After the border is formally determined, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Tang Republic and the Kingdom of Spain is logical, and what still needs to be further determined is some coordination between the interests of the two sides in all aspects. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Datang is a resolute advocate of free trade, free trade at this time and the free trade of later generations are two different things, its core meaning is that goods can freely circulate between countries and regions, without policy restrictions, while enjoying relatively low reasonable tariffs. Datang has always used a relatively low tariff, which is so low that smugglers are very satisfied. Compared with the 200 percent and 300 percent tobacco and sugar taxes imposed by the British at every turn in this era, Datang's tax rates on imported goods are already very friendly.

The high tariff rate is mainly due to the naïve economic concept of the era embraced by Europeans - ercantilism (also known as the "commercial standard"), that is, a country's national power is based on the wealth that can be obtained through a trade surplus, that is, the export value is greater than the import value. This view of economics is so simple that the vast majority of people agree with it, and even in some historical online novels in China in later generations, some people believe that this mercantilism is the best economy.

Extrapolating to ordinary individuals, it seems that a person who earns more and spends less can accumulate a lot of wealth. William Stafford, an early representative of mercantilism, insisted that the state should buy less in trade, which was obviously unrealistic, because there was not enough raw material input, and it could not meet domestic demand while making more products; From the second half of the 16th century to the 17th century, a group of economists represented by Thomas Meng emphasized selling more, so during this period, countries rewarded exports, ensured that their countries were in a state of excess, and took the colonies as the main objects of trade excess.

Mercantilism essentially attaches great importance to the accumulation of gold and silver money, and governments of all countries attach great importance to the inflow of precious metal money. Then the inflow of a large amount of precious metal money will inevitably lead to inflation, which will destroy the livelihood of ordinary people in the country, and also affect the continued reproduction of factories, and in the final analysis, it will be the destruction of the economy.

There is also an important idea implicit in mercantilism, which is that there is no cooperation between states, only hurt and be hurt, in short, a zero-sum game. By selling more and buying less, governments believe they can take away a lot of money from their competitors, thereby weakening their national power and ensuring their own superiority. In this regard, it echoes the belief of Western European countries that gold and silver currency is the ultimate embodiment of national strength and economy.

Later economics generally believed that mercantilism had its necessity and benefits in a particular historical period, and in some cases. Middle school history textbooks like to say that Westerners have completed the accumulation of primitive capital with bloody colonization, which is correct, but the important role of mercantilism in this cannot be ignored. The large import of gold and silver was an important step for Western European countries to complete the accumulation of capital.

Even in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that is, in the time of Bai Nan, China continued to accumulate primitive capital in a special kind of mercantilism, in a state of peace. Of course, it is not fair to describe it as mercantilist, after all, this kind of trade surplus is not deliberately led by the state, but it cannot be denied that there are policy factors. The main reason lies in the overall economic system, which tends to encourage exports and investment to drive economic growth.

From this point of view, in the eighteenth century, the Tang Dynasty was not only different from the self-sufficiency and relatively closed small-scale peasant economy of the Qing Dynasty and other traditional feudal countries, but also different from the mercantilism of European countries that only put gold and silver first, and was a relatively advanced economic guiding ideology.

For the time being, there is a certain ambiguity in Datang's economic policy, but fundamentally the Tang people do not have the attitude of selling more and buying less, but selling more and buying more, on the one hand, to promote the prosperity of trade, stimulate the development of domestic manufacturing and service industries, and on the other hand, to improve the living standards of their own people. Naturally, there is a factor of industrial capacity that is far more scientific and technological than that of this era, because no matter how this kind of trade is done, it seems that the Tang people take advantage of it.

With manufactured and processed products as the main export commodities and industrial and agricultural raw materials as the main imports, this is a perfect trade scissors, and it is also the main way for developed countries to take advantage of developing countries through trade in later generations.

This complex set of logic was not something that Alfonso, an eighteenth-century Spanish minister, could understand. In fact, the entanglement of the Spaniards was quite serious, and under the mercantilist thinking, they were extremely resistant to high-quality Datang goods entering Mexico and other Spanish colonies, thus squeezing out the market for Spanish goods, but Alfonso looked back and found that Spain actually did not have any decent goods that could be imported into the colony, and because of the too scarce commodity imports, the colonies developed slowly and complained.

