I'm really not doing business

Chapter 905: The rich live in luxurious houses, with fine clothes and fine banquets; the poor live in shabby alleys, with only chaff to feed.

After a smallpox epidemic hit Coconut Sea City, the number of people taking opium dropped sharply. In the face of a major epidemic like smallpox, the opium addicts would die quickly due to their weak bodies. Even if they survived, they would die from other complications.

This brought Coconut Sea City back from the brink of danger to a safer area.

It is no wonder that the theories of natural selection, anthroposelection, and survival of the fittest are so popular in Southeast Asia. These places are originally wild and untamed, and they are already carrying out cruel selection in accordance with the laws of nature. Human activities have intensified the intensity of this selection.

Lin Fucheng shared a basic lesson about drug control in his travel notes in Southeast Asia:

Once the number of drug addicts in a place exceeds a certain value, the drug problem will most likely never be solved without violent means.

This number is 5%. There are 200,000 people in Coconut Sea City, and there are more than 13,000 poisonous insects in the area. This is actually very dangerous. Even though Zhang Yuanxun has tried every means, he still cannot effectively eradicate the problem.

Zhang Yuanxun had to maintain law and order in the Strait of Malacca while conducting drug enforcement. He had only 3,000 guest soldiers and 5,000 guards, plus 3,000 naval forces stationed in Jiugang. This was all his armed forces. Even with his brutal methods, it was still difficult to stop the spread of opium.

The pandemic was also a violent means, and it was extremely effective. With the mass death of poisonous insects and the violent intervention of the Governor's Office, the number of poisonous insects in Coconut Sea City was reduced to less than three thousand.

The anti-drug situation in Coconut Sea City immediately improved.

Spices, cotton, silver, steel, guns, and germs are unavoidable topics in the Age of Discovery. The movement of people has accelerated the spread of viruses in various places.

For epidemic diseases like smallpox, even if no one deliberately poisons the people, they will still spread around the world with the population. For example, smallpox broke out many times in Japan, but the Momoyama shogunate had no way to deal with it.

The smallpox plague in Coconut Sea City is definitely not some kind of human elimination plan by Zhang Yuanxun!
Zhang Yuanxun definitely didn’t do it!
Even if he did it, as long as he wore the three-inch round dragon flag, the sin would be the emperor's.

All Ming people who went out to sea were required to be vaccinated against cowpox. The reason for requiring everyone to be vaccinated was mainly to prevent Ming people who went out to sea from bringing smallpox back to the Ming Dynasty. In addition, with the help of Huimin Pharmacies and health workers, smallpox was gradually eradicated within the Ming Dynasty.

This time the smallpox plague first broke out in the Yuanxu Islands of the Thousand Islands Country, and then spread to Coconut Sea City. It has a very long and clear transmission chain. With the flow of people and the movement of goods, the plague spread everywhere.

Before Lin Fucheng left, the public security in Coconut Sea City had improved a lot.

"This Lin Fucheng became a pirate just to observe the opium field business." Zhu Yijun admired Lin Fucheng's courage.

He was a scholar-official and a fifth-rank doctor of the Institute of Things. He had no need to be curious about the operation of the opium field business, nor did he need to observe it personally, but he still went there at great risk.

Opium fields are also a type of plantation economy, and opium is usually grown together with tobacco. Tobacco is the hard currency in Southeast Asia, and opium is no exception.

Unlike what the people of the Ming Dynasty imagined about the opium fields, the poor coolies and tenant farmers who worked the fields could not earn any money at all. In fact, because too much opium was planted, these poor coolies and foreigners who were close to the water and took advantage of it first, and their lives became even poorer as they smoked too much opium.

In the place where poppies bloom, apart from the occasional tobacco field, no other crops can be seen, and the price of food just squeezes the last penny out of the hands of the poor coolies.

Plantation owners only needed a little opium to control hundreds of slaves.

The plantation owners did not make a lot of money. Even if they had used all means to exploit the farmers, the opium in the opium fields could not be sold at a good price. One acre of land could only produce one opium ball. They had to plant hundreds of acres of land and wait for people to come and collect the money. The price they gave was often very low, only a few hundred taels of silver a year.

