After Zhou Lang received the declaration of war from Britain, the United States and Spain, he couldn't help but sigh, not because he was afraid of war, nor because he was worried that he would not win, but because he regretted the treatment of the crown prince.

During the struggle for the gold mining area, the Chinese Imperial Court fully cooperated with the crown prince, and the affairs of the Americas were subject to the attitude of the crown prince, which was Zhou Lang cultivating a successor.

But who knew that Zhou Jitong played a good hand of cards so poorly.

He could have united with other countries to deal with one, but all countries have contradictions between them, and if he makes good use of it, he can get a helper and let the other party get an enemy, but it can be made to the extent that he is an enemy of all the forces in North America, which is really unreasonable.

Britain and the United States into the forgivable situation, Britain's consistent policy is to unite the weak to suppress the strongest, China is the strongest force in North America, but also the most powerful country in the world, the British will not let go of any opportunity to attack China. Therefore, Britain is very willing to go into the United States and win over the United States by ceding some of its interests. But China can actually support the Americans to get the whole of Canada in exchange for the support of the United States. With China becoming the number one power in the Americas, Zhou's worries about the United States no longer exist, and even if the United States gains the vast expanse of Canada, it will not pose a threat to China.

But under the operation of the crown prince, first because of the cold land of Canada, he was at odds with the British, and because of the Indian issue, he was at odds with the United States, so that Britain and the United States took the lead in coming together. If this is understandable, it is simply unreasonable that Spain and the United States are about to fight because of Texas, and they can unite the two countries. Moreover, Spain has always been China's most important ally in the Americas, and during the domestic revolution, Spain relied on China to barely keep the colony, and the colony of La Plata was even recovered with the help of the Chinese army.

As a result, the crown prince even forced such an ally to the side of the enemy, which made Zhou Lang feel an incredible stupidity.

Of course, the crown prince Zhou Jitong himself is not a mentally retarded person, not a fool. He has been concerned about this son since he was a child, and he knows very well that his son's IQ is middle and upper, and the education he receives is the best education, so that he does not even have political common sense. But in the past few years in power in the Americas, there are few brilliant strokes worth mentioning, which are either decent or negative.

This is another accidental inevitability, a war with Britain is a matter of time, after the end of the last global hegemony, in fact, both sides did not achieve their goal, although China seized a large number of British colonies, but did not hit the British fleet, and the British in the small naval confrontation, do not have an advantage. The British completely lost control of the Indian Ocean, and around the Indian Ocean, only Tasmania was left as a colony for exiles, which could not support their effective control over India. In the Mediterranean, however, Britain continued to maintain sea supremacy.

In fact, China only fought for a year in that war, and Britain was already at the end of its strong crossbow at that time, so the British were not convinced after the war. Ten years later, the British balanced their finances and were the first in the world to complete the Industrial Revolution, and now Britain has begun to transition to a liberal economic era, exporting machinery and equipment to the world, and their inventions are still world-class.

Other countries have just begun the industrial revolution, China's industrial scale is very large, but there is no end in sight to the completion of the industrial revolution, and because of the special cultural background, the Chinese's ability to invent and create still does not seem to be stimulated, although there are many improved technologies based on the steam engine, such as a large number of transformative inventions of traditional handicrafts, but the kind of inventions that can affect the times are almost none. This made the British consider themselves to be the most special in the world, the most creative and adventurous people, and the national pride did not decline because its power was greatly reduced compared to history.

The situation in China is similar to that in France, where power is very centralized, and power is the way resources are allocated, and the result is the same as in France, where there are basically no cross-era inventions. The problem with France is that they are always used to organizing elites together and forming an academy of sciences to explore cutting-edge science, so France has made considerable contributions to many theoretical researches. The British, on the other hand, are focused on practicality, and their inventions are driven by profit-driven entrepreneurs, always close to the practical field.

But the reason is probably not so simple, the French introduced steam engines from England very early, and in 1770, the Peel brothers secretly ordered steam engines from England, and then tried to improve them for a long time, but they failed, and their improvements could not keep up with the latest steam engines produced in England. This was thought to be the lack of the free exchange of ideas that France lacked in England, so it stifled innovation. But in fact, it was the French who were not in the right way, and in England there were thousands of people who improved the steam engine, while in France it was confined to a few inventors.

