Compared with Quanzhou, Guangzhou has no inferior urban construction and exotic customs.
Quanzhou mainly has many merchants from Korea, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe, while Guangzhou has many merchants from Southeast Asia and even India. The emphasis of the two is different.
Su Yonglin inspected Guangzhou's municipal administration here, inspected the traffic conditions and agricultural production conditions in this area, took the initiative to talk to citizens in the city, also went out to talk to farmers in surrounding villages, and even talked to fishermen at sea.
After some in-depth understanding, Su Yonglin found that the situation in Guangzhou was different from that in Hangzhou, Quanzhou and other places.
After the Ming Dynasty gained control of Guangzhou through the Second Ming-Song War, it also implemented a policy of restoring agriculture and encouraging farming, but the effect was not obvious, and the number of citizens did not drop significantly.
After Su Yonglin’s on-site inspection and reports from local officials, Su Yonglin discovered that this was a problem caused by the late development.
Because it was developed relatively late and has a small population, the conflict between population and land in this area is not very big, and the main population is concentrated in the Pearl River Delta. There is still a very large area to be developed outside the Pearl River Delta, which is far from reaching The degree of vicious involution in the Hangzhou and Quanzhou areas.
Of course, this is by no means a fairyland on earth, and class conflicts are equally acute.
There is indeed a lot of undeveloped land, but most of the land that has been developed is in the hands of powerful landlords. Ordinary farmers either choose to open up wasteland or go to cities to work.
Developing land does not mean that you can start farming by burning a fire today.
From a piece of wasteland to a fertile land that can grow food, you have to go through many processes. The soil needs to be turned, drained, weeded, and fertilized. There are many, many steps. It takes at least two to three years to maintain the land, and the costs involved during this period. Very big.
The powerful landowners have the strongest capital and should be responsible for this work, but they don't. They don't want to bear the cost of reclamation. They want to go whoring for nothing.
So they colluded with the government to seize the land that the farmers had worked hard to cultivate, and forced the farmers to bear the cost of reclamation, while they enjoyed the benefits.
The peasants could not defeat the powerful landlords who were sidelined by the government, so they were forced to leave their homes and find wasteland to reclaim. After all their hard work, they finally succeeded in reclaiming the land. After spending countless energy, time and even lives, the wasteland finally became It has become fertile land and can produce food.
As a result, the landlord came again with a smile on his face.
As time went by, the homesteaders found that they could not keep the land they had finally cultivated. All the investment costs were in vain, and it was impossible to get rich.
So they gave up their struggle, settled down, and entered Guangzhou to make a living instead of being farmers.
As a result, the development process of the Lingnan land has slowly come to a standstill. Until new leeks enter this area and are naively reclaimed, the development level of this area will remain flat for a long time, making it difficult to continue to advance.
Except for a very few [good gentry] who will spend some money to organize farmers to reclaim wasteland, most landlords and powerful landlords will not waste time and effort to reclaim wasteland.
As long as there are yeoman farmers, they can use their own power to do business without capital.
Why work in the fields when you can make money while lying down?
After the peasants were exploited by the landlords and lost the motivation to develop the wasteland, the powerful landlords would not use the money to develop the emperor's land, but would start to ruin it.
If everyone lies down together and does nothing, it is impossible for us to pay for it anyway, and it is impossible for us to pay for it in this life.
This situation, coupled with the natural environment of the Lingnan region, has long been ignored by the central government, which regards it as a barbaric and hot land and is unwilling to invest resources. As a result, it has been unable to exert its real value for a long time.
This situation actually brought a lot of trouble to the Ming Dynasty.
When the Ming Dynasty took control of Guangzhou, they first sorted out the land acquired in the war and prepared it for farming by farmers. They first established a number of new rural areas as demonstration areas, and then launched an agrarian revolution and called on farmers to stand up against landlords.
However, they found that among the large number of citizens in Guangzhou, not many were willing to go back and become farmers.
Many citizens are more willing to do business and go overseas, but are not willing to return to farmers and farm the land.
Although doing business overseas is risky, the rewards are also high.
Some people are lucky and their income is much higher than that of farmers. Some people are even luckier and smarter. They make a lot of money by doing business overseas and live a very good life.
Guangzhou Port has prosperous commerce, and its cargo throughput is unique in the world. As long as you go to the port, as long as you are a working person, you can always find a job, and the income is not very low.
If you save a little, save some money, and work hard for a few years, you can start a small business by yourself, or open a shop to sell food and drink, and make money.
Then you can make arrangements to marry a wife and have children.
It is not difficult for people to get married in a place like this, not to mention that many poor families sell their sons and daughters at low prices. It is not difficult or uncommon to buy a daughter-in-law to carry on the family line.
You can live this life.
And being a farmer...
You Mingguo said nicely, the land is ours, who knows when you will take the land back and make it yours. You have worked hard for a whole year, but in the end you will get nothing.
It is even more impossible to reclaim wasteland. It is impossible to reclaim wasteland. I will never reclaim wasteland in this life. I can only make a living by fishing, doing business, etc. without starving to death.
We rely on mountains to eat mountains, and rely on water to drink water. We rely on the vast ocean, and we will never starve to death.
We have heard a lot of nonsense about dividing land. This is what those landlords did back then. If we can’t fight, why don’t we just lie flat?
Unless you take away all the sea, then that’s up to you.
Many officials and members of the Renaissance Association encountered such a situation when they went to do ideological work for the citizens. They were scolded by the citizens and expressed a full sense of distrust, so they had no temper at all.
For this reason, they have already scolded those damn landlords and wealthy people in their hearts until the eighteenth generation of their ancestors.
However, despite the criticism, the work of encouraging farmers and cultivators in Guangzhou is still very difficult to do.
Until Su Yonglin arrived in Guangzhou, the government had not launched a large-scale agrarian revolution, and the cultivated land in its hands had not been completely divided, let alone organized manpower to open up wasteland and expand production.
Only members of the Renaissance and the garrison could help reclaim wasteland at the request of the government. Others could not recruit professional farmers unless they spent money to hire people, let citizens help with farm work, and paid daily wages.
This situation is not good at all.
Therefore, after Su Yonglin arrived in Guangzhou, at a seminar on agricultural issues, some people even suggested that we simply reorganize the industry ecology. We can't just let the land be so barren. No matter how much money we make from doing business, it is not as important as the food grown in the ground. , it is definitely not unreasonable to emphasize agriculture and suppress business.
Therefore, the urban population should be restricted from engaging in industry and commerce, and the law should be used to drive them back to the countryside to become farmers.
Su Yonglin was shocked by this idea.
He didn't know why officials in Guangzhou would come up with such an idea.
Then the anger surged and he got angry.
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