Munitions Empire-Chapter 952 - 875 Wealthy Pan Yiping

Chapter 952: 875 Wealthy Pan Yiping Chapter 952: 875 Wealthy Pan Yiping Du Jia’s charm, Pan Yiping actually discovered bit by bit. Although Du Jia was actually quite handsome, after being a bartender who wiped glasses in a tavern, Pan Yiping felt he was “ugly.”

However, after Pan Yiping, the future father-in-law, met the military officer from the Great Tang Empire Embassy, the ruthless leader of a dark society, the chief editor of a newspaper, the Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Appointments, and the Prince Zhao Yu… he began to find Du Jia increasingly pleasing to the eye.

It’s the same principle as you finding Jack Ma increasingly pleasant to look at—anyone who can help you empty your shopping cart is akin to a father, as long as they don’t mind lowering their status to be a husband.

Who could imagine that a young man, who stood behind the bar wiping glasses all day with a smile, had abilities like Doraemon?

He was like Doraemon, using just a little power, he expanded Pan Yiping’s business by tenfold or even a hundredfold.

Now in Dahua Empire’s business circles, a dazzling new star has suddenly risen: the Pan Family somehow rapidly ascended to power becoming a formidable force that even longstanding families had to take seriously.

Business people know that no matter how much money you have, it’s just a tool; the key is to see how this tool is used in the environment.

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Putting it bluntly: having money is just a precondition, what’s more crucial is whether your money can pave the divine path!

If society looks down on merchants, and money is considered less significant, then this environment is not one that merchants favor.

If the environment is all about money, and everything revolves around money, if money can deal with anything, then money is everything, it’s the spiritual link between mortals and gods.

In the Great Tang Empire, money is not omnipotent, having money can only improve the quality of life, this environment is actually not friendly for merchants.

Today, the flourishing business within the Great Tang Empire is entirely because following the Great Tang Group rewards you with food and drink, so everyone eagerly follows.

What’s more commendable is that the Great Tang Empire has ensured the authority of the law, treating everyone equally in its standards, indirectly giving merchants a fair competitive environment, making them quite comfortable with the commercial climate of the Great Tang Empire.

However, these law-abiding, kind-hearted model citizens of Great Tang Empire immediately show their fierce fangs once outside the empire’s borders.

Simply put, capital is evil; it doesn’t create anything, it only plunders and destroys, it corrodes and damages. In a country where money can both bless and command spirits, huge capital often implies unlimited power.

Frankly speaking, the social hierarchy of scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants holds ancient wisdom—if the growth of merchants is not suppressed, the monstrous capital behind them once unleashed, would instantly destabilize the nation.

Tang Mo, fully aware of these principles, controlled the economic lifeline of the nation—although he didn’t directly intervene in market operations, the sheer scale of the Great Tang Group afforded Tang Mo control over intervening in businesses and markets whenever necessary.

This means, Tang Mo’s Great Tang Group is a super-massive state-owned enterprise, which can step in to regulate when necessary.

Thus, the Great Tang Empire is an extremely deformed nation adopting a dictatorial Emperor system, with Tang Mo himself as the Emperor. It encourages the destruction of the landlord class, pushing merchant capital to the forefront, ostensibly preparing for a constitutional monarchy.

But fundamentally, Tang Mo controlled state intervention in businesses and the manipulation of the market, with no intention of relinquishing control—he never trusted the free market, dismissive of the naive idea of market self-regulation.

Therefore, the Great Tang Empire gathered all elements of prosperity, yet due to its deformity, concealed many crises: on the surface, the Great Tang Empire had a strong, wise monarch, a thriving and powerful economy, and well-ordered state affairs.

But in fact, everything rested on the monarch, Tang Mo, who firmly controlled the Great Tang Group, using a highly unreasonable method relying on personal prestige and experience to patch potential flaws of a nation.

Despite this, the Great Tang Empire still stood out in this era, because the world wasn’t about who was better, its operating principle was based on being “less worse”.

A nation’s strength doesn’t rely on its flawless capabilities, but is, in fact, bolstered by the inferiority of others…

Although the Great Tang Empire was not adept at managing capital, other nations lacked even more experience in this area.

Laissez-faire was the initial attitude of all countries toward the expansion of business scale: they didn’t know how to manage, so they chose not to manage at all. As long as the merchants paid taxes, and were willing to pay more, everything else was overlooked!

Well, all the merchants were excited: they didn’t mind spending more money, what they minded was you not taking the money! With the income obtained from the Great Tang Empire being ten to a hundred times more, why would they worry about the tax rates of ten, twenty, or thirty percent imposed by other countries?

