Chapter 437: The New Post

“I used to say there were too many carrots and too few holes. Now that the branch bases are opening up, it’s the other way around: too many holes and too few carrots,” Liu Xiang shook his head and decided to make a list to organize his thoughts.

Vietnam, at present, was mainly positioned as a coal base and a rice supply base. However, the Great Library had specifically provided materials on the war in the south. If he went there, would it be for armed colonization? With the population explosion, the demand of the transmigrator group for both food and fuel was like a suddenly erupting black hole. The previous gentle trade with Vietnam could no longer satisfy the stomachs—and boilers—of the Senate. Judging from the recent “two journals and one newspaper,” the call for more direct measures against Vietnam was very high. The slogan “retake the nine true and Rinan commanderies of our great Han territory” had appeared many times.

As for Ryukyu, after reading the Historical Research from the Great Library, Liu Xiang roughly understood that this historical period was when the Ryukyu-Diaoyu Islands issue “since ancient times” went wrong. The Satsuma domain had used military force to compel the Shang dynasty of Ryukyu to pay tribute to the Satsuma domain, and had in fact controlled Ryukyu. From this time on, Japan began the process of Japanization, colonization, and localization of Ryukyu. Although Ryukyu continued to pay tribute to the Ming and Qing dynasties, it had in fact become a vassal of Satsuma.

Putting aside this just-beginning historical hot topic, Ryukyu was now an important maritime landmark on the Northeast Asian shipping route in the entire East Asian region—except for the Senate. Looking at the topographic map, trade ships from Fujian sailed north along the Ryukyu Islands, with islands and reefs along the way for route guidance and replenishment. It was an important central hub for navigation in East Asia. Controlling Ryukyu was not of great significance to the Senate, which could navigate along the ocean currents with its own nautical charts, but it indirectly controlled the Sino-Japanese trade routes of other sea merchants, and monopolizing the trade with Japan was just around the corner. The sulfur on several volcanic islands in Ryukyu was also an industrial raw material urgently needed by the Senate. Therefore, the goal of going to Ryukyu also seemed very clear.

But compared to Vietnam and Guangzhou, Ryukyu was insignificant, a spare move. It didn’t matter whether it was taken or not. As a local administrative official for many years, sending him there would be a bit of a “waste of talent.”

“Guangzhou—” Liu Xiang began to have second thoughts again. The most difficult to guess was this one. When it came to Guangzhou, everyone in the Senate knew that it was the territory of the great owner Guo, the base of the “Guang-Lei faction.” In particular, the near-completion of the first phase of the Great World project had reinforced this impression.

“Are they trying to rotate cadres? To prevent them from becoming too powerful?” This question once again surfaced in Liu Xiang’s mind. From the consistent policy of the Executive Committee, political factions and the personal political speculation of the Elders were generally allowed free rein as long as they did not cross the line, but no faction or individual would be allowed to become too powerful.

From the perspective of local factions, the weakest was the “local faction” on Hainan Island. Even the Sanya Special Administrative Region, personally overseen by Wang Gong, was actually completely dependent on the central government. As for the dispatched teams in Vietnam, Hangzhou, Jeju Island, Shandong, Taiwan, and other places, although some of them were already quite powerful, their dependence on the central government was still great.

Only this Guang-Lei faction controlled the largest and most important trade gate of the Senate. Even after the Hangzhou station opened the trade channel in Shanghai, more than 70% of the Senate’s trade with the Ming was still conducted through this portal. Not only that, but the sugar industry in Leizhou was the Senate’s money-printing machine. Its importance was self-evident.

It was only natural for the Executive Committee to carry out a certain degree of personnel reorganization of the Guang-Lei faction to prevent it from becoming too powerful to control.

However, this was not an easy matter. Although Liu Xiang was eager to go to Guangzhou and make a name for himself, his enthusiasm quickly fizzled out. The situation there was different. It was not a matter of a single transfer order to change the director of the county office. If someone else took over Guo Dongzhu’s position, it would be fine within his own system. Guo Yi would never disobey an organizational order. The problem was that his transfer would cause a huge shock in the local business circle of Guangzhou.

Would those who often did business with the Zi brand recognize this new owner? Liu Xiang had been a local official for several years and knew the natives’ way of thinking too well. The idea of rule by man was deeply ingrained. Although everyone in Guangzhou knew that Guo Yi represented the “Australians,” his departure, whether it was considered his personal “loss of power” or not, “the policy dies with the man” was the norm—not to mention that this was the 17th century. Even in the 21st century, when a leader of a street office or a county changed, it was common for the previous accounts to be completely disregarded.

Even if he took over, the silver temporarily stored in the Zi brand’s coffers would probably be withdrawn in a few days—after all, the commercial credit of this era was based on individuals rather than legal persons. If this happened, it would not only be a major incident, but also very embarrassing.

