In the center of Lanfang City, there is a ten-story office building.
This is the tallest building in Lanzhou, with a total construction area of 12,000 square meters and can accommodate nearly a thousand people for office work.
It was only at 10:30 in the morning that Savu Yang took his leisure time and came to the company to work in his Porsche.
For him who has a rich nightlife, going to work at this point is considered quite dedicated.
The driver respectfully parked the car at the elevator entrance of the underground garage, got out of the car, opened the door for Savuyang, and pressed the elevator button. After watching the boss get up, he parked the Porsche back in the parking space.
Savuyang has hundreds of people (including sailors) and more than a dozen ships running international routes, and controls most of Lanzhou's import and export trade.
However, his several hundred people are obviously not enough to fill such a large office building.
Therefore, there is only one truth - this building is shared by him and other units.
Above the 6th floor is his foreign trade company.
The 4th and 5th floors downstairs are the commercial department of Lanfang.
Floors 1 to 3 are the "outer offices" of Lanfang.
Two departments and one company share an office building, which is what a small country like this can do. The departments here usually don't do much trouble, and there are only dozens of office workers in the headquarters. Lanfang's Commerce Department,
It's like a rubber stamp for Savu Yang.
The same situation is happening in another office building two streets away - where Zhu Jingye's real estate development/infrastructure engineering company is located.
Downstairs of Zhu Jingye Company is Lanfang's Finance Department, which is mainly responsible for the country's infrastructure budget and planning. The ground floor is Lanfang's Construction Department.
This strange structure makes it very fast and convenient for anyone with power to do something in Lan Fang and get an approval document or something.
For example, if you want to establish business cooperation with a foreign country that you have not had much contact with before, you only need to convince Sa Wuyang, and he will ask the secretary to go downstairs with the application and stamp it, and the relevant business department will get the approval.
In the same way, if you can persuade Zhu Jingye to build a certain road this year and do underground pipeline construction in a certain area, he can get the Ministry of Finance and Economics to approve the budget during his lunch break.
…
If Gu Kun wanted to see Savu Yang for business, he would of course inquire about Savu Yang's schedule and make an appointment in advance.
So he came to visit Savuyang half an hour after he started working.
In this way, it is estimated that the other party has almost handled the daily routine chores.
Gu Kun was still wearing the same hard linen shirt and Lee brand jeans today, wearing a sun hat and sunglasses, and Shi Shiran walked into the lobby on the first floor.
There is a front desk next to the elevator hall, as well as security and security checks. A pretty female staff member asked him politely: "Sir, this is Lanfang Foreign Affairs Department. Who are you..."
"I'm not here to see you, I made an appointment with Mr. Sa." Gu Kun said and handed over his ID card.
After the female receptionist verified the reservation, she respectfully returned his ID card to him and told the security guard next to him: "Get this gentleman the elevator to the ninth floor."
There is no way, why did Lan Fang Shuang External and Foreign Trade Company hire the same security guards?
This country can only support two to three thousand fiscally allocated personnel (one thousand regular civil servants, and the others are considered professional/temporary workers).
Compared with the population of more than 80,000, it is basically 30 taxpayers to support one person who eats royal food.
After enjoying the treatment of a foreign affairs officer, Gu Kun was respectfully sent to the ninth floor.
"Here, sit down." Sa Wuyang took a cup of tea soaked with wolfberry, took a sip, and raised his hand slightly to signal Gu Kun to help himself, "Why do you want to discuss business during work hours?"
Savu Yang said this very naturally, as if he shouldn't discuss business during working hours.
Gu Kun sat down on the sofa opposite and poured himself a glass of water from the water dispenser: "After I bought Benma Reef that day, I went back and thought about it for two days. I felt that our current environment and infrastructure in Lanfang were too poor to do anything.
Tourism. We must at least make great efforts in transportation and publicity to attract wealthy foreigners."
Sa Wuyang nodded noncommittally: "It seems that you have done your homework seriously. However, it is useless for you to tell me about this matter. You should go to Zhu Jingye. He is in charge of the country's transportation infrastructure. Anyway, every year
With such a budget of less than 100 million ringgit, if you want him to tilt, it depends on what you can bring to him."
Gu Kun could tell that Sa Wuyang was very cold when he said these words.
Obviously, he felt that if Gu Kun did anything to improve the national infrastructure, he would fall into the hands of Zhu Jingye.
Then, there are nothing more than two possibilities:
Or, Gu Kun was regarded by Zhu Jingye as someone on his side, and in the end nothing could be done, and he was in trouble.
Either way, Gu Kun did get the job done, but he must have been won over by Zhu Jingye and changed his affiliation.
In either case, there seems to be no benefit to him savoir-faire.
The reason why Sa Wuyang did not deliberately hide his emotions was because he underestimated Gu Kun's ability to observe words and emotions. He still regarded Gu Kun as a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old.
It's a pity that Gu Kun is an uncle in his early forties inside, so how could he not see the other party's concerns?
He cleverly said: "Looking for Boss Zhu and Minister Zhu is of course one way, but I have thought about it. The transportation infrastructure needs to see rapid results within one or two years, and relying on his little financial allocation is simply not enough. We should look for foreign countries
investment, or financing from foreign banks.”
Sawuyang couldn't help but find it a bit ridiculous: "I'm just kidding, how can foreign capital be willing to invest in infrastructure projects in a place like Lanfang? As for issuing national bonds and having foreign banks underwrite them, it is not feasible."
Gu Kun: "But if it is a project with a relatively mature business model, and the construction target can be used as a mortgage, and the future rent repayment can be used to repay the loan, there will be foreign banks willing to give money. And, if this is the case, it is not necessarily
If you ask Minister Zhu to allocate money, you can apply for the contract."
