"Yamaguchi-kun, do you know what the lifeblood of the empire is?" Komura Shoutaro interjected.

"Iron and coal mines!" Yamaguchi Suchen thought for a moment and said.

"You're right." Komura Shoutaro nodded.

"But there are simply not enough iron and coal mines in our country!"

"Thanks to Sheng Xuanhuai, we have our own iron ore and coal mines." Yamaguchi Suchen smiled, Sheng Xuanhuai's Daye Iron Mine and Pingxiang Coal Mine have now fallen into the hands of Japan.

"Yes, if everyone is Hu Guangyong, we will be in big trouble." Komura Shoutaro said with palpitations.

"Thank you, Lord Sheng Xuanhuai, otherwise how could Hu Guangyong fall so quickly?" Mustache socket.

"Not bad. We don't have iron mines, we don't have coal mines, Sheng Xuanhuai will 'help' us. But fighting a war is not just coal and iron mines. Military spending is also needed, large sums of money. Where does military spending come from? Komura paused.

"From the taxes. Iron and coal mines are important, but I would say that the economic lifeblood of the Great Japanese Empire was raw silk and cotton. ”

"Thank you Sheng Xuanhuai for defeating Hu Guangyong, otherwise Hu Guangyong, who unified China's silk industry, would not be comparable to the empire's silk industry. It is precisely because of Sheng Xuanhuai's 'wise and martial' actions that the empire's raw silk industry has been strongly supported by the British, while the raw silk business of the Qing Dynasty can only get some scraps after the British buy the imperial raw silk. ”

"The Empire's cotton cloth was cheap and cheap, so it easily defeated the British cotton cloth and occupied more than 70% of the market of the Qing cotton industry."

Komura Shotaro clicked on the document: "The two main lifelines of the empire's economy are raw silk and cotton. It was precisely because of sufficient tax revenue that the empire was able to win the battle against the Beiyang Naval Division. Become one of the great powers. But Hu Xiaoyan! ”

Komura Shoutaro nodded at the mustache.

"But Hu Xiaoyan is fighting a cotton war with the empire in Anhui!"

"Cotton war?" Yamaguchi Suchen was a little puzzled, "Does Hu Xiaoyan have enough cotton?" ”

No wonder Yamaguchi Suchen is puzzled, because of the butterfly effect in this time and space, the champion businessman Zhang Jian's Dasheng Yarn Factory was established a year earlier than the original time and space, but as Yamaguchi Suchen said, under the double suppression of Britain and Japan, Zhang Jian could not get enough cotton at all, and his Dasheng Yarn Factory was actually in a state of shutdown for more than three months a year. Zhang Jian later made great efforts to cooperate with merchants from all over the country, and the merchants from all over the country took shares in the cotton produced by the land. The cloth produced by Dasheng Yarn Factory is very popular in the market because of its low price and high quality. So the merchants from all over the country agreed to this condition and began to grow cotton on their land, and then sold the cotton to the Dasheng Yarn Mill. But it takes time for these cotton to mature, and China's agricultural production, cotton production is also not high due to technical problems, and the price is more expensive than Indian cotton. Therefore, due to capital and production capacity problems, Dasheng Yarn Factory has always been unable to compete with cotton cloth from Japan and the United Kingdom.

"Of course, Hu Xiaoyan doesn't have enough cotton, but India does." The mustache said solemnly.

"India? United Kingdom? ”

Yamaguchi immediately connected the two.

"Yes." The mustache nodded. "At the beginning of the year, Hu Xiaoyan's Anqing Light Industrial Zone started, because of the shortage of cotton, so Anqing cotton cloth in Anhui could not compete with the imperial cotton cloth at all. However, Enming, the governor of Anhui, at the request of Hu Xiaoyan, comprehensively increased the tax on imported cotton cloth. Correspondingly, British cotton, which was already more expensive than imperial cotton, was even more unsellable. ”

"Isn't that great?" Yamaguchi was puzzled.

"Britain and Germany have set up warehouses in Anqing, Suxian, Lieshan, and Ma'anshan. The goods of the merchants of the two countries were unloaded directly at the wharf and transported to the warehouse for shipment, and because there were no Qing middlemen, their prices were similar to the selling price of imperial cotton cloth. Even with the addition of the cotton import tax, the goods of the empire were profitable enough. But British and German goods were not much profitable. Because their goods are shipped by sea from their own countries. The labor costs and freight costs simply cannot compete with the goods of the empire. ”

Yamaguchi Sotomi nodded, and Komura Toshitaro was silent.

