Nanyang 1931: From piglets to giants

Chapter 153: I don't want to be a marquis, I just want the sea to be peaceful

At least in Zheng Yi's view, whether it is the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression or the entire World War II, the general trend is unlikely to change fundamentally.

Ultimately, war, especially modern war, is actually a clash of industrial productivity, and the United States alone accounts for more than 40% of global productivity.

No matter what tactics, strategies, or wisdom, no one can turn the tide in the face of this unprecedented industrial giant that accounts for 40% of industrial productivity.

Whoever the United States supports will win.

Similarly, the huge gap between China and Japan on the front battlefield made it impossible for Zheng Yi to reverse the situation on his own. No matter how they fought on the front battlefield, they would lose.

There is no industry.

We can't rely entirely on Penang for support. Penang is just a small city with a population of several million. Japan has a population of 60 million. Including Manchukuo, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan, it is a primary industrial country with a population of nearly 100 million.

The trend is irresistible.

For themselves, if Britain and France had not suffered such heavy losses in Europe and paid such heavy losses that they had no time to pay attention to Southeast Asia, could Japan really have annexed Southeast Asia so smoothly?
You must know that in history, when Japan invaded Southeast Asia in 41, Britain no longer had the ability to send large-scale troops from its homeland.
As for France and the Netherlands, they were all gone by 41 years later.

The entire Pacific battlefield was basically a one-man show by the United States.

Therefore, even without considering the overall situation or the so-called patriotic sentiment, Zheng Yi's strategic goal is still to detonate the Japanese economy in advance.

The external price increases of oil, steel and rubber caused the premature collapse of the textile industry, which accounted for 60% of the national economy before the war. As the final blow, the price of grain in Southeast Asia increased.

It is enough to completely expose every aspect of Japanese society in advance.

There were only three options before him: surrender and withdraw troops, or correct the mistakes of militarism. Needless to say, that would be very impressive. In fact, it would be a good thing for Japan, China, and even the world. It was indeed the best option.

China has been beaten to this point. Without the participation of Britain and the United States, it would be impossible to impose too harsh conditions of defeat on Japan.

Or, go north to attack the Soviet Union and attack on two fronts with the German allies, then the entire course of World War II may be changed, but at least Zheng Yi is fine and can concentrate on farming in the next few years.

He could also safely expand his influence to the entire Southeast Asia and figure out how to get the United States to dig into the corners of the British Empire.

Or, as in history, they would go south to Southeast Asia and declare war on Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France at the same time.

But there was no Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France to tie down the European battlefield.

It's exciting just thinking about it.

In order to achieve this goal, the support and cooperation of Risaburo Toyota and all Japanese in Penang are crucial.

Are fortresses always breached from the inside?

Nanyang's textile industry itself is too weak, and there is no industrial base in other places except Penang. There is a difference between going for the high-end and the low-end.

If we want to develop the textile industry, the best and fastest way is to move. But who should we move to? It can only be Japan.

After all, making a textile machine is so time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Toyota Risaburo did not refuse Zheng Yi's conditions at all. Soon, new textile factories opened one after another in Nanyang.
He himself was the leader of the Japanese overseas Chinese in Nanyang, and a large number of Japanese overseas Chinese in Nanyang were engaged in the textile industry and had close ties with the domestic textile industry.

Soon, such an industrial chain emerged in Japan: stealing old textile machines and even generators and selling them to Southeast Asia for smuggling.

Even easier than you think.

Although it was only the middle of 37, the war itself was a bit early because of Zheng Yi's existence. Due to the increase in imported materials, they became poorer faster.

Historically, boycotts of Japanese goods were often short-lived. At least 40 years ago, some of them could still be sold in Southeast Asia.

As the saying goes, when people are poor, they have low aspirations. Throughout history, Chinese people have always been poor. No matter how much they hate Japanese products, they only have so little money. If they don't buy Japanese products, they can't afford to buy clothes, so there is nothing they can do.

And in this time and space, because of Zheng Yi, at least in Southeast Asia, the boycott really means a boycott. Japanese goods are now in serious stagnation throughout Southeast Asia, and even Malays and Indians are not buying much.

Penang itself has blended fabrics, and the Chinese in Southeast Asia are indeed much richer than in history, so they can afford American cloth.

It is precisely because of this that the operating rate of Japan's textile factories is less than 50%. A large number of machines are idle and not even maintained. Over time, many parts have rusted and are about to become scrap metal.

However, Zheng Yi was buying their second-hand, even rusty, textile machines at the price of new ones.

What a great temptation this is?

After a period of time, the Japanese government must have discovered such smuggling activities. They were furious and began to strictly control them, even setting up an anti-smuggling team. But how could they control them?
There are also corrupt officials in the Japanese military. As I said, everyone needs to eat. Although other Japanese military units are not as crazy and exaggerated as the Osaka Division, with the economic downturn, everyone is suffering from poverty, and even wives and children are starting to go hungry.

