In King Ning's palace in Anning City, Ning State, King Ning was discussing the development of Ning State with his ministers.
"Your Highness, the price of cotton has dropped by nearly 20%, and the price of sucrose has also dropped by 10%. In addition, the number of slaves we handle in Ningguo this year has been cut in half, which is less than half of last year."
"It is estimated that our Ningguo's treasury tax revenue will drop by at least 30% this year."
Liu Yangzheng, the left prime minister of Ning Kingdom, reluctantly reported bad news to King Ning.
Nowadays, the competition is becoming more and more fierce, especially in cotton, cane sugar, tea, and spices, and the prices are getting lower and lower.
"I know that the prices of cotton and sucrose have dropped. Why has the number of slaves been cut in half?"
When Prince Ning heard this, he frowned and asked.
"Your Highness, the main reason is that the former important slave-producing area of Eastern Europe has now been included in the territory of the Ming Dynasty and has become the Black Earth Province of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, it has lost an important source of slaves. In addition, the Ottoman Empire has become stronger since it was dealt with by the Ming Dynasty.
Less, it is no longer able to plunder slaves from Europe."
"As for us in the Ning Kingdom, our main source of slaves has always been to purchase slaves from the Ottoman Empire's army. This has had a huge impact on us and directly led to the decrease in the supply of slaves in our hands."
"Now the largest sources of slaves are Africa and Western Europe. The main slave traders are the Japanese countries. They plundered slaves wantonly in Western Europe and became the main slave supplier."
"But we have no involvement in this business. It is mainly monopolized by Tianjin Ocean Trading House, Sihai Trading House and other large Ming Dynasty trading houses."
Liu Yangzheng explained quickly.
"It's not okay to keep going like this. In the past two years, our Ningguo's tax revenue has been getting less and less. Now even the basic slave trade has declined seriously. If this continues, we will all have to drink from the northwest wind."
After hearing this, Prince Ning frowned.
"These colonies and vassal states are now engaged in plantation economy. Cotton, sugar cane, spices, and tea are grown everywhere. Animal husbandry is also practiced on a large scale in many places, which has led to the price of cotton, wool, cane sugar, and tea.
lower and lower."
"But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty has a vast territory, a large population, rich products, and its production capacity is getting higher and higher."
"In terms of food, there is now so much food in the Ming Dynasty that it is impossible to eat it all, and the price is extremely low. The food produced in the newly added Black Earth Province alone is enough to feed the entire Ming Dynasty for several years."
"A large amount of grain was dumped to Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The price was cheaper than what they produced locally and the quality was high. There was no competition at all."
"They use a lot of mechanized farming, and one person can cultivate thousands of acres of land. In other parts of the world, a farmer can only cultivate dozens of acres of land at most. This is already extreme."
"The price of basic agricultural products, grain, cotton, wool, tea, spices, etc. is expected to drop in the future. It is impossible to even think about selling at a high price. There is a surplus of grain production in various places."
"Your Highness, I think we must learn from the Ming Dynasty and the South African colonies and develop industry and processing industry. Otherwise, in the long run, our lives will only become more and more difficult."
Liu Yangzheng put forward the idea of developing industry. Basic agriculture was getting worse and worse. Even if the output could not match that of the Ming Dynasty, other colonies and vassal states were also constantly competing.
"But developing industry requires a huge amount of capital and requires certain infrastructure."
Li Shishi stood up and said: "Take a steel plant as an example. Investing in the construction of a steel plant will require at least tens of millions of taels of silver, and it will also require large-scale iron ores to meet the needs of the steel plant."
"Although our national treasury in Ningguo is still full now, if we continue to invest like this, we will soon be stretched. Moreover, these large-scale technology-based industries require a large number of talents, especially new talents. Only they understand
How to better smelt steel, manufacture machinery, etc."
"We in Ningguo simply don't have such talents. Even if there are a large number of textile factories in Ningguo now, once there is a problem with the machines, they still need to find maintenance personnel from Daming to repair them."
"Also, His Highness has always wanted to build a railway from Anning City to Delhi. This railway is very long. It is expected that at least 1 billion taels of silver will be invested in it, and the required steel, trains, technicians, workers, etc. will all need to be built from
If we come here from Ming Dynasty, our expenses may be even more."
At this point, Li Shishi also stopped. Railways have always been a pain in Prince Ning's heart.
Railway construction in the Ming Dynasty was booming, one after another, as if it was free of charge. It is said that even the railway to Sichuan is expected to be completed soon.
