"There are more than a thousand taels of silver and three hundred thousand taels of gold." At that time, the West had not yet entered the Age of Discovery, but the profits from maritime trade were already so astonishing. Precisely because of the huge gains from overseas trade since the Tang and Song Dynasties, after Zhu Di succeeded to the throne, he rebuilt the Shipping Department, which had been weakened by Japanese pirates, and established a relatively complete overseas trade management system.
After everything was ready, the Ming court used Zheng He as its envoy to lead a fleet of ships to shuttle between countries, carrying out official trade under the banner of rewards, and opening up an economy for the Ming Dynasty, which was in dire straits after the "Jing Rebellion". Transfusion aorta. By selling high-end Chinese products such as porcelain and silk overseas, the Ming Dynasty made huge profits from the price difference of the goods.
The main goods purchased by Zheng He's fleet and brought back home were pepper and sappan wood. According to the records of "Yingya Scenic Spots", the price of pepper in Sumatra Island, where it was produced, was only 0.01 tael/jin. ?According to the "Ming Huidian" records, the domestic market value of pepper during the Hongwu period reached 0.2 taels per catty, and the price difference was ten times that of the place of origin!
Peppers don't take up much space, so even with shipping costs, the profits are substantial. Who can say that the upper echelons of Ming Dynasty are simply thinking about "satisfying their own extravagant desires" and ignoring this huge profit margin? This hugely profitable idea was only possible because of Zheng He's voyages to the West.
It can be seen that Zheng He's voyages to the West were not only a loss-making purpose to "make ends meet", but actually brought huge wealth to the Ming Dynasty.
Yan Congjian expressed the "win-win" effect of his voyages to the West in his "Zilu of the Zhou Dynasty in Special Regions": "Since Yongle changed the Yuan Dynasty, envoys were sent out in four places to recruit people from all over the world, and they made great contributions. Rare goods and valuable treasures, before. The hope of the times fills the treasury and the market. The poor people may become rich if they accept the order and buy it, and the state will also be envious of it." The benefits of the voyage to the West for the economy and national finances can be seen here.
More importantly, Zheng He's voyages not only directly brought huge benefits to the court, but also brought considerable economic spillover effects to local areas, driving the development of many local economies.
Take Taicang Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, the starting point of Zheng He's voyages to the West, as an example - "Since the beginning of Yongle, He and others have served as envoys for seven times. Each time, he commanded tens of thousands of officers and soldiers, and more than a hundred ships sailed from Taicang."
According to the records in the "Tongfan Deeds" monument written by Zheng He, all seven of Zheng He's voyages to the West departed from Liujiagang in Taicang, and each time he used Liujiagang as the docking place for his return voyage.
Zheng He's mission not only brought back rare treasures and special products from Western countries, but also welcomed batches of foreign missions and exported a large number of Chinese products to countries around the world.
In this way, Liujiagang in Taicang not only became an important port on the southeast coast, but also became the port for the Ming court's foreign exchanges. People in the Ming Dynasty praised its grand occasion and said: "This is the year of peace in Yongle, both inside and outside the sea. I dare not accept it. Nine barbarians pay hundreds of tributes, and the roads are connected. There are big ships, ships come one after another, and Taicang's grand plan is to restore the old state." "
Later, the Qing Dynasty people traced its prosperity and said: "At that time, there was an endless stream of Western tribute ships. They were so pleased with its convenience that it was called the No. 1 wharf in the world. All the rare treasures from all over the world were collected there."
It was not just Taicang that benefited from the voyage to the West. In fact, within the territory of the Ming Dynasty, the economy of many places in Jiangnan and even Lingnan was rapidly affected by the driving effect of the voyage to the West.
For example, at that time, Foshan changed from an "isolated village cast iron" to a commodity in operation. The prices of some daily necessities that need to be imported from abroad have dropped from luxury accessories to daily necessities. Starting from the Yongle Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, which adhered to the maritime ban policy during the Zhu Yuanzhang period, quickly experienced economic prosperity in the southeast in just ten years, and Zheng He's voyages to the West obviously contributed a lot.
From all this, Gao Pragmatic came to a very clear conclusion: the Ming Dynasty gained huge wealth through Zheng He's official trade to the West.
So the question is, since it has gained a lot of wealth and promoted the development of related regions and industries, how did it become unsustainable later?
In fact, this question is not difficult to answer, especially for Gao Pragmatic, who has experienced the era of state-owned enterprise restructuring in the Red Dynasty, this question is simply a score-earning question.
Zheng He's voyages to the West were an official monopoly operation, which did not respect economic laws at all. It meant that the royal family monopolized the profits from overseas trade, and did not give private merchants and powerful nobles the opportunity to share the pie.
