A new era has arrived, at least in the Great Ming Kingdom in the East. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

What Chen Zhiting said belongs to the changes of the new era.

But he was talking about the big things, not the most drastic of these changes, nor the most important.

Chen Zhiting's railways, minerals, and diplomacy are all changes, but these changes are often strategic, and they have little impact on the people.

After Zhu Jinglun ascended the throne, he accelerated the changes of the people.

The most significant two, one is the continuous expansion of the tea trade, the production has doubled in recent years, but the trade volume has tripled, the main reason is that with the opening of trade routes, the Russians have increased the import of tea in recent years, historically, the Russians' demand for tea has increased, once let China know that tea exports have been growing in the 1890s, and since the 70s, Chinese tea has slowly lost the British market, and Indian tea began to occupy ninety percent of the British market share in the 80s.

The fact that the growth of Russian tea was able to offset the loss of British tea shows the enormity of this scale.

While the market increases, it will inevitably lead to a rise in prices, so the tea market has been extremely hot in recent years. A steady stream of silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the seeds bought by Zhu Jinglun a few years ago also took root and found that after everyone saw that the price of tea processed by modern tea factories was higher, the Chinese who liked to pile up quickly set up tea factories, and after the Chinese themselves successfully set up, the people who followed the trend became more enthusiastic, and in just one year, tea factories have blossomed almost everywhere, and half of the tea processed through tea factories has been reached, and it can be said that at least in the field of tea processing, Daming has completed industrialization.

The large-scale emergence of tea factories, although the overall quality of Chinese tea has improved, but it has made raw materials become scarce, most of the tea is processed in tea factories, resulting in the price of high-end tea has fallen, but the price of cheap tea in the past has been raised, and even the price of tea powder has risen to 20 taels and one quintal, which makes it difficult for the poor class in the West to drink tea.

Therefore, Britain and the United States wanted to continue to expand the production of Chinese tea, and the British attitude was better, mainly because they saw the success of the Irish-American Thomas in opening up tea gardens in China, and the royal family had an ancient tea garden in Heshan, and did not want the Americans to monopolize Chinese tea production.

Another change that Zhu Jinglun attaches importance to is in the silk reeling industry.

After Zhu Jinglun ascended the throne, he handed over the Qingshui Yamen of the Ministry of Industry to a little-known little man Chen Qiyuan, who had no qualifications in the officialdom and was sincerely afraid, but Zhu Jinglun told him that the Ministry of Industry should not only manage national projects, but also manage the production of private factories, including those handicraft workshops and large factories, all under his control, and even the arsenals were directly under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry.

This expansion of power made Chen Qiyuan even more frightened, for fear of not doing well, and he was cautious in other aspects, but only in the silk reeling industry he was quite resolute, Zhu Jinglun also encouraged him many times, the more he encouraged, the more he made efforts in this industry.

The reason is very simple, he is familiar with this industry, the first silk reeling factory in Daming was established by him, and it is quite profitable, he always insists that the silk reeling factory is a great thing, he preaches the concept of "one person does the work of ten people, and takes the wages of two people", and the modern steam reeling has increased the efficiency of the old workshop by ten times, and he feels that this can greatly increase the income of workers.

Therefore, in the past six months since Chen Qiyuan took office, he invited thousands of squires and wealthy businessmen from all over the counties of Guangfu to visit his family's silk reeling factory, and he not only taught the technology for free, but also gave a loan of up to 10,000 taels of silver, Chen Qiyuan borrowed 8,000 taels at the beginning, and then purchased a set of machinery and equipment imitated by Chen Liantai's iron workshop and bought a steam engine, and now the government has borrowed 10,000 taels of silver, which is more than enough.

Under his instigation, a large number of squires and merchants in the fourteen counties of Guangfu who widely planted silkworms invested in the silk reeling industry, first of all, they saw that the Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry asked them to do it, and secondly, they saw that doing this business could indeed make money, and once again silk reeling has existed in China for thousands of years, and everyone has the least resistance to it, and they do not think it is a grotesque thing, and they are far less frightened than the fire-breathing train.

