1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 969 The loss of the Great Qin people
When a huge balloon floated in the air and slowly passed by Chang'an City, it caused a sensation in the whole city.Countless people raised their necks, their gazes closely following the direction in which the balloon drifted.There were also some good people who rented a carriage together and followed the trajectory of the balloon, chasing it all the way.

"There's someone in the basket under the balloon!"

Finally, someone found the passengers carried in the balloon gondola. Two heads poked out from time to time, either observing the surrounding terrain, or enthusiastically waving to the underground crowd.

People in the city cheered even more enthusiastically, and countless arms kept waving, paying tribute to these two warriors who went to conquer the sky.

"If this falls, wouldn't it break people into eight petals!" Da Qin Zheng Wang Sun Zhenghuan saw the high-altitude balloon gradually go away, the shocked expression on his face did not calm down for a long time, "Why are the people of Qi so bold? , How dare you use the method of the gods to ascend to the Heavenly Court?"

"Your Highness, this is not a magic method." Yue Jingxiu, a scholar of Wenyuan Pavilion who came to welcome Sun Zhenghuan, shook his head and said, "A few months ago, this balloon that could float in the sky appeared in the sky above Chang'an City. , this is a flying tool made by the people of Qi."

After completing the corresponding diplomatic missions, most of the members of the mission to visit Qi arrived at the beginning of the year returned to Nanjing on a Qi merchant ship in early June to report to Emperor Chengde.However, Yue Jingxiu, the deputy envoy, stayed because he wanted to represent Great Qin and wish His Majesty the Emperor of Qi a [-]th Christmas.

Unexpectedly, Emperor Chengde and the ministers of the cabinet would attach so much importance to the [-]th Christmas celebration of Emperor Qi, and specially sent His Majesty's brother Zheng Wang Sun Zhenghuan as a special envoy, carrying a large number of gifts, to the mainland of Hanzhou, thinking that the emperor of Qi Happy birthday.

Thinking about it, in the past few decades, the connection between Qin (Ming) and Qi has become increasingly close, and just this year, they borrowed 300 million Hanzhou silver dollars from Qi to ease the financial difficulties of the imperial court. For several loans, my Daqin already owes the Qi State almost 1000 million, and I am a proper Daqin benefactor.

In addition, the current empress of my Daqin is the daughter of the emperor of Qi, and in this way, Emperor Chengde is the son-in-law of the emperor of Qi.Sending a mission, bringing some gifts, and celebrating the old man's birthday is also a matter of course.

As a cabinet minister of the Great Qin State, Yue Jingxiu stayed in Qi State for more than half a year, accompanied by officials from Honglu Temple in Qi State, except for the southwestern Guizhou (now Perth, Australia) area and the western Linhai (now Australia Port Hedland) area. Before visiting, I have taken the train and visited dozens of prefectures and towns in the southeast coast and southern regions of Qi State.

It was once thought that Qi’s prosperity and economic development may be limited to a few areas such as Jianye in the north, Weihai in the northeast (now Cairns, Australia), and Daxing (now Brisbane) near the capital.However, when he took the train from Daxing all the way south, he passed through Yongchang (now Gold Coast), Yingzhou (now Newcastle), Linzi (now Sydney), Fuzhou (now Wollongong, or Wollongong), Nandu (now Melbourne), Jiangling (now Geelong, southern Australia), Nan'an (now Adelaide) and other major cities, all showed a thriving scene of prosperity, with rows of standing factories and countless blast furnaces. Chimneys, mining mines, endless fertile fields in the countryside, cattle and sheep scattered in the pastures, well-equipped roads and traffic along the way, affluent and peaceful people's lives... All kinds of scenes strongly impacted his vision and inner world.

Judging from the appearance alone, my Heavenly Dynasty Shang Kingdom is far inferior to the Qi Kingdom!

In the past thousands of years, the Central Plains Dynasty in the mainland of China has almost always been the most prosperous and developed place on the earth. This is entirely due to the unique agricultural foundation and splendid culture, as well as the handicraft manufacturing that is far ahead of the world.

