Chapter 248: The entry point of Xuanzhou's strategy

There was a content error in the previous chapter, and the Atlas Mountains input error is hereby corrected.

The Chinese Empire had very early contact with the black people of Xuanzhou, and the ancient Kunlun slaves were 'overseas workers' from Xuanzhou (Africa) in sub-Saharan Africa. These earliest foreign laborers became envoys of exchange and contact between China and this ancient continent. In fact, the traversal people have no will to occupy and develop this land, this continent has always been a huge trouble, with a large population but barbaric and backward, a rough character and a rude and unyielding king, and the accumulation rate of capital is almost zero. The abundance of resources is not a good reason, and it is better to occupy the more cost-effective southern continent (Australia). Although it is vast and sparsely populated, it is at least easy to manage and develop.

There is hardly anything in sub-Saharan Africa that can attract pre-industrial countries. There are many endemic diseases, such as scarlet fever, sleeping sickness, malaria, jaundice, filariasis, parasitic flies, etc., the hot and humid rainforests are not suitable for settlement and urbanization, the arid grasslands are not suitable for the development of agriculture and water-intensive industries, and Africa's purchasing power can hardly be built on mining and nomadic economy. Therefore, until the information age, this ancient birthplace of mankind could not develop into an industrial society, except for South Africa, which barely squeezed into the developed countries by virtue of the prosperity of mining, other African countries gave people the impression of poverty and backwardness.

Many strongholds in the coastal areas of Xuanzhou were planted with the flag of the Chinese Empire, and became permanent settlements and third-class land, and a large number of pioneers who were eager for land and wealth gained a firm foothold with the help of the state, but it has always been difficult to penetrate inland. This continent is relatively easy to develop except for the coastal areas. The interior is an alien world, with barren rainforests (tropical highlands with no fertility at all) or swamps and water surfaces with snakes, insects, rats and ants. The arid steppes do not rain in the first half of the year, and floods in the first half of the year. Except for a few plateaus and river valleys, there are very few places where agricultural bases can be established.

This is only a last resort when resources are scarce, and only when the price of resources is high enough to exceed the development costs of the area. The farce of the frenzy that set off the carving-up of this continent in the era of imperialism is a joke. Apart from the centuries-long slave trade, which provided Europe with a small amount of raw capital, the continent contributed very little to the world economy. Tens of thousands of tons of raw materials exported are not comparable to the value of an imported generator set.

In addition to being a relatively high-cost resource reserve and future export place, it is basically not attractive to attract investment. The expansion group under the leadership of the Crossing Masses only surrounded the continent first and occupied all the coastlines. The attitude towards this continent is to 'put development on hold and settle disputes'. Why the controversy? The Swahili city-states in the east and the black kingdoms in the west are all civilizational peoples, and they cannot be conquered and ruled by force like primitive tribes. With countless means, the Crossing Crowd easily broke the resistance of these 'states' from the stage of tribal alliance to the stage of feudal states. The smooth establishment of an indirect colonial system brought these regions into the ranks of 'semi-colonial'.

In the case of the Congolese region, for example, the tribes have only just joined together to form the rudiments of the state, a multi-level tribal federation state. The big tribes are the big cities and provincial capitals. Small tribes are small cities and villages, subject to the management of large tribes, paying tribute and taxes in kind every year, and sending troops when there is trouble. The largest tribe is the capital. This loose tribal alliance is built on force and productivity. As long as a tribe has enough strong men and abundant products, sooner or later it can become a big power, or even a capital.

Although this kind of state is primitive, it is completely different from the tribes and their alliances, and it is a qualitative change produced by quantitative change, and it is a leap forward in civilization. Although the Congo does not have a written language, it has a systematic language and a system of political power. There are armies, prisons, and all kinds of violent institutions and systems. This is a world of difference from primitive tribes that have no organizational ability. An organization with a basic framework is like the difference between a vertebrate and an invertebrate compared to a simple family, family, or tribe.

