Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 201 Light Industry Development

The third step of the separation of the military and the government was to place the industrial system under government jurisdiction and to change the nature of all large and small enterprises established since the founding of the country into state-owned enterprises.

State-owned enterprises are operated under a model in which the government and the people jointly hold shares. The state holds more than 50 percent of the company's shares, and the remaining shares are distributed among the royal family, company employees, and meritorious soldiers according to their contributions.

China's monarchy of more than 2,000 years has conditioned the people to develop the habitual understanding that the monarch is the country. In addition, Li Mingyuan has made many contributions since he led the Chinese workers in the uprising. Therefore, in the distribution of corporate shares, government officials and senior military officers agreed that Li Mingyuan should hold a larger share.

Li Mingyuan is the monarch of a country. All state affairs are under his control. How many shares he owns in state-owned enterprises is not his main concern. However, as the supreme head of Rio Grande dominica, Li Mingyuan needs to set an example for his officials and soldiers. If he himself is unwilling to own shares in the enterprise, the officials, officers and soldiers under him will be embarrassed to ask for shares if their contributions are far less than Li Mingyuan.

Finally, after discussions and consultations among all parties, according to unified standards, the state held 55% of the shares in each factory, Li Mingyuan, representing the royal family, held 10% of the shares, meritorious military generals and national defense forces held 20% of the shares, government officials held 5% of the shares, and enterprise employees obtained the final 10% of the shares.

The control of state-owned enterprises is in the hands of the government, and the shares held by the military and officials are exercised by Li Mingmo. Therefore, although the corporate shareholding structure has changed, the control of domestic enterprises large and small is still firmly in the hands of Li Mingyuan.

Due to the insufficient population resources in the country, the basic policy formulated by Li Mingyuan was to concentrate limited resources on developing industry and the national economy. After sorting out the three major aspects of the separation of military and politics, Li Mingyuan took advantage of the few days before his departure to return to his busy work.

The separation of functions between military generals and government officials and the establishment of new schools were assigned to Liu Pu, Zhao Yan and others, while Li Mingyuan was personally in charge of industry.

In three days, the desk was filled with production data records from factories. After three busy days, Li Mingyuan finally had a new understanding of the industrial development status of Rio Grande do Sul.

The textile industry is the industry most closely related to the lives of the people, and it is also one of the most advantageous industries in Chinese society for thousands of years. Before the Industrial Revolution, the textile industry mainly relied on manual operations, with low production efficiency, resulting in high prices for some exquisite silk products. With the end of the First Industrial Revolution, the powerful countries led by Britain used new production technologies to greatly improve production efficiency and scale. In London, factories were filled with textiles, which were then loaded and transported by steam freighters to the Far East thousands of miles away and sold to the Central Plains, the birthplace of silk.

Driven out by cheap British textile products, traditional hand-woven textile workshops in Suzhou, Songjiang and Changzhou on the mainland went bankrupt one after another. Many female textile workers were reduced to selling themselves on the streets. However, the British Empire, which reaped the benefits of a vast commodity market, became increasingly powerful on the road of development.

The textile industry is a low-tech industry, but it is also an important industry related to people's lives and national stability.

At a time when Britain was opening up the continental market and selling textiles on a large scale, Japan, not far away on the other side of the sea, began to implement the Meiji Restoration Movement. The country promulgated reform laws from top to bottom and supported the development of the local textile industry by formulating policies that were beneficial to the country's textile industry.

In the early days of the Meiji Restoration, Japan mainly relied on exporting raw materials, food, tea and other agricultural products to obtain foreign trade profits.

In terms of the export share from 1866 to 1868, in 1866, food and raw materials accounted for 56%, and textiles accounted for 25%. By 1868, food and raw materials accounted for 50%, and textiles accounted for 35%.

During the initial difficult stage of the Meiji Restoration, Japan used the profits from exporting textiles to accumulate the first funds for industrialization, laying the foundation for the future rise of Japan's economy.

It is undeniable that Japan's Meiji Restoration had a progressive side. It enabled Japan to break away from being a backward agricultural country and develop from a small country into a major East Asian power that could stand on equal footing with Western powers.

