After Zhu Youzhen complained a few times, he stopped. As for Sarmento's behavior, he is indeed a little helpless now. Although he could punish the Portuguese by restricting trade, Sarmento, although the commander of the Portuguese Sino-Japanese trading fleet, was based in Goa.

Historically, the Portuguese trading fleet had been smuggling in the most part of its way of buying goods from China. So Samento was not at all worried about the Chinese emperor ordering a ban on trade with his fleet, so he had always been one of the objects of the official ban on trade in China.

He did not feel at all that China's maritime ban policy had much impact on his current trading activities, and he hoped to establish friendly relations with the Chinese emperor in order to allow his fleet to penetrate deep into the Chinese mainland to conduct legitimate trade, thus bypassing the exploitation of the middlemen in Macao.

But after lengthy negotiations, it became clear that the Chinese emperor was not interested in unilaterally granting the Portuguese freedom of entry and exit to the Chinese mainland, and only allowed them to trade at various trading ports.

China's new policy of developing trade ports is naturally much more relaxed for European businessmen such as Sarmento than the previous maritime ban policy, and they are also very optimistic about the future prospects of their trade with China.

But compared to the colonial benefits that the Portuguese had gained in India, the new trade policies issued by the Chinese emperor did not seem so satisfactory.

For his part, Sarmento had hoped to meet the conditions offered by the Chinese emperor in exchange for a few islands off the coast near the richest region of southern China, and to establish the Portuguese kingdom in New Goa in China.

The Portuguese had been in contact with China for so long, and through the actions of the missionaries, they had already gained a general understanding of the eastern coastal areas of China.

The city of Guangzhou, which was already very rich in their eyes, was just a new and vulgar city in China. In the eyes of the Chinese, only the Jiangnan region, located on the southeast coast, is the most prosperous place in China.

Missionaries who have been to Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other cities in the south of the Yangtze River have written letters to the Holy See to prove this. Some missionaries were so shocked that they even praised these Chinese towns and the Chinese living in them in their letters, "... Compared with the lives of these Chinese, we are more like a bunch of barbarians. ”

So although the Portuguese had established Macau on Chinese soil, they were not satisfied, and they still wanted to go north along the coastline and colonize the richer coastal provinces of China, making greater profits, just as they had done on the east and west coasts of the Indian mainland.

However, the emissaries who negotiated with them on behalf of the Emperor of China did not bother to talk to them about the lease of land, but only about pure trade activities.

This greatly reduced Sarmento's interest, and if it were just normal trade negotiations, he would naturally be reluctant to take such a big risk, and he would prefer to push these risks on the head of the Chinese emperor.

For Zhu Youzhen, the establishment of a regular flight from China to India is not about the commercial benefits it brings at the moment, but about cultivating sailors and captains who can sail long distances through this route, and he also has some other ideas.

After being silent for a long time, Zhu Youzhen looked up at Lu Qi and said, "One ship is not enough, there must be two." However, one can be delivered now, but the other can be made to order in Goa for delivery during the next trade monsoon.

As for the split of shares in this scheduled flight, it can be as they intended, they have 50% and we have 50%. I can also agree with their additional suggestion that after 5 years, if the route is not operating well, I will buy their shares at the original price. ”

When Lu Qi heard this, he finally couldn't help but interject and said, "In this case, wouldn't these people be sure to make a profit or lose money?" Isn't it too preferential to these merchants? ”

After Zhu Youzhen stretched out his hand and rubbed the corners of his eyes, he lifted his spirits and said: "I'm not afraid to let them take advantage, as long as our own sailors and captains can be trained, they are just taking advantage of some small profits now."

After negotiating with them, you select some of the more clever men from the survey office and procure a consignment of goods to go to Goa on their ship in the name of the Four Seas Merchant House.

The waters north of Malacca, we still have some records, but once we entered the Indian Ocean, few people have been there. This time I sent someone to India in the name of a merchant, hoping to do two things: first, to see if I could recruit some shipwrights from Goa;

The second is to investigate the customs and customs between Malacca and Goa, and collect some geographical and property information, especially to understand what the situation is on the Indian continent now, how many countries or forces, and what places those Europeans occupy.

Of course, it would be better to recruit some people who excelled in the local language, and I hope to compile a dictionary of the languages of mainland India. This will be of great benefit to our Ming merchants going to the Indian mainland to do business in the future. ”

Lu Qi agreed, and then asked Chongzhen for instructions: "Your Majesty, in the trade negotiations with Sammento, the other party hopes to sign a long-term trade agreement with us.