In addition to the low purchase price, they needed to use a large amount of silver to bribe the 'coastal defense inspectors' who inspected the tobacco fields. During his time as a pirate on the island, Lin Fucheng received six waves of coastal defense inspectors in three months.

But Lin Fucheng knew that these people were all fake, played by pirates, their ships were not hydrofoils at all, and their armor and fire cards were all forged.

The key point is that these people don't look like Ming people at first glance, whether in their appearance, spirit, or even their half-baked Chinese.

But the farmers did not dare to gamble. Whenever someone came, they had to bribe him, no matter if it was real or fake, because behind the fake coastal defense inspectors were pirates. These pirates loved to rob opium plantations the most because there were definitely no Ming navy in opium plantations.

If it is true, it will be even more tragic, because once they are discovered and the Ming navy’s anti-smoking ships arrive, they will be dead.

The anti-drug campaign in Nanyang is a war against drugs. We will fight whenever we encounter one and kill without mercy. Five levels of rewards will be given according to the scale of drug control.

Opium is an extremely profitable black industry. Even in Coconut Sea City where the price was very low and opium was rampant, a pound of opium balls cost thirty silver coins. However, opium balls collected from the fields cost less than three silver coins each.

A question naturally arises: who made all the money from the opium business?
Lawless pirates and various private markets.

Profits and risks are directly proportional. There are simply too many islands in the South China Sea, and the Coast Guard patrol has no ability to carefully observe every island. The Coast Guard patrol is more about conducting a comprehensive inspection of ships on the sea rather than a comprehensive observation of the islands.

The coastal defense patrol has done its best to maintain normal shipping routes without large-scale pirates.

The risk of the plantations was not great, but the pirates who transported the opium and the private traders who accepted the opium bore the greatest risk. The private traders who accepted the opium had to sell it, and as long as they sold it in bulk, they might be targeted.

Therefore, all the profits were earned by these pirates and illegal merchants in the private market.

"The world is bustling with people all because of profit. The world is bustling with people all because of profit." After reading the latest travelogue of Southeast Asia, Zhu Yijun could only shake his head continuously. The world is bustling with people all because of profit.

According to Lin Fucheng's observation, the purpose of black business is to make money.

It's all smuggling. Pirates who smuggle opium have to risk being beheaded, but they don't earn as much as those who smuggle coffee, tea, and raw silk.

Lin Fucheng conducted in-depth research on the drug dealers imprisoned in Coconut Sea City and finally found the answer. It was not the turn of these pirates to do legitimate business at all, so they could only do illegal business.

As far as the tea business is concerned, even the Songjiang Ocean Trading Company cannot get involved. The Ningbo and Yuegang Ocean Trading Companies have already monopolized all the tea business.

What smuggling has to circumvent is not only the inspection by the imperial court, but also the monopoly of these wealthy families. For the smuggling business of white goods, the taxes collected by the imperial court are nothing at all. These business companies and merchant gangs are the most difficult to deal with.

It's not even a question of profit, but a threshold. If you inadvertently violate the taboos of a certain industry, you won't even be able to do business and will only become a pirate.

Even when it comes to smuggling contraband, pirates cannot avoid these powerful and wealthy families, because the private markets are run by them. The ships, sailors, and even long and short weapons, weapons, and gunpowder you want are all available in these private markets. There is really no way to avoid them.

Moreover, opium plantations cannot be transformed. Once you transform them, you have to find ways to satisfy the labor of the drug-sucking insects you raise. The price is extremely expensive, but abandoning these laborers and buying a batch of Japanese or foreign slaves is not cheap either.

Moreover, plantation owners could easily become addicted to opium, either out of curiosity or for social reasons, and once they got addicted, they could not get rid of it.

This is a road of no return. Once you embark on it, there is no turning back. No matter who you are, it is a nightmare that you will never be able to escape from in your lifetime.

The biggest wish in life for these drug dealers was to retire from the underworld, but basically none of them could have a good ending. They were either killed by the imperial court or by other pirates.

