The next morning, Zhao Jun went to court with a panda in his eyes.
When the magistrate came back, apart from the prime ministers, Li Di was most excited.
Because Wang Sui fell ill this time and fell into a coma, the imperial doctor said that he would not be able to survive the New Year at the end of the year, and he was almost on his deathbed.
Therefore, this time the Constitutional Yuan may have a vacant prime minister position, and there is a high probability that he will be able to ascend to the Constitutional Yuan.
When Zhao Jun didn't come back before, Li Di was a little worried that Zhao Jun was not in Bianliang and Lu Yijian would interfere with it.
But now that Zhao Jun is back, he has nothing to worry about.
Even if he is happy that he can ascend to the throne after someone dies, he still feels so happy, which seems a bit inhumane.
But since Li Di didn't have much friendship with Wang Sui, there was no need to feel sad for him. Secondly, this is a politician, who wants to fight to the death for power.
After the morning session, Li Di wanted to see Zhao Jun, but Zhao Jun had someone give him a message - be patient.
This sentence made Li Di feel reassured, and he was secretly happy that he had defected to Zhao Jun, and indeed he had made the right move.
Although the former prime minister's willingness to be someone else's follower seemed a bit self-destructive.
But Li Di had been up and down in the officialdom for so many years, so he had already started watching.
What's more, Zhao Jun is too young.
Sitting in such a high position at such a young age and deeply trusted by officials, he might be able to hold power for a long time in the future.
If you can stay with a powerful boss stably for a long time, it will be a great blessing for him and the children of the family.
Therefore, Li Di naturally chose to bet. This is the keen sense of an old politician.
Zhao Jun went to the Constitutional Yuan after the morning court. A meeting was held. Except for Fan Zhongyan, who was now transferred to Hebei, only Wang Sui, who was seriously ill in bed, did not attend the meeting.
Everyone sat in rows, and Zhao Jun took his seat again, placed his notebook on it, and started today's topic.
First, let’s talk about the current domestic situation.
Militarily, Fan Zhongyan achieved two great victories in the northwest, one defensive battle and one counterattack, which severely crippled Li Yuanhao. Now he can only hide in his lair and lick his wounds.
The army of the Liao Kingdom in the north moved southward, and the two sides conducted several tests on the border. The Liao army sent small teams to harass the border fortresses.
The Song army in the fortress used thunderbolts and directly used catapults to throw clay pots containing gunpowder into the enemy camp. At the moment of the explosion, the Liao cavalry was so frightened that they fled in panic and did not dare to approach.
Yelu Zongzong was clearly facing the tortoise shell of the Song Dynasty, and it was obvious that he was already riding a tiger.
Some wise generals suggested that they simply bypass the fortresses and cities on the front line of the Song army and go south to clear grass valleys to plunder the people of the Song Dynasty. They did not believe that there was nothing they could do with the turtle shells of the Song Dynasty.
Yelu Zong was so angry that he asked the wise man to lead the troops by himself. As a result, the general did go around. He was dumbfounded when he took five thousand light cavalry south for more than 200 kilometers and reached Jizhou.
Because the tortoise shells of the Song Dynasty were built directly from Xiongzhou to the Daming Prefecture of Beijing in the Song Dynasty. Although there were also people farming, once they discovered the Liao cavalry, they immediately threw down their hoes, or got into nearby bunkers, or ran to the city.
During the Song Dynasty, the economy and agriculture had actually shifted to the south. Starting from the Qin and Han Dynasties, Hebei and Henan have always been the traditional farming and economic centers of the Han people because of their relationship with the North China Plain.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Hebei's population reached more than six million, becoming the main area where Yuan Shao dominated the world.
But by the Song Dynasty, the population of Hebei was still 6 million, including about 3.3 million in Hebei East and 2.6 million in Hebei West. In the Song Dynasty, when productivity and agricultural technology far exceeded those of the Han Dynasty, this was obviously unreasonable.
In contrast, Henan and Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions at the same time had a population of more than 10 million.
The only reason was that Hebei became the front line of confrontation with the Liao Kingdom. The Song Dynasty court turned the Hebei border and nearby states and counties into military towns, and moved the people on the border southward.
Therefore, there are fewer people in the border areas, and the main population gathering in Hebei is basically near Damingfu, north of the Yellow River.
The Liao Kingdom wanted to bypass the fortresses on the border and attack the hinterland of the Song Kingdom hundreds of kilometers deep. Unless Yelvzong really wanted to abandon the logistics line and plan to make a desperate move, it would be impossible to bypass it.
