Three days later, the number of applicants exceeded ten million.
Immigrants without a threshold were first welcomed by the poor people in Africa and the Middle East. Those who were more or less in touch with the Internet and longed for a better life in the outside world were particularly enthusiastic when signing up.
However, Jiang Chen obviously failed to live up to these people's expectations.
For volunteers from underdeveloped areas, Celestial Trade was extremely cautious. Almost no applicants from Africa were selected, and few people from the Middle East were qualified for the interview.
It was not because of racial discrimination, but it was entirely due to considerations of security and other factors. Living habits, religious customs, and even food culture, these may bring hidden dangers to colonization. In order to reduce the risk in this area, any applicants who held a negative view on secularization were not qualified for the interview.
After the interview results came out, Liu Qingpeng couldn't even believe it himself. With only a high school education, he was selected?!
Happiness came too suddenly. On the same day, he excitedly took a few of his close friends out for a drink. The next day, he resigned from the person in charge of the factory, and then went to the Xin Embassy with his identity information to get a work visa to Coro Island.
Dragging his suitcase, he got off the plane at the airport of Coro Island and soon saw the bus responsible for picking up volunteers.
Most of the people on the bus were Asians, and there were even people from his hometown. There were also many people from Europe, the UA, and Russia sitting on the bus. However, because of the language barrier, he only curiously looked at these foreigners and didn't communicate much with them.
Jiang Liushi's minibus drove to a ferry, and then the ferry drove to Ange Island. Jiang Liushi's minibus sent them to the volunteer community next to the training center.
From now on, they would live here and receive four hours of training in the venue and four hours of VR training every day.
Six months later, according to their performance in training, they would be divided into different types of work for specialized training. A year later, their status would change from temporary workers to full-time workers. Although they would still be volunteers, they could already be regarded as prospective astronauts.
The construction of the space elevator would be synchronized with the Moon colonization program. A year later, Celestial Trade would select 200 people from these volunteers as the first batch of colonists to the Moon to take the first shocking step of interstellar colonization!
…
After the completion of the space elevator, a large number of astronauts would be needed in the space station.
Long before the launch of the space elevator program, the astronaut training center began construction. On the one hand, it was to provide space station staff to Celestial Trade, and on the other hand, it was to provide basic aerospace training to Xin citizens, at least to the extent of adapting to a zero-gravity environment!
"At present, 30,000 volunteers have arrived in Xin for training. Although we have cooperated with Future Tourism, the entire space training center is still losing money. According to the Finance Department's estimate, the Space Training Center's deficit this month is between 8 million USD and 10 million USD. "
"A loss of 100 million a year?"
When he heard Xia Shiyu's report, his expression didn't change much.
The aerospace project was a bottomless pit, and he was already prepared to lose money in the early stages. He had already lost more than 100 billion yuan, so why would he care about a mere 100 million?
"The training center's budget remains the same, but ask Wei Yun's side to think of ways to make the space training center more useful for tourism. I don't expect to be responsible for my own profits and losses, just don't lose too much. I don't have any other requests. "
"I will tell him." Xia Shiyu nodded.
"Also, how is the negotiation with Australia's SunRice going?" Putting aside the astronaut training, Jiang Chen asked another question he was concerned about, which was the food supply for the future space elevator space station and the lunar colonial base.
"SunRice rejected our proposal to acquire farms in northern Australia, even if we offered an 11% premium. According to the person in charge of negotiating with us, this decision was made by the parent company, Cargill. "
As everyone knew, 80% of the global food market was controlled by the four major companies, ABCD. These four companies were ADM, Bungie, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus. It could be said that the global food prices were basically determined by these four companies.
It was not difficult for people to discover that three of the companies belonged to the UA. The global food market was basically under the control of the UA. Although the UA had never announced that the food market must be settled in US dollars, the rice in people's bowls had never left the control of the UA.
In the 2004 soybean crisis, Hua's squeezed enterprises collectively collapsed. The UA taught Hua, who had just joined the WTO less than three years ago, a painful "trade lesson." Even now, more than a decade later, China's soybean industry had yet to recover from the crisis.
Before 2004, Hua was one of the major soybean producers.
It was no longer the barbaric Victorian era. The battlefield between countries no longer relied on brute force. Through the use of the invisible leverage of the market, even nuclear weapons could not achieve.
Whether it was the orbital space station or the lunar base, the only industry that was difficult to achieve self-sufficiency was food production. Even if hydroponics and aeroponics were used, it was difficult to control the high production cost.
With the space elevator, the cost of transporting food to outer space would be greatly reduced, but it was still difficult to get rid of the control of the four companies.
At present, Xin's food basically relied on imports from Australia. If Jiang Chen made a move against the US dollar, the UA would undoubtedly attack Xin in the food market.
Xin, which completely relied on imports from grains to dairy products, was defenseless in the food market.
There was only one way to reduce price fluctuations in the international market to a minimum, and that was to produce their own food and turn from an importer to an exporter! Even if the rice did not grow on the land of Coro Island, it must grow on the overseas farms controlled by Xin's domestic enterprises.
Achieving self-sufficiency in food production was crucial for the future development of Celestial Trade! Therefore, Jiang Chen instructed Xia Shiyu to propose an asset acquisition plan for SunRice, which monopolized Australia's grain exports. He hoped to acquire 400,000 acres of farms in northern Australia.
However, unfortunately, Cargill, which controlled SunRice, was unwilling to give up the farms in its hands. Although 400,000 acres of farms only accounted for a small portion of SunRice's arable land.
"What about contacting Cargill?"
"They are not willing to talk at all." Xia Shiyu shook her head. "My suggestion is to register a subsidiary in Australia and acquire farms from Australian farmers through the subsidiary … Although the cost and efficiency of doing so are not proportional, the difficulty is certainly much lower than pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth."
As one of the granaries of Asia, Australia's agricultural market was quite mature. No farmer would be willing to sell their farms. After all, many Australian farmers had made a living from this for generations. If they lost their farms, they would not be able to find other jobs.
Unless Future Group offered a high premium, they wouldn't agree at all.
Jiang Chen was also in a dilemma.
Xin was a good place, but it was a bit small. When he chose his base, he didn't think so far ahead. He thought that with the globalization of the economy, he could buy anything he lacked. However, now that he had a bigger plate, he realized that things were far from as simple as he thought.
[It's so annoying. If only thousands of square kilometers of territorial waters could be replaced with land … Wait!]
When he thought of this, Jiang Chen's eyes suddenly lit up.
[Can't we just build the farm on the sea?]
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