Chapter 150 Rebuilding the Maritime Silk Road
Chen Biao still did not give up on making Peking self-sufficient.
With today's productivity, the grain output of the Ming Dynasty is not enough to feed the people, so we have to go overseas.
As long as he has enough goods, trade routes and escort ships, he can continue to purchase food through legitimate trade.
Of course, there is actually a more convenient method. However, the education Chen Biao received since childhood made him unable to accept such a method.
We Chinese have always valued win-win cooperation in business, operating with integrity. We sell you handicrafts and luxury goods, and you sell us food and minerals. Peaceful foreign trade can help us make up for our own food shortages. Why would we resort to such wicked tactics?
When China was extremely poor in modern times, it used clothes, toothbrushes and apples to repay debts in exchange for industrial products; in modern times, as a pure resource exporter of food, timber, minerals and other products, it also lives a comfortable life.
The Age of Discovery has not yet begun, but it is a great achievement to transform the bloody voyages that have not yet appeared in the world into a peaceful and commercial Maritime Silk Road led by the Ming Dynasty.
Chen Biao boasted about his own greatness and justice, and wrote furiously to get Emperor Hongwu to agree to let him build a commercial port and naval base in Haijin Town.
Chen Biao knew that the people of Yingtian probably looked down on traveling merchants and would frown at the mention of commerce, so he wrote two memorials.
In a memorial, Chen Biao elaborated in detail on the benefits of overseas trade to the Ming Dynasty, and how to use high-value-added goods to exchange for large quantities of low-value-added goods such as ores, grain, and timber that would consume the country's resources. In this way, the country could strengthen its national strength without exploiting its own people and could afford to support a strong army.
In another memorial, Chen Biao not only briefly explained the benefits of doing business overseas, importing grain and increasing taxation to farmers, but also emphasized the strategy of Ming Dynasty doing business with the nobles of Goryeo and Japan, and tying up the interests of the upper classes of Goryeo and Japan, so that they would turn to Ming Dynasty without hesitation and even take the initiative to send troops to help Ming Dynasty eliminate the remnants of Yuan Dynasty and Japanese pirates.
Goryeo and Japan were both younger brothers who would not obey unless they were beaten. But a temporary beating changed a generation, and they immediately became trembling again.
Goryeo is doing well now. As long as the Central Plains dynasty does not change, it is basically obedient. It has not been colonized by Japan, and the thinking of the Goryeo people has not been distorted.
But from ancient times to the present, from the very beginning, the Japanese nation has been completely...
Chen Biao swallowed the curse words.
Goryeo was connected to the Ming Dynasty and had long been a vassal state of the Central Plains dynasty, just like Yunnan and northern Xinjiang today.
Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty's technology develops to a certain level, it can slowly develop its potential like it did to the vassal states such as Yunnan and Northern Xinjiang, and gradually transform it from a vassal state into a territory directly under the central government.
The Koreans, from top to bottom, now recognize their dependence on the Central Plains dynasty. This will not be difficult to achieve as long as the Ming Dynasty becomes strong.
But Japan is too far away and difficult to manage.
Even if Japan has a lot of minerals, mining is a hard job. You can't just ship the people of Ming Dynasty to a foreign country to mine for Ming Dynasty? There is no such thing as cheating the people.
Let the Japanese emperor and generals organize mining and farming themselves, and sell the minerals and grain to the Ming Dynasty. This is the long-term solution.
Harmony brings wealth. The Ming Dynasty wasn't a band of tyrannical bandits. Even if Chen Biao wanted to, the Ming Dynasty's scholars and officials would never agree. This is the moral value accumulated by the great Chinese civilization over thousands of years.
In order to achieve the goal of making money through peace and to solve the threats from Goryeo and Japan without using war, Chen Biao requested to open a commercial port, build a military port, and form a new navy in the north that mainly uses long-range artillery as its means of attack.
To allow merchants to conduct business peacefully, just like opening a border market, they need strong military protection. So there is nothing wrong with preparing a new navy!
