When setting up administrative regions later, the group took various factors into consideration and ultimately decided to set the capital of the Java administrative region in Jakarta.
But the Sundanese people had changed the name of this place to "Sunda Kelapa", so the group translated it literally and named it "Coconut City", and decided to build it into one of the five most advanced and prosperous model cities to showcase the Chinese civilization to Southeast Asia.
Jiangnan Group has accumulated rich experience in urban construction and has the confidence and ability to do it!
At the end of the ninth year of Wanli, after half a year of field investigation, the technical staff of the Planning Institute fully combined the actual situation with the future development direction of Coconut City and even West Java, and came up with a scientific and reasonable urban construction plan.
After five years of hard work, the infrastructure of Coconut City was basically completed. Standing on the hillside of Jixiang Mountain in the south of the city and looking down, you can see that a brand new water city has taken shape between the mountains and the sea.
In the coastal dock area, the piers that extend into the sea are full of cargo ships of all sizes. In the bay, there are also many ships waiting to be loaded and unloaded, waiting for the Popeye cranes painted in red and white to lift the cargo in the cabin to the rail trucks at the dock.
Once a car is full, the animal- or human-powered rail cars will immediately drive to the storage area outside the dock area so that the pier can be cleared as soon as possible to unload the next ship.
Leaving the efficient and busy dock area and storage area to the south, across the river is the bustling commercial district. The commercial district is lined with shops, all with white walls and black tiles, and colorful signs.
Although Coconut City is a city with many rivers, planners still took great care to design this seven-mile commercial street that crosses several rivers. For this purpose, they even built seven large stone bridges that are wider than the streets.
Because past experience tells them that there should be a wide and long street connecting all the streets in the city. Then this street located in the city center and connected in all directions will naturally become the commercial center of the city, just like it is now.
A prosperous commercial street will quickly drive the development of surrounding neighborhoods, and then make the entire city prosperous.
Oh, yes, this street is called Jiangnan Street. The commercial streets of all 18 overseas administrative regions of Jiangnan Group are called Jiangnan Street.
In the past, Jiangnan Street was dotted with residential areas. Although Java Island is not the group's main immigration destination, Coconut City's unique location and administrative resources as the capital of Java have attracted more than 100,000 immigrants to settle here.
Although most of the houses are still made of bamboo and wood, the tree-lined streets, clear rivers, and clean roads make it impossible to associate this place with the former Jakarta, which was full of mud and garbage, silted and dirty rivers, and full of mosquitoes and flies.
People sailed in black-sailed boats through the streets and alleys, and the river was filled with Chinese dialects. In a trance, it felt like a Jiangnan water town. No wonder the management committee publicized that Coconut City is the "Southeastern Suzhou".
However, the management committee was not satisfied with this, because in this era when the number of overseas immigrants has exceeded 10 million, 100,000 residents is really nothing...
~~
"The development level of Coconut City can only rank fifth among all the cities in Southeast Asia. We still have a lot of shortcomings, the most important of which is the lack of population. The young master often said that when people gather together, there will be prosperity, and when there are people, there will be everything..."
On the Jixiang Mountain, Java’s executive senior official…oh no, the executive deputy director of the management committee and mayor of Coconut City, Cai Yimu, was humbly accepting an interview from the Nanyang Times.
He is the first graduate of the accelerated course of Jinling Caijiaxiang Primary School, and also the first batch of literacy students trained after Zhao Hao invested in the school.
In a blink of an eye, it has been twenty years since Yimu graduated. He has also grown from a sixteen-year-old boy to a 36-year-old middle-aged man.
After graduation, Cai Yimu joined Jiangnan Education and has been working diligently for the group for the past 20 years.
And he came at a good time!
At that time, students trained by the group were still rare, unlike now, when there are so many of them. Middle school students are not rare anymore...
Scarcity makes things valuable. After the internship, he was retained at the group headquarters as a liaison clerk, that is, a correspondent who travels around to send messages.
