I want to be emperor

Chapter 603 The Empire Will Never Disarm
The strong expansion of the Great Chu Empire in Southeast Asia has brought huge returns in a short period of time.

This return is naturally a lucrative market!
Although the market needs time to respond, even if the Great Chu Empire has opened up most of the markets in Southeast Asia, it will take time from stock preparation to transportation and sales.

However, a large number of orders from overseas are feedback in advance, which has given the upper echelons of the empire great confidence.

In the winter of Chengshun's 13th year, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce reported that this year's export volume of the empire is expected to increase by 50.00% compared to last year, and an increase of [-]% compared to the previous year.

In just two years, the export volume has doubled directly!

Of course, it is due to natural growth, but the strong expansion of the empire in Southeast Asia has also brought about an indispensable impact.

These increased export goods will bring more gold and silver income to the empire, and will be used to purchase a large number of various overseas products, especially various industrial raw materials such as cotton, timber, saltpeter, sulfur, rice, spices, ivory, etc. Consumer goods, and at the same time, it can gradually increase the gold reserves of the Great Chu Empire.

More importantly, the rapid increase in overseas orders and the continuous increase in domestic orders have further stimulated the development of the domestic business community.

With the development of industry and commerce in a good situation, many people even think that as long as they open a factory, they can make money lying down...

A large number of landlords and rich people dug out the gold and silver buried in the cellar, and the funds gathered after the continuous sale of a large amount of land were invested in industry and commerce.

Industry and commerce have become investment hotspots for the Chinese gentry, instead of buying land as soon as they have money as in the past thousands of years...

Now in the Great Chu Empire, land does not make money or even maintain its value.

Because the Great Chu Empire has already implemented a tiered agricultural tax rate across the country, the more land it retains, the higher the agricultural tax. After a certain level, the land will not only make no money, but will lose money...

In addition, the imperial government has continued to suppress large landlords for more than ten years, forcing them to continue to sell their land. This has also made the empire, and now there are very few medium and large landlords.

Today, a large number of traditional gentry have poured into the business world.

To some extent, the remaining gentry class of the Great Chu Empire completed their status change in just a dozen years.

They are no longer the traditional landlord class, but have become a merchant class.

And these changes are what the higher-ups of the empire are willing to see, and they are also actively promoting... Well, those who refuse to change are basically dead!
Let capital reach out from the land, return the land to farmers, and put money into business.

In this way, the peasants had the land to settle down, the gentry class could make money, and the government obtained the most important stability and taxation.

Three wins!

Well, this does not include a large number of traditional gentry families whose families have been destroyed by the government for various reasons in the past ten years!

They stood on the opposite side of the times, so they were ruthlessly crushed!
The industrial and commercial development of the Great Chu Empire has been further developed due to the stimulation of overseas markets.

As for the official empire, it has withdrawn the ticket price for Southeast Asian expansion early on...

The military fought three wars of varying scales in the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Kingdom of Ayutthaya, and even the former Kingdom of Burma. In addition, there was no war, but the Kingdom of Annan still signed an agreement.

The empire also gained a great deal of direct benefit from it.

Not to mention expanding the territory and obtaining a comprehensive market, the Great Chu Empire officials also received a large amount of compensation, spoils of war, and other economic benefits.

The indemnity includes 500 million Chu Yuan from the Kingdom of Ayutthaya, 80 Chu Yuan from Cambodia, and 120 million Chu Yuan from Myanmar.

Then, in terms of spoils, in the Battle of Siam, the landing troops of the Great Chu Empire evacuated the capital of the Ayutthaya Kingdom... According to official statistics, the various spoils are at least 700 million Chu Yuan.

Then in Cambodia, the capital of other people's kings was also taken over in one pot, and the spoils were less, but there were millions of them.

There are no spoils in Burma...

And don't think that this is the end of the matter... It's not over yet. The Great Chu Empire has issued loans of tens of millions of Chu Yuan to the above-mentioned countries, including Annan, South, and North, through various messy means such as providing loans and arms sales.

