I want to be emperor

Chapter 864 Entering Europe and Freedom of Trade

At the beginning of August in the 36th year of Chengshun, the Imperial Palace of Jinling City in Yingtianfu.

Luo Zhixue held an imperial economic meeting that day, mainly to listen to some domestic economic developments in the first half of this year.

The main thing to listen to is the export situation.

Although for the contemporary Great 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, earning a lot of profits from other countries through a large amount of exports, and then buying a large amount of industrial raw materials and agricultural products from agricultural countries or colonies and transporting them back to the country to maintain the operation of the industrial system and growth. speed, and by the way improve the living standards of the domestic people.

For example, the development of modern Britain and Japan typically relied on international trade.

It's just that the economic structure of the Great Chu Empire is special compared to many modern industrial countries in the original time and space...Although there are exports, and they are quite profitable...but the proportion of impact on the economy is average, and the biggest impact on the economy is domestic consumption.

This is mainly because the consumption power of the local market of the Great Chu Empire is far from that of those indigenous countries.

For many industrial products, there is actually no market abroad... Basically, domestic consumption is the mainstay. The growth rate of most industries in the Great Chu Empire has never been driven by exports, but by internal driven by demand.

Hundreds of millions of rural population with a certain consumption capacity, coupled with a large number of urban population with stronger consumption capacity, their demand for various industrial products is massive, far exceeding the consumption capacity of foreign natives.

This is the market that really drives the rapid development of various industrial products of the Great Chu Empire.

However, there are no exceptions. For example, textiles, which have a relatively large export ratio... After all, food, clothing, housing, and clothing are things that you have to wear even if you are poor. At most, the clothes you wear are cheaper or even tattered.

Unfortunately, the textiles of the Great Chu Empire are hard to say, but they have a huge advantage in price...

There is no way, all kinds of textiles in the Great Chu Empire are produced by machinery, and the efficiency is hundreds of times higher than that of foreign indigenous handmade cloth. It has a great cost-effective advantage, and the quality is often not bad, or even better.

This is also the reason why the cloth of the Great Chu Empire can be sold well all over the world, and has entered every corner of the earth one after another. Even in Europe, there are now a large number of machine-made cloth from the Chu Kingdom...

Chu’s machine-made cloth can be sold well all over the world. There is no other reason. The cost of selling industrial products overseas will be further reduced.

It is cost-effective, and at the same time, even if the aborigines have poorer spending power and the population of a single country is smaller, the combined population of many aboriginal countries is not a small number. As for the poor spending power... no matter how poor they are, they still have to wear clothes.

For example, India also has hundreds of millions of people... Even if these hundreds of millions of people are the lowest untouchables with extremely low consumption power, they still become the largest dumping ground for textiles and many other industrial products in the Great Chu Empire.

The local hand-woven textile industry in the Indian Peninsula has long been defeated by the Great Chu Empire... The local indigenous princes once tried to resist, and even the Mughal Empire tried to resist. What kind of trade protection ideas did they have, but they were defeated by the Great Chu Empire's Indians? The garrison cleaned up a few times, and after destroying a few indigenous states, they all became honest.

After all, the business of the local hand-textile industry is not in their entire interest, let alone the interest of all of them. It is impossible for all the local aborigines to bear the losses of the merchants in the hand-textile industry and the dignitaries behind them... let alone , a considerable part of the local aboriginal dignitaries are actually the trading agents of the Chu people.

No matter how awesome the Chu people are, it is impossible for him to personally sell the cloth to every local aborigine... Chu people are actually engaged in wholesale.

Transport the goods to coastal and river ports, and then sell them wholesale to local aboriginal merchants.

The local aboriginal merchants will transport all kinds of goods from Chu people, such as cloth, to various places for sale.

And these days, if you want to do this kind of large-scale and very profitable trade, but also have a great impact... This is impossible without any strength, so the trade agents of the Chu people in the indigenous countries are often local dignitaries.

Well, this kind of people have made a lot of profits by doing business with Chu people, and they will naturally protect the interests of Chu products.

When the handicraft industry groups in some places and the dignitaries behind them tried to boycott the dumping of Chu products, the people of Chu 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 the same Chu tool.

After all, they are all business partners of Chu people, and Chu people often provide them with a large amount of ordnance at a relatively favorable price, and the performance of the ordnance provided is often better...Of course, this is actually the domestic weapon industry An important measure to expand overseas markets.

That thing, weapons are not something that you can sell if you have a good thing.

