One in front and one in the back, two boats sailed into the Uruguay River.

These are two "small boats" with a tonnage of no more than 300 tons (in Europe, they are proper medium and large ships), which were auctioned off at a special auction of contraband inspected by the customs, and after being slightly modified and repaired in the mainland, they are now used for ocean-going trade, and there is nothing unsuitable about them.

Of course, there are some differences in the goods carried by the two ships, the first ship is full of goods from India, Australia and Persia, including madder, coarse raw silk (Punjabi silk), carnelian, precious stones, insect lacquer, axian medicine, benzoin, fennel, mohair (produced in the mountains of Australia, is the fist product exported to Australia in recent years, the price is very high, most of the clothes are made for the rich), etc., the variety is rich and the value is very high.

Indian goods, which have been sold on the East Coast for many years, are still highly sought after by the people, and all kinds of goods are often in short supply, so there are many merchants engaged in this trade. The majority of these were the state-owned East African Transport Companies, but with the economic development of the East Coast and the growth of private wealth accumulation, various small private trading companies have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and have maintained a high rate of growth in recent years.

It is these people who sell large quantities of Indian goods to the East Coast year after year. The total amount of this trade is so large that it is surprising that the East Coast has a trade deficit with India at a time when trade is very strong in the rest of the world. The large number of Indians who have created enormous wealth, but because of poverty, isolation, and the influence of the small-scale peasant economy, they are very indifferent to the import of goods from the outside world, just like Chinese mainland. The East coasters, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the French, and other European merchants worked collectively for more than a hundred years, but only a few kinds of goods were accepted by the Indians, including steel products (which were the fist commodities exported to India by the British), hardware, muskets, and cannons, and the commercial development was not very ideal.

Fortunately, people on the East Coast do not think of mercantilism as much as Europeans, they advocate free trade, and the global markets eliminate trade barriers, so they do not pay much attention to the "China fever", "India fever" and even "Mexican fever" (a series of Mexican goods represented by tequila, cochineal, and lacquer) that are blowing up in China. The East Coast imports mostly primary products from there, and no amount of money they buy threatens the local industry, while they export manufactured goods in the past, and everyone knows how profitable they are.

This vessel laden with goods from the Indian Ocean was followed by a special vessel, a migrant ship from the Far East. The captain of this ship is called Zhang Yilan, who is in his Chinese New Year's Eve, and when he was a teenager, he followed his family to South Africa to do business, opened a quarry, ran a plantation (growing sorghum and wheat), but was not too profitable, and finally simply attached to the Renjun Trading Company of Li Renjun, a patriarch on the east coast, and started the tobacco and black slave business in New Courland, which accumulated the first pot of gold.

After making his fortune, Zhang Yilan was tired of this game of polygonal trade on both sides of the Atlantic. Descended from the Ming immigrants, he is full of interest in China on the other side of the world, and has always planned to visit Jinanfu, Shandong Province, where his father was born and raised, to see what it is like and how the customs are different from those on the east coast. Therefore, after determining that most of the family's fortune would be inherited by his eldest brother, he left home with a few thousand yuan of floating wealth, first auctioned off a smuggling merchant ship in good condition, and then bought some hardware, steel bars, soap, woolen wool, medicines, dyes, and other goods that he thought could be sold at a good price in the Far East, and set sail directly to the sea.

There were more than 30 sailors on his ship—in fact, there was no need for so many, but the ocean-going trade situation was complicated, and more men were usually equipped in case of emergencies—only a few or eight were from the east coast, and they were all hired by Zhang Yilan with high salaries, all from his hometown of Yiling County, a quiet small county located at the southern foot of Dingjun Mountain.

The remaining sailors were divided into two parts, mostly recruited Italians. For various reasons, these people were unwilling or did not find a job farming, and the construction team was reluctant to go, but preferred the sailors with high salaries - not only the sailors had a high basic salary, but also various bonuses, and at the same time allowed each person to carry a suitcase of a certain size to carry various commodities - in addition to a small number of Indians hired through the gray channel, these people were all sent to the overseas colonies for reclamation, but they would hide from the ship, and no one could find them.

In short, because of the stability of life on the east coast and the relative affluence of the people, in addition to the navy with high social status and a strong sense of honor, many young people are reluctant to become sailors, because life is boring and dangerous, and they are not in a state of urgent need for money. As a result, the average age of sailors in even state-run ocean shipping companies is rising, and it is becoming more difficult to find new sailors, so incentives have to be drastically increased to recruit more young people to join the sea. Otherwise, who is full of food and supports to gamble life and death with you in the monstrous waves, is it fun?

Compared to the state-run ocean-going trading giants, private captains recruit sailors in a completely different way. They generally form a group with the township party as a link, and each person contributes money, effort, or technology, and occupies a part of the profits of this business. On top of that, they recruited additional non-national workers as sailors, because their low wages (just like the Dutch kidnapping Germans and Scots on ships to serve as sailors) could effectively save costs.

And these recruited sailors with complex backgrounds will not be unhappy. They are generally people who are relatively short of money, and they are not very interested in farming step by step, so they go to sea to work as sailors under the temptation of high returns, gamble with God, win the clubhouse tender model - well, if you win, go home and enjoy the happiness - if you lose, you will be buried in the belly of the fish, and the last trace of this world will disappear.

Zhang Yilan's ship was loaded with more than 200 immigrants from Ningbo. Due to the fact that the locals have more work and less work, many people boarded the ship and came to the east coast in a daze under the means of half-coaxing and half-temptation by Zhang. When they were in Qingdao Port, officials from the Ministry of Immigration and the State Development Administration had already jointly registered and made a register, for which they also paid Zhang Yilan a subsidy of 20 yuan per person, which was an income of more than 4,000 yuan.

