xymnovel Chapter 93 The Great Qin World Expo: The Pricing Power of Civilization
Chapter 93 The Great Qin World Expo: The Pricing Power of Civilization
In the southern part of Xianyang, the "World Expo Park," covering an area of 3,000 mu, was bustling with activity.
If the first half of the exposition was a visual bombardment—the roar of steam trains, the brilliance of electric lighting, and the shimmering of glass curtain walls that made envoys from various countries kneel in awe—then the second half was a silent, yet far more bloody, massacre.
This massacre was devoid of swords and spears, only the clinking of chips and the rustling of papers turning.
This is the "Daqin International Trade Settlement Center".
Wang Jianguo stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling clock in the "Guangyin Pavilion," looking at a group of foreign envoys whose eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets.
This floor clock, standing three zhang tall, is made entirely of brass and mahogany. The intricate meshing of gears inside creates a precise rhythm. Every hour, a mechanical bird on top pops up to announce the time, accompanied by a clear chime that resonates throughout the entire park.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is more than just a timekeeping tool." Wang Jianguo pointed to the exquisite pocket watch in the display case next to him, his tone resembling that of a live-streaming e-commerce host in later generations, but with a touch more academic authority. "This is the 'Rhythm of Civilization'."
Standing in the front row was Marcus, the envoy of the Roman Republic, clutching a newly issued trial pocket watch tightly in his hand, his face full of struggle.
"Your Majesty... Your Excellency," Marco said in a Qin accent thick with mutton, "this thing is indeed exquisite, but it's too expensive! A thousand gold coins? In Rome, that could buy an estate and five hundred slaves! We have sundials and water clocks, why waste money on this?"
The envoys from the surrounding Western Regions kingdoms nodded in agreement. The Parthian prince chimed in, "Indeed, sunrise is for work, sunset is for sleep. Why be so particular? Do 'minutes' and 'seconds' matter for herding sheep?"
Wang Jianguo pushed up his resin glasses on the bridge of his nose, a smile playing on his lips that said, "You know nothing about industrial civilization."
"My Lord Mark, how did the Roman legions agree to launch simultaneous attacks?"
Marco was taken aback: "Look at the command flag, listen to the bugle call."
"What if there's a thick fog? What if we can't hear the bugle call from two separate mountain peaks?" Wang Jianguo pressed on. "If our Qin army agrees to launch its artillery barrage precisely at '3:45 noon,' while you're still estimating the time by looking at the sun, what do you think your chances of winning are?"
Marco broke out in a cold sweat.
Wang Jianguo continued, "Let me give you another example from the commercial sector. The Qin Dynasty's train timetable is accurate to the minute. If your caravan wants to load goods onto the train but is ten minutes late because they are using a sundial, sorry, the train waits for no one. Your silk and spices will just rot in the warehouse."
He turned around and pointed to the huge world map behind him, which was marked with a dense array of time zone lines (although only a few lines centered on Xianyang were drawn at the moment).
"Gentlemen, what Da Qin is selling isn't watches, it's a 'standard'," Wang Jianguo's voice rose eight octaves. "From today onward, the world's time will be based on Xianyang. This is 'Xianyang Standard Time' (XMT). You can choose not to buy, but that means you've chosen to be excluded from Da Qin's logistics, military, and commercial systems."
"Are you willing to be barbarians abandoned by time?"
A deathly silence.
A moment later, Marco, gritting his teeth and trembling, pulled a seal from his pocket: "Rome...order fifty pocket watches! We need to calibrate the sundial in the Roman Forum!"
"The Parthian Empire has ordered twenty!"
"We need ten of those from Loulan!"
Watching the envoys rushing to place orders, Ying Zheng, standing on the second-floor corridor, gently swirled the wine glass in his hand (it contained grape juice; he had recently been abstaining from alcohol for health reasons).
"Is this what you mean by 'dimensional reduction attack'?" Ying Zheng asked Little G, the blue orb floating beside him.
"Yes, Brother Zheng." Little G's voice carried a hint of smugness. "When they started adjusting their pocket watches, trying to keep up with the time in Xianyang, their pace of life, their mode of production, and even their logic of thinking had already been hijacked by the Qin Dynasty. That's called—the colonization of time."
Ying Zheng nodded slightly, his gaze deep: "Very good. Have Zhao Gao tell the watch factory that export-type pocket watches made with slightly inferior gears must be sent back for repair every three years. I want them to be indispensable to the watchmakers of Great Qin for generations to come."
If "time" is a soft knife, then Liu Bang's "currency forum" was nothing short of blatant robbery.
