I want to be emperor

Chapter 1151 Export Restrictions and Indigenous Markets

The explosion of automobile consumption power in more than a hundred indigenous vassal countries has made the five major automobile companies begin to pay attention to the potential automobile market in these indigenous vassal countries.

Prior to this, in fact, none of the automobile companies had any plans to expand automobile sales channels in the vassal countries.

The reason is very simple, that is, cars are export-restricted equipment... Not to mention just a car, even the gasoline engine in the car is export-restricted equipment.

Under such circumstances, automobile companies cannot sell cars to these indigenous vassal states... The only exceptions are several Chu vassal states whose status is equivalent to the administrative territory of the Great Chu Empire.

Such as the Kingdom of West Africa and the Kingdom of America and Song Dynasty.

These Chu vassal states have a higher status than the indigenous vassal states and can purchase some industrial equipment to a limited extent for the development of their own industries. At the same time, some civilian consumer goods, including cars, are not within the restriction, but some important industrial equipment , especially equipment related to the defense industry cannot be imported.

Generally speaking, these Chu-origin vassal states are similar to the ordinary administrative territories in the Great Chu Empire, and they have limited technical restrictions. However, unless it is something more sensitive or important, there will generally not be too many restrictions.

But the indigenous vassal countries are different. Export restrictions are very strict. So far, even steam engines will not be exported to the indigenous vassal countries.

And cars are no exception... Although cars are only industrial consumer goods, their exports are also restricted because of their internal combustion engines.

Now, a small opening has been opened, allowing the indigenous vassal states to purchase a small number of passenger cars in the name of official procurement to be used as cars for the dignitaries in the vassal states.

This is equivalent to opening a hole in the restriction on automobile exports. Since the hole already exists, it will definitely be further relaxed in the future.

For example, each vassal country was allowed to increase its share of automobile imports.

Now an ordinary vassal country can import dozens to more than a hundred vehicles, then it may be possible to import hundreds or even thousands of vehicles in the future.

Although there are not many vassal states in this country, the Great Chu Empire has many vassal states... in total, there are more than a hundred vassal states.

If a vassal country is allowed to import a thousand vehicles, then the total number of vehicles will be hundreds of thousands.

Moreover, although a car is a large item with a relatively long service life, it is still a consumable. After you buy a car now, it will still need maintenance and repairs in the future, which will generate a part of the revenue; after the car's service life expires A new car needs to be purchased to replace it.

This means a steady stream of orders!

Although the car market in the indigenous vassal states is still very small for the time being...all combined are not even as good as the sales volume of an economically developed prefecture-level city in the coastal area of ​​​​the East Asia of Chu State.

But in the long run, the market potential is still good... After all, the total population of indigenous people is also quite large, and the combined population of so many indigenous countries is hundreds of millions.

Moreover, the population of these indigenous countries continues to increase, and the population will definitely be greater in the future.

With a population of hundreds of millions, and the fact that these indigenous countries have basically been integrated into the global economic system of the Great Chu Empire, even if the Chu people plundered most of their labor value, they could still have some left over. This means that there will still be some wealthy people among these indigenous people who have enough strength to buy cars.

Even if this base number is very small, when placed on a scale of hundreds of millions of people, no matter how small the proportion is, it can evolve into a big number.

What's more, the export restriction regulations of the Dachu Empire are not static. In addition to strictly guarding industrial production equipment, restrictions on some consumer goods, whether military or civilian, are actually being gradually relaxed.

This can be seen from the restrictions on arms exports... At first, the Chu people were only willing to sell matchlock guns and flintlock guns to the indigenous people. Later, in the late 1930s, they opened up the sale of flintlock guns with caps, etc. In the 1950s, the Chu Empire liberalized the export of single-shot rifled rifles.

If we follow these steps, it is expected that the export restrictions on repeating rifles will be relaxed in a few years, and even the export restrictions on early rifled guns will be relaxed.

At least the military generals said that the military does not mind letting these indigenous countries possess early repeating rifles and rifled rifles as long as they can dispose of their large inventory of retired and old weapons at high prices.

Of course... there are still restrictions. For example, repeating rifles can only export 11mm caliber black powder repeating rifles, and rifled artillery can only export early-stage rifled artillery with backward recoil guns.

New eight-millimeter smokeless firearms and rapid-fire artillery are impossible to export...at least not for many years to come.

It's just that the military has no objections, but it doesn't mean that other high-level empire officials have objections... Even people in the defense industry are not interested!

The national defense industry is now quite profitable selling single-shot rifles and smoothbore cannons, and they make a lot of money... In order to make money, the five major automobile companies have set up a lot of production lines.

Although these weapons are backward, it does not mean that the equipment in the production line is also backward... The national defense industry will not say that in order to make single-shot rifles, they go out to find machinery and equipment with the technical level of the 1930s... but continue to use advanced machinery and equipment. , to increase production and reduce costs.

Finally, there are the selling price and profit that are very important.

Exporting weapons and equipment to the indigenous people does not mean that if your goods are good, you can make more money... but how much money you can make depends on how much money the indigenous people have in their pockets.

