Homo Sapiens

December 17th, 2019.

After spending three days in Dongzhi, Fang Xinwu drove west toward Black River Town with two of his men.

Their vehicle passed through Rui Niang Town, where they needed to cross a highway bridge. However, the bridge was currently occupied by construction vehicles, so they had to follow the guidance of the internal guard, drive two kilometers south, and cross a temporary pontoon bridge.

Fang Xinwu looked out the car window and saw a massive construction site in full swing not far north of the Rui Niang Bridge.

He stopped the car and saw that a dam was being built. South of the bridge, along a section of the river near a mountain range, another construction project was also underway.

These two sites were for the Rui Niang Town hydroelectric power station and pumped-storage reservoir projects. For the Shan Plateau of Hongsawaddy, the potential for hydroelectric power was immense.

The region’s abundant hydropower resources were primarily a result of its topography and climate.

The Shan Plateau forms a significant elevation drop in relation to the Lower Irrawaddy River Valley, the Irawaddy River Delta Plain, and the Salween River Delta Plain. This difference in elevation is what creates the potential for hydroelectric power.

Furthermore, Hongsawaddy has a typical tropical monsoon climate, with extremely plentiful rainfall each year.

The combination of these two factors resulted in the Shan Plateau’s enormous hydroelectric potential.

The hydroelectric station and pumped-storage reservoir in Rui Niang Town were just one of the projects invested in by Eastern Hydro Power Company, a subsidiary of the Qingye Group.

This power station wasn’t particularly large, with a designed installed capacity of 200 megawatts, while the pumped-storage reservoir had an installed capacity of 80 megawatts—a standard medium-sized hydroelectric plant.

Eastern Hydro Power Company wasn’t aiming too high. Although Hongsawaddy’s hydropower potential could support a power station on the scale of the Three Gorges Dam, the investment would be too large, the construction period too long, and the uncertainties too numerous.

After all, Qingye Electric Motor Company currently needed to import 72% of its core components from Huaguo, and localizing component production was still a long and arduous road.

If they were to immediately start work on a large-scale hydroelectric station, the ones who would profit would surely be the companies capable of manufacturing large water turbines. Qingye Electric Motor Company couldn’t supply hydroelectric generators of that class in the short term.

Therefore, of the dozens of hydroelectric stations currently under construction, 13 were medium-sized and 27 were small-sized.

Qingye Electric could use the construction of these power stations to simultaneously import and assemble components while also working on developing locally produced equipment.

As for the power grid, Hongsawaddy lacked the foundation to develop an interconnected grid. Therefore, they adopted the principle of supplying power locally to reduce the cost of laying extensive long-distance power lines.

The Dongzhi area, for example, currently relied on a few other old, small hydroelectric stations. The Rui Niang Town hydroelectric station under construction, along with the planned Dongzhi thermal power plant, would be the mainstays of its future power supply.

Fang Xinwu observed that the dam at the Rui Niang Town hydroelectric station was incredibly tall and secretly wondered about its investment cost. He was extremely curious about the Qingye Group’s capital chain.

After all, the Qingye Group was currently undertaking massive construction projects all over Hongsawaddy, and the scale of investment certainly seemed enormous.

In reality, however, many people did not understand the Qingye Group’s internal operating model.

Trying to understand the Qingye Group’s actions through the lens of a typical commercial company was, without a doubt, like a blind man trying to describe an elephant.

The Rui Niang Town hydroelectric station and pumped-storage reservoir, currently under massive construction, had a total investment of only about 11 million US Dollars.

This cost would be difficult to achieve even within Huaguo, the king of cost-effective infrastructure. The unit cost for a medium-sized hydroelectric station in Huaguo was about 6 to 7 million Huayuan per megawatt.

The Qingye Group could achieve this cost because, on one hand, their labor costs were extremely low and the construction land was practically free. On the other hand, engineering and building materials were all produced directly. Aside from some components for the power generation equipment, there were no other costs.