In the round table conference room, Liu Bang, dressed in the flying fish robe of the Embroidered Uniform Guard (although he is now the Minister of Commerce, he still likes this outfit), was playing with a gleaming gold coin in his hand.
This is the latest "Dragon Dollar" gold coin issued by Da Qin.
Unlike the gold cakes and silver ingots commonly used by various countries in the past, this gold coin is perfectly round, with exquisite Qin seal script and dragon patterns embossed on both sides. Most importantly, it has a ring of fine and neat serrations around its edge.
"My fellow buddies... oh no, my fellow envoys," Liu Bang couldn't shake his江湖 (jianghu, a term referring to the world of martial arts and chivalry) accent, "What are we most afraid of when we're doing business? Insufficient purity! Insufficient weight! Those gold nuggets and silver bars you brought, we still have to have them appraised, weighed, and even bitten with our teeth—isn't that troublesome?"
Hanno, a merchant from Carthage, frowned and took out a heavy gold ingot: "It's troublesome, but real gold and silver gives me peace of mind."
"Reliable my foot!" Liu Bang scoffed, casually tossing the gold coin onto the table with a crisp, melodious "clink." "The gold coins you used before, you wouldn't even know if someone had clipped the edge. But this 'Dragon Dollar,' see this serration? This is the latest 'anti-trimming technology' invented by the Great Qin Academy of Sciences' Newton... oh no, by the Mohist masters. Even if you grind away just a tiny bit, the serrations will disappear, and you can see it at a glance."
This was a great invention of Sir Isaac Newton when he served as Master of the Mint, and now it has been shamelessly plagiarized by Liu Bang.
Liu Bang stood up, placed his hands on the table, and looked like a hungry wolf eyeing a fat sheep: "From today onwards, all transactions at the World Expo and in all future trading ports of Great Qin will only be conducted using 'Dragon Dollars' and 'Qin Half-Taels.' The gold and silver you bring must be exchanged for Dragon Dollars at the Great Qin Bank before you can purchase goods."
"On what grounds?" Hanno slammed his fist on the table and stood up. "Gold is gold, it's hard currency everywhere! Why should we exchange it for your money? And... if I'm not mistaken, your exchange rate deducts a whopping 20% 'seigniorage'!"
"Just because of this."
Liu Bang snapped his fingers.
The curtain behind them was drawn back, revealing rows of goods on display: crystal-clear glassware, colorful silks, high-carbon steel knives that could cut through iron like mud, and even a small steam pump that was puffing out smoke.
"Do you want these things?" Liu Bang asked with a smile. "If you want to buy them, you'll have to use Qin coins. That's the rule."
"This is hegemony!" Hanno protested.
"No, this is 'credit'." Liu Bang's smile faded, his eyes sharpening. "Your gold is of varying purity; that's 'raw material.' But the Qin's dragon dollars represent the power of the Qin Dynasty, the myriad treasures of the World's Fair, the iron cavalry that swept across the northern deserts, and the ever-burning blast furnace! That's 'brand premium,' understand?"
Hanno slumped down. He was a shrewd businessman, and he knew Liu Bang was right.
If Carthage did not accept this exorbitant clause, it would be unable to purchase the compasses that would allow its fleets to sail further, or the steel swords that would make its army invincible.
"Change..." Hanno gritted his teeth, "We'll change."
Li Si, sitting in the corner, made a heavy note in his notebook:
"Seigniorage revenue: It is estimated that the revenue in the first year can offset three years' worth of taxes. Note: Although Liu Bang was a scoundrel, he was indeed a good sword."
Section 3: The Curse of the Nut
Area C of the expo is the "Industrial Standards Pavilion".
There are no glittering decorations here, only wrenches, screws, gears and bearings hanging all over the walls.
This might seem like the most boring pavilion, but for the chief artisans from various countries responsible for the technology, it was hell.
Bahram, the chief craftsman of Parthia, was currently fretting over a broken screw.
Just now, the King of Parthia spent a fortune to purchase a luxurious four-wheeled carriage called "Da Qin No. 1" (shock-absorbing version), but during a test drive, one of the screws securing the axle broke due to bumpy roads.
"It's alright, I can make one myself and replace it." Bahram confidently took out his toolbox, which contained a hammer, file and iron bar.
He was the best blacksmith in Parthia, and could easily hand-mold a screw.
However, when he spent half an hour, sweating profusely, filing out a screw of roughly the same size and trying to screw it in, he found that he couldn't turn it at all.
"What's going on?" Bahram asked anxiously, straining to tighten the nut, but with a "crack," he broke the threads on the carriage nut.
