Xinshun 1730

Chapter 951 Satan and Cathay

It is very difficult for the Chinese to understand this nightmare in Britain.

Even if they lost to Little Japan in the Jiawu Year in history, the mentality of the domestic elites is not such a nightmare, but has turned to "changes make things happen".

Basically, it is very difficult for people in Dashun to have such a bewildered "pious belief", so they can't understand it at all.

Even if the traditional way doesn't work, at most it will turn from the extreme self-confidence in the past to a complete denial.

If you are not a believer, it is really difficult to understand this "pious belief".

It is even more difficult to understand the logic of these devout believers when their devout beliefs conflict with the cruel reality.

To figure this out, there is one thing to understand first.That is to say, under the Protestant "view of righteousness and benefit", trade is a kind of belief.

That is [trade, which is the foundation of what we call law, liberty, and property, the real cornerstone of the world].

The trade here is not a trade in a broad sense, but a trade in a narrow sense of "only trade that makes money can be called trade".

If you can't understand this point, you will have a lot of doubts, and feel that what they say seems to make sense, and trade can indeed bring benefits.

The reason why I feel that some of what they say makes sense is because the "trade" in their context is not the same concept as the "trade" understood by the people of later generations.

It’s like the tenant farmers in Dashun and the agricultural laborers in Britain, or the “poor peasants” with one mu of land per capita in Dashun and the “poor peasants” with 48 mu of land in Russia; or the Cossack peasants who only pay blood taxes and are self-governing Farmers who are serfs in the village... have the same name, but they are not the same thing at all. If you use what you understand or what you are familiar with, you will get a lot of weird imaginations.

On the British side, this conflict between belief and reality has produced a kind of "illogical" clumsiness.

Adam Smith's clumsy logic of "British capital controls China's shipping, and Britain acts as an intermediary in China-West trade" and "free trade can still solve the Sino-British trade problem" does not want Chinese goods sold to Europe. so it is.

Earlier, Defoe clamored that "if Russia hadn't been busy fighting the Great Northern War, it could have conquered China with 10000 soldiers; 30000 British or Austrian soldiers, or 10000 French soldiers, would have been enough to conquer China."

Why conquer China?Because "the blockage of China's trade violates God's arrangement and the sanctity of trade."

If you think about it all the time, it's okay.

As long as it is reasonable, there is a clear logic, a universal and consistent theory, right or wrong, at least it can be regarded as an idea.

It will not be the case of "chicken and duck talking" that Qi Guogong lamented.

But the reality is that just after Defoe clamored for "China's trade blockade", he published an editorial that year, calling for a complete ban on Chinese cotton cloth, a complete ban on Chinese porcelain, and curbing the influence of strange Chinese-style gardens on British traditions.

And because of his influence, he indirectly promoted the second enhanced version of the "Oriental Cotton Cloth Prohibition Order" in 21 years.The direct reason is that Chinese goods caused British workers to lose their jobs, and woolen factories in London and other places starved to death...

His suggestion is correct from the British point of view.

However, just as they shouted about free trade in front, they came back like this, and they did it as a matter of course and confidently, which made it difficult for the people in Dashun to understand.

In Songjiang Mansion, Liu Yu and Qi Guogong discussed this "chicken and duck talk" issue.That is to say, the Chinese mind cannot understand the thinking of Protestant countries, and it is difficult to understand their logic.In particular, it is impossible to understand the "righteousness" of "taken for granted".

This root comes from the "sacredness" of its religious tradition.

For sanctity must be universal, not something useful here and useless there.It cannot be said that God is in charge of things in the west, but when he reaches the east, he has to give up to the Jade Emperor, Bodhisattva, river god, mountain god and the like.

This "sacredness" endowed them with the "justice" of massacre and aggression.

Is there a single logic that makes sense in the situation Defoe faced?
Of course it can, forsaking sanctity, forsaking universal applicability.

With a pragmatism that is completely at odds with his religion.

I just made it clear: if you are poor, you will be mercantilism, and if you are rich, you will be free trade. I am only thinking about the interests of my own country, and the interests of my own country are paramount.

In this way, whether it is Defoe or Adam Smith's clumsy explanation of Sino-British trade, it can be explained.

However, this abandons sanctity, abandons universal applicability, and also abandons "natural justice".

So in order to protect its own industry, should France attack Britain? Is it right?Obviously, the interests of the country come first.

Is it right for the Indians to kill the North American colonists and scalp the colonists?Obviously, the interests of the family are paramount.

Is it right for Japan to ban Christianity, expel Chechitan believers, and massacre Shimabara believers?Obviously, the interests of the country come first.

The Netherlands carried out a massacre on Ambon Island, arrested the people in the British business house, and killed them all, isn't it right?Obviously, the interests of the country come first.

Abandoning sanctity and universal applicability means abandoning "innate justice", and abandoning innate justice is going to hell, so it is impossible to abandon sanctity.

The senior officials from Dashun came to the Protestant country and felt that the root cause of the fact that chickens and ducks could not understand the truth at all came from this.

This is why there are people shouting for free trade, while others demand a ban on cotton cloth; here they shout for free trade, and the methods given there seem to be pure nonsense... Similar logic that normal Chinese people can't understand at all .

China cannot find similar words to describe this logic.

It seems that the closest word seems to be "both when and standing".

In fact, it was a thousand miles away.

The premise of both being and establishing is that you know in your heart that "being" is not right, otherwise what is there to establish?
What if you think that "dang" is right in your heart, and you sincerely believe that you are qualified to "stand"?

