After resting for several days, Yunxi officially recovered on June 25th, began to go to court and officially took over this great empire, one of the best in the world.
The day before, Yunxi evaluated the current Ming Empire, using his own customary method.
The latest census shows that in the 26th year of Hongwu's reign, there were 10,652,870 households and 60,545,820 people in the Ming Dynasty.
The total number of fields in the country is 8,577,623 hectares. In the 30 years of Hongwu's taxation, more than 29.4 million shi of grain and various things exceeded 5 million guan of money.
After Yunxi checked the "History of the Song Dynasty", he found that there was still a big gap between the Ming Dynasty and the Song Dynasty. During the Tianxi Year of the Song Dynasty (1017-1021 AD), the total farmland of the Song Dynasty was more than 30 million hectares, and taxes totaled 150.85 million yuan.
Although a hectare of land in the Ming Dynasty was larger than that in the Song Dynasty, it was still much less than theirs. As for the tax, the difference was more than four times.
Of course, this is related to the fact that there are still few people in the Ming Dynasty. At the end of the Song Dynasty, Shenzong (reigned from 1048 to 1085 AD), there were 16,569,874 households in the country, which was 1.6 times that of the Ming Dynasty.
From the perspective of social composition, the Ming Dynasty is now dominated by a large number of owner-peasants, mixed with a small number of large landowners like the Chang family. At this time, there was no later bureaucratic landowner class.
After Yunxi's analysis, he believed that the reasons why there was no big bureaucratic landowner class were: First, Lao Zhu had stricter management of the bureaucratic class, so that they did not dare to privately deprive the people of their land through various methods.
Second, after sharing the land with the officials and gentry, it became unprofitable to donate the land to the officials and other families, so the common people were unwilling to do such a thing.
Third, Yunxi believes that the most important reason now is that there are too few people now! The territory of the Ming Dynasty is still larger than that of the Song Dynasty, but the population is only 60 million.
Now in the Ming Dynasty, a lot of land that was cultivated during the Song Dynasty is in a state of waste because there are not enough people. With fewer people and more land, labor is more important than the fields. When a large number of fields are deserted, who will rent other people's land?
For the rulers of ordinary agricultural societies, this is a great thing.
However, for Yunxi who wanted to develop overseas, the population was too small, which meant that there were not many people to fill the vast land overseas.
Of course, Yunxi wanted to develop sea power and seize the land of primitive people who were still in a primitive state and difficult to define in a cultural sense.
Yunxi believed that not giving priority to the development of sea power, but staying on the mainland and chewing on the Mongolian grasslands, those hard bones in Central Asia was a very stupid behavior.
When you have exhausted all your national power in order to gnaw hard bones, you will look back and find that the sea has been occupied by Europeans, and China has lost the opportunity to formulate world rules and expand the territory of the Han people.
The Northeast region is not considered a stronghold at this time, but its input-output ratio is still not as good as that of Nanyang, so it is also placed in a secondary position.
Therefore, in addition to focusing on developing sea power, Yunxi also wanted to encourage childbirth. Yunxi had already thought of several ways to encourage childbirth and was waiting to be implemented.
But just having people is not enough, it depends on whether the people can do it.
When Napoleon was marching across Europe, there were probably 3,000 Europeans in Southeast Asia. There were definitely more than 3 million Han Chinese, but they were willing to live under the hands of the Europeans. In the end, they were defeated one by one by the Europeans who recovered.
Fortunately, the people of China today have not experienced more than two hundred years of domestication in the Ming Dynasty and more than two hundred years of enslavement in the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Their personality independence is much stronger than that of the Han people in the late Qing Dynasty, and even more independent than people in the 21st century.
Be strong.
Why is China's military increasingly unable to fight? Because China's imperial power was too strong. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty completely abolished the feudal system and implemented centralized power, the imperial power has completely lost its checks and balances.
The result is that as long as he is the emperor, he cannot tolerate the border troops being good at fighting, because once the border troops are able to fight, they will frequently provoke wars, not to mention the generals. If they turn their guns and rebel, it will be over.
The emperor's pro-army resides in the capital. There has been no fighting for a long time, and the dogs and horses have been sluggish. Each generation will become worse than the last. Once the pro-army degenerates, the armies in other places will also be weakened accordingly. In order to stabilize the center, the emperor will never allow other ministries to be stronger than the pro-army.
The army was not as good as the last. By the end of the dynasty, the army was all frivolous. Even after one or two dynasties, the army could no longer fight.
