As far as financial management is concerned, Gao Pragmatic has already proven that he is unparalleled in this dynasty, but this year is no better than in the past because there are so many places to spend money, and all of them are big money. Let's take a look at how much money he will spend this year.
Major items:
First, North Korea is a new vassal, and after eight years of war, it is completely useless. Since the Ming Dynasty has accepted North Korea's annexation, it must prove one thing: North Korea's surrender to the Ming Dynasty is far better than that of the old days.
What does this require? Of course, it requires peace of mind and prosperity for the people.
Restoring the people and promoting industry cannot be achieved by shouting a few slogans and sending a few officials. It requires a large investment of real money. Although Gao Pragmatic had made some plans for North Korea's future industrial development as early as during the war, the specifics
Implementation is also inseparable from money, and any investment will take a certain amount of time to be completed, eventually generating benefits and beginning to have an effect on the positive cycle of social economy.
North Korea currently has several big problems. First of all, all roads have been smashed to pieces, many fields have been abandoned, and some of them have become ownerless lands. The newly appointed governor of North Korea must follow "the way of heaven, and make up for the damage."
insufficient” style to reallocate these fields.
Specifically, it is necessary to grant land to those who live the most difficult life, and even find opportunities to convict the former Korean noble officials and confiscate some land to landless peasants, so as to avoid causing social unrest.
However, redistributing fields will not solve this year's problem. After all, agriculture has a fixed farming and harvesting period, and before that, seeds need to be obtained. Last year, it was so confusing that the seeds were obviously insufficient and needed.
This year it was raised from within the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, the imperial court must first find a way to feed the Korean subjects who will inevitably be short of food this year. However, the disaster in the Ming Dynasty is also serious, and there is no surplus food to help North Korea. In this way, it can only rely on food from southern Xinjiang for emergency relief. Although southern Xinjiang is
There were also floods and wind disasters, but because of the small population, large fields and geographical advantages, the harvest was still good. However, Jinghua was a business group after all, and it could not operate at a loss, so the Ming court also had to spend money to buy grain.
However, the imperial court did not have so much cash. Therefore, under Gao Pragmatic's hint, North Korean governor Zhang George contacted the North Korean governor Gu Yangqian and the North Korean commander-in-chief Qi Jin. The three officers jointly submitted a letter to the court, requesting the court to approve the "transfer" between North Korea and Beijing.
Land for food.”
To put it simply, Jinghua is responsible for supplying sufficient grain, and the grain will be discounted and directly used to buy North Korean land - including but not limited to mines, salt fields, ports, land in the city, etc., but the land will not be sold.
In fact, the rule of not selling land was not a request made by the three major members of North Korea, but was actively requested by Gao Jingjing. This is in line with Gao Jingjing's habit in the Ming Dynasty - basically not buying land. The reason is also very simple: like Jinghua
As a commercial giant, buying land is the most likely to attract attention from the Ming Dynasty and the public, and once there is any public opinion, it is often not a good thing.
Fortunately, Gao Pragmatic has no shortage of domestic land, or he has never been interested in buying land in the Ming Dynasty - farming is indeed the safest business in agricultural society, but in fact, the cost-effectiveness of doing so is extremely low.
An industry that believes that "travelers will only make a fortune out of this if they have lost their minds".
Over the years, Jinghua has purchased very few fields in Daming. The few fields it has purchased are of a "scientific research nature", which is used to test new species, such as drought-tolerant rice, corn, potatoes, etc. Of course, while conducting scientific research,
It didn’t mean that there was no income at all, so later these lands also provided high-quality seeds for the above-mentioned products, which could be considered as recouping some of the money.
With the clause "North Korea will not sell its land", the court's criticism of this memorial can almost be ignored. For most Ming officials, when they have free time, they will still consider the so-called long-term stability of North Korea, such as
There is already insufficient land in North Korea. If a large amount of land is bought by Jinghua, will Jinghua hoard it if there is a shortage of food in North Korea in the future? Even if Jinghua has never done such a thing in the past, what if it happens?
There is no need to worry now. Jinghua does not buy land. It is still only interested in mines, saltworks, ports and urban land as in the past. These are so-called "commercial lands", although the court officials now know more or less about them.
Land is also very profitable, but they also know that in order to make money from this land, it requires upfront investment, and people with insufficient capital cannot do it anyway. Moreover, after completion, they can also pay commercial taxes, which is a win-win situation, and there is nothing wrong with it.
However, North Korea still needs a lot of things that the court can allocate money to do, such as renovating fields, building roads, rebuilding water conservancy, repairing cities, etc. There are places where these lively Jinghua can help - no one knows the skills of Jinghua Infrastructure, but they absolutely
If you don’t work for free, whether you are supplying cement or directly responsible for the project, you will have to collect money.
Even if Gao Pragmatic tries his best to make arrangements, such as asking North Korea to provide work-for-relief services, etc., in the end it will still cost more than 900,000 taels of silver - this is this year, next year and even in the next few years, the amount will also vary.
investment.
Secondly, the country has been severely affected by disasters this year, whether it is locusts, floods, ice disasters, etc., so a lot of money needs to be invested, and Jinghua can only provide some help in food supplies, refugee immigration, etc., and earn at most a certain amount.
It can't be free.
All in all, the imperial court had to spend more than one million taels of silver in this area. This money could hardly generate any income, and could only be regarded as "maintaining stability". To a certain extent, it was wasted.
