If the "Separate Patrol Sea Route Rectification Admiral Lei Lian, Deputy Envoy Zhuchi" is transferred from Guangdong to Guangxi, this will certainly cause certain losses to the Guangdong officialdom, but overall it is not a big problem - even if a deputy envoy has to pay bribes, There are only a few people worthy of his bribery, and the impact is not big. The pressure faced is high and pragmatic, but he can still handle it with confidence.
The key is still the issue of salt works. When Lianzhou Prefecture was under the management of Guangdong, Guangxi basically relied on Guangdong for all the salt it needed. In the past ten years when Guangxi was experiencing constant rebellions, successive governors of Guangdong and Guangxi had ordered "to transport salt with low prices." Arrive at Xunzhou, Guilin and other places for trafficking to increase military supplies." It can be seen that Lianzhou is not only rich in salt profits, but also one of the means for the governors of Guangdong and Guangxi to show their authority.
Not to mention that there is a chain of interests in the salt farm. This is a salt farm. How many people can Guangdong officials share in the profits?
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic can be sure that the proposal to transfer Lianzhou back to Guangxi will definitely cause conflicts with Guangdong officialdom, and even directly conflict with the governors of Guangdong and Guangxi. Coupled with the previously mentioned issue of guarding against Japanese pirates, Gao Pragmatic did not dare to vouch for whether the imperial court was willing to do so in the end.
But regardless of whether it works or not, it is best to do it quickly while the teacher is still here. Otherwise, even if the uncle takes over as the first assistant, he will have more worries about moving to Lianzhou. After all, the Zhang family itself is one of the big salt merchants. If you rashly touch Guangdong's salt power, you may be criticized. Even though the relationship is uncle-nephew, you still have to be careful about this kind of thing.
As a younger generation, it doesn't matter if it occasionally brings a little trouble to the elders, but major troubles should be avoided as much as possible. Although your uncle is very close, he is not your biological father after all. He can protect you from wind and rain, but he has no obligation to protect you from knives.
On the contrary, it is not a big problem for Teacher Guo Puguo to handle this matter, because he has no personal connection with the word "Yanli", and Gao's pragmatic move is not that he wants to get salty money by himself, which avoids being criticized by someone. It would be much easier to deal with some attacks from the perspective of personal interests and turn it into a purely government issue - Gao Gong faced much more resistance than this during his reforms, and he didn't back down, right?
Then, we can put aside the issue of Lianzhou—actually mainly Qinzhou Port—for the time being.
Gao Pragmatic then began to think about where to start to increase the chieftains' dependence on the "new lifeline".
The first thing to determine is what industry can replace farming and become the new lifeblood of the chieftains.
The so-called lifeblood, to put it crudely, is the main financial income.
It’s very wonderful. This is a question of developing the local economy. It can be regarded as entering the field that Gao Pragmatic is best at - when he traveled through time, the most critical work task of the local cadres of the Red Dynasty was to "center on economic construction"? Finally a professional counterpart.
Although the development of industry and commerce is a project that Gao Pragmatic is good at, but in terms of the actual development situation of Ming Dynasty, generally speaking, under the premise of ensuring public security, three basic elements must be met: Convenient transportation , large population and rich resources.
There is no need to worry about whether public security is guaranteed. At least these three elements are almost not satisfied in the western and southern Guangxi areas at this time, at least not completely, so I can only say sorry.
Business must rely on industry or agriculture. Since industry has no hope, it can only rely on agriculture.
Farming is already an excluded item and does not need to be considered, so all that is left is to develop cash crops.
Of course, the most famous economic crops of the Ming Dynasty are sericulture and tea, but because of their fame, they have already had good production areas. If Gao Pragmatic came to western Guangxi and southern Guangxi to develop these two fields, it would be the same as digging coal from Shanxi to Kaiping. Selling is just brain-twitching.