Although he is just an errand boy, he is classified as a management position in personnel, although it is only the lowest level of "Administrative Level 15".
One of the main features of Jiangnan Group is the clear hierarchy of positions. Coast guards have police ranks, employees have job ranks, and management positions also have administrative ranks, which are divided into 15 levels in total. Level 1 is the highest and level 15 is the lowest...
A year later, the group established a new port city on Jeju Island and recruited expatriate managers within the group with no restrictions on years of service.
He decisively signed up and was promoted to administrative level 14 and sent to Jeju Island. He worked as a middle-level clerk in the office of the mayor of Xingang for two years and was promoted to senior clerk, administrative level 13.
Because he is diligent, quiet and willing to use his brain, he is appreciated by Mayor Tang.
At the end of the fifth year of Longqing, the opportunity came again.
Tang Youde was transferred to Taiwan Island to serve as the chairman of the management committee. He also followed the chairman's team to Taiwan.
At that time, the group was still very short of people, and the business in Taiwan was ten times bigger than that in Jeju Island. Tang Youde could only "make do with the materials" and entrusted all his subordinates with important tasks.
He was assigned to Yilan City to serve as deputy director of the City Hall Office and director of the Yilan Soft Drinks Factory, skipping the deputy section level and section level and being promoted to the tenth administrative level!
But this is nothing. In the early stages of the group, there were many low-level cadres who were promoted faster than him. The higher you go up, the harder it is to get promoted.
As a result, "Yilan Soda" became a huge success under his leadership, becoming a symbol of Taiwan Island and the group's star product, and was often mentioned in newspapers.
With his fame, he embarked on a road to success. One year later, he was promoted to Director of Yilan City Commerce Department, administrative level nine. He was also named an outstanding employee of the group and participated in the group's fifth anniversary conference at the end of the year.
In the first year of the Wanli reign, the group established a new cadre academy in Suzhou. He was ordered to return to Jiangnan for a year of off-duty training. In the second year of the Wanli reign, he returned to Taiwan to serve as the deputy mayor of Fengshan City. Administrative level eight.
In the fifth year of Wanli, Cai Yimu was sent to Luzon to serve as the mayor of the newly established Daimao City.
He has been working in Haomao City for five years, and this is the first time he has completed his full term.
In the tenth year of Wanli, he was promoted to member of the Borneo Administrative Committee and mayor of Lanfang, the sixth administrative level.
He was ready to work hard in Borneo for another five years, but he encountered an anti-corruption storm and many senior officials were dismissed. There was no other way. In the 12th year of the Wanli reign, he was transferred to Java to fill the gap and served as the deputy director of the management committee and the mayor of Coconut City. Administrative level five...
Within the group, the administrative level five corresponds to the level of intermediate police inspector with two gold stars in the Coast Guard, which means he has officially entered the ranks of senior officials!
~~
But in front of this reporter, he didn't put on airs at all, instead he counted on his fingers like a small businessman. There was nothing he could do, because he was brought up by Old Tang.
"Look, the population of Yongxia City, which was first established by the group, has exceeded 500,000! The population of Malacca City across the way is also 400,000. Xingzhou City, which has a worse foundation than us, has a population of 200,000..."
"Then it should be ranked fourth." Cai Yisen, the reporter from Nanyang Times, reminded him.
"There is also Pattani." Cai Yimu said.
"There are only about 70,000 or 80,000 Han people in Beidan..." Reporter Cai pushed the thick lenses.
"The big clay man is not a human being?" Cai Yimu said unhappily.
“You didn’t include the Sundanese people either…” reporter Cai retorted.
"Just write it like this!" Cai Yimu glared at him.
"It seems that our 'Nanyang Press' does not belong to you, Deputy Director Cai?" Reporter Cai said unhappily.
