I want to be emperor

Chapter 544 Three birds with one stone

Jinling City, the Royal Courtyard.

A large number of important officials of the empire gathered together, and these important officials of the Great Chu Empire turned their heads. Luo Zhixue sat on the dragon chair and listened quietly to the discussions of the officials.

This is an imperial internal affairs meeting with the five-year development plan as the core content. In addition to the military generals, all the ministers and co-organizers of the imperial study in the civil service system participated.

After the meeting started, like most of the imperial meetings in the past year, Luo Zhixue sat upright, and most of the time he listened to the courtiers discussing and even arguing with each other, and he basically didn't open his mouth to express any opinions. .

Luo Zhixue is very clear that he is an emperor, the helm of the entire empire, and his own influence is too great. Just a word can determine the direction of the empire's major policies.

And the more so, the more cautious Luo Zhixue was.

After all, he is just an ordinary person. Even if he has some basic common sense of later generations, he only understands a lot of things superficially.

There are many things that he thinks are good and can be done, but when the times are different and the actual situation is different, there will be problems of acclimatization if they are implemented hastily.

Some policies he thought were bad and unnecessary, but after analysis and debate by many courtiers, he found that they were quite good, and the effect of implementation was also very good.

Just like last year when formulating a series of education development plans, Luo Zhixue originally planned to open various public schools on a large scale, and to collect many private schools from the private sector into government-run schools, so as to improve the schools used for enlightenment and primary education as much as possible. quantity.And unified teaching materials, unified recruitment of teachers, unified treatment and so on.

Basically, he is trying to transplant the public education system of later generations.

However, after conducting pilot experiments in some areas, it was found that it was not that simple. On the one hand, there was no expected large number of children signing up for school... Even if the tuition fee is already very low, even poor families or those with excellent grades can still Applying for tuition exemption, the vast majority of families, especially poor families, still do not send their children to school!

Because this will lead to the lack of an old powerhouse in their family...and this labor force will continue to eat and drink...

Although the tuition fees of the school are very low, they still have to pay tuition fees, and they have to bear their own food and drink.

In this way, the vast majority of poor families will not send their children to Shangnei, even for free...

In rural families, children who are a few years old can already do what they can do, and those who are seven or eight years old are half an adult.

Digging the ground, weeding, harvesting, lifting... everything is indispensable.

Not to mention the 90th century, even if it was the [-]s of the [-]th century, it was in the so-called modern society, but most of the children in rural families still had to go to school and help the family with farm work. Carrying weight that shouldn't belong to them.

When the new education policy of the Great Chu Empire was piloted, such an embarrassing problem arose. A large sum of money was invested to build the school, recruit teachers, and invest a lot of money. A student came to sign up for school... Those who came were also students who were originally in private schools!
It is one thing that no students come to sign up, and another problem is that government-run education is too expensive.

Because it is universal education, although it is not completely free, it is only a symbolic tuition and miscellaneous fee, which is not enough to maintain the operation of the school.

After all, all kinds of school buildings and office facilities cost money, and if an ordinary school teacher becomes a well-established education official from the ninth grade, the salary will also become higher.

This entry and exit means that these government-run schools need continuous blood transfusions from the official finances, and it is a massive blood transfusion!

One of the pilot high-level government is okay, and the finances are rich, so it can barely support it, but the other two pilot middle-level and low-level governments can't support it.

Without the strong financial support from their superiors, they couldn't even launch the government-run school plan...

But now the Great Chu Empire is in the stage of a waste of time, and a large amount of financial funds are mainly used for industrial development, agricultural development, water conservancy, roads and bridges and other infrastructure construction. In many places, due to local financial difficulties, even the salaries of regular officials It cannot be distributed, let alone a large sum of money is used to run government-run schools.

Another very important issue in terms of funds is that in the past, a large number of these private schools existed in the private sector, in fact, quite a few of them were funded by the local gentry.

These gentry set up these private schools out of fame or other thoughts, but they didn't think about making money or anything, but instead poured money into them.

The government took over these private schools, which means paying money for the gentry...

When the gentry see that your government has taken over, they will naturally not continue to throw money into it. Anyway, they will not lose their reputation, so why spend money on education?Master Ben's money didn't just fall from the sky!

After tossing and tossing about the new government-run education pilot projects in the three prefectures, a lot of money was spent, but the number of students did not increase much... No matter how you look at it, it is all a loss to grandma's family.

Through this incident, Luo Zhixue has completely understood that many policies that seem to be good in later generations may not be suitable for the present!

This is the seventeenth century, and both productivity and people's ideas are very different from later generations.