Coupled with the inability to correctly deal with the glut of goods caused by overseas trade, the emperor simply and crudely adopted the "salary reduction" method. As a result, the court officials not only failed to benefit from overseas trade, but in fact suffered losses. In this way, the uneven distribution between interest groups of different classes eventually led to Zheng He's voyages to the West being vilified as a "waste of people and money" until they ceased to exist?
Gao Pragmatic believes that there are roughly three important points in this issue:
In fact, the trade gains brought by Zheng He's voyages mainly benefited the royal family, but had an impact on private planning.
Judging from the goods brought back by Zheng He's fleet, most of them were luxury goods such as sappan wood and pepper. These materials could basically only be consumed and played by the upper class, and it was difficult to have direct investment and output.
This is the reason why Liu Daxia, who was still working as a driver during the Xuanzong period, dared to openly question Zheng He's voyages to the West: "Three guarantees, the voyages to the West cost hundreds of thousands of money and food, and thousands of soldiers and civilians died. Even if you get a rare treasure, what will it do to the country?" beneficial?"
In addition, Zheng He's voyages to the West produced great social impacts. As a large amount of silver and gold flowed to the Ming Dynasty through trade surplus, while solving China's shortage of precious metals since the Tang and Song Dynasties, it also caused the currency to depreciate by nearly 30% during the Yongle period.
At the same time, due to the heavy shipbuilding tasks, a large number of shipbuilder households in the southern shipbuilding areas fled. The shipbuilder households in the Nanjing area even dropped by more than three-quarters, which affected social planning to a certain extent - before It is said that the craftsman expenditure of Gao pragmatic shipbuilding was much higher than that of Zhu Di, and this can also be proved from here.
Similarly, this is the reason why during the Xuanzong period when the Western expeditions were stopped, the imperial court issued an edict to "stop all purchases and comprador items, as well as building materials for ships, wood, plants, etc." The oppression and harm are great.
In particular, the official overseas trade system of the Ming Dynasty greatly inhibited and affected the opportunities for private maritime merchants and powerful nobles to profit from overseas trade, making them resolutely opposed to Western voyages due to uneven distribution.
The official policy of exclusive overseas trade adopted by the Ming Dynasty at that time was very disrespectful of economic laws. Not only was it incompatible with the Song Dynasty's encouragement of private overseas trade, it was also incompatible with the "official-owned ship" system of official-private partnership that was criticized by later generations during the Yuan Dynasty. Not as good as anything.
In any case, is "official ship" better? Or is it a state-monopoly mixed operation system of public-private partnership, in which the government pays for the capital and ships, hires private maritime agents to operate them, and the profits are split 70-70 between the government and private parties, more or less There are still some traces of "market economy" in it.
However, the monopoly management system of the Ming Dynasty was tantamount to "eating alone". While it made a lot of money, it harmed the interests of the vast number of maritime merchants and the powerful nobles who tried to get a share of the pie. Not only did it suffer Their resolute resistance also caused the spread of "private practices" among the people.
Of course, these social classes whose interests were harmed would not sit still and wait for death, so they used various means to oppose the Western Movement, and thus formed a strong community of interests. As mentioned in the first volume of this book, Xu Jie once commanded his family to directly Participate in maritime private affairs.
At that time, the coastal border defense had reached the sensational stage of "the guards dare not ask questions, the garrison posts cannot stop them, and they have been blinding the public law for hundreds of years." So a lot of tariffs are lost.
It was under this circumstance that Gao Gong felt that instead of doing this, it would be better to announce the liberalization of overseas trade management rights, which is the so-called "listen to maritime trade and collect taxes", which can at least protect tariffs.
Under such a collusion of interests, even if the emperor repeatedly issued orders to request a sea ban, he could only face the insidious disobedience of the civil servants. Therefore, Zheng He's voyages to the Western Seas were actually an act to protect the official monopolized maritime foreign trade from being obstructed by other forces. Of course, it would also be strongly opposed by the civil service group and the interest groups behind it.
Thirdly, in response to the falling commodity prices caused by excess imports, the imperial court resorted to internal dumping to "discount salaries", which aggravated the resentment and disgust of imperial officials towards the Western voyages.
Since the voyages to the West were government-run trade, its planned business model and the inefficiencies brought about by bureaucratic management inevitably led to a dead end of economic laws.
For example, as a large amount of pepper floods the market, pepper prices continue to fall. In just two years, by the fifth year of Yongle reign, the price of domestic pepper in the Ming Dynasty had dropped by 0.1 taels per catty, to half of what it was in the Hongwu reign. As a result, profit margins shrank significantly, the market became saturated, and pepper and sappan wood piled up like mountains in the royal warehouse.
