Chongzhen Wiretapping System

Chapter 759
Seeing Gushi Khan's expression, Emperor Chongzhen knew exactly what he was thinking, so he smiled slightly and said: "The pattern of the world is changing rapidly, and it is useless to stick to the rules. It is better to be prepared than to be unprepared, even in the end. It doesn't matter, doesn't it matter?"

The principle is indeed this principle, and Gush Khan himself is considered a capable monarch, so he naturally understands it, otherwise, it would be impossible to become the Khan King of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Seeing that he agreed, Emperor Chongzhen stopped communicating with him.Although Gushi Khan has the ability, but he shrank in Tibet, you can know that he has no ambition to fight for world hegemony.If you stay in that corner, you will definitely be abandoned by the general trend of the world.Since he is willing to stay, just stay there!

So, the interview was basically over.Emperor Chongzhen invited him to celebrate the New Year in the capital, and at the same time let him know the power of Ming Dynasty. In this way, Tibet will be more secure.

As for Emperor Chongzhen himself, there are still many things to be busy.

Other high-yielding crops have been promoted to a greater extent than before.Especially potatoes, the harvest in the Hetao Plain is very good.This made Emperor Chongzhen very gratified. If there was enough food, it would be of great help to Hong Chengchou in preparing to reorganize the new grassland army.

In terms of finance, the revenue of the state treasury is not much different from last year.

Although the income from glass, steam engines and cement is increasing, since the end of last year, wars have started along the southeast coast, first the battle of Taiwan, then the battle of Annan, and then the battle of Luzon, which seriously affected the Zheng family. income over there.

However, Emperor Chongzhen didn't care too much about it.It is not a long-term solution to collect taxes from maritime merchants through the Zheng family's model of collecting protection fees.Now that it has become a navy, it is even more impossible to use this old model.

The reason why Emperor Chongzhen went to Guangzhou twice was to sort out the taxation model of maritime merchants.

Today, the trading partners of Daming maritime merchants are mainly the new territories occupied by Daming. This is in great demand, and it is currently the place where most maritime merchants go.The second is the surrounding Yi countries, but although there are many Yi countries, their consumption is low, and they mostly exchange for local specialties, which are transported back to China for trade.

The last one is the trade with Frangji.As far as this is concerned, there is no need to go to sea, and only need to conduct transactions in Guangzhou.In the future, after the power of the Ming Navy expands, the maritime merchants of the Ming Dynasty will inevitably go out, and they can go as far as Africa, and they can also go to the Frangipani country for trade.

But for now, the sea is rough and the risks of long-distance trade are too high, so few people are taking risks.However, for this reason, there is a new voice in the south and Jiangnan, which is that if they trade directly with the Folangji people in Guangzhou, it is estimated that the Folangji people will make a lot of money.It would be better for the imperial court to go on an expedition as soon as possible and expand the territory as soon as possible, so that they can also sail away for trade.

Of course, Emperor Chongzhen welcomed these new voices, which would give him more reasons to go to the Middle East.But for the time being, he doesn't plan to overwhelm the seedlings, just let this kind of voice grow naturally.After all, an expedition to the Middle East is not something that can be done casually, and it takes time to prepare.

On the treasury's side, the Nanyang War has subsided and is under Daming's control.The immigration of a large number of Ming people will definitely drive a huge demand.It can be seen from this that the sea trade will explode again next year, and the tax revenue will definitely be restored, even more than before.

In China, glass, needless to say, is a necessity for wealthy people.And with the maturity and diversity of glass technology, new demands are constantly being developed.

Emperor Chongzhen didn't pay much attention to this. As far as glass is concerned, he was more concerned about the production of concave-convex lenses and glass test tubes.

Concave-convex lenses play a very important role in optics; glass test tubes are related to the development of chemistry.This is what he values ​​most.

As for cement, the policy set before has been proven to be effective after a year of practice.

While cement is used to build roads and bridges, part of the cement is used for consumption by wealthy local families to subsidize the cost of infrastructure.

However, there are also problems with this policy.The local Metropolitan Procuratorate uncovered as many as [-] cases of embezzlement and corruption of cement; Dongchang and Jinyiwei uncovered as many as six cement corruption cases involving the local Metropolitan Procuratorate.

Regarding these cases, Emperor Chongzhen was not soft at all. Although he did not peel the skin and fill it with grass like Taizu, the effect was actually similar.Emperor Chongzhen confiscated their family property, made them all paupers, and then punished them to do hard labor, build roads and bridges, and contribute their only value to the great infrastructure of Ming Dynasty. role.

Emperor Chongzhen was not satisfied with this year's infrastructure construction, and decreed that the progress of this infrastructure construction should be increased in the coming year.Use the engineering troops transformed from local health stations as the backbone to assist local labor and speed up the construction of highways across the country.

