Homo Sapiens

Meanwhile.

Ceylon entered January of ’22.

The year was off to a brand-new start.

The amphibious assault ship, the *Luzon*, appeared in Colombo’s North Harbor in a grand procession, accompanied by other warships and supply vessels.

At almost the exact same time,

an aviation division and a Field Division dispatched by Hongsawaddy also arrived in Jaffna City—the capital of the Northern Province of Ceylon.

The Ceylon Army, having long prepared in secret, swiftly linked up with the Luzon Navy, the Hongshawa Air Force, and the army from Hongsawaddy. Using this as a foundation, they began to reorganize Ceylon’s military system, encompassing its land, sea, and air forces.

Tianzhu, the country most likely to have interfered in Ceylon’s upheaval, was now mired in the Assam War. It was also in a full-blown confrontation with Xiba in the west, leaving it with no spare capacity to intervene in Ceylon.

America was similarly tied down by the Three-leaf Oak in the Latin America Region and its strategy of suppressing a certain major eastern power, making it difficult to pull away.

As for other powers, they had even less of a presence in the Ceylon Ocean.

However, America’s lapdog—Kangaroo Country—had recently been acting on its own, pointing fingers at Ceylon and the Qingye Group.

This rabid dog clearly didn’t understand its place and was courting death. The Homo Sapiens Company had already made a note of it in its little black book.

The task force commander, Rear Admiral Hu Zhengyue, and the newly appointed head of the Ceylon Navy, Rear Admiral Matugmao, stood on the docks of Colombo’s North Harbor and spouted a bunch of pleasantries for Ceylon’s television stations.

Afterward, the two men headed to Nigambu Port, north of Colombo.

In the future, Nigambu Port will be developed into a dedicated military port.

At the same time, the Ceylon Ocean’s Fourth Escort Fleet would be formed. Together with the Third Escort Fleet stationed at Hongsawaddy’s Tuwah Port, it would jointly maintain order and project deterrence throughout the Ceylon Ocean region.

This was also to ensure that the surrounding maritime trade routes could be safely protected.

...

From the Financial Building in Colombo, one had a clear view of the North Harbor’s port.

Horton lowered his binoculars, his expression grim. "Bastards!"

Sunny and John, also in the office, wore ugly expressions as well. After all, the Wall Street Financial Group had lost tens of billions of US Dollars on Ceylon’s foreign sovereign debt. For regional managers like them, this was definitely not a good thing.

"What do we do now?" John asked, nursing a headache.

Sunny thought for a moment. "Manila Bank is still buying Ceylon’s sovereign bonds, but the price is only about 8.2% of what it was before. If we sell at this price, our losses will be too severe."

"Can we seize Ceylon’s assets in North America and Europe?" John inquired.

Horton shook his head. "I’ve looked into it. The three major clans do have significant assets in Europe and North America, but these are not official Ceylonese assets. Right now, of the three clans, all but the Solomon Clan are considered exiled powers. Their wealth will be ours sooner or later, so there’s no need to freeze it directly."

Although the Wall Street Financial Group already considered the international assets of the three clans to be in the bag, they had to be careful about appearances. If they directly froze these assets, who would be willing to transfer their wealth to Europe and America in the future?

Moreover, the Wall Street Financial Group planned to find opportunities to use these clans in the future. If they swallowed up their international assets now, the Qingye Group and Ceylon would probably be thrilled.

Besides, with the methods at the Wall Street Financial Group’s disposal, they could use more ’legitimate’ means to drain the clans’ assets bit by bit, leaving no room for complaint.

After all, the money was already within the borders of Europe and America. Wall Street had far too many ways to ’earn’ those assets.

Right now, the mission headquarters had given Horton and his team was to find a way to crash the economies of Ceylon and Hongsawaddy, not to fixate on the assets of those international citizens.

Horton looked frustrated. "It’s extremely difficult! This economic model is too self-contained."

