Chapter 558: Jiang Charity FundTranslator: _Min_ Editor: Caron_
With the cooperation of Xin, the news only provided a brief summary of the explosion that happened a day ago. News of the first round of the business forum concluding without a happy ending was suppressed due to “consideration of the bigger picture.”
Afterward, the media was engaged by another piece of news.
The President of Future Group conducted a news conference and announced the establishment of a personal charity fund named Jiang Charity Fund with an initial fund of 300 million USD. He suggested contributing at least 500 million USD every year. The charitable fund was a non-public fund by nature and the fund was mostly concerned with building education, health, and public infrastructure in poor areas.
The head of Han Charity Organization and the mayor of Shangjin all highly praised Jiang Chen’s generosity. The media all heaped an overwhelming amount of praise on him. Xin’s President, Zhang Yapin, spoke to the media saying that there were no limits when it came to charity and Jiang Chen’s actions would become a symbol of friendship between the two countries.
At the same time, Hua’s number one official expressed his agreement.
The fund manager was a man named Wu Botao arranged by the Liu family.
Jiang Chen didn’t want Future Group to be too involved with the daily operations of the fund and fully relinquished control to the Liu family. If anything happened, they just needed to bring this Wu Botao out as a scapegoat and this wouldn’t negatively influence Future Group.
300 million USD was approximately one-tenth of Future Group’s profits in Hua. Of course, this number would probably more than double next year because the server for the Phantom would come online by the beginning of next year when the worldly virtual reality MMORPG would be officially released. A lot of Wall Street analysts provided estimates that as long as no problems existed with the operation, just the MMORPG would generate at least 2 billion USD in annual profit.
And this didn’t include the one time profit of selling the helmet.
Quite comically, the netizens of Hua didn’t bring up many opinions about Jiang Chen in the “delegation” since they always viewed Jiang Chen as their own.
The reason why nobody brought it up was because the two countries were not comparable in terms of power – there was a friendly relationship, no competition, a high number of cultural similarities, and a common enemy. If Jiang Chen immigrated to the other country and it was exposed by the public, he would be criticized half dead by keyboard warriors.
But with the charitable fund becoming public, no one cared about his nationality. With Future Group’s purposeful manipulation of public opinion, major social media outlets once again were flooded by the generous rich. Although Jiang Chen didn’t care how people viewed him, to be frank, he felt good when so many praised him.
Especially when all the girls on Weibo spammed “Jiang Chen, Jiang Chen, I want to bear your baby” or “Nation’s husband, mua mua mua”…
Wait, something wasn’t right.
Whatever.
Let’s put the charitable cause aside.
The Zhou family, who put up a good attitude, began to feel worried when Jiang Chen didn’t contact them.
Seeing that Jiang Chen suddenly started a charity, Liu Xiangguo suddenly changed his stance during the internal discussion and pointed his spear at the supporter behind Li Yanhong and the Wang family who held a strong opinion against Future Group, Zhou Antai immediately realized the Liu family already contacted Jiang Chen and clearly reached some form of agreement!
While he was cursing how Liu Xiangguo screwed him over, Zhou Antai couldn’t do anything about that. From the beginning, the Zhou family was on the opposite side against the Wang family and stood with Future Group. Even if he changed his stance now, the people on the opposite side wouldn’t view him too highly.
Regardless of where it came from, the grass on top of the wall (1) was unwelcome.
The Zhou family starting to lose their cool and contacted Jiang Chen.
Jiang Chen thought it was comical when the Zhou family came in contact through Zhou Zihao. He obviously guessed the Zhou family was there to ask for benefits.
But different from the Liu family with influence concentrated in politics, the Zhou family’s connections and resources concentrated on military tech, energy, and other state-owned enterprises. Jiang Chen knew they didn’t need more cash, but rather, wanted to help them gain technical prowess.
Jiang Chen didn’t let the Zhou family leave emptyhanded. Instead, he took out the piece of cake known as nutrient supply and tied Zhou family to Future Group’s bandwagon.
With the Zhou family in the lead, they established a food company with an import and export license in Yangcheng to purchase military-grade nutrient supply with high calories and nutrient level from Xin. The product was repackaged and sold to the military logistics department. In theory, Hua’s military could not directly partner up with foreign entities, but through this gimmick, the problem was gone.
Compared with Russia with a weak economy, Hua with a booming economy was, without a doubt, a partner with a brighter future. The Zhou family decisively signed a contract for 3 million boxes of nutrient supply. Just this batch alone netted Jiang Chen 600 million USD alone. As to how much the Zhou family would gain politically on this military necessity with long shelf life, high efficiency and low logistical demand wasn’t something of his concern.
The three-day delegation concluded.
With business contracts worth 2 billion USD, the Xin President along with the rest of the delegation boarded the plane at the airport in the capital.
Based on the previous plan, Jiang Chen would follow Xin’s delegation onboard to UA. But because of the “small incident” that happened at the hotel, it made him change his mind.
Before he was certain the CIB was uninvolved with this attack, he didn’t want to joke about his own safety. Therefore, Jiang Chen temporarily canceled his plan to accompany the delegation. Instead, he chose a representative from Future Group to replace him on this visit.
Some people were secretively happy about Jiang Chen’s decision while some people expressed their regret. But regardless, Future Group was only a company by definition and a missing President wouldn’t affect the relationship between two countries.
While the UA President welcomed Xin’s delegation, the new President of UA personally sent Jiang Chen an email to express his regret Jiang Chen couldn’t make the business forum that took place on Wall Street.
But the President only expressed regret from his personal perspective without delivering many thoughts. They wouldn’t know if the attack at the hotel was related to CIB or not; they could only express understanding regarding why Jiang Chen made this decision.
Since CIB conducted an attack on Jiang Chen without approval before, it was reasonable that the attack was related to CIB. But the CIB director in the far Flo felt wronged as this attack had nothing to do with CIB at all, but he was called multiple times to the Rainbow Mansion by the President.
The intention for the newly elected President to win over Xin through Jiang Chen was obvious. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to make a move on Jiang Chen at this time. Especially since the last mission in Hua caused CIB’s force in Hua to be severely crippled,. Even if he wanted to do something, it was questionable if he had the ability.