“…… The establishment of modern transportation facilities represented by ships and railways, as well as the expansion of commerce in the three core cities of Yinxian, Dinghai and Shangyu, constitute an unprecedented prosperity of Ningshao's commerce. If Ningbo's light industry, which has begun to take shape, is a humble depiction of the local industrial image, then the commercial development of Ningshao is the embodiment and return of the business tradition of Ningshao people since ancient times. ”

“…… Since ancient times, Ningbo has been very prosperous in doing business, tea, silk, cotton, bamboo, rice are sold all over the country, and it has always been an important place of national wealth. After the East Coast entered Ningbo, a large number of goods from the East Coast and Nanyang poured into the local area, but the traditional Ningbo merchants were not intimidated, they relied on their inherent advantages and shrewd and capable business style, actively engaged in foreign trade, and used a variety of channels to do business with the Qing Kingdom, Shun State, Japan, Korea and even the Netherlands, resisting the influx of foreign goods, but also greatly promoted the prosperity and modernization of the local economy in Ningshao. In the process, the Ningbo merchant group began to coalesce and rise, and its economic power was greatly strengthened, and it has become a decisive force on the Far Eastern soil, very similar to the Dutch in the lowlands of Europe. ”

The above is the content of the leading newspaper in Ningbo, and it is also the content of the second edition of the "Ningbo Weekly", a government newspaper. After in-depth interviews and a lot of information, the reporter of the newspaper used a lot of pen and ink to describe the development process of the Ningbo merchant group in the past few decades.

Unlike Shandong, which has experienced countless turmoil and has been turned into a blank land, the Ningbo area has not suffered any disasters since the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the people's lives are stable and business is prosperous. Moreover, when the East Coast army entered Ningbo, the local gentry were also polarized, some resolutely resisted, and some cooperated with the East Coasters. The nature of resistance is gone, and there is no place to bury the dead, and the cooperation has really made a lot of money in the past few decades. Especially those businessmen who have hitched a ride with the Bank of Taiwan and engaged in foreign trade with them, which one is not a wealthy businessman with a lot of money now? The series of houses in the countryside of Dinghai County, which cover an extremely wide area and cost a lot of money, are the places where these big businessmen buy their homes, and they are no worse than the big houses of those merchants engaged in foreign trade inside and outside the city of Guangzhou.

Today, in the 80s, the rising Ningbo merchant group gradually gained political influence and exerted its influence in a series of affairs. Who burdened the government of the Southern Pioneer Team and raised money from these businessmen? As the saying goes, eating people with soft mouths and taking people with short hands, businessmen pay money, naturally they also want fame and social status, and then there are some policies that tend to them.

The successful integration of the Ningbo merchant group into the East Coast economic system – of course, there are those who hate them and see it as a successful whitewash, since many of the merchants were secretly linked to the Qing state in the first place – should be regarded as a classic example of the rule of the East Coast overseas colonies, that is, the way in which the East Coast people should rule the overseas colonies. If the colony of Ningshao, which is of the same species, can do the same, so can the colonies in India and other places do the same in the future? Do we need to break the original local social system? How to make the lowest cost and the highest benefit? This is an issue worthy of discussion by the relevant departments of the East Bank Government.

"Ningbo, now the signs of momentum are becoming more and more obvious." After eating a drawer of xiaolongbao in the Dinghai Port Business District, where every inch of land is valuable, Jiang Yunfan, general manager of the East Coast Japan Company, put down the newspaper in his hand and said with emotion.

Jiang Yunfan has also been working in the Far East for a long time, and he has lived in Yantai for a long time, and after he came to Ningbo, he immediately felt a different atmosphere. If the people of Denglai are stoic, resolute, and do things at a glance, and are a good source of soldiers and cadres, then the flexible and changeable style of the local people in Ningshao almost makes him think that he has gone to a different country. It can only be said that oranges are born in the south of Huainan, and oranges are born in the north of Huai, and different environments have indeed created different cultures.

"Let's go, let's go to the market. In order for the East Coast Japanese companies to better explore the Japanese market, they need to find ways to expand the variety of products and sell more things. Otherwise, just relying on the old three, the foreground can be seen, and it is not interesting. After paying the bill, Jiang Yunfan waved his hand and took two or three entourages down the teahouse and walked out onto the street.