Come on, as long as you let them do as they please, they were willing to fork out even more money!

In the Dahua Empire, money was indeed a great thing. So when Pan Yiping had money, he found that he could suddenly do a lot more things.

On the surface, he was now a cotton merchant, controlling the cotton trade between the Qin Country, Dahua, and the Tang Country, which nearly amounted to monopolizing two-thirds of the cotton trade of the Western Continent.

Behind the scenes, he was actually a money laundering tool, with the Great Tang Empire turning astronomical numbers of Gold Coins into legal funds in his accounts, which were then legally subsidized to many officials of the Dahua Empire.

Moreover, he was also one of Prince Zhao Yu’s financial backers, which meant he was Zhao Yu’s moneybag. This wasn’t about merely giving Zhao Yu some pocket money; it involved providing a series of supports to the officials of Zhao Yu’s faction through actions.

These supports included, but were not limited to, investing in construction within the regions controlled by Zhao Yu’s supportive local officials, helping these officials improve their performance, granting them more and sufficient voice on the court.

These moneybags also needed to appease and build networks of interests, arranging better job positions for their faction’s officials’ families, providing more favorable learning environments for their descendants, allowing the related officials to engage in political struggles without worries, more valiantly charging into the fray.

This wasn’t bribery, but rather a transparent strategy: I simply invest in the regions of the officials I favor, can you control that? If the officials I favor perform well, build their regions well, collect more taxes, then that’s their competence! If I have the money to build a kindergarten next to the official’s place, hire the best teachers and the most expensive caregivers, with a hundred teachers revolving around four students and only charging a buck for the fee, would you be upset? Does your child want to join? Sorry, we’re full…

Just like the things Pan Yiping was recently doing: only when he reached this position did he suddenly realize that there was so much delicacy involved.

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Don’t be fooled by his being a merchant of textiles, cotton goods, cotton, and various food specialties, because what he was doing now, two-thirds of it had nothing to do with these businesses.

Accountants from the Great Tang Empire helped him audit the entire company’s finances, professional managers from the Great Tang Empire helped him manage the entire business operations of the company, and he didn’t even know how “wealthy” he really was now.

And his current business not only covered all the previous branches, but was also investing in factories, schools, bridges, and roads.

The most interesting part was, when he learned that he owned a university dedicated to training in clothing tailoring, fine arts, horticulture, industrial design, he was stunned himself.

This university had taken only half a year from construction to start admitting students, and many teachers had studied at art schools in the Great Tang Empire.

At the invitation of Prince Zhao Yu, the school had many senior lecturers from the art academy of the Great Tang Empire as guest speakers, and immediately after completion, it became one of the top ten art schools in the world.

Many officers from Zhao Yu’s faction had their eligible children sent to this school to study art and etiquette, while casually finding romantic interests and friends, establishing new networks.

Pan Yiping found it particularly amusing that he now owned a football team named “Pan Cotton and Linen,” and he also kept more than thirty thoroughbreds, with a huge hunting ground outside the Imperial Capital.

Emperor Zhao Kai of the Dahua Empire had even visited that hunting ground and had killed a completely white tiger there… It was said that this “auspicious beast” made Zhao Kai very happy, and he took both the lever-action rifle imported from Great Tang and the tiger’s corpse back to the Imperial Palace.

Everyone in the Imperial Capital who had their own sources knew that Pan Yiping very sensibly gave half of the shares of the hunting ground to the Emperor, although Pan Yiping himself didn’t know about this for a long time… Now the place was called “Good Place,” a name personally written by Zhao Kai, engraved on a plaque.

When a merchant managed his business to this extent, he was basically invincible. Pan Yiping indeed was invincible; he realized that besides spending money, there was nothing else he could do.

Even, he soon discovered that he was spending money too slowly. He desperately spent money, yet still found that his bank deposits were rapidly increasing.

Actually, when he first saw the total amount of allowances, risk allowances, salaries, and bonuses provided for the overseas personnel of the Great Tang Empire Intelligence Bureau, he knew that his son-in-law, who wiped glasses, was far wealthier than him.

As for the risks of becoming an intelligence official of the Great Tang Empire: Pan Yiping thought that those Dahua Empire officials and policemen, who used to haunt like nightmares, probably didn’t have the guts to arrest their boss’s close friends, nor the courage to investigate the big shots who frequently had tea and chatted with the Prime Minister and the Prince.