Chapter 76 - 75: Talisman
Chapter 76: Chapter 75: Talisman
The Jinting Village committee office.
After Village Chief Wang Jianxin and Party Secretary Fang Yong drove back, they gathered the other members of the village committee for a small, late-night meeting.
Fang Yong passed out cigarettes to everyone present, then looked at Wang Jianxin. "Old Wang, what’s your plan?"
"What’s the plan? We do as we’re told!" Wang Jianxin lit his cigarette and took a slow drag. "Haaa... Mayor Luo’s intentions are crystal clear. Besides, you’re not thinking of meddling with this poverty alleviation program, are you?"
"We could prioritize taking care of our own first..."
"Oh, really? Ah Yong, who in your family raises fish? Why don’t you have them switch to raising Egyptian Fish!"
"That’s not what I meant," Fang Yong said in a low voice. "The town government must be offering subsidies for this, right? We could..."
Wang Jianxin took another drag from his cigarette. "Haaa... Don’t even think about it. The town government does plan to offer subsidies, but not direct ones. They’re planning to hire excavators to dig ponds for the impoverished households for free."
"Then we could still register, and then just source the Egyptian Fish from other places..."
"Ah Yong, don’t be too greedy. And do you really think you can hide something like that? When those people start making a fuss, it’ll be bad for everyone, and we won’t be able to answer to Mayor Luo. If you really want a spot, you’d be better off just going directly to Hailufeng Company. As long as you have a fishpond, you can sign a contract."
"But my family’s fishponds were all expropriated."
"Then what do you want to do?"
"Anyway, each village has a 70-mu quota. If we squeeze a little, we should be able to free some up." A flicker of greed showed in Fang Yong’s eyes.
Wang Jianxin stared at him with a smirk. "Heh, and what will you do if you can’t deliver the fish to Hailufeng Company then? The penalty for breach of contract is 90,000 yuan per mu. How many mu do you want? How about I give them all to you?"
"Egyptian Fish are everywhere..."
"You can think of that, but others can’t? Someone will definitely think of buying Egyptian Fish from outside sources at a low price. If you all buy from outside, have you considered the transportation costs? That means you can, at most, buy locally within Shanmei. And locally, besides Hailufeng Company’s contracted farmers, who else is raising Egyptian Fish on a large scale? When you all rush to buy, do you think everyone else is an idiot who’ll sell them to you cheap? Once your costs go up, can you really make a profit?"
Wang Jianxin looked at Fang Yong as if he were looking at an idiot.
Hearing this, Fang Yong broke out in a cold sweat. He quickly took a puff of his cigarette to calm his nerves. "Haaa..."
After a moment, Fang Yong calmed down. He then realized that Wang Jianxin had been saving him and quickly thanked him, "Thanks a lot, Old Wang."
Wang Jianxin thought to himself, ’If it weren’t for the fact that a big idiot like you is easy to control and use as a pawn, I wouldn’t have bothered reminding you.’
Outwardly, however, he just smiled. "It’s good that you understand. If we implement this properly, these people will owe us a favor. Just think of it as campaigning for the next election. If anyone comes to you, just tell them to go sign a contract with Hailufeng Company directly."
"I understand." Having abandoned his various schemes, Fang Yong naturally became selfless and impartial.
In truth, Jiang Miao had already considered the possibility of people buying from outside sources at low prices. The fixed-quantity purchase contracts were designed to prevent exactly that, and the high penalty for breach of contract was another deterrent.
The reason fixed-quantity purchase contracts could suppress the practice of making a profit by buying large quantities from cheap, external sources was that Hailufeng Company would issue public announcements listing the farming scale of each contracted grower and strictly cap the total purchase volume.
This way, non-contracted farmers would not rashly start raising Egyptian Catfish. Given the notorious reputation of Egyptian Fish in the Lingnan Region, the scale of Egyptian Catfish farming was very limited everywhere, especially in Shanmei proper. Aside from wild ones, very few farmers would actually raise them.
