January 22, 1724, Fengyuan (present-day Chennai, India, also known as Madras).

Trade and empire have always gone hand in hand, and even, at some point, they were a pair of similar synonyms.

The specious expansion theory that "trade expands wherever the dragon flag is planted" has not yet fully taken shape, but since the establishment of trading stations and settlements overseas by various trade monopoly trading companies and countless adventurous merchants in Qi State, dumping manufactured goods and grabbing wealth have been important drivers of imperial expansion.

According to the census data four years ago, about 13.5% of the population engaged in trade in Qi country, plus the industrial population (including mining, construction, etc.), the proportion of industrial and commercial population exceeds 45%, which has far exceeded the proportion of the population in the agricultural sector. In the past 20 years, the rise of the consumer society in Qi is inseparable from the prosperity of commerce and trade, and it is inseparable from the development of the manufacturing industry and the outbreak of the industrial revolution for a long time.

The surging urbanization process in the country has not only expanded the consumer market, but also contributed to the continuous growth of the middle class in Qi, whose good economic status and strong purchasing power have become the backbone of the rise of the consumer society.

In this situation, the Qi people are increasingly changing to "modern people", and the drastic changes in the economy and society have prompted the Qi people to change their way of thinking, values, lifestyles and behaviors from "traditional people" to "modern people". In a relatively fair society, people are ambitious and strive to reach the upper class; Factory owners and trading company managers are motivated to achieve great success in their careers, and they are eager to adopt new processes and technologies in the commercial and industrial fields to promote social progress. The general public is increasingly interested in new things such as observation, experimentation, and scientific exploration, and conventional and rational knowledge is widely disseminated. People indulge in the material well-being they create, the life they create, and the spiritual pleasures that come with business and leisure.

More than 80 years ago, when the state of Qi was founded in Hanzhou, it spared no effort to develop industry, advocated science and technology, and then launched a vigorous industrial revolution. The rise of Qi is that it has always had a very successful manufacturing industry, and has maintained the core competitiveness of "Made in Qi". The textile industry (mainly the cotton textile industry, including the wool textile industry, the fur processing industry, the silk weaving industry, the flax industry, the weaving industry, etc.), the tool and appliance manufacturing industry (knives, furniture, utensils, ceramics, vehicles, jewelry, machinery and equipment industries, etc.), the primary product processing industry (wood processing industry, wine industry, food processing industry, etc.), the mining industry, the metallurgical industry, the construction industry, the shipbuilding industry and the repair industry, all continue to maintain a high-speed and healthy development rate, and promote the domestic economy to move forward.

In the above-mentioned industries, the textile industry is undoubtedly in a relatively important position. Although the share of textiles in the whole export is declining year by year, from 68% in 1680 to 36% at present, it still accounts for 30% of the domestic export share, and is the largest export industry. The Indian market is the largest export destination for Qi's textiles, with a population of hundreds of millions in the region, providing a steady stream of orders for the domestic textile industry and feeding nearly one million upstream and downstream industrial workers.

Since the end of the First Qi-India War, a large number of cotton textiles from Qi have flocked to the Indian market, which has greatly impacted India's original cotton textile industry. You must know that the production cost of large-scale mechanized industrial products is much lower than that of time-consuming and laborious artefacts, so as soon as low-cost industrial cotton fabrics from Qi entered India, they crushed India's local production and manufacturing industry in a very short time.

The originally huge scale of India's cotton exports quickly shrank, and most of the Indian textile factories that survived were controlled by Qi commercial capital. The cheap labor makes the production cost of Qi extremely low, and the profits are quite amazing, which does not know how much blood and tears of Indian farmers and workers have been sacrificed, and Qi has a strong maritime power to control almost all Indian coasts and ports and shipping routes, and colludes with various local powerful factions to maintain high export taxes on cotton fabrics, and intentionally or unintentionally push up the purchase price of cotton and other raw materials, so as to stifle the development and expansion of India's local cotton textile industry.

Qi is equivalent to using the money scavenged from Indians to pay for all imports in India, and continues to feed the development of the domestic cotton textile industry.

"India is like a plump 'cow' with endless treasures, which feeds the empire with a steady stream of wealth, which in turn nourishes and strengthens our national power and enriches our people. To put it bluntly, India is the most solid foundation for China to maintain hegemony in the Indian Ocean and even in the world. Gu Qingxian, the Imperial Special Envoy to India and the Right Attendant of the Indian Department of the Cabinet's Overseas Affairs Department, stood on the third-floor balcony of the Governor's Palace, looking at the bustling streets in the city, and said with emotion.