Because of differences in soil and climate, China's agricultural productivity is three to five times that of Europe and other regions.Extensive rice and wheat planting, advanced farming level, and world-leading "shit making" technology for thousands of years have enabled China to produce more food and reproduce a larger population, resulting in lower labor costs.

In Europe and elsewhere, the opposite is true, where higher labor costs become a disadvantage.Therefore, for quite a long time, China has been the leader of the world economy.

Until the middle of the 16th century, China was still technologically more innovative and advanced than Europe, and even greatly surpassed the medieval true god world.A rough comparison and statistics of most inventions and creations in ancient China and today's world can even draw the conclusion that almost half of the countless basic inventions and creations originated in China.

Before Columbus discovered the New World, Chinese goods were so out of reach for poor Europeans.After Columbus, a large amount of silver in the Americas provided Europe with the only acceptable exchange for China, and China became the world's largest commodity exporter.

In iron smelting, papermaking, coal mining, salt industry, silk, textiles, porcelain, printing, and construction, the Ming Dynasty was still in the leading position in the world at the beginning of the 17th century, and its industrial output accounted for more than two-thirds of the world.Jingdezhen controlled the global porcelain market not only because of its excellent products, but also because of its advanced production scale and organization.It can be said that it represents the highest peak of the world's handicraft industry and the most magnificent achievement of large-scale centralized manufacturing before the advent of the machine age driven by the steam engine of Qi State.

During the same period, the owners of British handicraft factories had assets of only tens of thousands of pounds, but the private "capitalists" of Ming Dynasty could mobilize as many as several million silver for investment and production.

In terms of the iron smelting industry, which can better reflect a country's industrial capacity, during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the iron production exceeded 16 tons, which was more than the total iron production of all countries in the world (the iron production in Europe was only surpassed in the early 18th century. will reach 16 tons).

It is roughly estimated that during the Ming Dynasty, China produced about 30%-35% of the world's manufactured goods, India and Europe each accounted for 20%, and China and India accounted for more than half of the world's wealth.

In fact, from the early Ming Dynasty to the present Daqin, the mainland of China is not without changes, nor is it without development, but this change and development still have not jumped out of the agriculture-family-handicraft era.At the same time, not to mention Qi, which was advancing rapidly, even Europe has undergone earth-shaking changes, from the era of agriculture-handcrafts to the era of industry-primary factories.

At present, Daqin’s government-run workshops or private workshops, although they still maintain a considerable scale, such as weaving, ceramics, coin manufacturing, shipbuilding, and firearms manufacturing, the number of workshops varies from hundreds to thousands.But from the perspective of Qi people, the manufacturing level of Daqin is extremely primitive, with few or no machines used in production, and most of the tools are bamboo and wood. Of course, some factories also imported some hardware tools from Qi. Most of them are bound and connected with simple beef tendon, sheep intestines, and hemp rope. The power is entirely by manpower (a few have hydraulic power), and there is not much animal power.

Many ceramic factories and cloisonné factories in Qi State have already used clocks and thermometers, while Jingdezhen still uses incense to measure time and test strips to measure temperature.

The former Celestial Kingdom has always been the richest, most fertile, most cultivated, hardworking and populous country in the world.However, compared with the rapidly developing Qi State, it seems that it has been stagnant for a long time, and its national strength was quickly overtaken by Qi State.

A young member of the Ministry of Industry named Dai Zi, Wailang, once gave advice to Yue Jingxiu during his inspection. The huge difference between Qin and Qi was due to the nature of imperial examinations and education, as well as the social atmosphere.He believes that the current education system in Daqin has created relatively stable and highly accomplished literature and art, but it cannot produce the scientific spirit and innovation source of Qi.

"What you learn is not what you use, and what you use is not what you learn." The dictatorship of power and academics is the greatest "destruction" to Daqin's science and technology.In a powerful society, being an official has become everyone's dream, and the imperial examination is the only way.

