Xinshun 1730

Chapter 665 Spoils Sharing Conference ([-])

This condition sounds like it would be beneficial to both parties—not to mention the East India Company, but for Dashun, it also boosted Dashun's cotton cloth exports.

But Liu Yu was not too enthusiastic about this condition.

The big surplus is not the export quota.

It is the channel of the sales terminal.

The thirteen lines of the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not affect the exchange of gold and silver for exports to Europe. This point must be clarified.

But what affected the Qing Dynasty was that it had no ocean-going fleet, no trade monopoly, no qualified reserve sailors, no progress in navigation, and a lack of understanding of changes in the outside world, rather than insufficient trade volume.

Liu Yu doesn't need Dashun to boost the export volume, what he needs is Dashun to break the monopoly of "transportation and sales" in Europe.

The difference is that the Thirteenth Bank and the East India Companies of various countries are in cooperation, with one buyer and one seller.

Dashun's trading company is in confrontation with the East India companies of various countries.

The big surplus is not exports, but the transportation and retail sales of exports.

He had always been worried that Li Gan would follow the old path of the Manchu Qing, because he believed that there was no big difference between opening up trade in Malacca and opening up trade in Guangzhou in terms of external expansion and internal reform.It is the most difficult step to take the initiative to go out, especially if it does not seem to affect making money, the court is afraid that it will not have the motivation to take the initiative to go out.

Now that Duplex proposed this condition, it didn't mean that it would be of no benefit to Dashun.

Rather, Liu Yu and France still have a lot of interests that need to be exchanged.

It is not difficult to speak out and let France pass this bill.

However, this needs to be exchanged for something, and for Dashun, there are many benefits to be exchanged, how could he put the exchange on such a thing that he doesn't care about at all?
Besides, he himself is wary of the French East India Company. If he is going to make a fool of himself in the future, how can he give blood to the East India Company?

This time when he came to France, not only did he not give blood to the French East India Company, but he also tried to let the King of France obtain the franchise of American ginseng and mink sweaters, so that the East India Company could simply act as an errand, weakening its strength and potential.

"Mr. Duplex, this matter is obviously to our advantage. It will greatly help our cotton exports. I will seriously consider it and mention it at Versailles."

"However, before that, I need to get some bans and tariffs on your country's import and export trade. I need to formulate a more detailed plan."

"Before going to Versailles, I hope you can send these materials as soon as possible."

Duplex heard that Liu Yu was very happy and supportive, so he nodded in agreement.

As soon as he left, the Weihai department "studying in France" personnel who had come to France to "step in" a few years in advance, rushed to see Liu Yu.

After exchanging greetings, these people who had stepped on the site in advance poured out a lot of bitterness on the trade issue that Liu Yu was most concerned about.

"Colbert said: His overly strong state intervention policy made French businessmen not think about overcoming operational difficulties through their own efforts as long as they hoped to take shortcuts with the king's order. However, these enterprises It is impossible not to encounter the ever-changing situation, and if business operators do not work hard to find a way out when they are in trouble, no authoritative department can do it for them and cure all diseases."

"But he also said: France's aristocracy is too powerful and the church is too powerful, which is completely different from Britain and the Netherlands. If there is no strong state intervention, financial subsidies, state-owned factories, and planned investment by the state, tens of millions will be lost every year. The wealth of the pound is in foreign trade."

"He was well aware of the weakness of strong state intervention, but he also knew that it was the only way to resist the British and Dutch trade invasions."

"Colbert has been dead for 60 years, but his set of policies has still had a serious impact on the trade between China and France. Mirrors, silk, silk, velvet, tea... these things, or the country For those that can be produced or have substitutes, France imposes "prohibitive tariffs". It is used to protect the domestic industry. Therefore, the French drink coffee and do not drink tea; therefore, the silk of Dashun cannot be sold in France; Therefore, France's own porcelain can basically meet the demand."

The people who came earlier collected a lot of information in this regard, and these materials can be regarded as a direction to find the answer to the question: when they were in Weihai, many people from the Weihai family involved in trade wondered "the trade volume between China and France, Why are there so many less than Denmark and Sweden? Why did the French East India Company go bankrupt and reorganize several times?"