As a result, the British merchants changed their strategy, and after consulting with Hu Xiaoyan, they imported cotton from India, and the governor's yamen implemented a tax reduction or even exemption policy on imported cotton. In this way, the cost of imported cotton is very low. Indian cotton was transported by water to the industrial area of Anqing, where it was quickly woven into cotton cloth. In this way, cotton cloth becomes a local commodity, not affected by the surcharge on imported cotton cloth. However, British businessmen got low-cost cotton cloth, and more than 90% of the cotton cloth in the Anqing Industrial Zone was covered by British businessmen. British merchants continued to ship by water to various parts of Anhui to sell. The Empire's cotton cloth was subject to an import surcharge, while British cotton cloth was not affected at this time. As a result, the Imperial cotton cloth was seriously challenged. In Anhui, Henan, Jiangsu and other places, the sales of imperial cotton cloth have been reduced by half! ”

Yamaguchi Suchen just woke up! What a trick!

"And what about the Germans?" Yamaguchi Suchen suddenly thought of a question. If the British do this, won't the Germans be even worse? The price of cotton cloth in Germany is much more expensive than that of cotton cloth in England and Japan!

"Germans?" The mustache smiled bitterly: "The Germans stopped selling cotton cloth later!" ”

"Nani? Don't sell cotton anymore? So what money do their cotton merchants make? Yamaguchi asked in surprise.

"Yes. Germany has switched to selling sewing machines! The mustache smiled wryly.

"The price of cotton cloth in Germany is too high, so the government of Lieshan told the Germans that the farmers bought cotton cloth to make clothes to wear, but Chinese clothes are sewn out of stitches and threads, which is not only slow but also old. As a result, German cotton merchants imported a batch of sewing machines from their own country, which they rented and sold in warehouses all over the country. Not only that, the Germans also designed more than 100 sets of clothing styles for the Qing people, because the German sewing machine is of good quality, the speed of sewing clothes is fast, and the style is novel, and the rental price is also cheap. So the sewing machine rental business of the Germans is doing very well. In order to meet the needs of the market, the Germans even introduced the method of paying in installments. There are many families of miners who are not short of money, so they deliberately buy sewing machines. When the sewing machines were selling well, the Germans launched another service. ”

"What service?" The more Yamaguchi listened to it, the more interesting it became.

"The Germans cooperated with the British, and whoever bought cotton cloth from the British could rent a German sewing machine, and if someone made too many clothes, he could sell them to the German merchant. The German comptoirs bought these clothes and sold them in Shanghai, Guangdong and other places. Because Chinese labor is very cheap, and Chinese women who specialize in selling clothes are ingenious, the clothes bought by the Germans are cheaper and more fashionable than those made in Britain and Germany, and these clothes are sold very well in Shanghai, Guangdong and other places. The Germans made a fortune as a result. ”

"The Germans not only sell sewing machines and clothes, they also make bicycles and even small goods such as buttons, iron needles, foreign fires and so on in the Anqing light industrial base. Because these things are produced in Anqing, they have been praised by the governor of Anhui Province. They received so much support in taxation that the markets for the empire's small goods in Anhui and the neighboring provinces were almost completely lost. And that's only been six or seven months. According to statistics, if the empire turns a blind eye to Hu Xiaoyan's light industry and heavy industry bases, a year later, the empire's cotton, cigarettes, foreign fire, foreign noodles and other businesses will be completely defeated in the coastal provinces along the river. ”

Yamaguchi was dumbfounded. He was a figure of the 1900s and simply could not understand the power of the Chinese Shenzhen model. The British and German merchants who used the money and technology of other merchants to develop their own industries, and the merchants of other countries who completely tied their chariots to their chariots with the profits of the early days, were eager to stop.