The fate of that smart man was that Fan Zhongyan mobilized his troops and directly besieged Hejian Mansion, and the entire army was annihilated.
This battle was actually a real test by the Yelv Sect.
He was not so stupid as to directly send people in to die, but the result of the test was obvious. Song State had built too many defenses along the border all the way to Daming Mansion, which really made it impossible for him to do so.
Therefore, to a certain extent, militarily, the Song State was already in an invincible position because it had defeated Xixia, the northwest was safe, and the Liao State in the north was unable to invade from the south.
Zhao Jun was still very happy to get this result. At least his arrival gave the Song Dynasty's military a powerful shot in the arm.
There is no need to worry about the military at the moment.
Lao Fan can withstand it.
Economically, Lu Yijian and the others have not been doing nothing in the past two years. They have reformed the state-owned market and handed over 51% of the management rights to private enterprises.
The Ministry of Industry and Commerce has also registered several state-owned commercial banks.
As mentioned before, there were actually registered companies in the Song Dynasty. Registration with the government and obtaining a "store book" was considered a successful registration. At that time, it was called a trading firm.
These state-owned commercial banks cooperate with private enterprises, and the management rights are handed over to private enterprises. As long as they do not violate laws and disciplines, evade taxes, and basically make things difficult for them on the official side, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce will solve it for them.
As a result, Bianliang's original state-owned tea, salt, alum, wine, spices, etc. officially entered the private sector, liberalizing the monopoly official system and allowing commerce to flourish.
The only thing that we still specialize in now is ironware.
After all, this thing is a strategic material. If it is allowed to be privately owned, it will not be long before Xixia and Liao Kingdom can obtain a large amount of iron tools, which will be detrimental to the Song Kingdom.
As for the reform of officialdom, it has now been extended to the whole country, and a system of linking official positions to grades has been implemented.
For example, Zhao Jun's Zhiyuan Zhiyuan was also the Duke of Song Dynasty, so he was completely genuine.
Lu Yijian and others were both informed by the Political Academy, so they were ranked first in rank.
If there are ministers in each department who observe the candidates and know their identities, then they are the second rank, if not, then they are the second rank.
The levels of assistant officers of various ministries, such as ministers of various ministries, are basically between the third rank and the fourth rank.
And the strategic envoy along the way will be raised to the third rank, the pacification envoy, the transfer envoy, and the punishment department will be the fourth rank, and important areas may be upgraded from the third rank.
The main reason is that the economic and strategic envoys are not permanent and are basically not set up in the south. Only when there is a war, senior civilian officials will be assigned to serve. They have military and political control, which is comparable to the power of the Jiedushi in the Tang Dynasty.
The magistrate at the state level is usually from the fifth rank, and the magistrate of a county is usually from the seventh rank.
Basically, it has solved the problem that the original assignments and grades were not linked, which caused confusion in the officialdom and unclear authority.
In addition, the country has also begun to separate public security and judicial organs. Previously, it was temporarily piloted at the road level, and it was officially promoted nationwide last year.
Since then, there have been many basic departments such as the Dali Bureau, the Criminal Trial Bureau, the Education Bureau, and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau.
They assumed the functions of the local courts, the Supervisory Yuan, the Education Bureau and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau. From then on, the county magistrate began to focus on local development, while criminal cases were handled by the local county captain (Public Security Bureau) Dali Bureau and Criminal Trial Bureau.
Moreover, at the road level, the Yushitai also has branches, and the assigned censors are all young censors who have just passed the Jinshi examination.
Young people are often more energetic and have not been polluted by the big dye vat of officialdom, so they are more energetic.
They inspect local areas every month and audit the situation in states and counties.
Like before, Zhao Jun arranged to confiscate the land of wealthy landlords who violated laws and regulations and turned it into official land.
If these official fields are found to have been misappropriated by local states or counties by the inspection censor of the Yushitai, or there are local problems, they must be reported to the central government immediately.
Then we have to see if Zhao Jun's knife is sharp.
In terms of education, the primary school knowledge brought by Zhao Jun has been promoted on a pilot basis in Bianliang.
The imperial court established several primary schools to enroll children from poor families free of charge. The main teaching was primary school mathematics and normal Confucian education.
The outstanding ones will be selected to teach junior high school mathematics, chemistry and physics.
Although the books Zhao Jun brought did not completely cover the entire mathematics, physics and chemistry of junior high schools, they still contained a lot of content in this area, such as "Interesting Little Experiments in Physics", "Basic Chemical Reactions", "Nature and Science" and so on.