First sell the weapons through the hands of local compradors, and then gradually expand the local arms market by taking advantage of the performance or price advantages of the weapons, and finally take the arms market of the entire region into their pockets. This is the overseas arms merchants of the Great Chu Empire. consistent strategy...

In the middle, it is often necessary to provoke several wars by the way.

When instigating wars, these arms dealers like to stir up the local people’s boycott of Chu’s cloth with merchants from other industries, such as those textile merchants. ...

It can not only clean up the remaining local hand-woven textile workshops, but also advertise their own weapons, and then occupy the entire local market.

Then you can take advantage of this opportunity to excuse how much loss you have suffered, ask the indigenous country concerned to compensate for the loss, cede some territory, set up a concession, extrajudicial power, etc. This will get the military and the Ministry of Ethics and Ethics, etc. official support.

It belongs to Baili without harm!
This is also why wars break out wherever the Chu people go... The benefits are touching!
The overseas export of commodities is still very important to the Great Chu Empire, especially for industries such as cloth and weapons, which are just in demand.

Luo Zhixue was quite satisfied with the data reported by the economic department. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs, the export performance in the first two quarters of this year was excellent.

The main export commodities in the first half of this year, such as silk, tea, porcelain, cloth, weapons, and civil iron products (farm tools, kitchen utensils, hardware tools, etc.) have all improved 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 quite high... After the Great Chu Empire controlled the Malay Peninsula, it became a spice exporter, and later controlled the Spice Islands, and even the entire After Southeast Asia.

Almost the world's spice supply is controlled by the Great Chu Empire... and the Great 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 and cultivation. In fact, it is mainly to meet internal demand, but the output can also be exported by the way.

Finally, sugar has also become the main commodity exported by the Great Chu Empire in recent years. Edible sugar has always been a bulky and expensive commodity in the agricultural era.

In order to meet the domestic demand for edible sugar, the Great Chu Empire promoted the cultivation of sugarcane on a large scale in many places, especially in Guangdong and Guangxi, and used mechanical equipment for sugar production. source of edible sugar.

The production of edible sugar has continued to increase at a very high rate in the past 30 years. In addition to meeting domestic demand, these edible sugars are also exported in large quantities...

It is also worth noting that the commodity exports of the Great Chu Empire were almost exclusively industrial products... Spices and tea were an exception.

But even for tea, tea bricks are mainly promoted overseas by the Great Chu Empire... Mainly, tea bricks are processed by machinery, which is convenient for large-scale production, and is more durable for storage, suitable for long-distance transportation.

As for black tea, green tea... In the contemporary era where the sealing measures are not reliable, black tea is better, and the transportation time is barely okay for a few months... But green tea is not good, this thing is very unsuitable for sea transportation, it is easy to go moldy and deteriorate .

Therefore, the tea exported by the Great Chu Empire, except for the nearby Fusang and other places, there are very few green teas in the tea exports of other places... But it does not mean that green tea is not transported by sea. In fact, there are still a lot of them, but basically It was shipped to the overseas colonies of the Great Chu Empire itself, such as America.

Every year, there are a large number of fast clipper ships that specialize in transporting tea, galloping across the Pacific Ocean, in order to quickly transport green tea and black tea to the Americas at the fastest speed... No way, many Chu people themselves They are used to drinking green tea or black tea. Since there is a market demand, there will naturally be businessmen who specialize 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... This is some habit formed in the past few hundred years, and the Great Chu Empire in the last 30 years The result of tea merchants pushing tea bricks forcibly.

As for the Europeans, they don’t have the habit of drinking tea on a large scale for the time being. It’s not that there are too few tea drinkers. The tea agents in the Great Chu Empire and the Dutch merchants who mainly promote and sell tea in Europe are not very good... Chu The tea association in China has lobbied the high-level officials of the empire several times, saying that the barbarians in Europe are disobedient to the king, and hope that the emperor's master will come to Europe as soon as possible, and bring the emperor's grace, rain, and so on to the local aborigines!
Well, for the tea merchants of the Great Chu Empire, Europe is the last market that has not been conquered... This is seen in the eyes and anxious in the heart!
Damn Xipi, those cloth sellers have bought the cloth to Europe, why no one wants my tea?This is very unreasonable. The tea merchants of the Great Chu Empire felt that it was necessary to use guns to change the living habits of the natives in Europe: you can drink this tea, and you have to drink it if you don’t drink it...or else Just look down on me, the Great Chu Empire, let alone the millions of lions in our empire!
This is also a major feature of the contemporary tea international trade of the Great Chu Empire: the main thing is to buy and sell by force!
In fact, the export of many commodities of the Great Chu Empire did not follow the usual path...

