"Gold and silver are only money, and money itself is not wealth."

"Only food, clothing, and other goods should be called wealth, and all wealth derives from the cultivation of the land. The prosperity of the cultivator is the necessary basis for all other levels of wealth. ”

Some of the central ministers of the Holy Han have already put forward such an argument, which is also somewhat overkill, but it is still based on a certain amount. As the old saying goes, there is no stability without farming, no work, no wealth, no business, no life. Agriculture is the foundation, but the important role of industry and commerce cannot be ignored.

Of course, mercantilism is now prevalent in European countries, and they are bent on how to expand their trade surpluses and how to hoard gold and silver without flowing out. But in the Han Dynasty, there is no need to consider these problems at all, even if the imperial court does not intervene in tariff barriers, the Han Dynasty is completely self-sufficient with its vast land and rich variety of goods.

For the big han, in fact, there is nothing in Yangyi's hands that the big man does not have.

In the Ming Dynasty, these Xiyi could also exchange silver, copper, spices, glass, chiming bells, clairvoyants and other things for gold, raw silk, porcelain, tea, silk, cane sugar and other things of the Eastern Empire. At that time, the Ming Dynasty had a great demand for silver, copper, spices, etc., and there was also a lot of demand for self-striking bells, clairvoyant mirror glass products, etc., but the trade between European merchants and the Ming Dynasty was still in deficit, and they relied on entrepot trade, taking raw silk, cane sugar, porcelain, tea and other places bought by the Ming Dynasty to Japan, India, Persia and other places to do regional entrepot trade.

After the Ming Dynasty, but more than 100 years of maritime trade, the foreign trade of the Ming Dynasty flowed into no less than 300 million taels of silver. The silver that Spain found in the Americas, and the silver dug up, was either transported directly to the East, or it was circled in the hands of European countries, and finally it all flowed to the East.

And now, in the foreign trade of the Han Empire, the Xiyi have nothing to handle.

Glass in the hands of the Venetians? Dahan already has a glass industry that is not weaker than that of the Venetians, and self-produced glass products do not have to be shipped all the way. The cost is cheaper and the price is lower, and foreign glass products have no advantage.

A self-striking bell?

Dahan also has, the Royal Watch Factory, has already formed a huge and perfect watch industry chain, the clocks produced by Dahan come from behind, many styles, low cost, cheap price, table clocks, pocket watches and even bracelet watches.

A commodity like a clairvoyant mirror, which was once profitable, has already been self-produced. Even like clocks and glass, it began to take advantage of overtaking at a lower price, and in turn it was exported to the pair.

As for the spices that were once the most sought-after in European countries, because of the disorderly competition of several European countries in the East Indies Spice Islands, the spice monopoly has long been broken, especially in the middle of the seventeenth century, the production of spices has been out of control, and now spices are flowing out of the hands of Portugal, the Netherlands, England, Spain and other countries. It is said that there are enough spices in Europe to last for ten years.

The price of spices has fallen again and again in Europe, and it has long ceased to be a profiteering commodity. Even if some spice merchants used to burn some of their stocks, and even the colonists of the Spice Islands cut down many spice trees, they could no longer bring the price of spices back.

And now the Han has also directly intervened in the trade of Nanyang. Spices can be exchanged directly from the indigenous sultanates of the South Seas, such as Aceh, and even Singapore has long grown many spices.

Spices, which were once imported in large quantities by merchants in the Ming Dynasty, were now cultivated and produced by the Han Dynasty themselves, and could be obtained cheaply through transactions with the natives of Nanyang. Why buy at a high price from the Netherlands, Spain, Portuguese, British, etc.?

The once lucrative spice trade of a pound of spices and a pound of gold is now as uncompetitive as ****.

If there is only one item that can still be traded with the Great Han, it is silver.

Unfortunately, the Spaniards continued to decline in silver mining in the Americas. Less and less silver was being shipped to the East. And copper is also very much needed in Europe, and in the past they could also trade with the Japanese, get silver and copper from the Japanese, and then trade with the Ming Dynasty. But now that the whole of Japan is in the territory of the Great Han, what else do these European colonists have to trade with the Great Han?

Especially when the Han Dynasty now has a large number of ocean-going merchant ships and has a number of large ocean-going shipping lines, they can directly go to the South Seas, cross west to India and even trade in Persia, Africa, Europe and other places.

The Han Dynasty didn't need those colonists in Nanyang to act as intermediaries at all, and they didn't have the opportunity to take advantage of it from the middle. The Han Dynasty directly transported the exported goods to the South Seas, India, Persia, and even Africa and Europe in exchange for real money, silver, and various raw materials, such as African ivory, gold, silver, copper, saltpeter, sulfur, rice from Central and South China, cotton from India, spices and sugar from the South Seas, and so on.

Among the commodities exported by Dahan this year, the largest ones are tea, cane sugar, raw silk, porcelain, cotton cloth, more than 400,000 quintals of tea, more than 2 million pieces of porcelain, more than 100,000 quintals of raw silk and silk woven cloth, and millions of cotton and linen cloths. In addition, clocks, glass, tobacco, medicinal herbs, and liquor were also sold.

A large number of goods are exported, but only cheap rice, cotton cloth, jaggery, ore, etc. are imported.

There was a huge trade surplus, and a large amount of gold and silver flowed into the Han Dynasty.

In particular, this huge surplus of trade still broke the trade monopoly of the Anglo-Dutch countries in the South Seas, and left these people aside. The Han gulped on meat, and these colonists didn't even get any soup.

