Needless to say, Cui Guangqi is likely in grave danger.
The documents in the file folder were also examined. They were all confidential documents from the Investigation Department, as well as investigation documents of commercial companies in the jurisdiction. From the contents, it was clear that Cui Guangqi had put in a lot of effort to extort money from these businesses.
Soon, a document caught Yuji Imai's attention. It was an investigation report on the smuggling channels of a trading company. The report showed that the trading company, Chenguang, had been engaged in the smuggling of electrical materials. The owner, Zhen Xu, was a Zhejiang businessman with an unknown background. He purchased goods from the French Concession and then smuggled them to southern and northern Jiangsu, making huge profits from it.
Yuji Imai took this document very seriously. It was no small matter. If it was just smuggling electrical materials, Shanghai had a large population, a developed commercial sector, and complete power equipment. If the smuggled electrical materials were consumed within the city limits, that would be fine. However, if they were smuggled to southern and northern Jiangsu, the consequences would be much more serious. Those areas were the activity range of the Loyal and Patriotic Army of the Wuhan government and the New Fourth Army of the Red Party. Needless to say, the destination of these electrical materials was to be supplied to the Chinese military.
At that time, due to backward technology and low production capacity, the Chinese government was unable to produce various electrical appliances on its own and relied entirely on imports for electrical materials. For example, communication wires and cables, high-power radios, and key components of radios such as vacuum tubes, dedicated batteries and antennas, signal amplifiers, etc., all needed to be imported from abroad. Unfortunately, due to the backward technology of that era, the quality of these electrical materials was very poor, their service life was very short, they had to be replaced frequently, and they were consumed very quickly. Many times, a radio had to be taken out of service just because a small component was damaged, resulting in huge waste. Therefore, the Chinese government's demand for electrical materials was always very large.
However, since the outbreak of the full-scale war between China and Japan, the Japanese have strengthened their economic blockade against the Chinese government, and import channels have been almost completely cut off. Now, only the French territory of Guangzhou can purchase these electrical materials, but this is only a drop in the bucket. Therefore, the Chinese government has used all the electrical materials it can collect for military purposes, and the purchase price has skyrocketed. The huge profits involved are no less than those from smuggling medicines, which has prompted some merchants to take risks and start to get involved in the trade of smuggled electrical materials. This is the kind of business that Chenguang Trading Company does.
Now, due to the strict restrictions imposed by the Japanese on searches within Shanghai's urban area, there are no longer any sources of smuggled goods. Therefore, the source of smuggled goods is in the French Concession and the International Settlement, because merchants from various foreign powers are located there. Relying on their respective backgrounds, they use various diplomatic privileges, bribery, and other means to evade the inspection of the Wusongkou Customs established by the Japanese and transport these goods into the Shanghai concessions to make huge profits. Ning Zhiheng's Fujiwara Company is one of them.
The concession area was located in the middle of Shanghai, surrounded by the Japanese-occupied Shanghai, like an isolated island.
If they wanted to transport smuggled goods to areas outside Shanghai to obtain greater profits, they had to go through Japanese-occupied territories. If the Japanese wanted to cut off these transport lines, they would have to invest a great deal of resources. This is one of the reasons why the Special Higher Police established the Special Investigation Division.
Yuji Imai carefully read through the document and nodded inwardly. He had to admit that Cui Guangqi was exceptionally capable. He had even sent his agents to infiltrate the French Concession to investigate and find out that the supplier of Chenguang Trading Company was Brown Trading Company, a large trading company with the support of the British consulate, which specialized in smuggling.
Of course, Cui Guangqi's hard work was not to cut off the smuggling channel and curry favor with the Japanese, but to follow the clues from Brown Trading Company to find other downstream customers of Brown Trading Company, and then to extort money from them, or simply intercept the goods and resell them himself. In short, he would make a lot of money no matter what he did.
This matter must be investigated further, but for now, we must first find out the truth behind Cui Guangqi's disappearance.
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