The group of cloth sellers like to play low-price dumping, crowding out other handicraft workshops, destroying the local handmade cloth industry and then selling them at high prices... This may seem mild, but it is the kind that really eats people without spit out their bones.

The group of people who sell weapons like to provoke wars, and wars will break out wherever they go... Proper warmongers.

And the group of people who sell tea are not a good thing... because these tea merchants like to buy and sell by force...

No way, not everyone in every place has the habit of drinking tea. People don’t drink tea at first, and no one wants your tea when you transport it there.

Although consumption habits can be cultivated, it will take decades at every turn... The tea merchants in Chu State can't wait so long, they often adopt a more straightforward method: bundling sales with other products, or simply holding guns to force The local rich and powerful merchants purchase tea. If the local rich and powerful merchants don’t want all the money in their hands, they have to sell the tea in the local area... The habit of drinking tea is almost done.

Anyway, they used to do this in Southeast Asia and India... If Chu's army reaches Europe, they don't mind doing it in Europe.

Merchants from several countries, such as the Dutch and the British, are too slow in promoting tea... The tea merchants in Chu State can't wait to go to the battle to promote tea in person.

For this reason, the Tea Association of the Great Chu Empire has stated the importance of opening up the European market to the top of the empire several times, and promised that once the empire goes to Europe, thousands of tea company members and countless tea farmers members in their tea association will I will actively donate money... I dare not say if there are too many, but there is no problem at all with donations of several hundred.

Thanks to the vigorous development of the merchants engaged in international trade in the Great Chu Empire, the export of commodities in the Great Chu Empire has always maintained a relatively high growth rate.

In the past two years, because of the relatively successful market development in West Asia, especially the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Dynasty, the growth rate has been greater.

In fact, the relationship between the Great Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Dynasty was quite good before, especially when the Great Chu Empire first set foot in the Indian Ocean in the early years, in order to open up the local market in West Asia, it took a relatively soft route, mainly to find The Ottoman Empire and Persia provided them with a lot of military support.

The guards of the Ottoman Empire were the first army in West Asia-Europe to be equipped with flintlock guns in large quantities. Their flintlock guns were provided by the Great Chu Empire.

In exchange, the Ottoman Empire allowed the goods of the Great Chu Empire to enter Egypt and sell them to the Ottoman Empire and Europe through the Egypt-Mediterranean channel.

The Persian dynasty is similar. The Great Chu Empire opened the way with weapons. It sold more than 2 flintlock guns to the Persian Empire that year, and finally obtained the right to trade locally.

Later, the relationship gradually deepened, and the continuous arms trade, coupled with the growing strength of the local Chu comprador group, contributed to the Ottoman Empire's tacit approval of the Great Chu Empire's occupation of the peninsula Oman.

Last year, the Empire and the Ottoman Empire signed an agreement to officially lease Kuwait near the Port of Basra in the Iraqi region, and at the same time lease the Atkoi area in the Egyptian region

These two places in the concession actually adopted relatively normal methods, which were approved by the Ottoman Empire.

Why did the Ottoman Empire agree? Naturally, they also have something to ask for the empire... They want the empire to send certain technicians, sell them certain equipment, and help them establish an arsenal with certain technical capabilities. to produce flintlock muskets and muzzle-loading smoothbore guns.

For this reason, they not only took the initiative to lease the two Great Chu Empires for a long time, but they have not been able to negotiate a permanent lease to the Great Chu Empire, allowing the Empire to station soldiers in this leased land for self-protection, and other Some commercial markets have made concessions, such as opening up more trading ports and allowing imperial merchants to freely go to designated trading ports for trade.

Although the empire has strict restrictions on technology exports, the restrictions are generally on modern mechanical equipment represented by steam engines and corresponding technologies. As for the original water power equipment, there are no restrictions... After all, the natives can also make these things themselves. On the contrary, there are relatively large restrictions on the manufacture of hydrodynamic equipment and some steel parts used in it.

As for weapons, the Great Chu Empire sold flintlock guns and front-loading smoothbore guns all over the world... It is not a big problem to directly build a primitive arsenal for the natives. Anyway, they have to be workshop-style production, It is impossible to compare with the modern steam engine factory of the Great Chu Empire in terms of performance and cost.

The Ottoman Empire did not expect to be able to build a truly modern factory... They just want to improve their own technical level and obtain a certain level of self-sufficiency in weapons... Now the flintlock has become the mainstream infantry equipment in Europe and West Asia. Tactics have become popular, and the Ottoman Empire is also thinking about self-sufficiency...

