Chapter 281: The Japanese Return to Japan (13) Lessons from the Past
"There are more than a thousand taels of silver and three hundred thousand taels of gold." At that time, the West had not yet entered the Age of Discovery, and the profits from maritime trade were already so amazing. It was precisely because of the huge profits from overseas trade since the Tang and Song Dynasties that Zhu Di followed
After taking power, he rebuilt the Shipping Department, which had been weakened by Japanese pirates, and established a relatively complete overseas trade management system.
After everything was ready, the Ming court used Zheng He as its envoy to lead a fleet of ships to shuttle between countries, carrying out official trade under the banner of rewards, and opening up an economy for the Ming Dynasty, which was in dire straits after the "Jing Rebellion".
Blood transfusion artery. By selling high-end Chinese products such as porcelain and silk overseas, the Ming Dynasty made huge profits from the price difference of goods.
The main goods purchased by Zheng He's fleet and brought back home were pepper and sappan wood. According to the "Yingya Scenic Views", the price of pepper in Sumatra, where it was produced, was only 0.01 taels per catty. According to the "Ming Huidian" records,
The domestic market value of pepper during the Hongwu period reached 0.2 taels per catty, and the price difference was ten times that of the place of origin!
Pepper does not take up much space, so even if freight is included, the profit is very considerable. Who can say that the upper management of the Ming Dynasty simply thought of "satisfying their own extravagant desires" and ignored this huge profit margin?
This hugely profitable idea was only possible because of Zheng He's voyages to the West.
It can be seen that Zheng He's voyages to the Western Seas were not just a loss-making purpose of "not making ends meet", but actually brought huge wealth to the Ming Dynasty.
Yan Congjian expressed the "multi-win" effect of the voyages to the West in his "Special Records of the Zhou Dynasty": "Since Yongle changed the Yuan Dynasty, envoys were sent out in four places, and they recruited people from all over the world. They made great contributions. Rare goods and valuable treasures.
The hopes of the previous generations filled the treasury and the market. If the poor people accepted the orders and bought more, they might become rich, and the state would also be rich." The benefits of the Western voyages to the economy and national finances can be seen here.
More importantly, Zheng He's voyages not only directly brought huge benefits to the court, but also brought considerable economic spillover effects to local areas, driving the development of many local economies.
Take Taicang Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, the starting point of Zheng He's voyages to the West, as an example - "Since the beginning of Yongle, He and others have been envoys to various groups, and they have been envoys for seven times. Each time, he commanded tens of thousands of officers and soldiers, and more than a hundred sea-going ships, and sailed from Taicang."
According to the records in the "Tongfan Deeds Record" written by Zheng He, all seven of Zheng He's voyages to the West departed from Liujiagang in Taicang, and each time he used Liujiagang as the docking place for his return voyage.
Zheng He's mission not only brought back rare treasures and special products from Western countries, but also welcomed batches of foreign missions and exported a large amount of Chinese products to countries all over the world.
In this way, Liujiagang in Taicang was not only an important port on the southeast coast, but also became the base for the Ming Dynasty's foreign exchanges. People in the Ming Dynasty praised its grand occasion and said: "In this year of peace in Yongle, no one dares to refuse at home and abroad.
, Nine barbarians and hundreds of tribes will pay tribute, and the roads will follow each other. There will be big ships, and ships will come one after another. The grand plan for Taicang's restoration."
Later, the Qing Dynasty people traced its prosperity and said: "At that time, there was an endless stream of Western tribute ships. They were so pleased with its convenience that it was called the No. 1 wharf in the world. All kinds of rare treasures from all over the world were collected there."
It was not just Taicang that benefited from the voyage to the West. In fact, within the territory of the Ming Dynasty, the economy of many places in Jiangnan and even Lingnan was rapidly affected by the driving effect of the voyage to the West.
For example, at that time, Foshan changed from an "isolated village cast iron" to a commercial commodity. The price of daily necessities that needed to be imported from abroad dropped from luxury jewelry to daily necessities. Since the Yongle Dynasty, the maritime ban policy was adhered to during the Zhu Yuanzhang period.
During the Ming Dynasty, within just ten years, the economic prosperity of the southeast quickly emerged, and Zheng He's voyages to the West obviously contributed a lot.
From all this, Gao Pragmatic came to a very clear conclusion: the Ming Dynasty gained huge wealth through Zheng He's official trade to the West.
So the question is, since it has gained a lot of wealth and promoted the development of related regions and related industries, how did it become unsustainable later?
In fact, it is not difficult to answer this question, especially for Gao Pragmatic, who has experienced the era of state-owned enterprise restructuring in the Red Dynasty, this question is simply a scoring question.
Zheng He's voyages to the West were an official monopoly operation, which did not respect economic laws at all. It meant that the royal family monopolized the profits from overseas trade, and did not give private merchants and powerful nobles the opportunity to share the pie.