As far as the current Great Chu Empire is concerned, there is absolutely no condition for universal government-run compulsory education...

After this incident, Luo Zhixue seldom slapped his head directly to copy the policies of later generations. Instead, he chose another method, which was to make demands, give the courtiers some ideas, and let the courtiers figure it out by themselves!
His courtiers are the natives of this era, and they understand the various contemporary situations better than Luo Zhixue.

And after many people discussed and analyzed the pros and cons, Luo Zhixue was able to get some things he wanted, and then choose a certain result he wanted.

To put it simply, in the past, Luo Zhixue asked himself to do things by himself...

But now, Luo Zhixue only asks... As for how to do it, that's up to the courtiers!

After such a transformation, Luo Zhixue found that his efficiency in handling various government affairs had been greatly improved, and the various policies he had formulated were also more perfect and more effective.

After the failure of the pilot government-run compulsory education, after collective discussions among many officials in the court, an improvement plan was finally put forward and implemented to meet the requirements put forward by Luo Zhixue.

Luo Zhixue's request is simple: "Improve the literacy rate as much as possible, especially the literacy rate of the younger generation!"

He didn't set any specific value, because setting the value would involve statistics...and it's a big nationwide statistics, the amount of work is bigger than universal education...

Because of the difficulty of statistical work, in fact, Luo Zhixue still does not know how many people his empire has... He can only have an approximate figure, about 7000 million!

And in these 7000 million miles, how many people are literate, how many are just proficient in writing, how many are landless peasants, how many are self-cultivating farmers, how many are big gentry households, how many are urban population, how many are rural population, etc. an exact number.

And some of the inferred data are also very biased.

For example, according to the data submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 90.00% of the national population is rural population, and only 5.00% of the population is urban population, and more than half of the 5.00% population still live in market towns.

However, the data submitted by the Patrol and Police Department deviated greatly from the data of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. They believed that the urban population of the country should have reached about [-]%.

The numbers submitted by these two departments are completely different...

In order to find out how many people are in his empire, the literacy rate of the people, the place of living and other basic population information, so as to formulate and implement subsequent policies, Luo Zhixue ordered the Patrol Department to take the lead last year, and other Various departments cooperated vigorously, local governments at all levels guided publicity, established national population and household registration files, and relied on household registration files to count population data.

But this is a big project, and it can't be done in a few years.

The Great Chu Empire does not even know a basic national population information, let alone the literacy rate. It can only rely on sampling inferences, such as selecting a certain place for investigation, and then use it as representative data.

It's just that these data are not reliable...

For example, the literacy rate, the literacy rate in the Jiangnan region cannot represent the literacy rate in other regions at all...

The reading culture prevails in the south of the Yangtze River, and the literacy rate is relatively high, while other places are much worse, and in these poor places, the gap between them is relatively large.

Because of the lack of detailed statistics, now Luo Zhixue looks at the various situations of the empire, as if walking with a pair of eyes that do not match the degree. He can only see the outline of everything, and it is impossible to look at it carefully. ...

When formulating policies, we can only set the scale as loosely as possible, and not set the value too rigidly, leaving some space for the officials below and the public.

When looking at the flowers in the fog, the goal is set too far ahead, and the officials below are blind in order to achieve the goal regardless of people's livelihood.

It was like this when we were working on education policy last year, and it is almost the same when we are working on agricultural policy now.

Luo Zhixue didn't say how much grain production must be increased, how much land should be opened up, etc... because he doesn't even know the total grain production in the country, nor the total cultivated land, let alone the cultivated land that can be developed. ...

Without detailed data to back it up, he came up with a deadly goal, which was too low. The officials below saw that he could do it without working, so he just lay down and watched the flowers and the birds every day...

The goal is set high, and the officials below see it, oh my god, this goal is too high, and it will not be achieved anyway, so what should I do?Concealing and false reporting... I can't tell my superiors that I didn't complete the task, right? Everyone else reached the goal with their mouth full of nonsense, and you honestly said that you didn't complete the goal, isn't it courting death!

False reports and concealed reports are not bad, but I am afraid that some people will engage in various extreme operations in order to achieve their goals, regardless of people's livelihood, such as forcing farmers to increase food production, reclaiming wasteland and farming a lot of land beyond their farming capacity, and finally producing a lot of chicken feathers!
Therefore, Luo Zhixue did not give his ministers too detailed goals when working on the agricultural development plan this time.

Even the focus is on how much land to open up wasteland and how much food to increase, but to focus on the restoration of agricultural production and the construction of irrigation facilities.

In fact, there is land, especially in the provinces north of the Yangtze River. Because of natural disasters and man-made disasters, many places are empty...

