After the fleet organized by Datang Western Company set off from the port of Guangzhou, it did not go directly south to the South China Sea, but first went to the Hong Kong Navy Pier, where it joined a number of escort ships of the navy, and then sailed directly to Luzon!

In this huge fleet, there are ships of the Datang Western Company, as well as the immigration ships of the Ministry of Agriculture's Immigration and Reclamation Department, as well as the escort fleet of the Navy.

After all, piracy in the South China Sea is quite rampant today, and many of the pirates who used to be active in the coastal waters of Datang have entered the South Seas, and there are not a few pirates who have heard that it is easy to make money here, and there are not a few pirates who have come from other places to make a fortune.

Even if the ships of an overseas trading company with an official background such as the Nanyang Company, if only one or two ships go to sea, it is not safe to encounter pirates, after all, pirates don't care what kind of ship you are, in their eyes, these lone merchant ships are fat, and they will bite hard.

In recent years, many merchant ships that went to sea for trade have never been returned, and although many of them were sunk by storms, many of them were actually plundered by pirates.

Several fleets have more than 20 ships, some of which are large and some are small, the largest is nearly 1,000 tons, and the small ones are only about 100 tons, but since they are ships that dare to run to the open sea, the worst ones are also Canton ships and Fu ships.

Such a large fleet, and in addition to a few professional warships, the other ships are also all armed merchant ships, not to mention ordinary pirates, even if the Portuguese see it, they will not dare to act rashly.

Although the naval strength of the Portuguese is strong, the Portuguese need to control more sea areas, they need warships to maintain the security of local sea areas in mainland Europe, on the west coast and east coast of Africa, on the coast of India, all over Indonesia, and on the east coast of South America.

Otherwise, they would not sit idly by and watch the Tang Western Company build colonies in Luzon and Banten, not because they don't want to stop it, but because they can't stop it, and at the same time they have many concerns.

The Datang Navy set off from the Hong Kong Naval Base, and it didn't take long to kill Malacca, and it didn't take much to do so, just a dozen warships, it would be able to blockade Malacca, block the Strait of Malacca, and completely cut off the spice trade in the South Seas that the Portuguese had been operating for many years.

Although the strength of the Datang Navy is not strong, so far not even a single battleship has been put into service, but there are more than 20 cruisers and frigates of several hundred tons.

Such a force, even the Portuguese, needs to be treated with caution, not to say that war can be started.

If they want to win the Datang Navy, they have to transfer warships from the Indian Ocean and even African waters, not to mention the time spent back and forth, but more importantly, the warships in these waters have been transferred more, how can they maintain control of the local waters?

Based on this general environment, the Portuguese can only turn a blind eye to the Tang Dynasty's establishment of colonies in the Nanyang region, in addition to inciting pirates to attack, as long as the Tang Empire continues to trade with the Portuguese and does not block their Portuguese spice trade, then they will endure.

Anyway, the Portuguese controlled the trade routes from Europe to East Asia, and as long as the Tang Empire could not transport goods directly to Europe, in the end, they were all needed by the Portuguese.

It's just that they don't know that the Tang Empire has quietly opened up European routes, and at the same time is trying to introduce Spaniards to the South Seas.

The huge fleet sailed south, and their ships, under the influence of the monsoon, raised all their grace and sailed towards Luzon at maximum speed!

In fact, in the winter season, the ships that go to sea are only them, and most of the ships that want to go south will set sail during this period, from North Korea and Japan to the south, from the northern coast of the Tang Dynasty to Tianjin, Jiaozhou and other places, and even to the south of Shanghai Port.

Almost most of the ships heading south set sail during this season, and when they reach their destination, they trade and then wait until April and May next year to start taking advantage of the southwest monsoon to move north.

The result is a complete route for north-south maritime trade!

Therefore, many ships in Guangzhou Port and Lianzhou Port began to set sail to various ports in the South Seas, most of them went to Malacca, and there were also other ports of the indigenous countries of the South Seas, and they were also the first ships to go south this year.

In the months that followed, ships would continue to sail south, either later or further north, and the whole wave could continue until the end of the monsoon.

However, other people's ships, Datang Western Company naturally does not care, they only care about their own fleet!

This time, in addition to the ships owned and leased by Datang Western Company, there were other private merchant ships that also followed the fleet of Datang Western Company to the south, and those merchant ships that went south with them naturally wanted to go to Luzon and Banten for trade.

Throughout the winter, Datang Western Company is expected to send a total of 21 merchant ships south, more than half of which are the latest 680 merchant ships, and the rest are also Galen ships with relatively large tonnage, or simply traditional Chinese ships such as Fu Ships and Guangzhou Ships.

Other private trading companies will also send more than 20 merchant ships to Luzon or Banten to trade, and their ships are generally smaller.

But the ships that were able to go to sea in these years were not small, and the key thing was that the value of the goods loaded by these ships was huge, and the goods on each ship were worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

Among them, a 680 merchant ship of the Datang Western Company, not counting other goods, silk alone is worth 100,000 taels of silver!

The total value of the goods carried by these ships sent by Datang Western Company to the sea is more than one million taels of silver, and interestingly, most of these goods are not purchased by Datang Western Company with its own cash, because they do not have so much funds for activities.

Most of the goods were purchased with loans, and they borrowed millions of taels of silver from various banks such as the Royal Bank and other banks, using the company's many ships and other fixed assets as collateral for the purchase of goods.

