Ajige pouted his mouth and stopped talking in aggrieved manner, but the discussion about the United States of New Zealand had just begun.
"There can always be a solution for the silver issue, but who is willing to cross the ocean to Xinzhou?"
The person raising the question now is the imperial concubine Zheng Chagu. She has heard about the hardships and dangers of going abroad since she was a child. Going to Nanyang is already extremely difficult and dangerous. Shipwrecks and epidemics can make people who go to sea to make a living lose half of their lives within a few years!
No one would want to go to sea unless they were crazy about getting rich or were too poor to do anything about it!
Zhu Cixiang glanced at Tea Girl, sighed softly, and said, "Tea Girl, who do you think I spent these 30 million taels of silver for?"
Zheng Chagu is a smart person. She understood immediately when she heard this. She frowned slightly and said, "Your Majesty, is it for the wealthy children?"
Zhu Hehao is the eldest son of Zhu Cixiang. He is now over ten years old and is working as a top student at Laoshan Middle School - he is a typical "other people's child". He is excellent in both character and study. He is among the best in every exam. He has a good personality and is good at making friends. It's a pity that he is only the eldest son of the emperor, not the emperor's eldest son, so he has no chance to inherit the throne...unless Zhu Hexing dies in infancy, and Wu Sanmei cannot have another son.
But the problem is that most of Zhu Cixiang's children are healthy, and very few of them die in infancy (it's impossible if they don't, this is the 17th century after all). As Zhu Hexing, who has been frail since childhood, has grown older, and Wu Sanmei often takes him to exercise, his health is getting better and better, and he has not been sick for several months.
If Zhu Hexing finally grows up and is canonized as the crown prince, then Zhu Hehao's life may not be easy... After all, he is the eldest son of the emperor, and he is so outstanding, and Zhu Cixiang will not treat the clan as a pig. keep. If Zhu Hehao develops another career in the future, won't he really become a thorn in Zhu Hexing's side?
In an imperial family, father and son can turn against each other, let alone half-brothers?
But letting Zhu Hehao cross the ocean to Xinzhou... Zheng Chagu, a mother-in-law, felt reluctant to part with it. Thinking of this, her eye circles were sore and she was about to shed tears.
Seeing his beloved concubine shed tears, Zhu Cixi felt uncomfortable in his heart, but some things had to be done.
He sighed: "It's not all for the rich children... Children like the rich children are not unique to my family. Most of the princes and noble families have several rich children! If you crowd into the officialdom and crowd into the army, where can you accommodate them? You can't have a high-ranking family without a humble family and a low-class family without aristocratic families, right? And there are many people in the country who can't survive!"
Zhu Cixiang knew that the country he ruled was not a comfortable place without having to visit incognito. It was wrong for a country with a population of more than 100 million, in the primary stage of capitalism, and without a land of natural choice to allow the common people to be happy!
The capitalist road is so easy to follow, why do we need socialism?
Now the social environment in the Ming Dynasty is relatively stable. There are two main reasons. One is the increase in food. More than 10 million shi of rice are imported from Southeast Asia every year. After the Huanghuai Transport Project, Huainan and Huaibei have changed from an area affected by floods and droughts to a year-round bumper crop. Compared with the past, the grain-producing areas can produce an average of 20 to 30 million more dan per year. In addition, the large number of capitalist farms appearing in the four rivers, two lakes, Fujian and Guangdong, as well as the newly recovered Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong (western) and other places also promoted the increase in grain production. Therefore, in the 10th year of Hongxing, except for Sichuan and Yunnan, the food supply of the Ming and Han provinces was at least 100 million more than that in the 16th and 17th years of Chongzhen!
Therefore, it was obviously easier for the poor in the Ming Dynasty to make ends meet in the 10th year of Hongxing than in the 16th or 17th year of Chongzhen.
Another reason for stability is a bit politically incorrect - the ability of the new aristocrats and the new army to suppress peasant uprisings after being baptized by the Zhongxing War has increased significantly. The uprisings have no chance to become bigger, and they are brutally suppressed. The upstarts of the new army suppressed it...
