Chapter 36 Secret Procurement and Chartering Agreement (3)
"What?"
Carl let out a sound of astonishment, praising God. Had he heard his own inner voice? Before leaving this ancient Eastern country, he had unexpectedly thrown out several large cakes, no less than ten battalions' worth of equipment. Especially the high firepower that Li Han demanded, calculated like this, it could sell for nearly three million pounds at a high price, with profits of no less than one million!
"Agreed to him, this order can be accepted!" kept reminding himself in his heart, however, Karl wouldn't simply choose to give in. He shook his head and said "I'm very sorry, Mr. Chinese, you should know that at this time, only we can provide you with so much equipment without any additional requirements. Although some of them are old models, they have been well-maintained, so there won't be any damage issues. You can still use them for at least ten years or even longer, right? So if you really want it, I think I can only give you 5% off the market price, no lower than that!"
In a sense, what Karl said is not wrong. Take the current four-country military sales team in Beijing as an example. Although the military equipment they sell to the Qing government is barely considered the latest generation and the price is not high, it comes with various additional clauses, such as using domestic railways, mines, and even tariffs as collateral. Of course, the reason why the person in front of him is so eager is that China does not have huge interests like Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan. Moreover, Li Han uses real silver - British pounds for transactions. With the prosperity of the British Empire at this time, it's no wonder that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be unwilling to accept it!
"I see, it seems that our transaction may have some trouble, well, I can only order a small amount of military equipment from you, and after the uprising in Hubei, I will contact other arms dealers again!"
Li Han shrugged, with a very regretful look on his face, picked up the bundle of counterfeit British pounds from the table and put it back into the tactical backpack. Originally, they could have slowly negotiated to lower the price a bit more, but with the scheduled uprising time approaching, he couldn't afford to linger here and had to resort to a bold move, daring to see who would crack first!
"Oh, no, no, dear Chinese friend, I think you may have misunderstood my meaning. You also know that I need to transport the arms from far-off Europe to China, and the journey is long and fraught with unknown dangers (Li Han sneers, when did I become an idiot? In this era, it's impossible for someone to make such a large deal without backing from a country?), so the price I gave you is 5% lower than the market price. In fact, I've already lost out, not just a little, but a lot!"
Karl saw that he didn't stop at all, but instead his hands moved even faster, and before long there were only a few bundles of pounds left on the table!
"However, considering you are a major client and for the sake of our friendship, how about this: all goods will be 8% cheaper than the international market price?" Karl was bleeding in his heart, 8% would mean he'd have to give up nearly ￡100,000 worth of equipment!
"It's a deal" brought a glimmer of joy, but Li Han's face remained expressionless. He shook his head and said, "No way, your goods are all old stock from several years ago, there's a quality issue, so you have to be 15% lower than the market price!"
"It's okay, it can be accepted!" Karl thought to himself that there was still room for profit, but this price he absolutely could not accept because the profit was too low. "Impossible, 15% is too high, we can only go as low as 10%!" He had followed formal arms trading teams and trained in regular arms trading times, generally allowing profits of between 0.5% to 3%, and had never heard of anyone giving up such a large profit at once!
Unfortunately, Li Han did not have the same experience "Alright, 10% is 10%, but it must be based on current international market prices!"
He also remembered that when he was in history class, the teacher mentioned the international background of the Xinhai Revolution at the end of the Qing Dynasty. He vaguely remembered that Lao Shi had said that the success of the Xinhai Revolution was due to the fact that it did not suffer from foreign intervention, which accounted for more than half of the reasons. It is worth noting that in history, whether it was Russia or Japan, they both wanted to take advantage of China's weakness and cut off a piece of fat meat. For this reason, a certain expansionist Tsar had proposed a plan for military intervention by the five countries of Japan, Russia, Britain, Germany, and France, with 200,000 troops, of which Russia would occupy 100,000, with the intention of completely swallowing up Outer Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Northeast China. However, before Russia could do so, the Balkan crisis broke out, and they could only hastily instigate a group of Mongolian traitors to stage an "independence" farce in Outer Mongolia. As for Japan, it had just annexed the entire Korean Peninsula, and the wounds of the Russo-Japanese War had not yet healed, while domestically, the emperor was critically ill and the country was embroiled in internal party struggles, which gave the Xinhai Revolution a relatively favorable external environment.
If he hadn't miscalculated, once the Xinhai Revolution and the Balkan Crisis kicked off, the price of weapons on the international market would necessarily skyrocket. At that time, just this point alone would allow him to save around 10% of his expenses.
His ambitions are not small, so now he urgently hopes to end the domestic division and chaos before World War I. He can take sufficient benefits in the war that destroyed three empires (the largest empire - Russia, the richest empire - France, the strongest empire - Germany, strictly speaking, Britain was also destroyed) and strive for as much of the huge profits of $30-35 billion (according to the purchasing power conversion formula, 1918's $35 billion is approximately equivalent to $11.7243 trillion in 2009, $11.96612 trillion in 2011, if it were 1914's $35 billion, it would be equivalent to $16.88367 billion) generated by that war. Only by truly taking advantage of the east wind of World War I can he initially complete the light industrialization transformation of the country and join the ranks of world industrial powers.
