What's more important is that after dumping at such a low price, even if freight and other expenses are added, Datang Western Trading Company still makes a profit in the cloth business, and the profit is not small.
This is because the production cost of cotton cloth in the Tang Empire was very low. After a large number of mechanical equipment, especially steam engine power, was used in factories, the manufacturing cost of cotton cloth, a typical light industrial product, became extremely cheap.
The cost of cloth purchased by Datang Western Trading Company from China is low, so naturally it can be bought cheaper in India.
What's even more interesting is that Datang Western Trading Company does not always conduct low-price dumping in a certain area.
The early low-price dumping was to compete for the market and crowd out the local cloth industry. After the local handmade cloth industry was finished, Datang Western Trading Company would slowly increase prices, and finally increase them to a reasonable level.
After all, Datang Western Trading Company is here to make money, not to do charity. It has always been dumping goods at such a low price so that local people, even paupers, can afford to wear clothes. This is not the original intention of Datang Western Trading Company.
Maximizing profits has always been the pursuit of Datang Western Trading Company!
Relying on industrialized mass production to reduce costs is an obvious feature of the current industrial development of the Tang Empire.
This is why cotton cloth seems to have little technical content on the surface, but the cotton cloth of the Tang Dynasty is able to kill the home-made cotton cloth of other countries.
And this advantage cannot be imitated by other countries!
Therefore, it is not that the Portuguese have not thought about imitating some products of Datang in recent years, but they are unable to do so.
However, they still imitated a lot of things that did not require industrial technology and relied on manual production by craftsmen. Tang Ship is a typical example.
The Portuguese began to imitate and build Tang Dynasty ships very early. At first, they were only built on a small scale in Malacca. They were mainly used for merchant ships, but they were soon also applied to the field of warships. Later, this shipbuilding technology was also brought to other countries by the Portuguese.
local or even their own country.
After all, the Portuguese were not stupid. They discovered Tang ships, which were much better than the previous Kara ships, and compared with Galen ships, they also had their own merits.
The difference between Tang ships and Galen ships is generally that Tang ships are faster and have better seaworthiness, but at the same tonnage, their cargo capacity is less than that of Galen ships.
In addition, the Tang ship has an advantage that the Galen ship does not have, that is, the Tang ship's hull is more suitable for deploying artillery and has better anti-sinkability. This performance is extremely important for warships, even for contemporary ocean-going merchant ships.
It is also very important, because even merchant ships are all armed these days, and they also carry a large number of naval guns.
After all, the Tang Ship was originally designed as a warship, and later it was improved and used as a merchant ship.
Because compared with other sailboats of the same era, Tang ships are more suitable for deploying artillery and are more suitable for combat.
After the Tang boats were imitated by the Portuguese in Malacca, they gradually entered Europe. Now the Portuguese are building ships in their own country and have also begun to build some Tang boats.
So today in Malacca, the commander of the Indian Ocean Fleet, Admiral Chen Pengming, could see a large number of Tang Dynasty ships in the port of Malacca, many of which were warships.
However, although the Portuguese also used many Tang ships as warships, Admiral Chen Pengming did not have any unnecessary worries.
If it was in the age of sails, he might still be worried. After all, Tang ship-type warships are more suitable for combat than Galen ships and Krat ships. But now, it is already the steam age.
The pure style battleship is completely outdated!
In the internal exercises of the Tang Dynasty Navy, a steam cruiser was created to use steam power to continuously maneuver and seize the wind direction, and finally defeated a small fleet composed of two sail battleships!!
Although the original exercise was not a live-fire exercise, it was just a simulation exercise, and the results of the exercise were highly contingency, it is undeniable that a battleship equipped with a steam engine is completely superior to a pure sail in terms of maneuverability.
Of battleship.
What's more, the Tang Navy also had an advantage in ammunition, and that was grenades!
The Tang Dynasty has been using grenades for many years. Not to mention the grenades with external fuses in the early years, and the grenades with built-in fuses, after so many years of development, they have already matured and are commonly equipped with the entire army. They are basically equipped with the entire army.
Artillery pieces weighing more than five kilograms can now use grenades with built-in fuzes.
The lethality of grenades to sail battleships is huge!
The explosive power of the grenade can not only effectively kill the personnel on the enemy ship, but also effectively destroy the superstructure of the enemy ship, especially the mast and sail!