"Oh dear, what a pity."
A technician from Daqin, dressed in dark blue overalls, walked over, holding a vernier caliper. He shook his head and clicked his tongue. "This is an 'M12 standard thread,' with a pitch of 1.75 millimeters and a thread angle of 60 degrees. The thing you just hand-tightened had a pitch that was at least 0.5 millimeters off, and the thread profile was wrong too. By forcing it, you ruined the original assembly."
"Then...what do we do?" Bahram was dumbfounded. "This carriage is the king's prized possession!"
"Simple." The technician took a small, exquisite box from the shelf, inside which were ten neatly arranged, shiny black screws. "Buy genuine parts. This box is a great deal, fifty gold coins."
"Fifty gold coins?!" Bahram jumped up. "That's just a piece of iron! In Parthia, fifty gold coins can buy a ton of iron!"
"That's a ton of scrap iron," the technician said coldly. "In Qin, this is called a 'standard part.' This screw is made of high-strength alloy steel, precision-machined, and then heat-treated and rust-proofed. Its tolerance is controlled within 0.01 millimeters. Can your ton of iron compare to that?"
The technician casually picked up a screw and easily screwed it into another nut used for demonstration with his fingers; it was as smooth as silk and fit perfectly.
"See that? This is the beauty of industry." The technician proudly raised his chin. "Also, you damaged the threads of the nut, so now you have to replace the entire axle assembly. That... will probably cost about five hundred gold coins."
Bahram collapsed to the ground.
He suddenly realized that buying the carriage was just the beginning. As long as the carriage was running, Parthia would have to continuously purchase screws, lubricants, bearings, and even specialized wrenches from Qin.
This is Chapter Twelve of Wang Jianguo's "Daqin Industrial White Paper"—"Vendor Lock-in".
Once you use my standards, you become my slave.
You want to build it yourself? Sure. First, build a lathe that can produce standard threads, then refine qualified alloy steel, then train workers who understand tolerances... By the time you've got this set up, the Qin Dynasty will have already upgraded to the next generation of standards.
Section 4: A Ranking of Civilizations
At the closing banquet of the expo.
Ying Zheng sat high in the main seat, looking down at the envoys from various countries below, who were exchanging toasts and drinks. Some of them were returning with their gifts in abundance, some looked worried, and some were haggling with the Qin officials beside them.
"Little G, look at this panorama of humanity," Ying Zheng said calmly. "I used to think that conquest meant taking cities and territories and killing countless people. Now I understand that true conquest is about making them unable to live without you, wanting to learn from you, yet never being able to truly emulate you."
[Brother Zheng, your comprehension surpasses that of 99% of carbon-based life forms.] Little G popped up a virtual bar chart. [Based on the transaction data of the past few days, we have successfully established a 'civilization ranking table' centered on the Qin Dynasty.]
Ying Zheng looked at the chart.
First Tier (Core Layer): Daqin. Standard setter, technology exporter, possessing absolute pricing power.
The second tier (cooperation level): Rome and Carthage. They could buy second-tier commodities (such as glass, cement, and low-end steel), and profited by reselling them to surrounding barbarian tribes. They were the "high-level laborers" of the Qin Dynasty.
The third tier (resource layer): the Xiongnu (now fragmented), the Baiyue, and small states in the Western Regions. They could only export raw materials (wool, ore, rubber, spices) in exchange for Qin's manufactured goods. Their lifelines were firmly in Qin's hands.
Fourth Tier (Edge Layer): Those savages who haven't yet connected to the fiber optic cable... oh no, haven't yet connected to the trade route.
"Pricing power..." Ying Zheng pondered the word. "I originally thought that the length of the Tai'a sword being one meter was my whim. Now it seems that it was the rule I set for this world."
He stood up and raised his glass.
The noise from below the stage vanished instantly, and everyone looked at the First Emperor of the East with awe.
"Gentlemen," Ying Zheng's voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly throughout the hall through the loudspeaker (an echo chamber designed using acoustic principles), "My Great Qin welcomes all friends. As long as you abide by the Qin's time, use the Qin's currency, and follow the Qin's standards."
"I don't want your land; it's a burden."
"What I want is your future."
The envoys looked at each other, not quite understanding how the "future" could be given, but they still knelt down in unison and shouted "Long live the Emperor!"
Only Wang Jianguo, sitting in the corner, shook his head helplessly and wrote in his notebook:
"From this day forward, globalization (Qin Dynasty version) officially begins. I don't know if this is an acceleration of civilization or another form of cruelty."