This is a typical commercial street, mainly engaged in foreign trade, and there are all kinds of people. This is not a joke, you can tell from the clothes and hairstyles, there are people from the East Coast with short hair, there are traditional Han people with hair buns, there are Koreans, there are Japanese, there are Europeans, and even Qing people with pigtails on the back of their heads, which shows the prosperity of this port city.

There are almost no shops engaged in retail business on the street, all of which are professional stores mainly engaged in wholesale business, such as salt, tea, skin, medicinal herbs, grain, cotton, oil, paper and so on. These stacks themselves do not have production bases, that is, they are all so-called tooth shops, but they have great energy, and basically monopolize the trade of a certain commodity in a certain place or even the whole of Ningshao, and this is actually the most important way for local Ningbo merchants to carry out primitive accumulation.

Jiang Yunfan has a very clear understanding of the skills of these tooth shops, as the locals say, "it is quite difficult to trade without flowers", and these trade houses have developed so far, and they are no longer simply intermediary business, but have expanded more economic functions. For example, the stack can provide credit guarantee and transaction guarantee for foreign merchants, can act as a notary public, can handle transportation and storage business, can provide important business information, and even can provide life services for merchants, tax payment services, etc., in short, they have broken through the previous single broker role, to a more comprehensive direction.

Jiang Yunfan assisted the East Coast giant grain enterprise National Grain Reserve Depot in Ningbo to purchase grain in Ningbo when he was in Yantai, and several local grain stores in Ningbo helped a lot at that time, taking care of the storage and transportation of grain, and at the same time paying taxes, and the State Grain Reserve only needs to be responsible for signing contracts and making payments.

"Why are so many Qing merchants coming to trade now?" After seeing several Qing merchants with pigtails in their heads, Jiang Yunfan was also a little confused, although the east coast and the Qing country have been peaceful, but now the business ties are so close?

"They are all merchants of the Huizhou Gang!" An attendant said: "The main business, tea, oil, pen and ink business, now it has gradually developed into the pawn industry, and the scale of the business is still very large." Mr. Jiang, you may have forgotten that a lot of the pen and ink we exported to the Sendai Domain are produced in Huizhou. ”

"Well, I almost forgot about it." Jiang Yunfan patted his head and said with some embarrassment: "The pawnshop is a huge profit, how did the local businessmen in Ningbo do it, and they actually let the Huizhou Gang come in." Although these Huizhou businessmen have been very strong in the field of financial business such as money and pawn since the pre-Ming Dynasty, Ningbo has been reshuffled for decades, and it can still make people develop. Alas, the Bank of Taiwan is also right, just staring at trade all day long, and has not considered the development of financial business. ”

"Mr. Jiang, in fact, it doesn't matter much. Many of these Huizhou merchants plan to live in Dinghai permanently, because we can provide them with a very good business environment, and at the same time, the market is also very broad, which is difficult for the Qing people to give. They set up shop here, do business here, pay taxes here, and after a long time, what side are they? The attendant said with a smile: "I think that as long as the naturalization policy is implemented and qualified Huizhou Gang businessmen can join our nationality, then this is not a problem." ”

"Hehe, let's not talk about naturalization or not, the huge profits of the financial industry should be heavily taxed. Now Ningbo is not also clamoring to build a railway, just from the money everywhere, pawn shops from the money, the railway is also nearly 150 kilometers, although the southern development team is relatively financially well-off, but can not rely on their own to build the railway, or Ningshao businessmen to raise funds. Jiang Yunfan also said with a smile.

It is said that with the development of Ningbo's economy and the prosperity of commerce, the combination and distribution of merchant groups with strong regional colors over the years have also begun to become popular. The existence of these merchant groups not only strengthened market competition and enlivened the circulation of goods, but also strengthened the trade ties between Ningbo's economy and other regions, and promoted the commodity circulation of the entire Far East. As the "Ningbo Weekly" once lamented: "The prosperity of the market is not only the gathering of local merchants, but also the merchants of other provinces, provinces and even countries have set up their own stores or branches in the meantime, and the government has resolutely implemented the ......policy of freedom of trade."