When Lin Fucheng was found, he had already led the pirates within a 300-mile radius to destroy the opium fields and plant more crops. Lin Fucheng, who knew a little bit about everything, was highly respected by the pirates. Almost no educated people would help them plan how to survive.

Lin Fucheng's travel notes suddenly changed the topic and focused back on Coconut Sea City, talking about the process of the formation of the drug street in Coconut Sea City.

Because of the vertical divisions or communities that are united by identity or ethnicity, drug enforcement becomes very difficult. The farther away from the Ming Dynasty, the more difficult it is to enforce drug control. This is closely related to the patrols of the navy fleet.

During the long struggle, each Han town and city has formed a complete set of management methods for drug addicts and drug dealers.

On the other side of the Sunda Strait from Coconut Sea City, there is a place called Banda City. It is also a port where no Ming navy is stationed. Although it is under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Office of Old Port, because the Governor's Office lacks scholars, the Governor's Office of Old Port did not even send officials to the less important Banda City.

The drug addicts and drug dealers here are completely mixed together. It is impossible to catch them all, and even if they are caught, they may not be convicted, because there is no government office here. Only the chiefs of several local tribes take turns to be the dealer.

If you kill my people today, I will be the banker and kill your people tomorrow. That’s why there will be no arrests, no sentencing, no executions, and no one will go to fight drug trafficking.

However, the violence caused by the rampant opium addiction is also a problem that these chiefs must face.

In just a few years, the local chiefs formed a tacit understanding, which was to concentrate all the drug dealers in Banda City in one or two blocks. In this drug street, no opium business would be regulated, and they would even appoint officials similar to supervisors to maintain fair transactions.

But the drug addicts and drug dealers in this neighborhood can leave the city, but within the city, they cannot leave these two streets.

In this way, the security in Banda City seems to have improved a lot. All it takes is a plague, and these drug addicts and drug dealers will die of the disease.

Due to its latitude, Banda City has no four seasons, only summer, and is a severely affected area by malaria outbreaks. Malaria itself is very deadly. These poisonous insects have very poor health and quinine is extremely expensive, which results in the poisonous insects basically not surviving more than five years.

Coconut Sea City also found inspiration from the poison streets in Banda City. Soon, all the Han towns and cities adopted a similar method, allowing these poisonous insects to concentrate in these poison streets and let them fend for themselves.

This is the significance of the court's anti-drug campaign. Drug addicts and drug dealers will die on their own. Various epidemics and poor neighborhood environments will more easily take away drug addicts in poor health.

The profits from poppy cultivation are not high to begin with, and gradually the entire Nanyang industry will transform into a legitimate business.

It is called a block, but in fact it is just two lanes and three rows of townhouses. There is not even any road, and it becomes quite muddy when it rains.

As long as we vigorously crack down on drug abuse, we can curb the expansion of opium and reduce the number of drug addicts to no more than 5% of the local population.

Luzon and Old Port have accumulated a wealth of experience in drug control.

According to Lin Fucheng's visits to Luzon and Old Port, as long as the number of drug addicts and drug dealers is reduced to less than 1% of the total population of the region, opium will completely disappear in the region within five to ten years.

If the number of people addicted to drugs is between 1% and 5%, the spread of opium will remain within a relatively controllable range; once it exceeds 5%, the spread of opium will be unstoppable and will grow rapidly, exceeding everyone's imagination.

Another important significance of drug control is to shape consensus and transform the vertically cut Nanyang into the horizontal cut that is more familiar to the Ming Dynasty, that is, the king's rule.

Zhu Yijun finished reading Lin Fucheng's Travels to Nanyang and was sure that Lin Fucheng had really done a good job of researching the economy and life at the grassroots level in Nanyang. Zhu Yijun took the Travels to Nanyang and read the last paragraph:
"The rich live in luxurious mansions, wearing fine clothes and feasting on fine banquets; the poor live in shabby alleys, barely making ends meet. Inside the mansions of the rich, music and music play all night long; in the huts of the poor, the cries of hunger are heard. Although the sky and earth share the same foundation, our fates are different; the sun and the moon shine together, but the cold and warmth are different."

“The rich do not know the suffering of the poor, and the poor cannot see the glory of the rich.”

