Traveling through history leaving a name

Chapter 396 Twenty-five million taels of silver
After learning that as long as you buy the flag and documents of the Royal Fleet, you can avoid being robbed by pirates, more and more people buy flags.

An ocean-going merchant ship can earn at least tens of thousands of taels of silver a year.

Even if he only makes two trips a year, he still has a profit of 3 to 3000 taels of silver. Compared with this, the protection fee of [-] taels is nothing.

Along the entire coast of the Ming Dynasty, there were too many merchant ships going abroad, at least three to four thousand.

With such a large base, as long as some ships buy flags, this is a lot of income.

"How many of our flags have been sold?"

At the Royal Fleet headquarters in Fuzhou, Yan Siqi asked his subordinates.

"Sir, in just three months, we have sold more than 2000 flags and earned almost 600 million taels of silver." His subordinates reported to Yan Siqi.

"Give me an order to let the pirates intensify their patrols on the route. As long as there is no flag, they will be snatched up, and those who resist will be sunk." Yan Siqi ordered to his subordinates.

Next, more than 600 million taels of silver were divided into several batches and transported to the capital.

When Emperor Wanli heard that he had made more than 600 million taels of silver just by selling the flags, he was overjoyed.

Moreover, this is only one year's income, and it is exciting to think about the fact that he can earn at least this much every year.

In fact, if Daming Maritime Merchant is willing to pay taxes obediently, Zhang Qingfeng actually doesn't want to use the set of protection fees.

Just because the coast is too long and most of them are smugglers, it is impossible for the Royal Fleet to see them.

Instead of catching smugglers, it is better to arrange some pirates to rob on the waterway to collect protection fees.

Although the sea is vast, there are only a few waterways. If you deviate from the waterway, you will face unpredictable dangers.

With the existence of waterways, there is a living space for pirates.

If ships could run anywhere in the sea, the pirates would have been out of work long ago.

Although smuggling along the coast was rampant, after the Royal Fleet took over the customs, it still severely cracked down on smuggling ships, which also increased the revenue of the customs several times, reaching the level of annual tax collection of 200 million taels.

However, the Royal Fleet is primarily concerned with overseas trade.

From the Ming Dynasty to North Korea, to Japan, Ryukyu, Nanyang, India and other places, there are merchant ships of the royal firm running, and there are almost more than 200 ships.

These merchant ships can bring more than 800 million taels of income to the Royal Commercial Bank every year.

If the protection fee of 600 million taels of silver is added, Haimao can earn more than 400 million taels of money for Emperor Wanli a year.

If you add the money earned from other industries, such as banking, manufacturing, textiles, etc., Zhang Qingfeng earned more than 500 million taels of silver for Emperor Wanli a year.

Although he has so much money every year, Emperor Wanli is still so stingy, and it is still very difficult for court ministers to get money from Emperor Wanli's internal funds, which makes Zhang Qingfeng very speechless.

Fortunately, no matter where a natural disaster occurred, Zhang Qingfeng would persuade Emperor Wanli to spend some money to immigrate, which could be regarded as alleviating the instability of Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Wanli had so much money, Zhang Qingfeng naturally wouldn't watch the money go moldy in the warehouse.

He once again increased his investment in shipbuilding.

After the 600 million taels of silver were transported to the capital, he directly invested in the construction of twenty shipyards.

With such a large territory and such a large population of Ming Dynasty, there are only three to four thousand merchant ships, which is obviously not in line with the status of Ming Dynasty.

You know, in Europe, the Netherlands alone has hundreds of shipyards and more than 6000 merchant ships, four or five times the number of merchant ships owned by Ming Dynasty.

In Zhang Qingfeng's vision, at least within the next ten years, the number of merchant ships owned by Ming Dynasty will catch up to half of that of the Netherlands, reaching more than 8000 ships.

Such a large amount cannot be completed by the twenty shipyards invested by Zhang Qingfeng alone, so he also needs to invest in other shipyards and businessmen.

Zhang Qingfeng planned to trick the powerful people of the Ming Dynasty into participating in maritime trade, as well as the big merchants and landowners in the interior, and let them invest all their excess money in maritime trade, so that maritime trade could develop.

If the Ming Dynasty's merchant fleet was to be doubled within ten years, there would still be too few talents.

Therefore, Zhang Qingfeng ordered his men to open a polytechnic university in more than a dozen cities including Tianjin, Jinan, Yangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou, preparing to recruit 20 students at once.

It is not difficult for Zhang Qingfeng to directly recruit teachers from these schools from Daming University of Technology.

In addition to cultivating talents, Zhang Qingfeng's industrial promotion plan is also in full swing.

After hearing that Zhang Qingfeng was willing to release most of the technologies of the Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, many people cooperated with the Machine Manufacturing Bureau and set up various factories in many big cities.

In Nanjing, Zhang Qingfeng cooperated with Daming Cao Guogong to open a steam engine manufacturing factory.

With the rise of industry and commerce in various parts of the Ming Dynasty, the demand for steam engines is also increasing. A steam engine factory in the capital is obviously unable to meet the national demand for steam engines.

Moreover, it is too troublesome to transport machines from the capital to the south.

So Zhang Qingfeng simply set up factories elsewhere to meet demand.

In addition to steam engines, this is true for many other things, such as machine tools, agricultural machinery, mining machines, etc. These are things that are in great demand across the country, so setting up local factories can also provide better supply.

In addition to industry, agriculture is also developing rapidly.

Last year, Zhang Qingfeng planted all Huangzhuang in Shuntian Prefecture with crops such as potatoes, corn and sweet potatoes, and cultivated a large number of crop seeds.

Later, under the administrative intervention of the imperial court, these crops began to be promoted in Shuntian Prefecture and many natural disaster-prone areas in the north this year.

At present, the promotion of these crops is very smooth, because no one can refuse crops that have been proven to produce more than [-] kilograms per mu.

Moreover, these crops can also make delicious food.

As the imperial court actively promotes these crops, it is believed that within a few years, these crops will become one of the staple foods in the north, and the people will no longer be afraid of disasters and starvation.

However, the spread of high-yielding crops will also bring about a drawback, which is the explosion of population.

After the Qing Dynasty popularized these high-yield crops, the population suddenly increased from tens of millions to more than 3 million.

For population explosion, if it is handled well, it can enhance national power.

And if it is not handled well, it is a sign of the country's subjugation.

Zhang Qingfeng knew that there would be continuous natural disasters in Ming Dynasty in the next few decades, so he has been constantly encouraging immigrants over the years.

In the past few years, the number of people who immigrated from the mainland to Taiwan alone has exceeded one million.

Emperor Wanli was also willing to spend money on the people who immigrated to Taiwan, because this was the territory of his favorite son Zhu Changxun.

The royal firm made so much money.In addition to investing in industry and navigation, Zhang Qingfeng invests more in mining.

In recent years, he has built steelmaking plants in Kaifeng, Nanjing, Wuhan, Taiyuan, Chongqing and other places.

Along with these steelmaking plants, there are also investments in various industrial equipment manufacturing plants.

(End of this chapter)