New Shun 1730

To some extent, free trade and Zhou Li are indeed quite similar.

It is also quite similar to absolute zero.

It is a dream, but it is impossible to achieve in reality.

Especially, with the active participation of Dashun in world trade, in this era, it will only produce counter-effects.

Europe is fragmented, underpopulated, and no country can have a complete industrial chain, including France at this time.

The theory of "absolute advantage" first and "relative advantage" later seems to be feasible in Europe.

For example, you can't produce silk in Britain. The mulberry trees transplanted by James can only grow red mulberry, and the silk they spit out is not good at all.

However, Italy can produce silk, at least Italy can grow black mulberry, although the quality is not as good as Oriental Lake Silk, it is definitely better than red mulberry.

Adam Smith argued that, look, can Britain grow mulberry? Yes, it can build a greenhouse, which is against natural conditions, but it is not impossible to grow it.

But, in this way, why doesn't Britain produce what it is good at and go to Italy to exchange silk?

This is called absolute advantage.

In Ricardo's time, this set of problems had arisen again, so Ricardo quickly patched it up. This is called "relative advantage".

But the problem is that these things, in the steam age - until the third and fourth industrial revolutions, the entire industrial chain may require at least 1 billion people, otherwise it will not work. But in the steam age, the so-called industrial chain, the scale of tens of millions of people is basically enough - with the entry of Dashun, both absolute advantage and relative advantage have problems.

In short, the emergence of Dashun will rapidly intensify the anti-free trade trend in Europe, and the local nationalists and national capitals of various countries will stand up to engage in self-reliance and tariff protection.

It will rapidly lead to the awakening of Europe and the anti-free trade movement in Europe.

Because it really wants to force Europe to have neither "absolute advantage" nor "relative advantage".

For Dashun, it has one-third of the world's population.

And the territory is vast, spanning the latitude from the Arctic Circle to the equator. The diversity of climate, the simultaneous occurrence of rain and heat, and the development of handicrafts have caused problems for this theory of "fragmented free trade in Europe in the late handicraft era".

For example, Shaanxi cannot produce silk, so why not grow mulberry trees in Jiangnan?

Shandong and Liaodong see that silk is so good, so why not raise tussah silkworms?

Another example is the brass technology for zinc smelting and processing.

There is no zinc mine in Songsu area, so you can't do it even if you want to.

However, the Yunnan-Guizhou region had to develop Yunnan copper mines on a large scale due to the "lack of money" problem caused by the economic recovery of the founding of the Dashun Dynasty. In order to transport copper, infrastructure had to be built to keep the waterways unobstructed. As a result, zinc and brass in Guizhou have also become important export products.

For another example, the British have been arguing that there are only so many people. If everyone goes to farm, who will do handicrafts? When the economy develops, there is a shortage of people to dig canals, cut trees, build ships, and engage in textile industry.

Therefore, we should talk about absolute advantages and relative advantages, so that the population will flow to the most suitable industries in the country. Instead of sending the population to industries where the country has little advantages.

But the question is, is this a problem in Dashun?

Is there a shortage of people in agriculture? What kind of people are lacking? There are too many people in agriculture. Even if the two-year three-crop system is fully promoted in North China, which is intensively cultivated, there are still hundreds of millions of people.

Is there a shortage of people in shipbuilding? Is there a shortage of people in textiles? Is there a shortage of people in tree cutting? To put it bluntly, in the late Qing Dynasty, Shandong recruited short-term workers, and two kilograms of sorghum rice a day, and they flocked to it.

What relative advantages and absolute advantages, as long as these "surplus populations" can be accommodated, even if the court is bored and hires people to dig pits today and fills these pits tomorrow, there will be no shortage of people.

Relative advantages must be seized, absolute advantages must be seized, and if there are no advantages, then create opportunities and create industrial chains to continue to seize.

The British enclosure movement produced 20,000 to 30,000 people a year to fill these industrial and commercial jobs.

If Dashun had a random flood or drought, 20,000 or 30,000 people would lose their land and become refugees? That's just a small amount, and at most it's qualified to be included in the county annals, not even the memorials reported by the provincial governors to the court.

