Seeing Gushi Khan's expression, Emperor Chongzhen knew exactly what he was thinking, so he smiled slightly and said: "The world is changing very quickly, and it is useless to stick to the rules. It is better to be prepared than not, even in the end If it’s not used, what does it matter, right?”
The principle is indeed this principle. Gushi Khan himself is considered a capable monarch, so he naturally understands it. Otherwise, he would not have become the Khan King of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
When Emperor Chongzhen saw his promise, he stopped communicating with him. Although Gushi Khan was capable, he shrank in Tibet, which shows that he had no ambition to dominate the world. If you stay in that corner, you will definitely be abandoned by the general trend of the world. Since he wants to stay, just stay there!
So, the interview was basically over. Emperor Chongzhen invited him to celebrate the New Year in the capital, and at the same time let him know the power of the Ming Dynasty. This would also make Tibet more secure.
As for Emperor Chongzhen himself, he still had many things to be busy with.
Other high-yielding crops are being promoted to a greater extent than before. Especially potatoes, the harvest in the Hetao Plain is very good. This made Emperor Chongzhen very pleased. If there was enough food, it would be of great help to Hong Chengchou in preparing to reorganize the new grassland army.
In terms of finance, the revenue of the state treasury is not much different from last year.
Although income from glass, steam engines and cement is increasing, wars have begun on the southeastern coast since the end of last year. First there was the Battle of Taiwan, then the Battle of Annan, and then the Battle of Luzon, which seriously affected the Zheng family. The income there.
However, Emperor Chongzhen didn't pay much attention to this. Collecting taxes from maritime merchants through the Zheng family's model of collecting protection fees is not a long-term solution after all. Now that we have become a navy, we cannot use this old model.
The reason why Emperor Chongzhen went to Guangzhou twice was to sort out the taxation model of maritime merchants.
Nowadays, the trading objects of Ming Dynasty maritime merchants are mainly the new occupied territories of Ming Dynasty. There is a huge demand for this, and it is currently the place where maritime merchants go most often. Next is the surrounding Yi country. However, although there are many Yi countries, their consumption is low. They mostly exchange for local specialties and transport them back to the country for trade. This is the bulk of the foreign trade.
The last one is the trade with the Folangji people. For now, there is no need to go overseas, you only need to conduct transactions here in Guangzhou. In the future, when the power of the Ming Dynasty's navy expands, the Ming Dynasty's maritime merchants will inevitably go out, and they can go as far as Africa, or they can go to the Franconian country for trade.
But for now, the sea is rough and the risks of long-distance trade are too high, so few people are taking risks. However, for this reason, there is a new voice in the south and Jiangnan, which is that if they trade directly with the Folangji people in Guangzhou, the Folangji people will probably make most of the money. It would be better for the imperial court to go on an expedition as soon as possible and expand the territory as soon as possible, so that they can also sail away for trade.
Emperor Chongzhen certainly welcomed these new voices, which would give him more reasons for his expedition to the Middle East. But for the time being, he wasn't going to try to force it to grow, so he just let this voice grow naturally. After all, an expedition to the Middle East is not something that can be done casually. It takes time to prepare.
On the treasury side, the war in Nanyang has subsided and is under the control of Ming Dynasty. The large number of immigrants from the Ming Dynasty will definitely create huge demand. It can be seen from this that sea trade will explode again next year, and tax revenue will definitely recover, even more than before.
In China, glass, needless to say, is a necessity for wealthy people. And with the maturity and diversity of glass technology, new demands are constantly being developed.
Emperor Chongzhen was not very concerned about this. As far as glass was concerned, he was more concerned about the production of concave and convex lenses and glass test tubes.
Meniscus lenses play a very important role in optics; glass test tubes are related to the development of chemistry. This is what he values most.
On the cement front, the previously formulated policy has proven to be effective after one year of practice.
While cement is used to build roads and bridges, part of the cement is used for consumption by wealthy local families to subsidize the cost of infrastructure.
However, there are also problems with this policy. The local Metropolitan Procuratorate has uncovered fifteen cases of embezzlement and corruption in this cement; while Dongchang and Jinyiwei have uncovered as many as six cement corruption cases involving the Local Metropolitan Procuratorate.
Regarding these cases, Emperor Chongzhen was not lenient at all. Although he did not peel off the skin and fill it with grass like Taizu, the effect was actually similar. Emperor Chongzhen confiscated their property and made the whole family paupers. They were then punished with hard labor, building roads and bridges, and contributing their only value to the Ming Dynasty's infrastructure. This can be regarded as an alternative "setting an example to others" role.
