When Luo Yuan finished introducing the situation in Luzon, everyone understood the main topic of today's meeting. It is nothing more than that after the battle of the Maritime Trade Alliance, whether to take only the area around Manila City, take over the entire Luzon Island, or go one step further and fight with Spain to the death over the entire archipelago.
The nobles first discussed in private, and most of them felt that just taking the city of Manila was a bit unreliable. At least Luzon Island should be taken. In this way, future defense would be easier, and it would look more like a successful victory for Luzon. The Song Kingdom "continues to survive".
This idea is somewhat traditional Chinese. To take over, you have to take over an entire area, just like the Portuguese colonial strongholds in Asia. There are hammers in the east and sticks in the west. Dots and pieces are everywhere. This is really not something they can understand. .
However, even though they were talking about taking a whole piece of land, they thought that only Luzon Island was enough, and were not very willing to continue to attack the entire archipelago.
In this expedition, besides Jinghua, Zhu Yingzhen, the Duke of Chengguo who contributed the most armed transport ships, may have the most representative statement. He explained: "Rixin, this is how I look at this matter: take Luzon Island After that, we actually completed our planned plan, which was to master the transit point for trade with the Spanish. From now on, we no longer have to pay the fluctuating taxes and fees to the Spanish.
In addition, we only took Luzon to show our generosity, which means that we have no intention of killing them all. When the Spaniards saw this, they would probably not be so angry that they would simply stop trading.
The last point is that we went out for a run. Although we happened to capture the opponent's large treasure fleet and made a lot of money, it is not reasonable to soak in the sea for a long time and waste time. After all... no matter what, we in the Maritime Trade Alliance are doing business, so we can't just focus on fighting others, right? "
Gao Pragmatic did not express his position clearly, but nodded. Zhu Yingzhen's understanding of his action was that Gao Pragmatic could at least understand his intentions.
That's right, the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance is a trade alliance after all. No matter what you do, the first thing you must consider is interests. There are many kinds of interests, but the word sea trade in "Sea Trade Alliance" already explains the basis of this alliance. If we only focus on fighting and put trade aside, is it still called a sea trade alliance? Just call the War Alliance.
The nobles originally proposed Zhu Yingzhen as a representative. Gao Yingzhen only nodded but said nothing. They didn't want to all stand up for a while, lest if Gao Yingzhen didn't agree, the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance would fall into internal chaos. There's a deadlock.
Although everyone is indeed talking about business now, they will not forget their roots after all - they are nobles first. What is Xungui? Honorable nobles are political dignitaries. Even if they are usually a marginalized group in the court's administrative decision-making, they are still out-and-out political dignitaries in terms of status.
Politicians cannot only consider economic interests, because their economic interests are dependent on political interests, so political interests must also be considered. And since political interests are discussed, they are naturally unwilling to have a stalemate with Gao Pragmatic, a person who will sooner or later become their chief minister in their eyes.
Especially when Gao Pragmatic's age advantage is so obvious, who knows how long he will be able to rule the world in the future? If nothing goes wrong, it is not impossible for him to be the chief assistant for twenty or even thirty years in the future. During such a long time as an assistant, who can get good results if he offends him?
Therefore, after Zhu Yingzhen finished speaking, there was inevitably an embarrassing silence in the conference room of Rixin Building.
Xu Wenbi, the extremely rare Duke of Dingguo, also came today. He didn't intend to speak at all when he saw this situation. He finally coughed lightly and said slowly: "The great Sinong has always won every battle. Now maybe he has some unfinished ideas, thinking that Isn’t it true that only taking Luzon has done the full job?”
Gao Pragmatic is such a person. As soon as he heard Xu Wenbi's words, he knew that the old man had either gone astray or deliberately provoked him.
What does "the intention is not yet complete" and "the work is not completed"? Does that mean that if I continue to fight this battle, the reason is just because I don’t want my reputation of “victorious in every battle” to be damaged?
"What Duke Dingguo said is wrong." Gao Pragmatic smiled slightly, looked around at all the nobles, with a hint of pride in his eyes, and said solemnly: "The right way is that the Yi and Di are afraid of power but not virtuous, so "Zuo Zhuan" There is a saying: Virtue is used to soften China, and punishment is used to intimidate the foreign barbarians. Today, Spain is the leader of the Western barbarians. We are a vast dynasty. If the sword is not unsheathed, it will stop. When the green blade is spread out, why do you cut off your fingers and turn back?"
When all the nobles heard this, they couldn't help but be shocked. They are very understanding of his highly pragmatic temperament, and overall he is a "easy to talk" person. But everyone knows that if anyone thinks that being pragmatic is only easy to talk about, he is not far from being in trouble. There are so many lessons learned from this matter that we don’t even need to give examples.
