Chapter 1221 Factors restricting development!
Seeing Ye Mingsheng shaking his head, Song Haibo hesitated for a moment and asked:

"Marshal, do we need to ask Captain Zhao to intervene?"

Ye Mingsheng shook his head and said:

“It’s not the right time yet. Gao Zhenji is not a fool. Since he dares to touch Ma Jingui at this time, he must have his reasons. I really want to see if he can defeat Ma Jingui…”

"Give him ten days and see if he can take down Ma Jingui! If he still can't deal with Ma Jingui after ten days, let Zhao Wentao intervene!"

"Yes!"

"How is the preparation of information on the major businesses in Jiangnan going?"

Facing Ye Mingsheng's question, Song Haibo seemed a little embarrassed. He hesitated for two seconds before organizing his words and said:

"Marshal, we have already collected some basic information, but we have not yet collected their most core account books. Director Wang of the Coordination Office said that if we want to obtain their account books, we may need to use some means!"

Ye Mingsheng fell silent upon hearing this, and then he opened his mouth and ordered:

"There is no need to do this for now. Let Wang Xuecheng use conventional means to collect as much as possible. If he can collect it, that's the best. If he can't, that's fine too. In short, don't use any extreme means!"

"understand!"

Ye Mingsheng has always attached great importance to Jiangnan, the richest region in the Great Zhou Dynasty. When the Fengwu Army only had Liaoyang and Youyan, Ye Mingsheng had already begun to lay out its plans.

These arrangements also helped He Jingyun to attack the city of Lin'an with great force, and finally prompted Lu Jianchao to choose to surrender.

After taking over Jiangnan, although Ye Mingsheng was far away in Yijing, he was in the Attendant's Office and specially arranged several working groups to collect information about Jiangnan.

So even though Ye Mingsheng affirmed Zhu Chen's work during his inspection of Chishan Prefecture a few days ago, Ye Mingsheng was also well aware that Zhu Chen had hit a wall in promoting the development of overseas trade!
Ye Mingsheng knew that Zhu Chen had tried his best in this matter. There were many reasons for restricting the development of overseas trade in Jiangnan and even the entire Da Zhou. However, Ye Mingsheng was still a little disappointed with Zhu Chen’s work results in this matter. However, because of the achievement of rebuilding Chishan Prefecture, Ye Mingsheng did not plan to replace Zhu Chen························
Since Zhu Chen failed, Ye Mingsheng was ready to personally take action on this issue to see how big the resistance was! Ye Mingsheng believed that the first factor that restricted the development of overseas trade was ideology. Da Zhou was a country based on land power. The biggest enemy in history had always come from the grasslands in the north. Therefore, compared with land power, both the temple and the people did not pay enough attention to navigation!
The second is the shipbuilding technology. In the past few decades, the situation in the Great Zhou Dynasty was turbulent, and the court's control over the local areas gradually declined. Local separatist regimes gradually emerged in various places. One of the negative effects brought about by the separatist regimes was that in order to maintain their independence and to compete for world hegemony, various places started an arms race!
As a result, a large amount of manpower and material resources of the Great Zhou were caught up in the arms race among various vassal states. If you train 5,000 more soldiers today, I will train 10,000 more soldiers tomorrow. If you make 1,000 sets of armor, I will make 500 muskets.

And because the Great Zhou was a land-based dynasty, the investments of various vassal states in the arms race were basically focused on land warfare. Only Jiangnan, Huainan, Jingchu and other places invested in the navy, but the overall investment was not much!
The reduction in military investment and the reduction in commercial trade caused by the turbulent times led to stagnation in the technological development of shipbuilding in the Great Zhou Dynasty!

In fact, the Zhou Dynasty still uses the technology of 70 or 80 years ago in shipbuilding, and the total number of shipbuilding craftsmen has also decreased. This has led to the fact that many ships built in Jiangnan can only sail on the Nanjiang River, and it is difficult to cope with stronger winds and waves at sea!

Because the neighboring Dongdao is an island country, they attach great importance to the development of ships, which makes the ships built in Dongdao more durable than those built in Jiangnan····················
For this reason, some Jiangnan merchants even placed orders with the shipyard in Dongdao instead of the shipyard in Jiangnan, and the reduction in orders also created a vicious cycle.

In addition to ideas and technology, the environment is also an important factor restricting the current development of overseas trade in Jiangnan and even Da Zhou!

The environment is divided into internal environment and external environment!
The first is the internal environment. Everyone who knows about the Zhou Dynasty knows about the administration of officials. No matter how rich a businessman is, he is still just a businessman after all!
The taxes on the surface are one set, and the private tributes and bribes at various levels are another set. Therefore, the big businesses in Jiangnan basically have two sets of accounts, one for themselves and one for others!
There are constant struggles within major businesses and even government offices. The conflicts between them are inextricable. If you hold me back, I will set a trap for you. Some even want to harm you even if it does not benefit themselves. We are never able to work together to make the cake bigger!

Due to the limitation of ships in the external environment, much of the overseas trade of the Great Zhou Dynasty used Nanyang as a transit or supply station. Nanyang can be said to be very chaotic. It is not an exaggeration to describe the various forces as one after another.

The problem of pirates is particularly rampant. They are completely different from some pirates in the territory of Da Zhou. Some larger pirate gangs have more than 10,000 people and hundreds of ships, and they occupy the islands and act like kings!

In order to maintain their safety, the merchants in Jiangnan basically paid tolls to the pirates, and some even had deeper dealings with them out of necessity.

In addition to these pirates, some local Tu ethnic kings were not friendly to the merchant ships of the Great Zhou, and regarded them as fat sheep. They were different from pirates. If you paid tolls to the pirates, there was a certain chance that they would let you pass.

But these native tribes are quite hostile. Even if you are willing to pay them a certain amount of bribe, they will still kill your people and steal your goods.

These human factors, coupled with the reasons of timing, lead to great risks in overseas trade. If you are not careful, you may lose both your goods and your people. This has led to major businesses being very cautious in developing overseas trade in order to avoid too much loss, and they are unwilling to increase their investment significantly easily!
There was even more uncertainty because of the ongoing unrest in the South Seas three months ago, when a group of native tribes and a group of pirates went to war over a good port.

Therefore, in order to reduce losses, some businesses in Jiangnan took the initiative to give up some trade orders. This was the last straw that broke the camel's back for Zhu Chen, forcing him to give up promoting the development of overseas trade and shift his work focus to rebuilding Chishan Prefecture!

(End of this chapter)