This is inseparable from Spain's urine since the colonial era, the exploration and colonization activities led by the royal family, the only thing they want is gold and silver, and Spain's own industry is developing slowly, and there is a lack of decent products, so it is not like the British can dump cotton and other textiles in large quantities to their colonies, the Spaniards sell cotton as a raw material to their colonies!

Wrong economic policies and excessive thirst for gold and silver caused Spain to inflate several times at every turn, and also limited the development of the colonies. From the perspective of later generations, it is known that the colonial countries with English as the mother tongue and a population dominated by Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups, namely the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have prosperous economies and are all developed countries with extremely high per capita GDP. The colonial countries with Spanish as the mother tongue and Latino as the majority population, namely Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and other countries, are either drug-ridden or heavily indebted, and are not very rich developing countries.

Historically, Mexico had better opportunities for development than the United States, but in the end it was reduced to the younger brother that the United States wanted.

Mercantilism is like a poison, and zero-sum thinking is even more maddening. It is better to have a colony in disarray, and there is nothing to gain from it, than to let the opponent take advantage of it to develop. Alfonso actually vaguely found that this was a rather stupid thinking, he thought that Spain was huge, and if it could take advantage of the situation to develop, no country such as Britain and Datang could compete with it.

"The Tang Republic has extraordinary technology, especially their military weapon manufacturing capabilities, if their weapons can be copied, at least the Tang Kingdom has nothing to fear, and Spain, with its repeating muskets and long-range cannons, can regain lost land on land, and even rob a wider colony. On the seas, we can defeat the British, master the seas of Europe, and control the trade of the world! "This is a sweet dream, Alfonso knows that if a country wants to dominate the world, it must have force as a guarantee, Spain's force has not been particularly powerful, military thinking is not the most fashionable, and weapons are not the sharpest. If these can be made up for by the Tang people, then Spain's future hegemony will be invincible.

On the one hand, he did not want the Tang Republic to do business with Mexico and other colonies, and on the other hand, he wanted to get the weapons of the Tang Dynasty.

In the end, Alfonso chose a clever solution, he said: "The only authorization given to me by His Majesty King Carlos III is to determine the borders and bridge the war with the Tang Dynasty. Now I have fulfilled the glorious mission entrusted to me by His Majesty the King, and I have also established friendship with the Tang Republic. However, I have no right to decide a series of matters related to the establishment of diplomatic relations, as well as trade issues, so I ask the Tang Republic to prepare a credential and return to Spain with me to exchange credentials with His Majesty the King, which can be regarded as the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. As for the specific trade issues, we can continue to talk about them in Madrid. ”

He talked about it himself, if Carlos III was not satisfied, it would be useless in the end, and it would also overdraw Spain's diplomatic integrity, so it was better to directly let the Tang people go to Spain to meet Carlos III in person, and then the Spanish side could gather the able ministers of the entire court to discuss how to deal with trade with the Tang.

After Zheng He heard about it, he also knew that this kind of business negotiation was not in a hurry, so he could only talk patiently and slowly, saying that now Datang's main trade target has been in East Asia, and even his own plantations and colonies in Hawaii, and Mexican smugglers like Silva can also provide some Mexican goods, so Datang is not overly anxious about the Spanish negotiations.

Alfonso, who had completed his mission, was not in a hurry to return to Spain. He hoped that during his stay in the Tang Dynasty, he would write a more complete and detailed record of what he had seen and heard, and hand it over to Carlos III as a consultant. It's just that everything here is extraordinarily novel, very different from European countries, and the minds of the Tang people can be seen in many places.

The huge stores that were needed for the entire population of the city, the factories that he could not read, Alfonso wanted to record them all, all of which were valuable information for Spain.

And on the ninth day after he came to the Tang Dynasty, the Migratory Bird Project fleet returning from the Qing Dynasty returned. The fleet that returned with a full load left Los Angeles empty, and everyone was curious to find out what kind of goods the fleet had brought back from the Qing Kingdom.

Alfonso was also curious, the route was somewhat similar to the Manila route, where the Tang went directly from Los Angeles to Canton in the Qing Kingdom, and it was not like a Manila galleon that limited the amount of cargo.