"Golden waves and silver waves cannot cover up the stench of opium; coconut breeze and banana rain cannot dispel the poisonous miasma and cold. The rich and powerful young men, in their laughter and talk, have seized all the profits of the sea; the skinny people, in their gasping breath, are prisoners of the opium fields."

"Alas! Within the same city, there are two distinct worlds, as different as heaven and earth. How can we say that we share the same light and the same dust?"

Zhu Yijun liked Lin Fucheng's articles very much. None of his articles took the stand on the side of the meat-eaters such as elected officials, powerful and wealthy people, local celebrities and gentry, and wealthy businessmen. He always looked at issues from the perspective of the poor and laboring people.

Lin Fucheng had problems with his class identity. He was an elected official and a fifth-rank social studies doctor, but for various reasons, he still felt that he was a poor laborer.

The main reason was that the Renhe and Xia families had framed him and prevented him from taking the imperial examinations. Lin Fucheng naturally had no good feelings towards these meat-eaters. Now that he had the emperor's protection, he cared even less about the world's evaluation of him.

Feng Bao was also deeply moved when he saw the second article of the Nanyang Travel Notes. He said, "Your Majesty, there are so many literary masters in the Ming Dynasty. During the years when Lin Fucheng went to Nanyang, none of them wrote a single amazing article. It was not until Lin Fucheng came back that the literary world of the Ming Dynasty could be said to have something to look forward to."

"Is it because Lin Fucheng is so great? Not entirely. As the old saying goes, there is no first in literature and no second in martial arts. Whether the article is good or bad, everyone has their own merits. The reason why Lin Fucheng's article is amazing is that he is willing to take a look, walk around, and ask questions down to earth."

"Facts speak louder than words after all."

Before Lin Fucheng returned to the Ming Dynasty, he had already thrown out "Xiaobo Liqushu" and "Five Pivots on the Rise and Fall of Craftsmen", as well as the first chapter of his travels in Southeast Asia, about the reasons why the barbarians could not be educated. This immediately updated the second chapter about the dangerous drug threat in Southeast Asia, and listed enough examples to support his point of view.

Even if some meat-eaters don't like Lin Fucheng sitting on the side of Wanmin, they still have to see what Lin Fucheng said. After all, if they want to do business in Nanyang, they have to know these things.

Lin Fucheng is not the leader in the literary world, but this title is no longer important to him.

"In the future, everyone will talk about Lin Fucheng's generosity." Zhu Yijun wrote in red on the second travelogue of Nanyang with a smile on his face, indicating that Feng Bao should archive it, as they would be buried with him in the mausoleum in the future.

The visible military boots and the invisible big hands, these invisible big hands can be called Lin Fucheng's big hands.

Lin Fucheng is still the leader of the liberals, but as a liberal, he always launches fierce attacks on absolute liberals. Heretics are indeed more hateful than pagans.

Lin Fucheng hated these absolute liberals, these idiots, who had alienated the definition of freedom and turned it from a positive word into a negative one.

Between absolute freedom for a minority and relative and limited freedom for the majority, Lin Fucheng firmly chose the latter.

The important reason why Lin Fucheng scoffed at absolute freedom was that he had actually met the supreme Emperor of the Ming Dynasty many times, which was a living example.

Your Majesty has the capital army in the left hand and the navy in the right hand, the theory of contradiction in the left hand and the theory of class in the right hand. You have many brave generals under your command and an Imperial Academy of Gewu, which controls the financial resources of the world. However, Your Majesty does not live a free life. On the contrary, most of the time, Your Majesty is busy in the big mill in the capital.

Even Your Majesty, a wise and holy ruler who holds the greatest power in the world, cannot do whatever he wants. How can absolute freedom be achieved?

Whether it is an ideal country or the other side, the most important thing to deceive people is to let them see hope!
The idea of ​​absolute freedom is impossible to achieve, and there is no way to achieve it. The theory fails to fool people, but instead discredits the word freedom.

