Through the understanding of the silk weaving industry set up by the French, Zhou Lang felt the gap with Europe, especially France, in the cultural industry, which is not at the technical level, but at the cultural and ideological level, with its own cultural barriers, so French luxury goods will dominate for so many years.

It seems that French cultural products can become popular all over the world, and now it seems that it is no fluke. In the era of Louis XIV, it can be said that France's national power is unique to Europe, but in the 18th century, it was clear that Britain was ahead of France, and the popularity of British fashion was many years later, and even after the rise of the United States, because of Americans' love for British cultural products, British culture was promoted to the peak.

China cannot just be a big producer, it must occupy a place at the cultural level, otherwise it may be burdened with low-end hats. Now it still has a place in the world of luxury goods, which can only be said to be too thick left by the ancestors, but the French have found the right way and began to surpass China.

Thinking of these, Zhou Lang couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat, and figured out a problem that had plagued him for a long time, China has no shortage of culture, Chinese culture is extremely unique in the world, but China's cultural industry has never been able to go abroad, I used to think that Europeans were too conservative, and now it seems that China is missing a commercial mechanism that transforms culture into commodities.

China's production has completely become a matter of craftsmen, then the product will always be just a product, and cannot become a cultural product, and the high-ranking cultural people must also be involved, so as to promote the industry to go high.

After the French sounded the alarm for Zhou Lang, he immediately found the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and communicated with him.

In the end, he even hired the French as consultants, and also set up a Chinese design school, and invited those idle and elegant, elegant masters, who were very artistic, to help train a group of apprentices in the silk industry with artistic standards, so that the craftsmen must understand art, and what is produced is a work of art, not a product.

Drawing inferences from one another, Zhou Lang found that all handicrafts in China have similar shortcomings, the upper cultural elite rarely participate in the field of craftsmen, the porcelain industry is relatively good, the painters in this industry know how to imitate the works of masters, but the painters themselves are limited to the level of knowledge and art, and the imitation is similar, but also with a sense of craftsmanship, far from the real master swaying freely.

The same is true for the fans that Guangzhou sells all over the world. Developed gem processing, ivory carving, etc., are also craftsmen, not artists. In the same way, art schools and design schools were established in accordance with the French model, and vigorously trained designers with artistic attainments for these industries.

Cultivate a group of upper-level designers who are separated from the work of craftsmen, and create a set of cultural industry models designed by designers and then manufactured by craftsmen.

The construction of this industrial chain has a long way to go, it is difficult to break the suppression of the French silk factory on the local factory in China in a short period of time, fortunately, the French are mainly concentrated in the export field, and in the export field, Chinese handmade products are also irreplaceable, Yun Jin, Song Jin and other first-class luxury goods, exclusively for the royal family, now open to sales, a large number of new workshops began to enter this field, the fabrics they produce are expensive, more scarce than the French fabrics produced by machines on a large scale, and more profitable.

Moreover, there are ordinary silk workshops that imitate the machinery and equipment of the French, imitate the designs of the French, and squeeze into the export fields occupied by the French. But no one has yet imitated the French cultural system in the silk industry, which is not something that one or two merchants can do, and must rely on stronger organizations to achieve it. The Ministry of Industry is in contact with the Silk Weaving Guild, led by the Ministry of Industry, providing technical support, and the Silk Weaving Guild will contribute funds to establish design and art schools to cultivate top-level talents.

At the same time, relevant laws have been introduced for the design industry to protect the work of designers, and now those Chinese workshops who want to imitate French design have to pay royalties to French designers. This protects French designers, but in the long run, it is to protect the future of Chinese designers, and if we can attract a group of artists who are down-and-out to sell calligraphy and paintings on the street to join the design industry as soon as possible, it is very likely that China will give birth to local designers as soon as possible. Zhou Lang never believed that China's local art standards would lose to the West.

It was also the concern about the silk weaving factories run by the French in China that made Zhou Lang discover that these factories were actually using slaves, and they were all white slaves, which shocked him greatly. In particular, many of them were British slaves, which has caused protests from British diplomats and caused trouble at the government level.

Whites have slaves?

Yes!

In this era when slavery is not completely over, it is possible for any race to become a slave. There are still remnants of slavery in China, the slavery system.

Zhou Lang has carried out many rectifications of the slave system, and the results have been some, but they are far from reaching the goal. At first, he felt that this remnant of slavery could be easily resolved, and he made a decree, known as a decree, declaring that all the children of slaves no longer had the status of slaves, that is, abolishing the system of domestic children, and the children of the family were similar in status to commoners.