Whether it is for long-term peace and stability or for its own convenience, the Chinese Empire cannot kill all the natives here by force, and can only slowly conquer this place with soft power such as trade and cultural assimilation.

The ancient kingdom of Ghana was conquered by the Moroccan Murabit dynasty ten years before the crossing. But the remnants of Ghana are also the most powerful power in West Africa. For the sake of gold and ivory, many brave explorers colluded with the profiteers of the Kingdom of Ghana to destroy the salt industry and the most lucrative export gold industry in the region, and became the emperor of the primitive country.

Those forces that have established trade relations and friendly exchanges with the Chinese who have established colonial bases include the Kingdom of Benin, the Kingdom of Kanem, the Kingdom of Axum, the Kingdom of Hausa, etc., these regions are backward in terms of productivity, and there are no good things to exchange with the empire, except for leather, golden sand, ivory, precious stones, timber and rare ores that can be exchanged for consumer goods of the Chinese Empire, there is not much industrial goods consumed here. Even the nails and saw blades used to build wooden houses are rarely afforded by the inhabitants here.

Pieces of land were taken by the traversers at a very low price, and the land that had been planned to be reserved for decades or even hundreds of years was thus included in the reserve land list of the Xuanzhou Group.

The way to open up these backward regions is simple, and if it is not as ugly as the Europeans traded glass balls and small mirrors for gold and slaves, but it is not as bad as scissors.

No ethnic group can do without the trade of necessities of life, and the self-sufficiency of necessities has always been the goal of all ethnic groups, in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to develop the production of necessities of life, but some industries are difficult to develop, for the sake of strategy, the Chinese Empire can not let this continent appear a country with a complete industrial system. In order to achieve the most effective guidance and subtlety, financial and trade liberalization is the best weapon.

The art of capital lies in the fact that no sheep can discover the sheep after shearing the sheep. The goods are exchanged for domestic industrial goods and fast-moving consumer goods, but everything in these trade goods catalogues is a good thing that these countries actually need. Cheap iron farming tools for land reclamation, cement and molds for building bridges and roads, various simple equipment for processing wood and ore, kerosene lamps and matches for lighting, labor protection supplies such as rubber shoes that are convenient for people's life and production, cheap Chinese herbal medicine pills, insect repellent agents such as wind oil essence, a large number of steel knives (kitchen knives and mountain knives) with quality assurance, high-quality and inexpensive stationery and books.

These are products that cannot be produced without large-scale industry. It's also a very practical and down-to-earth goodie. As long as the goods that are used and cannot be separated from are easier to obtain the recognition of the people at the bottom and the market than those glass beads and small mirrors that cannot be used.

Both the buyer and the seller have a real need. Moreover, knowing that the value and use of goods are all transactions that you are willing to make, and there is no need to record them in the history books if there is no guilt or guilt at all, and there is no need to record the trade that is not touched by the fraudulent trade at all. As for the exchange of a kerosene lamp for a hundred crocodile skins, no one will pursue it.

The stakes of the scissors gap are known to everyone with a high school education, but no one can avoid it, and all countries and organizations involved in the national trade and global division of labor system have equal opportunities in this scissors gap. It depends on whether he chooses bitter first and then sweet or sweet and then bitter. Are there also developed countries that export raw materials? Of course there is, but that's only after industrialization, as long as the country tightens its belt. The money saved from between the teeth is used for the appreciation of human capital and the construction of industrialized hardware facilities, and it will always become a developed country. Except for the United States, a perverted agricultural god-given land, all developed countries with a population of more than 10 million have achieved primitive capital accumulation in the midst of hunger and cold. All developed countries have come out of the pattern of bitter first and then sweet, first high savings and then high consumption.

After all, the materials consumed by the intellectuals and technicians who have been trained out of production cannot be conjured out of thin air. The infrastructure is also a real guy who has been paid for by labor. If you don't save money and accumulate wealth to pay for these things, the Buddha will not be able to help you get rich. Even if you lie on the gold mines, you can only live the life of a poor least developed country. It is better to expect people who have not experienced hardship and economic education to get rich than to hope that money will fall from the sky when they win the lottery.