"The Minister of War Zeng Shengwu requested the order to establish the Nanyang Navy, to transfer 60,000 elite soldiers from the Songjiang Navy, and to recruit an additional 20,000 soldiers from Guangzhou and other places. In this way, the total size of the Ming Navy will be 150,000." Zhu Yijun hesitated as he looked at the memorial in front of him.

Expand the military.

The navy was divided into two, the Songjiang Navy and the Nanyang Navy, and the headquarters of both navies were the Sanduao Naval Port.

There are many reasons for doing this. The first one is that the Songjiang Navy, with a size of 130,000 people, is too large. In the past, it was used to prepare for the destruction of the Japanese pirates, that is, to prepare for the destruction of the Japanese pirates.

Now that Japan has weakened to the point where it no longer needs such a large-scale defense, transferring 60,000 of them south also represents the shift of Ming Dynasty's strategic focus from attacking Japan to managing Southeast Asia.

Moreover, as the development of Nanyang progressed, there were more and more Han Chinese in Nanyang, and the situation became complicated. Not all Han Chinese were good people, and there were more and more desperate pirates. In order to cope with the new situation of development in Nanyang, such adjustments were made.

There is actually another issue involved here, that is, the grand strategy of developing both land and sea. The development of land will naturally not stop. Whether it is the adventure teams in the Western Regions or the Xianbei grasslands, the Ming Dynasty will not stop.

However, from the cabinet to the six ministries, and from the six ministries to local officials, they all believed that the ocean was the key. This can be seen from the fact that the Beijing camp had 100,000 elite soldiers and the navy was going to expand to a size of 150,000.

The development of land must face an old problem, that is, the cost outweighs the gain.

"Judging from the expansion of the navy this time, my plan to reopen the Western Regions has been a temporary failure." Zhu Yijun looked at the memorial submitted by the Ministry of War and felt somewhat helpless. The right time, place and people all made the issue of reopening the Western Regions fraught with difficulties.

The Emperor said that the Western Regions should be reopened. The court officials all agreed that Your Majesty was right. But when it came to implementation, the Emperor was faced with all kinds of difficulties that could not be solved in the short term. I hope Your Majesty could be more patient.

This is also the bureaucrats' secret weapon: procrastination. When they encounter a policy from their superiors that is difficult to implement, they delay it for a while until everyone is exhausted and no one mentions it again.

"Your Majesty, the time is not right." Feng Bao said in a low voice.

The meaning of "not having the right time" is very clear. The small glacier climate, coldness and drought are the biggest difficulties in reopening the Western Regions. Man can conquer nature, but he must also go with the flow.

"I can approve the Nanyang Navy, and even the Beijing-Guangzhou Highway, but I will never stop reopening the Western Regions."

"I can't do it now, but I will do it in ten, twenty, or fifty years." Zhu Yijun finally wrote his comments on Zeng Shengwu's memorial.

The Beijing-Guangzhou Highway runs from Beiya to Guangzhou Prefecture, a total of 7500 miles. Based on the cost of 3300 silver coins per mile, a total investment of million silver coins would be required, with a construction period of ten years. In addition, an additional million silver coins would be required as a redundancy to prevent various accidents.

The entire highway was divided into two sections. One section went from Beiya to Kaifeng Prefecture and Zhengzhou, and then to Wuchang Prefecture. The other section went from Wuchang Prefecture south to Changsha, passing Hengyang to Guangzhou. The reason why it was divided into two sections was because of the obstruction of the Yangtze River and it was not directly passable.

The Beijing-Guangzhou Highway, which the Ministry of Works had been dreaming of for nine years, was finally approved.

In the ninth year of Wanli, the necessity of the Beijing-Guangzhou Highway had been fully demonstrated at the proposal of the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi. In the end, the emperor chose the Longkai Highway over the Beijing-Guangzhou Highway.

The reason is simple: Shaanxi, Gansu and Suiyuan are too poor. If a highway is not built across the area, more people will die of starvation, poverty and hardship.

Zhu Yijun distributed 35 million silver coins to Shaanxi, Gansu, Suiyuan and Henan in order to make these places have silver, and goods would naturally flow to these places.

