Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 655 Economic Control (Part [-])
If the sub-envoy Zhuchi, who patrols the sea and rectifies the admiral Lei Lian, is transferred from Guangdong to Guangxi, it will of course cause a certain loss to the official circles in Guangdong, but overall the problem is not big—a deputy envoy, even if he has to pay bribes, There are only a few people who are worthy of his bribes, and the impact is not big, and the pressure he faces is high and pragmatic, and he can handle it with confidence.

The key is the problem of the salt field. When Lianzhou Prefecture was under the management of Guangdong, almost all the salt needed in Guangxi had to be supplied by Guangdong. In the past ten years of constant rebellion in Guangxi, the successive governors of Guangdong and Guangxi have ordered to "transport salt with cheap salt." Arrive in Xunzhou, Guilin and other places for trafficking to benefit the military.” It can be seen that Lianzhou is not only rich in salt, but also one of the means for the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi to show his authority (no wind note: the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi must also serve as the governor of Guangdong at this time).

Not to mention that there will be a chain of interests in the saltworks. This is a saltworks. How many people can Guangdong officials share in the profits?
Therefore, Gao Pragmatism can be sure that the proposal to transfer Lianzhou back to Guangxi will definitely cause conflicts with Guangdong officials, and even directly conflict with the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi.Coupled with the aforementioned issue of guarding against Japanese pirates (pirates), whether the imperial court is willing to do so in the end, Gao Pragmatism does not dare to guarantee it.

But no matter whether it works or not, it is best to do it while the teacher is still in place, otherwise even if the uncle takes over as the chief assistant, he will have more concerns about moving Lianzhou. After all, the Zhang family itself is one of the great salt merchants. Home, if you rashly move Guangdong's salt interests, you may be criticized.Although it is an uncle-nephew relationship, you should pay attention to this kind of thing.

As a junior, it doesn't matter if you occasionally cause a little trouble to the elders, but you have to avoid big troubles as much as possible.Although uncle is very close, he is not a real father after all. He can protect you from wind and rain, but he has no obligation to protect you from swords.

On the contrary, it is not a big problem for Mr. Guo Puguo to handle this matter, because he has nothing to do with the word Yanli, and the highly pragmatic move is not that he wants to reach out for Yanli himself, which avoids being caught by someone. It would be much easier to deal with these attacks from the perspective of personal interests, and turned them into a purely government affairs issue - Gao Gong faced much more resistance during his reforms, and he didn't back down, did he?
Then, for the time being, the problem of Lianzhou—in fact, mainly Qinzhou Port—can be put aside.

Next, Gao Pragmatism began to ponder where to start to increase the dependence of the chieftains on the "new lifeline".

The first thing to determine is what industry can replace farming and become the new lifeblood of the chieftains.

The so-called lifeblood, roughly speaking, is the main financial revenue.

It's very good, this is a matter of developing the local economy, and it can be regarded as entering the field that Gao Pragmatism is best at - isn't the most important task of the local cadres in the Red Dynasty when he traveled through the era to "focus on economic construction"?Finally a professional counterpart.

The development of industry and commerce is of course a highly pragmatic project that is relatively good at, but the development of industry, in terms of the actual development situation of Daming, generally speaking, under the premise of ensuring security, there must be three basic elements: convenient transportation , a large population and rich resources.

There is no need to worry about whether public security is guaranteed. At least these three elements are almost not satisfied in the western and southern Guangxi regions at this time, at least not completely satisfied, so I can only say sorry.

Commerce must depend on industry or agriculture. Since industry has no hope, it can only rely on agriculture.

Farming is already an exclusion item, so there is no need to consider it, so the rest is nothing but the development of economic crops.

The most famous economic crops of Ming Dynasty are sericulture and tea, but because they are famous, they have already had good production areas. If Gao Pragmatic came to develop these two items in western Guangxi and southern Guangxi, it would be like digging coal from Shanxi to Kaiping Selling is pure brainstorming.