"In just six months, all the cotton stocks in India have been eaten by the light industrial zone in Anqing, and even this year's cotton output has been covered by the cotton mills in Anqing. The merchants of the empire bought Indian cotton at a high price, and they were not able to buy even 1% of the cotton last year. If only that's all. Tao Chengzhang, the head of the Anqing Industrial Zone, even reached an agreement with Zhang Jian, and they divided the Chinese market from the south to the north. Tao Chengzhang even took a certain percentage of Indian cotton and sold it to Zhang Jian at a low price, which led to the accident of the imperial merchants who lost the cotton cloth in China's coastal provinces along the Yangtze River, and even the business in the north was robbed by Zhang Jian. In another year, Zhang Jian's new machine will be started, and the empire's cotton will be completely extinct in the Chinese market. ”

"The empire's economy was the lifeblood of two things: raw silk and cotton. Hu Guangyong failed in raw silk back then, so that the empire picked up the cheap. And now Hu Xiaoyan will never let go of his father's same mistakes. So he cooperated with the Manchu royal family, cooperated with the champion merchant Zhang Jian, and even sold himself to Li Hongzhang. It is precisely because of this that the Empire's cotton cloth business will fail in China, and the Empire cannot do anything about it. At home, he has Li Hongzhang and several princes as backstage, and abroad, he is a dog in the UK. Komura put down the papers solemnly.

"He succeeded. But will he stop there? ”

"Your Excellency, are you saying that Hu Xiaoyan will still meddle in the raw silk business? Isn't he afraid of repeating the mistakes of the past? Yamaguchi Suchen asked.

"Hu Xiaoyan is not Hu Guangyong. It can be seen from his shameless defection to the Manchu prince and Li Hongzhang that this person has always done things with planning and then acting, and will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. I suspect that the relationship between him and Britain will not be as simple as it seems. And Germany. Is it just a business relationship? What kind of relationship would allow Germany to sell him such an important national weapon? ”

Komura Shoutaro didn't believe it, and he slowly opened his squinted eyes.

"Don't you see it from his "The Rise of Great Powers"? China has always adhered to the policy of being an outer saint and an inner king, but Hu Xiaoyan is an inner saint and an outer king! ”

What does it mean to be an outer saint and an inner king? To put it simply, outsiders should be treated as their own sons, and their own citizens as slaves. Why? Quite simply, Koreans, Japanese, and other foreigners or Westerners did not have the basis to seize the throne of the emperor of the Central Plains. However, the people of the Central Plains were different, and Hong Xiuquan, who launched the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, took it as their mission to overthrow the Manchu court. That is, the people themselves have the ambition and soft power to seize the emperor's throne. Therefore, we must not give our own citizens any hope, and make them realize that their own citizens must be slaves and obedient dogs in a proper manner.

The most important point of the outer saint and inner king is to use Confucianism as the surface and slavery as the inside, and train his own citizens into obedient slaves. This is called servile training! Live according to my people, and perish against my people! Cixi has a saying that expresses the essence of it: Rather with outsiders, not with domestic slaves!

Therefore, the most obvious kingdoms of the outer saints and inner kings are the Song and Qing dynasties

The inner and outer kings, on the other hand, treat the inner people as if they were their own sons. Any problem of the son is the problem of Lao Tzu, and the pain of the son is the pain of Lao Tzu. But externally, it is the way of the king: those who follow me prosper and those who disobey me die!

Most of the Chinese dynasties insisted on the outer saints and inner kings, but without exception, these dynasties were all destroyed by foreigners. The dynasty that pays attention to the inner saint and the outer king is different, and he generally perishes at the hands of his own people. Among them, the most representative is the Tang Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty (the Ming Dynasty died at the hands of Li Zicheng, and Emperor Chongzhen was the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, as for the Southern Ming Dynasty, etc., it is actually no longer the Ming Dynasty, because none of the emperors of the Southern Ming Dynasty have been certified by Chongzhen or the cabinet of the court push process. Whether in terms of descent or legitimacy, Nanming has never been a state, but only a local division. ）

Hu Xiaoyan is a staunch supporter of the inner and outer kings. The Inner Saint and the Outer King have a basic point of view, that is, long-distance and close attack! This is very bad for Japan, and it is impossible for the people of the inner saint and the outer king to cooperate with Japan.

"Your Excellency, rest assured, I will urge the coalition forces to attack Hu Xiaoyan's new army as soon as possible. As long as Hu Xiaoyan dies, China will still be ours! Yamaguchi Suchen said categorically.

"No one can stand in the way of the Empire!"