So much so that in history, in the late Qing Dynasty, women in North China picked up wheat straw in the wheat fields, went home to braid them into straw hats, and they could actually sell them - you know, this thing is not silk, and Europe also grows wheat and eats steamed buns, not rice.

In addition, China has been short of precious metals since ancient times. This makes the purchasing power of silver prices here very strong, at least it is definitely much stronger than Europe, which has been over-issued by Spain for hundreds of years.

This makes this set of theories correct, but the observation samples and social existence are based on the "late handicraft industry, early steam age, fragmented and impossible full industrial advantage" Europe, and a result obtained.

And, to some extent, this set of things was also implemented in Dashun.

Although not thorough.

However, compared with Europe, which is fragmented and full of tariffs, it is more qualified to talk about "absolute advantage" and "relative advantage", right?

In short, has Shaanxi issued a policy to impose a 100% tariff on Jiangnan silk to protect Shaanxi's silk industry?

Has Hubei issued a policy to impose a 100% tariff on Hunan rice to protect the interests of Hubei farmers?

Adam Smith satirized Britain, saying that France was the biggest wine producer, just across the strait, but Britain went to Portugal to buy wine instead of the nearby one. Isn't that mentally ill?

Did Jiangsu say that Liaodong tussah silk and Jiangsu silk were in competition, so it imposed a 200% tariff on the Northeast, and went to Japan to buy expensive soybeans instead of the nearby soybeans?

Obviously, no.

Moreover, the cotton textile industry in Songsu area developed, which was originally a kind of tax during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, which led to the great development of cotton textile industry in Songsu area with relative advantages. It's not that other places can't weave cloth, but it's relatively better to grow rice or spin silk at home and go to Songsu to exchange cloth.

The problem of Dashun is more about "logistics".

The logistics cost and transportation cost have prevented the establishment of this domestic unified market with real, pure and theoretically perfect free trade.

Britain is about the same distance from Portugal as the capital is from Changsha. But there is the sea and the advantages of sea transportation. Not to mention now, even in a hundred or two hundred years, when railways are everywhere, sea transportation is still cheap.

Britain can import wine from Portugal, and Dashun has to go to Changsha to buy wine from Beijing and ship it back to Beijing to sell. Do you think you can pay for it with your pants?

Such high logistics costs have made Dashun's handicraft industry bloom in many places and everywhere.

For Europe, the unification of Germany means that the Holy Roman tariff has been broken.

But for Dashun, the great unification is completed, and the "natural tariff of logistics costs" where firewood is not sold within a hundred miles and grain is not sold within a thousand miles, how can it be broken?

France relied on conscription and fierce road construction to unify the domestic market; Britain relied on fierce canal digging to reduce the logistics costs of the domestic market.

Dashun is not a fool. Not to mention Dashun, even the Qing Dynasty is not a fool. When they were short of money and dug copper in Yunnan, they knew that they had to dredge rivers and cross the Three Gorges.

The question is, can Dashun build the Three Gorges Dam and lock the ship to achieve navigation and reduce the sunk cost? Or does Dashun have the ability to dig a canal from Yunnan directly to the capital?

Including, at this time, Dashun was digging zinc in Guizhou, copper in Yunnan, and changing the land system to control the southwest with salt to allow Sichuan salt to go south and Sichuan salt to enter Chu.

But Dashun could not build the Three Gorges Dam and directly open the way.

It can only build plank roads and trackers' roads on both sides of the Three Gorges, and rely on trackers to pull the boats to carry out logistics.

Relying on trackers to pull the boats, what is the cost?

This is to say, the formal domestic unified market of Dashun is about free trade, and also about relative advantages and absolute advantages. However, even if the banknotes and other things are completely abolished, the "transportation cost" caused by "mountains, rivers and distance" is a "natural tariff" that cannot be solved unless Dashun has the ability to move mountains and fill the sea.

Therefore, Dashun is essentially based on free trade internally.

However, what is shown is a state where the handicraft industry is developing everywhere, and the relative advantage regions are not obvious before.

Of course, this is a previous problem.

With the application of railway and steamship technology, Dashun has to consider the issue of "sub-port tax".

