I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 198 The Wave of the Times

The big sea ship that Third Brother Wen mentioned arrived as promised. The ship was very large, without any obvious flags or signs, but it was more than enough to carry the people waiting at the dock.

They all boarded the ship smoothly.
Xie Zhongyi and his family also breathed a sigh of relief, only to find that the big ship was almost full.

"You are the last batch," a sailor on the ship said to him.

The sailor's attitude was very good, which made Xie Zhongyi's family feel much more at ease.

The boat slowly left the dock and headed east along the Yangtze River.
The last group of them stayed on the deck for a while, and then a few young people came with pen and paper to register their information.
Soon it was Xie Zhongyi's family's turn. Xie Zhongyi answered the young man's questions truthfully, but there was one question that left Xie Zhongyi stumped.
"Do you have a household registration? Is your name on the official yellow book?" asked the young man.

Xie Zhongyi's heart immediately rose, "Why are you asking this? Can't I go with you if I have a registered permanent residence?"

"It's nothing. We will let you follow us whether you have a registered residence or not. You don't need to be too nervous. We are asking this just to count whether you have a registered residence or not." The young man comforted him quickly.

"I have a household registration!" Xie Zhongyi felt relieved.
The young man asked and left.

Xie Zhongyi found that the boat had sailed into the boundless blue sea and they were getting farther and farther away from the coastline.
He turned his head and saw a red sun rising in the distance, dyeing the place where the sea and the sky met red.
Xie Zhongyi, holding his wife and children, stood by the boat and silently watched the beautiful scenery they had never seen before. In the past, they always lowered their heads and worked silently, and never realized that the sun was so beautiful.
Many people, like them, were also enjoying this scene.
Some cool sea breeze blew on their faces, making them feel refreshed.

Xie Zhongyi was also immersed in this comfortable feeling, and he felt extremely relaxed.
He suddenly thought of something and took out a piece of paper with a red handprint on it from his chest. After taking a look at it, he slowly tore it into pieces. Then he casually threw the pieces away, and the pieces fluttered in the sea breeze like butterflies, and then scattered on the sea.
"Your Highness, this is the report on the Ark project this month." Chen Hong walked into Zhu Houxuan's office and saluted Zhu Houxuan in a standard posture while standing in the office.

"Leave it here!" Zhu Houxuan said without raising his head as he was reviewing documents.

"Yes!" Chen Hong gently put the file bag on the desk and walked out.

Zhu Houxuan quickly reviewed the documents in front of him, stretched, and picked up the file bag on the desk.

I saw the word "Top Secret" printed on the file bag. Turning to the back, I saw a seal on the back. After confirming that the seal was intact, Zhu Houxuan tore open the seal without hesitation, took out the documents inside and began to read them.

After reading for a while, he found a scroll from the bookshelf behind him and spread it on the desk.

The scroll was very long, with many charts drawn on it. Zhu Houxun looked at the document in his hand and filled the data into the corresponding charts one by one. There was a lot of data, and it took him a while to fill in all the data.

After filling it out, he looked at the charts on the scroll, and the data changes of the Ark project over the past two years were clearly displayed in front of him.

The Ark Project was Zhu Houzhao's overseas immigration project, and it was also a project that he attached great importance to. Zhu Houxuan's fingers moved on the charts one by one, and soon found the changes that interested him.

The Ark project initially transported refugees from the war in the north to Taiwan, and the refugees were passive.

After the war subsided, the number of refugees decreased, but the number of people transported to Taiwan by the Ark Plan was still increasing every month. The number of Ming Dynasty citizens who voluntarily signed up to go overseas began to increase, and they gradually became the main force going overseas.

This is partly because of the good publicity overseas, and partly because the impact of Qizhou's industry is increasing in number and size.
Take the Jiangnan prefectures that Zhu Houxun paid the most attention to as an example. In the narrow sense of the Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan mainly referred to eight prefectures and one state in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, namely Suzhou Prefecture, Songjiang Prefecture, Changzhou Prefecture, Zhenjiang Prefecture, Jiangning Prefecture, Taicang Prefecture, Hangzhou Prefecture, Jiaxing Prefecture, and Huzhou Prefecture.

These eight prefectures and one state were the real financial centers of the Ming Dynasty, and are also the core area of ​​the Yangtze River Delta region we are familiar with today.

Now these eight prefectures and one state are the places where the handicraft industry is most developed in the Ming Dynasty. Before the development of Qizhou, they were also the most economically active regions in the Ming Dynasty.

It is now also the area most severely impacted by Qizhou's industry.

There is no other reason, because the core industries of the two are the same, both are steel and textile industries.

The textile industry is fine. Qizhou is limited by raw materials and is in fierce competition with textiles produced in the south of the Yangtze River. This situation is expected to continue for several years.

However, the steel industry has been devastated by Daye Steel Plant. There is no way Qizhou's technological and scale advantages in the steel industry are overwhelming, both in terms of output and quality.

This resulted in various iron smelting workshops in the Jiangnan region losing their market and closing down one after another.

The closure of the ironworks resulted in the release of a large number of strong laborers. Jiangnan was the most densely populated area in the Ming Dynasty, and the labor market was already quite saturated, resulting in many people being unable to find jobs and having to work in agriculture. Therefore, the landlords raised the rent to exploit these strong laborers.
This has led to an increasing number of bankruptcies among the common people in Jiangnan.
According to the normal course of history, these common people will be ruthlessly eliminated.
After all, the rolling wheels of the times always need some people to increase friction.
This was within Zhu Houxuan's expectations, so he was also working hard to avoid this situation.
In fact, this situation also occurred during the Industrial Revolution in the British Empire. Under the oppression of the aristocracy and emerging capitalists, countless British people were forced to leave Britain and go to various parts of the world to establish colonies in order to survive. This also laid the foundation for Britain to become a world empire later.

The scene happening in Ming Dynasty is very similar. The oppression of Ming Dynasty gentry and Qizhou industrial system has made many Ming Dynasty people have no place to stand in Ming Dynasty.
But the difference between Britain and the Ming Dynasty is that Britain is an island country and a maritime country with a natural tradition of sailing.

The Ming Dynasty was a continental country, and its people were still attached to their homeland. Only a few people had the idea and channels to go overseas.

The main content of Zhu Houxuan's Ark Project was to use propaganda to make the people of the Ming Dynasty think about going overseas when they were desperate, and to provide channels for going overseas.

Make up for the missing link of the Ming Dynasty so that more people of the Ming Dynasty will not be swallowed up by the tide of the times.
Although going overseas to explore new things would also lead to various problems and loss of life, it was better than dying in obscurity in the Ming Dynasty.
(End of this chapter)