This kind of Japanese soldier is very easy to bribe. After all, the one who did this personally was Toyoda Risaburo and the Yasuda Group. They were all the top chaebols in Japan in the past. No matter how bad their reputation was, they always had connections.

Japan's militarism is mostly just lip service. They claim to be more loyal to the emperor and more patriotic than anyone else, but in reality, the people at the bottom are rotten to the core.

Who wouldn't want to take advantage of the little power in their hands, make more money, and then move to the Edo area with their wife and children to become a noble, or simply go abroad to Penang or even other countries to live a good life?
As long as they helped to build a few large textile machines, an entire regiment of Japanese soldiers could receive military pay that they could not earn in several years. After working for just a few months, they could take their families to Penang to buy a house and become rich, or to Argentina or Brazil to become farmers.

How many people can resist such temptation?

If there really is a fool in the anti-smuggling team who is devoted to patriotism, whose mind is full of holy war and long live the emperor, he will be ostracized within three days. In serious cases, he may even die at any time.

After a while, everyone knew that anti-smuggling was a lucrative job. Although the higher-ups attached great importance to it and even set up an anti-smuggling bureau, it was precisely because of this that rural soldiers who truly possessed relatively pure militarist ideas were unable to enter this office.

Relationships are important everywhere in the world.

Who has connections? The textile bosses in the city.

It would be a shame for a soldier who comes from a rural background and has firm militarist ideas not to go to the front line of the battlefield to be cannon fodder, right?

Those who risked their lives on the battlefield, those who flew planes into aircraft carriers, and those who committed suicide by disembowelment were basically all rural children who were poor before the war and remained poor after the war.

The more people stayed behind, the more connections they had. Most of them were children from cities, especially those from Tokyo and Edo.

In fact, not many of these children from Tokyo families died in history. The rural children were responsible for fighting the National Army, the US Army, and the Soviet Army.
The city children were lazy at work and stole goods while on guard. They stole all the supplies in the war preparation warehouses before the US troops landed, leaving nothing for the US troops except cement and building materials.

In that difficult era when people in Japan were starving to death every day, these people formed gangs by stealing war supplies, made fortunes on the black market, and quickly occupied high positions in various industries.
After the economy recovers in a dozen years, they will continue to let the surviving rural children and the new generation of rural children work for them.

Although the children of bosses, nobles, and military officers set an example by joining the army, most of them still served in roles such as the Tokyo Garrison.

Who would be willing to be minced meat on the Chinese battlefield if they have a little bit of connections?

Now, those with the best backgrounds have all been assigned to anti-smuggling operations.

Zheng Yi has indeed developed some of his own people in Japan. Although the Voice of Freedom has only been broadcasting for a short time, it has already gained a large number of fans.

However, the task that Zheng Yi asked Lin Shaoliang to assign to them was not to gather intelligence. In fact, he did not need any intelligence. He had only one purpose: to infiltrate.

Engage in rampant corruption.

Zheng Yi even approved Lin Shaoliang a full $5 million in activity funds for this purpose.

Don't be afraid to spend money.

As long as there are Japanese officers worth winning over, they will be recruited. After all, the money will not go into the pockets of the militarist government.

In addition to textile machines, Japan also bought generators, water purifiers, machine tools, leather-making machines, tea-roasting machines, and Zheng Yi even bought condensers, heat exchangers, and vacuum distillation equipment for manufacturing kerosene.

You have to know that he is an expert in this stuff. What he buys is just like scrap metal and is basically useless.

There was no time to worry about that. After all, the only industrial products Japan could export to earn foreign exchange were cloth and some kerosene.

Anyway, he has money, so he would rather accept the loss.

What's more, Zheng Yi even took the unprecedented initiative to promote the excellence of Japanese rice, and ordered Penang to mass-produce rice crackers, rice crisps, senbei and other rice-based snacks, and then insisted that Japanese rice and Northeast rice were better.

Large quantities of rice began to be smuggled from Japan and Manchukuo.

He would accept it even if it meant spending a little more money, as long as the money did not fall into the hands of the militarist government but into the hands of corrupt Japanese officials and unscrupulous businessmen.

As for experienced technical workers, we want as many as we can. As long as they can come to Nanyang to work, Zheng Yi guarantees that their salary will be at least three times higher than what they can get in Japan, and they will be provided with food and accommodation, and can also manage people and become leaders.

The big Japanese traitor Toyota Risaburo is very busy every day.

Every day, the Japanese Free Voice controlled by Lin Shaoliang broadcasts the great ideas of Hayek.

