When Li Xuan received the report from the 4th Infantry Division, he thought about it briefly and issued an order to let the 4th Infantry Division continue to pursue, but he must pay attention to the rhythm to avoid arousing fierce resistance from the chieftains on the Burmese side.
Next, clear out the remnants of King Mu, and, um, occupy some more territory.
What this means is, let the Fourth Infantry Division take advantage if it can, but don't force it if you can't.
After all, the war in Yunnan and even further south in the direction of Myanmar is not the main strategic direction of the Tang Dynasty at present. Take your time, don't be in a hurry, and thoroughly digest Yunnan first.
Although it has been ruled by the Ming Dynasty for more than a hundred years, there are still many chieftains in Yunnan, and the degree of sinicization is still not too high. Li Xuan's next step is to conduct large-scale sinicization of the area, following the example of the previous ones in Guizhou
The policy of returning natives to the country was changed, and this area was completely brought under the central rule, and a large number of immigrants were immigrated to carry out Chineseization.
Things in Yunnan are not the focus, the focus is still on Sichuan!
Regarding the matter of entering Sichuan, Li Xuan held several meetings with the army and navy and listened to the reports of the generals. As Li Xuan himself expected, the generals showed relatively confidence in the matter of entering Sichuan.
After all, there are three armies preparing to enter Sichuan, with a total strength of more than 100,000, and there are many artillery assists. No matter how strong the combat effectiveness of the Superintendent's Rear Army is, it cannot be stopped by just tens of thousands of people.
Follow the pace of the Tang Dynasty's army entering Sichuan.
The war in the southwest went smoothly. The North and the Tatars signed an agreement to cease war and trade. The two sides in Liaodong were just facing off. It was impossible for the Ming army of King Hui of Liaodong to break into Shanhaiguan. They only had to wait for the Tang Dynasty to free up their hands and clean up Liaodong.
A matter of minutes.
All this represents that the Tang Dynasty is on a healthy and rapid expansion path!
Therefore, Li Xuan did not worry too much about external expansion, and still focused on domestic affairs.
In mid-May, Li Xuan held an imperial cabinet meeting, with more than a dozen ministers and more than twenty ministers from various ministries participating. The issue discussed at this meeting was the unresolved issue of official land reform.
There was a fierce conflict at the meeting between those who supported the reform of Guantian and those who opposed the reform!
But Li Xuan was still the same as before, sitting on his dragon chair, watching these ministers debating. When no one on either side was convinced, Li Xuan made the final decision.
The reform of official land is on hold for the time being!
The land rent of official land is still the same as before, with a fixed amount, instead of changing with the increase or decrease of grain production.
However, in order to prevent the farmers who rent official land from going bankrupt due to reduced production, Li Xuan once again emphasized that if a natural disaster occurs in certain areas, the rent of official land in that area can be appropriately exempted.
At the same time, he also made another decision, which was to increase the promotion of rent-to-purchase, because the amount of official land currently held by the Tang Dynasty was too much, although part of it had already implemented rent-to-purchase.
But the overall proportion is less than 20%, mainly in the southern provinces where the rule is relatively stable.
Li Xuan didn't care whether the land was in the hands of the government or private individuals. As long as he collected enough tax revenue from the land, that would be fine.
Nowadays, strictly speaking, these official fields do not pay taxes. They just regard the land rent of the official fields as agricultural taxes and pay them directly.
However, although the fixed land rent method is still implemented, Li Xuan asked the tax department to prepare a rent reduction policy.
Nowadays, the rent of official land is relatively high, and the burden on farmers is too great. At the same time, although the current fiscal revenue of the Tang Dynasty is tight, it is actually not small. At the same time, the main growth driver of future fiscal revenue is industry and commerce. Li Xuan believes that it can be appropriately
It reduces the land rent of part of the official land and drives down the land rent of private land.
After all, the amount of official land is very large. After the land rent of official land is reduced, landless farmers will definitely be more inclined to rent official land. If the big landowners want to recruit tenants to farm, they will also need to reduce the rent accordingly.
Land rent.
Although the overall proportion is unlikely to be too large, even a reduction of a few percentage points is a good thing.
Although many people who supported the reform of official land were disappointed with Li Xuan's decision, they still got something they wanted. Lowering land rent is always a good thing.
And it is also a good thing for those who oppose the reform, because in this way, large-scale unrest and various uncontrollable troubles will be avoided.
If the government really wants to change to collect land rent based on the actual harvest, there is simply no way for the government to ensure that this policy is truly implemented. After all, the government cannot really send people to guard every piece of land to supervise the actual yield and monitor the actual yield on the spot.
Collect land rent.
After getting rid of the issue of official land rent reform, Li Xuan dealt with several major events in the next few days.
For example, the Customs Department was separated from the Ministry of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs was established, which is fully responsible for customs tariff collection and anti-smuggling affairs in various places.
