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

Chapter 229 Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce
The first Daming Merchants Conference was successfully held at the Royal Theatre. Zhu Houxuan delivered an opening speech on the stage of the Royal Theatre. In his speech, he emphasized the concept of fair trade of Daming Royal Group.
It also introduced the various products and cooperation mechanisms of the Ming Royal Group and announced the establishment of the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce.

The businessmen present at the meeting listened carefully to Zhu Houxuan's speech. Although he was so young, he was already the most important person in the Ming Dynasty's business community.

Zhu Houxuan's friendly and pragmatic demeanor left a good impression on the businessmen, and the technical capabilities behind the Royal Theater shocked them greatly.

First, when Zhu Houxuan was speaking, everyone present could hear it clearly, which was regarded as magic by many people.

Then there is the architectural technical capabilities and design innovation demonstrated by the huge span of the theater's dome.

Finally, there is the construction cost and speed of the theater.

These alone have aroused the interest of many businessmen.

The Merchants' Conference is not just a meeting, it includes many agendas, which introduce in detail the advantageous products of the Ming Royal Group and a series of cooperation mechanisms with the Ming Royal Group.

In fact, to put it bluntly, this is a product exhibition of the Ming Royal Group.

Various departments of the Ming Royal Group brought out all of their respective products in the hope of reaching cooperation with the participating merchants.

However, what attracts the most attention is not the product, but the membership qualification of the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce.

If you meet certain conditions, you can become a member of the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce. After becoming a member, you will receive a flag and token issued by the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce.

In fact, the Ming Royal Group provides a protection umbrella to businessmen from all over the country, which is a bit like the nuclear umbrella provided by nuclear-weapon countries to non-nuclear countries in later generations.

Because the status of merchants in the Ming Dynasty was relatively low and the business environment in the Ming Dynasty was too poor, if one wanted to do business normally, one had to rely on various powers. Since one had to rely on various powers, it would be better to rely on the imperial power.

The protection umbrella provided by the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce is not very strong. It can only prevent merchants from being harassed by local officials, give them a chance to speak up when faced with harassment from local powerful people, and give them the confidence to say no when faced with tax cards set up privately by some local officials.

In fact, this was Zhu Houxun's intention to improve the business environment of the Ming Dynasty, but he had no choice but to do so.

Normally, the government would formulate corresponding laws to improve the business environment. However, it is difficult for Zhu Houxuan to promote the establishment of relevant laws now. Even if he promotes the establishment of relevant laws, there will be problems in the implementation level. Therefore, he uses this roundabout way to achieve this goal.

The threshold for becoming a member of the Ming Royal Chamber of Commerce is set quite high. If it is set too low, too many people will come in, and the protection of the umbrella will be diluted, and it will also cause a counterattack from local forces. With the current strength of the Ming Royal Group, it cannot withstand these counterattacks, so Zhu Houxuan can only allow some outstanding businessmen to join first.

However, as the strength of the Ming Royal Group increases, this threshold will gradually be lowered.

After becoming a member, there are no additional obligations except paying a small annual membership fee. There are only requirements for the behavior of merchants, such as not using this membership to force purchases and sales, hoarding, bullying and other bad behaviors. Once discovered, the qualification will be directly revoked. You have to do what you are in your position. Zhu Houxuan believes that this is something he must do in his current position. Improving the business environment is beneficial to the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, this also indirectly expanded the strength and sphere of influence of the Ming Royal Group. Although the Ming Royal Group controlled a huge amount of capital, it was still relatively weak compared with the commercial capital of the entire Ming Dynasty. Zhu Houxuan wanted to use his identity advantage to mobilize the commercial resources of the Ming Dynasty to the greatest extent and invest in this industrial revolution.

The Ming Royal Group cannot monopolize all industries in the Ming Dynasty, nor does it need to monopolize all industries in the Ming Dynasty. It only needs to monopolize the core industries. Other industries can be left to other businessmen to operate and become a powerful supplement to the Ming Royal Bank.

Non-core industries such as cement, textiles, fisheries, transportation, food, etc. can be handed over.

During this process, Zhu Houxuan will also carry out the first round of technology diffusion in Ming Dynasty to improve the overall productivity of Ming Dynasty.

Those who benefit from this series of processes will also become potential supporters of the Ming Royal Group.

Another issue that interested the businessmen attending the conference was railway investment promotion.

Most of the people who came to the meeting did not know about railways before, but after they came to Beijing, they all experienced railways up close. Although the railways are still running on Marxism-Leninism, the efficiency and cost of this new mode of transportation still left a deep impression on everyone.

If there is any group in the Ming Dynasty that has the highest expectations for convenient transportation, it must be the merchant group.

In the relevant agenda of railway investment promotion, the staff of the Ministry of Railways brought out the cost and operating profitability of the Beijing-Tianjin Railway. The newly built Beijing-Tianjin Railway is very busy, and the Ministry of Railways has decided to build a double track. For this purpose, it has also acquired several horse caravans to provide sufficient horsepower for the Beijing-Tianjin Railway.

In order to impress interested businessmen, they even drove the experimental steam locomotive to the Chongwenmen Railway Station to demonstrate the broad prospects of this new mode of transportation.

It is not known whether this move impressed the merchants, but the steam monster scared the people of the capital so much that it alarmed the Five Military Commandery and sent out emergency troops. Even the officials of the capital came out to see the wonder.

This was tacitly agreed by Zhu Houxuan. He also felt that there was no need to keep the steam locomotive secret since no one could build one in that era anyway.

The specific cooperation mode of railway investment attraction is: Daming Royal Group provides technology and is responsible for construction and maintenance. The cooperating merchants are responsible for investment, participate in management and operation according to the amount of investment, and enjoy the right to dividends.

Railways are something that has low cost for businessmen to understand, and they are also very interested in this form of cooperation. No businessman can refuse such a mode of transportation that is many times more efficient than previous methods.

Because the traffic conditions in the Ming Dynasty were so poor, horse-drawn carriages were common only in the plains. The main means of land transportation at that time were still camel caravans and horse caravans, and the transportation efficiency was very low.

However, this is not the point that businessmen are most interested in. What businessmen are most interested in is that the railway built in cooperation still nominally belongs to the Daming Royal Group, and no one dares to set up tax checkpoints privately on the railway belonging to the Daming Royal Group!

(End of this chapter)