However, the interest on loans these days is not low. Finance banks generally pay between 20.00% and 30.00% off for external loans, and the annual interest can often reach between [-]% and [-]%. It depends on the situation, but basically it will not exceed this range.

In this way, in fact, the Great Chu Empire Finance Bank is quite conscientious when it comes to lending... It's not that the interest rate is low, but that they dare to borrow!
Bankers or wealthy businessmen in other countries, or even the country, rarely borrow from foreign countries. If you have no strength, if you dare to borrow, they will dare to swallow it directly.

However, the foreign loans of the Great Chu Empire Finance Bank usually come with a lot of additional conditions.

The most important of these is the political conditions, in addition to the political conditions, there are other additional conditions.such as limited use.

Either it is used to pay indemnities, or it is used to purchase all kinds of arms or other commodities of the Great Chu Empire.

Especially for the purchase of ordnance loans, this thing is very tricky. The domestic cost of matchlock guns has been as low as less than three taels of silver. The export price is often more than ten taels, and 15 taels can be bought in certain areas.

Artillery is more expensive. A two-and-a-half catty field gun can sell for more than 800 yuan, and a five-jin field gun can cost more than [-] yuan.

The value is so expensive, what, you say too expensive?

Think beautifully, this is not something you can say no to.

The soldiers of the Great Chu Empire put their guns on your foreheads, how dare you say no?

Therefore, it is very tricky for these Southeast Asian countries to find loans from the Great Chu Empire for military purchases...

Basically, the Great Chu Empire sold them the ordnance that cost ten taels of silver at a price of thirty or even fifty taels. Arms trading, this is not three or five times, so why do you mean to say that you are selling arms?
Then they look for a loan from a financial bank to pay for the goods, and for this they will bear a debt of more than 60 taels of silver... This debt will have an annual interest of 20.00%... The final repayment amount will be hundreds.

What, you want to repay the loan early, yes, but the prepayment also pays the interest during the contract period.

In order to guarantee repayment, the Great Chu Empire would take over their taxation agencies such as customs or salt tax.

Of course, these are all false, and most importantly, the huge military power of the Great Chu Empire is the guarantee for the repayment of these indigenous countries.

If you don't pay back the money, your country will be destroyed in minutes.

Colonial empires are so domineering and shameless.

And through such a toss, the Great Chu Empire's expansion in Southeast Asia, even if it does not count the subsequent market expansion gains, only through indemnities, spoils, loans, etc., a large amount of money has been withdrawn.

The bigwigs of the empire picked up their abacus and figured it out, oh my god, after deducting the military expenses, they actually made tens of millions.

This made the high-level officials of the Great Chu Empire red-eyed...

Since the Civil War of Unification, it has been a long time since there has been so much extra income... The domestic war is over, and the clans, various dignitaries and landlords of the former Ming Dynasty have basically ransacked their homes.

After there are no more confiscated objects, even the tax department is forced to lay off staff... It costs money to keep so many scumbags, and when there are fewer domestic confiscated objects, it is natural to lay off employees to reduce the cost of tax collection.

After the Civil Unification War, the main financial revenue of the Great Chu Empire was basically limited to conventional financial revenue. It seemed that there was a large amount of financial revenue every year, but the expenditure was also large. There were a lot of military expenses and various administrative expenses.

In addition, in those few years, the Great Chu Empire also engaged in agricultural development plans and restoration of people's livelihood plans.

If it weren't for the accumulated income from copying and confiscating a few years ago, I would have been unable to support it long ago.

Therefore, in the late period of the unification war, the empire actually started to increase income and reduce expenditure, and every year they shouted to cut military expenditures, even during the Eastern Capitulation Campaign, they all said that they wanted to cut military expenditures.

And after the fight against the captives was over, the top management of the empire finally made up their minds, and without hesitation swung a machete at the military expenditure, forcing the military to tighten their belts to live.

