Zheng Zhilong frowned, and calculated the account for Zhu Cihong, "Master Chitose, a big bird ship can only hold two or three thousand stones of rice at most...... No matter how cheap the rice in Annam, Champong, and Shuizhenla is, it will cost four or five dollars of silver and a stone to transport it to the ship, right? The difference in the price of a shipload of rice is only two or three thousand taels, and if you deduct the sailors' wages and the cost of repairing the ship, it is not much! ”

Zhu Cihong laughed: "Old Taishan, your account is not right!" ”

How could it be wrong? Zheng Zhi Longxin said: I can settle the account! I don't even have to count the millions of accounts a year......

Zhu Cihong thought to himself: Can you calculate me? I'm good at math, and the top student who almost got a perfect score in math in the college entrance examination is like me...... I used to count tens of billions of accounts without counting my fingers!

And the business of buying rice in Annam, Champong, and Suzhenla is not something you do at all, and the place where this business makes money is not selling rice, but colonizing!

As far as Zhu Cihong knows, colonization also has losses and gains. Losing money to colonize is about territory – it can also be seen as a long-term money-burning investment.

There are two kinds of colonization to make money, one is to make money, for example, the colonization of Taiwan by the Dutch East India Company is to obtain a trading base with China and Japan.

The other is to gain both money and land, not only to make money, but also to take down the land.

Now the Ming Dynasty has a lot of internal and external troubles, and it is not easy to have money, so it is impossible to lose money and burn money to colonize, otherwise it will die at a loss. But at the same time, the population of Daming is also large, and it is different from the Netherlands, which does not have many people, so you can't just think about money and not land. So you have to take the road of both wealth and land!

And the double harvest of wealth and land, or wealth in the front, land in the back! The key is to first find an industry that can be "drained" – even if it makes a little less, or no money, and attracts a certain number of people from the mainland to the colonies.

The population of the colonies could go up, so that they could further develop their industries and cities, so that they could occupy the land and reap the rewards handsomely.

Although the rice trade with Champa and Shui Chenla was not very profitable, it could be made on a large scale - the Mekong Delta was still very well developed in this era, and there were large tracts of land that could be cultivated, but at the same time, it was not without a little foundation, and there was a port city called Puliango, which was developing very well. The city, which would later be Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City, was still part of the kingdom of Tran La, but it was given more than 20 years ago to the daughter of a Nguyen lord of Quang Nam (a secessionist regime in Annam) who married King Trangh Chenla, making it a paradise for refugees from Annam, who had fled the Trung Nguyen dispute.

And the Annan refugees are similar to the Han people of the Ming Dynasty in terms of ethnic origin, living habits and language, and now there is no official Annan country, only the Annan Metropolitan Department of the Ming Dynasty!

In other words, Annam is not really an independent state now, but is dependent on a Tusi regime of the Ming Dynasty - this matter has to start with the decline and usurpation of the Li Dynasty after Annam. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Later Li Dynasty of Annam entered the so-called "Middle Decline Era", in which the clans fought each other and the powerful ministers took advantage of the opportunity to rise. One of the ministers, Mo Dengyong, covered the sky with his last hand and played the trick of Zen to usurp the country.

But this usurpation did not usurp the throne, and the other two powerful families of the Later Li Dynasty, the Zheng family and the Ruan family, did not accept the usurpation of the Mo family - they themselves wanted to usurp it! let Mo Dengyong take the lead, so he had to be a loyal minister of Zhongxing in the Li Dynasty, and found a distant relative of the Li Dynasty to be the emperor, and worked against Mo Dengyong. And they also sent people to Beijing to ask for help from Emperor Jiajing, the Ming Dynasty was the nominal suzerain of Annam! You can't ignore the usurpation of the vassal country, right?

So Emperor Jiajing sent a large army to crusade against Mo Dengyong, Mo Dengyong didn't see it right, Zheng Ruan's soldiers and horses were uneven, and the Ming Dynasty would be dead? Therefore, he surrendered to the Ming Dynasty and wanted to be a loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty. When Emperor Jiajing saw that Annan had returned inexplicably, of course he didn't fight Mo Dengyong and made him the commander of Annan.

Annan is gone!