According to the memories of later generations, Guangxi’s agricultural development seems to have greater advantages in fruits because of its abundant water, light, and heat resources. Bananas, pineapples, lychees, longans, etc. are among the best in the country. However, This makes no sense to Gaowu's current plans - without means of preservation, fast transportation, or even the ability to can, what's the use of producing so much fruit?
Ordinary fruits are meaningless, but there is one "fruit" that is very suitable for western and southern Guangxi, where there are many dry lands, and that is sugar cane.
The main function of sugar cane is of course not to be chewed directly, but to make sugar. There was a sugar factory in the county where Gao pragmatically worked before traveling through. Gao pragmatically accompanied the leader on several inspections. Although the reason for the inspection was because the factory was not performing well and was facing bankruptcy, the county had been thinking of ways to save it at that time, so in Gao is pragmatic and has a somewhat shallow knowledge base in sugar production.
This bit of knowledge reserve will only be heard in future generations, but it is at least more advanced than the Ming Dynasty's "ox-pulled stone reel" pressing method, and it has simple purification and crystallization methods, which can better ensure stratified production and underwriting profits. Good news.
For example, the chieftains were responsible for arranging for the local people to plant and collect sugar cane, and then they made local sugar by themselves using the ancient "ox-pulled stone puller" method. At this time, Gao Pragmatic came forward to purchase and refine the local sugar into refined sugar products. Such as white sugar, rock sugar, etc. Finally, Gao Pragmatic is responsible for underwriting.
The biggest advantage here is that the more local sugar the toasts produce, the more dependent they are on high pragmatism - otherwise they themselves will not be able to digest it at all, resulting in a huge waste of manpower and not being able to get what they deserve. income.
On the contrary, as long as Gao Pragmatic does not over-squeeze them, with the natural advantages of western and southern Guangxi, sugarcane planting will definitely yield much higher returns than farming.
Gao Pangshi had read some information about the Republic of China period in the past. He knew that in 1929, the sugar import volume of the Republic of China reached its peak of 740 million kilograms. At that time, it was worth 100 million taels of silver, ranking second in the country's imported goods. Therefore, starting in the 1930s, the Republic of China began to restrict the arbitrary import of foreign sugar to protect the development of the domestic sugar industry.
At that time, the warlords in Guangdong attempted to enrich their economic strength and consolidate and expand their political status by establishing the sugar industry, so they strongly supported and established the mechanized sugar industry. In later generations, the sugar industry in Guangdong and Guangxi was also a strong industry in the country.
The advantage of developing the sugar industry is that although it may increase the income of the chieftains, it will actually strengthen their control over the chieftains, because by then, if they offend themselves, they will lose a large source of wealth.
What's more important is that this source of wealth cannot be consumed by Tusi's own family, and some of it must be given to Tusi's subordinates. On the other hand, as long as you cut off the purchase of local sugar, it will not only be the chieftain's own interests that are harmed, but also the people under him will suffer losses - this will shake the rule! Can't you think about the consequences?
Therefore, the sugar industry is very suitable to promote to toasts. This sugar-coated cannonball is highly pragmatic and not afraid that they will not eat it.
But the sugar industry alone is not enough, because in addition to dry land where sugar cane can be grown, Guangxi also has more forest resources. It is known as "eight mountains, one water and one field". Western Guangxi and Southern Guangxi are typical mountainous and plain areas. It is quite limited, so the forestry industry can also find ways to make use of it.
There are two directions for the utilization of forest resources. One is the economic forest type, such as camellia oleifera trees and tung trees. Gao Pragmatic is more interested in the tung tree because he has the impression that the Chinese tung tree was an important industrial oil plant even in later generations. Tung oil is one of China’s hard goods for foreign trade. It is impermeable to water, air, electricity, and electricity. Resistant to acid and alkali, corrosion, and cold and heat, even in the Ming Dynasty, it has a very important use, which is shipbuilding. This is where Gao Pragmatic values it.
The only problem is that being pragmatic in this aspect is inconvenient for the toasts, so he can only regard western and southern Guangxi as a tung oil producing area, which greatly reduces his interest, so he has to consider alternatives for the time being.
