<h4>Chapter 806: Resistance in Acquistion</h4>


    <b>Trantor:</b> <i>Min</i>?<b>Editor:</b>?Caron_


    Three dayster, the number of applicants exceeded ten million.


    Immigration without a threshold was first weed by the poor people of Africa and the Middle East. Those who more or less had contact with the Inte and were eager for a better life in the outside world were particrly enthusiastic about signing up.


    However, Jiang Chen failed their expectations.


    For volunteers from underdeveloped areas, Celestial Trade adopted an extremely cautious attitude. Only a few applicants were epted from Africa, and slightly more Middle East applicants were epted for interviews.


    This decision wasn’t because of racial discrimination but rather, because of considerations such asws, living habits, religious practices, and even food culture, all of which might present hidden dangers to colonization. In order to reduce this risk, any applicants who rejected secrization didn’t receive an interview.


    After the results of the interview came out, Liu Qingpeng couldn’t even believe he was epted as someone with only a high school degree!


    Happiness came too suddenly. On the same day, he excitedly took out several well-connected workers from the factory and went on a drinking binge. He resigned to the factory’s director the next day then he went to Xin’s Embassy with his identity card to receive a Coro Ind work visa.


    Dragging his suitcase at Coro Ind Airport, he quickly saw the buses that were picking up volunteers.


    There were people all over the world on the buses, but due tonguage barriers, he could only curiously look at them and didn’tmunicate with them as much as he would have liked.


    The buses boarded a ferry then the ferry stopped at Ange Ind. The buses then transported them to the volunteermunity next to the training center.


    From now on, they would live there. They would receive four hours of on-site training every day, and four hours of VR training.


    After six months, they would be separated into different jobs for specialized training ording to their performance during training. A yearter, their status would be changed from temporary workers. Although they would still be volunteers, they could be viewed as quasi-astronauts.


    The construction of the space elevator would start simultaneously with the lunar colonization program. A yearter, Celestial trade would select 200 of these volunteers as the first settlers to the moon. This would be the first step toward the astounding intergctic settlement!


    After thepletion of the space elevator, arge number of astronauts would be needed at the space station.


    The astronaut training center started construction at the same time as the space elevator program. On one hand, it was meant to provide staff for the space station. On the other hand, it was meant to carry out basic aerospace training for the citizens of Xin; they had to at least adapt to non-gravity environments!


    “Up until now, 30,000 volunteers have arrived in Xin to receive training. Although cooperation with Future Tourism has begun, the entire space training center is still at a loss. ording to estimates from the Finance Department, the deficit of the space training center this month is about 8 to 10 million.”


    “We’ll lose 100 million a year?”


    Jiang Chen’s expression didn’t change much after he digested Xia Shiyu’s words.


    The aerospace project was a bottomless pit. He had long been prepared to lose money. Since he alreadymitted more than 100 billion US Dor, would he care about a mere 100 million?


    “The budget of the training center remains unchanged, but let Wei Yun think about it a bit more and see if he can make better use of this space training center for tourism. Don’t aim for profitability; just don’t lose too much money.”


    “I’ll tell him.” Xia Shiyu nodded.


    “In addition, what happened to the negotiations with Australia’s SunRice?” Putting the astronaut training aside, Jiang Chen asked another question he was concerned about: the food supply to the future space elevator station and the moon’s colonial base.


    “SunRice rejected our offer for the acquisition of the farm in Northern Australia, even though we offered a premium of 11%. ording to the person responsible for negotiating with us at SunRice, this decision was made by the parentpany Cargill.”


    It was no secret that 80 percent of the world’s food market was controlled by the four bigpanies “A,B,C,D”. Thepanies were ADM in the UA, Bunge in the UA, Cargill in the UA, and Louis Dreyfus in France. It could be said that global food prices were basically determined by these fourpanies.


    Interested people could easily see that three of them belonged to the UA. It was fair to state that the global food market was basically under the control of the UA. Although the UA had never announced that the grain market must be settled using USD, the rice in everyone’s bowls had never left the control of the UA.


    During the 2004 soybean crisis, the Hua enterprises collectively copsed, and they were taught a painful “trade lesson” who had joined the WTO for less than three years. Today, more than ten yearster, the soybean industry in Hua hadn’t rebounded from the crisis.


    It should be noted that before 2004, Hua was one of the major soybean exporters.


    Now that it was no longer the barbarous Victorian era, the battlefields had long not relied on swords and machetes. By using invisible leverage in the market, they could achieve things that even nuclear weapons couldn’t do.


    Whether it was the orbital space station or the moon base, the only industry where it was difficult to be self-sufficient was food production. Even if methods like hydroponic were used, it would be difficult to control the high production costs.


    With the space elevator, the cost of transporting food to outer space would be greatly reduced, but at the source, it would still be difficult to minimize control from the four ABCDpanies.


    At present, Xin’s food supply mostly relied on imports from Australia. If Jiang Chen attacked the US Dor, the UA would undoubtedly beat Xin through the grain market.


    With Xinpletely depending on the import of grains and dairy products, the country virtually had no defense in the food market.


    There was only one way to minimize the impact of price fluctuations in the international market – producing their own food. They needed to transform themselves from an importing country to an exporting nation! Even if rice wasn’t grown on Coro Ind, it had to be grown on an overseas farm controlled by Xin’s ownpanies.


    Being self-sufficient in food production was crucial for the future development of Celestial Trade, so Jiang Chen asked Xia Shiyu to propose an acquisition of SunRice, apany that monopolized Australian grain exports, hoping to acquire 400,000-acre farm in northern Australia.


    Unfortunately, Cargill, which controlled SunRice, wasn’t willing to give up its farm, although the 400,000-acre farm ounted for only a small portion of thend owned by SunRice.


    “Did we get in touch with Cargill?”


    “They aren’t willing to talk at all.” Xia Shiyu shook her head. “My advice is to register a subsidiary in Australia and acquire a farm from an Australian farmer through a subsidiary… Although the cost and efficiency of doing so isn’t directly proportional, it’s certainly easier than pulling teeth from a tiger’s mouth.”


    As one of the granaries in Asia, Australia’s agricultural market was quite mature. There would be no farmers willing to sell their farms. After all, many Australian farmers had been farmers for generations. If they lost their farms, they couldn’t find any other work.


    Unless Future Group offered a very high premium, they wouldn’t agree.


    Jiang Chen had no solutions.


    Everything else was good about Xin aside from theck ofnd. He hadn’t thought so far ahead when he chose the ind. He thought that with globalization, he could buy anything with money. But when he had a big country to run, he realized things were far more difficult than he imagined.


    [So much trouble. Only if I could rece thousands of square kilometers of sea withnd… Hold on!]


    As he thought of this, his eyes light up.


    [Why not just build farms on the sea?]


    ADM, Bunge, Cargill and (Louis) Dreyfus ounted for between 75% and 90% of the global grain trade.