In early August of the thirty-sixth year of Chengshun, the palace of Jinling City in Yingtian Prefecture.
Luo Zhixue held a royal economic meeting that day, mainly to listen to the development of some domestic economic conditions in the first half of this year.
The main thing to listen to is the export situation.
Although for the contemporary Chu Empire, domestic consumption is far more important than exports in order to stimulate economic growth, but exports are still very important.
This is similar to the development of many countries in modern history.
The rise of many industrial countries in modern times relied on export trade. They earned a large amount of profits from other countries through large-scale exports, and then purchased large amounts of industrial raw materials and agricultural products from agricultural countries or colonies and transported them back to the country to maintain the operation of the industrial system and increase growth. speed, and incidentally improve the living standards of the domestic people.
For example, the development of Britain and Japan in modern times typically relied on international trade.
It's just that the economic structure of the Dachu Empire was special compared to many modern industrial countries in the original time and space... Although there were exports, which were quite profitable... but the impact on the economy was average. The biggest impact on the economy was domestic consumption.
This is mainly because the consumption power of the Da Chu Empire's local market is far from comparable to that of the indigenous countries.
For many industrial products, there is actually no market abroad... They are basically dominated by domestic consumption. The development and growth rate of most industries in the Dachu Empire has never been driven by exports, but by internal Driven by demand.
With hundreds of millions of people in rural areas and a certain amount of spending power, coupled with a large urban population with stronger spending power, their demand for various industrial products is massive, far exceeding the spending power of foreign indigenous people.
This is the market that truly drives the rapid development of various industrial products in the Da Chu Empire.
But there are exceptions. For example, textiles have a relatively large proportion of exports... After all, clothing, food, housing and transportation, no matter how poor you are, you have to wear them. At most, the clothes you wear are cheaper or even tattered.
Unfortunately, the textiles of the Dachu Empire are hard to say, but they have a huge advantage in price...
There is no way, all kinds of textiles in the Dachu Empire are produced by machinery, and the efficiency is hundreds of times that of the handmade homespun cloth of foreign indigenous people. It has a great cost-effective advantage, and the quality is often not bad, or even better.
This is also the reason why the Chu Empire's cloth can be sold all over the world and has gradually entered the market in every corner of the earth. Even in Europe, there are now a large number of Chu Kingdom's machine-made cloth...
Chu's machine-made cloth sells well all over the world for no other reason than Chu's machine-made cloth is cheap... Especially since the Chu Empire used steam engines extensively and built ocean-going ships with larger tonnage. After the transportation cost further dropped, Chu's various types of cloth The cost of selling industrial products overseas will further fall.
It is cost-effective. At the same time, even if the purchasing power of the indigenous people is lower and the population of a single country is smaller, the combined population of many indigenous countries is not a small number. As for the poor spending power... no matter how poor it is, he still has to wear clothes.
For example, India also has a population of hundreds of millions... Even if these hundreds of millions of people are the lowest untouchables with extremely low spending power, they have still become the largest dumping ground for textiles in the Chu Empire, including many other industrial products.
The local handmade textile industry in the Indian peninsula had long been defeated by the Chu Empire... The local indigenous princes once tried to resist, and even the Mughal Empire also tried to resist, and came up with some trade protection ideas, but they were defeated by the Chu Empire in India. The garrison cleaned up a few times, and after wiping out several indigenous states, they all became honest.
After all, the business of the local handmade textile industry is not in their entire interests, let alone the interests of all of them. The losses of the handmade textile industry merchants and the powerful people behind them cannot be borne by all the local indigenous powerful people... let alone , a considerable number of local indigenous dignitaries are actually the trading agents of the Chu people.
No matter how awesome the Chu people are, it is impossible for him to sell cloth to every local aboriginal... The Chu people are actually wholesalers.
Transport the freight to coastal and river ports, and then sell it wholesale to local indigenous merchants.
Local indigenous merchants would transport various goods such as cloth from the Chu people to various places for sale.
And these days, if you want to do this kind of large-scale and very profitable trade, and at the same time have a great impact on trade... you can't do it without some strength, so the trade agents of Chu people in indigenous countries are often local dignitaries.
Well, this kind of people make a lot of profits because they do business with the Chu people, and then they will naturally protect the interests of Chu products.
When some local handicraft groups and the powerful people behind them tried to launch a boycott against the dumping of Chu goods, the Chu people did not need to do it themselves. These compradors sent troops to suppress it first... The troops controlled by these compradors often It's still all Chu weapons.
After all, they are all business partners of the Chu people. The Chu people often provide them with a large amount of ordnance at relatively favorable prices, and the performance of the ordnance provided is often better... Of course, this is actually the domestic weapons industry. An important measure to expand overseas markets.
Well, weapons are not guaranteed to be sold just because they are good.