Successive emperors would never allow the emergence of forces in this country that were not controlled by the central court. In order to gain control, they must implement the system of official transfer. What is the purpose of official transfer? The real intention is to neutralize local powerful people so that they will not cause rebellion.
Based on this principle, the weaker the people are, the easier it is for the government to 'manage' them. And the more 'managed' the government is, the weaker the people will be. In the end, when the country is destroyed, the people will be like lambs to be slaughtered by foreigners.
It's not that the Han people can't fight, it's that the control and education of past dynasties have made them ignorant of resistance.
Fortunately, local powerful clans would also resist. So this process was extremely slow. During the Five Husties, Ran Min led the Han people to resist, and the Eastern Jin Dynasty was able to rely on Jiang and Huai to defend the south of the Yangtze River.
In the Tang Dynasty, the emperor still delegated power to border generals, although this eventually led to the Anshi Rebellion.
The Song Dynasty strengthened its control over the country, so since the Northern Han Dynasty was pacified, the Song Dynasty's external offensive wars were basically unwinnable.
But at this time, only the bureaucracy had completely softened, and the people were still energetic, so Yue Fei and others led some of the defeated troops to organize the people and they were able to defeat the Jin army.
At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, China was the country that persisted in resisting the Mongols for the longest time. At this time, the Han people were probably the most organized and daring to resist in the world.
I have heard two short stories. A Mongolian met four big cannibals in the desert and wanted to kill them, but when he touched his waist, he found that he did not have a knife, so he said: "I wanted to kill you, but I forgot
I have a knife, just wait, I will go back and get the knife, and I will come back to kill you later." Then he left.
Only one of the four big cannibals ran away, and the remaining three were waiting here obediently to be killed.
Another story. Several Mongolians entered a small village in Eastern Europe, and the villagers carefully prepared the best things to entertain them. After the Mongolians had eaten and drank enough, they began to set fire to the village and kill people.
There were hundreds of people in the entire village, and no one wanted to resist. They would just run away or stay where they were and be killed.
The Mongols did not know what they were thinking, and did not carry out large-scale massacres against the Song people who resisted the most fiercely. According to records, the population of the Southern Song Dynasty only decreased by 26%, while the territory of the original Jin Kingdom in the north decreased by 89%.
Of the tens of millions of people killed, only over a million were left.
During the First Son Expedition, the Mongols massacred all the people in Krakow, the capital of Poland at that time, and they also continued to massacre cities during their attack on the Balkans.
Moreover, the Mongols later did not establish rule throughout the country, and basically adopted a system of local autonomy, especially in the southern region. As long as they paid enough taxes, the local governments managed themselves.
Of course, if you don't pay enough taxes, the Mongolian army will have a 'talk' with you.
Therefore, after more than a hundred years of rule by the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, the resistance spirit of the Han people has not been reduced much. Historically, the domestication of the people really began with Zhu Yuanzhang, and it took more than two hundred years of domestication in the Ming Dynasty.
However, the Ming Dynasty was its own political power. After Zhu Yuanzhang, it could not use too drastic measures and mainly continued to "de-militarize".
After the arrival of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, they began the most rigorous enslavement. The Manchu Qing Dynasty created a stable country that could be compared with India and was unprecedented in Chinese history. If it were not for foreign invasion, the Manchu Qing Dynasty could actually continue to rule for many years. It would be difficult to
was overturned.
However, this caused China to completely lag behind the world, lose its cultural confidence, and blindly learn from the West after experiencing a huge impact.
The situation between the East and the West is very different. Some of the so-called modern moral concepts in the West are simply not suitable for China's situation. The most typical one is the abolition of the joint sitting system.
According to the Western point of view, people are independent, so only one person is punished for committing a crime. But this is not the case in the East. How many people deceive and abduct themselves and are willing to go to jail and let their families live a good life? Countless! Therefore, the continuous imprisonment system will never allow
Abolish it! At least parents, children and biological brothers and sisters should be involved.
It seems a bit off track, but what Yunxi wants to express is that the Han people at this time can still afford the important task of immigration. As long as Yunxi solves one more problem, he can safely immigrate domestic people overseas.
This issue is the unity of the people so that they will not kill each other. History has proven that immigrant groups united by region and clan kill other Han people much more ruthlessly than they kill outsiders.
The temporary solution that Yunxi came up with was proven effective by cannibals and Europeans - religion.