Now Mr. Zheng is asked to think.

The most striking word is freedom. This is all normal market behavior.

In just three months, Japanese smuggling had gradually grown in scale. Goods had to go through Manchukuo first, and then be loaded directly onto ships from Port Arthur and sent all the way to Singapore.

Sometimes they are even delivered by warships.

Moreover, the money spent was far less than Zheng Yi had imagined, because the Japanese community in Penang really helped a lot.

Many textile factory owners who cooperated with Zheng Yi, and even officials of all ranks in Japan, did not need Zheng Yi to transfer money to them. They could just deposit it directly in the Yasuda Bank in Penang.

The Yasuda Zaibatsu was one of the four major zaibatsu in pre-war Japan. Although the Penang Yasuda Bank and the Japan Yasuda Bank are no longer one company, their credibility remains.

Just deposit the money in Penang. When the factory owners have sold most of their machines, they can take their whole family to Penang and withdraw the money from Yasuda Bank. At least, they can become a rich man in Penang.

What the hell is going on? They are not brainwashed rural teenagers. As the saying goes, the duck knows first when the river water warms in spring. These textile bosses were the first to feel that the Japanese textile industry would definitely be finished.

The vast majority of people are actually patriotic, but especially those capitalists who have some money, do you expect them to share the fate of the country?
As long as there is a way to survive, everyone runs faster than anyone else.

It was not Zheng Yi who paid for these equipment, or rather, Zheng Yi and the Chinese in Penang only bought a small part of them. Most of them were Japanese in Penang.

Risaburo Toyoda bought more textile machines than anyone else.

They already had a large amount of Japanese yen in their hands, and now they were in Penang, with nowhere to spend it. Originally, they wanted to raise money to donate to Zheng Yi and the National Government to fight against Japan.

Now, according to Zheng Yi's propaganda and various supports, opening a textile factory is considered to be anti-Japanese.

They are so enthusiastic about resisting the Japanese.

Why not use those few Japanese yen to buy textile machines to weave cloth instead of leaving them to rot in the bank?
In particular, Zheng Yi gave them such great support, including three connections and one leveling, tax cuts, and cheap chemical fibers.

These days, cloth mixed with chemical fibers is easy to sell! Isn't this just making money?

For more than half a year, Zheng Yi was busy like a top every day. Apart from paying attention to the Penang tunnel, worrying about the construction of four other petrochemical plants, and the ammonium nitrate preparation plant he was collaborating on with Professor Hou Debang, all his energy was focused on Nanyang Textiles.

Penang was definitely out of reach, so Zheng Yi had to further develop Yangon and other places in Malaya. He even went to Bangkok twice and started more cooperation with the Siamese military.

After Siam's anti-Chinese campaign, the Chinese in Siam, especially the wealthy business class, almost all became Siam's white gloves, and their relationship with the military became even closer.

It was not until I had been busy for several months that I suddenly realized that I seemed to have lost my mind.

In fact, he hadn't originally planned to do this.

In his original conception, the outcome of World War II was predetermined anyway.

Donate money to the motherland, but don't donate too much. Stay in a small place like Penang, have enough food, drink, money and power to live a simple life.

When Japan invades Southeast Asia, we will be able to drive the Japanese away even if we stop all production in the city and put up a stubborn resistance for a year, or even less than a year.

At that time, he only needs to resume production in Penang, win easily, and even become a victorious country.

When the British Labour Party came to power after World War II, it was a big sale of colonies. If they wanted independence, they could do so; if they wanted to stay, they could stay. They could control a puppet at will, and at least the Malay Peninsula was secure.

If you feel like it, you can become a king; if you want to show off your style, you can establish a republic; if you want to evade responsibility, you can become a chaebol and live in seclusion behind the scenes. How comfortable your life would be then.

He even thought about it, why not just like the King of Brunei after World War II, completely withdraw from the management of the company after the victory, then marry a lot of wives, have a lot of children, and live a life that everyone in the world envied by relying on dividends every year, flying around in his own private jet, and everyone who saw him would respectfully call him a rich man.

How good is this?
This was originally his goal.

He originally didn't even want to open a branch base in Yangon.

More than 90% of the population of Penang is Chinese, so it is easy to manage and his prestige is high. Isn’t the wealth he has earned now enough for his descendants to live a life of luxury for generations?

Unlike him now, he has to bother to manage Yangon. Yangon is not enough, he also has to manage Kedah and Perak, and even run around in southern Thailand, Bangkok, Semarang, and Singapore. Seeing that the Japanese are about to attack, he has started to continuously spend money on branch bases that are destined to be lost.

He originally just wanted to be a leader of the Chinese community in Southeast Asia.