First sell the weapons through the hands of local compradors, and then use the performance advantages or price advantages of the weapons to gradually expand the local weapons market, and finally capture the entire region's weapons market. This is the goal of the overseas arms merchants of the Great Chu Empire. Consistent strategy...
It is often necessary to provoke a few wars along the way.
When provoking a war, these arms merchants like to work with merchants from other industries, such as textile merchants, to instigate local resistance to Chu's cloth. It is best to turn it into a riot... and then take the opportunity to have the comprador's troops dispatched to suppress it. …
It can not only clear out the remaining local hand-woven textile workshops, but also advertise its own weapons, and then occupy the entire local market, killing multiple birds with one stone.
Then you can take this opportunity to use the excuse of saying how much damage you have suffered, and ask the indigenous country concerned to compensate for the losses, cede some territory, set up a concession, extra-legal jurisdiction, etc... This will in turn attract the attention of the military and the Ministry of Ethics and Education, etc. Official support.
It’s all beneficial and harmless!
This is also the reason why wars will break out wherever the people of Chu go... The benefits are so touching!
The overseas export of goods is still very important to the Chu Empire, especially for industries such as cloth and weapons that are in urgent need.
Luo Zhixue is quite satisfied with the data reported by the economic department. According to statistics from the Ministry of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs, exports in the first two quarters of this year performed well.
The main export commodities in the first half of this year, such as silk, tea, porcelain, cloth, weapons, and civilian iron products (agricultural tools, kitchen utensils, hardware tools, etc.) have increased to a certain extent.
In addition, the export of some other specialty commodities is also quite good. For example, the export of spices has always been very high... The Dachu Empire became a spice exporter after controlling the Malay Peninsula, and later controlled the Spice Islands, and even the entire After Southeast Asia.
Almost the world's supply of spices is controlled by the Da Chu Empire... and the Da Chu Empire not only produces spices in these places, but also promotes the cultivation of various spices in many places in the country through introduction, cultivation, etc. In fact, it is mainly to meet internal demand, but if the production is large, it can also be exported.
Finally, sugar has become the main export commodity of the Chu Empire in recent years. Edible sugar has always been a bulk and high-priced commodity in the agricultural era.
In order to meet the domestic demand for sugar, the Chu Empire promoted the planting of sugar cane on a large scale in many local areas, especially the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, and used mechanical equipment for sugar production. Later, it also established large-scale sugar cane plantations in overseas territories and obtained a large amount of sugar cane. sources of table sugar.
The production of edible sugar has continued to increase at a very high rate in the past thirty years. In addition to meeting domestic demand, this sugar is also exported in large quantities...
In addition, it is worth noting that the Chu Empire's merchandise exports were almost exclusively industrial products... spices and tea were the exceptions.
But even for tea, the Chu Empire now promotes tea bricks overseas more... Mainly because tea bricks are processed mechanically, which facilitates mass production, are more durable, and are suitable for long-distance transportation.
As for black tea, green tea... In today's world where sealing measures are not very reliable, black tea is better, and the transportation time of a few months is just okay... but green tea is not good. This stuff is very unsuitable for sea transportation and can easily become moldy and spoilage. .
Therefore, the Great Chu Empire exported tea. Except for nearby places such as Fusang, there were very few green tea exports from other places... But this does not mean that green tea was not transported by sea. In fact, there was still a lot, but basically it was It was shipped to the Chu Empire's own overseas colonies, such as America.
Every year, there are a large number of fast clipper ships that specialize in transporting tea leaves on the Pacific Ocean, in order to quickly transport green tea, black tea, and other teas to the Americas as quickly as possible... There is no way, many people in the Chu country themselves People are accustomed to drinking green tea or black tea. Since there is market demand, there will naturally be businessmen specializing in this.
As for the indigenous people... to be honest, the indigenous people in India, West Asia, and even Europe, people in India and West Asia are used to drinking tea bricks... These are some habits formed in the past few hundred years, and there have been great changes in the past thirty years. The result of the tea bricks being pushed hard by the tea merchants of the empire.
As for Europeans, they don’t have the habit of drinking tea on a large scale yet. It’s not that they don’t exist, but there are too few tea drinkers now. The tea agents of the Chu Empire, the Dutch businessmen who mainly promote and sell tea in Europe, are not very good... Chu The tea association in China has lobbied the imperial high-level officials several times, saying that the European barbarians are dissatisfied with the king's rule. They hope that the imperial king's army will soon come to Europe and bring the emperor's favor to the local indigenous people!
Well, for the tea merchants of the Dachu Empire, Europe is the last market that has not yet been conquered... This is what they see in their eyes, but they are anxious in their hearts!