According to Gao Pragmatic's memory, Guangxi has abundant water, light, and heat resources, so its agricultural development seems to have a relatively large advantage in fruit. Bananas, pineapples, lychees, and longan are among the best in the country, but This is meaningless to Gao Wuzhen's current plan - there is no fresh-keeping method, no fast transportation, and no ability to make cans. What's the use of producing so much fruit?

Ordinary fruits are meaningless, but there is one "fruit" that is very suitable for western and southern Guangxi, which have a lot of dry land, and that is sugar cane.

The main function of sugarcane is of course not to chew directly, but to make sugar.There was a sugar factory in the county where Gao Yushi worked before crossing. Gao Yushi accompanied the leader to inspect a few times. Although the reason for the inspection was that the factory was facing bankruptcy because of its poor profitability, the county had been trying to save it at that time, so in The high pragmatism in sugar production also has a little shallow knowledge reserve.

This bit of knowledge reserve will be heard in later generations, but at least it is more advanced than Daming’s "cow-pulled stone reel" pressing method, and he has simple purification and crystallization methods, which can better ensure layered production and exclusive sales. benefit.

For example, the chieftains are in charge of arranging for the natives to plant sugar cane and collect them, and then they rely on the ancient "ox-pulled stone reel" method to make soil sugar. Such as white granulated sugar, rock sugar, etc. Finally, Gao Yushi is responsible for the underwriting.

The biggest advantage here is that the more soil sugar the toasts produce, the more they rely on high-level practicality—otherwise they would not be able to digest it all by themselves, not to mention a huge waste of manpower, and they would not be able to get what they deserve. income.

On the contrary, as long as they are highly pragmatic, as long as they don't squeeze them too much, with the natural advantages of western Guangxi and southern Guangxi, planting sugarcane will definitely get much higher returns than farming.

Gao Wushi has read some documents from the period of the Republic of China in the past. He knows that in 1929, the import of sugar in the Republic of China reached a peak of 7.4 million kilograms, worth 30 million taels of silver at that time, ranking second in the country's imports.Therefore, from the [-]s, the Republic of China began to restrict the arbitrary import of foreign sugar to protect the development of the domestic sugar industry.

At that time, the warlords in Guangdong tried to enrich their economic strength and consolidate and expand their political status by establishing a sugar industry, so they strongly supported and established a mechanized sugar industry.In later generations, the sugar industry in Guangdong and Guangxi is also a strong industry in the whole country.

The advantage of developing the sugar industry is that although it may increase the income of the chieftains, it can actually strengthen their control over the chieftains, because at that time, if they offend themselves, they will lose a lot of money.

More importantly, this source of income cannot be eaten by the chieftain's own family, and there must be some profit for the chieftains under his command.Then conversely, as long as he cuts off the purchase of Tutang, the chieftain's own interests will not be damaged, and even the people under him will lose money-this will shake the rule!Can you not think about the consequences?

Therefore, the sugar industry is very suitable to promote to the toasts. This sugar-coated cannonball is highly pragmatic and they are not afraid that they will not eat it.

But the sugar industry alone is not enough, because in addition to the dry land where sugarcane can be planted, Guangxi also has more forest resources, known as "eight mountains, one water and one field". Western Guangxi and southern Guangxi are typical mountainous and plain areas. It is quite limited, so forestry can also find ways to use it.

There are two directions for the utilization of forest resources, one is the type of economic forest, such as camellia oleifera and tung tree.Gao Wushi is more interested in tung trees, because in his impression, Chinese tung trees are important industrial oil plants even in later generations, and tung oil is one of the hard goods in China's foreign trade. Anti-acid and alkali, anti-corrosion, and heat and cold resistance, even in the current Ming Dynasty, it has a very important purpose, that is, shipbuilding, which is where Gao Pragmatic values ​​it.

