Benjamin Disraeli left the British palace depressed and returned to his official residence.Then he locked himself up alone, wanted to be quiet in his study, and quietly thought about how Britain should face China's provocation next, he couldn't figure out what gave the Chinese emperor so much courage Benjamin Disraeli even wondered if the German side, especially Bismarck, had privately reached some kind of agreement with the Chinese emperor The British colonies are the most, and they look powerful on the surface, but the productivity of labor in the United States has been twice that of Britain since 1870, and there is no sign of shrinking.The U.S. is sparsely populated, so it is capital-intensive in manufacturing and focuses on labor conservation.Therefore, large-scale production in the United States is in line with the resource endowment of the United States and feasible, but it is difficult to achieve good economic benefits in the case of relative scarcity of resources and abundant labor in Europe.In the U.S., parts are directly procured and assembled, and the fixed model is basically mass-produced.However, the European industry is made of parts and has individual assembly, and the style is relatively richer.In addition to the resource endowment side, another major reason for Britain's loss of productivity advantage is the industrialization organization already mentioned.From relatively high profit margins, low manufacturing levels and personalized production to low profit margins, the transformation of high-manufacturing and large-scale production is an important cornerstone of the start of American industry.In the shipping industry, for example, in Europe in the 19th century, the shipping industry relied heavily on human networks.A group of shipping agents invest together to buy boats and other necessities.The mission of this investment is to complete the round-trip cargo voyage from London to Buenos Aires, which requires the shipping agents' different business connections to find the cargo, how to unload the cargo at the port of call in Argentina, etc.The credibility of the people who complete the whole voyage is very crucial, and there is also the problem of long-term credit and running-in.This is also the reason why Huahuang can't directly engage in grain procurement by himself, but has to go through the two proxy countries of Spain and the Netherlands, and the old empire Spain and the Netherlands, which are extremely weak brothers, are also just suitable for Huahuang's current taste.At the end of the 19th century, with the rise of international trade volume, the increasingly convenient communication of telegraph and telephone, both of which were the first to develop in China, but with the trade of various countries to China, Europe and the Americas have a large number of introductions, this technology is easy to imitate, the advantage between China and the great powers has been very small, but as the earliest country to develop the information industry, China has always been a little ahead, and the steam engine ship is more popular and fast, the fleet and shipping companies began to replace the relatively scattered shipping agency cooperation organizations in the past.In both the United States and the United Kingdom, the concentration of the top 10 shipping companies increased rapidly during this period, but the United States switched more rapidly in industrialization organizations than the United Kingdom, making its productivity level better than that of the United Kingdom.In addition to the increase in concentration, there is also the transformation of the company organization from the network to the hierarchy.From the perspective of industrial structure, in 1870, the agricultural population in the United States still accounted for about half of its total labor force, while the United Kingdom accounted for only 20%, which means that a greater proportion of the American agricultural population shifted to manufacturing and service industries after 1870.This is especially true in Germany, where the proportion of the population employed in agriculture was still a significant proportion before the First World War, and by the end of World War II it was still more than twice that of the United Kingdom, and the productivity of agricultural units was not as good as that of the United Kingdom, which to some extent dragged Germany as a whole.But the rapid post-war shift of labor was also the basis for Germany's catch-up.In terms of total factor productivity, in fact, Britain has not been overtaken by the United States so quickly.There are a lot of factors involved in this, universal education.The penetration rate of secondary education and higher education in Britain and Germany lagged behind that of the United States before World War II, which also led to a considerable distance between Britain and Germany and the United States in terms of the proportion of employees in the service industry.Of course, the linear relationship between education coverage and productivity is not clear, but is only one major factor in the explanation.This is also the reason why Huahuang would rather sacrifice the speed of industrial expansion than dare not first fully popularize the five-year compulsory education, Huahuang put education first.In terms of vocational education, the United States is relatively weak in this regard compared to Britain and Germany, and there is no need for highly skilled workers in the case of mass production, but it is necessary in Britain and Germany, where individualized production is more common.Germany's excellent vocational education system after World War II is the main reason why it has overtaken the productivity of British manufacturing.The adoption of information technology, the United States left Britain and Germany far behind after the war.Therefore, Emperor believes that the main reason for Germany and the United States to catch up with Britain is the difference in resource endowment, which leads to heavy capital investment and large-scale production, and the transformation of industrial organization; disparities in education coverage and their corresponding emphasis; As a backward country, at the time of the transformation of the agricultural population to the manufacturing industry, the United