The situation in Rio Grande do Sul in the early days of its founding was more dangerous than that in Japan. Therefore, in terms of industrial development, Li Mingyuan took more radical measures than Japan. In the early days of the Meiji Restoration, Japan's textile industry mainly relied on the government to formulate support policies, while production relied on cheap labor for manual production. It was not until more than ten years after the Reform Movement, around 1880, that textile machinery was introduced for industrialized production. In Rio Grande do Sul, because Li Mingyuan had more insights from later generations, the textile industry took the path of industrialized development from the very beginning.

The textile industry consists of four links from raw materials to finished products: raw cotton - spinning - weaving and dyeing. Among the four links, except for the collection of raw materials, which requires manual operation, the three main links of spinning, weaving and dyeing are all completed by machines.

In Pelotas County, an agricultural base in Rio Grande do Sul, the purchased raw materials such as cotton, flax, wool, alpaca and so on are transported to textile factories near the sea. The raw materials are then processed by a series of textile machinery such as textile machines, looms, printing machines, dyeing machines, etc., and turned into brand new cloth. Finally, part of the cloth is transported to garment factories as raw materials for military uniforms and rushed to be made into black or gray military uniforms, while the other part is directly sold to ordinary Chinese through newly opened shops.

Li Mingyuan spent more than one hundred tons of gold on purchasing industrial equipment including textile machinery, but the gold was not wasted. In the textile industry alone, several textile factories equipped with a complete set of textile machinery quickly switched to busy formal production after trial production. Orders from the army for up to 100,000 military uniforms brought the textile factories into their first peak of production. After industrialized production and a significant reduction in product prices, the textile industrial base in Hetao County not only received large-scale orders from ordinary Chinese, but even the Paraguayans, as allies, began to buy fabrics from the textile factories.

The Hetao Textile Factory is the hottest industry in Rio Grande do Sul. Orders from the military, domestic Chinese and Paraguayans have meant that the textile factory has been in short supply since it started production. As the most important link in commercial transactions, a large number of cloth shops and clothing stores have emerged. Some retired or disabled veterans have obtained support from the government and purchased cloth from textile factories by delaying payment, and then sold them to ordinary Chinese through stores. In addition to the cloth shops opened by retired Chinese soldiers, there are more shops opened by newly immigrated Chinese businessmen in the county. They immigrated to Rio Grande do Sul with their keen sense of smell and bold and adventurous nature, and then invested their accumulated fortunes in the hottest textile industry.

Li Mingyuan was happy to see that the newly immigrated Chinese merchants were investing in the textile industry. Although the government did not give preferential treatment to merchants who opened cloth shops, such as the "pay later" policy like it did to retired soldiers, it also made many tax reductions and exemptions to reduce the cost of operating their stores. The prosperity of the textile industry not only brought manageable benefits to the newly immigrated Chinese merchants, but also had a great impact on animal husbandry and economic planting industries that were closely related to the textile industry.

As we all know, the raw materials of the textile industry are kudzu, hemp, cotton, animal fur, silk, etc. In the Central Plains, hemp is the main raw material for ordinary people's clothes, while in South America, due to the influence of its geographical location, the main textile raw materials are cotton and animal fur.

After the European colonists arrived in America, they brought flax and other plants, which changed the local economic plant species, but did not change the status of cotton as the main raw material for the textile industry. Like other places in South America, Rio Grande do Sul also uses cotton as the main raw material for textiles. In the southern plains near Uruguay, a large amount of cotton is planted. The raw materials for textiles in the Hetao Textile Factory are also obtained from nearby farmland.

The quality of cloth produced with cotton as raw material is higher than that of linen. Therefore, Li Mingyuan did not change the economic and agricultural structure of Rio Grande do Sul. He only sent people to introduce some other types of economic plants from the mainland and Europe to make the domestic economic and agricultural structure more comprehensive.

Sericulture with mulberry trees is a world-famous advantageous agricultural product of China, and the climate environment of Rio Grande do Sul is similar to that of the Jiangnan region, making it very suitable as a base for developing sericulture. Therefore, among the tasks assigned to Sun Bin by Li Mingyuan, one was to introduce mulberry trees, silkworms, and bankrupt female textile workers from the mainland to Jiangnan.

