Van Diemen quickly poured a cup of tea and poured the unmelted nougat in his mouth directly into his stomach. Only then did he feel better.

Fan Diemen rested in the room for a while, and Ning Qi came to invite him to a banquet. During this visit to Hainan Island, Fan Diemen got to know the banquet culture of the Haihan people. In addition to breakfast, there were arrangements for lunch and evening every day.

Banquets of varying sizes were organized by the military, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Shipping, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the General Office of the Executive Committee, and other units. Although Van Diemen considered himself in good health, he also drank heavily at the banquets in the past few days.

Qixunbasu was a little overwhelmed. He originally thought that he could avoid these occasions by going on an island tour, but he didn't expect that as soon as he arrived at the first stop, Yacheng, there would be another banquet waiting for him.

"Mr. Ning, are these banquet arrangements a little too frequent?" Fan Diemen said with a bitter smile: "I have only been in your place for a few days, and I have already attended more banquets than in the past year!"

Ning Qi said seriously: "This reception banquet was arranged by the staff of the Cliff Office, and I didn't know it beforehand. If we refuse to attend, it will easily make the people below worried, so we'd better attend it as a routine."

Van Diemen himself is also a powerful figure, so he can naturally understand this kind of relationship in the workplace. At the moment, he could only smile bitterly and said: "You can go, but you can't drink too much."

Eating and drinking is a feature of Haihan officialdom. Driven by Chuanzhong, the entire bureaucracy from top to bottom is accustomed to choosing banquets as a place for communication. Because there are many foreign-invested plantations here in Yacheng

Park, so as the local competent authority, the Cliff Office has a lot of time to deal with people from all walks of life. Eating and drinking are very common activities, and there are also special public relations and entertainment expenses in the office budget. Big leaders like Ning Qi go to places

When inspecting work, a full set of necessary courtesy treatment must be provided. You can't just have a working meal to do the work. If these red tapes are omitted, even if Ning Qi won't blame them, the people in the Cliff Office will not be at ease.

.

Of course, Van Diemen's pre-statement did not successfully save him from the toast relay at the banquet. Although local Ming officials, business representatives and cadres in the Cliff Office did not dare to drink Ning Qi's wine, they were still concerned about this.

The stupid Xifan barbarian didn't have to worry about attacking. The seven or eight people accompanying him took turns to fight, and soon Van Diemen began to be unable to resist. If Ning Qi hadn't stopped him after seeing what was going on, Van Diemen would have had to fight again.

He was so drunk that he fell down.

The direct consequence of this reception banquet was that the local inspection schedule had to be postponed to the next day in order to allow Van Diemen to return to a sober state. Ning Qi did not rest, and took advantage of this period to listen.

After receiving the recent work report of the Yazhao Office, we also met with two investor representatives and finalized with them the plan to develop two new oil crop plantations in the upper reaches of the Ningyuan River north of Yacheng. The two plantations will take approximately

The preliminary reclamation and planting will be completed in half a year, and will also create more than 400 jobs for local people.

The next day, Ning Qi and Fan Diemen visited several local business banks. To be precise, these business banks are just local offices of foreign investors. The Qiong Lianfa Business Group behind them is currently the richest in the South China Sea.

A powerful private business organization, Qiong Lianfa can provide all the supplies that the Dutch want to obtain from Northeast Asia.

Van Diemen wasted no time in seizing this opportunity to invite various companies to send caravans to Batavia for trade, and said that after the signing of the South China Sea Trade Alliance Agreement, the trading activities of Haihan and Ming merchants in Batavia also increased.

He will enjoy a more preferential tariff policy. However, his propaganda did not achieve very good results. Most of the shopkeepers just said a few polite words, or said that they would ask their superiors for instructions. No one would do it in front of Ning Qi.

I agreed to his invitation.

The trading firms that Qiong Lianfa belongs to have many years of cooperation experience with Haihan. They understand Haihan's methods of operation and are very sensitive to policies. The bosses are also very concerned about the operation methods of the South China Sea Trade Alliance.

I have already inquired about the relevant information. One of the contents of the agreement between Haihan and the Dutch East India Company is that the Netherlands will give up commercial activities north of Ambrosia Island, and Haihan will provide it with a purchase list and supply of goods. Haihan's

The measure is obviously to monopolize the trading rights of the Dutch in Northeast Asia. Under this premise, who would dare to go out on their own to carry out trade activities with the Dutch?

The Haihan people want to monopolize this business, of course, in order to obtain higher profits, and Qionglianfa, as a private business organization dependent on the Haihan trade system, will naturally not go against the official. Anyway, when the time comes, Haihan will receive the Dutch

Many of the goods placed by people still need to be forwarded to them for purchase. These firms do not have to worry about not being able to obtain profits from them. Ningqi is confident, and of course he will not care about Van Diemen's futile promotional activities.

