Chapter 343 Fifty years later

Time flies, and fifty years have passed in the blink of an eye, and time has arrived at the 333rd year of the Ming calendar.

In the ninth year of Longwu, Wang Pu proposed that the new chronological law was officially passed with the approval of the cabinet. The new chronological law took the first year of Hongwu (1368) as the first year of the Ming Dynasty. To this day, the Ming Dynasty has gone through a full 333 years, and more than fifty years have passed since the revival of Longwu.

A group of old ministers in the revival of the past, such as Sun Chuanting, Qian Qianyi, Lu Daqi, Qu Shisi, He Tengjiao, etc., have long been gone. The young handsome men of the past, such as Wang Pu, Li Dingguo, etc., are already old and are about to go, but the younger generations such as Sun Chengzu, Wang Fa, and Li Dingxi have already taken over the power from their fathers.

At this time, the Ming Empire had established a very complete constitutional monarchy system in politics.

The emerging bourgeoisie led by the four major families has completely seized the power of the empire. The so-called four major families refer to the Wang family, Sun family, Zhu family and Chen family.

Among them, the most powerful one is the Wang family. The current head of the Wang family is Wang Fa and Wang Pu's eldest son.

The Wang family controlled more than 90% of the banking industry and more than 80% of the military industry, almost monopolized the empire's finance and arms industry. In addition, in Australia and North America, there are also large ranches, and several large gold mines in South Africa and Chile. Even Wang Fa did not know how much wealth the Wang family had.

The Sun family is a wealthy family whose power is second only to the Wang family. The current head of the family Sun Xu is the eldest son of Sun Chengzu. Although he is nominally the great-grandson of Sun Chuanting, he is actually Wang Pu's legitimate grandson. So in terms of bloodline, the Sun family and the Wang family are actually family and do not distinguish between each other at all.

Although the wealth of the Sun family cannot be compared with that of the Wang family, it completely monopolized the empire's shipbuilding and steel industry.

In addition to the Wang family and the Sun family, then the Zhu family. The origin of this Zhu family is a bit special. Speaking of which, the Zhu family is a royal relative of the royal family, but not the bloodline of Emperor Taizu.

This matter has to be said from the beginning. Emperor Chongzhen had four children, Emperor Longwu, King Yong, Princess Ding, and Princess Changping. Among them, Emperor Longwu had no fertility and King Ding died suddenly when he was young. King Yong accepted many concubines, but the ones who gave birth to ten consecutive babies were daughters! Emperor Longwu had no choice but to follow the cabinet's proposal and adopted the eldest son born to Princess Changping and Wang Pu to his knees, renamed Zhu Hekan and planned to be the crown prince.

It happened that King Yong gave birth to twin sons at this time. Emperor Longwu immediately changed his mind and adopted one of King Yong's sons to himself, named Zhu Hezai and made him the crown prince. This is the current Emperor Wanli! In the end, although Wang Pu's son Zhu Hekan did not treat him as the emperor, he became the prince and set up a new branch. This is the origin of the Zhu family.

The origins of the Chen family are similar.

Just the year when Wang Pu returned from his expedition to Japan, in the seventh year of Longwu (1650), his beloved wife Chen Yuanyuan died of dysfunction when she gave birth to her third child. Wang Pu was in pain and asked Chen Yuanyuan to change her third son, Chen Yuanyuan, to set up a new family to inherit the incense of the Chen family, and to mourn his deceased wife with this.

Therefore, fundamentally speaking, the four major families of Wang, Sun, Zhu and Chen are all descendants of Wang Pu. The heads of the four major families are either brothers or uncles and nephews. Basically, they are actually family members, but their surnames are different. The industries inherited by the four major families are also divided from Wang Pu's huge industry.

In terms of economy, with the influx of Japanese workers, Indian workers, South Asian workers and African black slaves, the economy of the Ming Empire ushered in unprecedented leapfrog development. In just less than fifty years, the process of the industrial revolution was completed, and from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization.

The spider-web-like railway extends from the distant Indochina Peninsula to the cold Siberia, from the coastal Songshan to the desolate Gobi Desert, with towering chimneys everywhere, the roar of machines everywhere, busy construction sites everywhere, the train station is crowded with fruits everywhere, newspaper hawking, and children shining leather shoes shuttle through the crowd...

