Chapter 843 - 787: Struggling Forward
Mountain Eagle did not answer Li Chengji's question because he himself did not know the answer...
Many people from the East spend their whole lives busily, and when asked by others, most would smile and say they have a 'busy fate'!
Many don't even know why they need to keep busy...
Some culturally refined people from the East who have studied abroad describe their compatriots with a compassionate tone, saying Easterners spend their entire lives anxious, busy, and toiling for their final years...
They say people from the East don't know how to live, don't know how to enjoy the present!
But what they don't understand is, the East's per capita natural resource possession ranks at the bottom among 192 countries in the world...
Easterners should feel anxious; the habit of saving is the most important treasure against uncertainty.
Our per capita water resources are only over 2,200 cubic meters, ranking 121st in the world...
To some extent, our per capita available water resources are not even enough to support one person's lifetime consumption.
Of course, rainfall and water recycling can mitigate this issue, and it's precisely this situation that keeps the water usage cost high for Easterners.
Moreover, our water resources are unevenly distributed, with only 32% of the national arable land in the south, but over 80% of the water resources, whereas the north has 68% of arable land but less than 20% of water resources.
Due to complex terrain issues, our 'water resource utilization efficiency' and 'industrial water usage per unit value' are only one-third of those in developed countries.
To overcome this shortcoming, just to solve the water problem, the East must construct and maintain a large amount of water infrastructure.
If technology and investment can barely fill the gap for water resources, then the arable land resources are even more despairing...
The East has a per capita arable land area of 0.09 hectares, ranking 126th in the world!
Many people would mention the East has a farming talent, feeding 20% of the population with just 7% of global arable land, but many don't see the huge costs involved.
The average grade of arable land in the East is only 4.76 (with 10 being the highest), with medium and low-yield fields accounting for over 55%, just this alone gets far overtaken by the United States.
Being good at farming is useless when others scatter seeds casually and yield more than your meticulous cultivation.
To some extent, Easterners are forced to farm because only by investing enormous human resources, energy, and time can they barely maintain food security.
The East has per capita forest resources of only 0.16 hectares, ranking 130th globally, and these forests include artificial forests making up 38% of the global share.
And with poplar and pine as the main fast-growing artificial forests, their species diversity is less than one-fourth of regular forests, with per hectare forest water retention rate and carbon storage not matching the effects of primary forests.
Just like this, the East uses enormous human and resource costs just to maintain...
With water, soil, and forests like this, mineral resources are even worse...
The World Bank once estimated that the East's per capita natural resource (water, land, energy, minerals) value is less than four thousand dollars, ranking around 120th, while neighboring Russia's per capita natural resource value is 3.1 million dollars.
The East is a standard resource-rich country; the term 'vast land and abundant resources' is not misplaced, but once the denominator is 1.4 billion people, it's a completely different matter.
Easterners and the entire East Asia are trapped by this, and so anxiety becomes the norm.
The East managed to withstand water resource costs three times that of other countries, planting costs five to eight times higher, and utilized a wave of development dividends to fully establish and withstand the infrastructure while controlling living costs and prices and solving poverty issues...
This is an unprecedented great achievement!
But Easterners are still anxious...
Because as an important part of the world's industrial chain, the East not only became the world factory, providing the most complete industry support and supply chain globally, but also offered the highest quality labor population worldwide.
But at the same time, the East has a high dependency on world trade. If you want to make money through the material processing model, transactions in energy, minerals, and other raw materials are unavoidable.
Simultaneously, in order to sell commodities globally, geopolitics is another unavoidable factor.
And sometimes being overly principled means suffering, suffering greatly!
Only those who have lived abroad understand that Europe and America, including those on their colonies, no matter what they outwardly proclaim, in essence, believe in the power of might.
They don't believe at all that the East can genuinely maintain the principle of peaceful development because, from their value system, not intervening in other countries for own interests after developing to such an extent is abnormal!
And with limited resources, when industrial development reaches a certain level, if you cannot effectively intervene in bulk commodity prices or persuade other countries to open markets, the industrial asset prices domestically will plummet.
Moreover, as industrialization and intelligence deepen, the demand for elite industry personnel will keep declining, leaving a large portion of those millions of 'engineers' unemployed every year.
The first industry in the East can no longer, like in the early years, absorb excess urban populations through rural migrations.
The third industry still has potential, but is it enough, or would those scholars who have spent over a decade of diligent study be satisfied?
So far, the East possesses the best infrastructure in the world, the most robust industrial system, relatively inexpensive healthcare system, top-ranking social order, top-notch organizational ability, and a financial regulation ability that makes Western economists jump in their coffins.
