The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 366 Qingguo's Little Thoughts

"Bi Qing, take a look."

On December 1735, 12, Qi Shaoyi, the third king of the Daqing Kingdom, came to Xingqing City (now La Plata), more than 10 kilometers east of Yongding City (now Buenos Aires), under the escort of a team of guards, to attend the opening ceremony of a local shipyard.

The shipyard is a large modern factory jointly invested and built by Qi Daxing Shipbuilding Heavy Industry and Qing Ministry of Industry and Commerce, with a total investment of more than one million yuan.

After this shipyard is completed and put into production, it will be the only shipyard in Qing Dynasty and even in the entire South American region that has special construction facilities for ships of all levels from 100 tons, 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons. It can meet the full range of construction needs of various types of ships from barges, tugboats, fishing boats, warships to cargo ships, special ships, etc.

By then, the shipyard will also become the largest, most technologically advanced and most efficient shipyard in the entire South America.

Amid the bustling celebration, Prince Qing Qi Shaoyi appeared particularly high-spirited. Looking at the several docks and large shipyard bases that were still under construction, he seemed to see thousand-ton ships sailing from here to the sea, and then bringing back countless gold and silver and huge amounts of supplies.

He also seemed to see majestic warships slowly sliding into the water from the dock, and then entering the vast Atlantic Ocean, galloping across the waves for the expansion of Qing Kingdom and the pursuit of maritime interests.

This shipyard represents a huge step forward in the industrial development of Qing State, and is also a milestone that will lead Qing State's industry to a new height.

More than ten years ago, Qing Kingdom had the first railway in South America. Now, Qing Kingdom has the first modern shipyard in South America. In the future, Qing Kingdom will also have steel mills, machinery equipment factories, locomotive manufacturing plants, coal chemical plants... and a series of other factories with complete categories and advanced technologies, thereby becoming the richest and most powerful kingdom in South America.

Just as he was imagining the bright future of the kingdom, a guard officer came over and handed Prince Qing a piece of intelligence that had just arrived.

Qi Shaoyi opened the sealed envelope, took out the information inside, and read it quickly at a glance.

Bi Sihan, the Chief of the Military and Political Department of the Qing Kingdom and General of the Cavalry (Admiral), was waiting at one side with his head lowered. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw a meaningful smile on the face of Prince Qing, which aroused some curiosity in his heart.

After a while, Prince Qing handed over the information and asked softly for his opinion.

"If Qi is determined to go to war with France, we in Qing should actively participate. This may win Qing a rare opportunity for development. We may even be able to gain a few 'sugar islands' and get involved in the lucrative sugar trade." After reading this, Bi Sihan also smiled.

That's right. Over the past few decades, Qi State launched several wars in the Americas and the Atlantic region, and Qing State, as a vassal state, followed closely, actively participated in the wars, and reaped huge benefits from the wars. This not only enabled Qing State to significantly expand its territory, but also indirectly promoted the development of its own economy.

In the First Qi-Xi War, Qing, together with Qi, declared war on Spain and seized more than 100,000 square kilometers of territory south of the Pengxi River (now the Colorado River in Argentina), thus gaining a large "warm land" for the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

In the Second Qi-Spanish War (part of the War of the Spanish Succession), Qing once again joined Qi in beating up Spain, conquered the southern and eastern coast regions of the Spanish La Plata, expanded the territory by thousands of miles, seized large tracts of fertile land, and also received more than 500,000 taels of silver in compensation.

The State of Qi even half-sold and half-gave away a large number of Spanish ships and supplies captured during the war to the State of Qing, which not only greatly promoted the development of its domestic maritime transportation industry, but also greatly enriched the kingdom's finances, causing the overall domestic economy to experience an abnormal wartime prosperity.

During the Qi-England War several years ago, Qing continued to follow Qi's footsteps in the war and took the opportunity to launch an attack on Portuguese Brazil, easily occupying the Rio Grande region and pushing the border northward to the upper reaches of the Uruguay River, thereby obtaining precious coal resources needed for industrial development. Although the coal resources in the region were of poor quality, with a low carbon content and a high ash content, Qing no longer had to spend huge amounts of money and time to import coal from Qianzhou (now South Africa) or Hanzhou.