"So, the Cabinet government has unceremoniously removed the franchise monopoly of several of our trading companies and directly intervened in the specific management of Indian affairs?" Qi Shaosong, the treasurer of the Bangladesh trading company in Fengyuan, smiled bitterly and said with a little dissatisfaction: "Then the decades of investment and construction of our trading company have not made a wedding dress for your cabinet?" ”

"Why, your trading company wants to keep this monopoly business in Bangladesh and the east coast of India forever?" Gu Qingxian said sarcastically: "It's been more than sixty years, and the thirty-year monopoly granted to you by Emperor Taizu has long expired. If it weren't for the fact that His Majesty and the Cabinet felt that the colonization and development of several trading companies had been meritorious, the concession would not have been delayed several times. If you don't look at it, the monopoly of exclusive trade between the Nanyang Trading Company, the Luzon Trading Company, the Annam Trading Company, and the Jiangnan Trading Company and the Northern Trading Company on the mainland was abolished more than 20 years ago, allowing all trading companies in the country to come and go freely. Besides, the major shareholders of several of your trading companies are all members of the royal family and the cabinet department, and it is not your turn to cry here! ”

"You ......" Qi Shaosong listened, his brows furrowed, his eyes narrowed slightly, and his usual commanding temperament was about to attack, but when he saw the other party's awe-inspiring official authority, he suddenly realized his identity, and couldn't help but say stupidly: "Your cabinet is so hurriedly involved in India's internal management affairs, I'm afraid it's a little too hasty." ”

"Isn't there a three-year transition period, how can you rush it?" Gu Qingxian smiled, "Could it be that in the process of the cabinet government taking over Indian affairs, there will be huge changes in your family?" ”

Whether it was the early Indian trading companies, the later spun off Bangladeshi trading companies, and even the latest Burmese trading companies, in addition to obtaining exclusive trade monopolies granted by the government to engage in exclusive overseas trade, these trading companies continued to establish some degree of diplomatic ties with local governments, collect political and military intelligence, explore trade routes, establish port strongholds, and in fact act on behalf of the state.

Moreover, several trading companies had their own civilian managers, armed fleets, and sizable escort units, and the Indian trading companies even had the right to mint currency, the right to adjudicate justice, and the right to declare war on the military, forming a four-in-one organization of commerce, politics, military, and justice. They are no longer mere trading companies, nor are they exactly a government department, much less a political power.

However, just as social relations in Qi have already begun to shift, India needs to make the necessary changes. With the development of the new century and the change in the form of the Indian Ocean region, the nature of Qi's colonization of India has also undergone subtle changes.

Qi has dominated the Indian Ocean for more than 30 years, whether it is at the level of the royal family and government, or the military forces, and even civil organizations, all of them have shown incomparable self-confidence and pride with the strong national strength of Qi State. From the commentaries of various newspapers and media, one can read that the indigenous people of India are waiting for the guiding light of the advanced civilization of the Qi country, waiting for the instructions of the gods and the salvation of the supreme judge.

Qi's colonial affairs in India came with the will of God, and we can not only reap sufficient benefits from this vast land, but also spread light among these people who have been drowning in darkness, vice, and suffering for a long time, expand the generous power of "benevolence and righteousness", shape their society into a well-regulated society, and improve their lives with active industry and commerce, so as to establish a ruling order that is in line with the "values" of Qi.

"Let us work together to gradually propagate and establish the values and principles and views of our Qi country, take root in their land, and build our laws, institutions and ways of life, so that our moral values and Eastern civilization will also be established here."

Well, don't pretend, our Qi country is going to start a full-scale colonization of India. Under such circumstances, your few trading companies, which are desperately pursuing trade interests, will inevitably be unable to adapt to the colonial actions under the new situation, and will have to withdraw from the dominant position in Indian affairs in the future and concentrate on the trade affairs on which you depend.

India must be nationalized in the future, and the best way to accomplish this ambitious goal is to use the Qi style of governance, supplemented by the proxy model, and to conduct a comprehensive social education in the Chinese language – of course, this comprehensiveness refers only to the elite of India's indigenous people and the agents who are dependent on the Qi state.

Despite India's dizzying complexity of caste system, entangled religious contradictions, and intractable land ownership, the Qi people remained convinced that the centuries-old wisdom of the East and the growing scientific rationality would be all-powerful, and that the roots of the empire would sink deeper into India, thereby consolidating the empire's global hegemony.

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(End of chapter)