Unlike the merchant delegates at the merchants' congress, most of the maritime representatives of the Maritime Merchants Association were very keen to hold a conference in the capital to coordinate overseas trade.

Even though they had missed the meeting, the maritime representatives still rushed to the capital after the year. Some maritime businessmen from Guangdong and Zhejiang, who did not participate in the association last year, also sent representatives to Beijing to ask to participate in the association's discussions after heated discussions.

These maritime merchants are different from Zheng Zhilong, Liu Xiang and other maritime merchants who work part-time as pirates, or pirates who work part-time as maritime merchants, they are all businessmen who have a family business in the local area and go to sea just to do business.

They are different from maritime merchants such as Zheng Zhilong and Liu Xiang, who cannot survive without the ocean. It is also different from those gentry and wealthy families who want to monopolize the entire overseas trade, and completely regard overseas trade as their own cornucopia.

For these merchants, they hoped that there would be a more stable order at sea, that the taxes collected by the imperial court would not be too heavy, and that they would be able to trade freely and safely.

Maritime trade was originally an industry with a relatively high concentration of capital, although in Chongzhen's view, a ship of one or two hundred tons was only 3-5,000 taels of silver, which was really cheap.

For these small and medium-sized businessmen, a ship that can go to sea, a full load of goods, and hired shipwrights is already equivalent to the entire assets of a dozen or so families.

Although the profits of overseas trade are amazing, the cost of the ship can be recovered by one or two voyages, and the profit won by each subsequent voyage is net profit.

But in this era, every time you go to sea, it's no different from gambling on your life. Starting from the southeast coastal port, to the most familiar channel for the boatmen, that is, Japan, Manila, Hoi An, 10 ships go out, and there are always 2-3 ships that cannot come back. 100% profit means 100% risk.

And as the distance of the route increases, the risk to the vessel increases exponentially. Especially in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, whether it is * pirates or European adventurers, they know that the Chinese ships are the weakest in force, but the goods on their ships are the most valuable.

Chinese goods on Chinese merchant ships are the best-selling goods everywhere, whether they are shipped back to Europe or sold locally. Even if they robbed a Chinese merchant ship that had already sold out of goods, these Chinese merchant ships that liked to bring precious metals back to China would not let them down.

Therefore, once the Chinese merchant ships leave the Strait of Malacca, it would be good if 3 or 4 of the 10 ships could come back. The armed forces of Chinese merchant ships were able to deal with those pirates who fought hand-to-hand with cold weapons, but when they encountered European merchant ships with artillery as their main weapon, they could basically only turn around and flee.

This is why, at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Chinese merchants were able to reach Africa, and many Chinese* merchants were able to make pilgrimages to Mecca, but now, Ming merchants can basically only swim in offshore ponds.

With the contraction of overseas trade routes, the competition between Chinese maritime merchants has obviously become fierce, and such a narrow East Asian and Southeast Asian markets are obviously unable to withstand the maritime merchants of the southeastern coastal provinces to go to sea to trade together.

In order to maintain their own interests, it became natural for the maritime merchants to contact the officials of the imperial court to propose a maritime ban policy. And those small and medium-sized maritime merchants whose interests have been damaged have either abandoned the sea or simply gone to the sea to become pirates, and this has become a source of scourge along the southeast coast.

In the past, these maritime merchants were either attached to pirate leaders like Zheng Zhilong, or to the gentry and wealthy families who controlled the source of maritime trade. But no matter who they are attached to, they also have to pay a lot of money.

And the conflict between these two parties often affects them. Therefore, for these maritime merchants, it is obviously in their best interests for the imperial court to come forward to rectify the order on the sea and protect the safety of the ports along the southeast coast.

In addition, the actions of the imperial court in the past year have taught them that the imperial court's goal is obviously not only to protect a few local ports and the maritime order along the southeast coast, but also to organize manpower and forces to open up safe sea trade routes for the Ming maritime merchants.

The simple opening of the sea ban is actually of little significance to these maritime merchants, because the number of Ming goods that can be accommodated in several trading ports close to the Ming Dynasty is limited, and the opening of the sea ban is just to reduce the profits of the maritime merchants who monopolized these waterways, in fact, it damages their interests.

But the expansion of safe trade routes has really aroused the interest of these maritime merchants. In this era, trade is the most lucrative, naturally overseas trade, but the profits of overseas trade are also graded.

Like those European merchants who came across the ocean, their trade voyages back and forth between Europe and Asia must have made more than three times the profits they had invested.