Zhu Yuanzhang took the two memorials sent by Chen Biao, looked them over, and then called his confidants together: "I think Biao'er's plan is very suitable!"
Song Lian hesitated. "We're doing business overseas, exchanging silk and porcelain for their food. That's a good idea, but will the princes and nobles of foreign countries exploit the common people even more in order to buy large quantities of these luxury goods?"
Liu Ji rolled his eyes at Song Lian and said unhappily, "Why are you so concerned about your country and its people that you're also worrying about other countries? What does the well-being of the people in other countries have to do with us? Their kings are wise and will naturally know how to achieve the 'win-win' situation the Crown Prince mentioned. They can use the money earned from the Ming Dynasty to reduce taxes and improve the lives of the people. If their kings are incompetent and only care about pleasure, then their people will know it's time to change their king."
Song Lian said, "Then the common people are ignorant and don't know how to change."
Liu Ji swung his sleeves and said, "That's what they deserve. They themselves don't want to work hard to live a good life, so do they still want us, the Ming Dynasty, to make decisions for them?"
Song Lian thought about it, nodded and sighed: "That's true. I have no objection."
Other Confucian officials with the highest moral sense also nodded in agreement, not to mention non-Confucian officials.
Chen Biao's strategy of going overseas is indeed a win-win situation - in business, as long as it is not forced buying or selling, it means that the other party also thinks it is profitable, so how can it not be a win-win situation?
As for whether their princes and nobles do business for their own benefit or for the benefit of the people, that is a matter for the people of their own country to consider...
"What does this have to do !" Chen Biao said confidently.
Liao Yongzhong, who had rushed to Peking to meet the Crown Prince, was puzzled: "Da Meng? What Da Meng?"
Chen Biao said: "Oh, Daming, I was wrong."
Liao Yongzhong was even more puzzled. How could he say two words with completely different pronunciations incorrectly?
Chen Chong said with an air of old age, "Brother, you've just finished your spring plowing, and you went to Haijin Town to survey the terrain and plan the commercial port. You've been so busy that your mind is a little confused. Ouch..."
Chen Biao pinched his second brother's cheek.
Chen Chong immediately pleaded for mercy: "I meant that Big Brother and General Liao were just joking."
Chen Biao loosened his grip on his younger brother, who was becoming increasingly sophisticated but also increasingly disrespectful of him, his elder brother, and said, "In short, a strong navy is crucial for doing business well. The overseas countries are all barbarians, just like the grassland tribes. If our navy is not strong enough, they will not trade with us, but plunder instead."
Chen Chong added: "It's like the Japanese pirates."
Speaking of Japanese pirates, Liao Yongzhong couldn't help but grit his teeth: "Japanese pirates... If the Japanese island wasn't so far away, I really want to send the navy over and flatten the island!"
The Japanese invasion began at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
There was civil unrest on the Japanese island, and some nobles sent people to plunder Chinese merchant ships and invade the Chinese coast in order to gain resources for their struggle for hegemony over the Japanese island; some nobles were defeated in the struggle and lost their territory, so they simply stationed themselves on the island and became full-time pirates to support their luxurious life.
In the first year of Hongwu, the Japanese invasion was already very serious.
Zhu Yuanzhang once sent envoys to question the Japanese emperor and general, and the Japanese general chopped off the heads of the Ming envoys.
Zhu Yuanzhang hated Japan to the core, but he refrained from sending troops. Instead, he built fortresses on the coast to resist the Japanese pirates. To prevent his descendants from attacking Japan, he listed Japan as one of the countries that should not be conquered.
A country that will not be conquered means that the Ming Dynasty will not send troops to it unless the other party takes action first.
Many people in later generations scolded Zhu Yuanzhang for being "petty-minded", "lacking a maritime mindset", "looking down on other countries" and "arrogant and conceited", but they did not know that after Zhu Yuanzhang stopped the Northern Expedition during the Hongwu period, he invested most of his resources in the coastline and attached great importance to the Japanese threat.
The phrase "preparing for the Japanese invasion" often appears in movies and TV dramas. It refers to the coastal military garrisons established by Zhu Yuanzhang. When the northern grassland peoples did not attack, the coastal military garrisons were the most brutal front lines of the battlefield.