Sa Wuyang felt something, but he didn't dare to be convinced at the end: "You mean..."
Gu Kun: "I think we can put aside those roads, bridges and airports first, and focus on expanding the port - you are the controller of the country's foreign trade, and the facility specifications and throughput capacity of Lanfang Port involve the scale of the country's foreign trade.
So, as long as you don’t use the state’s financial allocation, you can apply directly to the Grand Duke or the Deputy Prime Minister for port expansion, and you should be able to get authorization, right?”
Lanfang Kingdom had a prime minister in name, but for ten years since its independence, the Grand Duke himself had held the concurrent post. Later, it was simply abolished. There was only one Deputy Prime Minister, who could be regarded as helping the Grand Duke handle day-to-day affairs.
There is nothing strange about this pattern. This is the case in Saudi Arabia. The king is also the prime minister and will remain in office until his death.
Contemporary countries that still adopt traditional monarchies (different from "constitutional monarchy") are basically no less weird than this. In the United Arab Emirates, there is a chief under the president, and the president is usually concurrently served by the chief of the tribe of Abu Dhabi.
.
As for Gu Kun's purpose of focusing on port affairs, it is actually very obvious: he knows that building an airport will cost more, so it is better to expand the port first so that Lanfang can dock ocean cruise ships in a few years, so that his tourism industry plan can be completed
There are customers.
"Bypass Zhu Jingye and go directly to the deputy prime minister to apply for port expansion?" A trace of desire for power and interests flashed in Sa Wuyang's eyes.
He has helped his brother-in-law manage the country's foreign trade for seven or eight years, and has always focused on operating fleets and importing consumer goods. He has never thought about expanding Lanfang Port.
The main reason is that his subtle competitive relationship with Zhu Jingye makes it difficult for him to speak out, and the country's infrastructure budget is indeed not large. Now that Gu Kun has put a piece of pie in his mouth to expand his authority, he is sure
Subconsciously I want to bite.
But after calming down for a moment, he realized that it wasn't that simple.
Expanding the port without spending any money from the state can indeed bypass Zhu Jingye.
But no one has dared to do it for so many years, and it’s not without reason - how can we recoup the cost of expanding the port? Lanfang only has such a small amount of import and export trade business, and when the time comes to expand the port by issuing national bonds, the terminal utilization rate will not be enough.
When you are full, you have to walk around.
After he calmed down, he sighed: "This matter... is easy to say. After the expansion, how will the business volume be solved? Our Lanfang only has such a small amount of domestic demand, even if I control the share of the Chinese import market in Kuching through the S channel.
That is, the consumption power of a population of 500,000, how much transport capacity will be needed?”
Gu Kun: "There was no way in the past, but it doesn't mean there will still be no way in the future. Mr. Sa, the outside world has changed. It is very different from the environment in the 1980s - China has risen and will become an increasingly larger world factory in the future.
.
If we can be one-sided in diplomacy, establish a good relationship with China, and let them come up with some guiding policies, even if we only take away a few percentage points from Lijiapo's business of refueling and repairing passing ships, it will be enough to support our small and cheap port.
.
After all, there are three to four million people in Lijiapo, with more than half a million employees and tens of billions of port investments that rely on the shipping industry. And we in Lanfang only have more than 80,000 people. Even if Lanfang Port is expanded now, it will not be possible in the future.
In a few years, at most, there will only be a few thousand people and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, relying on shipping. Taking 5% of China-related re-export trade volume from Li Jiapo will be enough for us to enjoy prosperity."
Gu Kun's insights made Sa Wuyang completely excited.
He is a knowledgeable person, and of course he knows that it is not impossible to snatch Li Jiapo's shipping business.
Many onlookers who don’t know much about Lijiapo think that the reason why Lijiapo’s economy is developed is its monopoly advantage in the shipping industry. They even think that Lijiapo’s origins are Panamanian-style. This is really a huge misunderstanding.
The Strait of Malacca is a natural waterway. Even if it requires manual dredging and maintenance, it can be passed free of charge. It is impossible to charge high tolls like the Panama Canal.
So Li Jiapo didn't start by buying money from the road. They just grew up slowly because of the tax and re-export advantages after more goods passed by, coupled with the shrewd management of the Chinese -
In other words, on the long Strait of Malacca, there are many ports in Malaya and Indonesia that can compete with Li Jiapo and are always thinking about replacing it. This is an open market, not a monopoly market.
It was during many years of operation that the Malays and Indonesians were unable to compete because their organizational efficiency was not as good as that of the Chinese and their business savvy was not as good as that of the Chinese, which allowed Li Jiapo to dominate.
However, the fact that the Malays and Indonesians "cannot rob" it means that this business is "allowed to rob".
As for Lanfang, it is actually not far from the main waterway of East Asia trade routes - Lanfang is located near the Natuna Islands. If you look at the map of Nanyang, you will know that from Lanfang to the west-southwest of 330 nautical miles, you will reach Lijiapo.
The distance is really not that far.
If a ship coming out of the Strait of Malacca is going to ports in South China, then it may have to take a detour of more than 100 nautical miles to Lanzhou - the normal route should be to sail out of the strait and immediately turn north-northeast and pass through Badas.
The archipelago sails from the Gulf of Siam and then heads north along the coast of Vietnam.
However, after leaving the Strait of Malacca, ships heading to ports in East China and even Japan and South Korea hardly need to take a detour when passing through Lanfang, or at most twenty or thirty nautical miles. The matter of stretching one's legs can be ignored.
"Do you have any ideas on how to specifically grab it, how to build a good relationship with China, and what kind of orders to focus on?" Sa Wuyang became more and more eager as he thought about it, and couldn't help but ask Gu Kun for details.