Datang Nongsheng

Chapter 516 Currency Management
Li Shimin thought that the convenient road would allow him to go to Shanyang, but he never thought about what it would be like when such a road network was rolled out across the country. Therefore, it is necessary for Sun Xiangfu to remind him that road construction is a matter of It was quite a waste of money. The Wang family spent 500 million yuan to build a road, but there are still ten roads, a hundred roads, waiting for the court to spend money to repair it!
At present, the most urgent need to build is the road from Luoyang to Shannan Road. Once this road is completed, the output of the entire Shannan Road will go to Luoyang, Guanzhong, or the goods in Guanzhong will go to Shannan and flow to the whole country by water. The Yangtze River Basin is much faster and more convenient. Using a land route of about a thousand miles and saving thousands of miles of waterway, its significance is equivalent to quickly connecting Zhengzhou, the railway hub of later generations, and Wuhan, the waterway hub.

This kind of large expenditure of several million guan can not be launched by the imperial court at the same time. Therefore, after Sun Xiangfu cited the example of this road, Li Shimin suddenly felt that after he conquered the surrounding Siyi, there are still many Things have to be done, and if you want to do these things, the court's finances and taxes are not very generous!
Li Shimin immediately gained a lot of confidence in the country's overall political development after Sun Xiangfu's several suggestions, and asked again, "Just now I said that I want to speed up the construction of education, but Zhengming said that I will be under great pressure. Is there any connection?"

Sun Xiangfu spread his hands and replied, "Your Majesty, labor force! You need to employ people to do this, and you need to employ people to do that. Once free education is implemented, then there will inevitably be more labor forces who will enter the academy to study. Let us Datang, how many land farmers are left? Without food and the output of various crops, everything will not be able to be carried out."

In any case, the Tang Dynasty that farmed is the strongest Tang Dynasty in the world. Due to the generally low productivity in this era, only the Han people in the Central Plains can rely on farming to solve their own food and clothing problems. The other surrounding barbarians just have No matter how vast the land is and how well-developed the resources are, the problem of food has always troubled them.

Why did the Turks keep going south?Why did the Tibetans insist on coming down to rob?Why did Goguryeo always want to snatch the land of the Central Plains?
The ambition of the rulers should only be a minority. The fundamental problem is that their output cannot support themselves, and life is too hard.

Now, most of these places are under the rule of the Tang Dynasty. Xue Yantuo, like Xue Yantuo, has to get more than hundreds of thousands of stones of grain from Shanyang every year. Goguryeo is a big cave with millions of stones. , Tuyuhun, the various ministries of the party, and the land of Yunnan are all big holes, and the population growth within the Tang Dynasty, don't doubt the ability of this nation to reproduce. As long as there is no war and the economy is good, they can all have children In the future, the consumption of food will increase significantly, but the number of people farming will decrease significantly. This social problem was only considered by Sun Xiangfu before, and he talked about it with Empress Changsun. Now, he has to talk to Li Shimin They also said it again.

After Sun Xiangfu explained this question to them in detail, Li Shimin, Fang Xuanling and others were stunned. It turned out that after the country of Datang became bigger, the situation became much more complicated, and they wanted to manage it well. , already need to stand at a higher height.

Feeding a population of more than 1000 million is completely different from feeding a population of more than 3000 million. This requires a two-to-three-fold increase in productivity to solve it. Moreover, it is even more difficult to make rapid progress in all aspects while suddenly feeding so many people. It's difficult, so Sun Xiangfu finally said, "Your Majesty, please go to Shannan Road next year to conduct new crop research to meet the new needs of our Tang Dynasty in agriculture."

"Go to Shannan Road to research new crops?"

"Yes, several embankments have been built around the Dongting Lake area of ​​Shannan Road this year. This kind of embankment is most suitable for growing rice. I plan to conduct research on rice planting so that its yield will be greatly improved like wheat. In this way, We can feed more people with less manpower.”

"Are you sure?"

"There are still some."

"So, next year, I will transfer you to the post of chief manager of Shannan Road. It happens that you will take care of all the road construction and farming there."

"The minister obeys the order."

In fact, at this point, Sun Xiangfu has already said what he wanted to say. However, Li Shimin has no intention of letting him go. This year is coming to an end. Next year, the court will have two major events. The first is the World's No. [-] Sports Conference Held in Dingxiang, this will be an unprecedented grand event. Moreover, by the second half of next year, the five county-level cities of the Anbei Metropolitan Protectorate will basically be completed. It is time to cancel the Anbei Metropolitan Protectorate .

The second big event is the second imperial examination to be held by Datang. It is the third year since Datang promoted education to the county level. The number of students from all over the country should be more than three years ago Many, this is related to the advancement of the entire construction of officials in Datang in the future, and it is also the top priority.

On these two matters, Li Shimin asked them a lot of opinions, and also raised a lot of his own demands. It wasn't until late at night that the alcohol on his body was gone, and he let Sun Xiangfu and others go back to the house.