There was a period of time in later generations when reflective thinking was popular. Not only marketing accounts, but also scholars in the humanities liked to "deconstruct and overthrow history" and "reflect on the bad qualities of the nation", and it was very popular.
For example, many historians have written papers claiming that the Wokou pirates were not Japanese, but Chinese in disguise, that the Wokou invasion was a civil war, and that Japan was innocent.
Among these historians, there are many professors from prestigious universities.
Their argument is that the "Ming Jiajing Shilu" records that "among the Jiangnan coastal police, the Japanese accounted for 13, and the Chinese rebels accounted for 17."
However, the context of this statement is that in the 32nd year of the Jiajing reign, Japanese pirates organized a large-scale border harassment, causing heavy losses to the coastal military garrisons. After the pirates were repelled, many treacherous people took advantage of the opportunity to stir up trouble, looting under the guise of the pirates, and "rebellion accounted for 17% of China's population."
Ming Dynasty documents used very precise terms: "Wokou," "Wannu," "Haikou," and "Haipi" all referred to different groups of people. The Wokou's disturbances on the border were the root cause of the maritime unrest, leading to the term "Haipi" (pirates and pirates) who collaborated with the Wokou internally and externally to commit crimes.
This is like the grassland peoples plundering the border, and then the Central Plains people appear to lead the way, seek refuge, and take advantage of the situation to rob.
In the vernacular imperial edicts passed down to later generations, there are direct instructions for coastal people to take up knives and kill the Japanese pirates, which shows how much Zhu Yuanzhang hated the Japanese pirates.
Then why did Zhu Yuanzhang not only not fight, but also not allow later emperors to fight?
Because Zhu Yuanzhang came from a poor family, he knew how hard it was for ordinary people to suffer when their country was at war. His vision of benefiting the present and future generations was quite far-sighted, but Zhu Yuanzhang was born in troubled times and wanted to end them, so he couldn't turn a blind eye to the suffering of the people he could see with his own eyes.
The Wo Islands were difficult and expensive to conquer; even if conquered, they couldn't be held, and even if occupied, the development costs were higher than the benefits. It was a truly disgusting place. If the Ming Dynasty, while fighting the Wo pirates, were to be exploited by the northern steppe tribes, it would be a crisis of national destruction.
Although he has a bad temper, he is very clear-headed.
After Zhu Yuanzhang destroyed the Yuan Dynasty's bureaucratic structure in the Northern Expedition, he no longer mobilized troops on a large scale. He only established garrisons in the northern border towns and along the coast, replacing offense with defense, allowing the people to recuperate.
Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang actually had a better way to deal with the Japanese pirates, such as Chen Biao's proposal to attack them from both military and economic perspectives.
But Zhu Yuanzhang's vision was indeed not that high, he could not imagine it; Zhu Yuanzhang had countless capable ministers under his command, from powerful families to noble sons from humble backgrounds, they could not imagine it either.
The limitations of the times.
In this time and space, there is Chen Biao. He brings with him the wisdom of a keyboard politician from a thousand years ago and will make new attempts.
At least it won't be worse than the Japanese invasion that accompanied the Ming Dynasty throughout its history.
As a naval officer, Liao Yongzhong fought against Japanese pirates many times.
After conquering Fujian and Guangdong and signing a temporary ceasefire agreement with Zhang Shicheng, Liao Yongzhong spent most of his time fighting the Japanese pirates, and a small amount of time fighting the remnants of other Yuan Dynasty warlords who were in collusion with the Japanese pirates.
Chen Biao was very greedy for Liao Yongzhong, so he tactfully asked Emperor Hongwu whether Uncle Liao's brother was free to come to Haijin Town and guide the Peking defenders to establish the northern navy in Haijin Town.
Zhu Yuanzhang immediately sent Liao Yongzhong to Chen Biao and let him use him at will.
If this had not happened, Zhu Yuanzhang would have forgotten to tell Liao Yongzhong about Chen Biao's identity.
