Chapter 2544: Guangzhou Textile Market (Part 2)

For now, their only hope was that Chinese and foreign merchants would recognize the potential here and begin trafficking Indian cotton.

"Hold on, hold on—let's set that matter aside for now." Li Shan laughed. "In any case, the Nansha factory's smooth operation proves our technical direction is still sound!"

Zou Biao adjusted his glasses with a helpless sigh. "Honestly speaking, reviving a technical zombie like hydraulic spinning isn't ideal. Hydraulic power has too many limitations..."

Ideal locations that combined favorable climate, geography, and human resources the way Nansha Village did were extraordinarily rare—perhaps impossible to find elsewhere in all of Guangdong. Promoting this technology widely would be extremely difficult.

"Moreover, hydraulic machines require building overflow dams to raise the water head. If the river channel needs to remain navigable, you also need supporting ship locks and lifts. Water may be free, but once you factor in infrastructure investment, the savings aren't that impressive. The only real advantage is low long-term operating costs."

"But it's running now, isn't it?" Li Shan knew his old partner was full of complaints, but boasting about one's own work was pointless. Especially now, when there were plenty of impressive alternatives out there—hydraulic power truly held little advantage.

Li Shan tried to lift his spirits. "Even if this technical zombie is old, what matters is that it fits our current conditions! So—how is the Type 07 selling?"

Type 07 was the simple human-powered spinning machine and loom they had specially developed for household users. The spinning machine was a replica of the "Type 77 Spinning Machine" from the War of Resistance period, originally based on the "Yamato Spinning Machine" invented in Japan. Zou Biao had improved the structure, enabling it to connect to various power sources, including small water turbines and animal power.

"The spinning machine has been average—only sold a few dozen sets. The loom, though, is selling like wildfire. Over a hundred units sold by last week."

This was an improved household loom based on the flying shuttle design with foot pedals, constructed from a large number of standardized wooden and metal parts. Like the Type 07 spinning machine, it could also connect to small auxiliary power sources.

The beauty of the Type 07 was that it could be set up at home. Women in cities and villages could buy one, purchase cotton or cotton yarn from the market each day to spin and weave, then sell the finished products.

"If you ask me, we shouldn't be selling the Type 07 spinning machine at all. The yarn quality is passable enough for the loom, I'll grant you that—but selling it essentially encourages small-scale production, which competes with factories for raw materials." Despite being the main designer of Type 07, Zou Biao wasn't fond of this "small producer's tool."

"Local cotton cultivation is minimal, farmers aren't enthusiastic about selling what little they grow, and the costs don't work out..." Li Shan said. "Once large-scale enterprises get bigger, they'll inevitably rely on purchasing cotton from outside. Letting individual households absorb the sporadic local production is actually a perfect fit."

In the long run, small producers would inevitably be crushed by factory costs. But this process might take ten to twenty years. After all, building a large-scale cotton textile industry was a gradual undertaking. Yet once established, its expansion into the broader market would be unstoppable—like mountains roaring and seas howling. There was good reason the Industrial Revolution had begun with cotton textiles.

Li Shan had actually never favored using silk to develop light industry. Beyond the transportation difficulties he'd mentioned before, silk output was fundamentally limited.

Silkworms could also "eat people," as the saying went—but in terms of volume, neither silk nor wool could ever match cotton. Due to the energy conversion inefficiencies inherent in animal-derived fibers, producing an equivalent amount of fiber required sheep or silkworms to consume far more land than cotton cultivation would. As luxury goods, their higher selling prices compensated for this. But for mass consumer goods, plant fibers like cotton and ramie were obviously better suited to large-scale industry. Silkworm cocoons were also highly perishable, unlike cotton and ramie, which farmers could store for long periods simply by sun-drying. Cotton could withstand long-distance transport without significant quality degradation.

Just as Li Shan set foot in Guangzhou, Chen Lin arrived shortly after. He didn't come empty-handed—accompanying him on the ship were over ten bolts of blue cloth and more than twenty bolts of white cloth.

These cloths had been hand-woven by weavers using machine-spun yarn from the cotton mill. The total shipment came to about two hundred bolts. Half had been dyed blue using Australian dyes; the other half would be sold directly as greige cloth.

Lame Zhang had dyed the blue cloth a bright cyan-blue using the Australian dyes. The color was far more vivid than any blue dye they'd used before. He'd praised it endlessly, saying he had never dyed such brilliant cloth in his life—and it didn't fade at all after rinsing.

Seventy bolts had been entrusted to several of Fengshenghe's old partners for sale. But most of his business connections dealt primarily in silk; cotton cloth might be beyond their expertise. Just as Chen Lin was considering where to find more suitable distributors, An Jiu recommended her father's Rui He Xiang—fortunately, they counted as acquaintances. So another fifty bolts of blue cloth went there for sale.

