The two BBC reporters fled from Lashio in a panic like frightened birds. They took an old-fashioned jeep and rushed to Mandalay, more than 200 kilometers away.
Halfway through the car, the driver yawned to express that he wanted to take a rest. The British man watched the driver take out a cigarette from his pocket and smoked one before feeling refreshed.
It was not a good feeling to stop halfway in the wilderness and walk with a drug addict. The two British guys were afraid that the smoker would be too high and cause a car accident on the way, so they insisted on driving by themselves.
This journey was like fleeing. After finally leaving the mountains in northeastern Myanmar and arriving in Mandalay, the British immediately called the police locally and said that his translator was shot dead in Lashio. The local officials only said "oh" to express their knowledge.
.
"Aren't you going to investigate?"
"What to check?"
"Someone died."
"You should have signed an agreement when you applied to go to Lashio. We reminded you to pay attention to safety. Now you can come back from Lashio intact. This is a great blessing."
The low-level official responsible for the reception did not pay attention to the British man's call to the police and only made a simple record. This made the British man, who is a BBC reporter, even more angry.
"Do you just ignore the invasion of the Holy Light Group? Even our reporters in Yangon heard the news, but you in Mandalay were indifferent?"
This is a huge accusation. The official who received the reception said with a straight face, "You British people like to slander and smear for no reason. The Holy Light Group has signed agreements with the Wa and Shan States and has been invited to invest in these places. What's wrong with this?"
?
Because of Holy Light's investment, almost half of the tobacco fields in the Golden Triangle have been wiped out. Except for the drug dealers, everyone has benefited. The security situation this month is obviously much better.
Even we in Mandalay are about to sign a cooperation agreement with the Holy Light. Both parties will jointly fund the construction of a regular road with a total length of more than 300 kilometers from Muse Port to Mandalay. It is expected to be completed in two years.
As long as this road is built, heavy trucks can drive directly from Muse to Mandalay in four hours. Our food and timber can be sold to China more easily.
'Holy Light' also agreed to build a vehicle manufacturing plant in Mandalay. They will send people to teach us how to produce motorized tricycles and four-wheelers. From leveling the land to building factories, to water and power supply, and localized production of spare parts.
, teach them all.
Mandalay needs such a factory, and we have selected land outside the city. The engineers of ‘Holy Light’ guarantee that the beam-frame factory can be built in half a year and put into production within a year. The annual output will be at least 100,000 vehicles.”
When the number of '100,000' vehicles was mentioned, the officials who received it were also full of expectations. For Myanmar, a country with almost zero industry, a vehicle factory with an annual output of 100,000 vehicles is a huge improvement.
This will drive the development of an entire industrial chain, add tens of thousands of "high-income" jobs, provide society with much-needed delivery vehicles, and greatly improve labor efficiency.
But the two British guys exclaimed: "This will put you into a debt trap that is difficult to escape. It will pose a huge threat to your finances, and you will be dragged bankrupt by unbearable interest rates. This is the case in Latin America now."
The reception official looked askance at this, "Our current financial situation is bad enough, how can it get worse? The government doesn't have money to pay the salaries of civil servants, and we don't even have basic gasoline and diesel now.
Besides, if the Holy Light invests its own money, how can there be debts? No one owes debts, so how can the high interest rates come from? What are you thinking? The Holy Light doesn’t play your tricks."
‘Holy Light’ doesn’t engage in financing?
The British guy was stuck in a traffic jam. He thought for a long time before continuing: "You have vehicles but you still lack gasoline and diesel. With an annual output of 100,000 vehicles, your foreign exchange cannot support the import of large amounts of oil."
Myanmar is extremely short of oil, including gasoline and diesel. However, they do not have much foreign exchange to import, which means that their domestic vehicles cannot run, let alone agricultural machinery. Social development is a joke.
But the receptionist shrugged.
"'Shengguang' is willing to invest and build a refinery on the western coast to produce oil for us. They will also lay oil pipelines, which will not only meet our domestic needs, but also export to the interior of China.
As for the current demand for oil, Shengguang also expressed its willingness to do its best to meet it. This condition is difficult for us to refuse, so Yangon also agreed to the investment cooperation project between the two parties."
For an agricultural country, industrial products that can greatly improve production efficiency are an irresistible temptation. For example, a water pump can allow more farmland to be irrigated, greatly reducing the amount of labor and reaping several times the benefits.
Is that farmer really willing to spend endless hours fetching water in the fields during the busy summer? Isn’t he just looking forward to having mechanical equipment to help?
In farming, sowing, fertilizing, spraying, harvesting, and transportation, every step requires the intervention of agricultural machinery in order to achieve dozens or hundreds of times of efficiency improvement.
But you know, which industrial country is willing to selflessly help another agricultural country? You can say nice things, but the interests still need to be negotiated.
Now the 'Holy Light' has appeared. It talks about nothing but money.
It doesn't matter if it's a machinery factory that produces tricycles.
But the refinery and the oil pipeline sounded like a huge project and a terrible one. The two British guys' heads were about to explode and they found this news unacceptable.
“Where is the refinery going to be built?”
"I don't know, it hasn't been decided in the short term. Anyway, it's on the west coast." The reception official pointed to the map of Myanmar in his office, and the two British guys were about to scream.
"There must be a conspiracy. To the west of Myanmar is the Bay of Bengal, which covers an area of more than two million square kilometers and has a water depth of more than one thousand meters. This place is perfect for the cruise of ballistic missile nuclear submarines."
"No, you can't allow the Holy Light to build a refinery. This will bring a huge threat to the world of freedom and democracy. When there is a refinery, there will be a port. When there is a port, there will be a military base. When there is a military base, it will be seized.
Your living space.”
The two British guys seemed to be hysterically describing the end of the world.
The receptionist was dumbfounded by the way they showed their teeth and claws. After a while, he said calmly: "Yes, just like what you British people did before."
"We are a civilized society, different from those evil regimes."
"So you're blocking us? Counting us as evil."
The British guy is dumb again.
Yangon is now unable to bear the blockade by the West. The country is on the verge of collapse and disintegration. In the next two years, it will have to bow its head and beg for mercy. But now Zhou Qingfeng has taken action. I really want to thank the West for driving this neighboring country to desperation.
There are a lot of outdated production lines in China that need to be eliminated, and a huge amount of backward production capacity waiting to be scrapped. All of these things are negative assets that no one wants - but this may not be the case in other countries.
In any of the larger cities in China, who doesn’t have the “Five Small Enterprises”? Just because of Yunnan’s backward status, Zhou Qingfeng can create a large number of industrial junk, as well as hundreds of thousands of skilled workers who are about to be eliminated.
Most of these people are in their 40s and 50s. They can no longer keep up with the development of the times and have no ability to learn and progress. Apart from being taken care of and setting up a small stall to do some odd jobs, why not go abroad to live in a cool life?
Anyway, agricultural countries are not picky, they need low-end industrial products.
Isn't this just a matter of hitting it off?
Looking further into the long term, there were too many areas that needed low-end industrial products in the 1990s. The market was huge!