"Ship Recruitment Bureau?" Zhu Wencong asked spontaneously.
"Yes! Last year, I had been in correspondence with the Premier's Office, arguing that our merchants have been secretly purchasing or chartering foreign ships and even registering them under the names of foreign merchants.
Nowadays, merchants are too shrewd. They know that using foreigners' names is effective, so they keep drawing on the tiger's might to drum up business.
The Premier's Office had no choice but to lift the ban on purchasing or chartering foreign ships, and upon receiving such good news, the merchants proposed to me the establishment of a modern steamship enterprise by Easterners.
The authorities were worried that if we followed Rong Hong's proposal to establish a steamship enterprise based on the charters of Western companies, the Qing court's shipping industry would be completely monopolized by foreign capital.