If you analyze it in detail, then the foreign merchant groups that are active in the Ningbo market today are-

Denglai Gang: The main output products are donkey skins, dried fruits, and draft animals, and the main imports are Nanyang specialties, cotton cloth and other southern goods.

Blackwater Gang: The main output products are mechanical parts, complete sets of equipment, ships, building materials, coal, horses, cattle and sheep, whale products, medicinal materials, mountain goods, wax, honey, and wood, and the inputs are grain, Nanyang specialties, cloth and other daily necessities.

Manmeng Gang: Mainly wool, beef and mutton, livestock, and the main imports are grain, southern goods and Nanyang specialties.

Nippon Gang: The main output products are swords, screens, copper bars and precious metals, and the main imports are silk and leather.

North Korean Gang: The main export products are medicinal herbs, dried fruits, tobacco, chili peppers, iron materials, and honey, and the main imports are silk, tea, books, bamboo ware, and Nanyang specialties.

Hunan Gang: The shipping trade is very prosperous, the trade volume is huge, the output is mainly tea, rice, this is the bulk of the goods, there are also soybeans, lead, iron, tung oil, medicinal materials, umbrellas, gypsum and other commodities, the import is mainly war horses, seafood, mechanical parts, weapons and ammunition, books and other commodities, all of which are urgently needed by the Li Shun regime.

Guangdong Gang: Merchants from this province, which once dominated foreign trade, set up shop in Ningbo, and their exports were mainly miscellaneous grains, medicinal herbs, soybeans, oils, and Nanyang specialties, and the main imports were weapons and ammunition, war horses, hardware products, medicinal materials, tea, silk, leather, cattle and sheep.

Fujian Gang: The main exports are tea, sugar, medicinal herbs, wood, lacquer, fruits, and Nanyang specialties, while the imports are leather, livestock, hardware products, war horses, weapons and ammunition, machinery and equipment.

I won't list the others. Such a large number of merchant groups have taken root in Ningbo, importing countless foreign commodities into the local area, making Dinghai Port one of the best commodity distribution centers in the Far East. Countless money circulates here, a large number of ships dock here, merchants speaking various languages gather here, and the East Coast cadres who have worked in Europe are a little confused, this Nima is going to create an Amsterdam again? Although it is still far inferior in terms of the scale and value of trade, and the variety of commodities is not rich enough, it is difficult to say where the Far East will go if it is managed well, given the huge population of the Far East (most of whom are not yet considered "merchants", and the scope of the small-scale peasant economy is still huge).

The only drawback of this commercial center is probably that it is thousands of miles away from the mainland of the East Coast, and with the exception of a few high-profit special goods, most of the industrial goods of the mainland of the East Coast are unprofitable to transport here. Therefore, no matter how prosperous and developed the commercial center of Dinghai Port is, the promotion of local industry and commerce, especially the vital manufacturing industry, is extremely limited, and the local people do not have much light, which has to be said to be an important regret. Therefore, even the matter of building a railway in Ningbo was not very active, and it can even be said that it was indifferent, so that the Southern Railway Company could not get any subsidies from it, and in the end it was up to the local businessmen in Ningbo to find a way.

Fortunately, their economic strength is good, and their capital is abundant, so if they really want to build a railway, they can still make a long time. It just so happened that the Southern Railway Company was also interested in building the Shangding Railway (Shangyu-Yuyao-Yinxian-Dinghai) in the prosperous commercial Ningbo, and decided that this was a railway that could make a quick profit, so the two sides could be said to hit it off. Liu Houfei, the new leader of the Southern Pioneer Team, also expressed his support for this, which removed the last obstacle to the construction of the Shangding Railway - and at the same time the biggest obstacle, that is, the political obstacle - and now only the technicians sent by the Southern Railway Company have completed the surveying and mapping, determined the final drawings, and then can start construction.

Once the Shangding Railway, a railway that crosses the entire east bank of Ningshao, is completed, the local commerce of Ningbo, which originally relied on traditional river transportation, will be able to reach a higher level. Just as the local railway company on the east bank has run on the canal office and it is difficult to operate, the people of Ningbo will sooner or later realize the great economic significance of the railway, a system of rapid transportation.