To the end of his life, Defoe felt that wool, woolen fabrics, and the clay pots he was obsessed with couldn't be sold in China because China "violated God's arrangement and there was no free trade."

But the problem is, whether it is Ming Dynasty or Dashun, even the Manchu Qing Dynasty in history... To put it mildly, it is laissez faire towards trade goods and the national economy. It doesn't deserve to be called a centralized government at all so that it can't control it at all.

The rulers simply cannot understand what is "mercantilism" and what is "tariff protection"-ah, the accumulation of precious metals requires the cooperation of customs policies?
No, it's obviously not necessary, as long as the business is done, the precious metal will be sent automatically?They are not even allowed to trade, and they even give me gifts and bribes, insisting on giving me silver.Isn't the meaning of customs just to collect taxes and enter the treasury?Do tariffs mean anything else?It is really a strange story through the ages, which has never been heard before.

Manchester cotton cloth, excluding freight, opens a wormhole portal, the cheapest is 14 pence, 168 cents and three feet.

Better-quality blue cloth dyed with soil in southwestern Shandong costs 17 renminbi a foot and 51 renminbi three feet.

According to the Chinese way of thinking, if free trade is really sacred, doesn’t that just mean that British textiles cannot be sold in China, which reflects the sanctity of free trade?

Cotton, woolen and so on can be understood. After all, they sell well in Europe. If you are blindly confident, you can understand.

But what the hell is the clay pot he's obsessed with?How do you get the confidence that pottery pots, which are tens of thousands of miles away, can be dumped in China, the country of porcelain?

Now the ship of Dashun Western Trading Company has arrived in Amsterdam.News of the auction of goods dominated the newspapers all day long.

The cruel reality made nightmares fall on their heads, and the contrast between belief and reality made each of them look like schizophrenia.

Dashun is no longer just a backdrop in Eastern stories.

It is no longer just an oriental garden in the asymmetric aesthetic style of "sharawadgi" built by noble lords.

It is no longer just the black tea from Wuyi Mountain that you drink while basking in the sun in the afternoon.

It is no longer just expensive and gorgeous crystal porcelain.

It is a real country that stepped out of the background board, participated in the Russian coup, instigated the Dutch coup, and drove the cargo ship to Amsterdam.

And this country is precisely what they see as "Satan's perfect masterpiece."

According to the definition of British Protestantism at this time, China was a country that had been conquered by the devil before Jesus arrived in the East.And the biggest manifestation of this fact is their idolatry].

【The Jesuits are also a group of heretics who worship idols. They molded Jesus Christ into a worshiped god and fused it with Confucius.Make the idol worship of China and Rome, can join hands, and eventually become good friends]

[At this point, the 'wisdom' of the Jesuit group dwarfs the devils in China, and the masterpiece they fabricated together stunned even Satan himself]

[The Jesuits and the Chinese devil have formed a religious hodgepodge, making this fusion worse than the pure devil before it.They bound the faith of Jesus Christ with the moral philosophy of the pagan Confucius, and gave doctrinal explanations in a serious manner-this way of preaching itself is the act of the devil.Only in this kind of nation that has long been conquered by Satan will it spread like this]

When many people in later generations heard the word "Protestantism", they felt that it must be more tolerant and progressive.But in fact, as Liu Yu said, or as it has been staged countless times in ancient China, the first step of any religious reform must be restoration.

What is new is the oldest.

Protestantism is the most fundamental.

They think that they are the orthodox, the closest to the original meaning-so Catholicism can produce such weird heresies as liberation theology, but Protestantism cannot.

Precisely because before Dashun banned religion, the Jesuits monopolized foreign exchanges, which made it quite unfavorable for these Protestant countries.

This kind of realistic factor has created this kind of British statement-China has been conquered by Satan before Jesus spread to the past; the group of heretics of the Jesuits, mixed with Chinese moral philosophy, created a situation that Satan himself All shocked by the masterpiece.

It is very different from the way of belief in the East. After being beaten up by someone in East Asia, they will definitely feel that the other party must be strong. We must learn from them, otherwise why are they so strong?
But the special "justification by faith" in the Protestant doctrine - if you start doing good deeds without believing in Jesus, you must go to hell, because this is preaching for the devil - it is exactly the opposite of the logic on the Chinese side.

So it creates a very special situation:

Yes, Dashun is very strong, and their goods are very good.

But precisely, this proves that our beliefs are correct. We must fight against the devil, defeat the devil, and not be tempted by the devil. If this person does not believe in religion but has done many good deeds, then it is the devil possessing himself who is tempting you.

The same is true for a country. If the country is not religious but powerful, then the devil must be tempting us to leave the orthodox faith. At this juncture, we must be firm, and we must be more convinced that everything we are pious is correct.

This is not only difficult for Dashun to understand, but also exacerbates the nightmare of those who, like Defoe, have opposed China for a long time.

The more I believe that I am fine, the more I believe that the opposite is the temptation of the devil, which leads to the nightmare of the conflict between belief and reality.

The advantage is that we can naturally add a layer of "justice" to ourselves-everything we do, such as murder and arson, massacres in concentration camps, and extermination of genocide, is fighting against the devil, and we are naturally righteous.

Because we are naturally righteous.

So if you can't do well, it's because you are different from us, you deserve it, and this is the root cause of your backwardness.

If you do well, it means that you have been conquered by Satan and is luring us to hell—this Satan can gradually be replaced with something else that “fears them deeply” as time progresses.

Satan is just a statue used to frighten people. When the time progresses and the devil statue is no longer so scary, just change it to another one, but the core remains the same.

(End of this chapter)