Although the weapons of the Great Chu 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 they get stuck, wouldn't they be doomed?
Seeing that many countries in Europe have successively established their own arsenals to produce flintlock guns and guns, and although the Ottoman Empire has imitated them early, but the technology has not been qualified... In a hurry, they can only find Chu people, let Chu The countrymen helped.

Naturally, the Chu people have no opinion on this, and directly stated that there is no technical problem, and they can produce an arsenal with a higher technical level than the arsenals of European countries in minutes.

Well, it is higher than the arsenals of European countries, but it can only be a little bit higher... As for the output, don't expect it, it's handmade...

In addition, the strategic balance of the region still needs to be maintained, otherwise, where would the arms dealers of the Great Chu Empire sell their weapons...

We must know that whether it is European countries or the Ottoman Empire, they are all customers of the arms dealers of the Great Chu Empire.

This series of cooperation eventually led to the Great Chu Empire obtaining two very important concessions in West Asia, Kuwait and Atkoi.

Although these two concessions are currently only used for commercial purposes, they mainly serve as outposts and material transfer stations between the Great Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire... As for the garrison and the like, it is only for self-protection.

But now is the present, and the future is the future... If one day the top management of the empire gets mad and thinks that they want to take down the whole of Egypt, Atkui will become an outpost for the Great Chu Empire to attack Egypt.

Of course, that might happen in the future... Right now, the people of Chu think that doing business with the Ottoman Empire is good, and they save money and make more money.

After all, the trade model between the Great Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire is tantamount to Chu people acting as manufacturers and wholesalers, transporting the goods to the merchants of the Ottoman Empire, and then leaving it alone... The merchants of the Ottoman Empire and the local people behind them The dignitaries will consciously sell the goods of the Great Chu Empire to every place in the Ottoman Empire through various channels... and even sell them to the Mediterranean coast through entrepot trade.

Transit trade through the Ottoman Empire was also an important way for the goods of the Great Chu Empire to enter the European region.

Transit trade through the Ottoman Empire is not enough... Especially in Egypt today, there is no canal, and land transportation is required to travel from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The transportation volume is small and the transportation cost is high.

It is necessary for the Great Chu Empire to allow its goods to be imported to Europe on a large scale through the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.

It is no longer the kind of small trade that passed through European seafaring merchants in twos and threes... These European seagoing merchants have no ships, and the transportation volume is too small...

The merchants of the Great Chu Empire wanted to detour their tens of thousands of tons of steam freighters to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, take the goods directly to the ports of European countries, and then sell a large number of industrial products.

Just like what the tea associations want: to directly occupy the entire European market!
Chu merchants in other industries are also lingering on the European market... Even the arms industry, the cloth industry, the silk industry, the porcelain industry and other industries that have achieved certain results in the European market hope to pass certain military, military, and other industries. Political means to develop the European market more comprehensively.

For example, to obtain several concession ports or colonies in Europe, which are super transit points and springboards for entering Europe!
What is more important is to adopt various means to force local countries to fully open their markets, cancel various trade bans, and cancel their various monopoly trading companies.

The merchants of Chu State are fed up with the messy monopoly trade licenses in various European countries. They can only do business with companies they designate, such as the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company...

In recent years, although these colonial companies have lost their colonies, they still have not fallen, but have become more profitable...

why?
Because they are the only enterprises designated by their respective countries that can trade with Chu State, they monopolize the trade of Chu State.

For them, the loss of the Asian colony is nothing more than the difference between going to Guangzhou to buy goods and now going to South Africa to buy goods... And now because the trade route is shorter, it means that the risk of navigation is greatly reduced, and the cost of trade is also greatly reduced... This money actually earned more than before.

This made the merchants of Chu state a little unhappy... The European market is monopolized by these trading companies, which means that the terminal market is out of control. The most important thing is that they have earned a lot of benefits that should belong to the merchants of Chu state...

Monopoly, this is a very profitable business, but I am not the one who engages in monopoly... This makes people jealous.

Therefore, in the past two years, many Chu businessmen engaged in European trade have been chanting the slogan of trade freedom and have been lobbying the high-level empire to enter Europe.

To say that the monopoly trade in the European region is a great violation of the free trade policy of the empire...

In European countries, some dignitaries turn black when they hear this... Nima, I am monopolizing in my own country and exploiting the untouchables under the rule, it's none of your business...

But the merchants of the Great Chu Empire were not happy!
(End of this chapter)