In order to save military expenses, the army farms their own fields, raises pigs and grows vegetables... Who is the largest reclamation group in the Northeast?It's not some kind of foreign immigrants, but the military's reclamation.

It can also be seen from this that the financial situation of the Great Chu Empire is actually very tight.

It looks very rich. In Chengshun's 13th year, the central government's fiscal revenue reached an astonishing 1000 million Chu Yuan.

But still the same sentence, the more you earn, the more you spend.

Military expenditures are tens of millions, administrative expenses are several thousand, and various infrastructures, such as official roads and various ports, are also very expensive.

And the water conservancy facilities for flood control and irrigation are like a bottomless pit, continuously devouring the funds of the empire's finances.

And this cannot be stopped, and the construction efforts cannot even be reduced, because supporting agriculture and solving food problems are the basic national policies of the empire that were finalized many years ago.

Before the unification of the country was completed, Luo Zhixue had already chanted the slogan that the people depend on food, and the most important task of the empire was to feed the people.

And to have enough food, everything else is nonsense, that is, there must be enough food.

However, based on the fact that modern food imports are troublesome, and the freight is very expensive, it is ultimately up to ourselves to solve the problem of food and clothing.

As early as the fourth year of Chengshun, at that time the empire had not even started the Northern Expedition, and had already begun to implement the first five-year agricultural development plan.

After the end of the fifth year of Chengshun, the plan achieved great results, and the Great Chu Empire took advantage of the situation to launch the second five-year agricultural development plan.

The goal remains the same: increase food production!
And a large number of basic water conservancy facilities, whether it is flood control or irrigation, are actually in the end to ensure food production.

Based on the current basic national policy of the empire, the large number of flood control and irrigation projects to ensure food production will not be reduced, but will continue to increase in scale.

In order to increase food production, the empire has become so frantic that it is ready to take the initiative to divert the Yellow River.

If the Yellow River continues to take the Huaihe River into the sea, the huge Jiangbei region, and even the hinterland of the Central Plains including the large area of ​​Luoyang and Kaifeng will not be able to guarantee safe food production.

In the case of small floods every year and three years of major floods, it is not bad to be able to save one's life, so what about increasing food production.

And the northern region continues to be dry... This year is still the Little Ice Age, and the climate is extremely abnormal, especially in the northern provinces, where droughts occur every now and then.

For this reason, the empire is determined to divert the Yellow River. On the one hand, it will prevent the Huaihe region from flooding every year, and on the other hand, it can also divert the water from the Yellow River to the north to irrigate the cultivated land in the North China Plain.

After years of on-the-spot investigations, the Yellow River diversion project has officially started in the autumn of 13 in Chengshun!

According to the plan, the Yellow River diversion project will divert water from the Yellow River into the Daqing River in Shandong.

This diversion, of course, does not mean just messing around and just breaking the Yellow River's embankment. In fact, a lot of preparatory work is required.

In particular, the Daqing River section, which is going to take over the water from the Yellow River, needs to be dredged on a large scale to straighten some curved river courses; to expand and divert the narrow river sections; to set up flood storage areas to avoid impacting downstream river courses, etc.

These are huge projects that require overall planning.

For future generations, many projects are not small even with the help of a large number of construction machinery, but for contemporary civil engineering, which basically relies on the construction ability of hoes, these projects are very large.

But the Great Chu Empire is not afraid... Such a huge project seems to cost money, but the Great Chu Empire has always had a tradition of using work for relief.

There are more and more places affected by disasters every year. Whenever a disaster occurs, the imperial government basically immediately organizes engineering teams or companies to recruit workers... I dare not say that it will make you rich, but it is still possible to let the victims eat a bite of food without starving to death. .

The Great Chu Empire has always combined infrastructure construction and disaster relief.

As a result, you can often see that after a county in the Great Chu Empire was flooded, the empire would immediately launch a large project in or near the area... Basically, the cities mainly repaired flood prevention and digging canals.