It's a pity that Mo Zhu, who became the commander of the capital of Annam, still couldn't defeat the remnants of the Li Dynasty, and lost the national capital Shenglong in 1592, and the rest fled to the Ming Dynasty.

The revived Li Dynasty then petitioned the Ming Dynasty to reinstate the title of Annam. However, he did not get the consent of the Ming Dynasty, and only transferred the name of the commander of the capital of Annam to the Later Li Dynasty.

However, the chaos in Annam did not end because of the revival of Hou Li, but became more chaotic.

Because the Later Li Dynasty itself did not have strength, it relied on the support of Zheng and Ruan to prosper. After Zhongxing, it is natural for Zheng Ruan and the second lord to usurp the throne. But there is only one great position, who will usurp it? So the two fought. At the same time, the Mo family, who took refuge in the Ming Dynasty, did not cool down, and in 1600 they were restored and captured Thang Long. After that, although he did not hold it, he fled to Gaoping Prefecture in the north of Annam.

In addition, there was also a Wu clan (Wu Degong), who played a large role in the collapse of the Mo Dynasty, who began a rebellion in 1599, proclaimed himself the king of Longping, and also seized a territory in the north of the kingdom of Annam.

Therefore, there are now four regimes in the territory of the small capital of Annan, which have become a pot of porridge internally, and they have to recognize the "good father" of the Ming Dynasty externally.

But such an Annan, but he still has the strength to bully the Champa State and Shui Chenla in the south - it is not Zheng Ruan Mowu who bullies them together, just a Quang Nam Nguyen lord suppressed Champa and Shui Chenla, how weak these two countries are, you can imagine.

And Zhu Cihong, who aspires to be a big colonist, is also very weak now, and the four "little masters" of Annan may not be able to be eliminated.

However, he also needed to import grain from overseas and obtain arable land at the same time to alleviate the contradiction between man and land at home. So I can only find the two weakest weaklings in Champa and Shui Zhenla to bully...... And he didn't dare to send soldiers to destroy the country - because the soldiers had to be used to deal with Tartar and Li Zicheng. Therefore, they can only coax and deceive to take advantage of the city-state and Shuizhenla.

Zhu Cihong saw that Zheng Zhilong didn't understand, so he had to explain patiently: "Old Taishan, it is true that you can't make much money by buying rice from Annan, Zhancheng, and Shuizhenla to Quanzhou and Shanghai to sell it, and you may not make money after deducting the cost. But you must know that if we buy rice from Annam, Champong, and Suzhenla for half a tael of silver, and buy a large amount, there will definitely be people who will go there to cultivate and plant.

Regardless of Annam, both Champa and Suchenla have a lot of fertile wasteland to cultivate. Moreover, the national strength of these two countries is weakened, and even Annan, who is divided into four parts of one country, can bully them casually, not to mention my great tomorrow dynasty?

Now that there is a shortage of food in the country of the Heavenly Empire, it is also their honor to use their fertile soil to cultivate and plant! And we don't plant their fields in vain, we can protect them from being annexed by the Nguyen family of Annam, which is also a good thing for their princes, right? ”

Zheng Zhilong still didn't understand, this matter might be a good thing for Shui Zhenla and the king of Zhancheng, but what good would it be for the Zheng family?

Zhu Cihong then said: "The rice of Shuizhenla and Champa needs to be transshipped through ports and commercial ports. And this transshipment port and commercial port, of course, can be made into our territory...... In this way, we have a stronghold in Suchenla and Champa that can last for a long time. Shui Chenla and Champa were also on the trade route between China and the South Seas by merchant ships. Once we have our stronghold, then it will be much more convenient for our merchant ships to go to the South Seas and Siam. Your Zheng family's territory on the sea can also be expanded accordingly.

Moreover, Shuizhenla and Champa also have many special products that can be sold for money, such as ivory, rhino horn, ebony, agarwood, yellow wax, and can also grow sugar cane to produce cane sugar. As long as we have a base there, these can become our wealth. ”

It seems like so...... Zheng Zhilong was a little dizzy when he heard it, it was obviously a rice business, how could he occupy other people's territory to establish a port and commercial port, and still take other people's specialties for himself? This sounds like something Tartar and Xiyi did! I'm supposed to be a dignified country in the Ming Dynasty, how can I do this kind of deception, abduction, and bullying of people?