But as long as there are no major accidents along the way, such as the accident in which the entire fleet sinks when the storm hits, even if one or two of the ships are sunk in the process of going to sea, as long as most of the ships come back safely, then their profits can be doubled!

Don't think that doubling the profit is very high, in fact, it is not too high, because the risk is too great, and it is not unsightly to see the destruction of the fleet in the event of a large-scale storm.

Otherwise, why is the profit on the European route more than ten times or even dozens of times, because on such a long route, all kinds of risks are too great, whether it is a pirate attack, or an attack by the natives, or by the fleets of other countries in the open, or simply sunk because of a storm, and then there is a problem of sepsis, in short, the losses are too high.

Those dead sailors and sunken ships are all costs, so in the end, if you calculate the whole, in fact, the overall profit is not as exaggerated as dozens of times, but there are still several times or even more than ten times.

Well, the premise is to monopolize the routes.

The maritime trade in the East Asian seas is naturally not as high as the European route, because there is basically no monopoly problem in this sea area, everyone can run, and the more people who run, the profits will naturally be diluted.

However, even so, the profits of the Oriental and South Sea trade are still considerable, stimulating many investors to buy ships and go to sea full of goods in search of opportunities to make a fortune.

After all, this is a business that can double or even several times the profit with a single trip, and even if it is at the risk of being attacked by pirates and sinking in a storm, many people will admit it.

There are too many risks based on maritime trade, so many maritime trading companies in the Tang Dynasty today adopt a joint-stock system, and many shareholders invest together to share the risks.

The shareholding reform of Datang Nanyang Company and Toyo Company is a typical example of this kind of big backlash.

The ships went south one after another, and Li Xuan, who was in Jinling, also got relevant reports from the Ministry of Commerce, customs and other departments, but he naturally did not pay attention to these trivial matters, he paid attention to the advantages of industry and commerce brought by maritime trade to the Tang Empire.

The cabinet synthesized the reports of several subordinate departments and presented Li Xuan with the industrial and commercial development of Xuanping in the first three quarters of the seventh year.

Thanks to the continuous stimulation of maritime trade, the sales of export-oriented commodities have increased substantially this year, whether it is new industrial products such as soap, matches, weapons, and cloth, or traditional export commodities such as tea, silk, and porcelain, or some other commodities used for export, all of which have increased substantially.

At the same time, most parts of the country remained stable, especially after the political and military stability of the economic center of Zhili Sidao, all kinds of production returned to normal, and the economic level returned to normal levels, resulting in a huge demand for consumer goods.

Coupled with the market demand in other regions, this has led to a sharp rise in domestic demand for various agricultural and industrial products.

When there is a great demand for all kinds of products in overseas trade and domestic markets, this era is the era when people engaged in industry and commerce can make the best money.

Any person with a little capital or brains, set up a family-style workshop, produce something, as long as the quality is not too bad, then basically do not worry about the market, it is difficult to say how much you earn, but it is definitely profitable.

Seeing that opening a factory to make money means that more capital will pour in, which will lead to the large-scale development of industry and commerce.

Today's overall situation is that a large amount of capital continues to pour in, and it is not urgent for existing factories to actively expand production, and a large number of factories and various enterprises are also being established quickly and intensively.

In the first three quarters of the seventh year of Xuanping alone, there were more than 10,000 new manufacturing enterprises in the Ministry of Commerce, and there were countless small-scale service companies, trading companies, or simply small shops.

There are a lot of them, that's because the Tang Dynasty had strict taxes, requiring registration regardless of the size of the business behavior, even if you set up a stall on the street, you have to register a 'personal business license'.

The Ministry of Commerce is very lenient on the registration of individual businesses, as long as you declare your personal identity, explain what business you want to engage in, and pay the cost of ten copper coins, then you can do it. You don't even have to go to the local business yamen to register, you can find the village chief in the village to get an application form, just fill in the form and apply.

Of course, there are some restrictions on the enterprise class, but overall there are not many restrictions.

So if you want to do business these days, official documents are not a problem, as long as you are not in the business of weapons and so on.

As a result, the registration scale of various commercial organizations is quite large!

If you meet a random person on the street, you may not know what kind of trading company they have in their name!

However, it is difficult to measure the industrial development of these tertiary industries such as services and sales in the current era, so when the Ministry of Commerce measures the development of industry and commerce, it is often measured by manufacturing.

More than 10,000 new factories of various types have been added, and although most of them are small-scale factories, many of them are medium-sized and large-scale factories employing more than 50 people.

Among them, all kinds of new industries have become investment hotspots, textile is currently the hottest industry, more than 15% of the new enterprises in the factory are textile factories, they are either weaving factories, or spinning mills, or printing and dyeing factories, etc., followed by all kinds of daily products, these subdivisions of the industry are more complex, but in general it is still daily products, or consumer products.

The development of various consumer industries has also led to the development of other industries, and the three major categories of minerals, iron and steel, and machinery have directly benefited from the development of various consumer industries and have developed rapidly.

Jiangnan Iron and Steel Company, which has just been officially put into production, is in short supply for its production of various types of steel, raw wrought iron and other steel products, and its orders have even been scheduled for two years!

Nowadays, although the steel industry of the entire Tang Dynasty is already expanding rapidly, it is still in short supply.

In addition to military needs, the civilian demand for steel in these years was mainly used to make various tools.

Especially farm tools and kitchen utensils, and how many people are there in the whole of China? At least 150 million or more, how much steel is needed here?