Xinshun 1730

Chapter 778 The Difficult First Step
The fundamental problem of Dashun is internal.

Liu Yu has always been tossing around outside in order to promote the problem-solving class from the outside in.

But now, internal problems in turn restrict the development of the new era.

Any policy has two sides.

Putting the poll tax into the land tax is an inheritance of the whip method, and the logic is very clear, and it has been followed since the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

The good thing is that the control on population migration has been relaxed and population growth has been promoted.

The bad thing is that the price of land has dropped, and small farmers are more likely to go bankrupt. On the premise that the land rent remains unchanged at about [-]%, the rate of return for buying and hoarding land is much higher than investing in industry and commerce.

This point, when Liu Yu encouraged the development of Xizo investment, the wealthy businessmen mentioned this issue.

Although they do not have the knowledge of economics from a professional background, their long-term experience has led them to the same conclusion: taxation based on land will inevitably lead to a decrease in the sale price of land, because the bottomless pit of exorbitant taxes is also bound to the land and no longer Bind to the head.

In order to truly develop industry and commerce, it is necessary not only to allow capital to flow to industry and commerce, but also to open up a larger market.

Dashun still needs to implement a lot of supporting policies.

For example, popularizing the permanent tenancy system, such as implementing rent reduction policies, but these are really difficult to implement.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a wave of perpetual tenants, rent reduction, interest rate reduction, and non-slavery.

However, that trend was not promoted by the imperial government's policies, but by the tenants and servants who directly copied the guys, taking advantage of the opportunity of "turning the world upside down", and forcing the landlords to come out with knives.

However, after the chaos ended, the gentry tore up the contract they had forced out.

Or say: "The slave generation said that slaves should not rest with the heaven and the earth. If it is true, it is true slaves. Husbands have heaven and earth, but there are monarchs and ministers, fathers and sons, and masters and servants. If the heavens and the earth do not change, so will the rulers and ministers, father and son, masters and servants." The righteousness of a master and a servant, the heaven and the earth are open... If the nose is not located under the eyes, but suddenly located on the forehead, you will be famous!"

Dashun is actually an internally divided society.

In North China and most of the north, after long-term wars, see-saws, uprisings, resistance, and massacres in the late Ming Dynasty, they still basically maintain an economic foundation dominated by small farmers, and there are not many big landlords.

In the canal area, due to long-term floods, fierce folk customs, too many thieves and bandits, after natural disasters occur frequently, the name "Kong Er Er was trapped in Chen Cai, borrowed food from the beggar ancestor Fan Dan, but damn We didn’t pay back in the future. Now we beggars are all the disciples of Fan Dan, so it’s not only right and proper for you, the disciples and grandchildren of Confucius, to pay back some money and some food. The slogans are organized by the underlying religions, and they are in a mess.In some places, the gentry had to make more concessions; in some places, the gentry was the leader of bandits, creating magical situations such as tenants avoiding taboos and exercising power.

After passing the Jianghuai area, there are more big landlords and large manors in the Jiangnan area.The custom of keeping slaves in the Ming Dynasty, a large number of annexed land, and the vast majority of people are tenants.This is completely different from the economic foundation of the north, especially North China, Northwest and other places where there were more murders in Dashun.

Further south, the clan is powerful and the spread of Christianity is increasing. A large number of people who are oppressed by the clan and wiped out are all secretly Christians.Conflicts between natives and guests, and clan fights have also given religion great opportunities to take advantage of.Coupled with the northward shift of the foreign trade center, there have been many unemployed people, and religion has really flooded in recent years.

This kind of basically torn society is hidden under the prosperity of Dashun's expansion of territory, and it is a potentially huge crisis.

Under the crisis, it is a huge obstacle to the development of industry and commerce.

The economic foundation of the Jiangnan region is doomed that many merchants themselves are also big landlords hoarding land.This makes them have a deep local network, and they are also very familiar with such things as hoarding land and collecting rent.

At the same time, it also means that it is very difficult to promote the development of budding capitalism in areas where capitalism is budding through rent reduction, interest rate reduction, permanent tenancy, etc.

Without supporting policies, it is extremely difficult to develop industry and commerce.And this policy does not mean that the imperial court can develop by encouraging the development of industry and commerce.

Dashun wants to let capitalism sprout and grow, which is different from Western Europe.

If Dashun wants to develop capitalism, it must either reduce rent, interest rate, permanent tenancy, or land reform.

The benefits of this are, first, to increase the purchasing power of the domestic market.

The second is to reduce the income of land, so that capital can spontaneously transfer to industry and commerce.

This is in line with the profit-seeking nature of capital, and it is also a temporary solution.

But Dashun couldn't do it.

Or govt.

But the government is officially run, and with the organizational capabilities of Dashun's feudal dynasty, it can also run some heavy industries.

For example, military industry, shipbuilding, and steel. Of course, the conditions for this are basically mature, and the Academy of Sciences has already developed a steam engine.

Or, rely on the prophets, rely on the knowledge of later generations, grasp the lifeblood of the times, and find emerging industries with extremely high profit margins.

Not to mention the same rate of return as hoarding and buying land—unless the prophet mastered alchemy, the return on investment of the Dutch East India Company at its peak was about the same as buying land in Dashun and collecting land rent—but at least not too much. Low, so as to attract private capital.

