Chapter 288 Economy and Party Struggle (10) Industrial Clusters
Gao Pragmatic has not paid attention to the situation in the harem for some time. After all, in his view, now that the battle over the country has ended, the position of the prince has been determined, and the original turmoil surrounding this matter has passed. In the future,
Within the time limit, as long as it is ensured that no one dares to make any life-threatening plot against the prince himself, then there is no need to pay too much attention.
Therefore, after he quietly arranged the defense of Kunning Palace some time ago, he almost stopped focusing on the harem. Naturally, he knew nothing about the subtle changes that had taken place in the harem.
At this moment, he has made a decision. Anyway, the impeachment storm will take some time to pass, so why not take this opportunity to stay behind closed doors and deal with the internal matters about Jinghua that have been accumulated some time ago.
It seemed like there was nothing we could do about it. Ever since Liu Xin went south, there had been too much backlog of these things, and it seemed that things would get messed up if they didn't sort them out carefully.
He first looked at various industry reports. The departments with better performance seemed to be oriented to the internal market, including Jinghua Bank, Jinghua Infrastructure, Jinghua Mining, Jinghua Machinery, Jinghua Textile and Jinghua Ordnance Industry, etc.; those that performed worse than expected
It includes Jinghua Maritime Trading, Jinghua Port, Jinghua Trading Co., Ltd., Jinghua Shipping, Jinghua Textile, etc.
What is this? Strong domestic demand, insufficient external demand? If this is the case, then there is really no good way to solve the problem of insufficient external demand. However, how did the strong domestic demand come about? It stands to reason that Ming Dynasty is still in a
In a period of frequent disasters, is this domestic demand just a false fire?
This kind of thing cannot be inferred out of thin air. Gao Pragmatic carefully compared various data, and then compared them one by one with the court data in his mind, and then basically determined: Domestic demand is real, because the reforms in the past twenty or thirty years have already
A relatively obvious effect has emerged: cultivating a group of "urban middle class".
As the Pragmatic School has advocated for many years that "agriculture strengthens the country, industry strengthens the country, and commerce enriches the country" and uses this as a policy agenda to promote reforms, significant progress has now been made in all three aspects.
In terms of agriculture, Ming Dynasty now has sweet potatoes and corn as a supplement to the staple food. Its promotion in the northern provinces is particularly smooth (because there are more disasters in the north and these high-yielding crops are more needed). The southern provinces have also been promoted to varying degrees. For example, high pragmatic impact
Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Huguang, which are relatively powerful (Guangdong is close to the sea and has a strong commercial atmosphere, is greatly influenced by Beijing, and the other three places are all provinces with toasts, so they are naturally close and pragmatic), which greatly increased grain production.
No matter how well people around the world accept these new products, at least they can save lives when disasters occur frequently. The Chinese are the most practical people. Since these things can save lives, they are good things. As for the taste that they are not used to...
Since when do you still care about the taste? No matter how strange the taste is, it is always better than Guanyin soil, right? Besides, the Chinese people have always been talented in food. As long as it is not in a disaster year, they can find ways to make the taste better.
It's not that difficult.
[Note: New World crops did not taste the same as they did once they arrived in Eurasia. They also had to be iterated countless times before they became what they are now. However, there is a good chance of high-pragmatic introduction. In disaster years, no one will care about taste or perception.
As long as it can fill the stomach and prevent people from starving to death, it is a good thing.]
In addition to sweet potatoes and corn, Liaodong is also carefully cultivating and iterating cold-resistant rice suitable for the local area. These cold-resistant rice from later generations of Hokkaido have been iterated several times, and the yield has increased a lot compared with the beginning. Of course, don’t expect to compete with later generations.
Compared with the high-yielding Northeast cold-tolerant rice, after all, no one understands genetics these days, including Gao Pragmatic and Liu Xin.
Today's so-called "cultivation iteration" is actually mainly about seed selection. Roughly speaking, it means planting a large number first, then picking out those that grow best, and leaving their fruits as the seeds for the next batch, and so on. This cycle continues.
It is obviously a stupid method, but it is effective. Even if it takes a long time to evolve, it is still much better than the European method of sowing seeds and then watching God perform. At least there is hope.
Then there is the cultivation of cotton and sugar cane. In fact, in Gao Panggang's heart, only the Western Region is the cotton holy land in his mind, but this has not yet been confiscated, so he has to promote it throughout the Ming Dynasty.