"But you have to listen to me, because I'm your brother!" Cai Yimu blew his beard and glared, "You little brat, dare you disobey me?"
"Newspapers are the mouthpiece of the group, and reporters are the eyes and ears of the group! Brother, you taught me to distinguish between public and private affairs." Cai Yisen closed the interview book in his hand depressedly.
"Uh, about this..." Cai Yimu was speechless. He waved his hand to signal the accompanying personnel to move away, and then smiled apologetically to his third brother:
"Yi Sen, I'm not asking you to cheat, it's just, it's just how I put it..."
"Skillful expression." Yisen said unhappily.
"Yes, yes, yes, it's a skillful expression! I, your brother, just didn't receive enough education..." Cai Yimu sighed in distress.
He was not being modest. A one-year crash course was only enough to teach students how to read and write.
Nowadays, there are no crash courses anymore. All the schools of Jiangnan Trading Group have changed to the "three-three system" of three years of primary school, three years of senior primary school, and three years of middle school.
Although he had been studying hard over the years and had attended full-time training courses, the more he studied, the worse he felt about his poor foundation, and he often felt fearful that he was not worthy of his position.
However, since the group decided to let him do the job, he could only try his best to do it well.
~~
Cai Yimu lowered his voice and said, "You must know in the newspaper office what the major regions are fighting over most fiercely right now?"
"It's a fight for population." Cai Yisen took off his glasses and snorted, "Eight years ago, there were two million immigrants and they had no place to put them. Now it's still two million a year, but it's not enough to go around!"
"Yes. Fight for population! A thousand miles of fertile land needs people to cultivate it. The land in the city is valuable only when the popularity is high. Even the budget given by the group depends on the number of people. So if there are people, there is everything! If there is no one, you can only watch helplessly!"
"That's true." Cai Yisen nodded. In mainland China, people are cheap and land is valuable, but overseas, it's the other way around, land is cheap and people are valuable.
At present, there are two million immigrants a year, and not only in the eighteen administrative districts, but also hundreds of thousands will be sent to the Western outposts, so each administrative district can get about 100,000 immigrants a year. And then if the administrative districts are divided down, there really isn't much left.
"We currently have three cities in Java, Coconut City, Lower Port and Surabaya. In fact, according to the plan, we should also set up Yogyakarta, Bandung and Batang as soon as possible." Cai Yimu said depressedly, "But there are not enough people. Last year, we were only allocated 80,000 immigrants, and we solved 20,000 of them ourselves, which barely kept up with the development of the three cities. Where is the population to open another stall?"
What he called "solving it by oneself" was to attract Cantonese people who traditionally went to Southeast Asia. But these people can move freely, and if they see better development elsewhere, they will not stay here for long.
"Alas, we don't want to be special, we just want fairness. But last year the group gave Borneo 400,000, isn't that too far off?" Cai Yimu complained: "If we don't make our voice heard,"
"There are four administrative regions in Borneo, and they are the key immigration areas of the group. How can they be the same?" Cai Yisen said with a wry smile: "Brother, the group is a 'chess game in Nanyang', you should not always be afraid of being at a disadvantage."
"How can we not be afraid? If they have one more place, we will have one less place." Cai Yimu sighed, "If we behave ourselves and don't cry or make a fuss, the quota will be reduced again next year."
"I understand." Cai Yisen suddenly said, "You asked me to come to Coconut City not to report on the cinchona plantation. This is your real purpose."
"That's good to know. Before our director returned to the mainland, he told me to take down a big reporter like you! Don't let him fight alone in the headquarters." Cai Yimu put his arm around his brother's arm and said with a smile: "Yisen, I'm begging you, okay?"
"Oh, brother, you really give me a hard time." Cai Yisen sighed depressedly.
ps. Alas, problems always arise one after another. Every time you think you can follow the routine, you will encounter problems again. As a result, I have only finished one chapter so far... I have to go to bed and have to go to the hospital tomorrow...