In the whole Daqin society, on the cultural level, it is obvious that art is more important than technology, and technology is even turned into art.In Qi State, exquisite clocks and watches are a model of technology, but in Da Qin, they become works of art, inlaid with gold and silver, and decorated to the fullest.In Qi State, glass is most commonly used in magnifying glasses, microscopes, and telescopes. Of course, it is also used to decorate houses. However, in Daqin, some dexterous craftsmen processed glass into luxurious snuff bottles or precious carvings.

In Confucian culture, invention and science by themselves do not bring wealth, prestige and power.Moreover, intellectually, scholars in Daqin also lack the necessary empirical logic and research determination.

As early as the Spring and Autumn Period, there were definitions of finiteness, infinity, infinitesimal (minimum without interior), infinity (maximum without exterior), and concepts such as limit and instant in the "Mo Jing".During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Liu Hui pioneered the method of cutting circles to find the area of ​​a circle and the volume of a square cone, and to obtain the ratio of pi. His limit thinking and infinitesimal method are the profound manifestation of the limit thinking at that time, and it is the first in the world.

In the "Mengxi Bi Tan" written by Shen Kuo in the former Song Dynasty, he also created the "Gap Accumulation Technique", "Convergence Circle Technique" and "Chess Game Dushu Technique", and initiated the research on the summation of high-order arithmetic progressions.

Especially in the pre-Ming period, the level of mathematics development reached its peak, and there appeared "stack accumulation", "recruitment", "Tianyuan", "quaternity", Pythagorean mathematics, arc sagittal cutting circle, Outstanding achievements such as combinatorics, computing technology reform and abacus are already close to the door of calculus.But in the end, scholars from the Qi State, through systematic summarization and extended breakthroughs of the above-mentioned mathematical achievements, created calculus in less than a few years, and then proudly showed off to the visiting Daqin scholars.

The Daqin society, which was deeply influenced by traditional Confucian culture, still has a kind of Laozhuang thought, which believes that "there are many sharp weapons, and the country grows faint; the many skills, the strange things grow; the laws and regulations are good, and the thieves are many."

There is even an outrageous theory, "Those who are good in ancient times are not based on enlightening the people, they will be fooled. The people are difficult to govern because of their wisdom. Therefore, if you rule the country with wisdom, you will be the thief of the country; blessing".

The Qi State was first established 40 years ago. When it was fledgling, it vigorously enlightened the wisdom of the people and implemented comprehensive compulsory education so that the people could understand arts and sciences, master basic reading and writing skills and the wisdom of distinguishing right from wrong. Difficult to rule” and fell into the situation of “thief of the country”?
Xunzi's "Li Lun" mentioned, "Humans are born with desires; if you do not get what you want, you must seek it; if you seek it without measure and boundaries, you must fight; struggle leads to chaos, and chaos leads to poverty. The former kings hated chaos, Therefore, rituals and righteousness are established to divide them, so as to nourish people's desires and give people's needs, so that desires will not be exhausted by things, and things will not be subdued by desires, and the two will mutually support each other and grow. This is the origin of rituals."

However, after inspecting and exploring the development process of Qi State, they were surprised to find that they never followed the words of "Ritualism"?

In Qi State, it seems that all people and things are doing the opposite, and try their best to practice "people only seek the old, and the utensils do not seek the old, but only the new".We are diligently pursuing any implements and methods that can promote the development of power.

Dai Zi finally made a conclusion that the reason why my Great Qin lags behind Qi is due to the lack of necessary motivation, not lack of ability. This is limited by the overall social environment, not because the people of my Great Qin are born with weak minds. Yu Qi people.

What kind of people were these Qi people in the past?Those are all the hungry people and refugees who escaped from my Daqin (Daming)!
My Great Qin wants to reform, to open up the wisdom of the people, to develop utensils, and moreover, to advocate science for the whole people.