Zhou Lang's consideration is that those slaves have adapted to the life of master and servant, and letting them rashly break away from the status of slaves can only bring confusion about social identity and even loss of livelihood; But starting from their descendants, if they liberate their slavery status, it will take a generation to wash away the remnants of slavery.

He still thought too simply, since the Qin and Han dynasties fell, this problem has always existed for two thousand years, which means that this remnant of slavery is very stable, and there must be a soil for its survival.

After his decree was issued, Zhou Lang found that many wealthy masters began to circumvent this will, and most of the methods they adopted were to re-sign the deed of sale with the family children, so that the family children would once again change from free men to slaves who sold themselves, and many slave parents begged their masters to buy their children. Because the owner has no reason to raise people in vain.

In order to fight against this feudal remnant, Zhou Lang almost decided to declare all slaves free immediately, but he was worried that millions of slaves would suddenly lose their livelihoods. To be honest, unless the master is particularly bad, the life of the slaves is better than that of the poor peasants, there have been countless peasant uprisings in history, but there are very few slave uprisings, not because the number of slave class is small, but because when the peasants encounter a catastrophe, they really can't survive, but the slaves are attached to the rich class, these people have a strong ability to resist risks, and when the disaster occurs, they can provide the slaves with a bite to eat. Even the year of the great calamity was a time when good citizens were sold into slavery in large numbers.

Zhou Lang announced the freedom of the slaves, I am afraid that it is not pleasing to both sides, and the master is also blamed for being a slave.

But starting with their next generation, this is the most peaceful reform, and Zhou Lang still decided to stick to this method.

His approach was to provide material support for the descendants of slaves, and there were millions of rich people in China who owned slaves, and the number of slave classes was as high as about 10 million, and the state could still afford to support the children of slaves. And these people were born in large families, to put it bluntly, even if the level of knowledge is not enough, and the host family does not provide the opportunity for education, but there is still knowledge.

A large number of boarding schools were established, and as long as the slaves were willing to send, they were accepted. Moreover, it was announced that the slave trade system would be abolished immediately, and that any slave trade from the twentieth century onwards would be illegal, and the deed of sale would be invalid. Sure enough, a large number of slave children were sent to school, some of whom were unwilling to be raised in vain by the master's family, and some of whom were slave parents who felt their status was lowly and hoped that their children would be able to turn over.

A large number of slaves broke away from the traditional education of the Four Books and the Five Classics and entered formal schools, and it is possible that in the future China's most advanced cultural elite will come from this class.

Since the slave trade was abolished in the twentieth year of the Great Zhou Dynasty, it was legal before that, resulting in the French introducing a group of slaves from Europe before that.

Most of these slaves were not sold voluntarily, but were trafficked by various underworld forces, and it was their compatriots who trafficked them, who were cheated, robbed, and kidnapped from Europe to ships, and then sent to China to be sold as slaves by French factory owners, and became miserable free labor.

The reason why the French buy these slaves, and more than half of them are British, and nearly thirty percent are French, is simply that they cannot find enough skilled personnel in China, especially in the machinery industry, which is extremely scarce.

China has opened engineering and technical universities, opened technical colleges, and trained thousands of engineering and technical personnel every year, but this is far from enough for a large country with a population of more than 300 million that is undergoing rapid industrialization. Even most people are directly hired by the government, and a small number can easily find a job in a factory run by Chinese, who wants to work for an inferior ghost?

It was difficult to employ workers, forcing the French factory owners with the fastest expansion rate to directly import technical talents from Europe, and it turned out that the technical talents who came to China were limited, so they offered rewards for hiring, and the result was that a large number of technical talents were deceived and kidnapped.

Of course, the Western technicians who came from this situation were not willing to be slaves all the time, so naturally there was a phenomenon of fugitive slavery, so a judicial dispute occurred. The British Consulate provided legal aid to all British fugitive slaves and hired lawyers to defend them, but very few cases were successfully won because their owners were able to provide a full set of documents for sale.

The British have a strong tradition of interfering in the politics of other countries, and they always want to impose their ideas on others, so they exert pressure through diplomatic channels.

Zhou Lang sympathized with these white slaves, and he was also fighting against the remnants of slavery inherent in China, but he did not support the attitude of the British, and would never issue special policies for white slaves, and would not issue orders to break the law.

The British were not convinced, and they made a big deal in the newspapers, which led to a controversy, and the French pulled out an even more disgusting form of slavery to gag the British.