Volume 3: Confrontation! The Run of Civilization Chapter 548: Continue to Develop Northeast China
In terms of history, the Qing Dynasty had 12 emperors from its founding to the end of the third year of Xuantong. Among these 12 emperors, Yongzheng was the most criticized. But in Zhu Youdong's personal opinion, he was the only one who was the real "Chinese emperor" among these 12 emperors.
Apart from other things, the land tax was abolished, which was a head tax that many outstanding emperors in China for thousands of years had failed to deal with. This alone is enough to make people admire it.
The policy of equalizing the land tax is not just about abolishing the poll tax and relaxing population control. The most important thing is that the implementation of this policy makes taxation more fair.
A couple, if both of them are healthy, in this era of lack of contraceptive methods and no other entertainment at night, is likely to give birth to seven or eight children or even more in their lifetime. The poll tax is "fair" to everyone: whether you are rich or poor, the tax is levied according to the number of people in your family.
This superficial fairness is actually the greatest injustice: for the rich, paying the poll tax is not stressful at all, and they can have as many children as they want, with three wives and four concubines. But for the poorest people, the poll tax is so heavy that they have to drown the newborns starting with the third or even the second child!
In ancient society, the upper class would instinctively suck blood from the lower class. If it is allowed to develop freely, it will naturally lead to a widening gap between the rich and the poor, fixed social classes, and the entire society will be divided or even collapsed. To solve this problem, the only way is for the state to intervene and protect the lower class. At the same time, encourage the lower class to have more children to produce more...
However, if there is a poll tax, the lower class people will not be able to raise more children, but the survival rate of newborns in the upper class will be higher. If this situation continues, over time, the originally stable pyramid-shaped social structure will change, the bottom will become more and more unstable, and eventually lead to the collapse of society.
In addition, the poll tax is very complicated to calculate, and the tax calculation results vary greatly depending on gender, age, physical condition, etc. This seems fair on the surface, but for a time traveler like Zhu Youdong, complexity means tricks, which means that officials have more room for manipulation and more opportunities to take advantage of others.
Zhu Youdong had long been dissatisfied with the head tax, but the head tax was the main source of revenue for local governments. The office expenses and private pockets of local officials mainly depended on this tax. Therefore, this thing cannot be eliminated in a one-size-fits-all manner. Therefore, Zhu Youdong endured for many years. When the national income soared every year, he raised the salaries of officials at all levels three times in a row, and asked the Ministry of Revenue to list administrative expenses for all levels of government. Only then did he take advantage of the opportunity when the bureaucrats were afraid of the abandonment of land, and in the name of "improving the livelihood of farmers and guiding them to stay on the land", he proposed the "taxation of land per mu" and abolished the head tax.
In the sixth year of the Tianqi reign, the Ming Dynasty had an annual income of 180 million, of which more than 17 million was from land tax, more than 8 million was from head tax, and more than 9.2 million was from corvée tax. After such collection, the annual surplus of a tenant farmer with a family of four was about 10 silver dollars (all the grain in the hands of the tenant farmer was also converted into silver dollars). After the land tax was increased and the head tax and corvée tax were abolished, the land tax in the Ming Dynasty rose to more than 33 million, but the annual surplus of a tenant farmer family rose to 15 silver dollars.
On the surface, it seems that the country has only given away a little over one million yuan in profits. But in fact, the simplification of tax types has significantly reduced the opportunities for officials at all levels to take advantage of the situation - this is the bulk of the profits given to the people!
As the saying goes, when the time comes, heaven and earth will work together. After Zhu Youdong spent more than ten years laying the groundwork, today, the policy of equalizing the land tax, which harms the interests of bureaucrats but benefits the people's livelihood, was passed so easily.
Expanding territory abroad sounds impressive, but doing good things for the people of your own country and improving their livelihoods is what makes a good emperor. In this way, even if I lose this game in the end, I have finally done good things for the people of this era, and my journey through time has not been in vain.