Emperor Chongzhen was not satisfied with this year's infrastructure construction, and decreed that the progress of this infrastructure construction should be increased in the coming year. Use the engineering troops transformed from local health stations as the backbone to assist local labor and speed up the construction of highways across the country.
The expansion of Ming Dynasty is absolutely inseparable from the improvement of basic transportation. A major weapon for improving transportation is the application of steam engines in vehicles and ships.
Therefore, this is the thing that Emperor Chongzhen is most concerned about. After dealing with the most important matters, the prince accompanied him to inspect the application of the steam engine.
The train samples are already available and the rails are real. After the demonstration, in summary, the power is still a bit insufficient. In other words, the energy conversion rate is a bit low and the speed is slow.
In fact, in the original history, it was not until 1825 that the British Stephenson built a steam train and created the highest speed of land travel at that time, which was only 24 kilometers per hour. This speed cannot keep up with the speed of later generations of electric bicycles. However, although it was only this extremely slow speed in later generations, it also allowed the rapid promotion of steam trains.
Although Emperor Chongzhen did not know this, he did know the principle of crossing the river by feeling the stones, not to mention that he had more than 400 years of historical experience. Therefore, he issued an order: The railway will be built in a few years from the capital to Tongzhou. If there are problems, don’t be afraid and work together to solve them. The experience in building this first railway must be summarized in writing for promotion throughout the country. .
As for the rails, we don’t need wooden rails, let alone iron-clad wood, just use rails. There was no turmoil in the Ming Dynasty, life was stable, with the support of the court, and steel production was not low.
Although it may not be enough to talk about rolling out railway tracks in Daming, it is not realistic to promote it at once.
In addition, a very large consumption of steel is the manufacturing of weapons and armor. However, many of the Ming army already used cotton armor. For the protection of firearms, cotton armor is not inferior to iron armor.
Of course, the most important thing is that Emperor Chongzhen knew that the measure of a country's strength is steel production. How could he not pay attention to steel production in normal times?
Then, there is the application of steam engines on ships, which is more difficult than applying it on cars. However, the difficulty is relative. It is difficult to directly connect the propeller, but it is not difficult to drive the paddle wheel with a steam engine. Paddle-wheel boats have been around since the early years of the Ming Dynasty, and shipwrights knew how to make them.
However, according to the results of preliminary tests, although this paddle steamer is much better than the previous ship, its shortcomings are also obvious.
First, the structure of a paddle wheel ship is relatively bulky. Especially when encountering wind and waves, part or all of the paddle wheel blades are exposed to the water, making the ship unable to sail stably. Of course, if you sail on an inland river, you will encounter this situation less often. Even if there is, it is not a problem. After all, with such big winds and waves, previous ships would also have problems.
The second problem is that the blades of the paddle wheel are easily damaged during use. When the paddle wheel rotates, half of the blades rotate in the air, which not only increases the width of the ship and the resistance during navigation, but also when it docks at the dock, it is easy to collide with the ships on both sides, which not only affects its own safe driving, but also risk of bruising other ships.
The third problem, and the most critical one, is that if entangled objects such as aquatic plants twist the blades or shaft of the paddle wheel, the paddle wheel may lose rotation, which is a fatal problem.
It is precisely because the paddle wheel has so many shortcomings that the paddle wheel that existed in the early Ming Dynasty was not popularized and used. Of course, now that steam power has been used to replace the original manual pedaling method, the steam paddle wheel can be seen again and has the benefit of being used.
In this regard, Emperor Chongzhen did not stop eating because of choking, and immediately issued an order that the steam paddle steamers should continue to be built so that they could be used on the Grand Canal between Beijing and some sections of the Yellow River and Yangtze River. At the same time, also try to build a paddle wheel on the sea.
In addition, the test of a steam-driven propeller ship cannot be interrupted. If there are difficulties to overcome, the propeller ship must be built.
For this reason, Emperor Chongzhen also provided a lot of suggestions for their reference. After all, he had the knowledge of future generations, and he was a university graduate. He had learned a lot, knew some principles, and could always talk about it.
Just after completing these inspections, New Year's Eve has arrived.
Emperor Chongzhen also gave himself a holiday to spend the New Year well.
As for Chongzhen's twenty-one-year plan, he planned to focus on internal affairs and not plan to expand. At least Nanyang still needs to be stabilized, and Dongwu's shipyard cannot be built so quickly; in the northwest, Hong Chengchou must be given time to reorganize, and it is impossible to march westward immediately.
Of course, this non-expansion is not absolute, for example, the Japanese country. Emperor Chongzhen knew from the eavesdropping seeds on Hauge that this "god-level spy" had completed his mission very well, causing the Japanese country to become extremely noisy.
That's right, at this time, Hauge was experiencing one of the three major joyous events in life.
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