On the spacious streets, there are huge trams and charcoal-burning cars coming and going.

The Ming Empire has established a silver standard trading system worldwide. Almost all trade is settled using Mingyuan issued by the Central Bank of the Ming Empire. One Mingyuan is equivalent to one or two silver strips. Western powers such as England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands are gradually becoming vassals of the Ming Empire from an economic perspective.

By the 333rd year of the Ming Dynasty (1700), the total GDP of the Ming Empire was almost the total GDP of the world at that time. At that time, the total GDP of the European powers was even less than one-twentieth of the total GDP of the Ming Empire. Almost all industrial and commercial products were produced by the Ming Empire.

Indigenous people in Australia, Latin America, North America, and Africa can only provide cheap labor or produce cheap resource products.

The situation in Europe is relatively better, because the Ming Empire realized the industrial revolution ahead of schedule, and the European industrial revolution also followed suit, but in the process it still fell behind the Ming Empire. In terms of production efficiency and labor costs, European factories could not compete with the Ming factories at all.

In recent years, Europe has been experiencing a great repercussion, and a large number of factories have gone bankrupt, which further exacerbated the process of European powers becoming economic vassals of the Ming Empire. According to the research of the domestic cabinet think tank of the Ming Empire, at most five years, the Ming Empire will be able to completely control the lifeline of Europe economically.

In terms of military, the Ming Empire's external expansion has almost reached its limit.

The world is full of colonies of the Ming Empire. In the cold Siberia, cowboys from northern provinces are trying to cross the Ural Mountains to invade the Northern European plains. In North America, armed colonists of the Ming Empire are competing with the British for the Mississippi River Basin. In South America, the Ming Empire has already grabbed the entire Amazon basin from the Spanish.

There is also Australia, which has become a colony of the Ming Empire for more than 30 years. The indigenous people who originally lived on this continent have long been extinct. There are now about 7 million Han people living on the Australian continent.

The South Asian subcontinent has also become a colony of the Ming Empire.

The Indians who originally lived on this land suffered devastating plunder and massacre. Like the Japanese, a large number of adult Indian men were castrated and sold to the Ming Empire as laborers, and a large number of Indian women were also sold to the empire and became wives and concubines of Han people, making indelible contributions to the explosive growth of the Han nationality population.

Later generations once a historian said this when he mentioned this history: the industrial civilization of the Ming Empire was completely made up of the bones, blood and sweat of Japanese slaves, Indian slaves and African black slaves.

In addition, the Ming Empire also built solid military fortresses in Temasek and Cape of Good Hope, built the Suez Canal and Panama Canal overseas, and sent the most elite central army to garrison, thus completely controlling the lifeline of world trade. Merchant ships from European countries had to pay higher tolls.

The Central Army of the Ming Empire has been expanded to 500,000, of which 300,000 are stationed in Nanjing and Dayingli in Beijing, and the other 200,000 are stationed in northern provinces, eastern provinces, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and colonies such as Australia, Latin America, North America, Middle East, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa.

In terms of the naval force, the Ming Empire already had two ocean fleets, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Among them, the Pacific Fleet Command was located in Hawaii and was under seven squadrons, with more than 200 ironclad ships of large and large ironclad ships. The Atlantic Fleet Command was located in New Nanjing (New York), with four squadrons, with more than 50 ironclad ships of large and small.

From a global perspective, Africa is still in the ignorant and backward primitive tribal era. The glory of the Indians in South Asia has become history. Only England, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal in Europe can barely compete with the Ming Empire in military terms. This is because the Ming Empire is far apart from Europe.

If it weren't for the distance between them, with the strong strength of the Ming Central Army, the entire Europe would have long been wiped out.

However, even if it is separated by several oceans and even by thousands of miles of passers-by, the European problem will be faced and solved sooner or later by the Ming Empire, because economic control is not enough to make Europe surrender. To make European countries obliterate in the long river of history like Japan and India, there are still many things to be done.