There is also the silk reeling factory of Shangshujia as an example, so most people are psychologically intentional and want to make money, so it is logical to join this industry. Of course, there are also rejections, and in general, people who enter this industry are very enthusiastic.

As a result, in just half a year, thousands of small silk reeling factories were established, most of which were not even useful for steam engines, but only used the pedal silk reeling machine invented by Chen Qiyuan, which was only four times more efficient than the traditional silk reeling machine. However, there are more than 300 factories that use steam reeling, and the main obstacle is that it is difficult to find mechanics who know how to operate steam engines.

Of the more than 300 large factories, 100 are in Nanhai County, the other 100 are in Shunde County, and the others are distributed throughout the Pearl River Delta.

The bad thing is that there is a strong resistance in this industry, Zhu Jinglun mainly got this information through newspapers, and he saw a lot of public opinion criticizing these industries, thinking that they have taken the livelihood of ordinary silk reeling households, and they are from the perspective of people's livelihood and have great influence.

Chen Qiyuan visited the machine factories in the West, and what he saw was dozens of times the efficiency improvement and several times the income level, while those conservatives saw the withering of traditional industries and the livelihood of ordinary silk households.

Historically, Chen Qiyuan's later silk reeling factory had to be closed, and his cousin's silk reeling factory was even smashed, and the local county order also used this set of theories to prohibit the Chen family from opening the silk reeling factory again, and Chen Qiyuan was forced to move the silk reeling factory to Macau, because of these old ideas.

But now, despite the condemnation of public opinion, there has not been any incident to prevent workers from smashing machines, because Chen Qiyuan's status is different from history, and now he is the secretary of the Ministry of Industry and a member of the imperial court, and no one dares to go to his house to make trouble. It's like the silk reeling factory run by the Wen family and other big families in Shunde has never encountered major obstacles, and the same thing, people with different identities do it, and sometimes the results are different.

He believes that the change of the times is not something that can be done by one person, and strongman politics can play an immediate role in the short term, but the consequences are too serious and will be harmful for decades.

It takes time to really make modern silk reeling acceptable to the whole people, and it takes time for those with vested interests to know how to stand up and defend their own interests, so that their interests can be permanently protected, and the more the official protects them, the more they have no ability to protect themselves, and sooner or later they will still be persecuted.

Zhu Jinglun believes that with the passage of time, more and more people will benefit from the new production innovation, and they will stand up and speak out their voices, and when their voices occupy the mainstream, that is, when the concept of the whole country changes, and this concept of the whole people looking at industrialization positively is the result of an emperor forcibly unable to promote it.

The government should not interfere in the interests of the people, and what the government needs to do is to provide them with a fair and stable space. Therefore, Zhu Jinglun thinks that the government only needs to care about those industries that are related to national security, such as arsenals.

As for the private industry, if the government can not directly participate, it should not be directly involved, and letting an industrialist like Chen Qiyuan be the secretary of the Ministry of Industry is already the bottom line that Zhu Jinglun can accept, and he has always felt that this kind of thing is not a normal channel, and he has never seen a successful case of a managed enterprise or a state-owned company.

However, the railway has exceeded the capacity of the people, they have neither such experience nor such capital, but the importance of railway construction cannot be overstated.

In the industrial age of many countries, such as the United States, Germany and even Japan, these backward countries promoted their industrialization two major driving forces, one was the use of steam engines, and the other was the construction of railways. In terms of industry, in the process of industrialization accumulation in many countries, one industry is the textile industry, and the other is the railway transportation industry.

Needless to say, textiles have always been the largest consumer goods, so the textile industry can solve the problem of population transfer from agriculture to industry, while the transportation industry has completely broken the existing geographical limitations, creating a large national market for the first time.

The railway also directly promoted the steel industry and machinery manufacturing industry in Germany and the United States, the textile industry of these two countries has never developed, and finally became a developed industrial country, and the railway can be said to be a great contribution.

