In early August of the thirty-sixth year of Chengshun, the imperial palace of Jinling City in Yingtian Prefecture.

Luo Zhixue held a royal economic meeting that day, mainly to listen to the development of some domestic economic conditions in the first half of this year.

The main thing to listen to is the export situation.

Although for the contemporary Chu Empire, domestic consumption is far more important than exports in order to stimulate economic growth, but exports are still very important.

This is similar to the development of many countries in modern history.

The rise of many industrial countries in modern times relied on export trade. They earned a large amount of profits from other countries through large-scale exports, and then purchased large amounts of industrial raw materials and agricultural products from agricultural countries or colonies and transported them back to the country to maintain the operation of the industrial system and increase growth.

speedily, and by the way, improve the living standards of the domestic people.

For example, the development of Britain and Japan in modern times typically relied on international trade.

It's just that the economic structure of the Dachu Empire was special compared to many modern industrial countries in the original time and space... Although there were exports, which were quite profitable... but the impact on the economy was average. The biggest impact on the economy was domestic consumption.

This is mainly because the consumption power of the Dachu Empire's local market is far from comparable to that of the indigenous countries.

For many industrial products, there is actually no market abroad... They are basically dominated by domestic consumption. The development and growth rate of most industries in the Dachu Empire has never been driven by exports, but by internal

Driven by demand.

With hundreds of millions of people in rural areas and a certain amount of consumption power, coupled with a large urban population with stronger consumption capacity, their demand for various industrial products is massive, far exceeding the consumption capacity of foreign indigenous people.

This was the market that truly drove the rapid development of various industrial products in the Chu Empire.

However, there are exceptions. For example, textiles have a relatively large proportion of exports... After all, clothing, food, housing, and transportation, no matter how poor you are, you have to wear them. At most, the clothes you wear are cheaper or even tattered.

Unfortunately, the textiles of the Da Chu Empire are hard to say, but they have a huge advantage in price...

There is no way, all kinds of textiles in the Dachu Empire are produced by machinery, and the efficiency is hundreds of times that of the handmade homespun cloth of foreign indigenous people. It has a great cost-effective advantage, and the quality is often not bad, or even better.

This is also the reason why the Chu Empire's cloth can be sold all over the world and has gradually entered the market in every corner of the earth. Even in Europe, a large number of Chu Kingdom's machine-made cloth has appeared...

Chu's machine-made cloth sells well all over the world for no other reason than Chu's machine-made cloth is cheap... Especially since the Chu Empire used steam engines extensively and built ocean-going ships with larger tonnage. After the transportation cost further dropped, Chu's various types of cloth

The cost of selling industrial products overseas will further fall.

It is cost-effective. At the same time, even if the purchasing power of the indigenous people is lower, the population of a single country is smaller, but the combined population of many indigenous countries is not a small number. As for the poor spending power... no matter how poor it is, he still has to wear clothes.

For example, India also has a population of hundreds of millions... Even if these hundreds of millions of people are the lowest untouchables with extremely low spending power, they have still become the largest dumping ground for textiles in the Chu Empire, including many other industrial products.

The local handmade textile industry in the Indian Peninsula had long been defeated by the Chu Empire... The local indigenous princes once tried to resist, and even the Mughal Empire also tried to resist, and came up with some trade protection ideas, but they were defeated by the Chu Empire in India.

After the garrison cleaned up a few times and wiped out several indigenous states, they all became honest.

After all, the business of the local handmade textile industry is not in their entire interests, let alone the interests of all of them. The losses of the merchants in the handmade textile industry and the powerful people behind them cannot be borne by all the local indigenous powerful people... let alone

, a considerable number of local indigenous dignitaries are actually the trading agents of the Chu people.

No matter how awesome the Chu people are, it is impossible for him to sell the cloth to every local native with his own hands... The Chu people are actually wholesalers.

Transport the freight to coastal and river ports, and then sell it wholesale to local indigenous merchants.

Local indigenous merchants would transport various goods such as cloth from the Chu people to various places for sale.