In the past, it relied on the power of nature to make natural "tariffs".

But now, although Dashun did not move mountains and fill the sea, it conquered the power contained in the corpses of ancient plants, and the steamship officially declared war on the four words "downstream".

Therefore, the domestic problems have become serious all of a sudden.

Simply put, in the past, cotton cloth in Songsu area did have a relative advantage. But it may cost 10 yuan to produce and 15 yuan to transport to Hubei. Then Hubei can develop as long as it controls the cost to 24 yuan without local protectionism.

But now, on the one hand, colonial plunder and technological investment have reduced the production cost to 5 yuan; on the other hand, steamships are about to be used, and the cost of going upstream is greatly reduced, and the transportation cost may be 5 yuan.

Then, this means that unless the price of cotton cloth, which originally cost 24 yuan in Hubei, drops to 9 yuan, these people will lose their jobs.

Social existence determines social consciousness.

Adam Smith used the social existence of Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and maritime transport to come up with the theory of free trade.

In his theory of free trade, he did not involve the issue of "logistics cost" too much.

However, this does not mean that his theory is completely wrong.

Because, at the end of the handicraft era, he came to this conclusion based on the material basis of European maritime transport, although he lacked too much consideration of logistics costs and the problem of an inland empire of more than 10 million square kilometers.

However, not long after, humans conquered nature and drove the power of ancient corpses with trains, ships, railways and roads.

The concept of free trade went beyond the scope of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

It was ships, trains, railways and other efficient means of transportation that Adam Smith had never seen before that made free trade a possibility worldwide.

Otherwise, the applicability of his theory, or the applicability under the conditions of logistics and transportation capacity at this time, is problematic.

It's like Nasan's beetroot problem.

Nasan is worried about Martinique's sugarcane, which affects France's beets.

Where is Martinique? How far is it from France?

If we move it to Dashun, it's equivalent to the distance from the Ili River Valley to northern Jiangsu, or even farther.

But in Europe, based on sea transportation, it is not unreasonable for Na San to worry, and the sugar beet planting industry in France has also felt tremendous pressure.

However, in Dashun.

Suppose that the Ili River Valley in the Western Regions grows high-quality cotton.

Given the current transportation conditions and transportation capacity, will the Lianghuai Salt Reclamation Cotton Planting Area in northern Jiangsu, which is equidistant from Martinique to Paris, worry that the cotton in the Ili River Valley will affect their income?

Obviously, given the current transportation and logistics conditions, let alone the cotton in the Ili River Valley, even if half of Shaanxi is cut off to plant cotton, the cotton plantations in northern Jiangsu will not feel the slightest worry.

As a Dashun person, especially one who has experienced the changes in the past two or three decades, the most memorable or the most influential thing on the economic structure of Dashun.

It is not the use of new technology.

It is not the spread of free trade doctrine.

It is... abolishing the canal and changing to the sea.

The changes in transportation and logistics are the most intuitive and significant changes in the drastic changes in Dashun in the past two or three decades.

Yangzhou, ruined.

The once prosperous western Shandong region, known as the Little Yangzhou and Little Jingdezhen, has become a "national poverty-stricken county" in later generations.

The Jiaodong region, which the western Shandong region has always looked down upon and regarded as "Donglaizi", began to laugh at the northwest of Shandong as the "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of Shandong" because of sea transportation and the experimental railway from Jiaozhou to Jinan.

Going back a little further, the value of "opening up the Western Regions" is getting lower and lower.

With the development of navigation, the economic value of opening up the Western Regions, in addition to its military and political value, is completely incomparable with the Han and Tang Dynasties.

This is the internal logic of what Liu Yu said to the emperor that "their Western Regions are the Western Regions, and our Western Regions are Nanyang".

Transportation cost.

Any theory that does not consider the material foundation of the country will always end up as learning to walk in Handan and carving a boat to seek a sword.

The same is true for trade theory.

Just as Lao Ma satirized those who went to Australia and brought 3,000 men and women, saying that you transferred capital and population to Australia, but do you have the ability to transfer the production relations, material conditions, and arable land conditions of Britain to Australia?

The same reason.

