Nan Ming Sun Never Sets

Chapter 339 Reporting to the Emperor
1664 came in a blink of an eye. Since the Ming Dynasty officially adopted the Gregorian calendar as the official calendar, as soon as New Year's Day passed, the official documents of the Ming Dynasty began to officially use the Guangfu Year Number to record the year.But no one calls New Year's Day the Chinese New Year, and even on this day, it is not a public holiday of Ming Dynasty.

The hard-working new emperor, His Majesty, is still approving various official documents and attending various meetings in the Taiping Palace.Compared with the previous generation, the office efficiency of Unified Nanming has improved by more than an order of magnitude.Qualified civil servants trained from the Imperial College have also gradually gotten used to this way of doing things.

Everything is strictly recorded, and all civil servants have tasks on their heads. They are concerned about your KPIs, just like the companies of later generations.However, although this job is hard, the status of being an official is still different in Chinese society, at least in people's minds.Officials have stable income, complete benefits, and more importantly, they have power.

Compared with the former Ming Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Southern Ming Dynasty was a very different existence. It was a completely reborn modern country, and its governance was completely numerical. Although there was room for flexible processing, the gray things had been reduced a lot.

Wang Mianwu, the junior section chief of the Economic and Development Conference, was still very apprehensive about entering the Taiping Palace as he followed behind the head of his department with a stack of documents.Wang Mianwu was recently promoted from Jiangnan Province to join the Economic and Development Council. Before that, Wang Mianwu served as a magistrate of Anqing Prefecture, equivalent to the deputy mayor.At his early thirties, he was already quite prosperous.

Wang Mianwu came from an ordinary background, and was an ordinary scholar who passed down his family farming and studying. He was neither poor nor wealthy.Only his grandfather had passed the imperial examination. By his generation, several brothers in the family had passed the Tongsheng examination, but no one had yet passed the imperial examination.When the Qing Dynasty was in chaos, Wang Mianwu did not continue to take meritorious examinations, but studied and farmed at home.Later, when Jiangnan was restored, Wang Mianwu passed the Yingtian Prefecture Imperial College and got a good ranking. After graduation, he first interned in Yingtian Prefecture and was later transferred to Anqing Prefecture as a fellow magistrate. Because he got excellent marks in the exams and wrote some insightful reports, he was He was promoted to the Central Committee of the Council and the Economic Development Council, which has great power.

When Wang Mianwu was an official at the beginning, he was a little bit smug, but soon he discovered how difficult it is to be an official in Nanming.Since the division of labor in the Daming Office is extremely detailed, an official in charge of the economy like him doesn't even have access to finance and taxation.Taxation is managed by a special IRS, and the budget they get is only retained by the IRS in proportion.

Those local officials in the past had a lot of power to greedy for some money such as fire consumption. These are normal operations.In such a large yamen, officials need money to support their families and staff and administrative team.However, after the administrative reform of Ming Dynasty, the salaries of local officials have increased a lot, but it is absolutely impossible to withhold taxes.

Last year, there was an incident where the Guangdong local office forcibly withheld money from the local branch of the State Taxation Bureau. As a result, all relevant officials of the local office were brought to justice.

This is to eliminate the possibility of officials reaching out from the system. The Office cannot control the national tax system and can only wait for the finance to bring money.

Even relying on the people below to give gifts will not work. Public officials are disciplined. It is illegal to accept gifts exceeding a certain amount. Once they are reported, their official career will basically be over.Wang Mianwu has seen with his own eyes the downfall of several promising officials who did not take the rules seriously.The Ming Dynasty Office has strict management of officials, which is well known to the common people.

There is now a motto in the civil service team, if you want to get rich, don't be an official, which can be said to be very realistic.

Wang Mianwu followed his boss and waited for a while in a lounge in the Guangfu Hall of the Taiping Palace, and finally it was their turn to go in to make a report.The group of people who left just now belonged to the Ministry of Culture and Education. Everyone hurried away after finishing their talk. After all, His Majesty the Emperor is still very busy.

The person who came to report at the Economic Development Committee was a servant named Cai Bai.

This was Wang Mianwu's first visit to His Majesty the Emperor, and he was somewhat excited.He couldn't help secretly looking at the newly enthroned young emperor, and couldn't help but praise him in his heart. Although the emperor's attire can be said to be more casual, a shirt and a gray sweater, but he really has an extraordinary temperament, calm and calm.

The two bowed and saluted, Bai Mingxiu waved casually and said, "Sit."

Bai Mingxiu lowered his head and quickly scanned the documents, and opened his mouth and said: "...I have a general look at the report you sent earlier, let's not talk about the topic, I want to criticize the work of your Economic and Development Committee, this report is written I have written more than a dozen pages, and the content is very informative, but the key points have not been extracted. Do you still want me to do reading comprehension? Sorry, I know that you are all very capable, but I have limited time. If necessary, I will read your analysis and description, but please make a summary in front of the report and list the main points."

Cai Bai's forehead was sweating immediately, and Wang Mianwu was also a little frightened, because he was the author of this report.

"Yes, Your Majesty, this is our work error..."

Bai Mingxiu still waved his hand: "There's no need to apologize. I'm going to send a document to various agencies. When doing work, we must focus on the key points, and we can't always be formalistic and waste time on secondary things. Okay, the criticism is over, Tell me more about this cotton supply issue."

Cai Bai hurriedly said: "This Comrade Wang Mianwu is our main person in charge of this area. Please let him explain to you."

Wang Mianwu's heart was trembling and he said quickly: "Yes, Your Majesty. I will try to be as brief as possible. To put it simply, due to the rapid industrialization in Jiangnan and Guangdong, a large number of textile factories and spinning machines of various machinery factories have been built. , looms, sewing machines and other equipment, orders have basically been scheduled for three years. Because the profits of the textile industry are very good, and the rural areas of the south have realized agricultural co-operation, the strategy of unified purchasing and marketing has enabled farmers to realize their output In order to monetize it, farmers found that the cost of spinning and weaving their own fabrics was higher and the quality was inferior to that of directly purchasing textiles on the market, so the consumption of textiles increased explosively. We even counted that the cost was recovered with a profit within one and a half months of production. Enterprises. Under this impetus, a large number of textile enterprises have appeared together, and the demand for textile raw materials such as cotton, linen, silk, and wool has increased sharply. Especially for cotton, the price of cotton has almost tripled in the past few months. More. In fact, a group of companies, including state-owned enterprises, have seen this trend earlier, hoarded a batch of cotton, and are now raising prices. We have discovered that in terms of raw materials, China's textile industry has already experienced a serious imbalance between supply and demand. .”

(End of this chapter)