In order to relieve the disaster, Daming has issued bonds many times, issued 500 million taels of domestic debt at home, and issued up to 700 million US dollars of foreign debt abroad, one dollar is equivalent to 0.7 taels of silver, so the total debt of Daming is close to one billion taels of silver. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

This money is mainly used to provide food for the disaster area, but it is not enough to buy food.

There are 200 million people affected by the disaster, but not all of them have become disaster victims, and not all of them have been able to get relief in the end.

Therefore, the victims of the Ming Dynasty rescue, far less than 200 million people, according to statistics, the people who are currently receiving relief from the Ming Dynasty, only 30 million people, although with the famine becoming more and more loyal, and the flow of victims to the relief station of the Ming Dynasty, the number of victims received continues to increase, according to the current rate, I am afraid that this year and next year can grow to 50 million is a limit.

Due to the high price of the Ming Dynasty, the price of grain all over the world has risen a lot, and the United States has benefited the most. The price of grain in Daming has also increased significantly, and under the government's strong control, it is also much higher than the price booked, and the average rice is as high as four taels.

As a major exporter of grain, the United States' export prices are even higher than those of Daming, because the United States itself is a high-income country, labor prices are high, and the grain exported is mainly supplied to industrial countries like Europe, which can better bear the price increases.

The Ming Dynasty fed 30 million people, and it is possible to feed up to 50 million people.

If a person averages a load of grain, the direct expenditure is more than 200 million taels.

And Daming prepared one billion taels of silver, obviously the purchase of grain could not be used up at all, but the Ming government was still worried that it would not be enough, because more expenditure was not to buy grain, but to transport grain.

According to the data before the famine, the cost of raw silk exported from Shanghai to the United States was $17.40 for sea transportation, $5 for marine insurance, $7.17 for commercial interest, and $0.25 for the consulate's receipt, totaling $29.83.

Since the raw silk of the two countries is duty-free, although the US government has announced that it will waive all official fees, it has actually only waived some consular fees at the customs clearance, which is not even a fraction of it.

This is still the price before the famine, due to the occurrence of the famine, the price of international freight between China and the United States has risen sharply, although the freight rate of a load of grain is much lower than that of raw silk, but in the past there were 20 US dollars, and even reached 30 US dollars after the price increase, which is higher than the price of raw silk in the past.

30 US dollars is equivalent to 21 taels of silver, plus the purchase price, a load of grain, transported from the United States to the disaster area, even if you do not count the freight of the Ming Railway Company, it is as high as 26 taels of silver. If 50 million quintals of grain were to be provided to the disaster area, it would cost at least 1.3 billion taels of silver.

Such a huge burden could not be borne by the crude financial system of the Qing Dynasty, so it was not that they did not want to provide disaster relief, but in fact they simply did not have the ability to do so.

After more than ten years of accumulation, the Ming government played with its life, risked everything, and did not hesitate to support this huge burden.

But what you have to pay is not only the billions of silver in fiscal expenditure, but the implied price is much greater than this.

Due to the soaring price of grain, the domestic rice price that could basically be maintained at one tael and one quintal before rose to four taels and one quintal, and the Ming Dynasty is 80 million people eating, which is much larger than the number of disaster victims relieved, so the price paid by the people of Daming is much higher than the financial burden of the Ming government.

Isn't there no benefit if there is a burden?

Of course!

And it's huge.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of huge funds have been smashed, and even international grain prices have been raised, which in itself is a huge market.

Among them, it is natural to tend to the Ming merchants.

Daming's transportation industry has developed rapidly in recent years, but it has always faced fierce competition from European and American shipping companies, especially British capital, British Steamship Company, Baoshun Foreign Company, and Swire Ocean Company, which are the three giants, which previously monopolized most of the shipping market in Chinese mainland.

For this kind of commercial enterprise, Zhu Jinglun has always liked to solve it in a commercial way, on the one hand, he supports the competition of domestic shipping enterprises, gives tax incentives and low-interest loans, and on the other hand, he wields the power of capital and takes advantage of mergers and acquisitions. The Shanghai financial crisis of 1866 gave Zhu Jinglun this opportunity. That year, Baoshun went bankrupt because of too fast expansion, and in history they sought the head of their rival Jardine Matheson, but because of the personal grievances between the Didi family and the Madison family behind Baoshun and Jardine Matheson, Jardine Matheson sat back and watched Baoshun go bankrupt in history and did not rescue.

But now Jardine Matheson itself is controlled by Daming Capital, so they don't count what they say, so Baoshun's request for help was echoed, and finally HSBC came forward to acquire 60% of Baoshun's shares to avoid their bankruptcy.

However, through various ways, after more than ten years of fierce competition, British-funded shipping still occupies most of the market in China, and Daming Capital can only occupy more than 40% of the share, especially in the territory of the Manchu Qing Dynasty that competes fairly north of Shanghai, and can only account for 30% of the share.