Thirdly, Shen Yiguan also began to ask for money. This guy was responsible for the preliminary preparations for the Taishan Zen Ceremony, and Zhu Yijun warned him from the beginning in order to avoid the emperor's travel "harming the people along the way" and being scolded.
It is requested that the court pay as much as possible and that no local officials receive guests or offer gifts.
This idea was a good one, and it saved the emperor and the court from being scolded a lot. The scholars were quite appreciative of the emperor and Shen Guanyuan, but Gao Pragmatic was the only one who was in bad luck - it would cost a lot of money.
The most important thing is that the budget for this kind of expenditure fluctuates within a very wide range. If you want the emperor to be satisfied, you can spend millions of taels on it and nothing will happen. If you are reluctant to invest, the imperial chariot will be too shabby when the time comes, which will inevitably cause the emperor to be dissatisfied.
Even though the emperor couldn't blame Gao Pragmatic openly because the idea was his own, he was inevitably unhappy in his heart and felt that it was a lack of pomp and loss of face.
For this kind of thing where it was impossible to have the best of both worlds, Gao Pragmatic had no good solution, so he had to bite the bullet and arrange another 1.5 million taels. Part of it was the expenses of the charioteer and his entourage, the army, and part of it was the allowance for the stations along the way -
—In the past, the inn did not have to entertain such a large team, and there were even royal chariots among them. Therefore, the building needed to be expanded or repaired, and food materials, utensils, etc. also needed to be arranged and purchased.
You must know that after their reception this time, it is unlikely that they will receive a team of this size again in the future, so it is impossible for them to force themselves to pay for the money - remember Gao Pragmatic's "He Yi Road Shu", right? The current post station is "
"Contracting system", it is not easy for the imperial court to force these contractors to tighten their belts to welcome the emperor.
Fourthly, after the Korean War, all meritorious soldiers need to be rewarded, which is also extremely expensive. The Korean War lasted for almost eight years, and even the Li family in Liaodong suffered heavy losses, not to mention the large armies recruited from all over the country.
No need to spend money on losses?
Those who have done meritorious service, those who died in battle, and those who were injured should be compensated for those who deserve to be treated, treated for those who deserve to be treated, and rewarded for those who deserve to be rewarded. Rewards for generals are easy to say, but the Ming Dynasty is used to being stingy in this regard - just like Qi Jiguang back then.
Similarly, after a "big victory", the reward is only "twenty taels of silver". The key is the reward for the soldiers, which is the big one.
The losses of the Japanese army in Korea were not small, and they were much greater than in the original history. More than 80,000 heads were lost on the battlefield alone - which in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty soldiers were all regarded as silver rewards.
[Note: In the original history, after the eight-year war, it is generally believed that the Ming army lost about 30,000 people, the Korean army lost about 300,000 people, and the Japanese army lost about 140,000 people. In this book, it is different because of Gao Pragmatic’s participation: the Ming army’s losses
The total amount remains unchanged, about 30,000; North Korea's losses are about 350,000, including the losses caused by the suppression of the rebellion; Japan's losses are about 200,000, of which up to half were killed in action alone.]
The Ming army always has a "price" for the heads that count for military merit. The heads of the Japanese army are not as expensive as the Mongolians, but they are not cheap either. One head costs ten taels of silver. This means that just for the heads they obtain, they have to pay a high price.
More than 800,000 taels per time.
That's not all. After Gao Pragmatic presided over the restructuring of the Beijing camp and created the Imperial Guard, the Ming army subsequently came up with the concept of "collective merit". Therefore, as long as they win in the battle, they will be credited except those who are punished for their mistakes.
, including special merit, first-class merit, second-class merit to fifth-class merit, a total of six grades.
It is generally difficult to obtain special grades for collective merit on a large scale. For first grade, there are usually fifth and sixth grades. There is no silver to record merit for sixth grade. After the war, a few days of extra meals will be spent. For fifth grade, each person can get half a tael of silver.
——Don’t think it’s just half a tael, you can’t handle a large number of people. For example, if 50,000 troops are used in a battle, a collective of fifth-class meritorious service will have 25,000 taels of silver.
Korea has been fighting for eight years, and there have been dozens of major and small battles. If there is no beautiful victory, then it is not counted as merit. There are more than 20 times of collective merit, ranging in scale. In the end, Gao Pragmatic almost vomited blood, and only collective merit was counted.
The fifth-class meritorious service will cost 750,000 taels.
In short, in the final calculation, the various levels of rewards alone cost more than 2.3 million taels. Gao Yuanfu’s previous statement that he had trouble sleeping and eating seems to be true. If it had been anyone else, this would not be a problem.
It's Ann's problem, maybe I might as well just hang up my hat and go into seclusion - I won't serve you anymore!
Fifth, this comes to the cost of Liu Wei's Western Expedition, the truly fatal battle of throwing coins.
----------
Thank you to the book friend "Book Friends 20230528910_oC" for your monthly ticket support.
PS, 1: This chapter is from yesterday, 1K more updates, no debt. Today’s chapter should be updated in the middle of the night, if I fall asleep, it will be updated tomorrow morning.
PS, 2: In the past two days, I have intensively studied various ethnic groups in northern Myanmar, including their formation history, current situation, this chaos, etc. However, it is not convenient to discuss the current situation, so I will not say more.
So I am interested, and everyone can guess, after all, this book also involves the war in Myanmar... By the way, the area in northern Myanmar really belonged to China at the same time as this book and history.
