People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 301 Make a long-term plan

In the following meeting, Zhao Jun talked with everyone about other plans.

For example, the construction of new canals.

In addition to Wu'an, steel plants should be established in other places.

Zhao Jun plans to set up the second steel plant in Nanyang Basin.

The Nanyang Basin is rich in iron ore and coal resources. It is connected to the Hanshui Yangtze River to the south and Henan to the north, and has convenient land transportation.

The most important thing is that there is a river here called Baihe. Although there is no canal directly to Bianliang, if it is water transportation, it goes to Xiangyang in the south. It connects to Sichuan in the west through the Yangtze River, Zhejiang in the east, and Huguang in the south.

In this way, the south will have steel production capacity. If, or if, there is a problem with the Wu'an steel production base on the front line of Hebei, and it is attacked by the Liao people, the south will also have enough steel production capacity to support it.

And after a steel plant is established in Nanyang, steel manufacturing will continue to be laid south. When Guangdong has a steel plant one day in the future, the domestic steel industry will basically be fully developed and blossom in various places.

Moreover, steam engines had already been put into mass production around that time, and the national steel industry blossomed. With the civilian use of steam engines, trains, steamships and even cars could be manufactured.

Therefore, we are starting to lay out the steel industry now in order to wait for rubber to take root in Guangdong, Hainan and other places in a few years, so that the laying of the rubber industry can be completed as early as possible.

Then there were some other trivial matters related to various departments. The meeting lasted from the end of the morning to the end of the afternoon. They talked for about more than an hour. Even many official tasks were not completed. Then the meeting was dismissed to deal with political affairs.

At three quarters to noon, around twelve o'clock, everyone went to eat again.

There is a break at noon, and I will not resume work until three quarters in the afternoon, that is, two o'clock. I will work until about five o'clock and go to the Chongzheng Hall over Zhao Zhen for a meeting. It is basically a one-day process.

Some prime ministers simply settled the matter in the Constitutional Yuan, asking the imperial kitchen to deliver some food, and continued working hard, or took a rest in the room behind the Constitutional Yuan.

Some want to go home for lunch, while others simply go to restaurants outside. For example, Zhao Jun especially likes to eat at Fanlou recently.

The reason is that since the ocean-going fleet brought back chili peppers in August of the previous year, the chili peppers were grown in large quantities by the Ministry of Agriculture in Huangzhuang outside the city as a cooking condiment, and then began to be supplied to some restaurants in the city.

It's a pity that this thing is not to the taste of northerners, and the people of Kaifeng don't like it very much.

But Zhao Jun is from Hunan and has long been unaccustomed to Song Dynasty food. Now that chili peppers appear, he cannot let go.

It's just that he had just left the Constitutional Yuan and was about to go to Fanlou to have a delicious meal. Lao Fan followed him sneakily like a follower.

"what?"

It is mid-January of the lunar calendar, tomorrow is the Lantern Festival, and the weather is still very cold.

Although it wasn't snowing outside, the cold wind was blowing. Lao Fan was wearing a large cotton-padded jacket with his hands in his sleeves, looking quite wretched.

Zhao Jun looked at him warily and said, "You are following me sneakily and want to do bad things, right?"

Lao Fan wiped the frozen snot and grinned, showing his big yellow teeth - there were toothbrushes in the Song Dynasty, but there was no toothpaste. He could only brush with salt or a little soapy water, which was not particularly effective.

He said with a smile: "I'll have a meal with you."

"Something's wrong."

Fan Zhongyan's ancestral home is in Guanzhong, his registered residence is in Jiangsu, and he grew up in Shandong. There is no place related to eating spicy food. Zhao Jun guessed what he was thinking and said with a smile: "Want to come to me to ask about the next new policy?"

"Yeah, anyway, it's me who is implementing the New Deal. I'm in the front and taking the blame. I should know some inside information."

Fan Zhongyan did not hide anything and spoke frankly.

Every time they implemented a new policy before, they actually discussed it in private, hiding it from Zhao Zhen, Lu Yijian and others, and only announced it after the formula was determined.