Of course, this is not all the income of their ship. In fact, after arriving at the final destination, Daxing Port, the local county government will also give them a financial subsidy of 10 yuan per person, and the employer (state-owned farm, ranch) will also pay the same amount. In other words, Zhang Yilan will receive a financial subsidy of 40 yuan for each healthy migrant who arrives on the East Coast, which is quite a lot, and their ship alone has earned almost 9,000 yuan.

If you add to this the high cost of the ferry tickets that these immigrants from the East had to pay – and it is clear that they have no money to pay for the fares, so they have to owe it up front and deduct it from their wages for the previous months when they arrive on the East Coast – the total income of their emigration trip should be around 15,000 yuan, which is attractive enough in terms of business practices to be worth continuing. Not to mention, the goods they brought to the Far East when they set off were also sold locally at a good price, and the Japanese copper nuggets they brought to the ballast on the way back were also quite valuable in the local area, so the overall income was considerable, although it was not as good as the income from the sale of raw silk, porcelain, and tea from the Far East (not everyone could get these goods), but it was more than enough, and it was much better than the situation when many merchants of the British East India Company sat in Guangzhou for a year and could not get the goods they wanted and went bankrupt, isn't it?

It is worth mentioning that in order to pursue timeliness, boat owners like Zhang Yilan, who are engaged in private immigration business, take the Malacca route, which takes almost eight months to recuperate, which is twice as fast as the government-led immigration transportation route. Therefore, the Straits of Malacca and Sunda Strait, which were controlled by the Dutch East India Company, were still very important, and if they insisted on blockading these areas and refused to give the East Coast migrant ships the right to rest and resupply in Malacca, Ceylon, and other places, then this route would become very difficult, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it would be abolished. So, in Asia, the Easterners and the Dutch can be said to be pinching each other's vital points, and maybe the Easterners have the upper hand, but that doesn't mean that the Dutch can't do them harm, although they may never dare to do such stupid things.

According to the estimates of the Ministry of Native Immigration, there are currently about 20 ships engaged in this kind of ocean-going immigration business, which can replenish the mainland with more than 5,000 immigrants from the East every year, which undoubtedly strongly supports the development of the mainland. After seeing the benefits in this regard, now the East Coast government has also begun to deliberately guide and accelerate the cultivation of this market, advocating new opportunities for development here. They had even turned their minds to some foreign captains, especially the Portuguese, in the hope that they would make transporting immigrants from the East as a business, as they had been decades before, even though it would be impossible for the people on the east coast to quote them the exorbitant price of four hundred dollars per person.

The combination of official and non-governmental migration is undoubtedly of great significance in the context of the depletion of sources of immigration. It is also miraculous that those private boat owners can always use various means to get some people who are willing to go to sea, and do things that the official cannot do. As of the middle of this year (1686), through the unremitting efforts of all parties, the total population of the Republic of East China has reached a high of 6.232 million, breaking through the 6 million mark for the first time in history, which is of great symbolic significance.

Among these people, the number of Ming people is about 1.777 million, accounting for 28.5%; The number of second-generation nationals born in the country is about 3.63 million, accounting for 58.3%, which is undoubtedly the backbone of the population; The proportion of Europeans is not much different from what it used to be, and it is slowly declining, about 13.2%, and has remained in the range of 10%-20% for more than two decades.

In addition, the number of non-national workers has continued to decline due to the reduction in replenishment, and there are currently only 216,000 people, of which the number is the largest number of whites at 47%, followed by blacks with 42%, and the rest are basically Indians. According to the country's policy, blacks and Indians are to be sent away, so if we don't want to find a way, the once huge non-national labor groups that have contributed to the economic development of the East Coast will probably shrink to a surprising level, which does not seem to be a good thing for the East Coast. Therefore, the officials of the Nancun Water Plant sent a message on behalf of others, asking Goshkin to find a way to "make a big business" in Ukraine, which was caused by the lack of coolies.

By the way, it seems that I have forgotten to mention one thing before, that is, even Oriental immigrants who come to the East Coast by private ships can automatically obtain East Coast nationality, which is the same treatment as official immigrants, and is uniformly included in the resettlement plan formulated by the State Development Administration. European immigrants are much more difficult to work for, as each of them has to work on the East Coast for five years and pass a Chinese conversation test before they can apply for citizenship.

It's not an easy job! What kind of work and what kind of wages do non-national laborers receive, if you go to the street of Qingdao Port and ask someone to ask, he can tell you one, two, three, four with a kind of pity. What's more, I heard that there has been a recent call in the East Coast to revise the Homestead Law, that is, to focus on whether to extend the period of work for non-national workers from five years to seven years at the next meeting of the Founders' Assembly, so as to further squeeze their blood and sweat. Therefore, compared to them, the Oriental immigrants who automatically acquired nationality when they arrived and could divide their land did not know where their happiness was.

In many cases, Zhang Yilan feels lucky for these people, because this is the East Coast government sacrificing the interests of all the old citizens to subsidize them, the new immigrants, this kind of thing, may not be able to do it forever. Compared to them, non-national laborers who have worked hard for five years on forest farms, mines, farmland, swamps, sewers, and construction sites seem to be the correct "mode of operation" – these five years are equivalent to their ticket to the East Coast, which is expensive!

"I don't know when this kind of business will be able to do it." Watching the ship slowly dock in port, Zhang Yilan stood on the foredeck boredly, still thinking in his mind: "But even if the government cancels the capitation subsidy for oriental immigrants in the future, I will try my best to continue this business, and it is a big deal to increase the price of ferry tickets." Moreover, by that time, the colonies in the Indian Ocean have also developed very well, and they should make some money doing business along the way, and they should not lose too much. ”