Coupled with the inability to correctly deal with the glut of goods caused by overseas trade, the emperor simply and rudely adopted the "salary reduction" method. As a result, the court officials not only failed to benefit from overseas trade, but suffered losses as a result. In this way, it is different.
The uneven distribution among class interest groups eventually led to Zheng He's voyages to the West being vilified as an act of "wasting people and ruining wealth" until it ceased?
Gao Pragmatic believes that there are roughly three important points in this issue:
In particular, the trade gains brought by Zheng He's voyages mainly benefited the royal family, but had an impact on private planning.
Judging from the goods brought back by Zheng He's fleet, most of them were luxury goods such as sappan wood and pepper. These materials can basically only be consumed and played by the upper class, and it is difficult to have direct investment and output.
This is the reason why Liu Daxia, who was still working as a driver during the Xuanzong period, dared to openly question Zheng He's voyages to the West: "Three guarantees, the voyages to the West cost hundreds of thousands of money and food, and thousands of soldiers and civilians died. How can I get a rare treasure? How does it matter to the country?"
beneficial?"
In addition, Zheng He's voyages to the West had a great social impact. Because a large amount of silver and gold flowed to the Ming Dynasty through trade surplus, while solving China's shortage of precious metals since the Tang and Song Dynasties, it also caused the currency to depreciate by nearly 30% during the Yongle period.
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At the same time, due to the heavy shipbuilding tasks, a large number of shipbuilding households in the southern shipbuilding areas fled. The number of shipbuilding households in the Nanjing area even dropped by more than three-quarters, which affected social planning to a certain extent - before
It is said that the craftsman expenditure of Gao pragmatic shipbuilding was much higher than that of Zhu Di, and it can be proved from this.
Similarly, this is the reason why during the Xuanzong period when the expedition to the West was stopped, the imperial court issued an edict to "stop all purchases of comprador objects and building materials for ships, wood, plants, etc."
The oppression and harm are great.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! In particular, the official overseas trade system of the Ming Dynasty greatly inhibited and affected the opportunities for private maritime merchants and powerful nobles to profit from overseas trade, making them determined due to uneven distribution.
Oppose the voyages to the West.
The official policy of exclusive overseas trade adopted by the Ming Dynasty at that time was very disrespectful of economic laws. Not only was it incompatible with the Song Dynasty's encouragement of private overseas trade, it was also incompatible with the "official-owned ship" system of official-private partnership that was criticized by later generations during the Yuan Dynasty.
Not as good as anything.
In any case, is "official-owned ship" better? Or is it a state-monopoly mixed operation system of public-private partnership, in which the government pays the capital and ships the ship, hires private maritime agents to operate it, and the profits are split 70-70 between the government and private parties, more or less
There are still some traces of "market economy" in it.
However, the monopoly management system of the Ming Dynasty was tantamount to "eating alone". While it made a lot of money, it harmed the interests of the vast number of maritime merchants and the powerful aristocrats who tried to get a share of the pie. Not only did it suffer
Their resolute resistance also allowed private practices to spread among the people.
Of course, these social classes whose interests were harmed would not sit still and wait for death, so they used various means to oppose the Western Movement, and thus formed a strong community of interests. As mentioned in the first volume of this book, Xu Jie once commanded his family to directly
Participate in maritime private affairs.
At that time, the coastal border defense had reached the sensational stage of "the guard dare not ask questions, the garrison could not stop, and the public law had been deceived for hundreds of years."
As a result, a lot of tariffs were lost.
It was under this circumstance that Gao Gong felt that instead of doing this, it would be better to announce the liberalization of overseas trade management rights, which is the so-called "listen to maritime trade and levy taxes". This would at least protect tariffs.
Under such a collusion of interests, even if the emperor issued repeated orders to request a maritime ban, he could only face the civil officials' unreasonable disobedience. Therefore, Zheng He's voyages to the West were actually to protect the official monopoly of maritime foreign trade from other parties.
An act that is obstructed by powerful forces will of course be strongly opposed by the civil service group and the interest groups behind it.
Thirdly, in response to the falling commodity prices caused by excess imports, the imperial court resorted to internal dumping to "discount salaries", which aggravated the resentment and disgust of imperial officials towards the Western voyages.
Since the voyages to the West were government-run trade, its planned business model and the inefficiencies brought about by bureaucratic management inevitably led to it eventually entering a dead end of economic laws.
For example, as a large amount of pepper flooded the market, the price of pepper continued to fall. In just two years, by the fifth year of Yongle, the price of domestic pepper in the Ming Dynasty had dropped by 0.1 liang/jin, to half of that in the Hongwu period.
As a result, profit margins have shrunk significantly, the market is approaching saturation, and pepper and sappan wood are piling up in the royal warehouse.