Thinking of this, he felt a sense of accomplishment and his mood became high: "Okay, everyone, the north is hit by disasters, and we will use work instead of relief. The south is abandoned, and we will use profit to guide. These two things will be done. Next, let's talk about the situation in the north and south of the desert. Oh, by the way, since the northeast has been hit by disasters, the situation of the Jurchens is probably not very good, right?"
"Your Majesty, that's right." Li Dai, the third assistant in charge of domestic ethnic minority affairs, stood up and said, "The Liaoning governor's memorial specifically mentioned the six Jurchen tribes on the Songnen Plain. In recent years, they have also experienced a reduction in grain production and difficulties in their livelihoods. I have some data here. Since Your Majesty destroyed Nurhaci fourteen years ago and divided the Jurchens into six tribes and moved them to the Songnen Plain, the Jurchens went to Fushun Pass to trade with the Han people in the first five years, and the main products were animal skins, ginseng and other mountain products.
Starting from the sixth year, they began to sell grain to the Han people in Fushun, and the proportion of mountain products continued to decline. However, starting from the year before last, the proportion of mountain products increased again. Starting from the end of last year, the Jurchens purchased a large amount of grain. The recent report submitted by the Liaoning governor said that last month, the Jurchens came to Fushun customs for trade, and not only did they bring all mountain products, but they also asked to continue to increase the amount of grain purchased.
However, because the Jurchens have been selling goods at Fushun Pass for many years, they have also purchased a large amount of Ming products such as soap, glass, medicine, woolen fabrics, cotton fabrics, silk, porcelain, tea, iron farm tools, and various newly produced celluloid products, so they don’t have much spare money. They are in urgent need of food, but they don’t have enough money. ”
"Yeah." Before Zhu Youdong could speak, Xiong Tingbi raised his eyebrows: "Are they going to fall into their old habits again and start robbing people?"
"Not really." Li Dai smiled. "After Liaoning was established as a province, although the people there are civilians instead of military households, we still have a regiment stationed there."
"Humph, they won't dare to make the same mistake again."
"Haha~" Zhu Youdong smiled at Xiong Tingbi, then turned to Li Dai and said, "Does the elder have any opinions on how to deal with this matter?"
"Your Majesty, I think the method of using work for relief can also be used on the Jurchens. After all, it has been fourteen years since Nurhaci's rebellion. Over the years, according to your Majesty's arrangement, the new generation of Jurchens have basically become proficient in using Chinese."
“But they still insist on speaking Jurchen in the tribe!”
Seeing Xiong Tingbi jumping up again, Li Dai frowned, but still held back: There is no way, even though the Minister of Justice is usually weak in front of the elders. But this Xiong Manzi is different. After all, he is not a member of the imperial tutor party, so he has to endure it.
"Mr. Xiong, please be careful with your tone when you speak to the elder." After gently nodding Xiong Tingbi to make Li Dai feel more comfortable, Zhu Youdong said, "Elder Li, your suggestion just now is very good. Agriculture has always been independent and closed . The Jurchens are now mainly engaged in farming, supplemented by fishing and hunting, and their interactions with our Ming Dynasty are still a little less. Therefore, no matter how hard the scholars we sent there try, they can't make them completely abandon the Jurchen language. Now take this opportunity to implement work-for-relief for the Jurchens and completely break their tribal structure. I want them to never speak the Jurchen language again within 20 years!"
"Your Majesty!" At this point, Xu Guangqi was not happy: "Although the Songnen Plain is fertile and flat, the population there is still too small. I really don't know why it is necessary to carry out large-scale projects there now!"
"Well, Mr. Xu, we should be forward-looking when doing things. Let me suggest that the railway from Beijing to Shenyang via Shanhaiguan be changed to two-way traffic. The additional funds will be transferred from the Ministry of Revenue to the Ministry of Works for construction. Grand Tutor, don't be so serious. Anshan and Benxi near Shenyang have a lot of coal and iron. As long as the railway is built, we will build another heavy industry base there! Well, as for the railway from Shenyang to Sarawei, my inner treasury will pay for it."
