The situation in the Far East can be described in one sentence, that is, "there is no big wave"! Major Junior, who is in Macau, also used this as the title of his half-year performance report, which seems to show his increasingly profound "advanced knowledge" (i.e., Sinology) foundation.

After half a year of construction, the commercial station located on Zhu Island, outside the city of Guangzhou has been completed. This fortress-style commercial station covers a large area of ​​not small and 100 rooms, seven or eight warehouses, and can accommodate up to more than a thousand soldiers. It has strong self-supporting ability. If some wells are dug inside the commercial station, then it seems that it is not a big problem to hold here under the siege of the army for a year or two, because there is no force nearby that can harm them. What? Li Chengdong, Duke Hui of the Southern Ming Dynasty? Brother, don’t tease it? Just those poor troops under his command want to be enemies with our Great East Coast? This joke is not funny at all.

Li Chengdong's people didn't discover the "specificity" of the commercial station built by the East Coast people on Haizhu Island, because anyone with a little military literacy can find this problem. That is, the Haizhu Commercial Station is not so much a commercial station, but a fortress, but the East Coast people only need to transport cannons and turn it into a war weapon full of minions overnight. Anyway, with the level of Li Chengdong's subordinates, there is no way to do it.

During the construction of the Haizhu Island Merchant Station, Li Chengdong naturally sent people to negotiate. Later, people on the east coast bribed a military capital and clearly stated that they would not install cannons. In fact, there were more than ten cannons hidden in the business station and could be used at any time, but this was not worthy of advice from outsiders. After that, Li Chengdong reluctantly agreed to the continued construction of the Haizhu Island Merchant Station.

Of course, although the Haizhu Island Commercial Station has not been fully built, the relevant trade can be carried out. At present, Shao Shuguang's representative Han Ku (the brother of Han Jin and Han Yin, the son of Han Keda) has taken some commercial personnel and guards to rent a large residential house on Haizhu Island, and officially handled a trade matter on behalf of the Taiwan Bank.

A few days ago, after the Hei Water Development Team held a Standing Committee meeting, it was officially granted the Taiwan Bank \/The trading bank a 30-year monopoly on import and export rights of a total of 16 commodities including raw silk and its finished products, tea, porcelain, sugar, sandalwood, camphor, whale products, high-end fur, and Nanyang rice. To this end, the Taiwan Bank has undergone a significant restructuring of the Hei Water Development Team. The government's shareholding in the Hei Water Development Team increased from 19% to 39%, and the local Ministry of Finance's shares still remained unchanged.

The shares of natural person shareholders, including Shaw Brothers, have been greatly compressed (even if Shaw Brothers invested and subscribed part of the shares, its shareholding ratio dropped to about 7.5%), but no one expressed dissatisfaction, because the monopoly of import and export of various commodities in China means such as amazing wealth, and those who know the business will naturally understand. Otherwise, why do you think the government would grant such commercial privileges to Taiwanese banks and prevent them from adjusting their equity ratio? You think you will get such privileges? The government is not a fool!

Thanks to the war that occurred in Macau in the end of 1660 and early 1661, merchants from wealthy areas such as Guangzhou and Huizhou have now thoroughly understood the unusually powerful energy of the "yellow-clothed thief" - they even had to deal with Franji people who were 250,000 or 80,000. Isn't this strong? Therefore, more and more merchants are willing to trade with the East Coast people. Especially the Guangzhou merchants who are usually entangled with the Duke Huiguo Mansion, they sent their confidant family members to explore the way at the first time, expressing their willingness to start trade, which surprised Han Ku. He sighed in his heart: This commercial interest really has to be developed and maintained by force, otherwise these people would not have come to the door to negotiate business, and they also benefited a lot of money and received a lot of red envelopes.

Most of the things that the Cantonese merchants talk about were tea and raw silk. Of course, there was also some porcelain trade, but they were not produced by themselves, but were sold from other places. Anyway, the East Coast people would still be able to collect sugar in large quantities in Guangdong Province. However, the East Coast people only symbolically purchased hundreds of chunks of sugar. Due to the agreement with the Dutch, most of the sucrose purchase quotas for the East Coast people still had to be left to Taiwan’s sucrose (for this reason, the Dutch East India Company has already restored the area of ​​Taiwan’s sugar cane fields), so they can only talk about Guangdong and Fujian sucrose.

Cantonese merchants are still interested in the Nanyang specialties (such as ambergris, sandalwood, spices, etc.) resold by Taiwanese banks. In addition, they are also very interested in medicinal materials produced in the North (especially ginseng, deer antler, etc.), high-end fur, whale oil candle soap (in trial production in Heishui County), black pearls produced in the South Pacific, some high-end dyed cloths, watches and other strange objects produced in the local area. However, in general, people from the East Coast entered the large number of these trades. The various silver dollars minted by the Dabo Mints day and night flowed into the pockets of merchants in Guangzhou, Huizhou and other places.

At present, the Taiwan Bank is also trying to find out whether the local government can adjust the shipping space and transport some advantageous goods that seem to be sold at the Ming Dynasty in the Far East to balance the trade deficit between the two sides. Otherwise, wouldn’t the East Coast people be hardworking transporters and send precious metals obtained from Europe, Africa, America and other places back to the land of the Ming Dynasty? What’s this like? Commander Chang and Deputy Commander Liao must be very tearful at this time. Why did we arrive at our Great East Coast here, but we still can’t escape the vicious circle of silver black holes? Could it be that we really have to import opium into China to reverse this process? Well, the above is just a joke...

