Chapter 276 This is the road of blood, tears and capitalism (please order, please vote)
"Master Luo, do you mean that the Qing Dynasty can export hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers to our country?"
American Minister Ma Shali immediately became interested in Luo Xueyan's proposal to export Chinese workers.
The current United States has a population of just over 31 million, and its land area is only smaller than that of the later world empire, Alaska and Hawaii. Such a huge land can be said to be vast and sparsely populated.
It was originally possible to import some black uncles from Africa to serve as slaves, but in recent years the European powers have tended to be a bit "white left" and have begun to pretend that they are against the slave trade. It is impossible to import black slaves, and even some people in the United States are clamoring all day long.
To abolish slavery, all black slaves in the United States must be freed and sent back to their homeland of Africa.
These are four million black slaves! If we really want to send them all back to Africa, how much less labor will the United States have? Even if they are not sent back, these black slaves will work on the plantations in the south. They are very important to the construction of the United States.
It's not very useful.
Therefore, the United States during this period was relatively welcoming of immigrants. During the Great Irish Famine, the United States introduced more than one million Irish people, which greatly alleviated the domestic labor shortage.
But the more than one million Irish people were simply not enough for a country as big as the United States. They were absorbed by several northeastern states and disappeared. Agriculture in the south remained, but the wilderness of the great west remained inaccessible.
If the United States really wants to abolish slavery in the future and the jobs vacated by four million black slaves return to Africa, it cannot expect the Irish to fill them. How many Irish people are there in total? Many people starved to death from 1845 to 1850!
In addition, the populations of Latin American countries are now very small. Mexico has only 10 million, Brazil has only 8 million, and the populations of other Latin American countries are not worth mentioning. It is almost impossible to rely on Latin Americans to fill the huge labor gap in the United States.
It’s also impossible. Latin American countries are all short of population!
In today's world, it seems that the only countries that can provide the United States with a large amount of cheap labor are the Qing Dynasty and India.
India is a colony of the British Empire, and it is difficult for the United States to poach people.
And the Qing Dynasty had a population of 400 million!
"Mr. Minister," Luo Xueyan had been waiting for the words of the American Minister for a long time. He nodded immediately and said, "The Qing Dynasty is exporting workers to your country every year, but the export channels are not formal. There are many workers going there.
On the way to the United States, the conditions were too bad.
They died because of their inferiority. And after they made money in the United States, it was difficult for them to return to their motherland with their savings. In addition, if they had not become American citizens, they would still be our subjects of the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty did not have an embassy in the United States.
Unable to assist your country in managing them.
All kinds of inconveniences have made it impossible for the Qing Dynasty to export labor to your country. The business has never been able to expand! Mr. Minister, think about it if there were millions of Qing laborers in the United States, developing the western part of the United States and planting crops for farmers in the southern United States.
Cotton, build railroads and mines for the United States, won’t the U.S. economy take off? And will the domestic controversy over the abolition of slavery completely cease to exist in the United States?”
After he said these words, he did not wait for Marsali's reply, but turned to Wenxian and said: "Mr. Wenxian, the reason why you British have been unable to expand the Chinese market in the past ten years is not actually because of our Qing Dynasty.
, but when you are trying to achieve an impossible goal!
I understand what you want me to do? It is nothing more than to hand over the customs to you, allow your opium to be sold on every land that the Qing Dynasty can control, and allow you to enclose land and build concessions on the land of the Qing Dynasty. In the final analysis,
The goal is to export as many goods to China as possible in order to obtain China's silver.
But the problem is that your UK no longer has a gold and silver composite standard. What you implement is a gold standard! After silver flows out of China, it needs to be exchanged for "gold pounds" on the London exchange! And in this world
Who needs silver? That is, China, Japan, North Korea, and Vietnam. Among them, the largest demand is China, which uses silver as its currency.
If China changes from a silver importer to an exporter, the price of silver will plummet due to supply and demand! Even if China exports all the three to four billion ounces of silver in circulation, it will probably not be worth anything. What you are doing is not only unacceptable.
Expanding the Chinese market will actually cause the collapse of the purchasing power of the Chinese market!"
Why is this argument so similar to that of Nanjing's "Luo Angel"? Moreover, the two of them look quite similar.
Wen Xian couldn't help but frown.