But the people are gone, but the land is still there...

This has also led to the fact that many places, especially in the north, are now sparsely populated, and a large amount of land is forced to be abandoned due to lack of population.

It's just that the reason why many places in the north have become sparsely populated is that in addition to man-made disasters, natural disasters are also an important factor.

For example, the three provinces of Henan, Anlu, and Jiangbei, because of the confluence of the Yellow River and the Huaihe River, can be said to experience a small flood every year and a major flood every three years. Some dangerous river sections burst their embankments almost every year!
Not to mention once in 50 years, once in 100 years these extreme weather, even if it rains normally, there will be floods.

In these places affected by floods, its agricultural production is very difficult.

In addition, it is not only the Huaihe River and the Yellow River Basin that are affected by floods...the reason why they are mentioned is that they are more representative. In fact, floods are very common in many places, regardless of the south and the north.

This is because the irrigation and flood control facilities are basically zero these days... Aside from the Yellow River and Huaihe River, small rivers in some small places are very likely to flood the villages and cultivated land along the banks when a heavy rain comes!

And once there is a drought, you have to wait to die!

And these sporadic floods or droughts, although they only occur locally, often have little impact, but they can't stand it all over the country, and there are so many of them!
When the total amount is added up, these seemingly fragmented natural disasters have caused more damage to the entire empire than the flood of the Yellow River!

This is why the Great Chu Empire took the construction of basic irrigation and flood control facilities as the key content of its agricultural development plan.

The Great Chu Empire will use financial appropriations from the central government, provinces, prefectures and counties at all levels for the construction of irrigation and flood control facilities in various places.

In the second year of the plan, funds have already begun to be allocated, and various flood control and irrigation facilities have been constructed in many areas.

It is worth noting that the empire built various flood control and irrigation facilities on a large scale in various places, which also brought about a previously expected result.

That's a lot of infrastructure work, and that's a lot of jobs!
These job opportunities can enable the young and strong refugees who have lost their homes in natural disasters and man-made disasters in the past few years and are struggling to survive.

And this is also the reason why many other departments of the Great Chu Empire spent a lot of money in the five-year agricultural plan and engaged in various costly infrastructure construction.

Because of the large-scale construction of flood control and irrigation facilities, this was originally one of the means for the Great Chu Empire to use work for relief to restore the stability of people's livelihood after reunification and avoid large-scale refugees.

By the way, some impoverished families in many places are young and strong, and they can also take advantage of this opportunity to earn Weibo wages during the slack season. Although the money is very small, during the slack season, idleness is also idle, and idleness also costs money. The food at home is not...

It's better to go to the construction site to sell your strength and earn some ration money.

The official construction of these infrastructures by the Great Chu Empire is to kill three birds with one stone. It is not only for the development of agriculture, but also for the relief of work, and by the way, it can also promote the development of construction-related industries, such as quarrying, carpentry and other industries.

In an imperial meeting, after discussions among the courtiers, and Luo Zhixue's consent, the subsequent batch of agricultural infrastructure construction plans were preliminarily finalized.

Among them is the large-scale Huaihe-Yellow River flood control irrigation construction task. It is planned that in the next few years, some dangerous river sections in the Huaihe River Basin and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, mainly in Henan, Anlu, and Jiangbei provinces, will be flooded. Construct, reinforce, and divert and straighten some easily clogged river courses, designate flood discharge areas, and so on.

The initial goal is to completely reverse the flooding of the Yellow River and Huaihe River Basin, which occurs year after year.

Luo Zhixue did not expect to solve the flooding problem of the Huaihe River and the Yellow River once and for all through a few years of construction, and he did not even expect to be able to withstand some major floods. This is unrealistic in a short period of time, and he cannot become a fat man with one bite of food... …

His requirements are very low, even low for the people, that is, there are floods every year...

We can’t just flood every year when the rainy season comes. Even if we want to have floods, we have to wait until the floods that occur once every five years!

According to the plan, 66 small-scale projects, [-] medium-sized projects and one large-scale project will be planned for the sections of the Huaihe River and the Yellow River in the above-mentioned three provinces.

The large-scale project is the Hongze Lake flood control project, including the continued construction of the Hongze Lake embankment, the establishment of a flood discharge area, and the expansion of the flood season water storage capacity of Hongze Lake.

Because the Yellow River was diverted from the Huaihe River to the sea in the early years, the water volume of Hongze Lake will skyrocket during the rainy season every year, threatening the surrounding areas.

In order to ensure the smooth flow of the canal and protect the safety of people's livelihood in the surrounding areas, successive dynasties, especially the Ming Dynasty, built the Hongze Lake Embankment on a large scale.

