My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 609 This problem is very complicated

Despite being exhausted, Liu Rong did not consider 'putting aside her work for the time being'.

Liu Rong had actually gotten used to this kind of life.

Every time I encounter a problem, I lose my appetite and sleep for days on end, and my mind is completely blank.

In response to this situation, future generations might say: We need to relax, we need to clear our minds, and we need to balance work and rest.

But when Liu Rong finally sat on the throne of the feudal dynasty, he helplessly discovered that it was simply impossible.

There simply wasn't enough time for feudal emperors to rest, relax, or even clear their heads.

There's a joke about this that's been circulating for generations.

These wealthy businessmen, who are said to have vast industries, enormous assets, and wealth comparable to that of a nation, wake up every morning to find themselves facing hundreds of millions in additional salary expenses and loan interest.

For them, not making money for a day does not mean that the profit or loss is zero, but rather that they have incurred costs of tens of millions.

Therefore, unlike the extravagant lifestyle of big bosses that ordinary people imagine, where they indulge in lavish feasts and debauchery, truly 'successful' tycoons and businessmen spend every day under immense financial or work pressure.

This is what people often say: as soon as you open your eyes, you want to take money out of the world; as soon as you close your eyes, you still want to take money out of the world in your dreams.

If they don't find a way to recoup their losses, the sheer speed at which they're throwing money away is enough to drive anyone crazy.

If later generations of merchants were like this, one can only imagine how Liu Rong, a feudal emperor with some ambition and aspirations, was.

Admittedly, for emperors who lacked ambition, were content with the status quo, and were even willing to accept a 'minor setback', indulging in pleasure was the most appropriate way to live.

But for ambitious emperors—especially Liu Rong, who aspired to guide the future of China for two thousand years through his short, decades-long reign—the mental pressure they faced was absolutely indescribable.

Compared to the wealthy merchants of later generations who spend hundreds of millions every morning upon waking up, Liu Rong certainly didn't have the urgency to "spend a lot of money every day and find a way to earn it back."

But as a time traveler, Liu Rong also had to find things to do as soon as he opened his eyes every morning.

What specifically needs to be done?
What goals will the emperor achieve during his decades-long reign?
Liu Rong had no plan, nor was he capable of one.

Since plans can't keep up with changes, it's better to do your best and do your best than to plan first and then compromise.

Take the population issue, for example.

How should Liu Rong plan his career?

How can it be planned?

Set a target: how much should the population increase and how much land should be developed every few years?
This is simply not realistic.

Population issues have always been a macro-level proposition that can only be guided at the macro level and cannot be intervened at the micro level.

Liu Rong can throw money around and introduce policies to subsidize families who are willing to have children—especially families that have had multiple children;
But we absolutely cannot target a particular farming family and force them to have several children within a few years.

Or he might target a peasant family that already has several children, and then, relying on his imperial status, order them to raise and nurture all their children.

In terms of the level of medical and health care in this era, population growth is by no means a simple matter of 'births equal population growth' and 'deaths equal population decline'.

In this day and age, getting pregnant is one thing, but giving birth safely is another.
It's one thing for a child to live to the age of six without dying, but it's quite another for them to live to the age of twenty, get married, and start a new farming family.

In later generations, a newborn child will be roughly equivalent to a new population.

Even if the newborn is weak and sickly, or even has a serious illness or disability, the medical and health standards of later generations can preserve this new population.

But in this day and age, the ratio between the number of newborns and the increase in population—especially the increase in able-bodied men—is probably three to one, or even four to one.

That is, the Han people's population can only be officially recognized as having increased by one person when four children are born;
Or, in other words, twenty years later, the Han dynasty will have one more taxpayer.

If you're lucky, on average two or even three out of every four children will survive, which would be a baby boom and a population explosion.

If luck is against you, on average, less than one out of every four children will survive, which means population growth will stagnate, and it's not impossible for it to even turn negative.

In later generations, population trends became linear.

If there is growth, it is continuous growth; any changes indicate that the growth is accelerating or slowing down.

Even if it slows down, it will take several years of continuous slowdown before it returns to stagnation or even negative growth.

