Wang Lei felt a little angry when he heard what Mi Zhu said. Because cotton is comfortable and Wang Lei has plenty of money, he fell in love with clothes made of cotton after they were put on the market. But he didn't want to be taken advantage of, since cotton was produced in Xiliang , no matter how expensive it is, it can’t reach tens of thousands of dollars. It’s true that there is no businessman or treachery!
Mi Zhu continued with a smile: "The woolen cloth I made has its inherent flaw, that is, it is thick. This is an advantage in winter, especially as the weather has become colder and colder in recent years. Many people like it to be thick. woolen cloth, but it becomes a complete flaw in summer, and no matter how fine the clothes are made of woolen cloth, they cannot be worn in summer."
Although Daqian is in the Little Ice Age now, the temperature in summer is still high, and there are even extreme high temperatures. It is convenient for ordinary people to just change into the linen clothes they have at home, while the rich usually use silk. But the disadvantage of silk is that it is airtight, it easily sticks to the body after sweating, and the comfort is not high. In the past, when cotton was not available, rich people could only use silk.
But after the emergence of cotton clothes, its advantages in breathability and sweat-wicking properties instantly defeated silk, and became the first choice of wealthy people in Daqian in summer. And now Daqian is the place with the most wealthy people in the world. Thanks to the rush of buying, a batch of cotton cloth was sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
Of course, according to the Xiliang merchants, after tens of thousands of miles of experience, cotton cloth can be sold at such a high price, and everyone can accept it. But if it is true as Mi Zhu said, the cotton cloth was originally produced in Daqian, but the price is so high. They are a bit taken advantage of. After all, Daqian's textile technology is the best in the world. Any cloth processed by Daqian Textile Factory can be reduced by more than half. But now the price of cotton has not been reduced, but has been increased. This is what makes Wang Lei The most annoying thing.
Mi Zhu went on to say: "According to my investigation, the land planted with cotton in Xiliang now exceeds one million, and several textile factories have been opened in Xiliang. The cost of a piece of cotton cloth for Xiliang merchants is not It’s more than 800 yuan, and it may even be lower, because as long as the scale continues to expand, the cost will definitely continue to decrease.”
Now even Chen Deng was surprised and said: "There are actually more than ten times the profit. These cotton merchants have made a lot of money!"
Other Xuzhou businessmen were extremely surprised when they heard this set of data. Nowadays, Daqian business is developing rapidly, but there are not many industries that can earn 10 times the profit. For a while, they were envious and jealous of the Xiliang businessmen!
"These Xiliang people are so treacherous. They all know how poor they are in Jixian County. Our Daqian court has to find ways to help Xiliang with more than one billion yuan every year, but we didn't expect that the Xiliang people have already made a lot of money!" A Xuzhou man The congressman said angrily.
According to Mi Zhu, Xiliang's cotton cloth industry has a turnover of tens of billions a year. Even at 3,000 yuan per piece of cloth, the cotton cloth industry has a turnover of several billion a year, and Xiliang only has a population of one million. , even if this money is distributed evenly, each person in Xiliang can get several thousand dollars. Not to mention that the cotton cloth industry is really developing rapidly. If it really develops into a huge industry like woolen cloth, I am afraid that Xiliang It will become the richest place in Daqian.
But every time the Four People’s Conference is held, the people of Xiliang keep crying about poverty. It seems that if they don’t provide relief to Xiliang, people in Xiliang will starve to death. But they didn’t expect that Xiliang has secretly developed such a big industry! The people of Xiliang are so good at acting. , deceived the whole world.
Mi Zhu smiled and said, "Maybe you don't earn as much as you think. After all, Xiliang is remote. The cotton cloth is transported from Dunhuang to the Central Plains. Although it is not thousands of miles away, it is still 5,000 miles away. The cost of transportation alone exceeds the cloth itself. s price.
A million acres of cotton may seem like a lot, but in fact, only about 1 million pieces of cotton cloth can be produced each year, and the top quality ones are even less. Therefore, businessmen in the Western Regions are now looking for ways to expand the cotton cloth planting area. "
"It's just that the Xiliang people made a huge mistake. They actually placed the cotton plantation in Dunhuang to keep it secret. Although it blocked everyone's news about the cotton cloth for a short time, it cost thousands more miles to transport the cotton cloth! This has resulted in the high price of cotton! But merchants in Xiliang can do this kind of thing, why can’t our merchants in Xuzhou do it?