Because the Great Chu Empire established its capital in the south, and at the same time its navy was powerful and used sea transportation on a large scale, its dependence on the canal was not so great, but a small dependence did not mean that it could give up the Youhang Grand Canal.

At the same time, the livelihood of the people in the Jiangbei area also needs to be guaranteed, so the flood control embankment still needs to be repaired.

The entire Hongze Lake flood control project, to be precise, is the first phase of the project. It is estimated that more than 800 million taels of silver will be invested, which will be shared by multiple levels of finance in parallel. It is expected to be completed within four years.

After the completion of the construction, the water storage and flood control capacity of Hongze Lake will be further improved. At least there will be no such situation as now where there is a heavy rain every year and there is a large-scale flood.

As for this key project, in addition to the participation of the civil service system, the military will also participate.

Of course, this does not mean that the military will directly invest in combat troops. The number of regular troops in the Chu Army is not large, and they are all very busy. Even the second-class divisions cannot be recruited as laborers on a large scale.

However, during the unification war, the Great Chu Empire captured a large number of soldiers from the former Ming army and formed a large number of reclamation camps, construction camps, or transportation camps to work, but they were still militarized management institutions.

According to local conditions, these prisoners of war may settle or carry out infrastructure construction. In the Hongze Lake flood control project, it is expected that a large number of construction camps composed of prisoners of war managed by the military will also be invested.

When the first phase of the project is completed, the service period of the surrendered soldiers in this construction battalion will basically end, and then they can be disbanded directly and let the surrendered soldiers go home.

If the first phase of the Huaihe-Yellow River flood control and irrigation project is completed, millions of people along the banks can escape the hardships of annual floods and resume normal production and life.

Luo Zhixue attached great importance to this, and personally took care of everything from funding to personnel arrangements to ensure the smooth implementation of the plan without any major problems.

As for some small problems, they are unavoidable, just let the people below handle them by themselves.

-

When the Dongyao people in the Liaodong area fell into the crisis of destroying the country, I am afraid that they would never have imagined that when the Chu Manzi invested 10,000+ troops and spent huge sums of money to fight them, they could still carry out such a large-scale project in the rear.

If they found out, their jaws would probably drop... Where did this Manzi Chu get so much money from?

Dongyao people can't understand how powerful the financial revenue of the Great Chu Empire is!
It is estimated that it is impossible to understand that the largest institution in the Great Chu Empire is nothing else, but the taxation department...the most employees, the most funds, the highest administrative efficiency, and it also has its own armed forces.

The powerful taxation department ensured the financial health of the Great Chu Empire. When maintaining large-scale foreign wars, it can still have a large amount of funds for internal affairs.

Huang Taiji probably couldn't understand these things, even if he could understand them, he couldn't carry them out inside Dongyao!

Because this level of taxation system needs to be carried out on a blank sheet of paper, and it can only be implemented after a comprehensive breakdown of the old interest system.

In fact, the regime of the Dongbang people has been in power for decades, and the distribution of interests has already been completed internally, forming a stable interest system. At this time, it is impossible to change... it is impossible.

At the same time, this is also the reason why Luo Zhixue used the most iron-blooded means to forcefully promote various new policies, especially agricultural policies and tax policies.

Rather than waiting until it stabilizes.

Because once it stabilizes, new interest groups are formed, and after co-exchanging with the old interest groups, then don't expect to implement new policies to distribute benefits.

It must be forced to push at the first time, directly relying on guns and swords to push.

Reform... reform is impossible. Since ancient times, reform has been very difficult, and it is thankless. If it is not done properly, it will drag the empire into the abyss.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue doesn't plan to play any reforms... He can't do such things as sewing, he doesn't have the ability, let alone the courage!
What he can do is to tear down all the old ones, and then build a new interest system on the ruins.

And this is even less difficult for Luo Zhixue, who started as a rebel and has hundreds of thousands of troops in his hands. The situation in the past few years has also fully demonstrated this point.

In the pre-Ming Dynasty, some aspiring people in the Ming Dynasty would encounter a lot of opposition if they wanted to do something, and they would end up with nothing, especially in terms of taxation. It would be difficult for the court to take money from their gentry!

But in the Great Chu Empire... the gentry and big households are very active in paying various taxes!
Why do you want to ask?Could it be that these gentry are naturally good people and support the Great Chu Empire from the bottom of their hearts?

Just kidding... If you want to take money from their pockets, how can they be willing!
As for why you don't want to pay it back, and you still pay it so actively.

The reason is also very simple, all those who refused to pay taxes were killed...

(End of this chapter)