Regarding cotton, the cultivation and use of cotton in China actually has a long history. According to historical records, cotton was first introduced to China from West Asia, around the 2nd century BC or earlier.
Cotton, of course, is mainly used as a material for making clothing and other daily necessities. It has been so since ancient times. During the Han Dynasty, cotton was first planted in the Western Regions (Xinjiang). Later archaeologists discovered a cotton in the ruins of Bachu County in Xinjiang.
A flower of cotton from the 2nd century BC shows that Xinjiang was already one of the important cotton producing areas in China at that time.
From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, cotton cultivation and utilization were gradually promoted across the country. The textile properties of cotton were recognized by people, and it became one of the important textile raw materials in China during the Song and Yuan Dynasties.
By the Ming Dynasty, cotton planting was further popularized and became a national big industry. Especially in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the cotton textile industry became a pillar industry. However, it must be clear here that the cotton textile industry is concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. This does not mean that cotton textile industry is concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The production areas are all in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The transportation capacity restrictions these days will cause a problem: industries that require bulk materials will often form industrial clusters in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, because only the Yangtze River waterway can provide huge, cheap, and stable transportation capacity.
This means that today, the Ming Dynasty is the main cotton producing area starting from the basin east of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River (navigation to the west is inconvenient) and all the way east to the sea.
The emergence of Gao pragmatism did not change this trend, but instead strengthened it. Since Jinghua created the Ming Dynasty version of the Jenny spinning machine based on Gao pragmatism's memory, almost all important towns in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have become cotton textiles.
Important industrial cities include Jingzhou, Yuezhou, Hanyang, Wuchang, Jiujiang, Anqing, Chizhou, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Songjiang, including almost the entire important towns along the Yangtze River.
As we all know, the cotton textile industry is a labor-intensive industry. Even if the Jenny spinning machine is more efficient than the old spinning machine, it still requires a lot of labor. This has led to a significant increase in urban migrant workers, becoming the "urban middle class" catalyzed by the real school reform.
” an important category.
We all know that the cotton spinning industry is the most important industry in the initial stage of "industrialization". The key reason for its importance is that it is a product for the public and its market prospect is broad enough. However, the biggest enemy of this industry is
It lies in the small-scale peasant economy—the vast majority of the population does not have enough purchasing power.
In the original history, after the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty was forced to open its ports. As a result, a few years later, the British discovered that something was wrong, because apart from opium, their flagship product, industrial weaving, still had no market in China - the vast majority of Chinese people still
Wear home-woven homespun cloth.
Gao Pragmatic knows the solution to this problem, which is nothing more than to continue to increase the diverse urban population and transform more Chinese people from self-sufficient farmers and tenants into urban workers. More importantly, his reforms over the years have always been
Went in this direction.
For example, another major item in agriculture: sugar cane. The sugar cane mentioned here is of course not used for chewing. It refers to being used to make sugar, thus creating the sugar industry, training a group of sugar industry workers, and selling various products.
Sugar merchants, clerks, etc.
Guangxi, a province with a net loss of more than 100,000 taels of silver from the imperial court every year, has been changing at a rapid pace since Gao Pragmatic took office.
Take Huang Zhiting's old territory of Simingfu Tusi and the surrounding Huang Tusi territory as an example. In the later Red Dynasty, this place was roughly Chongzuo City, Guangxi Province, the national sugar production center, known as the "Sugar Capital of China". The annual sugar output is 2.4 million.
tons (2022), accounting for one-third of the entire province of Guangxi and one-fifth of the entire country of China.
What does this mean? It means that this area is used to grow sugar cane and make sugar. That is absolutely true! Therefore, Gao Pragmatic originally identified the development direction of sugar production and sugar production for Guangxi. After so many years of development,
Not only is Jinghua Group frantically expanding its sugar production in Guangxi, but many wealthy businessmen who are following the trend are actively investing in it, and have basically completed the super-large Guangxi sugar industry cluster of "one province supplying the whole country".
Putting aside sugarcane farmers, the sugar industry alone employs hundreds of thousands of people, and the sugar products produced are becoming more and more diverse. Not only the white sugar that was “only for the rich” in the past, but now all kinds of
All kinds of sugar products have appeared, and there are even "fruit candies" wrapped in oil paper.