It is because of the extra 5,000 miles from Dunhuang to Chang'an that we can help us defeat the Xiliang cotton cloth. As long as we open a cotton textile planting garden in Xuzhou, the woven cotton cloth can be directly sold to the richest Central Plains region, and The cost of shipping is extremely low, not to mention that the richest places in our country are all in the coastal areas. As long as our cotton cloth appears, these places will be our markets. Even if we sell it for 2,000 yuan, we still have a profit. Double the profit, but if a businessman from Xiliang dares to buy it for 2,000 yuan, he will go bankrupt!"
But when Wang Lei heard this, he immediately stopped Mi Zhu and said: "No matter how much wasteland there is, I can't give it to you. All the land I work on is state-owned. Private individuals are not allowed to own more than 100 acres of land. If you want to Forget about a few cotton plantations."
Wang Lei just listened to the excitement of the previous business war, but when he heard that Mi Zhu and the others wanted to establish a plantation, he immediately woke up. They are called plantations. With so little land, these businessmen really want to make a comeback.
When Mi Zhu, Chen Deng and others heard Wang Lei's decisive refusal, they all sighed in their hearts. It was obvious that the state-owned land had penetrated deeply into the entire Daqian officials, and they did not want to change this policy. And they wanted to shake this policy for a while. It can't be done.
Mi Zhu immediately smiled and said: "Of course we dare not violate the laws of the government. Although we cannot own land, the governor can establish several farms in Xuzhou. Xuzhou now has tens of millions of acres of wasteland, which is the most fertile land. , it is a pity that it is left wasteland like this. You only need to report to the government and say that you want to establish several farms in Xuzhou, reclaim all these wastelands, and then plant all these lands with cotton. After the harvest, you can use all these cottons. Leave it to me and I will spin the cotton into cotton cloth and it will be ready.
Even the people of Xuzhou can do this. 70% of their land is used to grow food, and the remaining 30% of the land can be used to grow cotton. In this way, the people of Xuzhou not only have food, but also can make money by growing cotton. The people of Xuzhou can quickly become rich. .
I can sign an agreement with them, and I can purchase all the cotton they grow, so that they will not suffer a loss, sir, the governor will also get generous taxes, and I will also get the raw materials, which can be described as killing three birds with one stone!"
Obviously Mi Zhu has been thinking about this matter for a long time. He knows that if he promotes cotton by himself, the land alone will restrict him. But if he joins forces with Wang Lei and the big businessmen in Xuzhou, he can mobilize the power of the entire Xuzhou. to expand the scale of cotton cultivation.
Just how profitable the textile industry is can be seen from the fact that Daqian’s largest fiscal and tax revenue comes from wool textile mills. Every year Daqian harvests countless amounts of wool from the grasslands, and these wools are used to weave tens of millions of pieces of woolen cloth. Daqian's tax revenue from these woolen cloths alone is close to several billion. If the profits from woolen cloths are added, tens of billions of profits can be obtained from them a year.
Although the cotton industry has just emerged, its potential has definitely exceeded that of woolen cloth. In other words, this is also a new industry worth hundreds of billions.
If Mi Zhu can occupy one-tenth of the cotton industry, or even only one percent of the industry's output, it will be enough for his family to prosper again. And this is what Mi Zhu hopes to do most. There is no foundation. In this place, people are so bullied when doing business that the Mi family wants to take root in Xuzhou again!
Wang Lei thought about it and realized that there would be no problem if he only applied for a few farms, and the cotton grown on the farms had been booked in advance by big businessmen like Mi Zhu, so the harvest would be guaranteed despite droughts and floods, and the profits would not be lost.
So he said: "It's not a big problem to set up a few farms. I can decide it myself. But if you really want to build a farm with millions of acres of land, the upfront investment is not small. If you can afford such an investment, I can't get it here." Pay so much money!”
Mi Zhu smiled and said: "Since this is a common cause for all of us in Xuzhou, of course everyone has the money and strength to contribute. In this way, my Mi family can contribute 100 million to help the governor build farms. The cotton industry is extremely huge, and it is not my family's. It can be solved by people, and of course everyone’s support is indispensable. As long as we move quickly, our Xuzhou cotton cloth will definitely surpass Xiliang cotton cloth.”
Nowadays, the industrial chain mentioned by Xu Wei is deeply rooted in the hearts of the merchants who work hard. Any ambitious merchant seems to want to eat up and down the industrial chain.
Mi Zhu's words made the businessmen around him extremely excited: "Count me in as a share, I can give you 50 million!"
"I'll pay 40 million!"
"I'll also pay 40 million!"
One businessman after another spoke out, Wang Lei's farm already had over a billion dollars before construction even started.
But these merchants are not at a loss. These merchants all know how prosperous cotton cloth is now. The price is actually higher than silk. It can be said that the first-class cloth in Daqian today is cotton, and the second-class cloth is Silk, the third grade is woolen cloth, and the worst is linen.