The development of cash agriculture increased the economic income of Chinese farmers, and some retired soldiers who originally did not grow cash crops or only grew a small number of cash crops also began to grow cash crops such as cotton in their own fields driven by the development of the textile industry.

Retired Chinese soldiers and Chinese workers who were allocated land all owned large areas of land. Especially for retired Chinese soldiers who had experienced the expedition, after being allocated hundreds of acres of land, most of the land had to be left vacant due to insufficient manpower. The dozens of acres of cultivated land were also too labor-intensive to harvest because of the excessive amount of rice and soybeans planted. Therefore, after comparing the benefits of planting cash crops with the benefits of planting cash crops, more and more retired soldiers chose to spare some of their energy to plant cash crops, while crops such as millet were planted according to the per capita cultivated area advocated by the government.

Due to the influence of the textile industry, domestic agriculture developed in the direction of combining economic agriculture and traditional agriculture, while animal husbandry, which provides animal fur, developed in another direction.

Due to the economic blockade by Brazil, Argentina and other countries, the number of livestock such as horses, cattle and sheep in Rio Grande do Sul was not high in the early days. Later, after the government reached an agreement with the Americans on the introduction of Chinese workers, it quickly reached an agreement on the introduction of livestock.

This transaction is the largest livestock import transaction carried out by Rio Grande do Sul. According to the agreement, Rio Grande do Sul will purchase 20,000 stallions, 40,000 mares, 10,000 bulls, 45,000 cows, 70,000 sheep, and 100,000 wild buffaloes at a one-time price from the United States at 10% below the market price.

Wild buffaloes are difficult to tame, and Rio Grande do Sul originally had no intention of purchasing them. However, after hearing the price offered by the Americans, Wang Youtian, the person in charge of Rio Grande do Sul, was tempted: the price of a bison is only one-tenth of that of a buffalo.

The price offered by the Americans was very low. After hearing this, Wang Youtian quickly reported it to Li Mingyuan. After getting his consent, he added an agreement to purchase 100,000 bison.

As for why the Americans would sell these wild buffaloes at a low price, Li Mingyuan did not understand at first. Later, after carefully asking Wang Youtian, he found out that when the Americans were building the Pacific Railway, the railway company organized company members to capture millions of bison. Except for those that were eaten by workers and died of disease, when the railway was completed, there were still more than 100,000 bison that had not been dealt with. Therefore, they thought of selling them to Rio Grande do Sul at a low price.

Although bison cannot be used to plow the fields, the profit from slaughtering them as beef cattle is more than the price of purchasing them from Americans. Moreover, bison can not only be eaten, but also be bred with buffalo to produce the next generation of domesticated buffalo.

The transaction with the Americans went relatively smoothly. By October 1869, all the purchased livestock had arrived in Rio Grande do Sul. In addition, some livestock that were injured during transportation were effectively utilized. Li Mingyuan instructed the food processing factory to make them into canned food for the troops.

The food processing industry developed from livestock breeding is different from economic agriculture. In addition to the fur of livestock being supplied to textile factories as raw materials, the meat of livestock itself can be canned and preserved.

After the development of preservation technology, food preservation is no longer a restriction on people's consumption. Using iron cans to preserve perishable meat products has reduced the price of meat, making meat affordable for ordinary people.

Rio Grande do Sul is located on the Pampas Plain. The local rich agricultural resources provide ample development space for the food processing industry. As for canned foods, under the guidance of Li Mingyuan, the processing plant not only produces various canned meats, but also develops many new products in fruits, sauces, vegetables, etc.

The cattle, sheep and other livestock purchased from the United States were mainly used for agricultural development. There was not much meat available for ordinary people to eat. In the early stages, canned meat was mainly supplied to the troops. Therefore, the food processing plants initially produced mainly canned vegetables and fruits.

It is a pity that we cannot eat meat often, but it is also a good thing to buy a can of inexpensive canned vegetables or fruits and taste the taste of specially processed canned food for the first time.

It was not as popular as the textile industry. As a new thing, canned food was only circulated in a small circle at the beginning. Later, after tasting the canned food, more Chinese people chose to buy it a second time. As more and more people came into contact with canned food, the originally fresh food became a daily necessity for ordinary people, and the food processing industry was also inadvertently integrated into the ordinary Chinese.

(End of this chapter)