Chinese businessmen go to Japan, Manila, Hoi An, Batavia, and their profits fluctuate between 50% and 150%. This is still the advantage of Chinese silver being expensive and foreign silver being cheap, simply put, it is the unequal exchange rate of this era, which provides a bonus for Ming goods.

Once this abnormal exchange rate is leveled out and the value of silver at home and abroad is equal, then the profits of offshore trade will inevitably fall to around 50%.

Therefore, opening up transoceanic trade is naturally the desire of every Chinese maritime merchant. However, ocean trade is different from offshore trade, and unfamiliar customs, weather and hydrology greatly increase the risk of transoceanic trade.

So when the Europeans embarked on the Great Voyage, it was the beginning of a new voyage of exploration initiated by the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, not by an expedition organized by a large merchant eager to gain access to Oriental goods.

This is simply because opening up new routes has never been a lucrative business, nor has it been an expedition voyage with a high success rate. On the contrary, the pioneers took great risks and invested heavily in exchange for new route information, which eventually pointed the way for those who came after them to make a fortune.

Although we are now approaching the end of the Age of Discovery, most parts of the world have been discovered by European navigators, and thanks to the work of these European pioneers, the Ming people began to understand what kind of world they live in from the European books translated by Jesuit missionaries.

However, the hydrological and climatic data of various sea areas, the tidal laws of various ports, and the specific itinerary of the Eurasian routes, these most important data, are firmly locked in the treasury of various European seafaring countries, and have never been secret.

If the Ming maritime merchants want to establish their own transoceanic trade routes, they must rely on their own strength and join the ocean exploration to explore the world. This kind of expedition was not enough by private forces alone, and it was also necessary for the imperial court to organize and use the power of the state to explore new routes and protect the free trade of domestic merchants on the new routes.

When the imperial court showed such a tendency, the maritime merchants in the southeastern provinces, who had been waiting and watching, were divided. Some maritime businessmen believe that they should join the association when it has just been established and has not yet fully controlled overseas shipping routes, so as to win their due rights and interests.

The other part of the maritime merchants felt that there was not enough time, and now although the forces shouting for the opening of the sea have the upper hand, there are also many voices in support of the forbidden sea in the local area. Judging from the history of the Ming Dynasty in the past in the maritime ban policy, the vigorous and seemingly lively policy of opening the sea may not be smooth sailing.

Not to mention, exploring transoceanic routes is a very costly and time-consuming job. Now joining the maritime association, it is obvious that he wants to spend money and contribute to this, and taking out such a large sum of money without seeing the benefits obviously makes these maritime merchants a little hesitant.

As for the ideas of these forward-looking conservative maritime merchants, those who want to join the association as soon as possible and participate in the exploration of new shipping routes will naturally not accept it. In the end, the two sides broke up unhappily, and these maritime merchants elected more than a dozen representatives to go to Beijing to petition the imperial court, asking to join the maritime association, and put forward their own requirements.

The arrival of these business representatives made Chongzhen really happy for a while. After all, although these maritime forces are not large, they are victorious in a large number of people, covering Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangzhou.

With them joining the Maritime Association, it not only weakened the power of those local gentry and wealthy businessmen, but also reduced their wings. He also found a new voice in the Maritime Association.

Although Zheng Zhilong and other maritime merchants on the southeast coast were polite to the northern maritime merchants supported by the emperor, these representatives of the northern maritime merchants were not very familiar with the sea after all. Xu Xinsu, who was saved by Chongzhen, was hostile to Zheng Zhilong, but it did not mean that he would get close to the local maritime merchants in the north.

Although the northern maritime merchants within the association are loyal to Chongzhen, as long as the emperor has any orders, they can implement them one by one in the association. However, in maritime affairs, these maritime businessmen can only be students of Zheng Zhilong and others at present. As far as Xu Xinsu said in private, when it comes to understanding the sea, these northerners are not as good as a sailor on his ship.

Although Chongzhen, who has the vision of later generations, can put forward his own opinions in the general direction, but for the details of marine affairs in the sail era, his performance is no different from that of a landlubber.

After all, in this era, some ships will reach their destination as quickly as possible, some ships will delay several times, and some ships may not arrive at the destination port at all. The reason for this situation lies in the wind and the efficiency of the captain who drives the boat.

Therefore, when Zhu Youzhen talked about the scale of Eurasian maritime trade and the comparative analysis of the maritime forces of European countries in Southeast Asia, the representatives could only shut up and listen to him.

However, when Zheng Zhilong and others talked about the characteristics of the black water ocean between Taiwan and the mainland, and the matters that need to be paid attention to when crossing the Taiwan Strait in various seasons, Zhu Youzhen could only remain silent.