This famine has greatly changed this situation, and the Ming government's disaster relief operations, of course, give priority to the services of domestic enterprises, and the Fujian Association, Tongwen Xing, and even the Tanmin Boat Gang have all received a volume of business that they could not have imagined in the past. The sand boats, which had been squeezed by steamers in the waters of China and had almost disappeared, have even begun to come alive again. And ship transportation, as long as there is capacity, there is no worry about no goods to transport.

In this case, Daming Capital pressed British capital for the first time, accounting for 60% of the regional transportation.

In terms of international shipping, the Ming Dynasty has been a weakness before, focusing on funding the Pan family's Tongwen Bank to open international routes, respectively, in Europe, North America, India opened up ten routes, because of the small number of ships, coupled with the monopoly position of Britain and France and other countries, these routes are operating at a loss.

This time, with the purchase of a large amount of American grain, the operation of the North American route of Tongwen Bank was the first to turn over, and the soaring international freight rates allowed them to get a large amount of profits, and with the support of Daming, they obtained a one-third share, and they couldn't eat more.

The development of the shipping industry is bound to be the best benefit of the shipbuilding industry.

The Ming Dynasty itself developed its shipping industry relatively early, and the steamship manufacturing industry was carried out even before the Opium War, of course, the pioneer was still British capital, Guangzhou Huangpu, Changzhou, and the area have always been the center of the shipbuilding industry, and Chiwan and Kowloon also have shipyards invested in the construction of arsenals.

The arsenal can even build ironclad ships, and the shipyards in Guangzhou have no difficulty in building steamships, but like the shipping industry, British capital used to occupy the largest share of civilian shipbuilding, and they built ships for foreign companies such as Swire, provided maintenance and other businesses, and the profit margin was not small, and it was always able to develop benignly.

Through this disaster relief, the unfavorable situation of Daming shipbuilding capital has also been greatly improved.

After the acquisition of Baoshun by Jardine Matheson, the shipbuilding business of Baoshun was also controlled by Daming Capital, and this time it simply sold the shipbuilding and shipping business of Baoshun to Tongwen Bank at a high price to Tongwen Bank, which hoped to intervene in the shipbuilding industry, using the equipment and technical strength of Baoshun Shipyard, coupled with the strong capital of the Pan family, the Pan family began to build ocean-going ships, and there were 20 ocean-going merchant ships built by themselves.

The arsenal also received a large amount of orders, and the Pan family could not bear their own rapidly expanding orders, but the arsenal received orders for thirty ships, which was larger than the business volume of Tongwenxing's own shipyard.

Stimulated by the profits of the shipbuilding industry, many private enterprises have also begun to put into operation shipyards, the more powerful is the Chen Liantai shipyard in Guangzhou, which is a machinery factory, in the development of the silk reeling industry, through the first introduction of steam reeling machine to develop into a mechanical giant, has long had the intention of shipbuilding, taking this opportunity to establish its own shipyard in Huangpu, not only the production of wooden-hulled steamships, but also the introduction of equipment, the manufacture of steel steamers, obviously ambition is not small.

The Pan family can develop on their own, and a large number of small and medium-sized shipping companies do not have the capital to expand rapidly, especially Shanghai's sand shipping industry, has been under the competition of foreigners and Daming steamship enterprises, can only guard the inland short-distance shipping for a living, but they used to have experience in transporting water from the northeast to Shanghai, and the transit point of this disaster relief is Shanghai, which provides them with a good opportunity, in the case of insufficient capacity, their sand ships have been able to sail to sea again.

At this time, the Ming government proposed to fund them to carry out the operation of steamship shipping, but they were not able to expand, and second, they had no experience in managing steamship operations, and their advantages were channels and navigation experience.

The Ming government provided a one-stop service, not only promising to send crews from the navy to help them train sailors, but also directly building a large number of small and medium-sized steamships in Daming and handing them over to carry out inland and coastal short-distance shipping.

For Daming, one of the main reasons why it has always been at a disadvantage in the competition with British capital is that British capital has taken Shanghai as its base camp and has been operating for too long, so it has a strong monopoly on the golden waterway of the Yangtze River.

They are all Chinese, they are all Chinese capital, they are all competing with the British, Daming is willing to support, in fact, the main thing is that Zhu Jinglun wants to support, for the Daming government, these Shanghai shipping companies that cannot bring taxes to the government are no different from British shipping companies.

But Zhu Jinglun felt that as long as supporting these people could offset the advantages of the British in Shanghai, then it would be beneficial to the competition of other Ming shipping companies, as long as Britain could not gain a foothold in Shanghai, then the entire shipping along the coast of China, they would gradually lose, which was a prosperous thing.