The other party believes that although the cotton and saltpeter and other things that we need in the Ming Dynasty are cheap, once they start to buy, they will form a large amount of hoarding. And according to the current navigation technology, the goods shipped out of this trade season must be the goods hoarded in the previous trade season.

Therefore, they hope that the quantity and price of the goods we have signed with them should be negotiated every three years. One year before the expiration of the contract, negotiations begin on the trade content for the next contract period. ”

Zhu Youzhen did not feel that there was anything wrong with Sarmento's request, because the goods that the Portuguese had previously traded in the ocean were high-value gold and silver nuggets, clocks, woolen wool, cotton cloth and other handicraft products.

It is also the first time that they have transported raw materials such as cotton, saltpeter, and jute from mainland India to China as bulk commodities.

Because the prices of these raw materials do not vary greatly between the two places, if there is a slight fluctuation, the trafficking merchants will lose money. Coupled with the fact that sea voyages are risky after all, and at the risk of the same, the fleet will naturally choose high-value goods for trafficking.

However, this is no longer the time when the great voyages have just begun, and in addition to sailing across the oceans, the voyages from mainland India to China are already very familiar to the fleet, and the risks have been reduced to a fairly low level.

For the voyage from mainland India to China, the natural climate and geography and hydrology are no longer the greatest threat to ships, but the pirates that infest this route are the greatest threat to them.

What constrained Portuguese merchant ships from expanding their trade from mainland India to China was that there were too few high-value goods produced on the Indian continent and too many high-value goods produced by China that they could not afford to buy Chinese goods, not that the Chinese goods market in mainland India and Europe was saturated.

In addition, the spices that Europeans are eager for are not so wildly sought after in China, after all, China's vast territory and the food customs of various places are very different, and spices can only be used as a concoction, not as a necessity of life like Europeans.

In this era, silk, porcelain, and lacquerware from China were regarded as treasures outside of China, and tea from China became popular all over the world with the spread of these merchants.

But a self-sufficient society in which so many precious goods were produced, and who demanded almost nothing from the outside world except gold and silver, was so hated by the European colonizers who came across the oceans.

But China is not the barbarian people that European colonizers encountered elsewhere, and they tried to open China's trade doors by force, but they all failed one by one. Therefore, they had to exchange the wealth they had plundered from the Americas and the Indian continent for goods produced in China.

But this wealth was not only needed by China, but also by the monarchs and nobles of Europe. Therefore, the scale of trade between China and Europe, because of the shortage of precious metals, can only be limited to the current scale.

Now the Chinese emperor wanted to exchange the cheap and abundant raw materials such as cotton and linen produced on the Indian continent as precious metals for Chinese goods, which was naturally an excellent proposal.

The only thing Samento feared now was that the Chinese emperor would stop the loss-making trade after one or two trips to the cheap raw materials, which would be a big loss for him.

"Renegotiating the contract every three years is acceptable. However, I think that the quantity and price of cotton and saltpeter can be determined, but the quantity is not limited, but the delivery port of these goods must be specified.

This year, due to the overflow of the sea in the Hangjiahu area, the people were more seriously affected. Although the imperial court exempted these places from taxes, it also needed to provide some relief measures so that the economic production in these areas could recover as soon as possible.

The Hangjiahu area has always been a famous mulberry cotton planting area, and almost every family will spin and weave cloth. Although many cotton textile mills were opened in the capital, the efficiency of weaving was too low, and the weaving technology was far inferior to that of the south.

I thought that it would be better to transport cotton yarn from the north to the south, and then set up weaving factories in Hangzhou, Huzhou and other places, so as to solve the problem of weaving efficiency in Beijing, and secondly, to help the victims in Zhejiang. Tell Xu what I mean, and let him see how to do this.

In this way, if the Portuguese do bring the cotton next year, it will be delivered directly in Shanghai or Zhoushan. Come to think of it, with Jiangnan's textile manpower, even more cotton is enough to digest..."

Zhu Youzhen explained to Lu Qi about the trade negotiations with the Portuguese. Huang Liji and several cronies are also discussing the political affairs at hand.

When these political matters were discussed, these cronies all got up and said goodbye, but Zhang Ruitu was the only one who stayed.

Huang Liji rubbed his cheeks with his hand to sober himself up, but suddenly saw Zhang Ruitu who had not yet left, he not only asked in surprise: "Chief, do you still have something to say?" ”

Zhang Ruitu, who was originally a little hesitant, calmed down after hearing Huang Liji's question, and arched his hand at him and said, "My brother Fan, my brother doesn't know whether to say a word or not. ”