You sell them 11mm black powder single-shot rifles, and they only have so little money in their pockets... You can set the price yourself, and in the end the profit will be so much.

If you give them a smokeless repeating rifle, the money in the pockets of the natives will not increase. Even if you sell it at a super high price, they will not be able to buy much, and the final profit will not be much greater.

In this case, the defense industry said that the weapons and equipment exported today are quite good... and there will be no need for large-scale changes in a short period of time.

There is no need to even export the early retractable cannons now...it would be good to continue selling smoothbore cannons.

The military has at least several thousand decommissioned early-stage artillery pieces in warehouses, and there is also a steady stream of decommissioned artillery pieces from the Chu Army that have been thrown into warehouses for storage. Once the restrictions on the export of frame-type artillery pieces are lifted, all of them will be lost. Thousands of old guns in stock can arm indigenous armies throughout Europe.

In other words... without their defense industry, the military would make all the money.

It is better to continue selling smoothbore cannons... The smoothbore cannons exported today are all newly produced by the five major weapons companies, and the export prices are not low, and the profits are made by the five major weapons companies.

Furthermore, smoothbore cannons are simple to produce, but rifled cannons are a bit technically difficult. Even early retractable cannons are actually somewhat difficult to produce.

However, the five major weapons companies have long since lost their production lines for retracting cannons. Now that you want to export retractable cannons, the five major defense companies have to build new production lines for retracting cannons... Building an artillery production line is much more expensive than building a rifle production line.

Therefore, when it comes to arms exports, sometimes the defense industry is more conservative than the military. They sell artillery based on the idea that smoothbore cannons can be sold for as long as they last.

But... even so, the Great Chu Empire's export restrictions on the weapons and equipment of indigenous countries are still gradually weakening... It can mainly ensure that its own army's weapons are inferior and have an absolute performance advantage. In fact, the military does not mind letting indigenous countries The army here is equipped with better weapons to fight against rebels everywhere.

After all, to a certain extent, the official regular armies in various indigenous countries are actually the proxy armies of their Chu people... In terms of nature, they are actually no different from the foreign legions. They all work for the Chu people. .

It's just that the foreign legions are directly armed and commanded by the Chu people, while the troops of the indigenous countries are armed and commanded by agents supported by the Chu people.

But the agents are all dogs of the Chu people... The agent's army is naturally cannon fodder for the Chu people.

Therefore, the military has no objection to increasing the combat effectiveness of some proxy armies under limited circumstances... The main opposition comes from the defense industry, and some more extreme officials who see all aliens as potential rebels are also opposed.

And as time goes by, these objections will gradually weaken... After all, the Da Chu Empire is too powerful, and it is getting stronger.

Even armored vehicles and even tanks have been developed... Are you still worried that the early and backward guns exported to the indigenous people will pose a threat to your own country? Then you might as well confiscate all the hot weapons of the indigenous army and distribute them with cold weapons to fight the rebels. However, by then these agent armies will be beaten into scum by the rebels from all over the country. I can't even sit still!

After all, indigenous rebels around the world can obtain some single-shot rifled rifles through various illegal channels, and even some civilian rifled artillery.

If the agent's army doesn't have any good guys, it really won't be able to control the situation...

If the agents can't control the situation, then they can only let the Chu people do it in person... and the cost of Chu people doing it in person is too high, even if it involves using foreign legions, the cost is even higher.

In many cases, the export restrictions on weapons and equipment will inevitably become more and more relaxed. It will be a matter of time for these indigenous people to obtain repeating rifles or even cannons.

Even export restrictions on weapons and equipment are gradually being relaxed, not to mention industrial consumables for civilian use.

This also includes cars...even the resistance encountered by export restrictions on cars is even smaller than that of steam engines.

Because steam engines are familiar to many indigenous people. After all, the Chu people have built mines, farms, operated railways, ships, etc. in various indigenous countries. Many indigenous people have actually seen the Chu people's steam locomotives.

Elites in some indigenous countries actually already know the principles of steam engines, and can even secretly imitate them by hand...but the performance of the steam engines they imitate is too poor and has no practical application value.

Once the export of steam engines is released and the indigenous people can freely use steam engines, it will easily lead to the industrial development of indigenous countries, and some indigenous countries may even be able to gradually imitate steam engines in the future.

And this was something that the Chu Empire could not tolerate.

But cars... are difficult to be directly applied to industry, and secondly, these indigenous countries may not be able to imitate them even if they take decades.

The core of a car is the internal combustion engine...the technological content of this thing is much higher than that of the early primitive steam engines.

The requirements for materials and processing technology are very high.

If you want to create a mature and usable internal combustion engine, it will be very difficult. Let alone these indigenous countries, even some ordinary large-scale machinery companies in the Dachu Empire will not continue to purchase equipment even if they do not consider patent issues. , if they only rely on existing technical capabilities and equipment, it will be difficult for them to produce a usable gasoline engine.

Gasoline engines are very difficult.

It has little impact on industrial development, and at the same time, the technology is too advanced and difficult to imitate... This is the advantage of cars when exporting.