States coincided with the technological upgrading and industrial division of labor upgrading with a significant jump in productivity.The large population is mainly due to this factor.Population is the most favorable factor for China to be proud of the world, and it is also the reason why the United States and Germany have always had a gap with Britain in terms of per capita GDP when China was still a 99 percent agricultural country, and it was not until after World War II that it surpassed Britain.Previously, the UK had been the richest country in the world with the highest standard of living.From the point of view of the national system.Britain, the United States and Germany have all established a relatively complete capitalist system, this system is not necessarily democratic, the emperor believes that Germany's dual monarchy is far from "democratic", it guarantees that the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie can obtain the right to speak in the country that was difficult to obtain before, so as to ensure their own rights and interests, and promote the state to introduce many policies to encourage the development of industry and commerce, and even sometimes war, the outbreak of World War I is not unrelated to the agitation of the German Junkers.From the point of view of the quality of the population and the level of science and technology.The United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, all three of which have reached comparable literacy levels.In terms of technology, Britain was far ahead in the first industrial revolution, and France only completed the industrial revolution and achieved comprehensive industrialization during the Second Empire; Germany may not be reunified, but in the second industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has caught up, Britain is a little behind, and does not stand in the first echelon of the industrial revolution, most of the important inventions in the second industrial revolution are mostly from the hands of American scientists and inventors, and Germany attaches great importance to the role of science and technology, and even uses unconventional means such as technological espionage on a large scale to obtain technology.In terms of resources.Although Britain has the resources provided by its own coal mines and vast colonies, the United States has no shortage of important resources in its vast territory, and the coal and iron resources in the Ruhr and Saar areas of Germany fully meet the needs of industrial development, not to mention that resources can be obtained through imports.In other respects, the virtues were at least as good as those of the British, and the size of the population became the decisive factor for the two countries to surpass the British.On the eve of World War I, in 1913, the population of the United States reached 965.12 million, second only to Russia among the Western powers, and although Russia has a large population, the quality of the people is low, the level of science and technology is extremely low, the social and political system is backward, and the domestic contradictions are very fierce, it is difficult to maximize the transformation of its population advantage into a development advantage, and Germany followed, with a population of 669.78 million, while the population of Britain was only 46 million at this time.
At the same time, the population growth of France is extremely pitiful, only 39.79 million people, considering that at the end of the 18th century, the French population accounted for about one-fifth of the population of Europe, this order is basically consistent with the industrial level of various countries at that time.A large population meant more labor and a larger market, as well as more soldiers in wartime, and virtue had already overtaken Britain in other respects, and it had an innate population advantage, and it was inevitable that its national power would surpass that of Britain.Labor costs are the first to rise in the UK, which will not only squeeze profit margins and weaken international competitiveness, but also cause the diversification of social ideologies, and the effect of transforming education technology into new investment hotspots will not be demonstrated, and the downward inflection point of national competitiveness will be cast; The early development of liberal thought led to the gradual loss of India by Britain, and welfarism further led to the decline of British manufacturing.The economic and social management of the labour cost cycle is more difficult, and the UK is the first to experience the pain, and there is no precedent for it.The industrial revolution in Britain was carried out earlier, and steam power was more popular at the beginning of the second industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, so the electrical revolution began, and it was difficult to update British industrial equipment, and it was more dependent on steam power.Virtue coincided with the period when the bourgeois government was just being established, the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, and the capitalists could concentrate on the purchase of new equipment.Britain had a large colonial population to sell to, so it was not keen on the pursuit of industrial efficiency and technological development, so British industry was weakened by the end of the nineteenth century, but the volume of trade continued unabated.The idea of mass production, especially the idea of standardized industrial production in the United States, struck the whole world of capitalist countries.For a long period of time, a considerable part of the wealth of the empire came from the encroachment on various resources of the colonies.For example, if a colony has just been occupied, its resources can be completely occupied by force, and there is no profit from it.The place where Benjamin Disraeli's eyes were staring at was the map, it was on the map, the Central Asian Province of China, the British-controlled India, and the Afghanistan region in between, he now regretted very much, last year's plan to send troops, without the participation of China, Britain gritted its teeth again, maybe it could completely occupy Afghanistan, but now, there is no such possibility, he knows very well.t1706231537: