After being reprimanded by Zhu Jinglun, Chen Zhiting knelt on the ground in fear, silent, his attitude showed that he really didn't want Zhu Jinglun to go abroad. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

"The railway cannot be repaired, you have seen the foreigner's railway, a thousand miles away from dawn and evening. If it is used to transport troops, it can save hundreds of thousands of troops and tens of millions of military expenses. For people's livelihood, it can assist in communicating what is available, and the government can collect more taxes in order to exempt agricultural taxes. ”

Zhu Jinglun sighed and helped him up, but he no longer raised the matter of the country.

"Wechen understands."

Chen Zhiting is not opposed to building railways, the benefits of building railways, many people have told him, countless foreigners and advisers in the government think it is good, Hurd is the most staunch supporter, Chen Zhiting himself has been to the West, he recalled the convenience of Western railways, but also sincerely sighed.

But the difficulty is really great, and the problem of the ancestral tombs and ancestral halls of the common people is almost an unavoidable dead knot.

Zhu Jinglun said: "This matter has to be handled by the government, but I will not intervene directly, if I need to come forward to cooperate, such as writing a sacrificial letter in the name of the emperor to the landlord who moved the grave, or let me personally preside over the relocation of their grave, I will not shirk it." Of course, if you can solve problems with money, you can solve them with money. I really can't solve it, so let's take a detour. In short, money can solve the problem with money, use favors that money can't solve, and people who can't solve it with favors, just use technology. ”

Chen Zhiting knew that Zhu Jinglun's attitude towards building the railway was very resolute, but he repeatedly said yes, and the two of them were the same in this regard.

But he heard one thing, Zhu Jinglun didn't plan to use force, in fact, he himself considered sending troops to forcibly move the grave.

"We don't participate in the Northern Expedition of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Their abacus is very fine, they now occupy the land south of the Yangtze River, but Jiangbei is under the control of Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang, so they are like a fish in the throat. As for Jiangxi, this is completely a chicken rib. It can be said that Jiangxi was almost given to them by the Hunan army and the Chu army. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupied Jiangxi, sandwiched between our country's Fujian and the Manchu Hunan, where they did not dare to give up or expand, and they had to always be on guard against the Hunan army attacking from Hunan, which involved too much of their strength. Once handed over to us, they then occupied Jiangbei, and their territories were united. However, we occupy Jiangxi, but in the future, we will have to face the threat of the Hunan Hunan army, and it is difficult to pose any threat to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. ”

If this strategy is from Li Xiucheng's hands, Zhu Jinglun feels that Li Xiucheng has made great progress during this time.

But the land of Jiangxi is still very attractive, after all, it is the territory of a province, and if you can occupy Jiangxi in your own government, this is a meritorious feat of opening up the territory and expanding the territory, Chen Zhiting regards it as a great political achievement, which can be written into the history books. And he also hopes that the Ming Dynasty will go on another northern expedition, and after the dynasties have gained a firm foothold, how can anyone not try to dominate the world. In the eyes of Chinese literati, after the Qin Dynasty, the entire country was already indivisible.

Zhu Jinglun let go of this topic, before the Ming reform was effective, he did not plan to expand in any direction, once you want to start expanding, you have to use the fastest speed to get through the whole country, drag the country into a protracted civil war, not only the Ming Dynasty can not afford it, the whole nation can not afford it, the tragedy of hundreds of millions of dead people in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising, he definitely does not want to see.

"The British and American ministers said that the opening of tea plantations is not something that cannot be promised. Lincoln did us a favor this time and asked him back a little bit of good, which made sense. It is also necessary to continue to expand our advantage in world tea production, and I have heard that the number of tea in India has increased again this year. At the moment, the price of tea is good, and production in India is also profitable. However, the British do not seem to have any intention of restricting imports from China and are concentrating on supporting Indian tea production, which is a good thing, but it is running out of time. ”

Due to the sudden opening of the tea market by the Ming Dynasty, the British people were less worried about the lack of tea, Zhu Jinglun even gave Margaret a tea garden, with Margaret marrying into the British royal family, this tea garden has now become a British royal asset, which also reduces their motivation to produce tea in India as a strategy, at least the British royal family has not called on the British to drink Indian tea for the time being, but the ancient tea of Yaoshan Ancient Village has recently become very popular in the British high society, and the price of tea produced by the ancient tea tree with a dry taste has been speculated to sky-high prices, the rich businessmen and tycoons all want to drink this kind of tea, so as to have some kind of inexplicable relationship with the royal family.

However, due to the growing demand for tea from the Russians, the price of tea in China is very good, on the one hand, in the tea industry, there is no ordinary tea workers boycotting the steam tea factory, because they can still survive and live well, on the other hand, it also allows Indian tea to survive in this market.

The cost of Indian tea is still much higher than that of Chinese tea, the most important Darjeeling in the Indian tea producing area, which is a mountainous area, and far away from the ocean, the British in history later had to build a special mountain railway to solve the traffic problem, China's tea producing areas, whether it is the Hanjiang River basin in Guangdong, or the Heshan and other counties in the Xijiang area, there is convenient water transportation, and the Jiulong River and the Minjiang River in Fujian can basically go directly to the tea area, and China occupies an absolute dominant position in terms of cost.

Indian tea must be defeated before the British build a costly mountain railway, so that the British capitalists will give up the incentive to open up tea production in India, so that the Ming Dynasty's tea production must continue to expand, even if the price will be lower in the end, so that tea can become an ordinary consumer product, rather than a product with luxury characteristics, so as to accumulate industrial capital for the Ming Dynasty for a long time.

"Let's go back to Britain and the United States. We do not exclude British and American businessmen from opening tea gardens in Daming, but in order to ensure that the precious land resources of Daming can be effectively utilized, businessmen who come to Daming to open tea gardens must go through our inspection. In fact, we need to control who we let and who we don't let come to run the tea plantation, after all, the land is limited, and we can't buy it all from those wealthy foreign merchants. ”

Zhu Jinglun continued.

Chen Zhiting nodded: "Then what kind of people should we allow?" Or do you just use this to prevaricate foreigners? ”

Zhu Jinglun said: "Of course, permission must be granted, and it is indeed good for us." Of course, ordinary businessmen can't come, we need those businessmen who can occupy the LinkedIn market for our tea, that is, those who have many connections, Beijing is big, and have enough connections, I think Jardine Matheson is good, you can give them a place, let them choose to occupy land in Liangguang and Fujian circles, but they can only be barren mountains that have not been cultivated, they must reclaim the land by themselves, and cannot occupy the land of the people. As for the price of the barren mountain, we can give them a concession or even lend it to them, allowing them to repay it when they have a profit. ”

"The Americans, on their side, allowed Thomas to expand their tea area. The Hakka people in Enping County were driven out a few years ago, and most of the mountainous areas where the local Hakka people used to live were deserted, and many ready-made tea plantations were abandoned. The Wukeng area, where Thomas Tea Plantation is located, is on the edge of Enping, and tells them to allow them to expand to Enping, even if they occupy all the barren mountains in the county. ”

"There are also our own businessmen to encourage them to grow tea, the Wu family in Fujian in the past few years heard that they have occupied a lot of land, in the past they were afraid of causing trouble, although there are tea gardens but not big, tell them to encourage them to build a tea garden as big as possible. These rich landlords had a lot of money, and instead of burying their silver in the cellars, it was better to exchange them all for real estate. ”

Among the merchants of the Ming Dynasty, only the Wu family and the Pan family have two tea gardens on a larger scale, because in addition to the two of them, other tea merchants are only willing to invest in tea factories at most.

The tea of the Wu family and the Pan family has a brand advantage, and the tea of the same quality can be sold for a lot of money in the British and American markets as long as it is marked with the mark of Haoguan, because for many old British and American magnates, their grandparents have been drinking this kind of tea since the beginning, and they are also the same as the Chinese scholars, they are not very willing to change their habits in a dominant position, and they are proud of this habit, which in turn affects and drives the people of the lower classes.

Chen Zhiting considered the consequences: "If the Americans and the British are allowed to grow tea in the mountains, I am afraid that Sweden, Denmark and other countries will also make such requests. ”

Zhu Jinglun shook his head firmly: "No matter what they do, it is not good for me to open up a tea garden in my country, but in the final analysis, it is to share the benefits with them, the meat of the Ming Dynasty is not something that anyone can eat, and a group of earth dogs without claws don't need to pay attention to it." If I go to France this time, the French have this request, I can think about it. ”

Chen Zhiting's point of view has always been that China was the boss in the feudal era, so he always evened down a bowl of water in front of foreign countries to show that the kingdom was equally fond of Fanbang.

Zhu Jinglun looks more at interests, and interests need to be exchanged at equal value.

"But if Jardine Matheson and Thomas Tea Plantation are allowed to open mountains in China, I am afraid that other British and American companies will not be reconciled, and they will instigate their own ministers to come to negotiate at that time."

Chen Zhiting said worriedly, he was not worried, he knew that Zhu Jinglun and Wu Chongyao had acquired most of the shares of this foreign company, and it was not good to say that this foreign company was now hanging on the head of a foreigner and selling Daming's dog meat, and Robert of Thomas Tea Garden even recognized Luo Tianchi as a godfather and entered Daming's household registration.

Zhu Jinglun said: "What I just said, of course, is not only for Jardine Matheson and other two companies, I have said it, we have to review, this is actually giving the power to the government, you can agree on it yourself." The general principle is that the foreigners who come to open up must be able to help us open up the foreigners' market, and if we occupy the foreigners' market, we will hit India's tea. For example, if the British companies that deal in tea in India also apply, they may as well agree to them. When they put all their money into the barren mountains of our country, they had no money to grow tea in India. ”

After being silent for a moment, Zhu Jinglun felt that there was still room to play, and he suddenly said: "This is an equivalent exchange, and it can not be limited to the tea industry." You know that many foreign companies are still selling opium, even if we increase the opium tax tenfold, but it is expected that 10 million taels of opium will be imported this year, and the key is that the smuggling is getting more and more serious. If Qichang and Baoshun also want to operate tea plantations, as long as they promise not to do opium business in the future, we can also accept it. They don't need to break it off within a year, they just need to break it slowly. ”

Zhu Jinglun felt that using tea profits to induce these foreign companies to give up opium smuggling would probably have the effect that the ban could not achieve.

In the end, Zhu Jinglun concluded: "In short, the general principle is that we must strive for as many benefits as possible, and no matter what kind of benefits can be exchanged. ”

Zhu Jinglun didn't know that Chen Zhiting's final performance brought him a great surprise, but that was all for later.

"The Russians are urging the construction of the railway, and we will not have to be in a hurry for ten years, we are not in a position to expand in the north now. The Russians also saw this and wanted us to pay for where they expanded. There is no such thing as cheap. ”

Zhu Jinglun did not expect that the most positive about the construction of the railway in the north by the Ming Dynasty was Russia, which had the strongest opposition at the beginning, but Britain and France did not care much about it.

"Is there anything else going on on your side?"

Zhu Jinglun asked.

Chen Zhiting hesitated for a moment and said, "The ironclad ship is about to go on trial, and the arsenal hopes that Your Majesty can take a look." ”