Doing it here, the natural disasters of the Great Chu Empire seem to be the same, the drought should be drought, and the rain should be raining, but the losses caused by natural disasters are gradually decreasing every year.

This point is extremely obvious in Henan, Shaanxi and Jiangbei.

The above-mentioned places were basically hells on earth in the late Ming Dynasty... Thousands of miles of red land, ten rooms and nine empty spaces are not exaggerated adjectives, but actual descriptions!

And now!
There are still many extreme climates in these places, but the population is gradually recovering, and many abandoned villages have resumed farming.

Although people are still hungry all year round, there is no large-scale famine after all.

Not starving people to death on a large scale, this is actually already the highest level of the Great Chu Empire, and it is also the biggest pursuit of Luo Zhixue at this stage!

But it is not easy to do this!

Don't look at the empire's industrial development is very strong now, and the army is beating the surrounding area... In fact, there are still a large number of people in the country who are starving and freezing!

Why are the poor children of the empire so enthusiastic about joining the army?Squeeze your head and go.

Because I can eat enough after joining the army...

Luo Zhixue reckoned that if he wanted to feed the people of the empire through his own labor, he would have to struggle for decades at least!

This is a long and difficult project!

It can even be said that this is even more difficult than competing for world hegemony!

Because although the country is constantly opening up wasteland and restoring people's livelihood, the food production is rising during holidays, but the population is also increasing day by day. It has reached more than 1000 million.

This does not include a considerable part of the unregistered population in the deep mountains and old forests.

In just ten years, the population of Huaxia Land has been spared from the natural disasters and man-made disasters in the late Ming Dynasty, and has begun to recover rapidly. It is estimated that it will reach 5000 million or even [-] million in a few years.

How do you feed so many people?

It is not enough to rely on traditional means
But Luo Zhixue still has confidence. Where does his confidence come from?

The Industrial Revolution!

Although all kinds of industrial products produced in the factory cannot be eaten or drunk, even if they make money, the gold and silver are still not edible or drinkable.

You said to rely on industry to make money, and then use the money to import food?That also depends on others having surplus grain to sell to you and being willing to sell it to you.

Relying on imported food to fill one's stomach is equivalent to sticking one's neck into the noose on the gallows. You just pray every day that the executioners of other countries don't pull the switch...

The industrial revolution is not like this. For a nation, its real role is to increase domestic food production through the power of science and technology!

If this is still unable to solve the food problem, then the guns produced by the factory are needed to seize more land for the nation to survive!

This is the true meaning of the industrial revolution for a nation!
Therefore, at the end of the 13th year of Chengshun, Luo Zhixue personally vetoed the proposal of some civil officials to further reduce military expenditures through disarmament at the imperial council meeting to free up funds for the development of domestic agriculture and commerce.

Empire, never disarm!
Unless all the foreign races in other countries are wiped out, and all the land in the world belongs to the great Chinese nation, the empire will never disarm!
Not only did Luo Zhixue not disarm, but he even finalized the military expansion plan himself, preparing to train a number of first-class divisions suitable for cross-sea landing operations and operations in tropical areas, which are expected to be dispatched to overseas operations.

If there is not enough arable land, go grab it!
Southeast Asia is quite suitable for farming. Although most of its inland areas are terrible tropical rainforests, many coastal plains are extremely suitable for important areas.

You must know that even at the current level of garbage farming in Southeast Asian countries, they can export a large amount of grain to the empire. The rice trade between the empire and Siam is not small.

To be honest, it would be too wasteful for these natives to farm in such a good place.

Not only here, the empire has also taken a fancy to the Indian peninsula... The Indian peninsula is still very suitable for farming. Even for a while, the empire cannot directly control the huge Indian peninsula and organize a large number of immigrants to farm there.

But it would be great if you can control several colonies and obtain a lot of food through colonization.

(End of this chapter)