Van Diemen obviously didn't know much about the inside story, otherwise he wouldn't have done useless research on these Qiong Lianfa shareholder firms. But he could also feel what he had done from the expressions of these shopkeepers.

The efforts have had little effect. Van Diemen thinks that this may be because Batavia is not attractive enough to these businessmen. After all, Batavia is too far away from the Ming Dynasty, and Sanya, run by the Haihan people, is much closer. If not

With sufficiently large benefits, it is indeed difficult to attract Ming merchants to cross the entire South China Sea to Batavia for trading activities.

At noon that day, several shopkeepers jointly hosted a banquet for Ning Qi and Van Diemen. This time, Van Diemen held his position firmly and refused to drink. Ning Qi looked on and secretly laughed. I am afraid that after Van Diemen returns,

I have been allergic to banquets for a long time. After the meal, the shopkeepers led the way, and everyone went out of the city to visit the plantation.

The look and feel on the carriage is obviously different from the feeling of actually walking into the fields. It is not difficult for Van Diemen to notice that there are no menacing foremans holding whips in the plantations here, and the working atmosphere is quite harmonious. Among them,

A shopkeeper introduced them: "The labor prices here are slightly more expensive than those in the Ming Dynasty, but there are no unnecessary troubles. All operations of the plantation require a special contract to be signed with the yamen in charge of Haihan, and everything is covered."

With clear regulations and the fact that there is no need to purchase land, the cost of operating a plantation is actually lower than in the Ming Dynasty."

The "unnecessary troubles" mentioned by the shopkeeper mainly refer to various management fees outside the system collected by the government. However, under Haihan's rule, there were not so many messy things. Investors hired local laborers

All are provided by Haihan, and the daily management of these laborers is also handled by Haihan's civil affairs agencies, eliminating the need for investors to spend additional energy and money.

After hearing the explanation, Van Diemen also secretly compared the plantations operated by the East India Company in Southeast Asia, but soon discovered that the two were not very comparable because most of the indigenous residents in the areas under the East India Company were very lazy.

They are unwilling to engage in manual labor for a living, so most of the laborers in local plantations are Chinese and slave laborers sold from other places. This inevitably creates some problems that cannot be ignored. First, cultural differences cause problems in communication.

There are many obstacles, and the Dutch have never been able to handle the relationship with these foreign workers; secondly, the labor relationship between the two parties is not guaranteed through agreements or regulations, which results in the workers having little enthusiasm for work, and the bosses will not

What's the point of being nice to these subordinates who can't do their jobs well without beating or scolding them?

In terms of the relationship between management and labor alone, the plantations run by the Dutch will definitely not be able to reach the level of the Haihan plantation in terms of labor efficiency, and this efficiency gap will subsequently lead to differences in operating costs.

Moreover, the Haihan people often further process the primary agricultural and forestry products produced by the plantations to produce high-end commodities such as cane sugar, edible oil, alcoholic beverages, etc., and then sell them on the market for several times the price. If the economic value created by the plantations is

Speaking of which, the gap between the two sides is indeed quite obvious.

Van Diemen then visited a local sugar cane pressing workshop. The steam pressing machinery used here was a new type of equipment that he had never seen before. Not only was the pressing speed much higher than that of human and animal power, but the specially designed rollers would

The sugar yield rate is nearly 20% higher than that of the traditional process. After watching the actual operation of the workers, Van Diemen is convinced that he has found the root cause why the cane sugar produced in Batavia has become increasingly unsaleable in the past two years——

With Haihan's advantages in planting scale, labor costs and processing technology, it is possible to control the price of sucrose below the East India Company's production cost line. As long as Haihan's output can meet the needs of the market, then the East India Company's

It's really a damn thing if the sucrose can be sold.

"This is really... an amazing production equipment!" Seeing the roaring press constantly swallowing the sugar cane, Van Diemen's tone was filled with jealousy.

It goes without saying that this weird iron thing will not be allowed to be sold. Van Diemen has seen a lot of this kind of equipment called "steam engine" made by the Haihan people in the port of Sanya, and that kind of equipment in the port of Sanya

The large railway cars running on the railway tracks in Sanya seem to be driven by this kind of equipment. The role of this unique invention of Haihan people in promoting productivity is obvious. Unfortunately, the principle of this thing is still a secret so far. Although

The East India Company has recently been trying its best to find out the secrets of this kind of mechanical equipment, but so far there has been no actual harvest. The factories that manufacture this kind of equipment are all located in Tiandu, inland Sanya, which is inaccessible to outsiders.

In a military controlled area, the risk of sending people to inquire for information is too great.

Van Diemen didn't know that a Spanish espionage case had just been solved in Sanya. Although there were people under his command lurking in Sanya, their social status was far lower than that of Du Wen, the main criminal in the Spanish espionage case, and they had no access to steam engine manufacturing technology.

This level of confidentiality. But he also knew that if he left it alone, this thing would make the gap in strength between the two sides even wider.
Chapter completed!