The expansion of Ming Dynasty is absolutely inseparable from the improvement of basic transportation.There is a big killer to improve transportation, which is the application of steam engines on vehicles and ships.

Therefore, one of the things that Emperor Chongzhen was most concerned about was also this.After dealing with the most important matters, he was accompanied by the prince to inspect the application of the steam engine.

The train samples are already available and the rails are real.After the demonstration, in summary, the power is still a bit insufficient. In other words, the energy conversion rate is a bit low and the speed is slow.

In fact, in the original history, until 1825, the British Stephenson built a steam train, which created the highest speed on land at that time, which was only 24 kilometers per hour.This speed cannot keep up with the speed of electric bicycles of later generations.However, although it is only an extremely slow speed in the eyes of later generations, it also quickly promoted the steam train.

Although Emperor Chongzhen didn't know this, he knew the truth of crossing the river by feeling the stones, not to mention, he has more than 400 years of historical experience.Therefore, he made a decree: to build the railway in a few years, from the capital to Tongzhou, don't be afraid of problems, and work together to solve them; the experience of building the first railway must be summarized in written form, so that it can be promoted throughout the country .

As for the rails, we don’t need wooden rails, let alone iron-clad wood, just use rails.There was no turmoil in the Ming Dynasty, life was stable, with the support of the court, and steel production was not low.

Although it may not be enough to spread the railway tracks in Daming, it is not realistic to promote it like this.

In addition, a very large consumption of steel is the manufacture of weapons and armor.However, the Ming army has already used cotton armor in many cases.For the protection of firearms, cotton armor is not worse than iron armor.

Of course, the most important thing is that Emperor Chongzhen knew that the measure of a country's strength is steel production. How could he not pay attention to steel production in normal times?

Then, there is the application of steam engines on ships, which is more difficult than applying it on cars.However, the difficulty is relative. It is difficult to directly connect the propeller, but it is not difficult to drive the paddle wheel with a steam engine.Paddle-wheel boats have been around since the early years of the Ming Dynasty, and shipwrights knew how to make them.

However, according to the results of previous tests, although this paddle steamer is much better than the previous ones, its shortcomings are also obvious.

First, the structure of a paddle wheel ship is relatively bulky. Especially when encountering wind and waves, part or all of the paddle wheel blades are exposed to the water, making the ship unable to sail stably.Of course, if you sail on an inland river, you will encounter this situation less frequently.Even if there is, it is not a problem.After all, with such big winds and waves, previous ships would also have problems.

The second problem is that the blades of the paddle wheels are easily damaged during use.When the paddle wheel rotates, half of the blades rotate in the air, which not only increases the width of the ship and the resistance during navigation, but also when it docks at the dock, it is easy to collide with the ships on both sides, which not only affects its own safe driving, but also risk of bruising other ships.

The third problem, which is also the most critical, is that if the blades or shafts of the paddle wheel are entangled by entanglements such as aquatic plants, the paddle wheel may lose its rotation, and this problem is fatal.

It is precisely because paddle wheels have so many shortcomings that the paddle wheels that existed in the early Ming Dynasty were not promoted and used.Of course, replacing the original human stepping method with steam power now will allow the steam paddle to see the light of day again, which has the advantage of being used.

In this regard, Emperor Chongzhen did not stop eating because of choking, and immediately issued an order that the steam paddle steamers should continue to be built so that they could be used on the Grand Canal between Beijing and some sections of the Yellow River and Yangtze River.At the same time, try to build a paddle wheel on the sea.

In addition, the test of a steam-driven propeller ship cannot be interrupted. If there are difficulties to overcome, the propeller ship must be built.

For this reason, Emperor Chongzhen also provided a lot of suggestions for their reference. After all, he had the knowledge of future generations, and he was a university graduate. He had learned a lot, knew some principles, and could always talk about it.

After inspecting these, the New Year's Eve will arrive.

Emperor Chongzhen also gave himself a holiday to spend the New Year well.

As for Chongzhen's 21-year plan, he intends to focus on internal affairs and not to expand.At least Nanyang still needs to be stabilized, and Dongwu's shipyard cannot be built so quickly; in the northwest, Hong Chengchou has to be given time to reorganize, and it is impossible to go west immediately.

Of course, this non-expansion is not absolute, for example, Wa country.Emperor Chongzhen knew through the eavesdropping seeds on Hauge that the mission of this "god-level spy" was accomplished very well, and the country of Wa was already in trouble.

That's right, Hauge at this time is experiencing one of the three happy events in his life.

　Thanks to Han Miao for the 500 starting point reward!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)