In order to cope with the possible food problem, the experienced Zuo Ming requested in advance to transport some stored grain from Henan Province and other places to Sichuan Province by water transportation.
When arriving, we should make a big fanfare, beat gongs and drums, and make a big publicity, so that everyone along the way can see, know, and understand what a huge amount of grain the Ming government has transported from other places.
In this way, it will not only increase food savings, but also increase the trust of the people in Sichuan and Shu who have just surrendered to the Ming Dynasty, and improve their perception of the Ming government.
After all, he had never accepted the rule of the Ming Dynasty. He believed that these people were somewhat wary of the Ming Dynasty government.
This kind of wariness needs to be dispelled by benevolent government, and the best benevolent government is to ensure that everyone has food to eat and that no one will starve to death.
This was the good thing about the feudal agricultural era. As long as agricultural production resumed, commercial and economic activities could resume sooner or later. After all, it was still small in scale and involved little, and the focus of the national economy was still agriculture.
Therefore, as long as we fully develop agriculture and restore production, encourage farmers to cultivate, and people will not starve to death, then it is only a matter of time before the Sichuan and Sichuan regions return to stability, and everything will eventually return to the established track.
As for commercial and economic issues, Zuo Ming, who has been in charge of Henan for five years, also has many thoughts on this.
What the people of Henan trusted was never the Jiaozi and Huizi used by the Song Dynasty, but copper coins, and the IOUs issued by the Ming Dynasty to borrow money from the people due to lack of funds.
Baitiao has become almost synonymous with banknotes in Henan, and is no longer just a symbol of government debt.
Zuo Ming knew very well that as the Yellow River Project was about to be completed, the life of Jiangnan Kingdom would also come to an end, and both Jiaozi and Huizi would become history.
The court of the Ming Dynasty disliked Jiaozi and Huizi very much. In the main social and economic activities of the Ming Dynasty, the government never accepted any currency other than copper coins, including Jiaozi and Huizi. Not accepted.
Therefore, even if there are people who use Jiaozi and Huizi, they are still used in transactions with Jiangnan Kingdom.
Judging from the news that Zuo Ming has received so far, the Zhongdu imperial court is planning to make every effort to reorganize the country's economy after destroying the Jiangnan Kingdom, and gradually withdraw the white bars from circulation and replace them with Ming Dynasty treasure banknotes with copper coins as reserves.
Su Yonglin held several national economic meetings in succession at the beginning of the eighth year of Hongwu to discuss economic issues after the country was basically unified, including the crucial currency issue.
The result of the meeting was that before the great voyage achieved certain results and before the country could stably obtain large amounts of gold and silver, there must be a temporary monetary strategy that could replace the current monetary system.
After many discussions, the economic meeting gradually reached a consensus.
That is to say, iron coins, Jiaozi, and Huizi were abolished, and copper coins and Ming Dynasty banknotes were mainly used as the official legal tender of the Ming Dynasty.
And after a period of preparation, all the copper coins from the Southern and Northern Song Dynasties and any excavated other eras were gradually recast into a brand new copper coin [Daming Tongbao].
Through the presentation and research of a large amount of information at the meeting, the Zhongdu Imperial Economic Conference basically determined that the intensifying money shortage problem in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties was related to China's own insufficient copper reserves, but it was not the main problem during this period.
During this period, the level of productivity and the development of the commodity currency economy in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties were not enough to make the copper shortage the main reason for the money shortage in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties.
The normal functioning of the economy during this period would not expose the shortage of copper reserves as a major shortcoming, or in other words, the problem of insufficient copper reserves would not be exposed at all.
In addition to the problem of insufficient copper reserves, the economic conference also summarized the three main reasons for this phenomenon: "outflow of copper coins", "prevalence of hiding money" and "destruction of money for casting".
The outflow of copper coins is easy to understand.
Copper coins of the Song Dynasty are well-cast, of stable quality, and backed by the strong economic strength of the Song Dynasty. Therefore, they have strong purchasing power and are generally trusted currencies in international trade. Neighboring countries are limited by their own casting technology and economic scale, so they use them one after another. Song Dynasty used copper coins to engage in trade.
In addition, the purchasing power of Song copper coins abroad was stronger than at home. Therefore, even though the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties strictly prohibited the outflow of copper coins, a large amount of copper coins continued to flow abroad and circulated abroad through trade, smuggling and other channels.
Among them, overseas is not the main direction for the outflow of copper coins. The amount of Song copper coins taken away through sea trade is far less than imagined.
The Liao Kingdom, Xixia, Goryeo, Japan, and later the Jin Kingdom, these coexisting countries in the mainland were the main directions for the outflow of copper coins. In other words, these countries and regions were important drivers of the money shortage in the Song Dynasty.
They would take a huge amount of copper coins from the Southern and Northern Song Dynasties and circulate them in their own countries through annual coins, livestock trade, etc., leaving the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties with not so many copper coins to circulate.
There is no doubt that this is one of the important reasons for the money shortage.
Regarding this issue, the Zhongdu Economic Conference believed that the Liao Kingdom was already over, the Jin Kingdom and Xixia had been destroyed by the Ming Dynasty, and the economies and coins of these regions had been unified by the Ming Dynasty. As a result, the Ming Dynasty obtained a large number of copper coins officially stored by various countries.
Although Koryo and Japan still exist, they are small in size and the amount of copper coins they took away is far less than the number of copper coins owned by the Jin Kingdom and Xixia. Therefore, the problem is not too big. It doesn't matter if they are ignored for the time being. Big deal.
Therefore, the problem of outflow of copper coins has been partially solved.
In the future, with the advancement of military affairs, this problem will be further solved. The divided external circulation in the mainland will eventually be solved by the unified internal circulation, and the outflow of copper coins will no longer be an issue worth discussing.
The problem of the prevalence of hiding money is also easy to understand.
In the middle and late period of the Song Dynasty, the government was in chaos, administrative efficiency was low, and it became increasingly unable to deal with economic issues.
Especially after the Song Dynasty discovered that paper money was profitable, it always issued more paper money, causing the currency value to be unstable and often collapsed, making the people no longer trust paper money. The instability of the value of paper money led to the popularity of collecting copper coins among the people to prepare for risks.
Copper coins are the hardest currency.
Therefore, people began to store copper coins to resist risks.
On the other hand, of course, it was the corruption and incompetence of the Song Dynasty that allowed the privileged class to obtain a large amount of wealth. However, they had huge wealth but did not have the corresponding goods to consume it. Therefore, this part of the money settled and became their savings.
The scale of their money collections often amounts to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. They are like terrifying gold-eating beasts, devouring large amounts of copper coins circulating in the market without spitting them out, making the money shortage in the market more and more serious.
Regarding this issue, the Zhongdu Economic Conference believed that under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, this issue was well resolved.
Because the Ming Dynasty carried out the agrarian revolution, the gold-swallowing beasts were eliminated on the physical level. After the gold-swallowing beasts were eliminated by the revolution, their family properties and the huge amount of copper coins they stored were also included in the national savings of the Ming Dynasty.
Through pursuit, the Ming government unearthed a huge amount of copper coins hidden in the homes of powerful landlords. As time went by, more and more copper coins were discovered, and the amount was staggering.
The Ming government did not have the bad habit of swallowing gold and was keen on construction and restoration.
Through these years of large-scale construction campaigns, the Ming government continued to invest huge amounts of copper coins into the private sector. Hundreds of thousands, millions and tens of millions of money went into the private sector, allowing this money to return to circulation.
There was an abundance of copper coins in circulation, so there was no money shortage in the Ming Dynasty.
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