However, he now wants to vigorously develop the textile industry and enter the low-end cotton textile industry, which requires quantity and a large number of textile workers. It is absolutely impossible to rely on the Chinese, as the number of Chinese is simply not enough.

Even after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the total number of Chinese in Southeast Asia was only more than 1000 million, and this was the result of Zheng Yi's great efforts. If he wanted to increase the number, there would not be enough ships.
Especially after Japan gradually occupied the eastern coast, the number of refugee ships actually decreased. Now in the Japanese-occupied areas, most passenger ships heading to Southeast Asia are illegal and it is difficult for them to escape.

It would be fine if there were only a few people, but even now, even Chinese and Chinese workers who have some culture and industrial capabilities simply don't bother to do textile work.

If you want to make a profit in low-end textile business, it is impossible to comply with labor laws, and it is impossible to set up in Penang. Wages must also be suppressed. And to be honest, the threshold for this industry is really low. As long as you can understand what is said, you can do it. If men can do it, women can do it too.

He could only use a large number of Burmese, Indians and Malays.

He also needs to bring these places to the stage of primary industrialization. After all, you need electricity, and after weaving cloth, you need roads, and if you have roads, you need cars.

Not to mention Yangon, which has been expanding like a balloon since it decided to rapidly develop its textile industry.

The population has reached more than 600 million, more than Penang, and is mainly composed of Burmese and Indians. The Chinese either work as police, militia, civil servants, factory managers, or in a small number of port and terminal service industries.

The Chinese are almost becoming the superior class, just like the British in the past.

Because the city expanded too fast, Zheng Yi was too lazy to take care of the appearance of the city. There were many Indians, and Indians, those who understand, understand. Now, except for a small area of ​​wealthy Chinese, the city is a monotonous place.

There were still many conflicts between the Burmese and the Indians, and the Chinese, represented by Hu Wenhu, also played the game of dividing and winning over.
They hired a large number of Indians into the factory, gave the Burmese people higher political treatment, and cooperated extensively with the Burmese landlords and powerful people in the lower tribes and villages.

Isn’t this the same thing the British did to the Chinese and Malays on the Malay Peninsula?

Just move it exactly as it is, without any improvement at all.

The Japanese were actually treated as second-class citizens. Even those Japanese in Yangon who were not Penang nationals had a status similar to that of the Chinese.

Are China and Japan joining forces to engage in colonization?

Against the backdrop of the Anti-Japanese War, it all sounds like a hellish joke.

Zheng Yi sometimes felt confused when he thought about it. How the hell did he become a colonizer?
Although the Indians and Burmese in Yangon seemed to respect him very much, even Hu Wenhu had a high prestige. After all, they had lived like this before, and Zheng Yi was at least better to them than the British.

The British did not make any money running Yangon, but Zheng Yi at least made Yangon have a pillar industry like textiles. Textile workers without labor laws at least lived better than landless tenants.

Those Indians really worship him.

Not only in Yangon, he also leveled the land, laid wires, and worked on electrical projects in Alor Setar, becoming a living Bodhisattva for the Malays.

The upper echelons, bosses and senior officials of this textile industry are almost all Japanese, with a small number of Chinese as partners (Penang tycoons now look down on the low-end textile industry). The backbone in the middle is a joint venture between China and Japan, but there are very few Chinese among the grassroots workers at the bottom.

If he continues to target Japanese food, he will have to deal with the Siamese military, and may even have to develop a strong cooperative relationship with the compradors and landlords in the French East Indies, that is, Vietnam.

Even Yang Shaomin sometimes says now, "Sir, you are becoming more and more like the King of Nanyang."

But Zheng Yi originally didn't want to be the King of Nanyang.

Doesn’t he just want to be the local emperor of Penang?
When it comes to the anti-Japanese war, the difference between him and him is just that it will end sooner or later. The Japanese will definitely lose anyway. Is it really necessary for me to do so many things?
Very tiring.

When did you start and how did you get to where you are today?

The textile industry was not profitable at all, so he was too lazy to get involved in it. He even slashed the price of chemical fiber in advance, and still made a lot less money.

Was it when he started weaving? Or when he took over Yangon? Or was it even earlier?
"Hey~"

Even if he was a time traveler, even if he knew that Japan would inevitably lose the war, even if he knew that he only needed to do nothing to win and become a wealthy man.

But living in this time and place, living in Penang where more than 90% of the population are Chinese, he was still inevitably infected by the high patriotic sentiment of Penang.

Especially after Wang Qiaoyun and He Shili left, there was always a fire in his heart that forced him to do something. As a result, he was confused and didn't know how he got to this point.

And there is no stopping.

He really never thought of becoming the King of Nanyang.

Or... have you actually thought about it?

He doesn't know anymore.

Anyway, it has come to this, there is no way he can shrink back.

(End of this chapter)