Although they know that profits will decrease after expanding the industry, they will make a lot of money if they can take the first bite. If they get on this bus of wealth, their future wealth may not be much lower than that of Zhen An and other Hebei merchants!
But Chen Deng asked: "How to solve the problem of cotton seeds? Listening to what you said, it is obvious that we want to expand cotton farms on a large scale in Xuzhou, but now there seems to be no cotton seeds in the entire Daqian, and now we have raised more than a dozen Billions of dollars, it seems that more than one million acres will be planted at one time. This is not a problem that can be solved with just a few seeds."
Everyone was shocked, as if countless amounts of money were about to fly away from them.
But Mi Zhu smiled and said: "Although the businessmen in Xiliang are strict in keeping secrets, they have strict restrictions on cotton seeds. They are even worried that the cotton seeds will flow out of Xiliang. They squeeze the cotton seeds into oil every year, and Even the pressed seeds will be used as fertilizer, and not a single seed will leak out. It can be said that the protection has been reached to the limit."
"But they have forgotten that cotton is not a product of my work. It is a product of the Western Regions. There are countless cotton seeds in the Western Regions. It can be said that they are useless at all. After the local people select the full seeds, Any remaining seeds will be discarded.
Coincidentally, I happened to have a caravan in the Western Regions, so I happened to find this scene, so I bought these cotton seeds with money, and these cotton seeds have followed my caravan back to Xuzhou. If all these seeds are planted, they will be cultivated. It’s not a problem to grow tens of thousands of acres of cotton fields, so you don’t have to worry about seeds at all.”
After hearing this, everyone finally felt at ease. Mi Zhu had really thought of everything in order to revive his family. All they had to do was follow suit.
At the same time, at the Jizhou Chamber of Commerce in Ji County, Wang Guojun also invited all the local big businessmen and congressmen in Jizhou to gather!
Compared with the parliamentarians and big businessmen in Xuzhou, Wang Guojun and the merchants and parliamentarians in Jizhou are very familiar with each other.
They did not say any nonsense, but Wang Guojun took out a map of Hebei and spread it on the ground. He pointed at Jizhou and Youzhou with a short stick and said: "The infrastructure construction in Jizhou has been extremely complete in recent years. In terms of industry, because it is far away from raw materials, the textile industry and steel industry cannot develop in Youzhou and Bingzhou, but we have the specialty of glass, and the salt industry and fishing industry are also the first, and now half of the world's canned fish They are all produced in Jizhou, and Jizhou's fiscal revenue is not much worse than Bingzhou's."
This is also the thing that Wang Guojun feels most helpless. The largest industries in the country now are the textile industry and the steel factory. However, it is difficult for these two industries to grow in Jizhou because of the raw materials!
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! "But our development in Jizhou has reached its peak. If we want to continue to develop rapidly, we cannot continue to do this step by step, otherwise we may be caught up by other states and counties!" "
Zhen An, who was beside Wang Guojun, asked: "Has the governor already thought of a way for Jizhou to continue to develop at a rapid pace?"
Others also looked at Wang Guojun. To them, Jizhou had developed very fast, but since Wang Guojun said this, they could only cooperate with Wang Guojun. After all, they were the parents of their hometown, and they had to rely on Wang Guojun to make a fortune.
Wang Guojun said: "At that time, Governor Zhang had the idea of building a water transportation network to connect the entire Jizhou. Unfortunately, this idea was too expensive, even with our financial resources in Jizhou, it was difficult to support it. At most, we built a canal network to provide us with future development. Lay the foundation.”
After the appearance of rail carriages in this world, the entire Daqian business prospered rapidly, and local wealth increased rapidly. This made Daqian's senior officials realize that roads can play a vital role in the development and prosperity of a place, and rail tracks After all, horse-drawn carriages are not real trains, and the transportation volume is still too small. Now it has become a factor limiting the commercial development of Jizhou.
When Zhang Baiqi was the governor of Jizhou, he wanted to build a water transportation network. After all, Jizhou's geographical location is so good, with a flat river, and the cost of digging waterways is the lowest. Just like Bingzhou is richer than Jizhou, they have no such idea. They are at most Change the tracks from iron-clad wood to rails.
Pointing to the map of Ji County, Wang Guojun attacked all the way down to Zhuo County, Hejian, Anping, and all the way to the Yellow River, and then said: "If we go step by step, first dig a grand canal connecting Ji County, and connect the entire Youzhou and Jizhou. With the power of our two states, we should be able to do it!"
Zhen An was surprised and said: "The governor wants to dig a big canal!"