On his side, he just wanted to build a railway from Anning City to Delhi to strengthen the control and transportation of various places in Western Tianzhu. However, after calculating the cost, Prince Ning was hesitant to start construction of this railway.
.
Prince Ning is indeed very rich now. Years of slave trade and massive plunder from the Ning Kingdom have made Prince Ning worth hundreds of millions of taels of silver.
The palace of King Ning was built extremely luxuriously, with emeralds, jade, pearls, agates, corals, etc., because they were all available, and the decorations were extremely splendid.
From being in a state of poverty when he left the Ming Dynasty and needing to borrow money to live, to now being the richest in the world, with a huge wealth of hundreds of millions of taels of silver, and having conquered the huge Ning Kingdom, King Ning can be said to be very successful.
However, just like that, King Ning also valued the money on hand very seriously and was reluctant to spend it easily. A large amount of money was hoarded by King Ning in his treasury. He even believed that
The First Bank of the Ming Dynasty did not deposit money in the bank.
Now you say that building a railway requires more than 1 billion taels of white clouds to be spent at one time. It may not be enough even if you have to pay for it yourself. You also need to borrow external debts. Naturally, Prince Ning will not do it.
Prince Ning had had enough of the days of being without money, and he no longer wanted to be borrowed money from anyone.
If you have money, just build it. If you don't have money, just pull it down. Anyway, according to Ning Guo's notice, this railway is not a necessity. If it is really not feasible, then build a highway first.
Building roads is relatively cheaper. Cement, sand, labor, etc. are all cheap.
"One billion taels of silver~"
When Prince Ning heard this, he couldn't help but twitch in his heart.
"If only I had bought shares in the Egyptian Canal. With this investment alone, I would have had 300 million taels of silver. If I gritted my teeth, I would have had the money to build this railway."
"It would have been better if I had listened to people's advice and used my money to buy various stocks in Ming Dynasty. Now I can easily multiply it several times, and I have money to build railways."
Thinking of this, Prince Ning's intestines turned green with regret.
King Ning has always been a very traditional King Ning, who doesn’t believe in banks, let alone stocks. Of course, the shares of the Egyptian Canal were not taken by King Ning because they were too few at the beginning, so he did not invest in them on a large scale.
He only invested a small amount, and most of the money was left in the treasury and became a lump of iron.
Who would have known that the Egyptian Canal stock has soared and become more and more valuable. Over the years, it is now worth more than 300 taels of silver per share. If the original 1 million shares were purchased, it would be worth 300 million taels of silver.
Now the development of Ningguo has become slow, mainly because of Prince Ning's reluctance to invest. Now that he has money, he just wants to bury it in the cellar.
Instead of using it to invest in building roads, railways, setting up factories, etc., naturally, if this money cannot be used to make money, it will also lead to deflation in Ningguo, and the money on the market will gradually decrease, which will affect the economy.
develop.
"Industry still needs to be developed. First build some steel plants, cement plants, glass plants, etc., and try to achieve self-sufficiency in these things as much as possible. If everything needs to be imported, the price will be expensive, and the quantity cannot satisfy our own needs.
needs.”
Prince Ning thought about it, and after thinking about it, he still felt that what Liu Yangzheng said made sense.
Nowadays, the competition for basic raw materials is becoming more and more fierce. The people of Ming Dynasty are extremely diligent and spread all over the world. They continue to develop in various places. The output of grain, cotton, cane sugar, tea, spices, etc. is also constantly growing. Everyone is
After working hard to grow and sell these things, the prices will naturally become lower and lower.
Only those industrial industries are still very expensive.
Things like cars, motorcycles, bicycles, steel, ships, machinery, etc. are getting more expensive year by year. Even though they are expensive, they are still very easy to sell. If you have money, you have to queue up to buy them.
It’s just that Liu Yangzheng and Ning Wang’s idea of developing industry is a good one, but they have ignored one thing. Industry is based on new learning. Without a large number of new learning talents, how can you build cars and motorcycles?
Big ships, machinery, things like that?
Even if it can be made, there is no way to guarantee the quality, let alone compete with products from Daming and South Africa.
"Your Highness, Liu Da, the son of Liu Jin, the chief minister of the Ming Dynasty cabinet, wants to see you~"
At this time, a eunuch came to King Ning and reported to him.
"Liu Jin's son?"
When Prince Ning heard this, he was slightly surprised.
PS: Do you think it is feasible to develop industry in overseas colonies?
