According to the previous accounts of some officials in charge of diplomatic matters in the Jin Kingdom, Japan seems to have mainly official and private contacts with the Southern Song Dynasty these days, and is not interested in the Jin Kingdom.
According to diplomatic records, the talker in Japan these days seems to be called Ping.
Because Jin Guo's introduction in this regard was unclear, Su Yonglin didn't know who was talking about Japan, but he still remembered something like the Genpei War. If you talk about it this way, Japan in this era seemed not to be unified. Civil unrest continues.
Therefore, Su Yonglin planned to send someone to Japan to learn about the current specific situation in Japan and the commercial and trade situation between them and the Southern Song Dynasty.
Su Yonglin knew that before the large-scale development and import of American silver into China, Japan was the largest silver-producing country, and this small island country had extremely rich silver deposits.
Through trade with the Southern Song Dynasty, Japan seemed to have imported a lot of silver into the Southern Song Dynasty, which solved part of the problem of silver supply for annual coins for the Southern Song Dynasty, so the Southern Song Dynasty was also very willing to trade with Japan.
But correspondingly, the Japanese liked Southern Song copper coins very much and took away a large amount of Southern Song copper coins through trade for their own use. This further aggravated the money shortage in the Southern Song Dynasty and made deflation even more severe.
Thinking of this, Su Yonglin suddenly felt that he could carry out a wave of operations against Japan.
Not to mention business, Su Yonglin didn't care about this aspect. The main thing was that being able to control Japan's silver deposits would improve China's economic dependence on copper to a considerable extent.
In the future, Su Yonglin plans to use gold and silver to improve China's monetary system. Deflation cannot continue to affect further economic development. American silver is just a passing thought at the moment, but Japanese silver is available.
Copper will mainly play a very important role in the future industrial system. Even now, copper also plays a big role in casting cannons. As a country with a small output of copper mines, all economic pressure is poured into copper. On the body, it is not friendly.
It seems that the island countries in Southeast Asia have a lot of copper?
Su Yonglin thought about it and felt that large-scale development of the navy and shipping was an urgent need. Whether it was Japan's gold and silver or Southeast Asia's copper mines, they would be indispensable and important resources after the country was unified in the future.
Not to mention using it now, but to start preparing to master it. The local indigenous people are not easy to deal with.
Japan, in particular, still has a certain amount of armed force. If it cannot be surrendered through force, it will not be easy to obtain enough silver and gold from them to stabilize the Ming Dynasty's monetary system.
Therefore, it is time to start establishing maritime hegemony in East and Southeast Asia.
When Su Yonglin began to set up plans to establish the maritime hegemony of the Ming Dynasty, Zhao Yucheng was also working hard to develop the power of the Fuxing Society in the south and doing his best to expand the influence of the Fuxing Society.
It has been more than a year since Zhao Yucheng went south. When he went south with 108 people, he secretly sneaked into the Jizhou and Nan'an Army on Jiangnan West Road in the Southern Song Dynasty to launch operations. In a sense, he was developing from scratch.
Facing unfamiliar terrain, unfamiliar people, living customs, etc., Zhao Yucheng and others faced very severe challenges.
However, they did not mess up their hands and feet, but developed slowly and step by step.
Because the Southern Song Dynasty had stricter examination of household registration, when they entered the Southern Song Dynasty, with the help of the private salt sales team of the Ming Dynasty, they bought the household registration of the Xinyang Army in Xinyang County from the money-minded officials of the Southern Song Dynasty, and truly became [Song people] 】Only after that did he legally enter the Song Dynasty.
The Southern Song Dynasty officials did not encourage people to leave their place of residence to work and live in other places, and the household registration management was relatively strict. However, because their oppression was too severe, exile was very common, and many people were forced to leave their original household registration.
The irony is that when faced with this phenomenon of passively leaving the place of residence and going into exile, the local officials in the Southern Song Dynasty were quite indifferent and ignored them.
Probably they believe that only those who stay in the local area and have industries are worthy of being managed by them, and the rest are just residues. They should get away as far as they can without adding any burden to the local area.
Not to mention that they like to bully the weak. In fact, sending people to the countryside to collect taxes also costs a lot. Sometimes they also face the risk of rebellion, which is not without risk.
So get rid of all unstable factors.
Therefore, although subjectively the Southern Song Dynasty government did not encourage or even resent population mobility, its brutal oppression actually led to an increase in population mobility across the country, which in disguise provided a commercial population for the southeastern coast and promoted the development of maritime trade.
Despite this, if you are not a refugee and want to move across regions legally within the Southern Song Dynasty, unless you are an official or a scholar with a prestigious title, it is most common to become a businessman and have a document issued by the local government to prove it.
Zhao Yucheng and others purchased the Southern Song Dynasty household registration with the help of the private salt team and became merchants. Using selling silk cloth as a cover, they entered the Southern Song Dynasty from Xinyang Army and headed south to Jizhou and Nan'an Army areas on Jiangnan West Road.
However, this does not mean absolute safety.
Compared with the university-level control and management of grassroots schools in the Ming Dynasty today, the control and management of grassroots schools in the Southern Song Dynasty were at the preschool level on average.
Of course, in the Southern Song Dynasty, there were some areas where the performance exceeded the preschool level, and there were also some areas where the performance was only at the prenatal education level.
Unfortunately, Zhao Yucheng and others tried several levels of grassroots management in the Southern Song Dynasty all the way south.
They had never experienced university-level management in the Southern Song Dynasty. The highest management level was only high school level. This was considered very good management. They had only experienced it in one county.
Then there is the junior high school level. I have experienced it in several counties. I have more experience at the elementary school level, and even more experience at the preschool and kindergarten levels.
They were also lucky enough to experience it at the prenatal education level.
Specifically, during the journey, they escaped three bandit robberies and one refugee riot, were forced to confront a group of bandits head-on and succeeded, and then experienced more than ten exploitative interrogations by petty officials along the way who demanded benefits.
They finally arrived in Jizhou successfully, entered Luling City, and stayed at a local hotel that provided food and accommodation for businessmen.
All the way south, the journey is not far, but it is really tiring.
Compared with the smooth journey they took from Zhongdu to the border area of the Ming Dynasty, reaching Jizhou from the border of the Southern Song Dynasty was not considered an arduous journey, but could also be regarded as learning from the West.
There are not only bandits and rioting refugees, but also local officials and officials who are more terrifying than bandits and refugees.
Officials are greedy and clerks are cunning. These guys wear uniforms and have darker hearts. They are several times scarier than bandits and refugees.
They were extorted by these corrupt officials for nearly 50 guan in tolls and benefits. They learned a lot about the local "customs" and also learned how some business travelers traveled in the middle of the night to avoid various exploitations by officials.
They often risk encountering bandits and wild animals on their way from forested areas or mountainous areas in the middle of the night, far away from urban areas and other places where there are officials. They stay up day and night, making them behave like some wild animals, inhabited by humans and ghosts. .
During this process, Zhao Yucheng had some profound insights.
"The ancients often said that harsh government is fiercer than a tiger. Before, we only experienced the suffering of farmers and did not understand the suffering of traders. Now we have experienced it and understand what all-round oppression means.
When encountering a tiger, a group of ten or twenty people, armed with weapons, can fight for survival. It is not impossible to kill the tiger. But when encountering a harsh government, what can happen even if there are hundreds or thousands of people? "
The 108 members of the Renaissance Association who were traveling with him were also deeply moved and nodded their heads in agreement.
