Both sides are willing to cooperate, so when Daming expressed to France that he was willing to consider France's previous cooperation proposal and carry out extensive and positive cooperation, the French immediately responded positively, and after the initial contact between the two sides, the French soon sent the most professional experts from China to negotiate. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Both sides have set up the most professional team to carry out the most extensive and in-depth cooperation, and the breadth and depth of cooperation make the French a little unbelievable, because even a European country would not dare to carry out this level of cooperation with another country easily, let alone two countries with such huge cultural differences, especially one of the most conservative East Asian countries before.

For a while, France was a little worried about this level of cooperation, whether France could afford it, but Daming showed a positive and optimistic attitude, firmly believing that Asia and Europe, the two countries with the most historical and cultural heritage, together will be able to burst out of the super power buried in the cultural level.

The reason why the French are so worried is because the Ming Dynasty has used many of the most core areas to cooperate with France, such as the national system of weights and measures and monetary policy.

The Ming Dynasty decided to abandon the ancient traditional system of weights and measures and fully adopt the International Unit System proposed by France.

Compared with the ancient Chinese weights and measures, the weights and measures proposed by the French in modern times are obviously more scientific, more scientific than the British weights and measures, such as many units in the United Kingdom, in fact, the king made them at will, feet, inches are not like this, I heard that the foot is the length of a man's foot. Later, when the railroad was built, the standard rule was directly the width of the buttocks of two English horses, because the earliest trains were horse-drawn.

This early classical weights and measures had this drawback, so the British abandoned the imperial unit in the 20th century, and only the United States persisted.

The United States can stand on its own because the United States is a world in itself, and Europe needs cooperation. Zhu Jinglun believes that although China is also a world, if China can cooperate more openly with the world, China will be stronger.

Therefore, it is very reasonable to choose the French weights and measures, because later generations used this standard all over the world.

For example, in May 1790, a special committee composed of French scientists proposed that one millionth of the total length of the earth's meridian passing through Paris should be used as the unit of length of one meter, which is obviously much more scientific than measuring the length of a man's foot.

More importantly, the International System of Units proposed by France, there is a connection between the various weights and measures, the weight unit of "ton" and the length unit of "meter", which is related to one cubic meter of water as a ton, and time is because of the introduction of Western clocks and watches, which has long formed a preliminary understanding in China, and the combination of length and time is the unit of speed.

In short, the weights and measures proposed by the French are a set of standard units that are organically linked together based on scientific calculations.

However, the Ming Dynasty did not intend to completely abandon the old system, because it was costly to change the old system, and countless literary and historical classics and accounting books were recorded in the old unit, and it was expensive to change them. Therefore, the Ming government intended to unify the Ming weights and measures with the state units by establishing a link with the French weights and measures.

The specific approach is to introduce the scientific "meter" as an intermediate unit, and stipulate that the traditional unit size of the Ming Dynasty is re-measured between the meter, one foot is one-third of the standard meter, and the inch is one-thirtieth of a meter. The length is specified, but the weight is actually regulated in disguise. Daming one pound is the old standard, the common people use more than 590 grams, while the customs use about 606 grams, even the internal is not unified.

In addition, this unit is actually a capacity unit at the beginning, which is equal to a hu, but it is not scientific to measure food by capacity, a bucket, a hu, a load of grain, in the case of different conditions such as dryness and wetness, particle fullness, etc., the weight can vary a lot.

The customs load is calculated by weight, and a load is 100 catties, which is also different from the civil and national customs.

So the weights and measures of the Ming Dynasty should have been changed a long time ago.

The French were surprised that Daming wanted to use the entire French unit system at one time, but in fact, Daming himself wanted to reform, but instead pulled out cooperation with France as a cover, which shocked the French for a while.

After the adoption of the French standard system, the traditional weight unit of half a catty and eight taels was abolished, and the weight of one catty of Daming was re-approved as five hundred grams, but in order to reduce the cost of change, it was still as close as possible to the old unit, such as a load of one hundred catties in the past, which is equivalent to one hundred and twenty catties now, so it was directly stipulated that one load of customs would be one hundred and twenty new "catties" in the future.

The change of weights and measures only shocked France, and the Ming currency innovation also had to be consistent with France, which made the French a little inexplicably surprised.