They all know what a pragmatic temperament is: when he feels that the conditions are negotiable, you offer a higher price and ask for more, and he is easy to talk to and is willing to give you face; when he feels that the conditions are not negotiable, you If you dare to continue to object, then at least he will kick you away and do it yourself; at worst, he will dispose of your original stepping stone until you are stuck in the ground.
So when Gao Pragmatic said this, Xu Wenbi couldn't help but frown and asked: "In that case, does Da Sinong want to take all the islands?" He paused slightly, and then asked: "The world knows that Da Sinong's temple is so high and far away. , but I am old and stupid, but I don’t know what the purpose of taking all these islands is, and whether it is cost-effective?”
The other nobles also looked at Gao Pragmatic, waiting for his explanation.
Gao Pragmatic didn't seem to be sulky, and he still said slowly and calmly: "It is better to use your remaining courage to chase the poor bandits, and not to use your reputation as an academic overlord. A common trick used by Westerners is to occupy a stronghold first, and then take the opportunity to build up momentum and treat others unprepared." And launch a surprise attack in order to subvert. Therefore, this battle of mine is not only a battle to establish power, but also a battle of absolute danger. I will definitely defeat them completely. I can only withdraw my troops by relying on my breath.
As for whether it is a good deal... You have been cooperating with Beijing and China's Beiyang Fleet for a long time, but you don't know the results of the Nanyang Fleet. I naturally understand. However, since you have also set foot in the East this time (see previous chapters, the Philippines is considered the East in Daming's words), I would like to share with you some investigation results that have not been published to the public. "
As soon as Gao Pragmatic said these words, all the honorable nobles immediately became energetic. Zhu Yingzhen seemed to have forgotten that he was the first noble representative to express his unwillingness to continue the fight, and immediately asked: "What kind of result?"
Faced with this problem, Gao Pragmatic was very generous and did not hide it at all. He seemed to have forgotten what happened just now and said with a smile: "Two aspects, one is the mining prospect and the other is the agricultural prospect. Of course, with this The two are also related to their respective processing industry prospects.”
Zhang Yuangong couldn't help but interrupt at this time and asked: "What's the situation in mining?"
Gao Pangshi glanced at him briefly and said calmly: "The archipelago is rich in gold, silver, and copper, of which 60 to 70% may be found in Mindanao, the largest island in the south, followed by Luzon."
"oh……"
"ah!"
"oh……"
Surprises and sighs suddenly echoed among the nobles. They have all read the maps published by Jinghua, and this time they are visiting the Philippine Islands. Although they only need to sit in the house and wait for news, they have already figured out that several large islands in the Philippine Islands are no strangers to Mindanao.
Zhu Yingzhen immediately asked: "Since it is said to be abundant, what are the reserves?"
"The copper may be half that of our Ming Dynasty, and the gold is about 30%. Only silver is not certain, and only some local folk rumors can prove it. However, the gold, silver, and copper mines in the Philippine Islands are mostly associated mines. Since there are so many gold and copper , I guess the silver won’t be too little.”
Gao Pragmatic's words were half true and half false. Liu Xin had introduced the Philippines' metal mineral reserves to him before. Calculated in terms of mineral reserves per unit area, it was indeed not bad. Its gold reserves ranked third in the world and its copper reserves ranked third in the world. It ranks fourth in the world, ranks fifth in the world in nickel ore reserves, and ranks sixth in the world in chromium ore reserves.
However, the premise here is "mineral reserves per unit area", which is not an absolute value. For example, in the case of copper mines, the Philippine Islands ranks fourth in the world in mineral reserves per unit area, but if we only look at the absolute value of total reserves, it has dropped to around 13th or 14th in the global rankings of later generations.
Of course, having said that, the Philippines is still rich in gold and copper reserves. But silver is different. Gao Pragmatic's statement that "there must not be too little silver" is purely deliberately vague. Liu Xin told him that until she traveled through time, the silver mineral reserves in the Philippines were not high, to the extent that even she "didn't know how low they were." Gao Pragmatic actually ignored the Philippines' silver reserves.
After Gao Pingshi's half-truth and half-false words, the nobles really got excited and started whispering. This is no surprise to Gao Pragmatic. After all, the Philippine Islands only cover an area of about 300,000 square kilometers, less than twice the size of Shanxi.
Of course, two Shanxi are not small, but in the eyes of the nobles, a foreign land like the Philippines itself cannot be compared with Shanxi, so it has so many gold and copper reserves that it is worthy of everyone's envy. .
