New Shun 1730

Dashun’s fundamental problem is internal.

Liu Yu is always struggling outside in order to create a class that solves problems from the outside in.

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

Any policy has two sides.

Incorporating the head tax into the land tax is a continuation of the Whip Law. The logic is very clear and has been in place since the mid-Ming Dynasty.

The good thing is that controls on population migration have been relaxed and population growth has been promoted.

The bad thing is that land prices have dropped, making small farmers more likely to go bankrupt. As long as land rents remain unchanged at about 50%, the return on buying land and hoarding it is much higher than investing in industry and commerce.

On this point, when Liu Yu initially encouraged investment in the development of Ezo, wealthy businessmen had already mentioned this issue.

Although they did not have the knowledge base of economics with a bachelor's degree, their long-term experience led them to the same conclusion: calculating taxes based on land will inevitably lead to a decrease in the sales price of land, because the bottomless pit of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes is also bound to the land and is no longer Bound with a human head.

If we want to truly develop industry and commerce, we must not only allow capital to flow to industry and commerce, but also open up a larger market.

Dashun still needs to implement many supporting policies.

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

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a wave of permanent tenancy, rent reduction, interest rate reduction, and no slavery.

However, the trend was not driven by imperial policies, but by tenants and slaves who directly copied people and took advantage of the opportunity of "the world was overturned" to force the landlords out with knives.

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

Or: "Slaves say that slaves should not live together with heaven and earth. This is true slave language. There is heaven and earth, and there are kings and ministers, fathers and sons, and masters and servants. If the heaven and earth do not change, then the king and ministers, fathers and sons, and masters and servants will also not change. . The meaning of master and servant is that the sky and the earth are open together... If the nose is not located under the eyes, but suddenly located on the forehead, what a celebrity!"

Dashun is actually an internally divided society.

North China and most of the north, after a long period of wars, tug-of-war, uprisings, resistance, and massacres in the late Ming Dynasty, still basically maintain an economic foundation dominated by small farmers, and there are not many large landowners.

In the canal area, due to long-term flooding, ferocious folk customs, too many bandits, and natural disasters, "When Kong Laoer was trapped in Chen Cai, he borrowed food from Fan Dan, the founder of beggars, but damn We won’t pay it back in the future. These beggars are all disciples of Fan Dan. Let you, the disciples of Kong Laoer and the gentry, pay back some money and some food. Isn’t this a matter of course?" Slogans like this rely on the underlying religion. Organized, chaotic. In some places, the gentry had to make more concessions; in other places, the gentry was the leader of the bandits, creating magical situations such as tenant avoidance and power gain.

After crossing the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, there are more large landowners and large estates in the Jiangnan area. The slave-holding custom passed down from the Ming Dynasty, a large amount of annexed land, and the vast majority of people were tenants. This is completely different from the economic foundation of the north, especially North China, Northwest China and other places where Dashun had a lot of murders in the past.

Further south, clans are powerful and Christianity is spreading rapidly. A large number of people who are oppressed by clans and exterminated are secretly Christians. Conflicts between natives and foreigners, and clan feuds, also gave religion a huge opportunity to take advantage of. In addition, the center of foreign trade has moved northward, and many unemployed people have appeared. Religion has become rampant in recent years.

This kind of society that is basically torn apart is a potential huge crisis hidden under the prosperous age of Dashun's expansion.

The crisis is a huge obstacle to the development of industry and commerce.

The economic foundation of the Jiangnan region destined many businessmen to be large landowners who hoarded land. This makes them have a deep local network and are very familiar with things like 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 government can develop by encouraging the development of industry and commerce.

Dashun wants to let the sprouts of capitalism develop and grow, which is different from Western Europe.

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

One of the benefits of this is to increase the purchasing power of the domestic market.

The second is to reduce the income from land, thereby allowing capital to spontaneously transfer to industry and commerce.

This is in line with the profit-seeking nature of capital, and it also treats the symptoms and root causes.

But Dashun couldn't do it.

Or run by the government.

But the government offices, with the organizational capabilities of Dashun's feudal dynasty, can also handle some heavy industries.

Such as military industry, shipbuilding, and steel. Of course, the conditions for these are basically mature. The Academy of Sciences has already developed a steam engine.

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

Not to mention that the rate of return is the same as hoarding and buying land - unless this prophet has mastered alchemy, the rate of return on investment of the Dutch East India Company at its peak was about the same as buying land and collecting land rent in Dashun - but at least it cannot be too high. Low, so as to attract private capital.

Moreover, this kind of industry cannot compete with the people for profit, nor can it threaten Dashun's small-scale peasant economy, which is the basis of Dashun's rule.