There was a lot of opposition at the time, but because the funds came from the imperial treasury, the ministers were ultimately unable to object. Under the leadership of Wang Chonggu, the Henan Engineering Corps began construction. It has been eight years since then, and the entire line is still not completed.

Naturally, some powerful and wealthy people in Jiangnan felt that it was a sin for the emperor to take their money and give it to the poor. Shaanxi, Gansu and Suiyuan were too poor, so they should be left to die of poverty, starvation and distress. If they didn't want to die, wouldn't they just migrate themselves?
Why did the emperor and the court use taxes to spend money on these places?
It was probably because of this kind of thinking that later, the poor coolies in Shaanxi, Gansu and Sui areas actually broke into the Northern Yamen and destroyed the Ming Dynasty, and then the whole world was destroyed.

The late Ming Dynasty and the Southern Ming Dynasty have been verified by history. This kind of thing where both the good and the bad are destroyed has happened more than once in history.

These people don't pay any attention to the emperor's explanation of the policy. All they talk about is evil and transfer payments.

The true meaning of the term "transfer payments to balance regional development imbalances" has been alienated, and this alienation is a deconstruction of the consensus on great unification.

Zhu Yijun once explained what a unified national market was, the outflow of talent and mineral resources to coastal areas, and issues such as taxation.

In fact, transfer payments, fiscal balance, or any other term, are meant to allow inland areas such as Shaanxi, Gansu, Suiyuan, Sichuan, and Henan to relax local protectionism, open up their own markets, and contribute their own talents and minerals.

Otherwise, setting up checkpoints in these local government offices will only result in a mess.

Just taking the coal-silver exchange that had just been established in the Ming Dynasty as an example, the court could have transferred the funds to Shanxi without being criticized, but the price of coal, an energy source, could have increased from six coins per catty to two hundred coins per catty.

In this way, the South will be without coal, the North will be without goods, and the mechanical workshops will no longer need to be run. It would be the end of us all just sticking to Confucian etiquette.

This kind of public opinion has harmed the Ming Dynasty once, and Emperor Xiaozong believed it at the beginning.

The army guards the border, the people provide supplies, and the people live in the middle of it with salt, making it the hub, so it is called Kaizhong. The Kaizhong policy was the national policy set after the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

In the fifth year of the Hongzhi reign, the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, Ye Qi, submitted a memorial to change the Kaizhong Law to the Zhese Law. The Kaizhong Law was completely ruined, and no one settled in the border areas to farm anymore, and the soldiers could not even get enough food to eat.

Since then, during the reigns of Zhengde, Jiajing, Longqing and Wanli, there were attempts to restore the Sino-Japanese policy, but all ended in failure. The Ming Dynasty's ability to control its borders immediately weakened.

In the early years of the Wanli period, under Wang Guoguang's policy of replacing salt with silver and military pay in kind, the problem of grain reserves in the border areas gradually improved. "Restoring the original nature of salt storage to enrich border reserves" was one of the major achievements of the Wanli Reform in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yijun tried his best to persuade the emperor, and the Ministry of Revenue gave detailed explanations and interpreted the policy several times in the official bulletin, but the public opinion was still rampant, leaving Zhu Yijun helpless.

Local protectionism was rampant, which was a huge obstacle to the overall development of the Ming Dynasty.

Later, Zhu Yijun no longer gave excessive and repeated explanations. His internal decisions were rarely influenced by public opinion. He would just explain them in the official newspaper. If people wanted to hear it, they would listen. If they didn't want to hear it, he had no better solution.

"Opening up the sea and reopening the Western Regions is a strategy that is carried out simultaneously on land and sea, just like two feet walking side by side, neither of which can be disregarded. Military affairs, political affairs, finances, and culture and education all depend on this. Although I have approved the request of the Nanyang Navy, the matter of the Western Regions must not be abandoned. If it is not accomplished in ten years, then it will be accomplished in twenty years; if it is not accomplished in twenty years, then it will be accomplished in fifty years!"

"The country is unified, and the sun and the moon shine together."

Zhu Yijun reiterated his position in the memorial. At present, the productivity of the Ming Dynasty and its ability to expand into the Western Regions were weak. He could wait, but he would not give up halfway.

(End of this chapter)