"Sarawei?" Wang Shaozheng looked at Zhu Youdong in confusion and asked the official from the Ministry of Revenue behind him to find a map of the entire Ming Dynasty. After a careful search, he found these three tiny words in a blank space.
"Your Majesty, this place looks like a barren mountain. Why did you build a railway there?"
Of course I know that place is a barren mountain, but you can't deny that there is the Daqing Oilfield there! Of course, this cannot be said openly - there is no MD internal combustion engine, and the oil produced now will have little effect. If you really want to extract other things from the oil or do some preliminary research on science and technology, the small oil fields in northern Shaanxi that can produce oil on their own are enough. However, taking this opportunity to further assimilate the Jurchens, it will also save you from the hassle of building railways when the internal combustion engine comes out one day.
"Grand Minister, there is something underground there that my Ming Dynasty will need decades later. Building a railway now is just a way to prepare for a rainy day. So, I will pay for it."
"...Okay, Your Majesty will pay for it yourself, and I have no objection."
"Yes, but the Ministry of Industry needs to send people to do the survey and design. I want this railway to be bidirectional and heavy-duty."
"As long as the emperor is willing to pay, I will send people immediately."
"Okay, okay, I'll pay." Zhu Youdong shook his head helplessly at the two stingy ministries, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works, and said, "It's estimated that the investment to build such a railway will not be less than 4 to 5 million yuan, right? Since so much has been spent, I'll pay a little more. Lord Li, how many Jurchens do you have now?"
"Your Majesty, the number reported by the Liaoning governor last year was 760,000 people."
"Humph, in fourteen years, they helped us fight two wars in Korea and Japan, and the number has increased by 160,000."
After muttering softly, Zhu Youdong turned to a compassionate expression: "Well, although the construction of a new railway can solve the livelihood problem of the Jurchens through work-for-relief, it will take at least a year to explore the route of this railway. In this way, it feels a bit too slow to help the emergency.
In this way, I will pay another sum of money, and the Ministry of Revenue will use it to exchange for grain and distribute it to the six Jurchen tribes. Let them go north and open up the Huerhai Sea for me. "
The ministers present at the meeting searched for a while with the atlas in hand, and then they discovered that the place was a swampy, sparsely populated wasteland.
"Your Majesty, although this place seems to be almost deserted at present, I noticed that the terrain is flat, and the Songhua River, Heilongjiang River, and Wusuli River crisscross. If this place is developed, it will become a large granary."
"Your Majesty is wise! After the Jurchens move away, we can organize the Han people who farm on the Liaohe Plain to move north to the Songnen Plain. Then we can relocate people from Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong and other places with small land and dense population to the Liaohe River. When the natural disasters in recent years are over, the Liaohe Plain, Songnen Plain, the newly developed Huerhai, and the entire Northeast will become big granaries!"
Humph, how can the famous Sanjiang Plain be good in the future? However, the various ethnic groups in Northeast China are still mainly planting spring wheat, which makes me very unhappy.
It seems that the Northeast really became a granary in the 1930s, right? The vicious Marshal Zhang lost the three northeastern provinces. After the Japanese took over here, they migrated a large number of Koreans and Japanese into the Northeast. While they robbed the land of the people of the Northeast in a brutal way, causing great disasters to the people of the Northeast, they also brought cold-resistant rice varieties from northern Korea and Hokkaido, Japan into the Northeast. From then on, the main crops in the three northeastern provinces changed from wheat to rice.
Alas, I have had too many things to do in these years, and God has been pretty kind to me in the past few years, and there have not been endless natural disasters year after year, so I almost forgot about this matter.
"That, Da Sikong."
"I am here."
"After the meeting, go talk to Song Yingxing and ask him to lead the team to the northern part of Fuguo, northeastern Japan, and especially Hokkaido, Japan. Look for and select cold-resistant rice varieties. It's a waste to only grow wheat in a place with such abundant water resources in the northeast!"
