Inside the venue!
Commissioner Wang approached Commissioner Pu and voiced his inner confusion: "Sir! Why must you select that Qin Jiang, and grant him such preferential treatment! Although he helped us capture the Rong Xing criminal syndicate and break the deadlock, we could have compensated him in other ways."
"A gambling license! Isn't that too important… And without requiring anything from him in return, won't this have a negative impact?"
Commissioner Pu: "You don't understand! He is the most suitable!"
Commissioner Wang: "Most suitable? Why…"
Commissioner Pu: "In the Pu Region, having only the Ning Family and the Zhou Family is extremely detrimental to the future development of the Pu Region. It must be a tripartite balance of power, so we need to introduce an external force…"
"Forces from the mainland are the most suitable, but given the current development of the mainland, there are not many qualified candidates. Not to mention anything else, just gaining a foothold in the Pu Region is not easy, let alone facing the suppression from the Zhou Family and the Ning Family. But these are not the most important points: the most important thing is that the newly arrived force must absolutely not be won over by the Zhou Family! I have looked into Qin Jiang's character. Following the incident with Rong Xing, he has already formed a private feud with the Zhou Family, so reconciliation is impossible."
"He also has the confidence not to reconcile with the Zhou Family. Even the hidden foreign forces behind the Zhou Family cannot do anything to the Black Dragon Group; the two sides are simply not on the same playing field."
"At the same time, the base of operations for the Black Dragon Group is in the North, so he won't place special importance on businesses or casinos in the Pu Region. He won't care about the entanglements of power in the Pu Region at all—he is a complete outsider. Plus, with the Black Dragon Group currently here, the timing, location, and people are all in our favor! It has to be him!"
Commissioner Wang nodded: "That is indeed true, but he and the Ning Family…"
Commissioner Pu: "Didn't you say she agreed? A person like that will definitely keep their word. Besides, the Ning Family knows how to conduct themselves with discretion, and their base is in the Pu Region, so even if the two families cooperate, it doesn't matter!"
Commissioner Wang: "Commissioner Pu is wise!"
Commissioner Pu: "Next, continue to strictly investigate the network behind Rong Xing. All malignant tumors must be eradicated."
Commissioner Wang: "Understood!"
… Inside the car!
Ning Hua looked at his Brother Jiang with an excited face: "Brother Jiang! You are just too, too, too awesome! A gambling license! That's a gambling license, you know? And you have one? Doesn't that mean you will be on equal footing with the Zhou Family and the Ning Family in the future? Doesn't that mean you've earned hundreds of billions just by coming to the Pu Region once?"
Zhao Shanhe also looked excited.
A gambling license!
This was something countless people in the Pu Region didn't even dare to dream of.
Yet, the two of them noticed that their Brother Jiang's expression was calm. Wait, no? Could he be this composed after obtaining such a massive benefit as a gambling license?
Ning Hua: "Brother Jiang? Are you not even excited about this? This is a profit of hundreds of billions!"
He couldn't understand it; even if the Black Dragon Group had a market value of 300 billion, adding 100 billion in assets should be enough to make people gasp in amazement, right?
Qin Jiang: "Do you think a gambling license is a money-printing machine!"
Ning Hua: "Isn't it?"
Zhao Shanhe: "Isn't it because of the gambling licenses that the Zhou Family and the Ning Family have their current market value of hundreds of billions?"
Qin Jiang: "It is because of the gambling licenses, but it is also not because of the gambling licenses! The gambling license is the foundation! But how much money can you really make just by relying on a casino? Ning Hua! Do you know how much profit a casino can generate in a year?"
Ning Hua: "This… I haven't calculated it specifically! But it should be at least 100 million a day!"
100 million a day!
That's tens of billions a year!
Hundreds of billions in three years!
300 billion in pure profit over a ten-year license?
Zhao Shanhe's breathing became a bit rapid: "Brother Jiang! Doesn't that mean there is a profit of 300 billion! That's a huge fortune."
Qin Jiang: "300 billion? You're dreaming! Do you know how much initial investment is needed for a casino? Do you know how much the tax on a casino is? Do you know how many employees a casino needs? How much do their wages cost? Have you calculated that?"
Zhao Shanhe and Ning Hua couldn't answer.
Zhao Shanhe didn't understand casinos at all, and although Ning Hua came from a prominent family, he had never paid attention to these things.
Qin Jiang explained it to them: "There are six casinos in the Pu Region! If you want to join in, you have to make large investments in the initial construction, style, decoration, etc. This investment is at least several billion! This is what you have to put out first, and it's only the smallest part!"
"The real big expense is taxes! Even if the daily profit is around 100 million, that's an average of 30 billion a year, and the tax on casinos in the Pu Region is basically half! It's not half of the net profit, but half of the revenue, which means 15 billion in taxes."
"Next is labor! To keep a casino running 24 hours a day, you need at least eight thousand to ten thousand employees! The average salary is 20,000! That's at least 2 billion in labor costs per year! That leaves 130 billion in profit! Assuming the average cost of renovating a casino every three years, the basic annual cost is around 1 billion, leaving an annual profit of only 120 billion!"
"Then subtract the dividends for the junket agents, as well as other miscellaneous expenses… having a profit of several billion a year would be pretty good…"
Hearing this analysis!
Zhao Shanhe and Ning Hua were stunned!
Several billion a year?
So little!
It was far, far less than their estimate of tens of billions!
Qin Jiang: "And this is assuming the best-case scenario: a new casino also has to face expenses like initial promotion, plus it's impossible to have the same customer flow as established casinos in the beginning, so the revenue will only be lower… having a profit of three to four billion in the first few years would already be good!"
Three to four billion!
This was more than ten times less than what Ning Hua and Zhao Shanhe had estimated!
Zhao Shanhe: "Only this much! The value of a gambling license is too low, right? This casino doesn't even make as much money as milk tea…"
Ning Hua scratched his head in confusion: "That's not right? Then where does my family's money come from? This profit isn't proportional to my family's assets, right? Holy crap? Could it be that my family is cheating…"
Qin Jiang: … What the hell, cheating? In a large-scale casino like this, wouldn't it be pure suicide for the house to cheat? I can't believe you said that!
Qin Jiang: "The true value of a gambling license is not just reflected in the casino, but also in the supporting hotels, tourism, one-stop lifestyle services, and so on. The Ning Family has been rooted in the Pu Region for hundreds of years; their business isn't just gambling licenses, but other miscellaneous things too. Assets accumulated over a century naturally cannot rely solely on these profits. Moreover, these supporting facilities require a huge amount of labor… A large amount of labor can provide employment for the local area, and its value cannot be measured by money alone."
"Of course, this doesn't matter to the Black Dragon Group; the base of operations for the Black Dragon Group is not here…"
Zhao Shanhe and Ning Hua nodded, seemingly understanding, but not quite.
Qin Jiang didn't explain further. Many things cannot be explained clearly in a sentence or two. The reason why the Zhou Family could be so rampant, even when Commissioner Pu could only peel back the layers and erode them step by step, was partly due to this. Wiping out the Zhou Family all at once would easily make them desperate, leading to large-scale unemployment, which would affect the stability of the local economy.
Real industry!
It is very important!
This is also the reason why Qin Jiang focuses on developing real industry!