The only problem is that it is inconvenient for the chieftains to be very pragmatic in this regard. He can only regard western Guangxi and southern Guizhou as a tung oil production area, which greatly reduces his interest, so he has to list it as an option for the time being.

Another direction of utilization is more straightforward: wood.

Of course, Gao Yushi has no interest in developing the furniture industry. These days, the country is rich in tree resources. Even Zhili in the north and south are not short of wood for making furniture. Therefore, Gao Yushi's main idea is to focus on ship wood.

There are many types of wood used in shipbuilding in ancient China, and they are generally obtained locally, and the best are selected from the best.And according to the different characteristics and performance of wood, it can be used in different parts of the ship.Gao Wushi didn't know much about these things at first, but he laid the groundwork early. He began to search for shipbuilding talents almost ten years ago. A few years ago, he opened the first Jinghua Shipyard in Shandong. Gradually understand.

At present, the types of wood commonly used in shipbuilding in the Ming Dynasty include fir, pine, cypress, teak, elm, red wood, camphor, nanmu, catalpa, catalpa, oak, and cypress, and the parts of ships that are suitable for various types of wood are not the same.

The old craftsman of Jinghua Shipyard under him once told him: "The masts of all woods are made of straight fir, and if they are not long enough, they are connected, and the outer iron hoops are surrounded inch by inch. The front of the ship's windows is hollowed out for the masts. All the trees The middle mast is carried by a number of huge boats, and the long cables are tied to the table. The beams and masts are made of nanmu, Chinese oak, camphor, elm, and locust wood. Among them, the camphor wood that is cut in spring and summer will be rotten for a long time. It should be noted that the pallets are not limited to any kind of wood, as long as local materials are used. The rudder stock is made of elm, nut wood, and Chinese oak; .”

The old craftsman is from the north, so he did not mention the most famous teak in later generations.Another craftsman told Gao Wushi that the shipbuilding timbers in Daming are not so meticulous, especially in the north, where pine or fir is generally used, and occasionally cypress is also used.Usually, double or triple planks are used on the side and bottom of the ship, and tung oil and lime are used to crack the hatches to prevent water leakage.Each ship is generally divided into more than ten compartments, even if one or two compartments leak, the whole ship will not sink.

Daming is still rich in resources for the three types of wood, pine, fir, and cypress, especially in Guangxi.According to his previous journey from Liuzhou to Siming, it seems that there are a lot of pine trees.Pine is also a good wood. It has been said since ancient times that "thousand-year submarine pine, ten thousand-year dry maple".

It means that pine is not afraid of moisture, and maple is not too dry.The "seabed" refers to a lot of water, that is, a humid environment, such as the kind that floats on the sea all year round.Pine wood is not afraid of water because it contains rosin.

Therefore, when it comes to shipbuilding, you can’t just think about teak. Teak is good, but it doesn’t mean that teak can only be used in shipbuilding, let alone that teak is suitable for all parts of shipbuilding.

The advantage of teak is that its expansion and contraction is one of the least among all woods, so it can resist the erosion of marine and land animals, and it will not corrode iron. At the same time, because of its small shrinkage rate, it is not easy to leak.Because teak has many advantages such as high corrosion resistance, not easy to deform in various climates, and easy construction, it is suitable for shipbuilding, especially ship decks, oars, and masts.If teak is used for the whole ship, it will be expensive and unnecessary.

Therefore, although it is not clear whether there are teak trees in Guangxi, he is not in a hurry, because the forest resources in Guangxi are now sufficient.As for the purchase of wood from the chieftain, Gao Wushi is not worried about the uncontrollable embarrassment of buying tung oil, because from the current point of view, except for him, Gao, I am afraid that no one will buy shipbuilding wood on such a large scale. plan, so if he didn't buy it, the toasts would have no place to sell it.

Of course, on the other hand, if we can handle places like Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar in the future, Gao Pragmatism will also like teak...
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(End of this chapter)