"If the machines are proliferating, the unemployment of farmers and workers will be heavy, but how will the court arrange them?" Yue Jingxiu was silent for a long time, and sighed, "Our Great Qin's way of self-improvement is different from that of Qi State. Qi State regards business as the foundation of the country. Great Qin regards people's livelihood as the foundation of the country; Qi's self-improvement lies in utensils and business, and our Great Qin's self-improvement lies in loving the people. Qi has a small number of people, so it uses machines, but still recruits our Qin people to make up for the lack of manpower; If you talk lightly about using machines, the poor still have no way to make a living, so more people go abroad.”

"When the world was first set, the population would become more and more numerous, relying on manpower for everything, and there were still many idlers, and then machines were used to guide them to be idle. Gathering tens of millions of idlers and sluts, how can they support their livelihoods? ?Among the four peoples, most of them live in farms. Men farm and women weave. Yea!"

When an official of the Qi State who was accompanying him heard Dai Zi mentioning whether he could imitate the Qi State model in Qin State, rejuvenate machinery, vigorously develop industry and commerce, so as to achieve the goal of enriching the country and strengthening the military, he showed a meaningful smile and gently He replied: "Your political soil is not suitable for our Qi model."

Hearing this, Dai Zi was stunned for a long time, and then heaved a long sigh.

Human nature is to seek wealth and hate poverty. Everyone is an "economic man" who "maximizes benefits", and the people of Qin are not exempt.

Sima Qian once said: "Using the poor to seek wealth, agriculture is not as good as industry, industry is not as good as business, and embroidery is not as good as leaning on the market." The emergence of businessmen broke the balance of wealth, and money power formed a threat to political power. They all tried their best to suppress the power of merchants, emphasizing agriculture while suppressing commerce, using agriculture to eliminate handicrafts and commerce, and using "equalization of the poor" to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. "It is up to the king to give, to take away from the king, to be poor, to be rich. Therefore, the people wear it like the sun and the moon, and kiss the king like their parents."

Looking at the governance of the Great Qin Dynasty, it has not been divorced from the framework of the past dynasties, and there are more or less suppressions and restraints on business and industry.Because, after all, commerce is a product of freedom, and my Kingdom of Heaven seems to have lacked the soil of freedom since ancient times.

Over the course of thousands of years of development, merchants have never been the mainstream group in society, and every industrial and commercial person must face a dynasty that "can be plundered by officials at any moment under the pretext of enforcing the law".Strong centralized dynasties regulated and hindered the creation of commercial ruling groups. In this situation, only the lower commerce, town shops and market places, seemed to be able to operate effectively.

"The legal procedures that support modern industry and commerce are based on private property rights" like the Qi State, first of all, it is contrary to the traditional Confucian moral concept, and the latter is just taken as a matter of course by the bureaucracy.

In addition, from the perspective of modern economics, the centralized politics of the mainland dynasty is characterized by "unclear property rights", "information asymmetry" and "incompatibility of incentives".When the magistrates are so powerful that they ignore the law, so that no one can say that his property is safe, and everyone is afraid of being falsely accused and deprived of everything he has.

If the dynasty is autocratic, the monarch is tyrannical, the officialdom is corrupt, and people's property is in danger of being infringed at any time, then people often hide most of their assets. Winter melon is the most direct response to this.

Power has always been the most mainstream law in an autocratic society.In this kind of power-dominated society, there is basically no legal property rights system, "don't worry about scarcity but inequality", and people pay more attention to wealth distribution than wealth creation. "Study and excellence will lead to officialdom", as long as you enter the bureaucracy, you can seize the wealth of others. This actually encourages people to take a predatory path and study the distribution of wealth as much as possible, instead of trying to create more wealth by themselves. much wealth.

On the contrary, Qi’s industrial revolution and social revolution directed people towards the creation of wealth, stimulating everyone to create their own wealth and forming a positive incentive.

The disadvantages of the Great Qin Dynasty lie in the difficulty of the system and the change of people's hearts, which can be wiped out without a temporary innovation.

(End of this chapter)