Therefore, the construction of railways actually entered Zhu Jinglun's field of vision many years ago, and he did not consider letting the people build railways from the beginning, and he planned to use the power of the state from the beginning.

Therefore, in the armistice negotiations with the Manchus, he included some requirements for the construction of railways in the Manchu territory. But he only occupied those and did not plan to start building them immediately, and the cost of building railways was high, and the first thing he wanted to build was definitely in the territory that his country could control.

The goal has long been there, that is, the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, to build a railway from Guangzhou to the Kowloon Peninsula, so that Guangzhou, the center of the Ming Dynasty, will be connected with the current international port of Kowloon Port. When Hurd was still building Kowloon Port, he repeatedly asked for the construction of a railway, and he believed that the construction of such a railway would give Kowloon Port a huge advantage in competition with Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Hong Kong has no railways and has been competitive, but Shanghai, with its unique geographical advantages, is still able to sit on an equal footing with Kowloon Port, which makes Hurd, who has become a subordinate of the middle school, unable to let go of the obsession of building a railway.

Therefore, Zhu Jinglun has already agreed, and the preparatory process has been carried out a few years ago, but the progress is slow, and the biggest obstacle is the acquisition of land, China has completed the transformation of private land ownership since the Qin Dynasty, and it can be said that it has the longest history of private ownership in China.

Land is not only private, but also sacred, in the eyes of the landlord that is life, so unless the government adopts a forced way, it is difficult to obtain continuous land in a short period of time, and the land for the construction of railways must be continuous, which is a big problem, and even let the customs continue to secretly acquire for more than three years, so far it is still unable to complete the acquisition of all the land.

Among them, the most serious is the problem of the ancestral halls and cemeteries of the common people, these lands cannot be sold, no matter how much money is paid, this is not a problem of money, this is a problem of faith, it is a problem of culture.

This incident also made Zhu Jinglun feel very troubled, and enforcing it would be a huge damage to the credibility of the government, and it would arouse extremely strong resistance, which was not in line with his own concept. He could be tough on the outside, such as scaring the British into giving up the coolie and opium trade, but internally, he was adamant about being soft.

He can use unfair means to go to Vietnam to steal minerals, but he must not use strong means to seize the land of his own people.

This is a matter of principle, but also a question of concept, in this era, the mainstream of the world's major powers is like this, historians summarize the principle of "internal coordination, external expansion", Western countries while carrying out the industrial revolution at home, while constantly appeasing their own people, constantly delegating power to the lower people, while carrying out crazy expansion abroad, from the economic aspect, this is to transfer the cost of domination to the colonies.

This is true of all large and small countries, even small Belgium has adopted this principle, Leopold II has the prestige of a wise king in Belgium, and has been praised by all the people, but he has implemented the most barbaric system of oppression in the Congo colonies, forcing the black people of the Congo to work, and the families of the blacks who are a little lazy, whipping is just a small thing, and the family members of the blacks who cannot complete the workload on time will be severely punished, they will not punish the precious labor, but they will cut off the arms of the laborers' wives or children, and they will not be able to cut off one hand at a time, Chop two twice.

Eventually, when the Belgians saw in the newspapers countless black children with mutilated limbs, they themselves could not accept the actions of their beloved king, and the Belgian government announced that the Congo would be annexed to the country and become their national colony, to be administered by the government with the consent of the government.

However, Leopold in Belgium continued to implement modern dialects, established a parliamentary system, and realized the transformation of the constitutional monarchy, which was unusually enlightened.

It is the ruling principles adhered to by Leopold's group of monarchs in the 19th century, and after the internal coordination of the industrial age, basically most industrial countries have completed a smooth transition and become a developed country, while the colonies have become a hell of turmoil in the coming century.

This kind of different way of governing internally and externally also has a concept in China, called the inner sage and the outer king, but in China it is always just an idea, which everyone admires, but there is no chance to realize it.

Zhu Jinglun wanted to give it a try.