Of course, it would be great if Little Guo’s team could stay on. But this was not something he could decide.

Putting aside internal problems, there were three other troubles in Guangzhou Prefecture: the bureaucrats of Guangzhou, the Portuguese in Macau, and the Elders in Hong Kong.

The prefectural city was where the provincial bureaucrats were located. If they sent people there to set up an underground government and a shadow cabinet, the high-ranking officials in the prefectural city would certainly not be as cooperative as Wu Mingjin in being a background prop. The relationships Guo Yi had built over the years, would he be able to take them over after he left?

Macau was currently in a state of “legally leased land” with the Ming government. If they set up an underground government, should they recognize the colonial status? From a nationalist point of view, they should not. Although the colony of Macau was different from the five treaty ports and various land cessions of the “Great Qing,” and legally speaking it was a normal land lease, a large number of people in the Senate still did not recognize the existence of colonies of other countries on the core territory of the Chinese nation, in any form. Therefore, the call to drive out the Portuguese and take back Macau had always existed in the Senate, and it was not small.

But Liu Xiang looked at it from a practical point of view. Macau was still the most important trading port between the Senate and the Portuguese. In particular, the Indian goods imported by the Senate were mostly through Portuguese channels. Driving out the Portuguese would not bring any practical benefits other than satisfying national pride. Moreover, the Portuguese, having lost their motherland, were now very submissive to the Senate, much easier to deal with than the桀骜不驯 (jié’àobùxùn - arrogant and untamable) Dutch.

The most troublesome was actually Hong Kong. If they controlled Guangzhou, what would be the relationship with Hong Kong? Liu Xiang knew that the current group of Elders in Hong Kong were all trying to achieve great things. But in this time, the possibility of Hong Kong becoming the Pearl of the Orient no longer existed. Since the Senate could directly rule Guangzhou, why would they still use this small island in the Pearl River estuary, which was very scarce in all aspects of resources? In the past, occupying Hong Kong and setting up a base was just to monitor Guangzhou. Once Guangzhou fell into the control of the Senate, the value of Hong Kong would disappear.

At present, Hong Kong’s industry was almost entirely dependent on the primary labor cooperation provided by the artisans of Guangzhou Prefecture to achieve a certain scale of shipbuilding development. In addition, its industrial limitations were great, and it was heavily colored by serving the military. The several agricultural product processing enterprises built by the light industry system were almost all serving the joint logistics headquarters, and they still relied on the supply of agricultural products from the Pearl River Delta.

In other words, the current Hong Kong, apart from its function as a port, was completely dependent on the mainland in other aspects. And the port function, apart from being meaningful to the navy, had no meaning in trade. Since they could directly rule and use the various ports of Guangzhou, why bother to go around Hong Kong?

After he took office, how would he get along with the Elders in Hong Kong? Should he demand that Hong Kong be incorporated as part of Guangzhou?

Just thinking about it gave him a headache…

Opening the Compilation of Conditions, Liu Xiang decided to focus on the local public sentiment first.

After years of intervention by the Senate, the economic and social structure of Guangzhou Prefecture had undergone earth-shaking changes, so the Great Library did not participate in the Compilation of Conditions at all this time. This important social survey document was mainly compiled by the Guangzhou Station, with full data support from the Intelligence Bureau. Because the data was detailed, it was more suitable for Liu Xiang’s reading habits than the several historical document compilations crawled from the Great Library’s data.

Liu Xiang scanned the various data again, writing and drawing on a piece of paper, clustering and reclassifying the various data according to his own understanding, making the data more suitable for his understanding of politics and economics.

“Well, if we calculate by pop, this is the situation now!” Liu Xiang classified the population into large types such as gentry, bureaucrats, farmers, laborers, workers, technicians, artisans, military households, etc., according to the classification model of Paradox’s grand strategy games. Then he took out a printed administrative division map of Guangzhou Prefecture and marked different labels and numbers in different areas. He was busy for more than two hours before he finished filling in the map—then he took out another filled-in map for comparison. This one was generated by a program he had written in his spare time while studying these three “gift” documents over the past few months. The processing flow was similar to the manual one, but all the calculation was done by the computer.

After a comparison, sure enough, there were still several differences between the two maps…

“I’m just bored out of my mind!” Liu Xiang decisively abandoned the results of his two hours of work and still used the computer-generated map for analysis. As for going back to check or anything, Liu Xiang simply gave up—the laptop had already been packed, and it was inconvenient to go through the boxes and cabinets now. Anyway, the sea route from Haikou to Lingao was only over 60 kilometers. This turtle-speed regular tugboat would arrive by dark. But just now, after all, the data had gone through his mind. He could understand it better than just looking at the computer-processed map. Many ideas popped up with just a glance or a peek.