Yu Xiu'er was very enthusiastic tonight. Even though it was late at night, she didn't mean to let Sun Xiangfu take a rest immediately. Sun Xiangfu knew that the matter of having a baby was put on her agenda again. He was so young that he was mixed up to the point of a family , The number of sons is not as many as Enyin's titles. It is too shameful for the emperor to confer titles on unborn children. It is her dereliction of duty as the mistress!
So, when Sun Xiangfu got up the next day, he wanted to write a letter to Zhang Gongjin in Pyongyang, asking him to help collect wild ginseng, tiger penis and deer penis and other Northeast specialties to replenish himself.

Closer to home, the purpose of his letter to Zhang Gongjin is to let them closely monitor the Wa Kingdom. If there is a chance, they will engage him. It is best to take the opportunity to take down the Wa Kingdom. The Tang Dynasty is short of labor!It just so happens that the Wa country has a population of several 10, so it's not for nothing!
Moreover, he also wrote to Li Ji, the general manager of Ningchuan Road, to provide him with some suggestions to help his subordinates go to the plateau, and asked him to find someone to explore slowly. This was after Li Shimin discussed with them last night. The matter brought up is because the Japanese kingdom and Tubo did not send envoys to surrender to the Tang Dynasty before the great court meeting.

Of course, what they don't know is that the Japanese country did send an envoy, but the ship was hijacked shortly after the ship went out to sea. Then, the unlucky Japanese envoy was beheaded and thrown away Feed the fish in the sea.

As for Tubo, after receiving the news of the disastrous defeat of the army in Guanzhong, the young and energetic Songtsan Gampo wished he could go to Chang'an with a knife to avenge his revenge. How could he proclaim himself a minister!Anyway, Datang couldn't beat him, and he needed to send tens of thousands of troops to defend him. He just waited for Datang to waste his troops and food around the plateau, and find him for peace talks when he couldn't hold back. With the remaining tens of thousands of troops going down to the plateau, and robbing some of the population, he can't afford to offend the Tang army, and the people from Tianzhu should be easy to bully!

In fact, from some historical records, we can know that in the early Tang Dynasty, the level of Tianzhu's army was so scumbag. Wang Xuance borrowed thousands of soldiers from Tubo and Nipura alone, and then sent Mojie, one of the four major kingdoms in Tianzhu, to the army. At the same time, it can also be seen that during this period, the population of the Tianzhu area was indeed quite large. A country with tens of thousands of troops had a population of at least hundreds of thousands.

It is also because of these plundered population bases that Tubo and Datang wars frequently mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops. In the famous battle of Dafeichuan, Tubo mobilized 40 troops, almost killing Xue Rengui. completely annihilated.

For Tubo, Sun Xiangfu and Li Shimin are both vigilant enough, because Sun Xiangfu, who has watched many TV dramas in later generations, knows that since the time of Emperor Gaozong, the Tang Dynasty and Tubo have been fighting for more than two centuries. , Even after the Anshi Rebellion, Chang'an was once captured by Tubo, and until the end of the Tang Dynasty, the two countries were defeated together.

For such an opponent, it is natural to study him earlier, and then get rid of him. Without it, Datang will control the Western Regions for more than 200 years, so there will be so many things that will happen later.

Of course, the role that Sun Xiangfu can play is just to suggest the direction to fight against altitude sickness. Some specific things have to be left to Li Ji to explore by himself. Shanyang Medical College will also start to study some Tibetan medicine , See if it can help the army.

After writing the letter, Sun Xiangfu set off for Weinan. After arriving last night, he added one more point, that is, Datang's monetary policy. With Datang's current trade volume, it is time to give the whole world, Make a currency rule, too.

In fact, the highest state of currency is to issue credit-based banknotes. However, this thing was difficult to operate in ancient times. First of all, it is difficult for you to do statistics. There may be a big collapse, and, at the beginning, it was not so easy for him to convince others, so now, he still has to choose the gold, silver and copper standard.

After the gold, silver and copper standard monetary policy is determined, it is necessary to manage it in a standardized manner. At the current market price of Datang, one tael of silver is almost worth ten taels of money, and one tael of gold is almost worth ten taels of money. , mainly copper coins.

After the new standardized management system is established, it will be different. Silver and gold can also be used as currency. However, before using it, you must go through the official mint to smelt and cast them into fixed-quantity coins of consistent purity. Well, privately owned silver and gold of varying purity cannot be circulated in the market.

Sun Xiangfu came to Weinan just to let the smelting workshop here make a set of models for casting coins. Not only gold and silver coins need to be regulated, but also the style of copper coins must be remanufactured, because Sun Xiangfu mentioned a head portrait It was printed on the coins so that everyone who used Tang coins knew what the emperor of the Tang Dynasty looked like. Li Shimin just made up the picture a little bit before nodding in agreement.

In this way, when Tang money begins to circulate in the whole world, who in the world does not know the king?So much political significance!
(End of this chapter)