This is bound to promote the development of mathematics, physics and chemistry in the Song Dynasty.
In a few years, after mathematics, physics, and chemistry have slowly taken root among the people, and science is included in the imperial examinations, I am afraid that in less than ten years, mathematics, physics, and chemistry will take root and thrive in the Song Dynasty.
So after hearing the feedback from everyone in the Constitutional Yuan, Zhao Jun is still very satisfied with the current progress.
Basically, except for the military system, tax system, official administration and land, the rest of the political system, economy, education and other reforms have been completed, and the resistance is not very big.
There is naturally little resistance to education reform. These officials do not understand what mathematics, physics and chemistry are.
There are some minor economic obstacles. For example, the officials of the original state-owned market could not accept the loss of their iron rice bowl, and they all made a fuss and opposed it.
But the objection is invalid.
Li Shen struck hard and severely investigated corruption in the original state-owned forecourts. The result was an earthquake, hundreds of officials were arrested, and many people were arrested from Bianliang to Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Now the resistance is gone, and the other officials don't care. They don't care about their affairs anyway, not to mention there are more people in the officialdom now.
After the reform of the official system, many new departments were added, and idle officials took over one after another, which suddenly solved the problem of redundant officials in the Song Dynasty.
But the way to solve the problem is to simply amputate the legs in order to cure the lameness.
Because in the past, redundant officials were idle officials who had no assignments and could receive less salary.
Now that there are errands, the salary is increased, and redundant officials are left to deal with it. However, the official salary expenditure is more, resulting in greater financial pressure.
However, this is not completely without benefits, that is, the new officials will obviously support the Constitutional Yuan more, and the existence of the Constitutional Yuan will allow them to rise to power, thus forming a new interest group.
Basically, as long as the Constitutional Yuan does not dismiss them again, most of the newly appointed officials will basically maintain the Constitutional Yuan's views.
Therefore, this resulted in a new officialdom restructuring with less resistance.
All that's left now is large-scale restructuring.
"very good."
After hearing everyone's reports, Zhao Jun nodded with satisfaction and said, "It seems like you haven't done anything these days."
Lu Yijian stroked his beard and said proudly: "That's natural, and he has made some achievements."
"Lao Lu, don't be too proud and complacent."
Zhao Jun said with a smile: "These systems are just foreplay, and the resistance will not be too great. If we really want to reform the system, the big one is yet to come."
After hearing Zhao Jun's words, everyone was curious. Wang Zeng asked: "It seems that you have really gained a lot this time."
"I do have some ideas. I need time to sort them out, but the core idea is actually to alleviate the survival pressure of the people at the bottom first. In this way, the domestic conflicts can be temporarily resolved."
"What's the specific method?"
"It's very simple."
Zhao Jun said: "For example, increase consumption and return it to the public, cancel a large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes such as transfers, scrap money, transfers, boss money, etc. Reduce the proportion of agricultural taxes as much as possible, and increase the tax rate for large landowners and the wealthy class."
"In this case, wouldn't the imperial court receive a lot less tax?"
Sheng Du frowned.
"It just reduced the proportion of agricultural taxes. Do you know how much the taxes were in the Southern Song Dynasty?"
Zhao Jun asked back.
Everyone shook their heads. In the past, people mostly asked about the Northern Song Dynasty and less about the Southern Song Dynasty. Indeed, they had not heard him talk about it in detail.
"Higher than the Northern Song Dynasty, generally more than 100 million strings."
Zhao Jun stretched out a finger and said: "In the Southern Song Dynasty, when only half of the country was in the country and a large area of land north of Huainan and Sichuan was lost, the tax rate was higher than that in the Northern Song Dynasty. In fact, we can see the problem."
Yan Shu was surprised: "Why is this happening?"
"Because of business tax."
Zhao Jun said: "After the Southern Song Dynasty moved to the south, in order to alleviate financial pressure, it vigorously developed trade. Through the Maritime Silk Road and the Ancient Tea Horse Road in Yunnan, goods were exported to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and even Europe. Even if they confronted the Jin Kingdom, The market is not closed, they trade with each other, and everyone gets what they need. The economy is more active than that of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the commercial tax rate is as high as 80%."
"Can you collect 80 million yuan from commercial tax alone?"
Everyone was shocked.
"more than."
Zhao Jun said: "The annual fiscal revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty reached 160 million yuan at its peak, and the commercial tax reached 85%. This shows that the industrial and commercial tax has basically replaced the agricultural tax and became the pillar tax in the Southern Song Dynasty."