A large number of materials obtained from the trade were temporarily stored in the Haizhu Island Merchant Station. At present, the East Coast people have collected some homeless bachelors in Guangzhou Prefecture, and then hired them to work at the Haizhu Merchant Station to act as coolies for loading and unloading goods. However, the core armed forces of the Merchant Station were still transferred from Shandong to a group of North Korean military men. In a colorful world like Guangzhou, the Korean military men who were not well-versed in language and had certain combat skills were even more trusted by Shao Shuguang and others.

After the inspection, the materials will be loaded on the island nearby, and then transported to the Taiwan Bank branch warehouse in Dinghai County, Ningbo Prefecture to uniformly allocate, waiting for the annual ships to be transported back to the east coast via the Indian Ocean route (the Strait of Malacca). As for where the ships from the Taiwan Bank came from to transport goods, well, the three armed transport ships of the Third Fleet Okhotsk Sea Squadron (the "Yaksa" and the "Nebchu" that have just been built and put into service, are all steam engine sailboats) have basically been temporarily allocated to Taiwan Bank for use, provided that they pay a symbolic leasing fee every year.

Speaking of this, we have to mention the Portuguese in Macau. In fact, most of the trade in Guangdong and Guangxi was monopolized by them. Except for a few foreign trade goods sold on Haizhu Island to merchants in other countries every year, the rest were all Portuguese merchants in Macau. The scale of this business was extremely large, so it was terrible to feed tens of thousands of white people and their descendants in Macau! But with the fall of Macau and the nearby waters were blocked by ships on the east coast, the Portuguese business naturally disappeared - no, now even their lives have to be safe, and they still talk about business - so many people, under the efforts of some officials of the Huiguo Duke's Office (often taking large benefits from Taiwan Bank), finally came to Haizhu Island to trade with the East Coast people.

China's Guangdong coastal trade dominance has been officially replaced by another force. As for how the Zheng family in Fujian would view this maritime force that has a strong competitive relationship with them, that is another matter. At least the people on the East Coast don't have to worry too much at the moment.

The East Coast people can not care about Zheng Damu, so can they not care about the views of the British East India Company? Haha, judging from the practice of the Far East Blackwater Development Team, they also didn't care about it. In mid-1661, two British merchant ships arrived from India in the south wind, and then suddenly appeared on the coast of Haizhu Island to request transactions. I don't know how these people came at that time, and they actually escaped the interception of the East Coast fleet from the outer coast! But their good luck only ended here. The powerful "Cadis Rock" warship far away was two British merchant ships into the far sea and then sank them in one fell swoop, which shows the determination of the East Coast people to monopolize trade. As for the consequences of this matter and how it will develop in the future, will the British find out that it has nothing to do with me, let's talk about what happens in the future!

In addition to trade transactions, as a large state-controlled syndicate, Taiwan Bank naturally has to undertake a series of policy tasks, such as collecting immigrants near the coast of Guangdong - to be precise, Guangzhou Prefecture -. According to the old rules, the search for immigrants starts from the easiest people. As of August this year (1661), people from the East Coast had collected more than 4,000 civilians near the coast of Guangzhou Prefecture (in addition to more than 500 ordinary immigrants who could not survive), and achieved remarkable results. Commander Chang and Deputy Commander Liao had written letters to praise Shao Shuguang, Tian Xing and others, and praised them for their great contributions.

It is naturally very exciting for Taiwan Bank to receive such praise from superiors. At present, Shao Shuguang, Tian Xing and others are still increasing their efforts to recruit Dan people, and they believe that as the poor group of Dan people deepens their understanding of the East Coast, the East Coast people will recruit them faster and faster, and the cost will also be lower and lower. However, the Dan people near Guangzhou have been recruited and there are still other places, and Guangdong has lost them and Fujian. In short, the potential here is still great, and it is worth spending a lot of effort to do it.

In addition, Shao Shuguang also sent Han Ku to implicitly to the people of Huiguo Duke's Mansion that in the past, the "piglets" of Huizhou and Huizhou's two prefectures could still continue. The East Coast people could even slightly increase the purchase price. Some military funds sold to Li Chengdong's subordinates in the past could also increase the quota. It all depends on what Duke Huiguo himself thought. Anyway, there is no problem with the East Coast people. As long as Duke Huiguo himself nods, this kind of piglet trade can continue. As for what some "pilgrim" and "do not know affairs" in the Southern Ming court would think, let him go! In this world, fathers and mothers are still not as good as silver relatives. It is said that after the instigation of the East Coast people, Li Chengdong's mind was a little shaken. Whether he will restart the piglet trade that had been engaged in several years in the future depends on how the situation changes.

Tan people from Guangzhou Prefecture, piglets from Chaozhou Prefecture; populations with immigrant tendencies in the guards of the two prefectures in Ningbo and Dengzhou Prefectures in the north; immigrants and ronin recruited by North Korea and Japan; and the largest share of existing immigrants in Huai'an Prefecture, these constitute the main body of the Far East immigrants sent to the local area by the Blackwater Development Team in the next few years - especially those from Guangzhou Prefecture who are relatively adapted to life in tropical areas, the Executive Committee even asked (the express quick contact ship currently sent to Yantai) to send them more and plan to send them to New Huaxia Island and the newly established Yicheng area for land reclamation and settlement. This is related to future strategic development and cannot be ignored.
Chapter completed!