Although Zhou Lang introduced French technicians to promote industrialization, he did not reject British technicians, but the level of British technicians introduced was low, and it was impossible for high-level British experts to come to China. But Zhou Lang introduced a large number of English systems, such as patent law, which was considered to encourage innovation. After the implementation of the patent law in the United States, it quickly triggered a boom in invention and creation in the United States after the founding of the People's Republic of China, but after the implementation in China, the effect was not obvious. It is true that there are some people who have made a fortune because of patent registrations, but for most inventions, craftsmen prefer to keep them secret.

While things are getting better, more and more new inventions are being registered and then promoted. But these inventions are still not revolutionary. For example, inventions such as the steam engine, trains, and ships did not appear. Zhou Lang sometimes wonders if the timing is wrong, because China entered the industrial age too late, and important inventions have been invented by others. In order to innovate new inventions, it is necessary to have internal combustion engines and electricity, and these two technologies are not yet ready to be born.

Zhou Lang's knowledge reserve does not have the ability to wrap around a motor, so he does not draw snakes to invent and create. In addition, as a king, he was more concerned with cultivating a soil for innovation than inventing a few technologies to be in the limelight. How should the innovation potential of Chinese be stimulated? This is a big problem. Zhou Lang found that with his ability, he couldn't seem to find an answer. But he has no doubt about the innovation ability of the Chinese, and it is a bit of a bully to pull the four major inventions. But in the information age, the ability of Chinese to innovate seems to be back.

However, innovation in the Internet era is mainly the innovation of business models, and it is still not technical. No Internet company has ever made a fortune by registering patents, so that kind of innovation can probably be classified as institutional innovation such as the imperial examination, rather than technological innovation such as the steam engine. Of course, there are also technological innovations, and in mobile phones, communications and other projects, Chinese are gradually beginning to emerge.

First of all, this is by no means an institutional problem, nor is it an intellectual problem, I am afraid that the root cause is culture.

It's not something that can be achieved overnight, so let's cultivate it slowly.

And this is only a secondary issue that Zhou Lang is concerned about, he is more concerned about the issue of business culture, as long as China solves the problem of business culture, even if there is no creativity, through the introduction of technology, it can dominate the world. When it comes to promoting business culture, Zhou Lang is very happy because he has found a way.

Through passive discovery and active exploration, China has finally given birth to its own business culture. But it is completely different from what Zhou Lang imagined.

To promote business culture in China, we always have to face an old idea of valuing agriculture and suppressing business. Merchants have been despised for a long time, despised to the point that they despise themselves, which gives the merchant class no motivation for sustainable development, and always uses wealth to get rid of their identity after accumulating enough wealth.

Small businessmen are like this, big businessmen are the same, Pan Zhencheng has achieved the position of the thirteen lines of general merchants, he has considerable influence in Europe, so that many Western nobles who know him are envious, but in China he himself looks down on his identity, the Pan family's genealogy, consciously deleted the content of his business, it seems that he has never been a businessman, but even if a child of the family is admitted to Xiucai, in the family tree must be written in a big book, for businessmen, the title of the thirteen lines of general merchant, in fact, even a Xiucai can not catch up.

Under the influence of this culture, it is actually difficult to have a wealthy merchant family that has been doing business for generations, which is not conducive to the accumulation of commercial capital and the inheritance of business experience. The reason why the Jin merchants were able to continue for hundreds of years is mainly because in that place in Shanxi, a culture of non-discrimination against merchants was born. Therefore, many families can do business in the era and pass on their capital and experience. And people in other places, even if they are equally famous Hui merchants, doing business is only as a second choice, and the best son of the family must train him to study and become an official, and then inherit the family business and do business.

Zhou Lang found that after the emergence of large commercial companies, although the cultural tradition of valuing agriculture and suppressing business was still there, the business atmosphere in society suddenly became stronger. Competition has become fierce, and the allocation of social resources has become more and more biased towards commercial allocation. This means that business is beginning to gain a foothold in society.

The reason for this is that this kind of large-scale joint-stock commercial company is not an industry with one surname, but is established by many large businessmen. He has solved at least two problems that have plagued China's business development for a long time, that is, the accumulation of capital and experience, joint-stock companies can go public for financing and issue bonds, and the accumulation of capital is no longer a restriction, as long as there are good projects, basically there is no worry about finding funds; The problem of experience has also been solved, because the directors and treasurers of the company are generally successful businessmen. They are not short of business experience, and the professional accounting and financial personnel trained over the years are also good managers.