100,000 square kilometers was more than 1% of the country's land area. It was larger than many provinces!
Could he even buy so much land?
Logically speaking, it was impossible. The Z people had a large population but little land. There were not many large grain farmers who contracted more than 10,000 mu of land, let alone 100,000 square kilometers.
But the land that Chen Jin wanted to contract was not arable land, woodland, grassland, or any land that could grow green plants.
It was desert land where not even a blade of grass grew.
According to statistics, the total area of the desert in the Z nation was about 700,000 square kilometers. If the Gobi Desert of more than 500,000 square kilometers was included, the total area would be 1.28 million square kilometers, accounting for 13% of the country's total land area.
The northwest arid zone of the Z nation was the area with the highest concentration of deserts in the country, accounting for about 80% of the country's total desert area.
The eight most famous deserts in the Z nation were: Taklimakan Desert, Gurbantunggut Desert, Badain Jaran Desert, Tengger Desert, Ulan Buhe Desert, Kubuqi Desert, Qaidam Basin Desert, and Kumtag Desert.
With so many deserts and millions of square kilometers of wasteland, it should not be too much of a problem for Chen Jin to contract 10% of it, right?
Speaking of which … why did he want to contract so much land?
Of course, it was very useful.
"Land is the origin of all things. It is the source of all value.
One square kilometer is equivalent to 1,500 mu. 100,000 square kilometers is equivalent to 150 million mu!
With so much land, we can use some of it to plant crops. If we plant 50 million mu, the average economic value per mu is 1,000 dollars. That's 50 billion dollars per year.
In addition, we can use one-third of the land to plant some economic forests, such as walnuts, apples, and various fruit trees. The return cycle of this kind of investment is generally more than five years. The longer ones may take ten or even decades, but it is still profitable. Take timber for example. An mu of economic forest with 30 years of age is worth more than 100,000 dollars. The environmental value created is even more limitless.
The remaining one-third can be used to plant large grasslands to raise cattle and sheep. We can also set up fish ponds to raise fish. We can also build some factories and houses. We can move many of Xing Hai Technologies' research centers there. We can build a high-tech city in the depths of the northwest desert.
In the surroundings of this city, there will be Xing Hai Technologies' farms, fish ponds, and ecological pig farms, chicken farms, and cattle farms. There will also be large areas of forests, orchards, and grasslands. Everything will be self-sufficient. All costs will be minimized.
"By that time, Xing Hai Technologies might not be the most profitable company in the country, but it would also be the company that is least likely to fail."
"Xing Hai Technologies will stand tall for 100 years, 200 years, and forever."
Why did Chen Jin say that?
Could it be that Xing Hai Technologies could collapse with his plug-in and the resources he had at his disposal?
Indeed!
Even if his hands were full of cheats, there was still the possibility of Xing Hai Technologies closing down … although Xing Hai Technologies was currently very profitable.
A high-tech enterprise like Xing Hai Technologies could still be "strangled" by all parties.
First of all, high-tech companies paid the most taxes, and a large portion of their profits was taken away by the government … This was understandable, as it was just an obligation.
On the contrary, if your product did well and occupied an absolute market share, you would be suspected of monopolizing the market and face penalties and fines … You couldn't do too well, or you would be restricted and suppressed.
In addition, technology was constantly being iterated, and competition was fierce. Once a high-tech company slowed down its pace of innovation and was overtaken by its competitors, even a century-old company could fall overnight. Of course, Xing Hai Technologies did not have such concerns.
There was also the issue of high housing prices.
High housing prices were simply the "killer" of high-tech companies. A low-tech industry like real estate could actually defeat high-tech companies.
There was even a law that "high-tech leads to high housing prices."
In all the places where high-tech industries were developed, housing prices were astonishingly expensive.
For example, Silicon Valley in the M nation, Shen Zhen, Shang Hai, Di Du, and so on in the Z nation, the housing prices were unaffordable.
High housing prices were not caused by high-tech companies! It was the shrewd real estate developers and investors who wanted high-tech companies to foot the bill, and wanted to rip off the big players.
Obviously, Xing Hai Technologies was the "big player" in the eyes of those real estate developers and investors.
Thinking of how profitable Xing Hai Technologies was, and how high the salaries of its employees were, they could definitely afford the housing price of $100,000 per square meter. There was no need to worry about no takers.
The huge profits that Xing Hai Technologies had earned steadily were about to be harvested by those greedy speculators.
Therefore, in the past two years, housing prices in Shang Hai had doubled, and rents had increased by 50%. A large part of the reason was indeed due to Xing Hai Technologies.
This made Chen Jin very angry. He had the idea of learning from Hua Yao and moving a few R&D centers out of Shang Hai. He would leave in a huff and let those speculators play by themselves.
Xing Hai Technologies had painstakingly earned some money, but in the end, the speculators took it all away with a 2% increase in housing prices. Who could stand it?
The problem was, where could Xing Hai Technologies move to?
According to the law of "high-tech leads to high housing prices," wherever Xing Hai Technologies moved, the speculators would follow. The housing prices of that place would skyrocket, and then they would continue to move. Who could stand the torment every few years?
Therefore, another saying came out: "A high-tech company that doesn't want to engage in real estate is not a good high-tech company." The best solution was to take drastic measures and enter the real estate business personally to prevent the speculators from taking advantage of the loopholes.
It was just that land in Shang Hai was too expensive. One mu of land would cost hundreds of millions. With the size of Xing Hai Technologies, they would need to buy at least a few thousand mu of land … Just buying land would require an unimaginably huge investment.
Chen Jin could not afford so much money, and it was not worth it!
"What if I buy the desert land in the arid northwest region? The land prices there are basically free. I don't need to spend much money, right? "
"Even if I buy 100,000 square kilometers, I'm afraid the money I'll spend won't necessarily be more than buying 100 mu of land in Shang Hai."
"The price-performance ratio is really too high!"
Of course, the development cost of desert land would certainly be more than 10 times or even 100 times that of ordinary land. The investment in the later stages of development would be very high, especially for water. Just the cost of pumping and transporting water would be unbearably high.
Fortunately, the era of unlimited energy was coming soon. At that time, the cost of each kilowatt hour might be as low as 10 cents. The northwest region was also very rich in electricity and energy. By then, they could use these cheap energy sources to solve the water supply problem. The overall cost would still be within an acceptable range!
Buying a large amount of desert land in the northwest was very promising!
…
Three days later.
Ling Jundong's call came in.
"President Chen, Minister Shen of the Ministry of Land and Resources has agreed to our request to buy land. He has approved 50,000 square kilometers of desert land to Xing Hai Technologies."
"50,000 square kilometers?"
Chen Jin was slightly stunned. Then, he was overjoyed. "Okay, that's fine too!"
"But there are also a few difficult conditions," Ling Dong Jun said.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