"The way to solve this problem is to expand China's imports while allowing silver to continue to flow into China. Only in this way can the value of silver be maintained and China's purchasing power not disappear!" Luo Xueyan paused and added, "
Moreover, the inflow of silver must be sustainable and not in the form of debt. Otherwise, the Qing Dynasty will only fall into a debt crisis and sooner or later it will be bankrupt and liquidated!"
In fact, in history, the Qing Dynasty has been operating in debt in the last few years. When the Qing Dynasty collapsed, the debt owed to various countries was no less than 2 billion taels, including principal and interest.
Considering the amount of silver in circulation in the Qing Dynasty at that time, it was impossible to repay this debt. Regardless of how many billions of taels of tax revenue there were in the year before the Qing Dynasty was ended, once the debt was paid off, the domestic liquidity of the Qing Dynasty would immediately dry up.
.
Moreover, these liabilities are all mortgaged. Customs duties, salt taxes, railways, mines, and all projects that can generate sustained and stable cash flow are almost all mortgaged.
In addition, the customs of the Qing Dynasty had long been under the control of foreigners, and the financial sovereignty of the Qing Dynasty was also controlled by foreigners. HSBC actually played the role of the central bank of the Qing Dynasty!
And all foreign banks had the right to issue banknotes in the Qing Dynasty! Even the banknotes issued by these foreign banks had better credit than the banknotes issued by the Qing's own banks.
In fact, the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent troubled times were a catastrophic national bankruptcy and liquidation.
At the end of the liquidation, the wealth accumulated from hundreds of years of trade surplus was almost wiped out. The currency issued by the state became waste paper. Industry and commerce that lost its effective currency could not create wealth at all. The country still had huge debts that could not be repaid. The only country with
The only valuable assets left are farmland
"Master Luo, I kind of understand what you mean," Wen Xian touched his chin and frowned, "Do you want your compatriots to work as coolies across the ocean in exchange for remittances to maintain the inflow of silver? ?』
Luo Xueyan spread his hands: "Mr. Minister, is there any other way? This country has a lot of people but little money. If you want to expand the Chinese market, you must give China's surplus population a way to work and make money. It happens to be needed in Southeast Asia and America. Labor force, why not let the Qing Dynasty export a large number of Chinese workers? As long as the Chinese workers can work in the Americas and Southeast Asia for a few years and return home with silver, a cycle of silver import and export will be formed, the value of silver will be maintained, and we can buy a large amount of British goods. ah!
Mr. Marsali, Mr. Bourblon, tell me, is this true?"
What Luo Xueyan wants to take now is actually a capitalist road full of blood and tears!
Capitalism must have capital! Without capital, there will be no ideas!
And if you want to have capital, you have to keep the price of silver from collapsing. Because today China still has a stock of billions of taels of silver, and this silver is still worth hundreds of millions of pounds. This was the "gold pound" in the 1850s, but It’s valuable!
Enough for China to launch an industrial revolution!
If the price ratio between silver and gold collapses, then these hundreds of millions of pounds of capital may become tens of millions of pounds. There will be no capitalism.
If China wants to import a large amount of Western machines and technologies to industrialize, and at the same time import a large amount of weapons and equipment to build a new army to defend industrialization, it is necessary to maintain the circulation of silver. It is best to maintain a net inflow of silver, at least. A small amount of net outflow should be maintained.
U.S. Minister Marsali was the first to express his approval of Luo Xueyan’s proposal: “I think Mr. Luo’s proposal is feasible! If there were one million Chinese workers engaged in manual labor in various countries in the Americas, each person would remit an average of 20 yuan a year. Two taels of silver, that’s twenty million taels! And the average value each of them creates for the host country is at least one hundred taels. This is a sustainable method that benefits everyone. The United States supports it in principle!”
French Minister Bourblon shrugged: "France has always been a friend of the Qing Dynasty. Although we do not need foreign labor, we have no reason to prevent poor Chinese who have enough to eat from going abroad to work as coolies! If so, it would be too inhumane. !Sall, what do you think?"
Wen Xian nodded slightly, but his brows did not loosen: "Mr. Luo, in the long run, your method is feasible. We can also discuss relevant treaties to regulate labor export, return, remittances and many other aspects. But at the moment .The British Empire still needs you to take effective measures to open the market and fulfill your obligations under the Treaty of Nanjing!
Considering the current situation, you'd better make concessions as soon as possible! Otherwise, I don't rule out the Taiping Rebellion getting more weapons and equipment from the West!"
well!
Luo Xueyan sighed: It seems that a devil of mass destruction is really useful!
Chapter completed!