Guo Pu, Grand Master of Zhongji Palace and Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, was on duty in the cabinet today. As soon as he entered the duty room, he said to Xiao Liangyou, the editor of the Hanlin Academy who had recently entered Zhiwen Yuan Pavilion: "Are you seeking truth today?" Spare? Bring it to me."
Xiao Liangyou was born in the same year as Gao Jingshi. After compiling the "Da Ming Huidian" together, he is now a good friend. Of course, he is aware of the teacher-student relationship between Guo Pu and Gao Jingshi. He is very concerned about Gao Jingshi's first visit after he took office as the inspector of Guangxi. He had already expected that Guo Pu would personally pay attention to it when he went there, so as soon as Guo Pu opened his mouth, he bowed slightly and said: "Yuanfu, the truth-seeking essay has been placed on your desk."
Guo Pu nodded with satisfaction, walked to the case and sat down, picked up the pragmatic essay and read it.
This essay is called "In order to relieve the people's poverty, please designate the Lianzhou Prefecture to be the governor of Guangxi". The title is of course very high-level, and the content is also very upright, but the general idea of his essay is very interesting, and the thoughts in it are almost It is completely consistent with the policy that led him to become the "Sixth Number One Scholar".
In other words, the key reason why Guangxi is in chaos is poverty. As he said in his policy statement: The biggest problem in the world today is poverty: poor officials will lead to corruption, poor people will lead to thieves, poor military will lead to trouble, and poor countries will make them weak... The so-called poverty means that for small people, their property is not enough to support themselves. , it is easy to be insufficient for personal use. If we look into its origin, it is nothing more than poor production and poor trade.
For this reason, if you want to prevent officials from being greedy, you must first increase their salaries; if you want to prevent the common people from stealing, you must first enrich their income; if you want to prevent soldiers from causing trouble, you must first pay them enough; if you want to prevent the country from being weak, you must first enrich its treasury.
And this essay of his is also based on this idea, proposing: "The poverty of Guangxi is not due to the limited land power or the lack of manpower. In fact, the products of the land cannot be processed and sold."
So Gao pragmatically proposed a bunch of projects to help Guangxi "process and sell", and stated openly in the essay that Jinghua was willing to take the lead in establishing two major sugar manufacturing and shipbuilding factories in Guangxi, and vigorously cultivate the local tung cultivation and tung oil trade.
The only trouble is that Guangxi does not have an outlet to the sea. Even if these goods can be produced, they have to go through Lianzhou in Guangdong.
Gao Jingshi clearly stated in his essay that for Jinghua and other businessmen in the future, there is no difference between paying taxes to Guangxi or Guangdong, but "Guangdong will always be rich and Guangxi will always be poor, so the Western Province will rely on the Eastern Province for supplies for a long time, and there will be no If the people are self-reliant and have insufficient warehouses and warehouses, how can they know the etiquette and abide by their duties?"
All in all, he raised whether Lianzhou Prefecture can be included in Guangxi to the level of whether Guangxi Province can have long-term peace and stability.
Of course, related issues such as the supplies of the squadron were also mentioned in passing to support this.
As for the possible "disadvantages", Gao pragmatically mentioned the issue of preventing Japanese pirates, but he didn't talk much about it. The main meaning was hidden in one sentence: "Since the industry is prospering there and the local area has benefited, strict measures will be taken." Be on guard.”
This sentence is quite interesting, as if it is saying that Lianzhou is not taken seriously at the moment. Even though the Guangdong Navy is quite powerful, because there is no interest related, the Japanese pirates can come and go freely. Since a series of industries will be established in the future, Guangxi will have a stake in them. In order to protect these interests, it is of course impossible to turn a blind eye to the threat of Japanese pirates.
If Guo Pu were to evaluate it, it would be that the intention was high and the argument was upright. The entire essay was not only upright and awe-inspiring, but also very practical, deeply adhering to the spirit of practical learning.
Guo Pu looked carefully to see if there was anything that was not in compliance with the regulations, but he was overthinking it. Gao Pragmatic had just finished compiling the "Da Ming Hui Dian" and was very clear about some things that should be avoided and paid attention to. How could he make a mistake?
Mr. Guo Ge then approved a sixteen-word reply: "The officer's comments are clear, his thoughts are appropriate, and his request can be granted."
When Zhu Yijun heard that Gao Pangshi had submitted his first memorial after taking office, he thought he had discovered some corrupt officials during his inspection and wanted to impeach him. Who would have thought that when he took it over, it turned out to be such a memorial, and he couldn't help but feel a little bit in his heart. Surprised.
Although the jurisdiction of the inspector censor has long been expanded to an almost unlimited extent, generally speaking, it should still focus on supervision. Generally speaking, these local administrative affairs should be in charge of the governor.
Zhu Yijun was a little surprised at first, but after reading it carefully, he had to admit that Gao Pragmatic's memorial was not ultra vires. The work of supervising the censor, regardless of whether it is to catch corrupt officials or detect traitors, in the final analysis is to maintain local peace. Although his main focus in this essay is finance, the ultimate goal is still to maintain local peace. It can even be said that it is for long-term peace and stability.
Zhu Yijun has always been very confident about Gao Pragmatic's ability. Although he vaguely felt that some people might object to this matter, he inherited a good habit from his father, Emperor Longqing: employing people without suspicion. Now that the cabinet vote was in agreement, he no longer thought about it, and wrote Zhu Zhu: "Lianzhou used to belong to Guangdong because of the Japanese pirates. This was not the case in the previous Song Dynasty. However, now that the Japanese pirates are in a difficult situation, Lianzhou returns to Guangdong. Guangxi is a long-term strategy, that's all. If there is a secretary, we can quickly make a clear decision, clearly define the divisions, and let me know."
