After Chief Executive Zheng Xiangdong learned the news, he immediately formulated a plan to intervene in the situation in Cochin.
As the executor of the plan, Foreign Affairs Commissioner Tang Xingqiang personally rushed to Black Coal City to take charge. At the same time, the ship he visited was the second-level battleship Wencang that had just been launched and outfitted.
In fact, at this time, the Xinghai City Shipyard had expanded its dry docks by twenty!
Among them, three dry docks are building Xinghai Kingdom's first first-class battleship, the Nanhai-class battleship with a tonnage of more than 3,700 tons.
The other ten dry docks are continuing to build secondary battleships. After all, as the main force of fleets in various places in the future, secondary battleships will not be wasted no matter how many they are built at this time.
Next-level 500-ton frigates are being built on the remaining seven dry docks.
In the next year, at the current rate, Xinghai Kingdom will have four first-class battleships, thirteen second-class battleships, and twenty-seven frigates.
Well, if it were not for the use of steam power to process and transport materials and the one-time casting of steel keels, etc., it would be completely impossible to build so many warships in more than a year.
Tang Xingqiang, the Foreign Affairs Commissioner who rushed to Black Coal City, also achieved fruitful results in a heated exchange of words.
After hearing the shocking news that the bandit-suppressing army was almost completely wiped out, the Zheng regime was in an uproar, and then they were even more at war with each other.
Some ministers strongly demanded that another large army be formed to continue the crusade against the Kun bandits.
Some ministers asked for a truce and peace. After all, the Zheng regime had suffered a lot of losses in the war with the south in these years. If it lost 30,000 troops and then fought against the Kun thieves with sharp firearms, it might endanger the country!
Amid such turmoil, the captured Zheng Guoqi quietly returned.
After a conversation with his grandson Zheng Guoqi, Prince Zheng, who had not expressed his opinion before, immediately expressed his opinion at the court meeting the next day.
Although the nominal emperor of the Zheng regime was named Li, the real emperor was Prince Zheng, and the emperor was nothing more than a puppet.
Under such circumstances, as soon as Prince Zheng opened his mouth, the commotion in the court immediately calmed down.
Soon, an envoy headed by the defeated general Zheng Guoqi set off for Black Coal City and started a series of discussions with the Xinghai Kingdom's Foreign Affairs Commissioner Tang Xingqiang.
Although Zheng Guoqi wanted to get what he didn't get on the battlefield, what he didn't get on the battlefield would definitely not be available on the negotiation table.
Therefore, the agreement finally reached between the two countries was full of various unequal colonial terms.
For example, the land where Black Coal City and Hongji Coal Mine are located were ceded to the Xinghai State as war reparations. Another example is that the Xinghai State has the power to select three locations along the Cochin coast to build trading ports and station no more than a thousand soldiers as a defense force.
What makes the Zheng regime happy are some of the clauses at the end of the agreement. For example, the Xinghai Kingdom is willing to sell part of its inventory of advanced firearms to the Zheng regime, and at the same time send a team of instructors to provide business guidance to the new army established by the Zheng regime. At the same time, Zheng
The regime can select a thirty-member officer corps to go to the Xinghai Kingdom Army Academy for further training and so on.
In short, although some land was cut off, the Zheng regime felt that it had made a profit.
One is the location of the three new ports, two of which are located within the southern regime. In other words, if the Xinghai Kingdom wants to get these two ports, it must attack the southern regime.
This is tantamount to trying to drive a tiger away from a sheep!
At the same time, Xinghai Kingdom's advanced firearms made Zheng Guoqi and other Zheng family officers extremely jealous.
If the Zheng regime established such a new army equipped with advanced firearms, it would not be difficult to destroy the southern regime.
It can be said that the situation is changing. In the past, the southern government used firecrackers to defeat Zheng's army. But in the future, the situation will be different.
Of course, Xinghai Kingdom's advanced firearms are so expensive that Zheng Guoqi and others tremble in their hearts.
A so-called Thunderbolt 1646 modified rifle actually costs one hundred Xinghai coins, which is one hundred taels of silver. It is said that the firearms sold by the Portuguese to the southern regime only cost thirty-five taels of silver each.
Another Napoleon cannon was priced at a high price of 7,000 yuan!
Well, to be honest, even Tang Xingqiang, who presided over the negotiations, felt a little uneasy when he signed the agreement.
As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he is probably aware of the cost of these firearms.
Due to the use of lathes and other machine tools, the cost of these firearms in Xinghai Kingdom is actually very low.
The thunderbolt 1646 modified rifle with a foreign trade price of 100 yuan has a shorter barrel, so the cost is even lower, only 5 yuan.
The cost of the Napoleon Cannon is only 137 yuan.
Basically, it means that the price of firearms sold by Xinghai Kingdom to the Zheng regime is twenty times the cost!
Black butt inflammation's huge profits!
However, Tang Xingqiang still had a little conscience, so there was another clause in the agreement. If the Zheng regime did not have enough silver to pay for the goods, it could apply for a low-interest loan of no more than two million from the Xinghai State National Bank.
At the same time, resources such as wood, coal, iron, etc., and even prisoners of war, etc. can be used to repay the loan.
It has to be said that both the elders of the Xinghai Kingdom and the senior officials of the Zheng regime felt very satisfied after seeing this clause.
The elders of the Xinghai Kingdom once again expanded the business of the National Bank. They felt that after all, the quality of the National Bank's business was directly related to their shareholder dividends.
Although the senior officials of the Zheng regime felt that the firearms of the Xinghai Kingdom were too expensive, when they saw that they did not need to pay cash and only needed resources such as wood, iron, coal, and prisoners of war to repay the loan, they felt that the people of the Xinghai Kingdom
Too stupid.
These days, what is more important than money?
You know, in the Jiaozhi territory, resources are very abundant. If necessary, just send some people to cut and dig, and it will be like picking up for nothing.
In the past, these things could not be sold at a high price.
After all, the nearby Daming Realm also has these things, and the shipping costs are still lower.
As soon as the agreement was signed, Zheng Guoqi immediately applied for a loan of two million, which can be said to have filled up the loan amount in one go.
Of course, the two million loan does not allow the Zheng regime to spend at will, and must be used to purchase the foreign trade commodities listed by Xinghai Kingdom.
Well, after Tang Xingqiang applied for a loan line from Zheng Guoqi, he immediately handed him a foreign trade commodity category book.
This foreign trade commodity category book is printed on coated paper and contains many exquisite color pages depicting Xinghai Kingdom's current export commodities.