This is done to prevent the New Deal from encountering resistance to the reform direction before the New Deal has even begun.

But even so, there are many difficulties.

In the past few years, for the New Deal, Zhao Jun first wooed middle- and lower-level officials, and then gave profits to interest groups. Finally, he eliminated many opposition officials and generals, and was even assassinated. It can be said that there is constant resistance.

But fortunately, everyone got through it. Although there were conflicts between Lu Yijian, Wang Zeng and other members of the Constitutional Yuan, in the end everyone successfully resolved many things and stood together again.

It's just that for things like reform, a plan must be made first, and the interests of many parties must be taken into account, so it's better to hide it from them first. Unexpectedly, Lao Fan followed him secretly.

"alright."

Zhao Jun didn't think about the need to hide it from Lao Fan. He was a reformist general and he had to take the blame for himself, so he said, "Let's talk over dinner later."

The two people left the palace together. There was a carriage to pick them up outside the palace, and the carriage driver was waiting like a driver every day.

After leaving the Donghua Gate, people were coming and going on the bustling streets. The numerous signboards were swaying in the wind. Countless scholars, tourists, passers-by, and traders were walking freely among them, creating a scene of Renzong's prosperous age.

In fact, in the past two years, hundreds of officials have praised that under Zhao Zhen's administration, there was a scene of the Tang Dynasty's Zhenguan and Kaiyuan era.

The people lived and worked in peace and contentment, had enough food and clothing, and the order was stable. Uprisings in various places were almost extinct. Except for the high housing prices in Kaifeng, other food prices, commodity prices and local housing prices are very low.

Ordinary migrant workers can work in Bianliang for a few years and save dozens of dollars, which is more than enough to buy some real estate and land in their hometown.

Even the number of beggars was much smaller, because the imperial court established welfare institutions such as Salesian Bureau, Orphanage Home, Futian Yuan, and Residential Home to specifically accommodate these beggars and refugees.

If he is the kind of beggar who has hands and feet and is lazy to eat, the court will check his household registration to see if he has committed any crime.

If there is no crime, throw him directly into the Xiang army.

If there are criminals who have fled after committing a crime, they will be punished according to the degree of their guilt.

For serious crimes, the package includes imprisonment, exile and even beheading. If the crime is small, it is better to be thrown into the army and reformed.

Those beggars who have lost their hands and feet and are really unable to work are placed in these welfare institutions. Those who can do a little work will be arranged to do some work, and those who really can't work will be supported by the court.

Therefore, beggars on the streets are almost extinct.

In addition, local taxes and light corvee reductions have reduced the survival pressure of the people at the bottom and the poor. The entire social environment has become more active and is no longer as lifeless as before.

Zhao Jun's carriage was quite recognizable. Under the protection of hundreds of guards, it passed through Mahang Street and entered the Fan Tower.

Two high-ranking prime ministers came to have dinner, so Fan Lou naturally prepared the best private room.

Under the personal reception of Fan Lou boss, Zhao Jun and Fan Zhongyan entered the private room. The private room is like a large attic. It not only has a living room, an inner room, but also a balcony. They can directly see the scenery of Bianliang on the third floor. .

Through the balcony, Lao Fan saw countless scholars coming and going in the street below, and he couldn't help but sigh: "Spring is coming soon again, it's really nostalgic."

"Miss you when you were a scholar?"

"No, I miss the time when I did the roll call outside Donghua Gate."

"Sure enough, people will only miss their most prosperous times, not the times of suffering."

Zhao Jun rolled his eyes and sat on the round table.

The food was served almost as soon as he went upstairs, because as soon as he left the palace, someone would come to Fan Tower to report the news.

Distinguished guests must not wait for their food to be served, so often the food is already served when they sit down.

There are chili stir-fried pork, spicy chicken, stir-fried beef, tofu stir-fried pork and so on.

In particular, he likes to eat fried pork with chili pepper and stir-fried pork with tofu. Chef Fan Lou learns these dishes every day, copying the taste of his hometown.

After the food was served, all the descendants evacuated. There were guards on the third floor and the third floor in the private room, but there were only two people in the room, Zhao Jun and Fan Zhongyan.

