Homo Sapiens

The taxi crossed two blocks and arrived in front of the Qingye Group’s Yangon Branch building.

This entire area was filled with Qingye Group’s office buildings and businesses.

Getting out of the car, Jiang Haitao saw the fairly dense crowd in the plaza outside and habitually put on a mask.

The locals around them were dressed very fashionably in shorts and t-shirts, some carrying parasols and iced milk tea.

If it weren’t for all the signs in Burmese, Jiang Haitao would have thought he’d arrived in a small city in Lingnan.

”Let’s go.”

The two of them entered the Qingye Group’s Yangon Branch office building.

The receptionist smiled and asked in Burmese, ”How may I help you two?”

”Uh...” His assistant, Zhang Qin, quickly asked in English, ”We don’t speak Burmese. Is English or Mandarin okay?”

The receptionist glanced at them, guessing they were likely Chinese, and said to another receptionist, ”Riemann, they’re probably Chinese. You take care of them.”

Riemann, who was a local of Chinese descent, nodded, then turned and asked, ”I speak Chinese. How can I help you?”

Jiang Haitao and Zhang Qin finally breathed a sigh of relief.

”I am the interim Vice President of the Xinxin Group. Your company’s Mr. Li Qingye holds shares in the Xinxin Group, and I need to meet with him to discuss restructuring our management. Please inform him.”

Riemann was a little surprised, but she carefully confirmed the details before calling her superior.

After more than twenty minutes of being passed up the chain of command, the news finally reached Li Qingye’s ears.

Li Qingye, who was in Luzon, had actually anticipated Jiang Haitao’s arrival. After all, with Du Shuping and the others currently ”visiting” him in Luzon, the leaderless Xinxin Group was bound to be in a state of internal chaos.

As the largest shareholder, with all the influence he wielded, if the Xinxin Group still dared to ignore him, then Su Ruoyu and the others would be unbelievably stupid. At this point, only Li Qingye could save the Xinxin Group.

Considering he was in Luzon and it was inconvenient to travel to Hongsawaddy, Li Qingye had Phil send his thoughts to Ma Chi, who would negotiate on his behalf.

「...」

After another flight, Jiang Haitao and Zhang Qin arrived in Dongzhi.

This was the largest city on the Shan Plateau and the public-facing headquarters of the Qingye Group.

The city’s developed area had expanded to more than four times its previous size.

As Jiang Haitao disembarked from the plane, he was stunned by the power of the Qingye Group, even though he was no stranger to modern cities.

Nearly the entire city consisted of Qingye Group businesses. Dongzhi might as well be renamed Aoyama Castle.

In fact, Jiang Haitao had researched the Qingye Group online before coming, but the moment he witnessed the mega-corporation with his own eyes, he realized his mental image had been far too unimaginative.

According to online estimates, the Qingye Group’s total assets were at least 500 billion Gold Yuan, equivalent to about 360 billion yuan.

Its core businesses were pharmaceuticals, glass, cement, beverages, agriculture, and finance.

This high valuation was largely thanks to Qingye Bank’s nearly three hundred tons of gold reserves, as well as new drugs from Qingye Medical.

In reality, everyone had underestimated the Qingye Group. After all, it had many hidden assets that were difficult for outsiders to detect.

But even so, to Jiang Haitao, the Qingye Group was still a behemoth. Even the former Xinxin Group, at its peak, was only worth just over 60 billion yuan.

Besides, there was a huge difference between the two.

The Qingye Group was a technology-oriented enterprise, whereas a large part of the Xinxin Group’s industrial value actually came from real estate and building materials—assets that were inflated.

If the Qingye Group were to count its real estate, it held about a quarter of all property in Hongsawaddy. If it really wanted to play the real estate speculation game, the Qingye Group could inflate its assets to over a trillion Gold Yuan.

But were assets like that actually useful?

The answer was obvious.

The Gold Yuan could not be excessively pegged to Hongsawaddy’s real estate, so the value of property in Hongsawaddy was naturally fixed within a certain range.

Based on Hongsawaddy’s population of 56 million, the upper limit for housing demand was around 10 million units. Add in commercial properties and office buildings, and the market’s ceiling was clear.

Residential and commercial buildings that exceeded this demand limit were clearly a waste of resources.

Hongsawaddy didn’t have that kind of money to throw into such waste. Currently, Hongsawaddy’s construction materials were almost all being used for roads, water conservancy projects, and urban infrastructure.

Investing limited resources into the areas of greatest need was the Qingye Group’s philosophy; the numbers on a balance sheet were meaningless.

After all, for the current Qingye Group, bankruptcy was not a possibility unless it faced a foreign military invasion.

Why do ordinary companies face the possibility of bankruptcy?

Because it’s rare for an ordinary company to control all the resources of a region, or even all the resources of a small city.

But the Qingye Group controlled all of Hongsawaddy’s resources, a region that also boasted vast agricultural wealth. Even without foreign trade, the Qingye Group could remain standing.

Since there was no risk of bankruptcy and no need to pay dividends to shareholders, only to provide for its employees’ needs, the Qingye Group naturally had no reason to chase after numbers on a balance sheet.

After all, no matter how good the numbers on the books looked, the Qingye Group’s actual gains wouldn’t increase by a single cent.

Could the Qingye Group claim its revenue had grown dozens of times over and actually receive dozens of times more in return? That was obviously impossible.

Fundamentally, virtual economic growth is not very meaningful for a mega-corporation.

Many people don’t actually understand economics, or rather, they are trapped in a Western-style economic mindset.

The operating mechanism of Western economics is not designed for development, but for accumulation—or, to put it more bluntly, for plunder.

Real wealth consists of resources, agricultural products, industrial goods, equipment, technology, knowledge, and services. These things exist in reality and cannot simply vanish in an instant.

Yet, within the operating model of Western economics, this trick of sudden disappearance is precisely what occurs.

So why play this trick?

Because there is profit to be made. Through this financial magic, wealth can be legally accumulated.

Who doesn’t like getting rich overnight?

When the growth of society’s real wealth is relatively stable, how does one get rich overnight?

The answer, of course, is to legally transfer the wealth from other people’s hands into your own.

This is where fiat currency and financial instruments become the key to the magic trick.

For example, by issuing more currency and hyping up a certain commodity to a value far exceeding its intrinsic worth, you can attract others to invest in that market. In this game of hot potato, a rapid accumulation of wealth is achieved.

The West uses this economic model to accumulate all sorts of real wealth.

But this model is not very meaningful for a mega-corporation, because the mega-corporation’s own wealth has already been accumulated.

Can a mega-corporation accumulate wealth from itself?

It’s like a vampire: it cannot replenish itself by drinking its own blood. In fact, drinking its own blood would only cause unnecessary losses due to inefficiencies in the cycle.

For this corporate vampire to grow stronger, there are only two paths.

Either it continues to expand by devouring what is external and assimilating it.

Or it focuses on internal development (advancing its technology), tapping into its own potential to become more formidable.