Moreover, these three wars also thoroughly established Qing Kingdom's status as a "great power" in South America, and implicitly established a strategic deterrent against Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil.

So, in the face of the possible outbreak of the Qi-France war, the Qing Kingdom would naturally follow closely and continue to fight along with its motherland.

Of course, given the strength of the Qing Kingdom, it is impossible to send an expeditionary force to directly attack the French mainland.

But we can dispatch the few steam warships we have to the Caribbean to lend a helping hand, to show our strength, or to transport some supplies to support the needs of Qi's expeditionary fleet.

With the strength of Qi, even if it could not completely defeat France, it would not suffer a major defeat. At the very least, it could seize the French Caribbean territory with its superior naval power.

At that time, Qing State could follow Qi State and "pick up" a few islands that are rich in sugarcane, thereby developing its own sugar industry. In the future, it would be able to spend less money to import large quantities of sugarcane from Portuguese Brazil.

At present, the trade situation between Qing and Portuguese Brazil is that Qing exports dried fish, rice, flour, corn, oil, as well as a large number of livestock, candles and primary handicrafts.

Almost all of the pickled fish, soybeans, butter, cheese, and beef products from Xiazhou (now La Plata Province) and Yizhou (now Uruguay), which were adjacent to Portuguese Brazil, were sold to Brazilian plantation owners.

In addition to sugar, the only commodities exported by Brazil to Qing Dynasty include gold, mahogany, minerals and a few other things. The trade between the two sides is extremely unbalanced.

Because Brazilian plantation owners, big and small, are unwilling to give up the huge profits brought by sugarcane. Even though a large amount of land is very suitable for growing crops such as rice and wheat, they will never make such a "stupid" decision.

At the request of the mother country, the Portuguese Brazilian colonial authorities also prohibited farmers from producing wheat, wine, vegetable oil and other agricultural products and commodities that could be imported from the mother country. At the same time, in order to increase customs revenue and avoid losses in the sugar industry, they also encouraged plantation owners in the country to continue to expand the scale of sugarcane cultivation, ignoring local food production.

Even the Portuguese government was indirectly helping Qing. In order to protect the interests of Portuguese local industrialists and businessmen, they implemented mercantilist policies and imposed strict restrictions on Brazilian industry and commerce in recent years, prohibiting the development of industry and commerce and prohibiting the establishment of handicraft workshops, which led to the decline of local industry and commerce and caused rampant smuggling trade between Brazil and Qing. These factors created the characteristics of Portuguese Brazil's single industrial and agricultural products, inability to be self-sufficient in food, and dependence on living products produced by Qing. This characteristic also greatly stimulated the development of Qing's agriculture and handicraft industry.

However, Portuguese Brazil is truly a treasure land blessed by God. No matter how the Portuguese mess around, they will never fall into poverty.

Just as the rosewood in Portuguese Brazil was becoming increasingly depleted after two hundred years of uninterrupted felling, the sugar trade began to flourish and it once supplied sugar to the entire European continent, making the Portuguese lucrative.

When European countries followed Portugal's example and established sugarcane plantations on Caribbean islands, Brazil's sugar industry suffered a major blow, with annual revenue dropping by two-thirds and the sugar economy beginning to go into depression.

Unexpectedly, the Portuguese discovered gold and diamonds in the Minas Gerais region. The once depressed economy of Portuguese Brazil entered a prosperous mining cycle, which continues to this day.

Over the past thirty years, Portuguese Brazil has mined approximately 100 million pounds of gold, accounting for 35% of the global gold market (Qi State mined 60% of the gold), and total diamond production has exceeded 150 million carats (during the same period, Qi State's Qianzhou mined 180 million carats of diamonds).

On the surface, the mining boom seemed to have saved the Brazilian economy while also enriching the Kingdom of Portugal.

But in fact, while the Portuguese colonists were squandering Brazil's wealth, they also missed the world industrial revolution led by Qi. They became increasingly dependent on industrial products from England and Qi, and the wealth plundered from Brazil flowed into the hands of other countries.

From a long-term perspective, gold and diamonds did not make Portugal and Brazil rich, but instead exacerbated their poverty and backwardness. The three prosperous economic cycles of mahogany, sugar cane and mining brought only deformed and false prosperity to Brazil.