But people often focus on the prosperity, overlooking the fact that the best infrastructure includes the cheap sweat and labor of hundreds of millions of migrant workers, the most powerful industrial systems include the high-quality and affordable labor of workers and engineers, and the cheap medical systems include the high-intensity labor of countless doctors...
However, even under these circumstances where most people have made compromises and sacrifices, many problems still remain unresolved...
It's not that the managers don't want the common people to have relatively better welfare, but rather that the current situation is already the limit at this stage.
Mountain Eagle doesn't know how others think; in his concept, only expansion can alleviate the intrinsic anxiety of Easterners!
It's not necessary to expand territories through war; as long as influence continues to increase and then gains strong intervention capabilities, it can assist national enterprises and individuals in industrial expansion, immigration expansion, investment expansion...
Mountain Eagle is a generation influenced by pirate civilization, but among this generation, some believe in the part packaged by the West after the Cold War, while he believes in the most primitive part...
His Shadow Fleet plan originates from what he believes in!
In his heart, if Easterners want to solve that anxiety, some people must go out, explore, buy, possess...
However, when Mountain Eagle saw Li Chengji's expression of surprise mixed with a hint of panic, he suddenly understood that this might be what foreign elites fear the most!
In a zero-sum game mindset, this is an irreconcilable contradiction!
So the East can never get too close to Europe, because there is a competitive relationship between many industries of both sides.
Russia clearly can only rely on selling energy to survive, but the cooperation with the East has always been slow to progress because they fear that after the combination, they will become a vassal.
In contrast, island people don't have this problem...
For example, the land area they purchased in Brazil has already exceeded the size of the island's homeland.
For example, the scale of Southeast Asian investments by island enterprises has reached an unprecedented level.
And the most characteristic feature of Abenomics that has been popular in recent years is negotiating with Southeast Asian countries: I purchase your national debt, you lend me the money you got from selling national debt at a low interest rate to island enterprises, allowing them to use this money to invest, develop businesses, and increase employment...
In this context, does it still matter whether they are island citizens or not?
Mountain Eagle certainly knows the difficulties involved...
That is, as long as the US Dollar is the main currency of global transactions, the strictly controlled monetary policy of the East is a hurdle that is difficult for ordinary people and small enterprises to surpass.
But opening this hurdle, the East will face the issue of capital outflows in the wake of financial liberalization, as well as the periodic US Dollar harvesting tide, which the low-profit mode of the East's mid- and low-end industries cannot withstand.
Some have always been talking about RMB internationalization, as if this is the key to solving all problems, but in fact, when the RMB can buy all categories of goods, it should naturally have the ability to internationalize, yet the East has been very cautious in its advancement...
It's not only the issue of obstruction by the United States...
In fact, compared to forcibly promoting RMB internationalization, the East is more keen on various free trade zones, not just to avoid the exploitation of the US Dollar...
More importantly, it wants to avoid the potential exchange rate fluctuations and resultant impacts on exports and industrial migration that might occur if excessive currency output is inadequately controlled before offshore currency management technology matures.
When a country's size has reached such dimensions, it becomes so difficult to continue developing!
A country of 1.4 billion people like the East cannot follow the path of the United States, and exploring an entirely new path is even more daunting than opening a pass in the Himalayas...
Mountain Eagle cannot reach such a high level of policy, and he knows that the insights and thoughts derived from his pirate thinking may not necessarily be correct...
But he is willing to stand by his ideas!
Mountain Eagle definitely cannot decide or have a say in the future of the East, but he knows what he can do...
Trade!
Now, it's no longer popular to knock on doors with cannons, but Mountain Eagle can use gray market transactions and smuggling to knock on doors, especially those of medium and developed countries!
This is what he is good at!
Mountain Eagle did not answer Li Chengji's question; he shook his head to clear away the messy thoughts, and looking at Li Chengji on the other side of the screen, he smiled and said: "We're just chatting casually; don't make it seem like Easterners are so belligerent.
Big Sister, let's return to the previous topic, the Kenyan technical team is also feasible...
A 40,000-ton cargo ship is large, and it can drift in international waters for long periods, making it convenient to do a lot of things.
That General Sied has a research team behind him, and I want to move the core laboratory to the ship...
The most crucial thing right now is to get hold of the ship as soon as possible!"
After saying this, Mountain Eagle smacked his lips and tentatively said: "Big Sister, keep an eye on the bulk carrier transactions, then how about we invest in a cargo ship together?
We can unite with Anna, and together go to Panama or Liberia to acquire or register a shipping company. In the initial stage, Amelia from Ansheng Group can help us lease a cargo ship...
Anyway, I won't be leaving Alaska recently; I have the time to focus on these matters, and we can first organize a wave of trade to give it a try."