It seems strange that advanced things are easier to export...but that's the truth.

Of course...industrial equipment is not included in this list. Chu State does not export any industrial equipment. It can only export consumer goods. Well, weapons are also consumer goods...but weapons are military consumer goods.

Based on the unique national conditions of the Da Chu Empire, senior executives of the five major automobile companies, especially those of Tangshan Automobile Company, judged that the empire will further relax restrictions on automobile exports in the next few years.

The automotive market in Europe, West Asia and India will further increase.

Although the current total volume is not large, we still need to plan in advance... to prevent the failure of the American market that year.

In the early years, the four major automobile companies were busy deploying their local markets in East Asia and failed to pay attention to the American market, so they did not carry out specialized market layout.

As a result, a North American automobile company appeared... This North American automobile company was also a three-no enterprise at the beginning. It had no core technology of its own at all. Engines and gearboxes needed to be purchased, and even the chassis technology was very primitive.

However, they relied on the rapid rise of the American market and established a foothold by selling assembly stations. In particular, their pickup trucks sold very well and quickly occupied the markets in the Americas and even Eastern Europe and Northeast China where there are many medium and large farms. Taking advantage of overseas markets, it quickly counterattacked the local market in East Asia.

It then became the leading company in the pickup truck category, and then developed other categories of cars. It successively made efforts in the fields of tricycles, cars, and trucks, and eventually became the fifth largest automobile company.

Now it has obtained relevant technology patents, and even launched its own engines and gearboxes, completing a gorgeous transformation from an assembly plant to an independent automobile manufacturer...

If the rise of Lee Power Company made the top three automobile companies start to attach great importance to patents and strictly guard against technology licensing, then the rise of North American Automobile Company made the four major automobile companies begin to pay attention to the early layout of potential markets. .

It is precisely because of the rise of North American automobile companies that the four major automobile companies have changed from focusing on the automobile market in economically developed areas to a comprehensive layout... Whether it is an economically developed area or an economically backward area, as long as there is a certain Potential, even if there is no potential, will penetrate his tentacles.

If the economy is developed and the market potential is large, then develop your own channels and adopt a self-operated model.

Regions with backward economies and smaller market potential adopt the agent model, leaving agents to do the work.

It is based on this concept that Tangshan Automobile Company quickly established a European subsidiary to prepare for the early layout of the European market.

It’s not about how many cars it can sell now, but it’s about having some first-mover advantages when the European car market develops in the future.

Coincidentally, Tangshan Automobile Company did this, and the other four automobile companies also did the same. Each of them successively established subsidiaries in Europe, West Asia, and India to carry out early market layout.

Even Changsha Anlong Automobile Company, an independent manufacturer, received a large number of orders from the official procurement of the indigenous countries this time. For the subsequent maintenance business and follow-up orders, it has also established three subsidiaries in Europe, West Asia and India. .

The market layout of these car companies in overseas regions focuses on the future potential of overseas indigenous regions... As for now, there is not much market.

There is no comparison with the overseas markets of other consumer goods, such as cloth...

Even though cloth is inconspicuous, it is still a major industrial consumer product category in the Chu Empire, and it is also the most important export commodity.

The scale of the textile industry in the Dachu Empire was extremely large... How to describe this huge scale?

Well, the textile industry of the Great Chu Empire was responsible for almost most of the textile needs of more than one billion people around the world. These textiles included various textiles such as clothes, shoes and hats, quilts, and even tents and rainproof cloths.

Among the four major industries of clothing, food, housing and transportation, the only industry in which the Chu Empire can truly fully control the needs of almost the majority of the world's population is 'clothing'.

Several other industries are somewhat lacking. Even 'food', which has a very strong degree of control, is actually unable to fully control it. After all, the indigenous people can also grow food and provide part of their own food.

The people of Chu's food control is more about controlling the international trade of food and regional food prices. It does not mean that they produce all the food and supply it to all mankind.

Not to mention 'travel' and 'live'. People in Chu cannot say that they have control over all the indigenous people in the world. After all, the indigenous people walk on two legs, and you can't control them. You can't control the indigenous people. The legs were broken, so the natives were asked to ride in Chu people's cars or carriages.

However, as the global economy further improves in the future, the economies of indigenous countries will also grow at the same time. Only when car sales increase will the Chu people be able to control the 'travel' of indigenous countries in various countries to a certain extent, but if they want to fully control it, It's impossible... Cars are also very expensive. How many natives can afford them?

Not to mention modern times, even in the original time and space of the 21st century, many poor countries could not absorb many cars.

As for trains and ships... these two things are completely controlled, but the market size is too small... let alone the train and ship markets in indigenous countries, even if the empire is added

The same goes for housing. Aborigines can just live in a thatched house or a wooden house. There is no need to buy the cement and steel bars from your Chu people to live in a building!

In terms of food, clothing, housing and transportation, so far, and even in the next few decades, the only thing the Chu people can control is 'clothing'.

This is the scale and significance of the textile industry in the contemporary Chu Empire!