Under Portugal's more than 200 years of colonial rule, the Portuguese Brazilian economy has never diversified, and has implemented an export-oriented single product system from the beginning. External market demand determines the export of products, which in turn affects and restricts the development of colonial territories.

The single product system, large landed property system and slavery system became the main characteristics of the social and economic life of Portuguese Brazil during this period, together forming a deformed economic development model and becoming a shackle that restricted Brazil's future economic development.

"Therefore, we in Qing must not be like Brazil, relying on others for everything and being constrained everywhere." Prince Qi Shaoyi stood on a hill outside the shipyard, looking at the sea in the distance (that is, the La Plata River), "For a country, maintaining necessary independence and autonomy is an extremely important principle."

"Your Majesty, although our Qing Kingdom dominates the southern part of the continent, its strength is still relatively weak. Even compared with several major European countries, it is far inferior." Bi Sihan carefully advised: "Therefore, our Qing Kingdom needs to be patient in many matters and not act too hastily or show off too much."

As an old minister of the kingdom, Bi Sihan knew what the King of Qing was thinking, but he had a very clear understanding of the current situation of Qing.

Although Qing was the most powerful country in South America, whether it was to balance the Spanish American territories or suppress Portuguese Brazil, Qing had enough strength and confidence to win the battle.

But if we want to fight against the motherland, that is not enough, let alone break free from its control and remove the constraints!
Yes, although Qing State was a close vassal state of Da Qi and the blood of Emperor Taizu flowed in the bodies of its kings, it was still suppressed and restrained by its motherland.

Although Qi did not ruthlessly plunder and exploit Qing as a colonial territory like Portugal and Spain did, it still had a lot of control over many aspects including politics, military and economy.

The Qi Navy not only stationed a small squadron in Yongding to strengthen its control over the South Atlantic Ocean, but also leased Ning'an Port (now Punta Arenas, Chile) as a naval base on the grounds that the Qing Navy was too weak to maintain the security of the Ning'an Strait (i.e. the Strait of Magellan), thus completely controlling this key maritime hub between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

It can be said that as long as the people of Qi wanted, they could cut off the connection between Zezhou of Qing (now southern Chile) and its mainland at any time, thereby blocking trade between the two oceans.

A few years ago, after the completion of the Zhongyong (Zhongjing-Yongding) Railway, the Qing government requested the Qi State to help build a railway across the Xiao Mountains (now the Andes Mountains) to open up land transportation between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and further strengthen control over the Zezhou area.

However, the Qi government made excuses, claiming that the existing technology was not capable of building a transoceanic railway across the towering Mount Xiao. It urged the Qing government to continue using sea transportation to complete the exchange of personnel and materials between the two oceans through the Ning'an Strait.

To put it bluntly, Qi State supported Qing State but also imposed some restrictions on it. It did not want to see Qing State continue to grow and become the absolute dominant force in South American affairs.

The local politicians of Qi State were well aware of the principle of strengthening the trunk and weakening the branches, consolidating the foundation and nourishing the roots, and they followed it unswervingly.

As a close vassal state, Qing Kingdom can receive a certain degree of military and economic support from the mother country, but it must comply with the empire's global strategic layout, and it cannot break away from the empire's control, act on its own, and disrupt the balance and stability of the entire region.

In order to gain a foothold in the North Atlantic and Caribbean regions, Qi had to choose to strengthen cooperation with Spain, and for this purpose prevented Qing from continuing to invade and encroach on Spanish American territories.

When Qi successfully pulled Portugal away from its firm alliance with England through the temptation of benefits and the threat of force, making it Qi's most important strategic partner in the Mediterranean and North Sea regions, it disregarded Qing's strategic goal of advancing northward and persuaded Qing not to make military threats against Portuguese Brazil, and even tried to force Qing to return the Rio Grande region it had seized to the Portuguese.

Therefore, in addition to a certain degree of dependence on Qi, the motherland, Qing State also vaguely felt a sense of rejection, believing that Qi had suppressed and restricted itself too much, and completely disregarding the fact that the two sides were both of the same ancestral Chinese descent, and were also blood relatives of Taizu.

You say, no matter how powerful our Qing Kingdom is, can it still threaten Hanzhou's homeland across the vast Pacific Ocean?

Yongle's plan to quell the rebellion and take over the "Central Plains" was not so easy to accomplish!

(End of this chapter)