Separating customs affairs from the tax department is also an important measure for Li Xuan to control the tax department. Currently, the tax department has too much power. In the past, it lacked talents, and for the convenience of doing things, Li Xuan almost
Put all money-related matters in the tax department. Taxation, customs, salary payment, financial budget, financial monitoring and other matters belong directly to the tax department.
Such a tax department is obviously abnormal, and Li Xuan plans to gradually split the tax department.
Splitting the customs is just the first step. Later, Li Xuan will split financial supervision, fiscal budget, and salary payment, returning the tax department to a pure tax collection department.
However, even if many powers are separated by then, the authority of the Tax Department will still be the largest among the agencies under the Tang Dynasty cabinet, not for any other reason, but because it collects taxes.
After all, Li Xuan has no intention of abolishing the tax inspection team, and he also plans to formalize the tax inspection team and turn it into a kind of tax police.
When establishing the General Administration of Customs, Li Xuan also made some minor changes to the current maritime trade policy. The changes were not major and mainly involved tariff adjustments for some imported and exported materials.
Import tariffs on various raw materials have been significantly reduced.
However, high tariffs were raised on imported industrial products, such as knives and folding fans imported from Fuso, guns imported from foreigners, etc. Some businessmen even ordered from the shipyard in Malacca controlled by the Nanyang Francois.
Ships, etc., all have higher tariffs.
In terms of exports, there are two extremes. China's special and almost unique export products, such as silk and raw silk and other related products, have slightly increased export tariffs.
Because these things are exclusive products, raising export tariffs will also increase the price. If the price is raised, you still have to buy it. What's more, after these things are transported to Europe by sea, the price has increased several times.
The focus of the silk business from China to Europe is not the purchase price, but whether it can be shipped back safely!
Export tariffs have also been increased on northern grassland, tea, salt, iron and other products.
But for some other products, export tariffs have been significantly reduced, that is, cloth, soap and other light industrial products!
Especially for cloth, in order to quickly open the market in other areas and compete with the local indigenous people's own hand-woven cloth, low prices are necessary.
Nowadays, various cheap machine-made fabrics from China have begun to widely enter Southeast Asia, Fuso, and even North Korea. There is an influx of machine-made fabrics. I don’t know how many poor families have lost their hand-woven fabrics.
of this additional source, causing turmoil in the local economy.
In Li Xuan's view, machine-made cloth was not only a strategic product used by the Tang Dynasty to make money, but also a strategic weapon used to undermine the economy and political situation of external indigenous countries!
When machine-made cloth first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, many textile workshops in the Jiangnan area closed down, and there were many weavers in unrest. Later, after the Tang Dynasty occupied the Jiangnan area, many textile factories were built there.
, and re-employed local weavers. Otherwise, I don’t know how much turmoil it would have caused.
However, cloth requires a large amount of cotton as raw material, and although the amount of cotton planted in the Tang Dynasty is growing at an explosive rate, it is still difficult to meet the huge demand, and large quantities are purchased by sea.
Nowadays, when many Arabs, Indians and even Francois come to trade, they bring most of the ship with cotton and the other half with silver or gold!
Why not bring all cotton? Because they have to leave room for silver or gold.
There was no way, although the Tang Dynasty needed a lot of cotton, cotton was not an expensive material, and a whole ship was not worth much. However, the goods they needed to purchase were all silk, porcelain, tea, etc.
They are not cheap, especially silk, which is a serious luxury product.
If they didn't bring so much cash, why would they buy silk?
Some smart businessmen transported some commodities that were offered by the Tang Dynasty at high prices and were also in high demand, such as saltpeter and sulfur. These two items were long-term purchases by the Tang Dynasty’s officials, and they would be shipped as much as they wanted.
, and the price is not low.
At the same time, spices are also an important commodity used to balance the trade deficit, but nowadays the merchants of the Tang Dynasty go to Southeast Asia to find spices and transport them back to the country, which does not give many opportunities to merchants from other countries.
So now, in the trade between the Tang Dynasty and other countries, whether it was with Fusang and the indigenous people of Southeast Asia or with the Francois and Spanish, there was always a surplus, and it was a very large-scale surplus.
Every time there is a trade, a pile of white silver enters the bank. The silver in the bank is getting more and more day by day. The Royal Bank's bank is built one after another, each one is bigger than the last!
But a few years later, in late May of the seventh year of Xuanping, Mr. Wang Haomen, director of the Finance Department of the Ministry of Taxation, gave Li Xuan a discount. The discount raised an interesting question: We need so much money to do this.
Well?
Mr. Wang Haomen said in the book that silver cannot be eaten or used. Apart from being used as jewelry and a small amount of industrial applications, it has almost no practical value.
Those barbarians kept digging silver mines, and then brought the silver to us to buy various genuine products, but we only got piles and piles of silver that we couldn't eat or use. We couldn't spend it even if we wanted to, because we were
trade surplus!
In this case, the question arises: Why do we need so much money?
(Today starts a new round of bursts. Three chapters and ten thousand words will be updated every day. Please give me some support so that I can code more vigorously on rainy days!)