The most suitable method is actually to shape the views of the country and the nation, but this is difficult, and I am afraid that Yunxi will not see much effect in his lifetime, so he can only use religion.
What is the way to form a broader group? Just find more common ground. Imagine that an immigrant group meets another immigrant group, and they chat and say: "I worship the Jade Emperor." The person opposite also said: "
Oh, I also worship the Jade Emperor!" This is where we found common ground.
Then, the local natives believe in Tianfang religion. Doesn’t this differentiate between inside and outside?
Moreover, the Chinese people have never believed deeply in religion. Most people only believe in it superficially. There are only a few devout believers. There is no need to worry about the theocratic power challenging the imperial power. It can only be used as a local check and balance, and this can just supervise the local officials.
of misbehavior.
In fact, the clan is the best check and balance on the local government, but the shortcomings of the clan have just been mentioned, so Yunxi cannot support the clan.
After talking about people's problems, Yunxi began to think about the political system.
I have already mentioned the disadvantages of the system of official transfer, but Yunxi cannot give up the system of official transfer. In the vast mainland, Yunxi is not very worried about the reduction of his power, at least not now, but the system of local officials
This will inevitably lead to a massive reduction in taxes.
The series of policies Yunxi wanted to implement required a lot of investment, and some of the policies he wanted to implement, although beneficial to the Han people in the long run, would inevitably violate local interests and common ideas.
Yunxi now has a sense of mission, feeling that he is like Peter the Great, pulling the nobles and people full of decadent ideas forward.
Just like Peter the Great moved the capital from Moscow to Petersburg, he used imperial power to force the country forward.
Therefore, in the mainland, a system of official transfer must be implemented, allowing local religious groups and powerful forces that have not yet been eliminated to supervise.
When talking about the official system, we have to mention the imperial examination system. Many people would never imagine that true Confucianism is opposed to the imperial examination system.
Zhu Xi, a great scholar in the Song Dynasty, believed that the best system was rural election, which was the imperial examination system in the Han Dynasty. Even the nine-rank Zhongzheng system in the Wei and Jin Dynasties was better than the imperial examination system.
He also believed: According to the imperial examination system, the Song Dynasty will definitely not be able to regain its northern homeland. If we want to restore Bianjing, we must abolish the imperial examination system and restore the imperial examination system, and then we can defeat the Jin Kingdom in a few decades.
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It's strange. Zhu Xi's "Four Books and Chapters" is now the standard question bank and answers for the imperial examination, but he criticized the imperial examination system the most.
The imperial examination system actually selects smart people, or people who can endorse and take exams, but it does not mean that these people can govern the place, nor does it mean that they have enough character to serve as officials. This leads to the concept of "being an official for thousands of miles"
Just for money' things happen.
When it comes to election in rural areas, everyone is a person who knows the basics. As long as the country is not too bad, the person chosen must be someone who has the ability to govern or has high moral standards.
This is also the reason why the "Book of Han" and "Book of the Later Han" vehemently criticized the political issue, but in fact, the political system at that time was much better than that of the Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties.
The nine-rank Zhongzheng system is another logic. Although the nine-rank Zhongzheng system leads to "no poor family in the upper class, and no nobles in the lower class," it does not allow these nobles to worry about the livelihood of their descendants, so they will not engage in wanton corruption.
At the same time, the nobles would compete with each other, and those without ability could not become chief officials. At most, they would have a sinecure or stay at home.
But for the same reason, Yunxi must focus on the imperial examination system, and then supplement it with other official selection systems as appropriate. Regarding this, Yunxi has not yet thought about it. However, in Lao Zhu's era, in addition to the imperial examination system, there were a variety of selection systems
There is an official system, so you don’t have to worry about too much resistance.
From the central level, Yunxi believed that the best political system in Chinese history was the system from the early Han Dynasty to the early period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, because at that time, the imperial power had checks and balances, and there were noble groups to check and balance.
Moreover, the nobility group at that time did not require military merit to be knighted. There were many civil servants who were knighted. This was a healthy aristocratic system.
There are checks and balances on imperial power. Of course the emperor is not happy, but it is good for the country. Now Yunxi must create a system of checks and balances while he is still awake and not lost in power.
The enfeoffment system to be implemented in some border areas was one of the checks and balances on the imperial power. During Yunxi's lifetime, perhaps their checks and balances on the central government were very small, but as time went by, and Yunxi wanted to cultivate real aristocrats similar to those of the Han Dynasty,
The hierarchy will eventually form an effective system of checks and balances without weakening the common people's culture.