Niang Xipi, those cloth sellers have all bought the cloth to Europe. Why is no one asking for my tea? This is very unreasonable. The tea merchants of the Chu Empire felt that it was necessary to use guns and cannons to change the living habits of the indigenous people in Europe: You can drink this tea, but you have to drink it if you don't... otherwise Just look down on me, look down on my great Chu Empire, let alone look down on the millions of lions in my empire!
This is also a major feature of the contemporary international tea trade in the Dachu Empire: the main focus is forced buying and selling!
In fact, many of the goods exported by the Dachu Empire are not very common...
The group of people who sell cloth like to play low-price dumping, drive other handicraft workshops into bankruptcy, destroy the local handmade cloth industry and then sell them at high prices... This may seem mild, but they are the real kind of people who eat people without spitting out their bones.
The group of people who sell weapons like to provoke wars, and wars will break out wherever they go... They are full-fledged war mongers.
And the group of people selling tea are not a good thing either... because these tea merchants especially like to buy and sell by force...
No way, not everyone in every place has the habit of drinking tea. They don't drink tea in the first place, so no one wants your tea when you transport it there.
Although consumption habits can be cultivated, it can only take decades... The tea merchants of Chu State cannot wait so long. They often use simpler methods: bundling sales with other products, or simply forcing them with guns and cannons. The local powerful businessmen purchase tea. If the local powerful businessmen don't want to spend all their money, they have to work hard to sell the tea locally... After these two trips, the habit of drinking tea is almost established.
Anyway, they have done this in Southeast Asia and India before... If the Chu army reaches Europe, they will not mind doing this in Europe.
Businessmen from several countries, such as the Dutch and the British, were too slow to promote tea... The tea businessmen in Chu State could not wait to go into battle to promote tea in person.
For this reason, the Da Chu Empire Tea Association stated the importance of opening up the European market to the empire's senior officials several times, and promised with heartfelt promises that once the empire goes to Europe, the thousands of tea company members and countless tea farmer members in their tea association will I will enthusiastically donate money...I dare not say more, but a donation of several hundred will not be a problem at all.
Thanks to the vigorous development of the Dachu Empire's merchants engaged in international trade, the Dachu Empire's commodity exports have always maintained a relatively high growth rate.
In the past two years, the market development in West Asia, especially the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire, has been relatively successful, so the growth rate has been greater.
In fact, the relationship between the Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Dynasty was quite good before. Especially in the early years when the Chu Empire first set foot in the Indian Ocean, in order to open up the local market in West Asia, it took a relatively soft route, mainly finding They came to the Ottoman Empire and Persia and provided them with a lot of military support.
The Guards of the Ottoman Empire were the first army in West Asia and Europe to be equipped with flintlocks in large quantities. Their flintlocks were provided by the Chu Empire.
In exchange, the Ottoman Empire allowed the Chu Empire's goods to land in Egypt and be sold to the Ottoman Empire and Europe through the Egyptian-Mediterranean channel.
The situation was similar with the Persian Empire. The Chu Empire used weapons to clear the way. It sold more than 20,000 flintlocks to the Persian Empire that year, and finally gained the right to trade in the area.
Later, the relationship gradually deepened, and the continued arms trade, coupled with the growing strength of the local Chu comprador group, contributed to the Ottoman Empire's tacit approval of the Chu Empire's occupation of the Oman region of the peninsula.
Last year, the Empire and the Ottoman Empire signed an agreement to formally lease Kuwait near the Port of Basra in Iraq, and also leased the Atqua area in Egypt.
These two places in the concession actually used relatively normal methods and were approved by the Ottoman Empire.
Why did the Ottoman Empire agree? Naturally, they themselves also wanted the empire... They wanted the empire to send certain technical personnel, sell them certain equipment, and help them build an arsenal with certain technical capabilities. to produce flintlock muskets and muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons.
For this reason, they not only took the initiative to permanently lease these two places to the Chu Empire that the Chu Empire had wanted for a long time but had been unable to negotiate, and allowed the empire to station soldiers in the leased areas for self-protection, but also other Some concessions were made in the commercial market, such as opening up more trading ports and allowing imperial merchants to freely trade in designated trading ports.
Although the empire has strict restrictions on technology exports, it generally restricts modern mechanical equipment represented by steam engines and corresponding technologies. As for primitive hydropower equipment, there are no restrictions... After all, the indigenous people can make these things themselves. On the contrary, there are relatively large restrictions on the manufacture of hydropower equipment and some steel product parts used in it.
As for weapons, the Chu Empire itself sold flintlock muskets and front-loaded smoothbore cannons all over the world... It would not be a big problem to directly build a primitive arsenal for the indigenous people. After all, they would have to produce it in a workshop style. It is impossible to match the performance and cost of the Dachu Empire's own modern steam engine factory.