In order to solve the pepper backlog problem and not want to reduce profits, starting from the fifth year of Yongle, the Ming court used "rewards" and "salary discounts" to distribute sumac and pepper as bonuses or wages to lower-level officials, and even
?They were upper-level civil and military officials. What’s more, during the distribution process, the imperial court refused to sell them to officials at all levels at low prices.
In the 10th year of Yongle, when the market value of pepper was already lower than 0.1 taels/catty, the salary discount was still at the price of 0.2 taels/catty in the Hongwu period. This was too cruel. You must know that the original salary of the Ming court was
The practice of reducing wages, pepper, and sumac, which was the lowest in history, was tantamount to further deprivation of wages. Officials dared to get angry but did not dare to pay, so they all used Zheng He's voyages as an excuse to cut wages.
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In this way, under the criticism of many officials, Zheng He's heroic voyage to the West instantly became a "waste of people and money". In the first year of Zhengtong, the cabinet ordered Wang Jinghong, the garrison eunuch of Nanjing, in the name of the young Yingzong to stop
Stop purchasing and building, the Western trade in the early Ming Dynasty? This has just officially come to an end.
However, a "funny" thing happened immediately. What the imperial officials did not expect was that the voyages to the West, which "wasted people and money", did not stop. Even though the imperial court spent a lot of money, there was no financial pressure. But when the voyages to the West came to an end,
During the Xuande period, Huang Fu, the minister of the Ministry of Finance, complained endlessly: the national treasury was empty, and "how can the levy be used to help" everywhere. This also illustrates from one aspect that the voyage to the West can bring huge benefits to the national treasury.
Having said this, it can be fully explained why Gao Pragmatic has to bring a large number of people together to engage in sea trade. On the surface, Jinghua's main "partner" is the Xungui Group, but secretly there are many other members of Gao Pragmatic.
Officials from the Practical School who "hold equity on behalf of others" have been involved for many years.
According to a highly pragmatic point of view, the more important figures involved, not only will the pressure they face in the DPRK be smaller, but also because these people do not run factories or farms, but only purchase goods in their hometowns or within their sphere of influence.
It can strongly stimulate local economic development.
Therefore, Gao pragmatically never goes it alone in the field of maritime trade. Even Jiangnan nobles, chaebols, and maritime merchants can also join Jinghua's caravan and sail together (but as mentioned before, Jinghua has to charge a certain percentage of escort fees).
What is his purpose in doing this? Naturally, it is to make sea trade benefit a wider range of people, so that more people can see the benefits of sea trade and be benignly affected by sea trade, thereby stimulating trade and revitalizing the economy.
This set of methods is very pragmatic and very familiar. The Red Dynasty economy has developed from the hard-working "three to one supplement" in the early stage of reform to a global manufacturing center in the later stage, with 41 industrial categories listed in the United Nations Industrial Classification, 207
Among the 666 industrial sub-categories and 666 industrial sub-categories, only Hongchao owns all industrial categories and is truly the world's only "full industry chain" industrial hegemon.
This development process throughout his previous life obviously had a huge impact on him, so he also engaged in various industries in the Ming Dynasty according to the resource endowments of various places.
Why?
Because in Gao Pragmatic's view, the title "Industrial Overlord" is naturally tailor-made for China!
Regardless of innate conditions such as geomorphology and resource endowment, or acquired conditions such as the tradition of big government, the influence of Confucian authoritative political thought, and the people's highly secular thinking (that is, they despise God and value people, compared to the influence of religious thinking)... you're welcome.
If China is not an industrial hegemon, then history has gone astray.
But here it comes back to the point: if the emperor now wants to recruit the inner court to build a royal fleet, and not to build a navy, but to engage in maritime trade, then this matter is highly questionable.
The royal family of the Ming Dynasty has a criminal record in this matter. If Gao Pragmatic does not object clearly, then as he just said, it is better to resign immediately and go home to retire.
Going home to retire can at least keep his reputation for the rest of his life by relying on his achievements in the "first half of his life", but if he helps the emperor establish a monopoly on the royal family's sea trade, then the words "infamous for eternity" will basically be reserved in advance by someone higher than him.
It's okay to be infamy for thousands of years, but the problem is that it is definitely impossible to do it this way, and it will do great harm to the people. This is similar to Chongzhen's layoffs in order to save some civil servants' wages, and the result is that Li Zicheng was laid off.
Liu Ping saw Gao Pingshi's solemn and determined expression, and knew that this matter was going to be a big trouble. But he also knew that the emperor had high hopes for this matter, and if he went back to report it like this, his future would be very bad.
With no choice, Liu Ping stood up with a grimace and bowed profusely: "Mr. Ge, save me! Mr. Ge, if I go back and tell the emperor like this, I'm afraid I won't even be able to save my uncle's face... Mr. Ge
, Mr. Pavilion, I beg you to always give me some advice for my uncle’s sake. In the next life, my slave will wear a grass ring and repay your kindness to Mr. Pavilion!”
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