As for the issue of its capital chain, this was actually a common misconception.

Hongsawaddy had no money, but its warlords, landlords, and powerful families were anything but poor.

After seizing their assets, the Qingye Group acquired not only a mountain of gold, silver, and jewels, but also large amounts of cash and secret deposits. This cash wasn’t the worthless Myanmar Kyat, but rather US Dollars, Euros, Swiss Francs, and Huayuan.

The physical cash alone was equivalent to about 32.3 billion US Dollars, while the deposits in various secret overseas accounts amounted to another 27.7 billion US Dollars.

The common people of Hongsawaddy were indeed dirt poor, but those warlords and powerful families were filthy rich.

After all, for so many years, they had been exporting two to three million tons of rice annually, vast quantities of precious timber, jade, and rubies, not to mention the black money from the Golden Triangle’s "flour." In recent years, they also had transit fees from the oil and gas pipeline and proceeds from selling off various mineral resources at bargain prices.

If this bunch of crooks didn’t have money, Li Qingye himself would have suspected the Hongsawaddy Branch and the Foreign Affairs Division of embezzlement.

In other words, just by squeezing the ill-gotten gains from these scumbags, the Qingye Group had obtained 60 billion US Dollars in cash flow, along with massive amounts of gold, silver, jewels, and fixed assets.

As for all this cash in US Dollars and other currencies, if they didn’t spend it now, what were they going to do, save it for New Year’s?

In any case, the Qingye Group and the various shell corporations of the Hongsawaddy Branch had recently been investing frantically in construction, while simultaneously purchasing machinery and production lines from abroad.

And unlike investment projects in other regions, which were bled dry at every level, where an investment of one hundred million might see less than ten million actually put to use, the Qingye Group’s omnipresent Soldier and surveillance systems, combined with the fact that the Spider Web Managers had virtually no desire to embezzle—after all, there was no need—ensured that this didn’t happen.

Therefore, for the same amount of investment, the industrial scale of a Qingye Group project was several times larger than one in a foreign country.

The Rui Niang Town hydroelectric station was a perfect illustration of this point.

Fang Xinwu felt that there was a problem with the Qingye Group’s capital chain, but in reality, there was none.

What’s more, tax collection in Hongsawaddy was actually contracted out to the Qingye Group and two other major groups, similar to how things are done in America.

This was the terrifying power of a megacorporation. Its internal economic cycle was sufficient to maintain the smooth operation of its entire industrial system and could continuously self-replicate its assets.

Importing production lines, machinery, and products from the outside was merely a way to accelerate the completion of its internal industrial chain.

From the perspective of a megacorporation, once a region has been truly "megacorporatized," it will essentially never face economic development problems.

The "megacorporation" referred to here is one that is at least approaching its complete form.

This is distinct from today’s trust-level or *konzern*-level megacorporations. These are not yet fully developed and have too many superfluous vested interests within them.

Only an enterprise that is large enough, possesses a complete industrial chain, has a fully controllable and autonomous operational zone, and internally has only a few vested interests is qualified to call itself a megacorporation.

Many people think the Samsung Group is a megacorporation.

In reality, the Samsung Group is nothing more than a puppet of the Wall Street Financial Group. What right does a company that doesn’t even have final decision-making power have to be called a megacorporation?

The current Qingye Group, and the Homo Sapiens Company behind it, could barely be considered a quasi-megacorporation.

Fang Xinwu did not linger in Rui Niang Town, instead heading quickly toward Black River Town.

Along the highway, besides the dense vegetation, there were construction vehicles coming and going from time to time.

The development of Hongsawaddy, supported by vast funds and a powerful system, seemed to give Fang Xinwu the feeling that the very heavens and earth were being remade.

He didn’t know if this change was for better or for worse, but at least compared to the previous era of warring factions and destitute citizens, it couldn’t possibly be any worse.

When you’re already at rock bottom, any direction you go is up—the only alternative is to stay and rot.

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