Chapter 35: Capital Verification and Grand Opening

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By the time they finished discussing the loan, night had fallen.

The officials who had arrived for their surprise inspection were ultimately unable to return to Pingdong County that day, so they stayed overnight at the brickworks.

Yu Yang had his elder brother and sister-in-law tidy up the brickworks’ only residential building. He also asked his eldest brother to bring over several cast-iron stoves and a few bunk beds welded at home. Then they spread out the quilts and bedding Uncle Six had purchased for the strongmen and brought over several buckets of well water for use.

The conditions were still crude, but they were good enough for one night.

After Yu Yang left, the county administrator filled a basin with hot water and soaked his feet while pondering the support plan.

Strictly speaking, the bean-sprout business had a monthly turnover of seven million yuan. Going by the banks’ loan-approval standards, which generally allowed loans equivalent to ten times the monthly turnover, Yu Yang should have been able to obtain a loan of at least ten million.

The problem was that Yu Yang did not even qualify as a registered individual business operator.

Apart from a few major customers who paid in advance, all the vegetable vendors conducted their transactions in cash. Naturally, there was no such thing as a bank transaction record.

Without a transaction record, the bank could not assess the amount of credit he deserved.

As for a mortgage loan…

Agriculture was not industry, much less real estate.

Industrial businesses had equipment and raw materials. Real-estate companies had land and buildings. Loans were relatively easy to arrange for both.

But what did agriculture have?

The land belonged to the village collective. Plastic greenhouses were inexpensive to build, while the glasshouses and brickworks depended entirely on technical expertise. That expertise belonged to people, and people could come and go.

Faced with such circumstances, no bank would be willing to offer a large loan.

That was why the county administrator had personally stepped in to help Yu Yang secure his start-up capital.

But the county administrator was also worried that Yu Yang might leave.

Not only were there people emigrating overseas, but investment delegations from other regions were also everywhere. If Yu Yang obtained the loan and an investment delegation from some wealthy area came along with a barrage of tempting offers, Pingdong County might end up even worse off than Liaocheng City.

Therefore, the matter concerning Yu Yang’s father had to be resolved as quickly as possible. That would leave Yu Yang with a favorable impression and make it easier to retain him through personal goodwill in the future.

Having reached this conclusion, the county administrator picked up his phone and called the detention center.

His first request was that they move Old Yu to a room with better conditions.

…

Pingdong County.

The West Gate Detention Center.

That evening, Dong Jian, the contractor responsible for Highway Section 385, was preparing to rest.

His situation was truly unfortunate.

The reason he had ended up here was entirely because of that culvert.

But what could he have done?

The original agreement had set the highway’s construction cost at twenty million yuan per kilometer. His company had undertaken five kilometers, as well as a small bridge costing ten million yuan.

When the funds finally arrived in the account, he received only thirty million yuan in total, in scattered payments.

How was he supposed to complete work worth one hundred and ten million yuan with thirty million?

Fortunately, the local villagers had been enthusiastic. Whole families had pitched in, and somehow they had managed to get the job done.

Now that a problem had arisen, they had made him take the blame…

“Absolutely shameless!”

“Just wait until I get out. I’ll send every last one of you in here.”

Dong Jian cast an indignant glance around the private room, which looked almost like a small hotel room. When he thought of the twenty or thirty people crammed into the room next door, their backgrounds hopelessly mixed, his mood improved considerably.

“Thank heaven for my father.”

Just then, the door opened. A middle-aged man with an honest-looking face entered under the watchful eye of a guard.

“Dong Jian, you two will share a room from now on.”

“Can I say no?”

“No.”

The guard finished speaking and shut the door.

The honest-looking middle-aged man raised his head in surprise.

“You’re Dong Jian?”

“That’s right. I never change my name, and I never change my surname.” Dong Jian lounged lazily against the wall. “Dong Jian. I’m in the road-and-bridge business.”

“So you’re Dong Jian?!”

“That’s me!”

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“Son of a bitch!”

“Help! He’s hitting someone!”