For these contracted farmers to make money as middlemen, they would have to buy huge quantities of Egyptian Catfish, and they’d have to buy them cheap.
However, the local, non-contracted farming scale was limited. A massive buy-up would inevitably drive up the market price quickly and cause the local supply of Egyptian Catfish to be bought out in no time.
With the purchase price rising and transportation costs added on, the profit margin wouldn’t be large.
As for buying from other regions, that was even less feasible. On one hand, the scale of Egyptian Catfish farming in other parts of Lingnan was also small. On the other hand, transportation costs would skyrocket.
Moreover, Jiang Miao had another trick up his sleeve: suddenly issuing temporary licenses. Anyone holding a temporary license could sell Egyptian Catfish to Hailufeng Company up to the quota specified on the license.
Just as Wang Jianxin had said, don’t assume everyone else is a complete idiot.
As soon as Hailufeng Company released these temporary licenses, all the non-contracted Egyptian Catfish would be quickly snapped up by the company.
The initial purchase price of 3 yuan per kilogram had been set taking into account cheap local transportation costs. If the fish were transported from other regions, the cost alone would be enough to make the transaction worthless.
The quoted shipping fee for a standard large truck is about 1 yuan per ton per kilometer.
However, Hailufeng Company required that the Egyptian Catfish be purchased alive. This meant standard trucks couldn’t be used; only specialized trucks for transporting aquatic products would work. The quoted price for those is around 3 yuan per ton per kilometer.
Assuming they were transported from the nearest location, Goose City Huangbu Town, to Magong Town—a journey of over fifty kilometers—the shipping fee per ton, including the base charge, would be around 300 yuan.
Meanwhile, the purchase price for Egyptian Catfish from other regions is between 2 and 3 yuan per kilogram.
In other words, for any Egyptian Catfish from more than 200 kilometers away, there would be basically no profit left after transporting them to Magong Town.
Jiang Miao had already had the company perform professional calculations for all of this when they were running the numbers on the costs.
If anyone got too greedy and deliberately signed large contracts, planning to play the game of buying low and selling high, the company would periodically release temporary licenses to consume all the Egyptian Catfish in the surrounding areas. This would leave those people with no way to purchase Egyptian Catfish nearby, forcing them to default on their contracts.
The truly impoverished households would certainly have no way of playing this buy-low-sell-high game. Even if they tried, it would only be small-scale purchasing within a few villages.
Only the major players would have the capacity to do so.
Jiang Miao felt no psychological pressure about taking money from people like that.
In any case, if you’re willing to make the bet, you have to be willing to accept the loss.
After getting burned once or twice, this bunch would probably stop trying to scheme around the Egyptian Catfish.
In fact, if those major players truly invested in farming Egyptian Catfish, they could also make money from Hailufeng Company.
What Jiang Miao hated were the insatiably greedy types who wanted to exploit Hailufeng Company’s poverty alleviation program for opportunistic gains.
It wasn’t that Jiang Miao was overflowing with a sense of justice. Rather, the poverty alleviation program could tie a large number of impoverished households to his company, thereby increasing Hailufeng Company’s say and influence in the local area.
Sometimes, when a company grows to a certain size, it needs to create a protective talisman for itself to become too big to fail.
This was one such talisman.
Look at Kangaroo Delivery. They ruthlessly exploit their couriers, so why does nothing happen to them? It’s because Kangaroo Delivery has a massive number of couriers in its grasp, to the point where they can’t be touched lightly.
Many companies with a huge number of employees are often linked to social stability.
And this poverty alleviation program was the second protective talisman Jiang Miao was preparing for Hailufeng Company.
As for the first talisman, that was naturally his special medical skills.
Anyone who dared to ruin his plans would become his target.
Therefore, those who tried to find loopholes weren’t just stealing resources that should have gone to the impoverished households; they were also undermining Jiang Miao’s plan. Naturally, Jiang Miao would find ways to deal with them.