Dashun was originally engaged in "free trade", and this was the case internally. Although not perfect, at least the atmosphere of "free trade" in East Asia is stronger than that in Europe, which is fragmented and full of tariffs.

However.

Mountains, rivers, canyons, plateaus, these natural "tariffs" of nature, as well as the vast area of ​​the empire, have made the "free trade" within Dashun develop in a form of blossoming everywhere.

However, a person who truly understands "free trade" will understand one thing and will foresee a new crisis.

That is:

When the railway extends from the plains, when the steamship changes the logic of "going downstream", when the navigation can go through the Black Water Ocean instead of the Grand Canal...

A huge crisis is about to fall on Dashun.

The premise of this crisis is what Lao Ma said [the scattered and dispersed state of rural real estate supplements the free competition in the city and the emerging large industry... The sideline of small farmers has developed rapidly].

Combined with the actual situation of Dashun, that is, "different from European sea transport", "natural tariffs formed by mountains, rivers, plateaus and valleys".

Dashun's handicraft industry presents a form of Dashun characteristics: blooming in many places, everywhere, around the prefectures and counties of various provinces, relying on the existence of "natural tariffs", and forming a star-studded pattern.

Before the reform, before the emergence of railways and steamships.

Songsu, northwest Shandong, Jianghan, Dudu, Guanzhong, Hebei, Guangdong... The handicrafts in these places all have their own characteristics, and at least achieved "self-sufficiency in the province and market filling in the province".

The abolition of the canal and the sea, without the annual maintenance of the Grand Canal invested by the court, the western Shandong region and Yangzhou region were the first to decline.

And with the upcoming emergence of new technologies such as railways and steamships that reduce logistics costs.

A "rewriting of the economic pattern" that is more rapid than the rapid decline of the canal economic zones such as Yangzhou and western Shandong caused by the abolition of the canal and the sea, is about to appear.

From the perspective of Dashun's "total productivity", it is undoubtedly progressive and improved.

However, from the perspective of the scattered handicraft economic zones in various regions, provinces, and prefectures and counties, this will bring about a destruction.

Rapid changes will also bring severe pain.

One abolished the canal and changed to the sea, and the trade center moved from Guangdong to Songsu.

This caused Dashun pain for thirty years.

From the canal workers' uprising in western Shandong, to the salt workers' uprising in Yangzhou, to the Wuling porters' uprising, the Guangdong embroidery weavers' uprising, and the Songsu resistance to the low rice prices in Nanyang... continuous.

It seems that the changes in Dashun in the past two or three decades are bright and beautiful.

But behind this brilliance is the army of Liu Yu's Qingzhou Army after the military reform, which suppressed from the capital to the Wuling, and from Yangzhou to western Shandong.

The abolition of the canal and changed to the sea, and the northward shift of the trade center to Songsu, only involved "commerce", not "industry".

The tea farmers in Wuyi Mountain are still growing tea, but the porters in Wuling are unemployed.

The salt in the Lianghuai area is still produced by the sea, but the salt workers and packers in Yangzhou are unemployed.

The basic economy of the western Shandong region is still intact, but people related to business and transportation in Linqing, Jining and other places are unemployed.

However.

The use of new transportation tools and the reduction of logistics costs will completely reshape the economic structure of Dashun.

In simple terms.

Before there were steamships.

Hubei's textile industry, even if its technology is lower than that of Songsu, and even if raw materials such as cotton and indigo are not as good as Songsu's advantage of being close to colonial shipping.

But with the "natural tariff" of "going upstream".

Hubei's textile industry is still able to withstand the situation - this is just like before the construction of the Suez Canal in history, Europe did have steam engines and the industrial revolution in Europe, but does shipping cost nothing? No cost? Wasn't it the famous scene in 1893 when Nantong cloth counterattacked machine-woven cloth and brought European cloth to Shanghai?

What is really going to change the economic structure of Dashun and cause severe pain is not the steam factories in Songsu, nor the new technologies in Songsu.

But...logistics costs.

To be more specific, it is a [steam ship] that is about to be put into use and can travel upstream.

This has an impact on Dashun.

In the 16th century, European sailboats traveled along the sea to India and China.