Lao Fan also came over from the balcony and sat down. Zhao Jun looked at the Hunan dishes on the table and said with a smile while holding chopsticks: "The peppers in our later generations have been cultivated and improved in various ways, and there are many types. The ones we bring back now are just bad." Some, mostly regular green and red peppers, but they’re okay.”

Green peppers were originally produced in the Americas. They were brought to Mexico and North America by the Indians very early on. Later, they evolved from red to green, and their spiciness became much lighter. Fortunately, there are red peppers in it, otherwise Zhao Jun would be a little unhappy.

Fan Zhongyan watched Zhao Jun stuff the green pepper into his mouth and eat it directly. He could unconsciously feel a hot touch on his body, and a drop of sweat fell on his forehead. He raised his chopsticks hesitantly.

"Eat, why don't you eat?"

Zhao Jun pointed to the dishes with chopsticks while chewing: "This spicy chicken is very delicious, why don't you take a few bites?"

"alright."

Lao Fan looked at death as if he were home, picked up a piece and put it in his mouth.

It almost killed him.

Obviously, eating a bite of a local specialty and feeling it is delicious can only appear in a story.

The reality is that for those who can’t eat spicy food, if you take a whole bite, the sourness can make you want to cry.

Anyway, Lao Fan burst into tears. With tears in his eyes, he swallowed the piece of spicy chicken. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, "Let's get down to business first."

"What's your next plan?"

"What's the plan?"

Zhao Jun put down his chopsticks, thought for a moment and said, "It's time to make a long-term plan."

Fan Zhongyan asked curiously: "Elaborate."

"Let's make a five-year plan."

Zhao Jun scooped a bowl of soup for himself and said: "Steam engines need rubber. If everything goes well next year, rubber will come back and be widely planted in Guangzhou, Hainan and other places. And the cinchona tree is very important. There is cinchona frost. The miasma that has existed in Lingnan for thousands of years will be solved."

In ancient times, Lingnan was not suitable for living, so it became a place where prisoners were exiled. The reason is that malaria is rampant, which was called miasma in ancient times.

Although China's native Artemisia annua can provide artemisinin for the treatment of malaria, the problem is that extracting artemisinin does not mean just crushing Artemisia annua and extracting juice. It requires rigorous chemical experiments and a complicated extraction process. First of all, Zhao Jun is not a chemistry major and does not have that ability.

Secondly, even if he has that ability, Da Song does not have the conditions for a laboratory.

On the other hand, cinchona cream is much simpler. The bark of the cinchona tree is dried and then mashed into powder. It has almost no technical content.

Therefore, with the Golden Rooster, there will no longer be any obstacles in the Lingnan regions such as Guangdong, Fujian, and even Taiwan, where miasma is now raging, and it will be no problem for the Han people to travel throughout Southeast Asia.

"Do you want to develop Lingnan?"

Fan Zhongyan asked.

"Moreover, this plan is still quite large and grand. I won't be able to explain it to you for a while."

Zhao Jun took a sip of the soup, then put down the bowl and said: "Let's talk about something simple first. After the rubber flows into our country, the sealing problem of steam engines will be completely solved, and steam engines can be mass-produced. What do you think we should do?"

"Train! Ship!"

Fan Zhongyan cheered up. He had seen western movies, and trains and ships often appeared in western movies. Those things not only made him yearn for it, but also the entire Political Yuan.

"wrong."

Zhao Jun shook his head and said: "It can achieve mass production, but it does not mean that it can be produced immediately. We brought back tens of thousands of kilograms of seeds for corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes and peanuts, but to promote them nationwide, the Ministry of Agriculture will have to plant them on a large scale outside the city. It takes two seasons to produce millions of kilograms of seeds before they can be distributed. Can rubber trees do that?"

"Forehead."

Fan Zhongyan thought about it. Rubber trees are trees, and the growth cycle of trees is much slower than that of crops. It may take several years.

"Even if they get a lot of saplings and even finished trees on the ship, and use soil to plant them on the ship, which shortens the growth cycle, there are still many problems and troubles to solve when transplanting them to the south."