But these two factors that make the country stable are time-limited!
Because Zhu Cihong achieved ZTE after taking over the country, interrupting the process of tearing down and starting over, which resulted in two serious consequences.
First, the Han population was not greatly consumed in the process of overthrowing and rebuilding - in history, the country had only tens of millions of people in the early years of the Qing Dynasty. Today's Ming Dynasty, excluding Sichuan and Yunnan, has a population of about 150 million. If Sichuan and Yunnan are included, it is almost three times that of the early Qing Dynasty!
Although the amount of cultivated land is somewhat more than that in the early Qing Dynasty in history, it is definitely not three times more. Therefore, the contradiction between man and land is still quite acute!
And since society has generally stabilized, the birth rate of the Ming Dynasty has been at a high level, and it may not take many years to exceed 200 million.
By then, the contradiction between man and land will become even more prominent!
The second is the expansion of aristocratic power in the process of overcoming difficulties and reviving it!
The honors of the Ming Dynasty have been in decline since the Tumubao Incident, and the social wealth they possess has also gradually decreased - the power of the honors has declined, and the wealth they possess has naturally declined. The imperial examination scholar-bureaucrats took advantage of the situation and occupied a large amount of wealth and resources.
This process is actually the process of downward flow of power and wealth, from the top to the middle, which is good for social stability - as the number of people benefiting from the Ming Dynasty's rule increases, the Ming Dynasty's rule base will also expand. If It’s not that these new people who joined the ruling group didn’t have the skills to kill people, the world wouldn’t be in chaos...
In the Battle of Overcoming Disaster and ZTE, Zhu Cixiang drastically cut off the privileges of scholar-bureaucrats and at the same time expanded the size and power of the military aristocratic group. A large number of heroes who overcame the difficulty joined the originally lifeless noble team, giving this dying group Infused with vitality.
In fact, the current Daming Xungui Group is almost a brand-new founding group, otherwise it would be impossible to defeat the Manchu Qing and suppress Dashun!
Moreover, Zhu Cixiang also launched new education and young officer training, which injected greater vitality into the second generation of overcoming difficulties.
Although a large number of motivated second-generation people who have mastered advanced knowledge and skills can effectively defend the Ming Dynasty, they will also seize a large amount of wealth for themselves and monopolize the upward path. Moreover, the energetic Kenan Xungui family also has a stronger reproductive capacity, so the Kenan Xungui group, which was originally a large number of people, is now expanding rapidly!
Zhu Cixiang sighed and said: "It has been more than ten years since our army came to overcome the difficulties. The children of the heroes who overcame the difficulties are about to grow up. Now all the primary schools in Laoshan and Nanjing Dongcheng are full, and several middle schools When recruiting people, it's like they're trying to squeeze everyone out... If this trend continues, in another ten years, every household (referring to the rich and powerful) will have to worry about the future of their children.
And we can’t take up all the good seats, we have to leave a way out for talented people from poor families, right?
In addition, there are more and more people living in extreme poverty at the bottom!
Now the world is stable, food is sufficient, industry and commerce are relatively prosperous, and I have abolished the Dingkou tax, so the people are willing to have more children. However, the world's population already exceeds tens of millions, and it is only a matter of time before the number reaches twenty or even thirty million. Will there be enough food by then? Is there enough land?
So after much deliberation, I can only expand our territory outwards and earn some space for survival and development for future generations. I want to turn America into a joint-stock country, and let the rich and powerful nobles and wealthy people invest. If they invest money, they will have a share of this country. If each of their families has land-free heirs, they can send them to the country of the United States as nobles. If they are rich and powerful, they cannot go abroad alone with nothing! You have to bring a group of people, right? The extremely poor people in the country can follow them and there will be a way out.
Moreover, the land in North America is wasteful and vast, making it suitable for farming. If 100,000 people can cross the ocean in a year in the future, the returning passenger ships can also carry millions or even tens of millions of kilograms of food. Only when people leave and food comes in can our country be stable for a long time! "