The plan to walk through the sins of the crowd is to be like a shepherd. Turn this ignorant and backward land with no value into an even more ignorant but valuable raw material export land. Let there be constant deflation and trade surpluses. Make this a warehouse for the Empire to purchase raw materials cheaply. Even the biggest scissors difference can't withstand the avalanche-like trade of precious metals. A hundred high-quality knives are nothing more than stamped steel blades, which are exchanged for only 3 kilograms of gold. A thousand boxes of matches cost 10 kilograms of gold, and a shipload of 500 tons of salt costs 30 tusks or 100 pounds of gold. Although Africa, especially West Africa, has continuously mined gold for thousands of years, almost all of it has been lost in a few years, and it has been either exchanged for various consumer goods and imports of the Chinese Empire or exchanged for coins.

However, this impossible coin is not gold or silver, but a nickel-chromium stainless steel coin. The banks that exchanged a large amount of gold at the 'market price' became the largest gold mine in the Xuanzhou branch after the empire's branch in the Xuanzhou Trading Bank.

If you want to exchange for high-end goods, you can only trade this kind of coin in exchange with the bank, monopolizing high-end industrial goods (tobacco, alcohol, addictive fast-moving consumer goods. Expensive clocks, branded luxury jewelry, and feminine products are also gold mines) Exporting Imperial Trade Groups and Exporters' Guilds (traversal-controlled organizations) only accept this coin trade. Once they get the coins, they can go to the bank and exchange them for gold or the equivalent of dragon dollars at a 10% discount at the 'market price'. The difference between the bank and the bank is dead. At that time, the natives got used to this convenient coin, not after trading with physical gold. Or there is no gold left in the exchange. Traversal is able to manipulate the supply of this cheap coin, thereby manipulating prices and the local wealth distribution system. The faster it develops, the better, and the more wealth you can earn when you travel through the crowd. When it was really impossible to continue to rule here, it was enough to abolish the purchasing power of nichrome coins, and declare that this currency could not be exchanged for dragon dollars and precious metals, and those who held these coins would suffer heavy losses or even bankruptcy.

The banks that poured these coins had a myriad of ways to pass on their losses to depositors and borrowers, such as exchanging most of their coins with local commercial banks for dragon dollars and precious metal coins before the coin's purchasing power collapsed, or buying them into assets and securities, and after the crash, selling some of the assets would allow them to recover several times the amount of the coins they had spent, and then returning the coins to the depositors according to the figures on the passbook. Even if you can lend out when you sign the loan agreement, you will have to borrow coins, and you must return them in dragon dollars and gold coins. If you want to be less obvious, the borrower can also transfer the loan at a discount to other investors who sell assets or goods that can maintain value.

Anyway, well-informed people such as the Crossing Zhong and their partners will definitely make a profit and not lose money, and the Xuanzhou natives will definitely not be able to play with the foreign merchants from the Chinese Empire who set the rules and grasp the market.

The export of commodities and the export of capital are the main work of capitalism, but the highest level is to achieve lasting profits and win-win results. As a killer feature and long-term layout, Li Ji can only do it first and then say, and it is impossible to say whether to use Li Ji, who may no longer be alive, when the time comes.

As for industrialization? Then I have to say hehe. Blacks want to dominate industrialization, unless they dream. Even if they have a conscience not to let this place become a hell for the slave traders, do they still want to be a latecomer to catch up with and overtake the country? The international law dominated by the great powers, like the law of the jungle, is a bloody battlefield of the jungle. If you don't let you be considered the responsible savior of humanity if you are starved, starved, plagued, wars, and corpses everywhere every year, how can you ask for so much. So said to the students of the Department of Diplomacy of the School of Political Science who came out of traditional families that had been baptized by Confucianism. If these nerds who are full of the same society don't see the dark side of society, how can they rest assured that they will go abroad for training, and it will be troublesome if they are kidnapped by primitive tribes. (To be continued......)