Although there are currently only three or four flavors of fruit candies, the trend has already taken shape, and the output value has taken off. After all, the richness of non-staple foods these days is far from what it was in later generations. Candies are simply loved by everyone, and are not only popular in China,
It is even being exported. This has led to the great development of Guangxi's sugar industry, and has also trained hundreds of thousands of industrial workers because of the high premium - these people have the ability to consume new industrial fabrics.
In addition to the sugar industry, the tussah industry in Liaodong, the hardwood industry in the southwestern provinces, etc. are also types of agriculture-related industries, and I will not list them one by one.
In addition to these, there are also some industries with higher "purity" that are also thriving, such as Jinghua Ordnance Industry. Jinghua Ordnance Industry has many departments, the most important of which are of course muskets and artillery products and their supporting ammunition.
With the Ming Dynasty's massive re-equipment of one million troops lasting nearly twenty years, and the training of three to four hundred thousand troops in southern Xinjiang within the same period of time, coupled with the fact that these two armies have been at war for many years, Jinghua's ordnance industry is simply
Make a lot of money.
In later generations, the American Empire had a famous "American military-industrial complex." Although it is indeed not a good word to talk about in China, it must be admitted that the current Jinghua military industry is almost the final product of the "Ming Dynasty military-industrial complex."
Core member.
The "complex" formed with Jinghua's military industry is naturally the military-industrial enterprises run by major aristocratic families. They have branched off other product lines that Jinghua is not very involved in, such as armor, helmets, knives, horse armor, and even military tents and military iron.
Kettle and the like.
According to Jinghua Ordnance Industry’s report and Gao Pragmatic’s understanding of the Ministry of War’s allocations, basically speaking, Jinghua Ordnance Industry accounts for approximately 43% of the Ming Dynasty’s total annual military equipment procurement and maintenance expenditures, making it a dominant company. In contrast,
Correspondingly, Jinghua Ordnance Industry also has up to 300,000 workers across the entire industry chain, which not only includes musket factories, artillery factories and ammunition factories, but also upstream enterprises - for example, the ammunition factory alone requires upstream paper shells
Once Gao Pragmatic took a serious look at these reports, he quickly discovered a phenomenon: industrial concentration is taking place.
In the Ming Dynasty, some firearms products could be produced everywhere across the country, but the products produced in most places were not very good, and the production costs were ridiculously high. This is not the case now, and there is a trend of centralized production of various products.
, several industrial clusters have gradually formed.
For example, the Kaiping Industrial Zone not far from the capital is not only a leader in steel and coal production, but also a military industry-intensive area. The capital's ordnance industry concentrated about 40% of the musket and artillery production capacity in the Ming Dynasty here - the reason is simple.
It has two advantages: first, it has high-quality steel materials close enough; second, it has the advantage of nearby shipping.
However, Jinghua's ammunition factory is not located here, but in Xi'an, Datong and Wuchang. This is because the main producing areas of saltpeter, the most difficult strategic material, are located in the northwest and Sichuan. After comprehensively considering the logistics relationship, they did
So choose.
Of course, from a strategic point of view, the separate layout of the firearms production base and the ammunition production base also has the consideration of preventing chaos. Part of the reason why Zhu Yijun believed that Gao Pragmatic had no objection was also because Gao Pragmatic explained the purpose of this arrangement to him
.
After all, this approach is simply "high pragmatism for prevention and high pragmatism for chaos" - if he puts it all in Kaiping, it means that he can arm an army of hundreds of thousands of firearms at any time, with sufficient weapons and ammunition.
What, you said that weapons and ammunition can be stored, but where do the people come from? Just kidding, hundreds of thousands of workers are his employees, aren't they just soldiers if they fire bullets? It doesn't matter if they have little combat effectiveness, as long as they can fire guns, they can even draw the distance to the capital.
, no one except the Imperial Guards could react.
In short, with the advancement of reform, many new industrial clusters have been formed across the country, creating millions of industrial workers, allowing these new industries and industrial workers to combine to form a new "economic cycle." Although the separation
There is still a long way to go to "break the small-scale peasant economy", but at least it can be said that the first step has been taken steadily.
Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic suddenly felt that something was wrong: Since domestic demand is strong, how come Jinghua Textile's performance is not as good as expected this year? Taking a closer look, Gao Pragmatic was a little stunned.
Jiangnan's local textile industry and Jinghua Textile started a trade war, or more directly, a price war.
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