So we can only look for markets externally.

Therefore, it is crucial to form a Nanyang Trading Company to fight monopoly with monopoly and fleet against fleet.

With the initiative in maritime trade and the European and American markets, the profits of some emerging industries will also rise. In turn, it can promote the flow of capital to industry and commerce.

And this kind of foreign trade is destined to be a dead end if it is completely run by the government. The result of complete government-running can only be conservative, or even gradually shrinking and degenerating into the closed-door Thirteen Hongs model.

Moreover, the huge expenses involved, if private capital is not brought in, the extremely rubbish tax collection capacity of Dashun; this grassroots control and financial system, which is far from being surpassed by the annual revenue of the British treasury, which does not even have India and is far from the sun never sets, can't afford to play the official Seven Seas Hegemony.

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

Return on investment.

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

After this battle, Liu Yu was very sure that he had overestimated the enemy before. In fact, Dashun did not need to build a bunch of battleships to take over Nanyang.

The problem at the military level is as simple as cutting tofu.

The real difficulties, like the two mountains faced by Yugong, are the political, trade and economic problems after going to Southeast Asia.

The thinking of all those who think that going to Southeast Asia, opening ports and engaging in trade can make the Celestial Empire instantly strong and civilized, and that it will become the first powerful country in the future, and that their descendants will have a good life, is essentially the same as the thinking mode of the Qing chieftains who set up the Thirteen Factories.

The only difference is that one opens a door in Guangdong and the other opens a door in Malacca. They are both waiting for people to pick up the goods at the door, and then they can get a few million taels of income from spices.

It's a very simple truth. Take tea as an example: what affects China's tea export trade volume is not whether it is one port or five ports, but the London tea monopoly exchange; the high tea import tax of the London Parliament; France's national substitution priority and national industrialism policy to encourage coffee in its own colonies; whether the smugglers in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark can avoid the British fleet's anti-smuggling cruise in North America.

Not to mention the bizarre and painful realities such as the British and French "Cotton Prohibition", Stockholm's attempt to raise silkworms in the Arctic Circle, Russia's Siberian Silk Weaving Factory, Mexico's Silkworm Industry Encouragement Order, etc.

The essence of the Boston Tea Party is that Fujian's Wuyi black tea was finally removed from the high tariff list. Because if it is not cancelled, the East India Company's "legal" tea will be killed by smugglers. The tea from the "legal" channel is cheaper, and the smugglers have no way to survive, so they have to sell tea.

This tea is neither Ceylon tea nor Indian tea, because Britain had not stolen tea seeds that year. The tea sold was black tea from Wuyi, Fujian.

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 does not make sense to consider the problem of the market instead of considering the supplier's non-free trade, which is purely from a business logic perspective.

Liu Yu was extremely opposed to the Thirteen Factories and the One Port Trade of the Qing Dynasty, and therefore was extremely opposed to the idea that everything would be solved once and for all by going to Southeast Asia and opening up trade.

Because the two are essentially the same thing, and are completely imaginary without understanding the economic logic of the real world.

The problem facing Dashun, or the problem facing China in this era, is not whether it should open up trade.

Rather, it is whether Europe should open up trade.

Whether it is Dashun or Ming Dynasty, they are subjectively closed.

There is no policy encouragement, no tax rebate protection, and no supporting export preferences.

But objectively, just like Liu Yu advocating free trade all day long, a group of feudal bureaucrats who are subjectively closed and rigid in thinking and do not understand trade at all, can shout free trade at will with the wisdom and hard work of the working people for two thousand years.

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

The subjective closure and objective trade advantage make Dashun's situation very awkward.

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

Instead, it needs to have enough gunboats to knock on the door of Europe: open the door, free trade.

Going to Southeast Asia, what you get is 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’s nothing more than changing from exporting five major items to exporting six major items.

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

This Dashun wants to take a different path, wants to break the closure of foreign exchanges, and wants to reverse the embarrassing situation of the whole nation’s slumber. The beginning of this road is indeed extremely difficult.

From the beginning of conquering the northwest and solving the land troubles in the northeast and northwest, Dashun can go to Southeast Asia without worries; then to give benefits to merchants, take out the profits of the Japanese trade company, and gradually reverse the inertial consciousness of society. It took nearly 20 years for some merchants to gradually get used to investing in joint-stock companies; then to the maneuvers and schemes of the trip to Europe, and finally go to Southeast Asia...

These are all the beginnings of this road.

Dashun is now only at the starting point of this long road, and it took nearly 20 years to take half a step.

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

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 transfer a large amount of gold and silver from the land to the sea, this is considered to be the real landing of this foot.

Take the first step on this long road to change fate against the will of heaven.