The once prosperous Western Region was completely reduced to desolation; the Ottomans, who once sat on the ground to collect money, gradually declined; and the once glorious Arab civilization began to decline.

In Dashun, people who cannot see this problem are not qualified to talk about free trade.

Before advances in technology, before steamships and railroads began to make prescient people fear internal economic collapse.

Dashun has a unified domestic market, and theoretically there are no internal tariffs or local protectionism.

Because nature is a natural tariff.

There are already natural tariffs, so why do we need administrative measures?

But now, there are people who don’t realize that humans have begun to tear apart nature’s “natural tariffs”, and people who don’t realize that Dashun is about to usher in a wave of more severe economic changes than the abolition of canals and sea reform.

He is completely unqualified to get involved in the throne.

Even, in fact, if you can't understand this, you won't even be qualified to enter the Tianyou Palace and the six governments.

Luxi, which was prosperous in commerce yesterday, has become the economic depression of Shandong in the past twenty years. It has been so depressed that some prosperous commercial cities cannot even compile "county chronicles".

They can't even figure out what's going on, and instead they resort to old-fashioned ideas, lack of business awareness, and investments that are only about to be cleared... Such people are not worthy of leading Dashun forward in this era of change. In the prosperous "Little Yangzhou" 20 years ago, could it be that the people there were not old-fashioned and had business awareness 20 years ago, but they no longer have it 20 years ago?

Social existence determines social consciousness.

Some social existences, such as maritime transportation, the small territory, and numerous internal tariffs, are "natural" in Europe. It is regarded as a problem that does not need to be discussed in theory.

For example, when people in the Northeast talk about the twelfth lunar month, they don't need to add the condition "the weather is 20 or 30 degrees below zero", because they think adding this sentence is equivalent to taking off their pants and farting.

However, as a complete set of theories aimed at universal application and with world trade as its core, it is necessary to add various conditions. Even more, we cannot ignore the issue of "transportation costs" that is completely regarded as something that does not need to be considered in Western Europe.

In Europe, especially small island countries like the United Kingdom, transportation costs seem to be negligible.

But in Dashun... technological advancement, in this era, cannot even offset the advantage of transportation costs.

This is the reason why many, many years ago, when Liu Yu went to the Heilongjiang River to resist the Rakshasa invasion, he saw "dogs eating people and eating people" in the houses of the Songhua River soldiers, but everyone was so short of money that they cried for father and mother. . Before there was a railway that ran through the Songliao watershed, the Songnen Plain was not even qualified to be a commercial grain base.

That is to say, the "per capita grain ownership" in Liu Yu's "two legs" has no practical meaning in Dashun. That's why he had to solve the problem of "these two legs".

In the end, the "unprecedented great migration to the east" route chosen by Liu Yu was, in essence, the route of "food does not have legs, but people do", which is the second of the two legs, rather than "food does not have legs, then people do." Just put legs on it” line.

After all, the latter seems to be the easier way to put legs on goods or to make people run to places with long legs to transport goods more conveniently.

However, whether it is to add legs to goods or to allow long-legged people to gather in coastal shipping areas, for Dashun, it will be a "big change that has not been seen in a thousand years" and will definitely completely reshape Dashun. economic landscape.

It is the process of crushing the "stars" scattered in various provinces and prefectures due to natural tariffs and turning them into a "scorching sun" along the East China Sea coast.

Compared with the abolition of canals and sea reform, this is only a "small reform" that affects the interests of "commerce and transportation" and affects not too many people.

This major change in the linking of goods can really dwarf the continuous uprising from the Gyeonggi Canal to the porters in Yeongnam in the past 20 or 30 years - just millions of water workers, salt workers, boat workers and porters. It's drizzling.

What will be moved this time are handicraft centers with at least 20 million people spread across the country like stars. and about 100 million small farmers and small producer handicrafts in the regional economy centered on the county.

Millions of water workers? Two hundred thousand five-ling porters? Millions, is that a lot?

Have you ever seen a major change involving widespread bankruptcy in rural areas with hundreds of millions of people and a collapse of the small-scale peasant economy?

One million, in Dashun, is a "small" thing that can be suppressed. Million level is really a "little" thing.