I am Da Song

Chapter 210 Laying All the Foundations for Jiangnan
Hearing Zhao Huan's inquiry, Yang Shi respectfully replied: "The official's calculations are not wrong. But the result can only know that we have a little surplus of grain in the Song Dynasty. If the court uses this as a basis to implement administrative affairs, it may be very different from the real thing. Far."

Zhao Huan looked at Yang Shi. Although the old official spoke very implicitly, he expressed his meaning very clearly.Your data, Emperor, is just a scholarly fantasy. It's useless, and it can't be used to handle government affairs at all.

Zhao Huan was not very angry. He had never managed government affairs with a scale of [-] million people. It was normal for him to lack experience in government affairs. This was also the meaning of the existence of these veterans.The new policy of the court requires these veterans to use their senior experience to avoid some unreasonable content in the policy and reduce the deviation between the new policy and the actual reality.

"Then come and tell me about my calculations, what are the biases in my calculations."

Yang Shi said: "The government calculates that there are about [-] million shi left in grain, but I think it may not be more than [-] million shi. It's just that these grains are wasted and abandoned."

"Abandoned?" Zhao Huan was shocked.This is very precious food!And the scale is as high as [-] million stones, how could it be thrown away?When is this an economic crisis?Milk and wheat are poured into the ditch.

Yang Shi continued: "It's not that the officials thought that the grain was burned in carts and carts, but that these grains have no meaning. They have never been seen by any people in the Song Dynasty from the beginning to the end, and they have been wasted."

"Consider and discuss in detail."

"Nachen, first of all, let me explain the distribution of grain. I have nearly one billion mu of fertile land. Even if the output per mu is two shi, the grain is more than 20 billion shi. In fact, it is far more than this figure. But it is not evenly distributed. .”

"In Shaanxi, Qinfeng Road and other places in the north, there are often severe droughts and food shortages. In Hebei, the Yellow River floods from time to time, and the country cannot be produced. Therefore, the entire court has to rely on southeast water transportation. Because of 20 billion shi grains, most of them From the southeast."

Hearing this, Zhao Huan nodded profoundly. In this way, his previous ideal algorithm was indeed big and vague.

If you want to engage in the industrial production of the Song Dynasty, it is difficult for the data to provide much support.

However, as Ji Xiang Yang said, the food is in the southeast, which means that the agricultural productivity in the southeast has a little surplus, and the population can be liberated to invest in industrial production.

At least in the southeast, there are sufficient conditions to promote the industrial economy and urban economy.

Zhao Huan thought about it, and Yang Shi continued, "But the abundance of food in the southeast does not mean that ordinary people are also rich. The food produced did not enter the people, but wasted in two directions."

"One is the transshipment envoy set up by our dynasty. Most of the wealth in the world needs to be transported to the capital from a distance of thousands of miles. However, due to the inconvenience of transportation, a large amount of food is consumed during the transshipment. This happens every year, which means countless wealth in the world. It can’t be circulated at all, so it was wasted on the way of transshipment.”

All the prime ministers were silent. The system of transshipment envoys was the national policy of the Song Dynasty. From the beginning of the founding of the country, Emperor Taizu established the law of strong stems and weak branches. All taxes, money and food were transferred to designated places controlled by the imperial court.In order to prevent the local area from becoming bigger and re-guiding the mistakes of the separatist regime.

It is also under this overkill national policy that the Song Dynasty has a saying that a country supports Tokyo and a city.

However, the successive years of transshipment also made the corvee service extremely heavy in the Song Dynasty, and the people served every year to transport money and food as civilian husbands.This kind of servant has almost become a classic impression of the Song Dynasty.Wang Anshi was forced to implement the recruitment law to reduce the corvee burden of the people of the Song Dynasty.

This is actually almost equivalent to the fact that the Song Dynasty was fighting every year, and the whole country was transshipping money and grain. Countless grains were wasted in the transportation. Not to mention that the people did not see it, the officials did not see it, even the emperor Zhao Huan I didn't see it either.

A huge amount of food was consumed in the process of transshipment from one place to another, which was a waste of time and money.

This national policy can only be evaluated as overkill.The entire country, the entire nation, has been terrified by the military chaos that has lasted for hundreds of years since the middle Tang Dynasty.

The chaos of the country by warriors is much more cruel than that of civil servants.Killing people like hemp, cannibalism is commonplace, and ghosts and ghosts for hundreds of miles are all normal.

Restricting warriors has become the consensus of all classes, including warriors.The imperial court must ensure that the whole country will not go back to the road of separatist regimes and military chaos.

But this national policy actually has a bit of a one-size-fits-all meaning.

Zhao Huan said: "It is undoubtedly a good strategy to transfer supplies to avoid the expansion of the region. But it is impractical to order all the money and food to be transferred to the imperial court without asking right and wrong, which is undoubtedly a great waste."

"Especially in the south of the Yangtze River, it is not a place where martial arts flourished. The gentry have been pursuing comfort and comfort since ancient times, and even took the initiative to obstruct the Northern Expedition. Even if the food is left in the south of the Yangtze River, it will not make the local army threaten the country."

"That's why I decided to abolish all the transshipment envoys in the south of the Yangtze River, and set up a new Xuanfu Division with full authority to handle all government affairs. The Jiangnan region only needs to pay taxes and taxes to the imperial court in proportion."

The newly established Xuanfu Division is roughly equivalent to the chief ministers of the provinces in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in later generations. It is no longer in charge of military affairs and supervision, but has an overview of the government affairs of a province.

After the Song Dynasty reformed the currency, the main tax collection was the imperial banknotes.With banknotes, the financial revenue in the Jiangnan area can be sent to the capital more conveniently.

Zhao Huan is willing to add a lot of power to the local government, but in terms of financial revenue, it is bound to be more stringent.

At present, no one knows the importance of taxation better than him, a traveler.Especially after the promotion of industrial civilization, a large amount of local fiscal revenue must be handed over to the national treasury in order to ensure the strength of the central government.

However, the consumption of transshipment is saved, and the food remains in the local area. At least in the southeastern region, there is no shortage of food. The abundance of food will make a large number of farmers switch to industrial production and work in cities.

In this regard, the Song Dynasty has an extra advantage over the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The Song Dynasty has experienced 200 years of unstoppable mergers. The land has been controlled by a large number of wealthy families and businessmen, and ordinary people have not been tied to death in the fields by the land.

Now Song Dynasty is on the eve of the British Industrial Revolution, in a similar situation of sheep cannibalism, but the contradiction is not as sharp as that of Great Britain.

In addition, the Song Dynasty encouraged industry and commerce to develop the urban economy in the south of the Yangtze River, and undoubtedly had all the conditions.

Zhao Huan looked at Yang Shi and asked, "Then what is the other direction of the food waste in the Song Dynasty? Why is Jiangnan so rich and has all kinds of conveniences, but it can't form a strong strength. On the contrary, Jiangnan used to Notoriously weak, once the northern powers go south, they are often destroyed."

(End of this chapter)