Zhao Jun pointed out the crux of the problem: "Let's not talk about the survival rate. Just say that even if you can survive and produce a lot of seeds, it will take at least several years or even more than ten years before they can be widely planted. So in During this time, we must plan for the first industrial revolution."

"Well, that makes sense."

Lao Fan also understood it, mainly because he didn't know much about rubber trees, so he made a mistake.

Zhao Jun said: "So when the first industrial revolution really begins, it is not just about building a few steel plants, but also improving productivity and production efficiency. I predict that it will take at least ten years for steam engines to become popular, and within these ten years What preparations do we need to make during the year?”

"Tell me about it, you are good at these things."

Fan Zhongyan was too lazy to guess. Anyway, he couldn't think of it with his ability.

"The first is population. The arrival of the industrial age will inevitably require a large number of people to work in factories. Now the productivity and food of the Song Dynasty can feed one to two hundred million people. As long as the planting area of ​​sweet potatoes and other crops continues to expand, to three to four billion people More than enough, so why isn’t our population growing explosively?”

Zhao Jun asked back.

"Do you want to share the same income?"

Fan Zhongyan asked tentatively.

"This is just one of them. Sharing a small family home can indeed stimulate people to have children, but there are also many hidden households."

Zhao Jun said: "In the last census, some hidden households were willing to come out. That was because the court exempted them from taxes and distributed land. But most of the hidden households were still willing to live a black life, which means that many hidden households were actually It’s still being concealed.”

"Well"

Fan Zhongyan nodded thoughtfully.

“Besides that, there is a serious problem of land annexation.”

Zhao Jun continued: "A large amount of land is concentrated in the hands of landlords, and the people are poor and cannot raise more children. Naturally, the population will not explode. Therefore, only by starting from these two aspects, there will be a wave of prosperity in the Song Dynasty in the next few years. The baby boom will coincide with the great development period of the Song Dynasty twenty years later and contribute to national construction."

"The time has finally come."

Fan Zhongyan was a little excited and slapped the table: "Hanlong, tell me what to do."

"It is definitely necessary to have a small share of the land."

Zhao Jun showed a solemn expression, "As for the land annexation issue, I have three solutions."

"Tell me?"

"This"

Fan Zhongyan was shocked and said: "I'm afraid all landowners across the country will rebel."

"Yeah, this one is too radical."

"What about the second one?"

“Article 2 prohibits land sales.”

Zhao Jun continued: "The imperial court was only allowed to repurchase the land, and then local governments began to build roads, canals, canals, and mine minerals. They recruited tenants from the landowners in each county and left them homeless. People can farm.”

Fan Zhongyan frowned and said: "I'm afraid there are a lot of problems inside. All I can think of is that the financial expenditure will definitely explode. Moreover, the tenants are controlled by the landlord through contracts and have no way to leave."

"This kind of large-scale infrastructure construction is definitely going to explode, but haven't we just solved the three redundancy problems? At present, our fiscal revenue is rising steadily, although it has not yet reached the level of more than 100 million yuan per year before tax reduction and exemption, but trade throughput can The volume has skyrocketed and the domestic economy has been greatly stimulated. It is only a matter of time that the annual fiscal revenue exceeds 100 million yuan in the next few years.”

Zhao Jun said with a smile: "After deducting about 30 million guan for a year's military expenditure, nearly 20 million guan for official expenses and miscellaneous expenses, the imperial court still has 30 to 40 million guan left. In addition, various places already have local tax revenue, which is several million guan every year. If we continue to work hard and carry out projects like crazy, we can not only stimulate the economy more, but also draw away the young and strong labor force."

"As for the contract issue."

He touched his chin and said: "The imperial court should promulgate a law to stipulate how much interest is considered usury. Anyone who dares to engage in usury will be imprisoned, exiled, confiscated of property, and beheaded. They will not be allowed to restrict personal freedom and severely crack down on any slavery system. Give Officials in various places issued death orders."

"This is to punish the landlords to death."

Fan Zhongyan was also quite shocked when he heard this combination of punches.