"Do you mean that the Song Dynasty should go all out to develop business?"
Lu Yijian asked.
In fact, the Northern Song Dynasty also vigorously developed industry and commerce, but it was not like the Southern Song Dynasty.
After all, the ancient traditional thought was to emphasize agriculture and suppress business. Therefore, during the Northern Song Dynasty, a balance between agricultural tax and commercial tax was maintained. It was not until the late Northern Song Dynasty that commercial tax completely exceeded agricultural tax, reaching 60%-70%.
"It's not full strength, but there is a degree of tightness."
Zhao Jun said: "Grasp the big ones and let go the small ones, promote them flexibly, and actively expand externally, and increase the import and export quotas. I think there are four directions in which Song Dynasty's business can develop externally."
"Which four?"
“The first is from Guangzhou to Central Asia and Southeast Asia, the second is from Qingtang to Central Asia, the third is from Zhejiang and Shandong to Guangzhou, Japan and Korea, and the fourth is from Chengdu to Dali and Southeast Asia. "
Zhao Jun pointed out: "Such two land Silk Roads and two maritime Silk Roads are bound to bring a steady stream of tax revenue to the Song Dynasty. Especially Japan, as long as Japan's silver inflows in large quantities, the money shortage of the Song Dynasty will be solved Solve it, and the extra copper can be used to make artillery and strengthen military capabilities."
He continued: "In addition, the expansion of foreign trade can stimulate economic growth internally, reduce agricultural taxes, and develop commerce, which will definitely not reduce tax revenue. It can also promote industrial development. For the people at the bottom of the Song Dynasty, it is It’s all a good thing.”
"Well"
Everyone nodded slightly, it sounded good.
Yan Shu asked: "I remember you said that Yongzheng's reform also included the sharing of land between households and households, so why wasn't this implemented?"
“Because it’s not the right time yet and productivity is not up to standard, spreading the land over a small area is self-destruction.”
Zhao Jun looked around the crowd and said: "The suggestions I put forward are basically things that can be achieved in the Song Dynasty. These things may not be possible in the Ming Dynasty, but they should be possible in the Song Dynasty. The rest cannot be done Things can only be discussed later."
He refers to increasing consumption and returning it to the public, and canceling a large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes. A policy to reduce the proportion of agricultural taxes and increase tax rates for large landowners and the wealthy class.
Although these policies did not work in the Ming Dynasty, it was different in the Song Dynasty.
The heavy levies and miscellaneous taxes imposed by the Song Dynasty not only forced the peasants to rebel, but also forced a large number of landlords to rebel.
It's not that these landowners want to rebel, but who is in charge of taxation in the Song Dynasty. Even if the family members of officials are doing business, they have to pay taxes first, which is comparable to the Internal Revenue Service of later generations of the American Empire.
Why are candidates, scholars, and officials exempt from tax?
nonexistent.
That was all done by the scholar-bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty to deceive the emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
In our great Song Dynasty, there were only three things that we could not escape from, one was to do corvee service, the other was to die, and the third was to pay taxes.
The wealthy class could avoid corvee by spending money, but they could not avoid paying taxes by spending money. That was why the Song Dynasty was so wealthy. It typically scraped three feet of land to fatten the court, and then the court spent money on three feet of land to extend its life.
Therefore, these reforms proposed by Zhao Jun were completely achievable by the Song Dynasty.
That is to say, a large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes were abolished to reduce the burden on farmers, and then external trade was expanded, and the large landowners and particularly wealthy people were continued to be squeezed to make up for the reduction in tax revenue caused by the abolition of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes at the bottom.
As for sharing an acre and so on.
a bit difficult.
The policy is definitely a good policy, but once implemented, the population will inevitably grow explosively.
Whether you admit it or not, the population of the Qing Dynasty could reach 400 million, and allotment of people per mu only played a driving role. The real decisive role was the introduction of high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes, corn, and potatoes, which could feed such a large population.
Otherwise, when there is a serious shortage of food, the poll tax will no longer be collected, which will inevitably lead to insufficient productivity, but the population will increase, and famine will easily occur.
Therefore, it is not appropriate to divide an area into an acre at least for now.
In addition to these more general policies, Zhao Jun also made some adjustments and made some policies that he studied by himself.
From agriculture to economy to local system reform, he has his own ideas.
It’s just that there are too many things, so for the time being, I will talk about some strategies that are relatively easy to understand, relatively conservative, not so radical, and easier to implement in the feudal society of the Song Dynasty.
(End of chapter)
