Chapter 156 He Xi’s Plan
He Xi has been thinking about the future, many things, overturning her own ideas again and again, and rebuilding her own ideas again and again.
Adhering to the idea of allowing Ming Dynasty to enter modernization, it has never changed. But how to do it specifically? On what day of a period, there is a thought of a period. This itself is also a process of thinking and progress.
He Xi always spends a lot of time on this every day.
At this moment, Zhu Yuanzhang asked, and He Xi answered fluently.
He Xi said: "Your Majesty, in my opinion, we should pay attention to three major things. The first is to find a market for the factory in Beijing. And this market should be divided into two categories, one is domestic and the other is foreign. "
"The easiest thing to do abroad is foreign trade. Increase investment in foreign trade. I am already making preparations for this. For example, lowering the requirements for merchants who go to sea so that small and medium-sized merchants can take ships to go to sea. And send expedition teams to go to sea. Looking for more markets overseas.”
"Send official fleets to Tianzhu, Africa, and Europe to strengthen external contacts and sell Ming products. Even at the expense of war."
"I haven't figured out how to do it in China yet, but there are some places where I've already figured it out a lot."
Then He Xi informed Zhu Yuanzhang of the changes he planned to make to Hebei's agriculture. Find ways to sell the most advanced agricultural tools to the people, and build water conservancy projects to allow the people to expand their farming area and become an important consumer group.
Thereby digesting the production capacity of Beijing and Liaodong.
The reason why He Xi puts the market first. There is a reason.
There is no other reason. The reason why He Xi is able to attract a group of people is certainly the prestige brought by He Xi's academic achievements. But in fact, these prestige are not useless, but they are of little use. The reason why so many people support him is that He Xi can make money with them.
Therefore, He Xi must let the economy develop. Let those who follow him taste the dividends of the times and development. They just continued to follow. If they all lost money, there was no need to think that these people would transform and become He Xi's opponents.
The factories trained by He Xi are much more efficient than handicraft workshops. Some handicrafts that can be called works of art are not as good as before, but in the pre-industrial era, an era of shortage of materials, there was no need to worry about not needing it. There is purchasing power to worry about.
Yes, purchasing power.
Most of the people in the Ming Dynasty were extremely poor. Whether they had enough to eat was a problem. They had no money to sell extra things, even production tools.
Moreover, the things consumed by the few people with the ability to consume are different from the bulk commodities produced by industry. Therefore, it does not seem that the industrial system has been established. But if it continues, it is also a question that needs to be considered.
Expanding foreign trade was something He Xi could not have imagined. Domestic trade is just a supplement.
Of course, there is one thing here that He Xi did not say, but Zhu Yuanzhang also knew it.
He Xi is afraid.
In fact, as mentioned earlier, if we really count, the Ming Dynasty's 60 million population is the largest single market in this era. If industrial products can completely occupy the Ming Dynasty's domestic market, then supporting the industrial systems of Liaodong and Beijing should not be a big problem.
But He Xi didn't dare to do this.
What He Xi is afraid of is not the corruption of corrupt officials, but the huge disaster that will result from the disintegration of the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy under the impact of industrial products. After all, many problems that occurred in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China were actually attributed to this one reason.
As long as foreigners make money in China, they don't need to clean up the situation. Therefore, the evil old society was formed and the people were extremely poor. We must know that not all Chinese people in ancient times were as poor as the rural areas before liberation.
Even after liberation, for a long time, the per capita food consumption data was not comparable to that of the Song Dynasty.
In terms of agricultural production, agricultural technological innovation has never stopped. However, the grain yield per mu in the Qing Dynasty exceeded that of the Song Dynasty. The rural areas should have been richer than in history. However, the rural areas before liberation were generally bankrupt. Life was miserable.
What will be the consequences if industrial products are rashly dumped across the country? He Xi doesn’t know.
That is to operate other non-industrial areas in China as economic colonies. Over time, it is possible that wars will break out everywhere. Therefore, He Xicai wanted to transform Hebei's rural areas and find a way to help Hebei people evolve from a self-sufficient small-scale farming economy to a professionally managed farm.
This is also He Xi’s preparation for more rural reforms in the future.
After all, rural issues were very important in Ming Dynasty. Because the foundation of scholar-bureaucrats is in the countryside. In the village.
If it is not solved, there will be more problems in the future.
However, this matter was so big that He Xi could only make preparations and did not even dare to mention it.
However, what kind of person Zhu Yuanzhang is, he is not easy to fool. He quickly caught the loophole in He Xi's words and began to ask. In a few words, everything He Xi wanted to hide was revealed.
Zhu Yuanzhang said: "So? Do you think that when industry develops to a certain extent, or when the industrial system is extended to the whole country, something will happen in rural areas?"
He Xi said: "There will be labor pains."
Zhu Yuanzhang sneered and said nothing. But He Xi blushed again after hearing this.
He Xi doesn't know who invented this word. But it is very clever, the depth of the problem that can be solved at once, this kind of technological progress, and the series of changes brought about by social reform will naturally make many people be swept away by the torrent of the times, and they don’t know what their fate will be.
But what kind of outcome cannot be described as labor pain?
Are there life-threatening labor pains? And it's not just one person's life, it's the lives of a group of people, or even more people.
There is no need to look at how fragile the people at the bottom of the Ming Dynasty are and how unbearable the pressure is. Just look at the previous floods. A natural or man-made disaster, and the accumulation of several generations of people will be wiped out.
The collapse of the small-scale peasant economy and the formation of a new economic system will certainly bring many people to the clouds, but more people may sink underground. The damage caused is by no means comparable to a natural disaster or a man-made disaster. m.
Such things are described as labor pains. This is really the art of language.
Zhu Yuanzhang thought for a moment and said, "Is such a thing inevitable?"
He Xi said: "It is inevitable. However, if we take care of it slowly, maybe the matter will not be so serious."
Zhu Yuanzhang said: "Xu Xu Tuzhi? Do you think those people below you will have Xu Xu Tuzhi's thoughts, and the group of nobles behind you can restrain their thoughts of not making money. In the secretary prison, you observed about the private salt Is there any memorial for you?"
He Xi was stunned and said, "I haven't seen it."
Zhu Yuanzhang said: "Then go and take a look. The salt tax has continued to fall over the years, and it is getting less and less. Even in Yangzhou, salt merchants have allowed salt merchants to recruit manpower to protect the salt. And locally? The proportion of private salt is obvious There are too many. People are willing to eat illegal salt, so illegal salt dealers are even more difficult to catch."
He Xi can tell why with his toes?
Naturally, the output of the Liaodong Salt Factory is too high. Although it can only be sold overseas, in terms of cost, the sun-dried salt method has advantages that cannot be ignored over the boiled salt method. Under such circumstances, it is natural that some people are willing to take risks and find ways to smuggle salt into the country.
He Xi even had some doubts as to whether Lan Yu or a certain distinguished person was behind this incident.
So, He Xi already knew the answer.
Now He Xi has made repeated orders not to sell salt from Liaodong to the country. The kind of person who can get a large amount of salt at this time and send it to the country is one of the nobles behind He Xi. There is no need to do this later, now these people have begun to be disobedient.
This made He Xi feel very uncomfortable in his heart. These nobles could not become the backbone of He Xi's faction. He had to organize his own direct line.
As for those who oppose He Xi, they will never stop. Especially this time, it is very likely to change the entire face of the countryside and dig into the foundation of the scholar-bureaucrats.
Some people died, but not completely...