Sometimes, if you are lucky, a large-caliber grenade hits the enemy ship, which can basically destroy the enemy's sail and turn the enemy ship into a dead fish that can only float on the sea!
Moreover, some large-caliber grenades and the huge kinetic energy brought by huge artillery shells can also penetrate the enemy's wooden hull and then explode deep into the enemy's ship. Such explosions are very deadly.
This is why the Tang Navy installed wrought iron armor belts on new warships.
It is because grenades are too lethal to wooden warships, and adding a layer of wrought iron to the hull can effectively resist grenade attacks.
In addition, the steel armor belt not only has an excellent defensive effect against grenades, but also has a very good defensive effect against solid bullets!
With the development of technology, the Tang Navy believed that steel armor belts were very necessary!
After all, grenades are not a patent of Datang. After all, this thing cannot be kept very secret. The grenade with built-in fuze is fine. It is more difficult to produce this thing manually, but the grenade with external fuze is basically
There are no technical difficulties anymore.
The Portuguese were also equipped with this kind of externally fuzed grenades early on, and used them exclusively on their sixty-four-pound and other large-caliber mortars.
Although this kind of mortar doesn't look very good, it actually poses a great threat to the wooden warships of the Tang Dynasty Navy.
During the rise of the Tang Empire, although a strict technological blockade was implemented, to this day, the export of any mechanical equipment, high-precision industrial products, especially various types of machine tools and steam engines is strictly prohibited.
Not only is export not allowed, even overseas territories under the control of Datang are not allowed to be purchased and used.
The most famous of them is the factory ban and the education ban.
So far, the Tang Empire still prohibits the establishment of educational institutions above secondary schools in overseas territories, and prohibits the private establishment of any type of factories. If you want to build factories in overseas territories and order machinery and equipment from China, you must apply to the Import and Export Committee.
And get approval, otherwise Duan, even if he purchases machinery and equipment, will not be able to leave customs.
In fact, the Import and Export Committee has never approved any such application!
However, even though the Tang Empire established such a strict technology blockade system, it was still difficult to completely prevent technology leakage.
Whether it is the Portuguese, the Tatars, or even the Spanish, they can more or less obtain some of the technologies of the Tang Empire through some illegal channels or even legal channels.
For example, the Tatars sent spies and openly purchased almost a complete set of textbooks in the hinterland of the Tang Dynasty, ranging from primary school to preparatory level. There were even some university textbooks circulated through private channels and illegally.
Channels, such as kidnapping, directly kidnap some technical craftsmen and then secretly transport them back to the Tatar-controlled areas. In the early years, the Gansu Ammunition Factory under the Northern Arms Company had more than ten technicians at one time
Missing, the local patrol station was unable to solve the case. Later, after Hantong accepted the case, he quickly found out the truth.
These more than ten unlucky technicians were kidnapped by the Tatars, and they were all taken out of Jiayuguan and into the Tatar-controlled area.
After all, the border between the northwest and the north was so long. Datang could block large caravans if it wanted to, but it was absolutely impossible to block a small number of people from crossing the border.
What's interesting is that the main purpose of the Tatars' various stealing techniques is to make guns and cannons, and the results are there. At least now the Tatars can make guns and cannons, although they still make matchlocks and cannons.
Early artillery could only be produced by hand.
But at least the problem has been solved.
Relying on their self-produced guns and combined with their own huge cavalry advantage, the Tatars were almost invincible in Central Asia. They successively destroyed the Yarkand Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, and are now fighting against Timur.
The war between the dynasties was lively, and according to rumors, they had already made contact with the Safavid dynasty farther west.
Of course, this kind of contact is not a good one!
The Tatars' Western Expedition was never about visiting other people's homes, they were going to rob other people's homes!
In recent years, the Tatars have been at war with neighboring countries almost every year, and they have expanded very quickly. Although they have the advantage of having huge cavalry, this is also due to the fact that they have obtained guns and cannons from the Tang Empire.
Technology has a certain relationship.
Cavalry is naturally good at fighting in the wild. Even the Army of the Tang Dynasty was afraid of the Tatar cavalry army of hundreds of thousands!
But they can't conquer the cities of Central Asian countries with cavalry alone!
When they attacked the city, they also used guns and cannons!