As early as the Napoleonic era, in addition to the International System of Units, France also tried to implement a unified monetary system, and Napoleon suggested that his brothers, who were given to the throne of various countries, should be consistent with France when minting currency, so that they could facilitate trade with each other.

Due to Napoleon's power at that time, his brother Louis became king of the Netherlands under his military force, and was the first to accept this proposal. Later, Napoleon's army pushed Europe, and other countries began to establish a currency system with France, initially forming a unified European currency area, so the currency of many countries was called the franc.

After Napoleon's nephew Napoleon III became Emperor of France again, he again proposed in 1865 that European countries establish a unified monetary union, all countries are based on the French monetary system, and the gold content of the main currency is set at 0.2903225 grams of gold or 4.5 grams of silver, which can be circulated in equal value between countries. The main coins are gold coins with denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5 francs, while silver coins of 5, 2, 1 franc and 50 and 20 centimes are issued. Coins less than 20 centimes cannot be circulated between countries. Since the countries concerned had basically implemented the same monetary system before, they adopted it.

Napoleon III's intention to establish a monetary alliance, in addition to facilitating trade, obviously also had political considerations, if the continent all adopted the French monetary unit, it would obviously greatly enhance France's international status.

Now that the Ming Dynasty, the largest country in the East, has accepted France's national currency system, it may have more important political significance for the French Third Republic, whose international status has been greatly reduced.

But at the same time, more important is the economic significance, if the currency of France and the Ming can be unified, then the trade between France and the Ming Dynasty will definitely be able to gain the advantage of Britain, and the establishment of good trade relations with such a large country will promote the French economy immeasurable.

Therefore, France was very active in agreeing to help, and was even willing to lend one franc to the Ming Dynasty as a fund to stabilize the new currency.

On the other hand, in fact, the Ming monetary system, has also reached the point where it has to be changed, in order to relieve the disaster, the Ming issued a huge amount of bonds, resulting in a big blow to the financial system, paper money has been completely decoupled from precious metals, completely supported by legal status, but still continues to depreciate, and the exchange ratio of silver has been from the first half of the year of two to one, has become three to one, obviously no reform, the Ming monetary system has the possibility of collapse.

The biggest purpose of the new monetary system is to re-establish ties with precious metals, and the current powers are implementing the gold standard advocated by the British, because gold is more stable than silver, but the Ming Dynasty is a traditional silver currency country, and it is unrealistic to rashly establish the gold standard, there are not so many gold reserves at all, and they owe huge foreign debts, and the establishment of the gold standard can only be a fool's dream, forcibly promoted, and will only collapse again.

However, the Latin Monetary Union advocated by the French, because it not only defines the gold content of the currency, but also stipulates the silver content, which is actually a kind of gold and silver double standard, which is a quite realistic choice for the Ming Dynasty who cannot go to the gold standard in one step. However, in fact, France's own Latin monetary union is also collapsing, silver is becoming less and less invaluable, France to a certain extent, in fact, has begun to switch to the gold standard, constantly revising the ratio between currency and silver, unable to maintain the ratio between gold and silver, which is also one of the consequences of the decline of France's economic status after the Franco-Prussian War.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty joined the Latin Monetary Alliance, in fact, it is more symbolic, the gold and silver standard of the Ming Dynasty, I am afraid that it has to be denominated in silver, and the currency appreciates and depreciates by correcting the price comparison with gold.

Since the French were willing to borrow a large amount of loans when Daming's finances were about to go bankrupt, Daming was of course willing, and he just lacked a reform fund, so he happily accepted it.

As with the re-establishment of weights and measures, monetary reform was accomplished by redefining the precious metal content of the currency.

The unit of the new currency is still two, but the weight unit of two itself has become the standard fifty grams, and the international gold price at this time is 1 to 16, so the Ming Dynasty stipulates that the precious metal content of one tael banknote is 3.125 grams of gold, or 50 grams of silver.

and began minting the first standard gold and silver coins.

Beyond these highly eye-catching, politically significant weights and measures and financial cooperation, cooperation in other areas may be more significant, but it lacks enough exciting highlights because the scope of cooperation between the two sides in other areas is so broad. In the words of both sides, it is to establish a comprehensive and unified economic and trade relationship.

The specific measures are that both sides have introduced concrete measures to promote the expansion of the scale of trade, and through all means, including tax exemptions and subsidies, there is no guarantee that the current trade volume of the two sides will more than double in the next five years.