Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 512

New book for collection: "The Rise of Great Powers 1900"

------------

The economic situation in the sixth year of Longwu (1652) was much better than Yang Chao expected.

Yang Chao thought that after last year's financial crisis, it would take at least two or three years of recuperation to stabilize, but he didn't expect the economy to rebound strongly this year. The first three months of the year were relatively stable. Since April, the economic situation has suddenly heated up.

What pleased Yang Chao the most was the hot situation of the textile industry. In fact, it has little to do with Yang Chao’s support, because the policy of supporting the production of the textile industry, including encouraging mulberry planting and sericulture, was only determined this year, and the effect of the policy is always lagging behind. , The reason for this economic upsurge is still due to market reasons.

After Yang Chao stabilized Jiangnan in the past few years, Jiangnan has enjoyed the dividend of peace, and various economic indicators should have returned to their peak period, especially after the opening of the sea trade, a large number of exports stimulated production.

It is precisely because of the prosperity of overseas trade that this year's economic rebound has been supported. In other words, if Yang Chao hadn't randomly intervened in the financial market and caused financial chaos, I am afraid that the economic boom should have started last year.

Although the Dutch can only bring back a shipment of goods from China every year, the East India Company has a strong sense of business. Their orders are placed in batches, so they limit the price to a stable level, but this also allows textile households to get long-term benefits. The order, to a certain extent, allowed them to obtain long-term benefits.

In the past few years, the Dutch have sold war horses to Yang Chao and opened up Japan's entrepot trade. They have a lot of money in their hands to purchase goods from Daming.

Over the years, the Dutch have sold 100 war horses to Yang Chao. Although the price of horses has been reduced to 300 taels of silver, the Dutch can already supply [-] war horses to Yang Chao every year, which is [-] million taels of silver.

These horses are indeed good horses, but Yang Chao already knows that these horses are not Western horses, but Indian horses purchased by the Dutch from India. Let the Indians get the Arabian horse, and after improvement, the Indian horse breed was bred.

Generally speaking, the quality of Indian horses is still good, especially the quality that is more suitable for Jiangnan makes Yang Chao more satisfied. They can adapt to the hot weather in India. Advantage.

Yang Chao has even planned to equip all the cavalry with more explosive Indian horses, and the conditions are also met, because the Dutch have built a large-scale horse farm and large-scale horse breeding in Taiwan in order to operate the war horse business. This era is a place where deerskins are produced, and a large number of deer can live, such as raising horses.

The Dutch even negotiated with Yang Chao, hoping that Yang Chao will purchase [-] horses next year, which shows the scale of their horse farm in Taiwan.

If the source of [-] horses is guaranteed every year, Yang Chao will be able to equip the cavalry with such horses, not to mention that Yang Chao's horse farm has also begun to produce more than [-] Indian horses and Mongolian horses every year. Planted, this kind of horse is between the Mongolian horse and the Indian horse, taller than the Mongolian horse, slightly smaller than the Indian horse, stronger than the Mongolian horse, weaker than the Indian horse, but much stronger than the Indian horse, However, it is slightly worse than Mongolian horses. This is a kind of war horse with higher comprehensive performance selected and bred.

In addition to the war horse trade, the Dutch also took advantage of the good opportunity during the integration of Zheng's forces to greatly expand Japan's trade, and they can also harvest 300 million taels of cash from Japan every year.In addition to the funds obtained by the Dutch from other places, the annual purchase volume from China has reached 1000 million taels, which has surpassed Japan's 500 taels, and has become Yang Chao's number one trading partner.

However, the imported products of the Dutch and the Japanese are similar, mainly silk and porcelain.

Since the export tariff on silk is only 30.00%, while the raw silk is as high as [-]%, the export of silk has replaced the export of raw silk. The Japanese found that the quality of silk was better and better than that of the high-quality raw silk they used in the Ming Dynasty. The local products that come out, the Japanese basically rarely buy domestic products.

The Dutch are naturally even more so. When Yang Chao raised tariffs, they originally turned to Japan for porcelain and imported raw silk to India. However, after Yang Chao cracked down on Japanese porcelain production, they could only accept high-priced Chinese porcelain. Anyway, the quality is the best. Well, after the silk tariff was reduced, the Dutch found that importing silk directly was more popular in the Western market, because the silk produced with the best quality Huzhou silk in the world and the most exquisite silk weaving technology of the Chinese was far away. Better quality than western silk.

As China, which has accumulated thousands of years of silk weaving technology and is the origin of the highest quality silk, if India has a rival in cotton spinning, then it has absolutely no rival in silk weaving.

The Dutch have already had in-depth exchanges with the silk weaving workshops in the south of the Yangtze River. They took out the most popular types of silk weaving in the West and asked these people to weave them. There is basically no silk type in the world that the Chinese cannot weave. As a result, That is, the silk weaving production of Westerners is basically unnecessary.

It’s just different from Yang Chao’s imagination. Yang Chao always thought that the reason why the West has been importing a large number of Chinese silk products in this era is that the Chinese have more sophisticated technology and better quality. Westerners do not have such technology, but this is just the least. important reason.