Last year, Dahan had a huge foreign trade surplus, resulting in a large amount of gold and silver flowing into Dahan. According to the statistical reports of the General Administration of Customs and the General Administration of Statistics, last year alone, more than 3 million taels of gold and more than 40 million taels of silver flowed into Dahan's overseas trade.

It is equivalent to more than 280 million taels of silver.

This means that a large amount of gold and silver is flowing rapidly into the Han Dynasty, and the flow rate of this gold and silver is quite amazing, like a huge black hole of gold and silver.

You must know that the Spaniards in the Americas have countless mountains of gold and silver, and they mine more than 80% of the world's gold and silver. But the average amount of gold they transported from the Americas each year was only more than 200,000 taels of gold, and less than 10 million taels of silver. The silver dollar equivalent to the Han Dynasty is worth less than 30 million silver dollars.

The amount of gold and silver that flowed into the Han Dynasty's trade surplus in one year was equivalent to the amount that the Spaniards had dug up in the Americas for nearly six years.

For several European countries that occupy the South Sea shipping lanes, such as Britain and the Netherlands, which believe in mercantilism, this is simply their life. And for the whole of Europe, this is a terrible thing, the surplus gold and silver black hole of the Han trade has exceeded the world's gold and silver production, and if this continues, all the gold and silver mined in Europe every year will not flow to the Han Dynasty. They also had to keep losing their gold and silver reserves.

For mercantilism, gold and silver reserves are everything, and the trade surplus of the Han Dynasty is a black hole of gold and silver, which will make them want to die every year, and it will not take many years for all of Europe's gold and silver to flow into the Han Dynasty.

Even if Dahan increases imports of raw sugar, rice, cotton, ores and other raw materials, minerals, and grains next year, it will not reduce its trade surplus much.

For gold and silver, Liu Jun is not so thirsty, and now the Han is not the right time. During the Ming Dynasty, silver was not very liquid. A large amount of silver was stored underground, resulting in a silver shortage, and silver was expensive and cheap.

But today's monetary system of the Han Dynasty, although it is based on the silver and copper double standard, is not a pure silver and copper standard, but also has the banknote of silver dollar coupons, with some credit systems. Nowadays, no one hides silver in the ground, and when the silver dollar is minted, it contains more than eighty percent of the silver.

Silver coins, copper coins and silver dollar coupons made the amount of money in the Han Dynasty continue to increase, and gold and silver were used as reserves for the issuance of silver dollar coupons. At a 20 percent preparation rate, one tael of silver can issue more than a dozen silver dollars. It was under this system that Japan acquired a large amount of gold, silver and copper. There is also the inflow of gold and silver from the trade surplus in the past two years, so that the current gold, silver and copper reserves of the imperial court are very sufficient, and the total monetary volume of the Han Dynasty can fully match the current national economic aggregate.

Even because of the large inflow of gold and silver, and the income of the people of the Han Dynasty increased significantly. There has also been a wave of inflation this year.

Therefore, now the Han is not as eager for gold, silver and copper as before, and has enough precious metals. No matter how much it is, it will only increase inflation and increase prices.

Therefore, for the imperial court, it is not a good thing for the imperial court to have too high a trade and a large inflow of precious gold and silver.

Of course, this kind of happy troubles are still very easy to solve, take out the gold and silver coins of the Han Dynasty to circulate and trade, and import a large number of various raw materials, grains, minerals, etc. from abroad.

In this way, the imperial court obtained a large amount of low-cost grain, raw materials, minerals, etc., and then reprocessed them in the country, so that the cost of goods was lower, and the domestic sales could also benefit the people, and the export sales could also change hands and make a lot of money.

In fact, this is just like China and the United States in later generations, when the Chinese first reformed and opened up, they had no technology, only cheap labor, raw materials, so they could only develop light industry, and a large number of cheap exports of light industrial products to the United States. The Americans, on the other hand, relied on their technological superiority and industrial superiority to concentrate on developing those high and new technologies, and then sold them to China at a high price.

Then the Chinese workers worked hard in the sweatshop for a month, working overtime day and night, 3,000 yuan a month, producing clothes and shoes, and buying an American fruit machine, but it cost two months of hard-earned money. The Americans, on the other hand, only work for a few hours a day, have to rest every week, and get tens of thousands of dollars a month, but with all kinds of Chinese-made goods produced in China, a pair of Chinese-made leather shoes is only twenty or thirty dollars.

That's the difference.

This situation is the same as that of Western colonial countries and colonies, which can only give blood to the mother country. They can only remain at the bottom of the entire economic system of the colonial country forever, doing the most painful, tiring and unpromising things.

Now, as long as the Han can maintain this trade surplus, it will be able to use the large amount of Dahan silver coins it earns to buy cheap raw materials and processed goods around the world. Even in this process of spending money to buy, buy, buy, buy

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid that our ferocious eating appearance will cause those Xiyi ghosts to jump off the wall in a hurry!"

Shoufu Yuan Jixian did not simply indulge in the wonderful prospects, and his rich experience made him know that when things exceed a certain limit, conflicts will always break out.

"What's the matter with the dog jumping off the wall, at most it's just a trade war. When conflicts of interest are irreconcilable, war is always inevitable, doesn't Motosuke have confidence in the Imperial soldiers, believing that they can't protect the interests of the Empire? ”

The admirals who attended the examination and the stars were shining brightly, and they all stood up one by one.

"If you commit a strong man, you will be punished even if you are far away!"

The admirals' words are like sharp arrows, and they are heroic and dry! (To be continued.) )

PS: Thank you for the support of my sister and my brother, thank you for your monthly pass support!