The Ottoman Empire did not expect to build a truly modern factory... They just wanted to improve their technical level and gain a certain degree of self-sufficiency in weapons... Today, the flintlock has become the mainstream infantry equipment in Europe and West Asia. Tactics became popular, and the Ottoman Empire also wanted to be self-sufficient...
Although the weapons of the Dachu Empire are good, they are also expensive... The most important thing is that the supply of weapons is in the hands of others. If one day it gets stuck, wouldn't it be doomed?
Seeing that many countries in Europe have successively established their own arsenals to produce flintlock muskets and guns, although the Ottoman Empire has imitated them early, the technology has never been up to par... In desperation, they could only find people from Chu and let Chu The Chinese helped.
The people of Chu naturally have no objections to this, and directly stated that there are no technical problems, and they can build an arsenal for you in a matter of minutes with a higher technical level than the arsenals of European countries.
Well, the level is higher than that of arsenals in European countries, but it can only be a little higher... As for the output, don't expect it, it's handmade...
In addition, the strategic balance in the region still needs to be maintained, otherwise where would the arms dealers of the Chu Empire go to sell weapons...
You must know that European countries and the Ottoman Empire are all customers of the arms dealers of the Chu Empire.
This series of cooperation eventually led to the Chu Empire acquiring two important concessions in West Asia, Kuwait and Atkui.
Although these two concessions are currently only used for commercial purposes, they mainly serve as outposts and material transfer stations for the Chu Empire's trade with the Ottoman Empire... As for the garrison, they are only for self-protection.
But this is now, and the future will be in the future... If one day the empire's senior officials get hot-headed and think that they want to take down the entire Egypt, Atequi will become the outpost of the Chu Empire's attack on Egypt.
Of course, that is something that may happen in the future... Now, the people of Chu think that doing business with the Ottoman Empire is very good, as it saves trouble and makes more money.
After all, the trade model between the Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire is equivalent to the people of Chu acting as manufacturers and wholesalers, transporting the goods and selling them to the merchants of the Ottoman Empire, and then leaving them alone...the merchants of the Ottoman Empire and the local people behind them The powerful people will consciously sell the goods of the Chu Empire to every part of the Ottoman Empire through various channels... and even sell them to the Mediterranean coast through re-export trade.
The transit trade through the Ottoman Empire was also an important way for Chu Empire goods to enter Europe.
Just transit trade through the Ottoman Empire is not enough... Especially since there is no canal in Egypt today, land transportation is required from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The transportation volume is small and the transportation cost is high.
It was necessary for the Dachu Empire to import its goods to Europe on a large scale through the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.
It is no longer the past kind of small trade through twos and threes of sailing merchants from various European countries...the ships of these European sailing merchants are not good, and the transportation volume is too small...
The merchants of the Chu Empire were thinking of sending their own steam freighters of tens of thousands of tons directly around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, carrying the goods directly to ports in various European countries, and then selling massive amounts of industrial goods.
Just what the tea associations want: directly occupy the entire European market!
Chu merchants in other industries are also looking forward to the European market... Even the weapons industry, cloth industry, silk industry, porcelain industry and other industries that have achieved certain results in the European market all hope to achieve certain results through military, Political means should be used to develop the European market more comprehensively.
For example, obtain several concession ports or simply colonies in Europe to serve as super transit stations and springboards for entering Europe!
What's more important is to use various means to force local countries to fully open their markets, lift various trade bans, and cancel their various monopoly trading companies.
The merchants of Chu State were fed up with the mess of various monopoly trade licenses in European countries. They could only do business with their designated companies, such as the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company...
In recent years, although these colonial companies have lost their colonies, they still have not collapsed, but have become more profitable...
Why?
Because they are the only companies designated in their respective countries to trade with Chu State, they have a monopoly on Chu State trade.
For them, the loss of Asian colonies is nothing more than the difference between going to Guangzhou to purchase goods and now going to South Africa to purchase goods... And now because the trade routes are shorter, it means that navigation risks are greatly reduced, and trade costs are also greatly reduced... I actually made more money than before.
This makes the Chu businessmen a little unhappy... The European market is monopolized by these trading companies, which means that the terminal market is uncontrolled. The most important thing is that they have earned a lot of benefits that should belong to the Chu businessmen...
Monopoly, this is a very profitable business, but you are not the one who creates the monopoly... This makes people jealous.
Therefore, in the past two years, many Chu businessmen engaged in European trade have been lobbying the empire's senior officials to enter Europe, shouting the slogan of free trade.
To say that monopoly trade in Europe is a great violation of the empire's free trade policy...
In various European countries, some powerful people have dark faces after hearing this... Damn it, I am establishing a monopoly in my own country and exploiting the untouchables under my rule. It is none of your business...
But the merchants of the Da Chu Empire were just not happy!
(End of chapter)