“When you built that highway, our entire township went to help you. And what did you leave us with in the end?”

“Oh, damn it! You’re from Ten-Mile Camp! Big brother, I couldn’t help it! Big brother, don’t hit my head—I make my living with my brain! Big brother, stop hitting me! I can get you out!”

“You can really get me out?”

“Of course. As long as they don’t convict you, it’s just one word from my father. But we have to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until the heat dies down. I don’t know which bastard started it, but the markets across all the neighboring townships were spreading rumors that the highway had collapsed. Then I came under suspicion, and in the end those people pinned the blame on the culvert.”

“What was wrong with the culvert?”

“It was built a little below standard. Once my father gets an improvement plan approved, we’ll make the plan identical to the culvert that already exists. Then there won’t be any problem… By the way, what did you do?”

“The brickworks…”

“The Ten-Mile Camp brickworks?”

“Mm.”

“So Liu Danian had you thrown in here? That’s nothing.” As he spoke, Dong Jian pulled out his phone.

“You’re allowed to keep a phone?”

“How else am I supposed to contact my father?”

“It’s good to have a father like that.”

“Isn’t it? I think so too.”

“Ah, it’s just that I’m not capable enough. If only my son could live as freely as you do. But he may be facing a crowd of debt collectors right now.”

“What’s your son’s name? I’ll have someone outside look after him.”

“Yu Yang.”

“Yu Yang? That name sounds familiar. Isn’t he the guy who sells bean sprouts?”

“No. He’s a senior in high school.”

“Oh, good. Otherwise, the two of us really couldn’t be brothers.”

“Why not?”

“Because those bean-sprout sellers are the ones spreading the rumors. Once I get out, I’m going to smash their stalls and tear down their plastic greenhouses.”

As he spoke, Dong Jian dialed a number.

“Old man, there’s a brickworks here… What? A problem left over from history? That’s all it takes? Fine. When can he get out? Tomorrow will do? You’re incredible! When can I get out? I have to wait longer? Are you really my father?!”

He then turned around and said, “Big brother, even though you can get out tomorrow, you should keep your little brother company. It’s terribly boring in here. Let’s leave together.”

“I’ve already stayed this many days. A few more won’t matter.”

…

The following day.

Before dawn, the head of the county rural credit cooperative and the director of the asset-assessment agency hurried over to arrange the loan at the county administrator’s urging.

Ten ordinary plastic greenhouses, plus ten steel-framed plastic greenhouses, were worth very little and could not be used as collateral.

The ten sunrooms under construction, together with the related technology, were valued at five hundred thousand yuan as collateral.

The brickworks being converted into a vegetable cultivation base were valued at one million yuan as collateral.

After witnessing the yield and enormous profits of the bean sprouts, the heads of the rural credit cooperative and the asset-assessment agency followed the principle that whatever the leader said was right and went through the procedures with meticulous seriousness.

Then they reached the computers.

Computers were certainly valuable, nearly twenty thousand yuan apiece.

Considering their added value, a company capable of purchasing one hundred and sixty computers would clearly possess considerable strength and qualify as a premium banking customer.

In that case, the rural credit cooperative would certainly be willing to lend three million yuan.

The problem was the televisions.

Oh, and the Subor learning machines.

You people really know how to make things difficult.

The heads of the rural credit cooperative and the asset-assessment agency did not dare argue with the county administrator. After lowering their heads and conferring for a moment, the credit cooperative director stepped forward.

“Boss Yu, why don’t we arrange this three-million-yuan loan as an unsecured credit loan?”

“That’s possible?”

“With the asset-assessment agency acting as guarantor, certainly!”

A credit loan was much more reliable than mortgaging a batch of so-called computers. Otherwise, if the truth ever came out, the county credit cooperative would become a laughingstock.

Seeing this, the county administrator turned to Yu Yang.

“If those computers aren’t needed, I can find another bank and help you borrow another three million.”

“Leader, there’s no need. This is already enough.”

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After politely declining, Yu Yang turned to the head of the credit cooperative.