Even when there is negative growth, the degree of negative growth gradually increases.

Therefore, the population situation in later generations can mostly be represented by an irregular parabola on the timeline.

But in this era, if the population situation is statistically analyzed on an annual basis and displayed on a chart, it would most likely look like an electrocardiogram.

Last year's bumper harvest will give you a growth of more than ten percent this year;

We can fight a war this year, and then immediately show you negative growth next year.

Therefore, in this era, population trends cannot be measured in years, such as saying "it is increasing every year" or "it is decreasing every year".

Instead, we can only say that over the past five or ten years, the overall trend has been one of growth/decline.

Although there were a few exceptional years when the population declined instead of increasing, overall it still increased compared to five or ten years ago...

Under such circumstances, all planning, programs, and hard targets regarding population data are meaningless.

Liu Rong could only do his best to encourage people to have children, share the costs of raising children, and improve medical and health standards to save the lives of more infants and young children.

As for the outcome, all we can do is try our best and leave the rest to fate.

However, although he didn't have any particularly specific plans or goals, as a competent politician—especially one who had traveled from the future and perfectly integrated into this era—Liu Rong still possessed a basic sensitivity to numbers and data. Currently, the Han dynasty's population had only recently exceeded thirty million, and the problem of land annexation had not yet shown any signs of emerging.

At this stage, Chinese civilization can clearly still support a population of this size, and the social atmosphere is relatively harmonious and stable, without too much intense competition and pressure for survival.

As for the future, based on Liu Rong's analysis of data from the past few decades and population data from the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, he made a rough deduction based on both data.

— In about fifteen years, the population of the Han people will reach 36 million, following the original historical trend.

At that time, land annexation will begin to emerge, the survival pressure on the lower classes will intensify, and the good life of the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing will gradually be gone from the lower classes of the Han Dynasty.

Twenty years from now, the baby boomers born in recent years, who have thrived at the tail end of the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing, will have grown up, and the population of the Han people will exceed forty million.

At that time, population annexation and class contradictions will become the main social problems facing the Han people.

After that, population growth will slow down, and more farmers will go bankrupt.

Unless new land is available to accommodate the population and social conflicts are resolved, it will be at least fifty years before the Han population exceeds fifty million.

When the population reaches 50 million, social contradictions will become more acute than ever before, and the lower classes and the landlord class who control the means of production will be in absolute opposition.

At the same time, the means of production will become increasingly concentrated in the hands of landlords, powerful families, and the aristocratic class, and the living space of the lower classes will be gradually compressed.

At least a hundred years from now, the population will continue to grow to around 5,000, nearly 60 million, just as it has in the original history.

Then came the concentrated outbreak of social contradictions, and the Liu Han Dynasty collapsed...

Of course, this is the original historical trajectory of the Han Dynasty, and it does not mean that the Han Dynasty will necessarily follow this 'old path' in Liu Rong's timeline.

But for Liu Rong, this is undoubtedly a negative example, a wrong answer that he can exclude or avoid in advance.

Following the original historical trajectory, Liu Rong could roughly determine the population trend and growth rate of the Han Dynasty without his intervention.

From 15 million at the beginning of the Han Dynasty to 30 million today, the Han Dynasty spent about 60 years.
The number of people who would be between 30 and 40 million would be within the next twenty years, which is the first half of Liu Rong's reign.

Fifty years later, Liu Rong may be old and frail, or he may have already passed away, and the population of the Han Dynasty will exceed fifty million.

Moreover, in the original history, the relationship between the Han people and the population did not depend entirely on the rate of population growth and the rate of land growth, but was also closely related to the outcome and frequency of foreign wars.

During the reign of Emperor Gaozu, the Han and Manchu population totaled only 15 million, with nine out of ten houses empty and the land sparsely populated.

There were unclaimed farmlands everywhere, and Emperor Taizu Gao even directly "granted land"—as long as you pointed to an unclaimed farmland and shouted, "This land belongs to me," the government would dare to issue you a land deed.