The main reason is the low price. Taking raw silk as an example, the price of pure white raw silk in Jiangnan is basically about 60 taels per load, while Indian raw silk costs 150 taels. The cost of raw silk determines the price of silk. Obviously Indian silk is more expensive.Japan's is higher than India's, and Westerners' own products are higher than Japan's.

In almost the whole world, Daming has the cheapest commodity prices. It would be great if the productivity is higher. The real reason is that the purchasing power of silver is different. Daming is not a silver-producing country. Although there is no shortage of silver, most of it is hoarded. Therefore, there is still a shortage of silver in the market, which makes Yang Chao have to find ways to make money.

It is precisely because of this shortage that the purchasing power of silver in China is the highest in the world, and ordinary people in Japan can also use the high-quality silk of Ming Dynasty. As a result, Chinese silk fabrics are still transported to the West by land and sea, with a rate as high as [-]%. profit.

That is to say, in a world where silver is used as currency, the currency of Ming Dynasty is seriously undervalued. Fortunately, there is no US emperor in this era, otherwise it would be time to force the currency of Ming Dynasty to appreciate.

This huge difference in purchasing power made Daming’s silk fabrics knock down all the silk fabrics in the world, and the only rival worth mentioning, India, was also powerless to parry.

In later generations, when the Indian government lowered the tariffs on raw silk from China, silkworm farmers in India committed suicide. I don’t know if there is such a tragic thing in this era.

Only in the field of cotton textiles, the Indians are still ahead of Ming Dynasty, and the cotton textiles of the Dutch are still mainly imported from India. The cotton textiles imported from Songjiang Prefecture are mainly exported to Japan, not to the West. According to the accounts of the East India Company, the amount of cotton cloth they purchase from India every year far exceeds that of silk and porcelain.

Compared with silk and porcelain, cotton cloth is a bulk commodity, and silk and porcelain are always a kind of luxury, which cannot be afforded by ordinary people.

"No, the Dutch have to import cotton cloth from Daming. Indian cotton cloth is cheaper because their cotton is cheaper, not because their labor is cheaper or more efficient."

In the case of silver denomination, Ming has the lowest labor cost in the world. It is not necessary to rely on a large number of oppressed female and child laborers to defeat India's textile industry during the British Industrial Revolution. The overvaluation of silver in China is enough to make China's labor costs make Westerners desperate, but also Indians.

However, India’s cotton industry is incomparable to the Ming Dynasty. There is no way to do this. Just like silkworms were created by the Chinese, cotton is generally believed to be planted by the Indians first. Even the type of cotton in the Ming Dynasty may be Indian cotton.

Moreover, compared with the Ming Dynasty, the Indians may not have an advantage in other aspects, but they completely surpassed the Ming Dynasty in terms of arable land area. The conditions of the Indian subcontinent are unique. It is also better, there is no shortage of water at all, and there are more sufficient sunlight conditions, which is almost the most suitable production area for cotton.

The conditions required for cotton production are nothing more than arable land, sunshine, irrigation, and manpower, all of which are lacking in these four Indians. In this case, their cotton price is one-third lower than that of the Ming Dynasty.

The ledger obtained from Nassau was similar to the one provided by Zheng. After Yang Chao was sure that it was correct, he immediately discussed with Nassau. He planned to attack the Indian cotton textile industry.

We must know that in all industrial countries, industrialization started from the textile industry, or from the cotton textile industry. No matter how hard we try, the parameters of silkworms spinning silk are definitely not as good as those of flowering cotton, so the price of cotton cloth is lower. It is more suitable for ordinary people, and the production scale can also be larger.

The British were able to become the world's factory and the first to complete the industrial revolution, but didn't they step on the bones of Indian textile workers?

Countries also follow the jungle law of survival of the fittest. In an era, there is often only one dominant country. Yang Chao will not let others surpass China. Therefore, Daming's textile industry must stand at the forefront of the world.

"I hope the Dutch can import cotton from India and sell it in Daming. The governor will take tax-free measures for cotton imports."

"At the same time reduce the duty on cotton textiles to ten per cent."

Yang Chao immediately threw these two red dates to Nassau, and Nassau was naturally very happy. He was always worrying about what China needed and what the Dutch could provide. Now, the Chinese have proposed what they want.

Nassau took advantage of the situation and made a request: "I hope Daming can guarantee that the Dutch East India Company will exclusively operate the cotton trade from India to Daming!"

The robber logic of the Westerners makes them always confidently make demands on the Eastern nations.

Yang Chao never agreed before, unless it was exchanged with reciprocal conditions.

But this time he agreed for the first time.

Just put forward a condition: "In exchange, the Dutch will reduce the import of cotton cloth from India, and allow the governor to send people to monitor!"

Nassau hesitated again. To be honest, their trade volume with India is much larger than that with China. It would be a huge loss to cut off the cotton clothing trade in India rashly.

(End of this chapter)