Beside Liu Yu are some local French porcelains they bought from France.

In terms of quality, it is quite different from the porcelain from Dashun.

But to the uninitiated, it already has an oriental style.

These people from the Weihai Department who came to France a few years ago put out pieces of porcelain from the boxes.

A Maitreya Buddha with a big belly sitting with his legs spread apart and a storage jar with a big jar in front of him.

A glaze pattern is a porcelain jar of several families wearing Hanfu, sitting at a table of eight immortals and eating with chopsticks.

One of the external decorations is some clocks in the shape of Chinese children flying kites. The children's hair buns are clearly identifiable, but the numbers on the clocks are Roman numerals.

These are all made by the French themselves.Just looking at the appearance, the smell is already very strong.

"This is a ceramics factory run by the Prince of Condé himself. It's not real porcelain, it's fake porcelain. But it looks like that. In the Château de Chantilly, the fake porcelain factory is there. With these For fake porcelain, the French don’t have to buy a lot of porcelain from this dynasty.”

"There is also French silk. We have also looked at it. The quality of silk is average, but in the tariff catalogue, silk belongs to the category of 'prohibited tariffs'. The tariff is so high that foreign silk cannot be sold at all."

"The so-called prohibitive tariffs are not to prevent imports, but to use high tariffs to cause substantial prohibition. You can import, as long as you pay a [-]% tariff and you can still sell it, that is Your skill."

"In the eighth year of Hongzhi in the previous dynasty, the French got silkworm seeds. In that year, the French captured Naples and captured a group of silkworm farmers and silk weavers. They began to raise silkworms locally, reel silk, and spin silk. "

"On the one hand, there are high tariffs. On the other hand, the royal family and nobles have large orders every year to ensure that the silk industry will not decline."

"In the era of Colbert, there was another national industrial planning, handicraft standardization decree, and absolute tariff protection policy."

"The trade between this dynasty and France... there is really nothing to grow. Several large items, such as tea, silk, and porcelain, are not easy to sell."

"On the whole, France's policy is government support. For some commodities that cannot be produced by themselves, Colbert believes that free competition cannot compete with those countries that developed first. Therefore, it is necessary to increase tariffs, strengthen control, government investment, and government Orders, hiring foreign craftsmen with high salaries, first complete from scratch, and then improve a little bit."

"The door of France is locked. In order to force France to open the door, the Anglo-Dutch alliance imposed a blockade on France for 12 years. The Netherlands even did not import a single piece of French goods for three full years, just to force France to lower tariffs. But obviously , the French survived."

Listening to the summary of the pioneers and playing with these pieces of porcelain produced by the Chantilly Soft Porcelain Factory, Liu Yu thought about Duplex's request, and it was hard to tell what it was like.

It has been almost 60 years since Colbert died, and he still affects the French economy and the trade between China and France.

It can even be said that some of the policies of this guy also contributed to the historical Hongxi tragedy-the black slave policy he formulated before his death, the decree encouraging the colonies to grow sugar, and the policy of building a large navy and maintaining maritime hegemony. The background, after decades of blooming and bearing fruit, made Haiti the largest source of sugar in Europe. Coupled with the "high tariff protection policy" he formulated, the Netherlands could not use gunboats to switch France, which led to Batavia The serious "surplus crisis" in the sugar industry, which had been expanding disorderly in the early stage, had a great impact.

Including the "administrative navy and civil servants in charge of the army" that France still maintains, the trade volume between France and China has not increased, and the whole set of "import substitution plan" launched by France itself, etc., are all shadows.

From Dashun's point of view, Liu Yu quite agrees that after many years, after the incident of being unable to breathe, Colbert's statue was pushed down.

But most of the things he opposed in Europe were of a high level; most of the things he supported and liked in Europe were idiots.

These policies really make Liu Yu very uncomfortable now.

It's not about selling goods to France. To be honest, he didn't expect to be able to sell goods to France at all.The French have a very high level of silkworm breeding—the three major labor movements in Europe, one of which is called the "Lyon [Silk Weaving] Workers' Uprising"; when the British think of tea, the French think of coffee.