Although they did not explicitly take away their land, they took away the tenants and young people in their hands. There is no one to cultivate the land, and it is useless for them to guard the land. It is deserted, but won't they have to be forced to sell it to the government in the end?

"At least I gave them the power to sell it to the government."

Zhao Jun spread his hands and said: "Actually, there is another trick here, that is, land with title deeds is recognized as owned by landlords and private individuals. In the future, private reclamation of cultivated land is prohibited. The government organizes manpower to build canals, reclaim the land themselves, and then put these The land was leased to tenants as official land, and the same system of anti-slavery and indenture contracts were used."

"Good guy, then the landlord may not even have the power to sell his land to the government."

Fan Zhongyan was even more shocked.

Zhao Jun is black.

The hands are really dark.

If this system continues, landlords across the country will have to shed their skins even if they don't die.

"There's no other way. We have to think of ways to get the land back from these landlords. Besides, I didn't let them suffer. The local governments bought it with real money and financial resources."

Zhao Jun shook his head.

In order to prevent the landlords from rebelling, it would be good if he did not openly rob them. He spent money to take back most of the idle land from the landlords. Then these tenants would become official tenants in the future, and the problem of land annexation could be greatly alleviated.

The main reason why this method can be used is that the Song Dynasty really has money, especially in recent years, foreign trade has been booming, and Japan has millions of taels of silver flowing in every year.

The Liao Kingdom was even more exaggerated.

In order to make firearms, millions of pounds of sulfur were purchased every year. This alone could bring tens of thousands of dollars in tax revenue to the Song Dynasty.

In addition, many trade routes such as the Maritime Silk Road, the Land Silk Road, and the Tea-Horse Road are booming. When conducting medium-amount trade, people have gradually begun to use silver, instead of having to carry several strings or several strings with them as before. Thousands of copper coins went out.

Therefore, Zhao Jun also gave the landlords of the Song Dynasty the last trace of dignity, that is, forcing them to sell their land to local governments at a low price, freeing their tenants, and at least they can exchange for some coins.

otherwise.

If they don't want to show dignity, the imperial court may directly help them show respect.

"What about the last one?"

Fan Zhongyan asked again.

"The last thing is to let nature take its course."

Zhao Jun shrugged and said: "When the industry officially starts, a large number of young people will go to the city to work, leaving the landlords with no one to work. They are forced to either sell their land or transform into factory owners and businessmen. Naturally, the land will slowly decline." Taken back.”

Fan Zhongyan thought for a moment and said, "This seems to be the method you originally mentioned."

"Yes."

Zhao Jun said: "This is also a common method used by the first-mover countries in the early stages of the industrial revolution in later generations. After all, they certainly cannot see the future direction and cannot make correct judgments. And there are definitely die-hards in this method, but it is relatively mild and will not cause Massive opposition. The only drawback is that it takes too long and may not allow the demographic dividend to catch up with the era of great development."

The last method is typical of the British sheep cannibalism incident. After the industrial revolution, wool raw materials were in short supply. As soon as the aristocratic landowners saw the profits, they immediately changed the land to pasture sheep. The result was the enclosure movement, and a large number of farmers lost their land. , were forced to work in cities, which actually promoted industrial growth.

This is the case in the Song Dynasty now. Once the industrial revolution comes, even with the size of the Song Dynasty, a large amount of land will not be converted into pasture. However, the income from working in the city is higher than farming, which will inevitably attract people to the city, leaving no one to farm in the countryside.

As a result, landowners in the Song Dynasty either took the initiative or were forced to sell their fields, introduce machinery, and become capitalists or businessmen, which can be regarded as easing the problem of land annexation to a certain extent.

However, this would take too long and would not eliminate the disadvantages.

Zhao Jun's real purpose is to recover a large amount of private land, so as to avoid building a high-speed railway like India later. Landowners along the way opposed it and it took more than ten years to build it, which seriously hindered the development of the country.

Now that the size of the Song Dynasty is not particularly large, with an area of ​​less than 3 million kilometers and a population of more than one billion, the restructuring will be completed. Then, whether it is building trains or roads, everything will be smooth. .

(End of this chapter)