There was light in the eyes of the nobles. Only Xu Wenbi, Duke of Dingguo, was relatively calm, but at this moment he couldn't help but ask: "Da Si Nong seemed to be talking about agriculture just now? Could it be that there are still many fertile fields in this archipelago?" "
To be honest, from Gao Pragmatic's point of view, Xu Wenbi's question was relatively low-level, because although "fertile land" is an important part of agriculture, agriculture is by no means just about fertile land. Of course, people in this era have such a superficial understanding of agriculture, which cannot be said to be Xu Wenbi's problem alone.
According to Liu Xin, the Philippines in later generations had an area of 30 million hectares (300,000 square kilometers), of which 47% was agricultural land. The main agricultural land was concentrated near cities and densely populated areas. The remainder is forest land, accounting for 15.8 million hectares, of which 14.2 million hectares are usable land, and 93% (13 million hectares) of this is agricultural land - almost equivalent to an Anhui Province.
The 13 million hectares of agricultural land are divided into food land, other food land and non-food land. Food land accounts for about 31%, or 4.01 million hectares; other food land accounts for about 52%, or 8.33 million hectares; non-food land accounts for about 17%, or 2.2 million hectares.
Among the food land in the Philippines in later generations, 3.34 million hectares were used for corn and 3.31 million hectares for rice. Among other food lands, coconut accounts for the most, accounting for 4.25 million hectares; sugar cane 673,000 hectares; industrial crops 59.1 hectares; various fruit trees 148,000 hectares; vegetables and root crops 270,000 hectares; and pasture 404,000 hectares.
Of the entire agricultural land, 78.31% is most suitable for agriculture, and 6.1 million hectares are most suitable for farming. However, Gao Pragmatic is not very interested in growing rice, one of the domestic staple foods, because he knows that there are enough people coveting the production of this staple food, so many that he does not need to pay too much attention or interfere in areas other than Liaodong.
However, he did not plan to make a big pie and then package up the "fertile land" in the Philippine Islands and hand it over to the nobles. In fact, he did not want the nobles to participate in rice cultivation, and he made this clear.
"Everyone, I don't recommend going to the archipelago to plant rice, and Jinghua doesn't intend to get involved. I don't think the agricultural and economic interests of our Beiyang Sea Trade Alliance in the archipelago lie in rice."
Xue Zheng, Marquis of Yangwu, said in surprise: "If you don't farm? What will you do?"
Gao pragmatic smiled and said: "I will introduce to you a way to get rich-sugar production." The nobles suddenly realized, but they were still waiting for Gao pragmatic's next step.
Gao Pragmatic was also unambiguous and introduced: "My wife was originally the chieftain of Siming Prefecture in Guangxi. You all know this. Her hereditary hometown was originally quite barren. When I was the censor of Guangxi, I made great contributions to the economy of Guangxi. After some planning, especially the timber and sugar industries are now developing best.
Let’s not talk about wood, let’s talk about sugar making. After the Huang family moved out of Guangxi, the original Siming Prefecture and surrounding counties and counties vigorously planted sugar cane, while Jinghua set up sugar factories nearby to manufacture various sugar products. Does anyone know what the gross profit of Jinghua Qinzhou Sugar Factory was last year? "
All the distinguished officials were from the north, so they naturally shook their heads as they didn't know the details of Jinghua's sugar factory in Guangxi.
Gao pragmatic smiled and said: "Qinzhou Sugar Factory alone produced about 40% of all sugar products in the Ming Dynasty last year, with a gross profit of about 370,000 taels."
The nobles took a breath, but Gao Pragmatic didn't finish his sentence. He continued to speak in an understatement: "However, sugar products are still in short supply everywhere. Jinghua's internal statistics show that even if Ming's current sugar production increases five times, , and don’t worry about sales at all.
What's more, the sugar production in other surrounding countries is not very good, and they will not refuse us to sell sugar to them... In other words, even if we build ten more enterprises like Qinzhou Sugar Factory, we don't have to worry about the lack of marketability of our products. Oh, by the way, Europeans have a higher demand for sugar than we did in the Ming Dynasty, and the same goes for Tianzhu, who can use sugar very well. "
The nobles looked at each other, and they believed Gao Pragmatic's words. Sugar seemed to have always been in short supply, and they had never heard of a time when it couldn't be sold. But what everyone is concerned about is, is Jinghua willing to hand over this deal?
----------
PS: I fell asleep in the middle of typing at night, and it was already past 12 o'clock when I woke up. I never thought that my golden body, which has been continuously renewed for more than a thousand days, would be broken like this... Sigh.
Thanks to book friends "milan123", "Lingqi Zhaobixin", "skyfishno.", "Cao Mianzi", "July 13, 19", "book friends 141216122515977", "Lao Xi from Altay", "All the Way" Thank you for your monthly ticket support from "Seyou", "Model Lollipop CHLG", "o Shangshu Ling", and "Chi Yujing Fengchen"!