Moreover, this kind of industry can't compete with the people for profit, and it can't endanger Dashun's small peasant economy, which is the basis of Dashun's rule.

So we can only go to the outside to find the market.

Therefore, it is very important to form a Nanyang trading company, to fight monopoly with monopoly, and to fight fleet with fleet.

With the initiative in maritime trade and the European and American markets, the profits of some emerging industries will also increase.This in turn facilitates the flow of capital to industry and commerce.

And this kind of foreign trade is doomed to be a dead end if it is completely government-run.The result of being completely government-run can only be conservative, or even gradually shrinking and degenerating into a closed-door thirteen-line model.

And the huge expenses involved, if private capital is not brought in, it will be a waste of tax revenue ability; this is a grassroots control power that is surpassed by the annual revenue of the British treasury, which does not even have India, and is far from the sun never setting And the financial system, we simply can't play the government-run competition for hegemony in the seven seas.

This brings us back to the theme of today's banquet.

ROI.

The Nanyang issue has never been a problem at the military level.

After this battle, Liu Yu was very sure that he had overestimated the enemy before. In fact, Dashun didn't need to build a bunch of battleships to win Nanyang.

Questions at the military level are as simple as cutting tofu.

The real problem like the two mountains that Yu Gong faced was the political, trade and economic issues after going to Nanyang.

The thinking of all those who think that going to Nanyang, opening ports, and engaging in trade can make the Celestial Dynasty powerful and civilized in an instant, and they will become the most powerful country in the future, and their children and grandchildren will be popular and drink spicy food. above is the same.

The difference is nothing more than one opening in Guangdong and one opening in Malacca.It's just waiting for people to pick up the goods at the door, so they can earn a few million taels of extra spices.

It’s very simple, take tea as an example: what affects China’s tea export trade is not the one-port or five-port trade, but the tea monopoly exchange in London; the high tea import tax imposed by the London Parliament; Alternative priority, national colonial coffee encouraged under the national industrialism policy; whether the smugglers in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark can avoid the anti-smuggling cruise of the British fleet in North America.

Not to mention the strange and painful realities such as the "Cotton Cloth Prohibition Order" of Britain and France, the attempt to raise silkworms in the Arctic Circle region of Stockholm, the Siberian silk factory in Russia, and the encouragement order for the silkworm industry in Mexico.

The essence of the Boston Tea Party was the Wuyi black tea from Fujian, which was finally removed from the high tariff list.Because if it is not cancelled, the "legal" tea of ​​the East India Company will be forced to death by smugglers. Tea from "legal" channels has become cheaper, and smugglers have no way to survive, so tea must be poured.

This tea was neither Ceylon tea nor Indian tea, because the British hadn't stolen the tea species that year, and the black tea from Wuyi, Fujian was the one that was poured out.

The high tariff policy at that time made the tea market saturated, and the only way to expand the market was to reduce taxes.

In a saturated market, it doesn't make sense to think about the lack of free trade on the supplier's side instead of market issues. It doesn't make sense to think about it purely from business logic.

Liu Yu was extremely opposed to the thirteen lines of the Qing Dynasty and the one-port trade, so he was extremely opposed to the idea that going to Nanyang and opening up trade would solve everything once and for all.

Because the two are essentially the same thing, and they are conjectures that do not understand the economic logic of the real world.

The problem facing Dashun, or in other words, the problem facing China in this era, is not whether to open trade itself.

Rather, whether Europe is open to trade.

Whether it is Dashun or Daming, it is subjectively closed.

There is neither policy encouragement nor tax rebate protection, nor any supporting export incentives.

But objectively, just like Liu Yu’s advocacy of free trade all day long, a group of feudal bureaucrats who are subjectively closed and rigid in their thinking and do not understand trade at all, relying on the wisdom and hard work of the working people for 2000 years, can call free trade at will.

At this time, each European country counts as one, and if they really engage in free trade, if any one can achieve a trade surplus in Dashun, then all economics textbooks will have to be rewritten.

Subjectively closed and objectively dominant in trade, Dashun's situation is very awkward.

What Dashun needs now is not to open up trade and reflect on itself.

But to have enough gunboats, go to Europe and knock on the door: open the door, free trade.

When I went to Nanyang, what I got was the source of goods.

This is the same as Dashun's original trade model. Silk, tea, cotton, and porcelain are all sources of goods.It is nothing more than changing from the top five export items to the six largest export items.

As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning.

This Dashun wants to take a different path, to break the blockade of foreign exchanges, and to reverse the embarrassment of the whole nation's sleepiness. The beginning of this path is indeed extremely difficult.

From the beginning of conquering the northwest, solving the land troubles in the northeast and northwest, allowing Dashun to go to Nanyang without any worries; Nearly 20 years have allowed some businessmen to gradually get used to investing in joint-stock companies; and then to the trip to Europe, with all kinds of tricks and tricks, and finally went to Nanyang...

This is all the beginning of the road.

Dashun is now just at the beginning of this long road, and it took nearly 20 years to take half a foot.

Now, even if it is only half a foot, this half foot has not landed yet.

Because, to allow these emerging classes to invest, to recognize the unity of rights and obligations, to endure spending money to support the army to protect their own interests, and to be able to transfer a large amount of gold and silver from the land to the sea, this is the real foot. landing.

Take the first step on this long, life-defying path.

(End of this chapter)