Nan Ming Sun Never Sets

Chapter 207 The Daily Life of His Royal Highness ([-])
Shanghai is probably the only city that never sleeps in the Eurasian continent in the 17th century. At night, the street lights in the city will be lit up. Although Bai Mingxiu has not made the technology tree leap into the electrical age, the generators, transmission lines, and electric lights are all part of the city. The tech tree has been lit up.

In fact, Bai Mingxiu feels that he is now letting his scientific and technological talents to engage in things like internal combustion engines and wireless telegraphy. Too high, otherwise it will lead to adverse consequences.Bai Mingxiu simply didn't ask anyone to do it. After all, he didn't complete the technology tree of the steam engine, and even if he got the internal combustion engine and other things, he still doesn't have the ability to extract crude oil and smelt crude oil on a large scale.

The city has gradually become populated. Although the Independent Brigade of the Ming Dynasty Restoration Army is still in charge of the city as the "Imperial Guards", Bai Mingxiu has let many people enter Shanghai one after another. After all, he moved the Legislative Yuan to After coming over, he also started operating various factories in Shanghai, and Bai Mingxiu even made a show of operation before.

Because many landlords in the south of the Yangtze River have too much land, Bai Mingxiu has implemented a land exchange policy, 1:3 for land in Australia, Java or Myanmar, 1:1.5 for land in Sichuan, or 100 mu of land for a set of foreign houses in Shanghai .It is basically impossible not to change. According to the progressive land tax payment method, those landlords whose land may be tens of thousands of acres can easily go bankrupt with just one year's land tax.The land tax of the Ming Dynasty New Bank is a Mingliang, and it has nothing to do with the harvest. It is a simple property tax.For example, in Jiangnan, individuals who own less than 50 mu of land are not expropriated, and those who own more than 50 mu of land will be expropriated. Basically, if they own more than 500 mu of land, the land tax will receive 50% of the market value of the land per mu.

Many big families have to distribute the land to the members of the clan, but when the property rights are given to individual families, it is very difficult to unite back to the big families. After all, the land rights office only recognizes the land deeds issued by them.

How many Jiangnan landlords can’t understand how prescient it is to exchange 100 acres of land in Jiangnan for a house in Shanghai at this time, especially when many of them find that a so-called foreign house is more than 200 square meters, and even the backyard is not as good as theirs. Once you enter the small house, the yard is huge.

Unable to resist the new regulations, most large landowners had no choice but to exchange land across districts, sell the land to the public, or sublease the land to newly established agricultural cooperatives.The land subleased to agricultural cooperatives only needs to pay the lowest level of land tax, and the agricultural cooperatives sign a long-term contract with the landlord, such as contracting within 20 years, rent-free for the first five years, and paying in one lump sum for the next 15 years, or paying Give them rent.

Agricultural cooperatives do not sign rents proportional to the harvest with landlords, because this situation is equivalent to the old tenancy system.Behind the rural cooperative medical system is strong government support, which is equivalent to semi-forcibly collecting land from landlords and handing it over to farmers for cultivation, and it is to organize farmers to carry out cooperative farming.

China is indeed a very complicated country, and the situation in each region is different.The forms of rural cooperative medical care must also be diversified.On the south side of the Yangtze River, it is quite common for each household to have less than 4-10 mu of land in the sub-fields of the Ming Dynasty. All peasant families in each village have joined the rural cooperative medical system.As a grassroots organization, agricultural cooperatives arrange farmers' production and other activities.More importantly, provide farmers with improved seeds, agricultural technology, fertilizers and possibly more agricultural machinery in the future.After the farmers have completed the cultivation of their private plots, if they still have surplus labor, they will cultivate the land under the agricultural cooperatives. The methods include both contracted self-cultivation and joint cultivation.The form of contracting and self-cultivation is actually tantamount to transferring land from landlords to farmers without depriving land ownership; joint farming is based on work points, and the more you work, the more you get.

Another major function of the rural cooperative medical system is to coordinate the cultivation of cash crops, which directly lead to cash income, which can greatly improve farmers' income.And even for grain, the agricultural cooperatives directly connect with the state-owned grain companies and purchase from all agricultural cooperatives at a uniform price. The prices of the grain companies are stable, which can be regarded as a layer of insurance to prevent the occurrence of cheap grain in good years, and the overcharging of four or five shi will lead to bankruptcy this kind of thing.

Most of the peasants in the south of the Yangtze River have not yet realized how powerful the agricultural cooperative is, but in view of the fact that the land is distributed and the grain is exempted, the peasants are still very active in joining the cooperative.

Most landlords in the south of the Yangtze River are still a little frightened by the series of new policies of the imperial court. This Ming Dynasty is completely different from the previous Ming Dynasty that allowed them to take advantage of it.It’s not that no one has thought of making trouble to resist, but some time ago, Zheng Chenggong’s vigorous purge activities in Jiangnan have caused many gentry and celebrities to go bankrupt, and even sent them overseas. Basically, everyone can only keep silent. There are also many gentry who wrote satirical poems, saying that the Ming Dynasty after the liberation was not as kind as the Tartars.

This is of course nonsense, and it can only be regarded as a non-mainstream in public opinion.Jiangnan has also begun to publish a large number of newspapers and magazines representing the official voice, and public opinion has been well controlled by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.New learning has also become popular.

After all, the Qing government used all kinds of blackmail methods and killed many people.Under the rule of the prince, everything was handled in accordance with the law. Unless economic crimes were serious, they were not punishable by death. At most, they were fined or thrown to the island of Java.Ever since, from this era, there have been some proverbs in the Wu language, such as words like "die Java", used to curse people.

Speaking of which, there are still some rich households who traded land for foreign houses in Shanghai.Some people already know that it is difficult to make money relying on [-]% of the land. After seeing the favorable industrial and commercial policies, they came to Shanghai to do business.Soon, the first group of real estate speculators in the seventeenth century appeared, but the current speculators are still relatively rudimentary.

After all, such a distinctive modern city, with spacious concrete roads and street lights, a variety of factories and commercial companies, and a large port leading to various places, the emerging bourgeoisie who are good at business have seen the potential of interest, as Smelling bloody sharks, they began to pour into Shanghai gradually.

The Oriental Magic City also began to show its magic power in the winter of 1662.The Jiangnan people who settled in Shanghai from that time always regarded themselves as authentic old Shanghai, and even boasted many years later that they had seen the prince when he was young in some restaurant.

(End of this chapter)