In Jia Huan's view, establishing one or several trading docks in coastal areas would be of great benefit to Daxia.
After the dock is established, a large number of merchants will soon gather there, which will facilitate large-scale commodity transactions, from which Daxia can collect a large amount of business tax.
If it works well, the commercial tax collected by one terminal can even be comparable to the tax collected by several counties.
The prosperity of commercial activities will also drive the development of all walks of life.
The civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty gathered in the Jinluan Hall, at least the civil servants, are probably the smartest people in Daxia. There is no reason why they cannot see through the key points.
However, what Jia Huan never expected was that the vast majority of civil servants refused to open the docks, and they were unwilling to trade with Zhenzhen.
There are three reasons for this.
The first is that Daxia has an ancestral motto that states not to sail to the sea and not to trade with overseas people. The Daxia court should inherit the ancestral precepts and not have commercial relations with the Zhenzhen State.
The second is that Daxia's national policy is to emphasize agriculture and suppress commerce. The establishment of docks focuses on commerce, which is not conducive to agricultural development and harmful to the country.
The third is those who are not from my race, and their minds must be different. Not only do they disapprove of commercial trade with Zhenzhen, they also reject cultural exchanges with Zhenzhen.
The leaders of the opposition are cabinet ministers Zhu and Cheng.
Jia Huan, who was watching from the side, felt it was ridiculous.
It is good that Daxia has ancestral precepts. However, when Daxia was just founded, there were internal and external troubles, and foreign pirates continued to invade the coastal cities of Daxia.
At that time, Daxia had limited military strength, especially without a strong navy, and the troops defending coastal cities were stretched thin.
Therefore, Xia Taizu had to migrate the people to coastal towns and decided on a strategy of sailing to the sea to prevent overseas trade.
In fact, this was just a compromise that had to be made under the current events at the time.
However, times have changed, and the situation is completely different from that of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Could it be that these civil servants, who are well-read in poetry and books, cannot see this?
Only Mr. Zhao and a few people at the scene were supporters. They combined the facts and argued hard to open the dock.
However, they are weak and are no match for the opposition.
Jia Huan watched with cold eyes and had no intention of participating in the debate.
Others speak softly and don't even have the qualifications to speak.
The final result of the discussion was that there would be no commercial and cultural exchanges with Zhenzhen, but the two countries could have normal exchanges.
Jia Huan was very puzzled. Without commercial and cultural exchanges, what else could the two countries have to do with each other?
Alice was very disappointed with Daxia's reply. She couldn't help but said:
"Your Majesty the Emperor of Daxia, Daxia is a mysterious ancient country in the East. I like Daxia civilization very much, but everything is constantly developing."
"And you, Daxia, are stuck in the old ways and will be abandoned by the times sooner or later. In our Zhenzhen country and other countries, the humanities are developing rapidly."
"We created a four-wheeled carriage, which runs very fast and can carry more goods, which greatly improves the transportation capacity."
"Our arithmetic has taken a big step forward, but now your arithmetic in Daxia is far behind ours. Our natural sciences are changing with each passing day and developing vigorously."
"Our industry is undergoing earth-shaking changes. We can smelt various alloys. My ships are getting stronger and stronger. We can easily travel across thousands of miles of sea."
"If you Daxia don't learn from us, you will be left far behind by us."
After hearing what Princess Alice said, Jia Huan was surprised.
Although this world is an imaginary world, its development is somewhat similar to the original history.
According to Princess Alice's description, the West is probably in the stage of the Renaissance and the first industrial revolution.
I wonder if they have invented the steam engine yet. Once the steam engine is invented, the industry will surely enter a stage of explosive development.
And based on their greedy nature, they are bound to colonize the world.
When the time comes, Daxia and them will have a battle sooner or later.
The civil servants of Daxia were completely angered by Princess Alice's arrogance.
At this time, Fan Zhongyu, the Minister of Rites, couldn't help but stand up and asked: "Princess Alice, you said that your country's arithmetic has far surpassed ours in Daxia. You are really making a big statement."
"You might as well come up with a few questions and let's discuss them and see which one is better in arithmetic between our two countries."
Princess Alice nodded and said: "Okay, then I will give you the simplest question. Given a right triangle with two right-angled sides of one, find the exact length of its hypotenuse."
Hearing this question, Jia Huan couldn't help but smile.
Princess Alice has an irrational number problem.
In fact, the concept of square root already existed in ancient China, and it is described in Chapter Nine of Arithmetic.
They have even discovered the existence of irrational numbers, but unfortunately they did not conduct more in-depth research, but chose to avoid the problem.
For example, if there are some numbers that cannot be solved by the square root, just mark them as indescribable and then take their approximate value.
Jia Huan was sure that this question would stump everyone present.
But this time, Jia Huan was not ready to take action.
The West is developing rapidly, but Daxia is still too conservative.
This is not conducive to Daxia's development, and perhaps it would be a good thing for them to suffer some blows.
Fan Zhongyu has a deep understanding of arithmetic, and he initially had a dismissive attitude towards the question asked by Princess Alice.
At first he did the math verbally, but soon found that it was a bit laborious.
Next, Fan Zhongyu asked for pen and paper and started calculating on the paper.
He used more and more paper and began to sweat. After a while, his court clothes were soaked with sweat.
However, he has been unable to calculate the answer.
In addition to Fan Zhongyu, there are several ministers who are proficient in arithmetic above the court and are also doing calculations.
However, their situation is no better than Fan Zhongyu.
Princess Alice looked at them calculating with a smile, and then said: "My lord, your calculation result is wrong in the fifth digit after the decimal point! It can be seen that you have no understanding of this kind of problem at all. A systematic summary.”
Being despised in person, the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty in Daxia were very angry and ashamed.
However, they have no way to fight back. They really cannot give a correct answer to this question.
Although arithmetic is a trivial matter, it still makes them extremely uncomfortable to be compared to a small overseas country.
At this moment, Princess Alice looked at Jia Huan and asked with a smile: "I wonder if Jia Sanshou, the number one prodigy in Daxia, can answer this question?"
Unexpectedly, this foreign girl actually asked him.
Jia Huan was not planning to get involved, so it would be a good thing to let these stubborn guys take some hits.
But the tree wants to be still but the wind doesn’t stop!
(End of chapter)