Finally, we need to focus on the development of the Ming Empire in the humanities field over the past 50 years. This is what Wang Pu values ​​the most. Martial arts can conquer the world but cannot rule the world. In the end, what we dominate the world depends on the soft power of culture rather than the hard power of military.

In terms of population, over the past fifty years, Wang Pu or the domestic cabinet of the Ming Empire has been a colonial strategy that has increased and decreased. On the one hand, it has plundered the population of the colonies. After men castrated themselves, they became workers and women sold them to Han people in China, promoting the growth of the population of Han people's blood, and then in turn exported the Han population to the colonies!

Encouraged by this national policy, over the past fifty years, the non-Han population in the empire and its colonies has decreased dramatically. For example, the Japanese are basically no longer found. For example, the indigenous people in Southeast Asia were extinct twenty years ago, and the Indians, when they were just conquered by the Ming Dynasty, there were more than 80 million people in India, but now there are less than 3 million indigenous people left in India.

In contrast, the Ming Empire had a population of only 150 million 50 years ago, but fifty years later, the population of the Ming Empire increased explosively to more than 960 million! Moreover, these more than 960 million people were all Han people, all of them were the people of the Han people, and there was no non-Han population.

What does this mean with a population of 960 million?

You should know that the total population in the world was only more than one billion at that time. In other words, the population of non-Han people was only less than 100 million, of which Europe had a population of about 50 million, Africa had a population of about 30 million, and the other more than 10 million were distributed on the other continents!

There is no doubt that the improvement of productivity and the official policy of encouraging births in the Ming Dynasty played a decisive role in population growth, but it is undeniable that non-Han women, such as Japanese women, indigenous women in Southeast Asia, Indian women, indigenous women in Australia, indigenous women in Indian women, etc. have made great contributions to the explosive growth of the Han population.

Culturally, the Ming Empire also pursued a cruel policy of extinction.

Once it becomes a colony of the Ming Empire, all documents other than Chinese characters will be banned, and all languages ​​other than Chinese will be forcibly banned by the government. In fact, this policy is a bit redundant because cultural extinction is less important in the face of the cruel genocide policy.

If a race is extinct, then their language, culture, customs, etc. will lose their foundation for survival.

The Han people replaced them to occupy the colonies. Since they were of course speaking Chinese and writing Chinese characters, who would pass on those blunt and difficult foreign characters and languages?

Of course, archaeologists and historians have the exception. Their profession is to discover these languages, words and once glorious ancient civilizations that have disappeared from the long river of history.

In short, after fifty years of great development, by the 333rd year of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Empire had become the absolute superpower in the world at that time. The so-called Western powers stood in front of the Ming Empire, as small as ants standing in front of the elephant. If it weren't for the long journey and the difficulty of military delivery and logistics supply, the Ming Empire would have wiped out Europe in minutes.

If the development continues at this speed, the Ming Empire will only become stronger, while the European countries will only become weaker. At most ten years, the Ming Empire will be able to wipe out Europe without any effort. However, some people can't wait. This person is Wang Pu!

Wang Pu is already in his eighties. He doesn't know when he will close his eyes, so he must sweep Europe in his lifetime and solve the last "European white people" in his heart. As long as the "European white people" are solved, the Ming Empire will no longer have enemies, and the Han people will no longer have any major threats.

From then on, there will be only one nation in the world, that is, the Han people. From then on, even if the Ming Empire will inevitably decline and divide, it will be just a dispute between the same nation and the same culture. It is like a fight between two brothers. He, a father, can't take care of so many things and doesn't want to care about it anymore.

Nanjing, Qinyuan.

Wang Pu was lying on the rocking chair, listening to his great-grandson Wang Siyi reading the newspaper to him. The old man is 89 years old this year and has lost all his teeth. However, he has a clear ear and eye, and a good appetite. At least he doesn't look like he is about to abandon his life. He has at least several years of life.

"Great Grandpa." Wang Siyi held the newspaper and recited in a tender childish voice, "This newspaper said that the two houses of Congress are about to officially pass a resolution to instruct the Ministry of Railways to build a railway across Siberia, extending from Beijing to Qucheng on the western foot of the Ural Mountains."

"Is Qu Cheng?"
Chapter completed!