The purpose, of course, is to get you involved in agricultural production as soon as possible, to contribute agricultural taxes to the country as early as possible, and to sell surplus grain to supply the army.

Therefore, in that era, the problem facing ordinary people was not that they had no land to cultivate, but that they had no one to cultivate the land.

The able-bodied men either died in the wars at the end of the Qin Dynasty or were dragged to the battlefields of the Chu-Han Contention. The farmers held hundreds of acres of fertile land but were powerless to cultivate it.

Later, when Emperor Taizong Xiaowen ascended the throne, the people of the country—at least the farmers in most areas except for the northern border counties—lived a peaceful life with almost no need for war and little need for corvée labor.

In this process, people's lives have gotten better and better. There is enough land to cultivate and enough labor to farm. The population has also steadily increased under this wonderful social atmosphere.

Even now, under Liu Rong's reign, with a population of 30 million, the government can still guarantee about 20 mu of arable land per person and at least one able-bodied laborer per family.

For the lower classes of this era, survival is still not a problem.

Neither farmland, as a means of production, nor the labor force that produces food from farmland could sustain the majority of the lower classes in this era.

More importantly, since the death of Emperor Gaozu, the Han dynasty had not fought a war for at least forty years in the past fifty years.
Aside from the Lü Clan Rebellion in the year Empress Lü died, which had almost no impact on the lives of the people, and the Rebellion of the Seven States in the three years of Emperor Taizong's reign, which was the year the Xiongnu launched a large-scale invasion of Guanzhong, the wars that affected the lives of the people were the ones that did affect the lives of the people.

In over forty years, there were only three years of war, which is already very good; it was a very peaceful and tranquil environment.

As for the three wars that broke out between Liu Rong and the Xiongnu after he came to power—especially after he ascended the throne—although the frequency was slightly higher, the impact on the common people was still not significant.

Firstly, the Han dynasty did not suffer significant losses in these three wars, and the costs were all borne by Liu Rong himself, coming entirely from the Imperial Treasury, with none of the burden falling on the shoulders of the common people.

If we must talk about the impact of these three wars on ordinary people, it is that they contributed their labor to join the army and fight.

The three wars resulted in no more than 400,000 conscriptions in total. Not to mention the impact, many people tried to get in through connections but still couldn't get into the army!
Soldiers who went to the battlefield and returned alive all earned military merits and received rewards, which were far greater than the profits from farming for a year.

Even those who did not return alive, or did not return unharmed, were all rewarded with a collective military merit and corresponding compensation.

In summary, these three wars were less like "battles" that affected the peaceful lives of people around the world, and more like a grand feast.

A grand feast where the fruits of victory in foreign wars are shared among all people.

In the future, as long as Liu Rong slightly controls the frequency of wars and tries to avoid launching two medium-to-large-scale battles consecutively within three years, the people of the world will still not be affected.

Of course, the premise is that you win—or at least don't lose too badly.

Historically, the Han population slowed down after reaching 36 million in the early years of Emperor Wu of Han's reign—especially after reaching 40 million, the growth rate suddenly deteriorated. The fundamental reason for this was that the living conditions of the lower classes deteriorated rapidly in a short period of time.

Although the foreign wars were won one after another, the costs of the wars were imposed on the people at the bottom of society.

Although the victories during the reigns of Wei and Huo allowed the common people to share in some of the spoils of war, the costs of the war were also passed on to the people, which meant that they were neither rich nor poor – the taxes collected because of the war were returned as rewards for military achievements or welfare.

However, after Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, the continuous setbacks in the Han Dynasty's foreign wars caused the situation to deteriorate rapidly.

The people of the world already bear the high costs of war, and because of the defeat in war, they have to bear the losses of the defeat.

Unable to gain any advantage on the battlefield, and even suffering losses instead, the nobles did not hesitate to turn their anger towards the common people, attempting to make up for their losses from the populace.

Therefore, when Emperor Wu of Han ordered the people to wage war, the people still had to send their able-bodied men to the front lines to fill the gaps, and in the end, they were still exploited by landlords, powerful families, and the aristocratic class...

(End of this chapter)