And these days, if you want to do this kind of large-scale, very profitable, and hugely influential trade... you can't do it without some strength, so the Chu people's trade agents in indigenous countries are often local dignitaries.

Well, this kind of people make a lot of profits because they do business with the people of Chu, so they will naturally protect the interests of Chu's products.

When some local handicraft groups and the powerful people behind them tried to launch a boycott against the dumping of Chu goods, the Chu people did not need to do it themselves. These compradors sent troops to suppress it first... The armies controlled by these compradors often

It's still all Chu weapons.

After all, they are all business partners of the Chu people. The Chu people often provide them with a large amount of ordnance at relatively favorable prices, and the performance of the ordnance provided is often better... Of course, this is actually the domestic weapons industry.

An important measure to expand overseas markets.

Well, weapons are not guaranteed to be sold just because they are good.

First sell the weapons through the hands of local compradors, and then use the performance advantages or price advantages of the weapons to gradually expand the local weapons market, and finally capture the entire region's weapons market. This is the goal of the overseas arms merchants of the Great Chu Empire.

Consistent strategy...

In the process, it is often necessary to provoke a few wars and so on.

When provoking a war, these arms merchants like to work with merchants from other industries, such as textile merchants, to instigate local resistance to Chu's cloth. It is best to turn it into a riot... and then take the opportunity to have the comprador's troops dispatched to suppress it.

…

It can not only clear out the remaining local handmade textile workshops, but also advertise its own weapons, and then occupy the entire local market, killing multiple birds with one stone.

Then you can take this opportunity to use the excuse of saying how much damage you have suffered, and ask the indigenous country concerned to compensate for the losses, cede some territory, set up a concession, extra-legal jurisdiction, etc... This will in turn attract the attention of the military and the Ministry of Ethics and Education, etc.

Official support.

It’s all beneficial and harmless!

This is also the reason why wars will break out wherever the people of Chu go... The benefits are so touching!

The overseas export of goods is still very important to the Chu Empire, especially for industries such as cloth and weapons that are in urgent need.

Luo Zhixue is quite satisfied with the data reported by the economic department. According to statistics from the Ministry of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs, the export performance in the first two quarters of this year was excellent.

The main export commodities in the first half of this year, such as silk, tea, porcelain, cloth, weapons, and civilian iron products (agricultural tools, kitchen utensils, hardware tools, etc.) have increased to a certain extent.

In addition, the export of some other specialty commodities is also quite good. For example, the export of spices has always been quite high... The Dachu Empire became a spice exporter after controlling the Malay Peninsula, and subsequently controlled the Spice Islands, and even the entire

After Southeast Asia.

Almost the world's supply of spices is controlled by the Da Chu Empire... and the Da Chu Empire not only produces spices in these places, but also promotes the cultivation of various spices in many places in the country through introduction, cultivation, etc.

In fact, it is mainly to meet internal demand, but if the production is large, it can also be exported.

Finally, sugar has become the main export commodity of the Chu Empire in recent years. Edible sugar has always been a bulk and high-priced commodity in the agricultural era.

In order to meet the domestic demand for sugar, the Chu Empire promoted the planting of sugar cane on a large scale in many local areas, especially the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, and used mechanical equipment for sugar production. Later, it also established large-scale sugar cane plantations in overseas territories and obtained a large amount of sugar cane.

sources of table sugar.

The production of edible sugar has continued to increase at a very high rate in the past thirty years. In addition to meeting domestic demand, this edible sugar is also exported in large quantities...

In addition, it is worth noting that the Chu Empire's merchandise exports were almost exclusively industrial products... spices and tea were the exceptions.

But even for tea, the Chu Empire now promotes tea bricks overseas more... Mainly because tea bricks are processed mechanically, which facilitates mass production, are more durable, and are suitable for long-distance transportation.

As for black tea, green tea... In today's world where sealing measures are not very reliable, black tea is better, and the transportation time of a few months is just okay... but green tea is not good. This thing is very unsuitable for sea transportation and can easily become moldy and spoilage.

.