In order to solve the pepper backlog problem and not want to reduce profits, starting from the fifth year of Yongle reign, the Ming court used "rewards" and "salary discounts" to distribute sumac and pepper as bonuses or wages to lower-level officials, and even ?They are upper-level civil and military officials. What's more, during the distribution process, the imperial court refused to sell it to officials and staff at all levels at low prices.
In the 10th year of Yongle, when the market value of pepper was already lower than 0.1 taels/jin, the salary discount was still at the price of 0.2 taels/jin in the Hongwu period. This is too cruel. You must know that the salary of the Ming court was the lowest in history. The practice of discounting pepper and sappan wood is tantamount to further deprivation of wages. Major officials dared to be angry but did not dare to respond, so they all regarded Zheng He's voyages as a way to reduce their salaries.
In this way, under the criticism of many officials, Zheng He's heroic voyage to the West instantly became a "waste of people and money". In the first year of Zhengtong, the cabinet ordered Nanjing garrison eunuch Wang Jinghong to stop purchasing and construction in the name of the young Yingzong. The Western trade in the early Ming Dynasty had just officially come to an end.
However, something "funny" happened right away. What the court officials did not expect was that the overseas voyages, which "wasted people and cost money", had not stopped. Even though the imperial court was spending a lot of money, there was no financial pressure. However, during the Xuande period when the overseas voyages were stopped, Huang Fu, the Minister of the Ministry of Finance, turned back. There are endless complaints: the national treasury is empty, and "what will be done by recruiting troops" everywhere. This also shows from one aspect that the voyage to the West can bring huge benefits to the national treasury.
Having said this, it can be fully explained why Gao Pragmatic has to bring a large number of people together to engage in sea trade. On the surface, the main "partner" of Jinghua is the Xungui Group, but secretly there are many other members of Gao Pragmatic. Officials from the Pragmatic School who "hold equity on behalf of others" have been involved for many years.
According to a highly pragmatic point of view, the more important people involved, not only will the pressure they face in the DPRK be smaller, but also because these people do not run factories or farms, but only purchase goods in their hometowns or within their sphere of influence, they will also It can strongly stimulate local economic development.
Therefore, Gao pragmatically never eats alone in the maritime trade. Even Jiangnan nobles, chaebols, and maritime merchants can join Jinghua's caravan and sail together (but as mentioned before, Jinghua has to charge a certain percentage of escort fees).
What is his purpose for doing this? Naturally, the goal is to allow sea trade to benefit a wider range of people, so that more people can see the benefits of sea trade and be benignly affected by sea trade, thereby stimulating trade and revitalizing the economy.
This method is very familiar to Gao Xiang. The economy of the Red Dynasty has developed from the hard-working "three to one supplement" in the early days of reform to a global manufacturing center in the later period. It has 41 major industrial categories, 207 intermediate industrial categories, and 666 small industrial categories listed in the United Nations Industrial Classification. Among them, only Hongchao owns all industrial categories and is truly the world's only "full industry chain" industrial hegemon.
This development process throughout his previous life obviously had a huge impact on him, so he also engaged in various industries in the Ming Dynasty according to the resource endowments of various places.
Why?
Because in Gao Pragmatic's view, the title "Industrial Overlord" is naturally tailor-made for China!
Regardless of the innate conditions such as geomorphology and resource endowment, or acquired conditions such as the tradition of big government, the influence of Confucian authoritative political thought, and the people's highly secular thinking (that is, they despise God and value people, compared with the influence of religious thinking)... you're welcome. If China is not an industrial hegemon, then history has gone astray.
But here it comes back to the point: if the emperor now wants to enlist the inner court to build a royal fleet again, and not to build a navy, but to engage in maritime trade, then this matter is highly questionable.
The Ming Dynasty royal family has a criminal record in this matter. If Gao Pragmatic does not object clearly, then as he just said, it is better to resign immediately and go home to retire.
Returning home to retire can at least keep his reputation for the rest of his life by relying on his achievements in the "first half of his life", but if he helps the emperor establish a royal maritime trade monopoly, then the words "infamous for eternity" will basically be reserved in advance by someone higher than him.
It doesn't matter if it remains infamy for thousands of years. The problem is that it will definitely not work and it will do great harm to the people. This is similar to how Chongzhen laid off people in order to save some civil servant wages, and ended up laying off Li Zicheng.
When Liu Ping saw Gao Pragmatic's serious and determined expression, he knew that this matter was in serious trouble. But he also knew that the emperor had high hopes for this matter, and if he went back to report it like this, his future would be very bad.
With no choice, Liu Ping stood up with a grimace and bowed profusely: "Mr. Ge, save me! Mr. Ge, if I go back and tell the emperor like this, I'm afraid I won't even be able to save my uncle's face... Mr. Ge , Mr. Pavilion, I beg you to always give me some advice for the sake of my uncle. If I wear a grass ring in the next life, I will repay your kindness to Mr. Pavilion!"
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