He packed the remaining eighty bolts and consigned them all to Guangzhou, hoping to find suitable distributors through trial and error. He also needed to give Master Wu an update—after all, Wu was the principal investor in this cotton factory.

Upon arriving in Guangzhou, Chen Lin first visited Wu Yijun, presenting four bolts of blue cloth and four bolts of greige cloth as samples. Wu Yijun was delighted by what he saw, and the conversation naturally turned to this new "International Textile Market."

Uncle and nephew had more or less guessed the Australians' purpose in establishing the market: to build a comprehensive trading platform for both raw materials and finished goods.

This was excellent news for "outsiders" like themselves. Neither Wu nor Chen had originally been cotton cloth merchants. Changing trades involved a complex process of "gaining entry." You needed recognition from relevant guilds, and both purchasing and sales channels for raw materials and products were completely opaque—requiring exploration from scratch. Sometimes even knowing a specific network wasn't enough to gain access.

Now, with this government-run platform, there would be a direct trading market. Whether buying or selling, everything would be laid out in the open. It was tremendously convenient for both transport merchants and producers.

"This is indeed an excellent approach. Needless to say, we must secure a seat in this market." Wu Yijun laughed. "Otherwise, selling this cloth might take enormous effort!"

"Cousin-Uncle speaks truly." Chen Lin agreed that this served both public and private interests well. "The only trouble is that the market hasn't opened yet, and we have a pressing problem that needs solving first."

"What problem?"

"No cotton." Chen Lin explained that the factory's operation had consumed all the cotton they'd spent half a year hoarding. They had no choice but to halt production.

"So fast!" Wu Yijun was stunned. He knew Australian spinning machines had remarkable efficiency, but hadn't realized they weren't just ten or twenty times faster than human labor—they were hundreds of times faster.

"I didn't anticipate it either." Chen Lin smiled bitterly. "I've already sent people to scour the surrounding villages—but it's early summer, and farm households have almost no cotton in storage. We'll have to wait until autumn for the new harvest. I figured Guangzhou, being a hub where merchants and goods from all directions converge, might still have some stored cotton available. I plan to search both inside and outside the city over the next few days."

Wu Yijun pondered for a moment. "It's worth trying. But your chances of buying cotton aren't good. Prices have surged in recent months—nearly tripled compared to last year's market price."

"Tripled?!" Now it was Chen Lin's turn to be shocked. During the "gap between harvests," when stocks ran low and new goods had yet to appear, some price increase was normal. But cotton had historically been stable; tripling all at once would mean buying it back at a loss, wouldn't it?

He immediately lowered his head to calculate costs. To his surprise, he discovered that even with raw material prices tripled, as long as the market price for cotton cloth held steady, there was still profit—just considerably thinner.

"If prices have tripled but there's available stock, we won't lose money." Chen Lin said. "What I mean is, as long as we're not operating at a loss, this factory's production cannot be interrupted."

Temporarily halting production wouldn't normally harm the factory. Close the sluice, stop the water wheel, send the workers home—no work, no wages. And since it was the busy farming season, the workers would have plenty to do, whether on their own fields or hiring themselves out as day laborers.

But Chen Lin had just employed drastic measures in Nansha. Keeping the Nansha Cotton Textile Factory operational was crucial for stabilizing his position in the village and clan.

"Tripled and still not losing money?"

"Indeed, we won't lose," Chen Lin confirmed. "The factory currently has 720 spindles running. If women spin at home by hand, each can only manage one spindle. A full day's work wouldn't match half an hour of machine output. Miss Li and Miss An both said that with sufficient cotton, we could run two shifts, operating day and night without stopping—which would lower costs even further..."

In factory production, labor constituted a large portion of costs. The higher the efficiency, the lower the expense. This was the fundamental reason factory production could defeat handicraft industry.

"Indeed, the Australians run their spinning machines through the night without stopping." Wu Yijun recalled his observations in Lingao.

"Cousin-Uncle, why has cotton risen so sharply?"

"The Australians have been selling quite a few new looms recently. Not the large ones we use, but smaller machines that can be placed at home..."

"Waist looms?"

"Of course not—foot-pedaled ones." Wu Yijun gestured with his hands. "Although these small spinning and weaving machines can't compare to our large equipment, the yarn and cloth they produce is vastly superior to traditional earthen looms—like the difference between clouds and mud. Once they launched, weaving households everywhere borrowed money to acquire them. With more new machines came greater demand for yarn, and cotton prices rose accordingly."

"I see." Chen Lin thought it over. He recalled seeing such "Improved Machines" in the product exhibition room during his visit to Lingao.

(End of Chapter)