Therefore, the Great Chu Empire exported tea. Except for nearby places such as Fusang, there were very few green tea exports from other places... But this does not mean that green tea was not transported by sea. In fact, there was still a lot, but basically it was

It was shipped to the Chu Empire's own overseas colonies, such as America.

Every year, there are a large number of fast clipper ships that specialize in transporting tea leaves on the Pacific Ocean, in order to quickly transport tea leaves such as green tea and black tea to the Americas as quickly as possible... There is no way, many Chu people themselves

People are accustomed to drinking green tea or black tea. Since there is market demand, there will naturally be businessmen specializing in this.

As for the indigenous people... To be honest, the indigenous people in India, West Asia, and even Europe, people in India and West Asia are used to drinking tea bricks... These are some habits formed in the past few hundred years, and there have been great changes in the past thirty years.

The result of the imperial tea merchants forcing tea bricks.

As for Europeans, they don’t have the habit of drinking tea on a large scale yet. It’s not that they don’t exist, but there are still too few tea drinkers now. The tea agents of the Chu Empire, the Dutch businessmen who mainly promote and sell tea in Europe, are not very good... Chu

The tea association in China has lobbied the imperial high-level officials several times, saying that the European barbarians are dissatisfied with the king's rule, and they hope that the imperial king's army will come to Europe as soon as possible and bring the emperor's favor to the local indigenous people!

Well, for the tea merchants of the Da Chu Empire, Europe is the last market that has not yet been conquered... This is what they see in their eyes, but they are anxious in their hearts!

Niang Xipi, those cloth sellers have all bought the cloth to Europe. Why is no one asking for my tea? This is very unreasonable. The tea merchants of the Da Chu Empire felt that it was necessary to use guns and cannons to change Europe.

The living habits of the indigenous people over there are: You can drink this tea, but you have to drink it if you don't... Otherwise, you look down on me, the Chu Empire, and even the millions of lions in my empire!

This is also a major feature of the contemporary international tea trade in the Dachu Empire: the main focus is forced buying and selling!

Many of the goods exported by the Dachu Empire actually did not follow the usual path...

Those people who sell cloth like to play low-price dumping, drive other handicraft workshops out of business, destroy the local handmade cloth industry and then sell it at high prices... This may seem mild, but they are the real kind of people who eat people without spitting out their bones.

Those people who sell weapons like to provoke wars, and wars will break out wherever they go... They are full-fledged war mongers.

And the group of people selling tea are not a good thing either... because these tea merchants especially like to buy and sell by force...

There is no way, not everyone in every place has the habit of drinking tea. They don't drink tea in the first place, so no one wants your tea when you transport it there.

Although consumption habits can be cultivated, it only takes decades... The tea merchants of Chu State cannot wait so long. They often adopt a simpler method: bundling sales with other products, or simply forcing them with guns and cannons.

The local powerful businessmen purchase tea. If the local powerful businessmen don't want to lose all their money, they have to work hard to sell the tea locally... After this, the habit of drinking tea has almost become.

Anyway, they have done this in Southeast Asia and India before... If the Chu army reaches Europe, they will not mind doing this in Europe.

Businessmen from several countries, such as the Dutch and the British, are too slow to promote tea... The tea businessmen in Chu State can't wait to go into battle to promote tea in person.

For this reason, the Dachu Empire Tea Association stated the importance of opening up the European market to the empire's senior officials several times, and promised with heartfelt promises that once the empire goes to Europe, the thousands of tea company members and countless tea farmer members in their tea association will

I will actively donate...I dare not say how much, but a donation of a few hundred will not be a problem at all.

Thanks to the vigorous development of the merchants of the Da Chu Empire who were engaged in international trade, the commodity exports of the Da Chu Empire have always maintained a relatively high growth rate.

In the past two years, the market development in West Asia, especially the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire, has been relatively successful, so the growth rate has been even greater.

In fact, the relationship between the Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Dynasty was quite good before. Especially in the early years when the Chu Empire first set foot in the Indian Ocean, in order to open up the local market in West Asia, it took a relatively soft route, mainly finding

They came to the Ottoman Empire and Persia and provided them with a lot of military support.
To be continued...