Another direction of use is more straightforward: wood.
Of course, Gao Pragmatic has no interest in developing the furniture industry - these days, the country is rich in tree resources, and even the northern and southern Zhili will not be short of wood for furniture manufacturing, so Gao Pragmatic's main idea is to focus on marine timber.
There were many types of wood used in shipbuilding in ancient China, and they were generally sourced locally and selected from the best. And according to the different characteristics and properties of wood, it is used in different parts of the ship. Gao Pangshi didn't know much about these things at first, but he laid the groundwork early. He began to recruit shipbuilding talents almost ten years ago. He opened the first Jinghua Shipyard in Shandong a few years ago, and then started to use wood for shipbuilding in the Ming Dynasty. Gradually understand.
At present, the types of wood commonly used in Ming Dynasty shipbuilding include fir, pine, cypress, teak, elm, red wood, camphor, nanmu, catalpa, catalpa, cypress, cypress, etc., but the parts of the ship that are suitable for various types of wood are different.
An old craftsman from the Jinghua Shipyard under him once told him: "All wooden masts are made of straight fir trees, and if they are not long enough, they are connected, and the outer surface is surrounded by iron hoops inch by inch. There are hollow gaps in the front of the ship windows to facilitate the tree masts. Every tree The topmast, combined with several giant boats, is raised by long cables. The beams and rafters are made of nanmu, eucalyptus, camphor, elm, and locust wood. Among them, camphor wood is cut down in spring and summer, and it will be eaten by powder for a long time. Need to pay attention. The pallets are not restricted to any wood, just use local materials. The rudder stock is made of elm, cypress, and cypress wood; the closing rod is made of walnut and cypress wood; the oar is made of fir, cypress, and catalpa wood... That's roughly it. .”
This old craftsman was from the north, so he did not mention teak, the most famous wood in later generations. Another craftsman told Gao Pragmatic that the current Ming Dynasty shipbuilding wood is not so detailed, especially in the north, where pine or fir is generally used, and occasionally cypress is used. Usually, double or triple wooden planks are used on the side and bottom plates of the ship, and tung oil and lime tank seams are used to prevent water leakage. Each ship is generally divided into more than ten cabins. Even if one or two cabins leak, the whole ship will not sink.
The three types of wood, pine, fir and cypress, are still abundant in resources in Ming Dynasty, especially in Guangxi. According to his previous journey from Liuzhou to Siming, it seems that there are particularly many pine trees. Pine is also a good wood. Since ancient times, it has been said that "the pine on the seabed lasts for thousands of years, and the maple stays dry for thousands of years."
This means that pine is not afraid of moisture and maple is not afraid of dryness. The "seabed" means a lot of water, that is, a humid environment, such as being floating on the sea all year round. Pine wood is not afraid of water because it contains rosin.
Therefore, when it comes to shipbuilding, we cannot just think of teak. Teak is good, but it does not mean that only teak can be used for shipbuilding, nor does it mean that teak is suitable for all parts of shipbuilding.
The advantage of teak is that its expansion and shrinkage is one of the least among all woods, so it can resist erosion by sea and land animals and will not corrode iron. At the same time, because of its small shrinkage, it is not prone to water leakage. Because teak wood is highly resistant to corrosion, not easily deformed in various climates, and easy to construct, it is suitable for shipbuilding, especially ship decks, oars, sculls, and masts. If the entire ship is made of teak, firstly, the cost is staggering, and secondly, it is unnecessary.
Therefore, although it is not clear whether there is teak in Guangxi, Gao is not in a hurry because the forest resources in Guangxi are now sufficient. As for the purchase of wood from the chieftain, Gao Pragmatic is not worried about the uncontrollable embarrassment of purchasing tung oil, because at present, except for Gao, I am afraid that no one will buy shipbuilding wood on such a large scale. plan, so if he doesn’t buy it, the toasts will have no place to sell it.
Of course, then again, if we can manage places like Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar in the future, Gao Pragmatic would also like teak...
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