“I also have a Mercedes worth two million two hundred thousand yuan. How much could I borrow against it?”

“Boss Yu, since the leader is here, I won’t beat around the bush. At most, one million one hundred thousand.”

“How about this? Earlier, we had one and a half million plus three million. If we mortgage the Mercedes for another one and a half million, that brings the total to six million. How does that sound?”

The county administrator had already turned to leave.

The credit cooperative director thought for a moment.

“That’s acceptable. But I hope your company will make extensive use of our bank’s services for its future cash flow.”

“No problem. Once the company is established, I’ll also have the employees apply for passbooks with our credit cooperative and use them as their salary accounts.”

In those days, the townships had only post offices and rural credit cooperatives. There were no other banking outlets.

Without the credit cooperative, there was truly no alternative.

Naturally, Yu Yang had no reason to refuse.

…

The negotiations lasted all morning.

In the end, under the supervision of the county administration, the rural credit cooperative granted a six-million-yuan loan in the name of supporting the development of local enterprises. The term was three months, and the interest was waived in full.

After the agreement was reached, the county administrator urged the heads of the industry-and-commerce bureau and the accounting firm to come over.

For what?

To verify the company’s capital.

At the time, the requirements for registering an individual business or a limited liability company were fairly low, and most did not require capital verification.

But registering a joint-stock company was different. Because it involved letters of credit, the transfer of shares, and the possibility of going public in the future, the company was required to possess sufficient financial strength.

This was known as paid-in capital.

For example, if you declared registered capital of one hundred million yuan when establishing a company, then after the company was founded, you had to produce one hundred million yuan in cash or enough fixed and intangible assets to equal that amount.

Otherwise, if you produced only twenty million, you would effectively be carrying eighty million yuan in debt.

Therefore, one could not recklessly inflate the registered capital of a joint-stock company.

Of course, in another era, when capital ran rampant, people would have stopped taking such matters seriously long ago.

But the private economy was only beginning to develop in those days, so this was something they genuinely had to consider.

Thus, when Yu Yang submitted the registration documents, he stayed just above the threshold for a joint-stock company and entered a registered capital of one million yuan.

Because the amount of registered capital determined how long the company’s name could be, a company with five million yuan in registered capital could drop the county designation. With fifty million, it could drop the city designation. With one hundred million, it could even drop the industry designation and simply call itself something like XX Group or Eastern XX.

Since they had only put up one million yuan, their company name was both unpleasantly long and embarrassingly grand:

Sanyuan Agricultural High-Tech Development Joint-Stock Company of Shiliying Township, Pingdong County, Taishi City, Dongshan Province.

With the county administrator overseeing everything, the process went smoothly.

By noon, the business license and tax registration certificate were already hanging on the east wall of the first-floor living room in the small Western-style house.

The deputy county administrator had even prepared three brass-colored plaques in advance.

One read: Advanced Enterprise.

Another read: Key Organization.

The third read: High-Tech Demonstration Base.

The three plaques hung vertically along the first-floor corridor, giving the place a surprisingly official appearance.

Against this backdrop, Sanyuan Agriculture held a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony in the courtyard of the house.

The county administrator stood in the center.

Uncle Six stood to his left, Officer Zhou second on the left, the township chief third, the director of the township investment-promotion office fourth, and so on.

The deputy administrator stood to the right, followed by the county director of industry and commerce, the county investment-promotion director, and others.

Yu Yang stood on the second floor, covering his right ear with his left hand while raising a bamboo pole in his right to set off firecrackers.

Snap!

The old photographer from the local studio captured this precious moment.

“Best wishes for a prosperous opening!”

The people of Ten-Mile Camp and numerous vegetable vendors, having received the news, came to offer their congratulations.

Yu Yang had intended to shout a few words, but then he noticed three Santanas and two police cars parked beside the provincial highway. All five vehicles had been neatly propped up off the ground with stacks of red bricks, and every one of their wheels was gone.

“You really can’t guard against everything!”