This is an artificial social division of labor and selection mechanism. Through this education system, out of a hundred people, one will be selected to be an official, one will be a scholar, a few will be businessmen, senior managers, and senior technicians, and a few will be ordinary clerks.
employees and technicians, while most of the rest are farmers and workers.
Therefore, the education system of the Tang Empire allowed you to study wherever you wanted. It seemed fair, but in fact it was unfair, especially for ordinary people.
There are actually many similar policies, and they are not limited to the education system.
Just like local development, some places have good natural conditions and relatively good cultural heritage, so development will be very smooth without too many obstacles. Even if the government does not deliberately support it, it can develop very well, such as
Let’s talk about some coastal cities or resource areas.
When development is good, then the conditions in all aspects will be better. For example, in the Pearl River Delta region, railways are very dense, and rail carriages in the city are also very dense. In some places without rail transit, there will also be ordinary public transportation.
Horse-drawn carriages pass.
In this way, a complete public transportation system has been built, coupled with the two-wheeled rickshaws and ordinary private carriages that have only appeared in recent years, which is enough to allow people from all walks of life to get the most suitable way of travel.
In some developed areas, many middle- and upper-class people living in the suburbs take train shuttles to work in the city in the morning, and take the train home early in the evening after get off work.
However, in some places, the natural conditions are not very good, the economic development is not good, and the infrastructure is naturally not very good. Many places do not even have railways.
Especially in several southwestern provinces, there are basically no railways connecting other provinces, and there are very few railways within the province.
The Southwest Railway and Sichuan-Hankou Railway plans initiated by Li Xuan were, to some extent, intended to support the development of the southwestern provinces.
It cannot be said that the eastern coastal provinces are extremely rich while other places are extremely poor.
To support the local economy, railways alone are not enough. Other policies must follow, such as supporting the local development of certain industries and commerce.
Especially labor-intensive industries that can provide jobs.
The southwestern provinces are all areas that lack arable land. It is impossible to become wealthy purely by relying on agricultural development like other plain areas. If these places want to improve their economy, they still need to rely on industry to drive it.
Supporting the development of industry and commerce also requires funds.
However, the Tang Empire's fiscal revenue has been increasing year by year in recent years. Although the expenses are also increasing year by year, it is still much easier than before to collect money for anything.
Entering the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping, the Tang Empire had already completely got rid of the fiscal deficit situation, and the central government had no debts, and it still had a surplus every year if it did well.
What's more important is that in the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping, the central fiscal revenue of the Tang Empire once again increased, reaching 350 million Tang yuan.
This number is not low!
The Tang Empire was able to do many things.
For comparison, the British Empire, the empire on which the sun never sets at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, had a fiscal revenue of only about 100 million pounds.
The gold content of Tang Yuan was 6.5 grams, and the gold content of later 19th century British pounds was about 7.32 grams. Although the gold content of Tang Yuan was a little less than that of later British pounds, it was not much less.
And a very important point is that the Tang Dynasty was actually very different from the British in later generations. This difference was mainly caused by the difference in population and territorial area.
This resulted in a huge difference between the economic systems of the Tang Empire and the British economy at the end of the 19th century, which also led to a huge gap in taxation.
The British economic system relies heavily on foreign trade. After all, the British mainland is just a small island country with a population of only tens of millions at the time. The British economic system is based on using its strong industrial production and financial capabilities to control other countries and colonies.
Market, plundering raw materials and dumping industrial products, its taxes mainly come from tariffs and various indirect taxes.
As for the Tang Empire, although the scale of overseas trade in the Tang Dynasty was not small, the scale of tariffs was actually very small, and more tax revenue came from other industrial and commercial taxes.
This can also be seen from the fact that Datang entrepreneurs pay more attention to the local market!
For any Datang enterprise that is interested in developing and growing, the domestic market is the most important and largest market.
In the thirty-five years of Xuanping, the total export volume of the Tang Empire was only about 100 million Tang Yuan. Well, this total export volume includes all the Tang-controlled areas on the mainland, overseas mainland, partial mainland and overseas territories. It also controls the indigenous people.
The region’s export volume.
Whether it is goods shipped from Shanghai and then sold to India, or goods shipped from New South Port in North America and then sold to Europe, they are all included.
However, even so, it is only 100 million Tang Yuan!
Moreover, Datang added a variety of extremely competitive products and exported a large number of arms and other industrial products overseas. Datang also gained this because it had huge military and political advantages and forced other countries to open their markets.
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Considering the population of overseas markets and their economic strength, it is actually very difficult to increase the total overseas trade volume on a large scale, because people only have such a little money in their pockets and they cannot make more no matter what.
How could the overseas market of a mere 100 million Tang Yuan satisfy the huge industry and commerce of the Tang Empire?
In contrast, Datang's domestic market is much larger!
Datang's domestic market actually refers not only to the local market, but also to the mainland, overseas mainland, overseas territories and other areas actually controlled by Datang.
Well, in fact, local regions are not the focus. The focus should be on consumer groups.
The consumption of the people of the Tang Dynasty was much higher than that of the natives of foreign countries!
Not to mention anything else, I will just talk about the oil industry, which has been very prosperous in recent years.
Today's oil price is about 7.5 Tang Yuan per barrel. However, the current oil output of the Tang Empire has reached about 10 million barrels. The various products such as kerosene and lubricants extracted from this oil are basically
It is consumed in the domestic market.
Based on this calculation, you will find that the crude oil market alone has reached more than 70 million yuan.
And most importantly, this number is still far from meeting the huge domestic demand. Royal Petroleum Company estimates that based on current oil prices, the domestic oil market can reach at least 100 million yuan.
If oil prices continue to fall to expand consumer groups, then this market can continue to expand to 200 million yuan or more.
It is just a new oil industry, and its output value is already comparable to Datang's entire export volume, and may even be higher in the future.