Changing the administrative ownership of a prefecture is not something that can be done casually. The six ministries, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and even the Fifth Military Governor's Office must make corresponding adjustments, including relevant administrative procedures, yellow books, fish scale atlases, etc. There are a lot of miscellaneous things, such as the transfer of archives and data.
Therefore, according to the imperial edict, all ministries are secretly trying to bring bad luck, and many officials privately seek advice from their respective cabinet ministers and backstage officials.
The Gao Dang side is naturally easy to talk about, and they will definitely join in singing praises when the new official Gao Pragmatic takes office, while the Xinxue group remains silent for the time being.
In fact, Shen Shixing is a little troubled now. According to his idea, there is no need to fight with Gao Dang over "such a trivial matter". Although Gao Pragmatic is young and low-ranking, he is a very special person. At present, Under the circumstances, it is not cost-effective to fight with Gao Pragmatic over this matter.
The current situation is that Guo Pu has obviously wanted to retire, and although Zhang Siwei is not very old, his health is not good. In this case, why not wait until they retire before having a fight with Gao Dang?
However, the trouble is that Liu Yaojie is a typical Xinxue Party minister. With his achievements in quelling the Bazhai Rebellion, not to mention coming to Yanjing, he at least has a good chance of serving as the Minister of War in Nanjing, which is the de facto most important minister in Nanjing. Now that Gao pragmatism has targeted Liu Yaojie, Shen Shixing had to consider Liu Yaojie's reaction.
So Shen Shixing decided to wait and see Liu Yaojie's reaction after receiving the news, and then decide whether to object or acquiesce.
Since no one immediately jumped out to speak out, the imperial edict would naturally begin to be implemented, and at the same time, the Gao family's related industries also began to move.
In Kaiping, the three major factories began to adjust their production capacity and urgently supplied a large amount of refined iron to the Jinghua Artillery Factory and Jinghua Musket Factory. The two ordnance factories used the excuse that the Jinghua security team needed to go south to Guangxi to protect the sugar refinery and shipyard that were about to be built, and began to work overtime for manufacturing. Longqing Type II musket, Bingzi Type I light cannon, and Gengchen Type I heavy artillery.
By the way, they also passed on a deal to Wang Chonggu's grandson Wang Qian to manufacture a large number of refined iron spearheads. The Wang family has now begun to engage in private military industry, but it is mainly engaged in the cold weapons and armor business, so this time Jinghua's iron spearhead business was directly handed over to the Wang family.
Wang Chonggu is Zhang Siwei's uncle. Logically speaking, Wang Qian and Gao Pragmatic are cousins, but judging from the habits of the Ming Dynasty, this "expression" is a bit far. However, the two families were both high-ranking members of the party and were related to each other, so they naturally had frequent exchanges on weekdays, especially since the iron used by the Wang family was supplied by Jinghua, so the Wang family earned a processing fee from it.
At the same time, Jinghua's armed forces were also mobilized urgently. A total of 4,000 people were mobilized in batches from Jinghua Trading Co., Kaiping, Henan Weihui and other places to Laizhou, Shandong. Liu Xian and Gao Jue also mobilized at the same time and went to Laizhou in person for final training and preparations. After all weapons and equipment were fully equipped, they were transferred to Guangxi by sea.
Among them, Liu Xian is only responsible for the training. After the training, he will return to Kaiping to prepare the second batch of personnel, while Gao Jue will lead the team to Guangxi to prepare for combat.
Although the number of troops mobilized this time is only 4,000, for the Jinghua system that has more than 20,000 armed or quasi-armed personnel in Gyeonggi, Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi, it is probably less than one-fifth, or even In addition, the subsequent second batch is only a quarter of the strength, but this is a "thousand-mile expedition", and many things must be considered.
At the very least, the first thing they did after arriving in Guangxi was to adapt to the climate. This alone would take at least two or three months.
Because of these various things, Liu Xiancai, who had the most experience in fighting in the south, rushed to Laizhou in person to impart his experience.
In addition to preparations for force, the Jinghua Shipyard in Laizhou is busy deploying personnel. Many shipbuilders need to rush to Guangxi with the fleet. Although Guangzhou has recruited a lot of people, it is impossible to recruit them all at the moment. They still need people from the north. support.
The recruitment of personnel for the sugar refinery is even more troublesome. This is a highly pragmatic and temporary decision. There is no talent reserve of this type in the north, so we have to recruit people from all over the country quickly, and at the same time recruit people in Weihui and Xinzheng.
After recruiting so many people, there must be enough food. The local food production in Guangxi is unreliable. Either you have to go to Guangdong to buy it, or you have to buy it from Huguang. Although in theory Gao pragmatically has a better business network in Huguang, it is more inconvenient to transport grain from Huguang to Guangxi - there are many mountainous areas and the waterways are countercurrent, so this matter has to be put aside for the time being. Jinghua only prepares food on the road in the north. The remaining grain will be purchased by Gao Mengnan near Guangzhou and transported to Qinzhou.
There are also other preparations made by Ling Ling Zongzong, so there is no need to go into details one by one. In short, the whole Beijing has taken action for it. The effect of Gao Pragmatic's ten years of foundation building depends on this wave.
Everyone in Jinghua is very aware of this, so they can't help but be nervous - the master is personally watching to see if they do well this time, and their future will all depend on this move.