In the three-plus months since Ceylon’s dramatic upheaval, Horton and his team in Colombo had come to understand the true meaning of a mega-corporation’s tyranny.

On the surface, Ceylon was very welcoming to foreign companies. The tax rates were favorable, and the services were impeccable. But whether it was Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Walmart, or Sam’s Club, they all faced unprecedented suppression.

This suppression wasn’t orchestrated by Ceylon, but by the Qingye Group.

Faced with this situation, the foreign companies were helpless. Even appealing to the World Trade Organization had no effect.

Take Colombo, for example.

The Qingye Group controlled the city’s electricity, water, and gas supply. On the surface, the prices it charged foreign companies and its own subsidiaries were identical.

The key, and the real problem, lay in that phrase: "on the surface."

The Qingye Group set its unit prices for electricity, water, and gas extremely high.

Commercial electricity rates in Colombo started at 10 Jin per kilowatt-hour, commercial water rates started at 2 Jin per cubic meter, and commercial gas was 10 Jin per cubic meter.

These prices were practically robbery, but the problem was, you had no choice but to use their services.

With such high utility fees, many businesses felt immense pressure. In reality, however, only private and foreign companies felt the squeeze; the Qingye Group felt no pressure at all.

After all, for Qingye Group’s subsidiaries, the money paid to the power, water, and gas companies was just moving from the left hand to the right.

Meanwhile, the Qingye Group would continue to hire aggressively. When private companies went bankrupt, their employees were immediately absorbed by Qingye, so there was never any large-scale unemployment.

The only ones who got hurt were the owners of private companies and the foreign corporations.

Many private companies couldn’t even retain their employees due to discrepancies in compensation and benefits.

This was the Qingye Group’s "pig-butchering" scheme for taking over Ceylon’s private sector. By massively hiking the prices of basic resources, they artificially created inflation. Internally, however, Qingye Group could use transfer payments to offset the losses of some of its subsidiaries.

Of course, it wasn’t as if there were no ways to counter the Qingye Group’s scheme.

After all, Ceylon was now supposed to abide by the "free trade" rules of the World Trade Organization.

If these foreign and private companies could band together and import their own materials and resources, they could indeed fight back against the Qingye Group’s malicious inflation.

But what was the purpose of these foreign and private companies?

The purpose of a business, when it comes down to it, is to make money.

So, how were they supposed to compete with a mega-corporation and make money off it and its employees?

This was a very practical problem.

The mega-corporation had a stranglehold on the vast majority of the employee market. It could use internal subsidies to give all its employees benefits, thereby locking up the majority of the capital in its employees’ hands.

As a result, other businesses couldn’t operate here. Naturally, they couldn’t turn a profit and would even have to continuously lose money.

Under these circumstances, continuing to increase investment would be like a moth flying into a flame.

Horton and the others now fully understood the Qingye Group’s operating model. They weren’t fighting a company; they were at war with a "regional power."

What was even more troublesome was that this "regional power" was wearing the skin of a corporation while also being protected by the special "shell" of a nation called Ceylon.

In other words, the Qingye Group enjoyed the benefits of a "regional power" without having to bear any of its responsibilities.

Horton couldn’t exactly go to the World Trade Organization and accuse the Qingye Group of maliciously subsidizing itself, could he?

Right now, foreign companies, including Horton’s own Morgan Stanley Company, appeared to have gained access to a free market in Ceylon, but in reality, it was only a free market in name.

This was because within Ceylon, there existed a highly self-contained "regional power" that was also highly intertwined with Ceylon itself: the Qingye Group.

The Qingye Group’s intangible barriers were the fundamental reason foreign capital could barely move an inch in Ceylon.

The foreign powers now had two choices: either use military force to destroy the Qingye Group’s various subsidiaries in Ceylon, or force the Qingye Group to become an official "regional power."

Of course, there was a third option: for these foreign investors to obediently pack up and get the hell out of Ceylon.