He came to France this time, neither to discuss cooperation, nor to discuss the exchange of interests, which need not be discussed.What really needs to be discussed is the issue of the distribution of spoils after the war, that is, how to deal with the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is the key for Dashun to open the European market, and it is also the most suitable country to be a comprador after breaking the backbone.The industry in the Netherlands has been completed and transformed into a professional comprador without any internal resistance.

Sharing the spoils is the most important thing to talk about.And France's oppressive trade policy, which may have a huge impact on the future distribution of spoils.

After thinking about it for a while, he still made a small comment on these policies of Colbert, which is basically a compliment and a positive one.

"New things cannot appear all at once. Colbert made this set, which was born out of the guild system and combined with centralized France. provide more fertile soil for the spread of corruption."

"Although there are problems of one kind or another, for now, it is much more difficult to open up trade in France than in other European countries. It is more than ten times, a hundred times more."

"The Russians actually learned the same way as France. State-owned farmers work in factories, state support, and government orders. If you don't follow this path, you will have nothing to do with Russia's climate, population, trade routes, ports, and transportation conditions in this life. It has nothing to do with business."

"Everyone is doing this now. They all want to be a Pixiu. They just eat and don't eat. France is the most serious one. I'm not going to talk about trade with France. There's nothing to talk about."

"Our products cannot be sold in France, and French products cannot be sold to ours. The key is, as long as France does not regard the whole of Europe as its market."

Although it is an alliance with France and plans to cooperate with the Netherlands and the UK, from a trade point of view, Dashun absolutely does not want France to gain power in Europe.

Colbert's set of policies is too ruthless.

Although after his death, Louis XIV messed around and began to persecute the Huguenots, causing a large number of handicraftsmen and bankers to run away, but the foundation laid by the Colbert era, as well as state subsidies and government order policies, made Huguenots France's trade gates are so tightly welded that they cannot be opened at all.

What Colbert himself said [too strong state intervention policy, so long as French businessmen hope to take shortcuts with the help of a paper order from the king, they will not think about overcoming business difficulties through their own efforts].

It means that if something is not easy to sell, the country will find a way to find a market, find a way, or go to war to destroy other countries, or go to war to force other countries to lower tariffs, or orders from the royal family and nobles, so that big businessmen are looking forward to borrowing Executive orders cut corners.

Of course, he himself does not believe in the free trade that Liu Yu talks about all day long.There is no free trade in Europe, and all of them are too rigid in tariffs.

France's industrial capacity is not weak, so it is impossible to reach cooperation in trade.Although the reputation of Colbert's later generations is very bad, it is even more notorious in the Netherlands and Britain. After the explosive growth of the United Kingdom, the free trade theory rose, and Colbert, who was devoted to local industrial protectionism and planning the economy, became a The man behind "France's backwardness".

Even though this management and control model, which seems to be born out of the old guilds and incorporates French centralization, does have problems such as corruption, lack of innovation, difficulty in accumulating capital, and excessively strict state control.

But now, Liu Yu is really at a loss for what to do, and there is no way at all-no matter whether the quality is good or not, there are basically local substitutes in France for the products that Dashun can sell.

It is far easier to destroy the Netherlands than to expand the trade volume between China and France.

The industrial capital of the Netherlands has been almost squeezed to death by the commercial capital of the country. If Dashun wants to open the door to European trade, it can only find a breakthrough in the Netherlands.

I am afraid that when the spoils are divided, France will open its mouth too much. What if it really wants to eat the Austrian Netherlands and make the Netherlands a vassal?At that time, I am afraid that the Netherlands will fully liberalize its tariffs on France?When the time comes, will we sell French products or Chinese products?
I have to stop France from opening up too much when dividing the spoils.The old Netherlands is going to die, but it can't die completely, it can't die completely, and it can't become a vassal of France. This really needs some manipulation.

Fortunately, Fleury, an old fox with strategic thinking, is near the end of his life, and Louis XV, who is ambitious and talented, wants to be in charge, so he can only pour some ecstasy soup on him.

Since the Count of Morpas said that Louis XV was going to abolish the prime minister and establish a cabinet, it can only be said that Fleury died at the right time.Once he died, no one in France should be able to restrain the king who "flooded after I died".

(End of this chapter)