New Shun 1730

"You think so?"

Liu Yu still maintained a smiling expression and asked a question.

Li Han did not hesitate, nodded and said: "The Duke of China often said that the cornerstone of the world's operation is matter. The world is material. Although I don't understand the deep meaning, I also know that when considering problems, we must take into account the existing material facts. above."

"If the Celestial Empire is bounded by Hami, it does not have fertile soil in the Western Regions, and it lacks the seven rivers west of Ili."

"If we say that the Celestial Empire is bounded by the Liao River, there are no fertile soils for large rivers such as pine and black."

"If we say that China is bounded by the East China Sea, there are no billions of acres of wasteland in Nanyang, Southern Ocean, Xinkuwu, Fusang, etc."

"So, what if the material conditions were the same as they are now?"

"Obviously, since the Duke said that the world is material, it must be said that the biggest problem in Kyushu today is the increase in population, and the per capita land is only three or four acres. So even if there are no natural disasters, no matter how large the population is, That would be equivalent to one and a half kilograms of food per person per day.”

"The average person has one and a half kilograms of grain per day. No matter what happens, something big will happen. If there is any disturbance, if there is a natural disaster, flood or drought, it will be a matter for the whole world."

"So, if we admit that this is the biggest problem in Kyushu now, then whoever can solve this problem is qualified to discuss the new 'biggest problem'."

"To solve this problem, there are only two ideas."

"Or, the yield per mu will increase. My father called it 'Wang Xieyan, common people's homes'. That means water pumps and saltpeter fertilizers will fly into thousands of households."

"Either way, there are still billions of acres of arable land north of Fusang, Nanyang, Yili Qihe, and Songliao. Even if the yield per mu is not increased, the people will have a family of five and a hundred acres of land. The so-called per capita income of the country. It’s okay if the amount of grain you own is 800 kilograms.”

"And these two issues, in my opinion, are actually the same issue."

"It's all about developing industry and commerce."

"It's just that the former is thinking about making saltpeter fertilizer and water pump."

"The latter should think about building railways and steamships."

"If there is a 'Grand Canal that does not require water', it will go directly from Shaanxi and Gansu to Yili's Seven Rivers and thousands of hectares of prime fields; if there is a 'Grand Canal that does not require water', it will cross the Songliao watershed from Shenyang to Songnen; if there is a A large ship that only lasted two months across the ocean set sail from Shandong to Fusang for cultivation, bringing people and food when it went..."

"Then, at the very least, the biggest problems facing Kyushu now, the problems of population growth and food shortage, can be solved."

"Either small farmers cultivate land and have convenient transportation, and their families can move. It is not comparable to taking the west entrance and crossing the east of Guandong at this time, which can take a year and a half."

"Either, following the example of the soybean business in Liaoning, capital is opening roads and enclosing land for reclamation. It is necessary to invest in attracting people. If there are no people to work for him, he will enclose the land. How can he make a profit?"

"Moreover, if there is a disaster in Henan and Hubei, the food in the Northeast, Western Region, and Fusang can be mobilized quickly to help the people through the Grand Canal without water and steamships that do not need sails, and there will be no major disaster."

“Only by solving this problem first can we be qualified to talk about more issues and let other issues become problems.”

"And now..."

"Is there land in Yili? Yes. Is there land in Heilongjiang? Yes. Is there land in Fusang? Yes. However, transportation is inconvenient, so that capital is not willing to invest there, let alone send people there to cultivate."

"So, we still need to develop industry, transportation, and infrastructure."

"However, infrastructure, railways, iron smelting, etc. require large investments and low returns. With this money, it is not as good as buying land to collect rent, speculating, or opening a pawn shop and lending usury..."

“Therefore, the problem is that we have to find ways to get money and capital into these industries with large investments and low returns.”

"If they don't want to run up here, they have to run to the cultivated land."

"Then, we must find a way to lure them here. If the temptation is useless, then use bayonets, cannons, laws, land equalization, and compulsory redemption of principal to make industrial bonds to force them to go there. Run up here.”

"I bet on the future. Twenty years from now, the land north of Songliao, the Western Regions, Fusang, and the Southern Ocean will have value with the development of transportation tools."

"In fact, as long as it can easily transport people and food, the so-called 'principal to be repaid' is not a problem at all. There are billions of acres of arable land in Northeast Fuso. Once it has commercial value, can it be sold casually? Can’t you even afford this principal?”

"Even if there is no money by then. Twenty years later, those squire and landlords will come to ask for the principal with the bonds to redeem their land, and the court will give them ten times the land in Fusang. Wouldn't they like it?"

"It's just that the current problem is just like the Duke's immigration policy in Fusang. The value of Fusang land is now entirely determined by the imperial court, rather than the price it deserves."

"And I bet that in twenty years' time, due to the development of steamships and railways, the price of Fuso's land will not need to be forced by the court, and it can still be sold at a high price. At that time, we can get hundreds of millions of acres of land as the 'principal' ’, wouldn’t they be happy to pay the squires who were forcibly redeemed?”

Speaking of this, Li Han glanced at Liu Yu with a smile and said with a smile: "Isn't the Duke Fusang's immigration policy also a gamble?"

"I was betting that Fusang really had gold and silver. So, [with good luck], five years later, the Duke won the 'bet'. Before that, the Duke didn't look for gold and silver at all, but used the money from the bubble company to settle and relocate people to the Yellow River."

"Since the Duke won the bet."

"Then, I would like to ask the Duke, since I have put everything on the developer of transportation and logistics, can I win the bet in 20 years?"

The atmosphere suddenly became solemn.

Even if Li Xi said this with a smile, it was a bit like a joke, asking about a "bet".

But, behind these jokes, there is a lot of heaviness.

The traditional Celestial Empire has come to this point, with the Celestial Empire and the dynasty itself as the main body. The biggest problem facing the dynasty now is, as Li Xi said, the biggest problem of the dynasty is that if it continues, even if there is no exploitation and no corrupt officials, there will not be enough food.

Solving the problem of "theoretical per capita grain possession" without large-scale uprisings is the most important thing facing this traditional dynasty.

This is why Liu Yu used technology to break the impression of "odd skills and tricks" not by relying on the ingenious pocket watch or the Jenny machine that may have appeared.

Instead, it was the "earthy" saltpeter fertilizer, the steam-powered water pump, and the "great auspicious sign" of hundreds of kilograms per mu produced in the emperor's personal farmland in Xiyuan.

The subject here is the feudal dynasty.

That is, it goes back to the problem that the practical school ridiculed the Yanli school at the beginning - 50 mu of high-quality land per household and 150 mu of low-quality land per household, you still call yourself "universal Confucian scholars" and "six arts of gentlemen", have you learned arithmetic? Have you calculated how many people and how much farmland there are in the world? Just open your mouth and say that 50 mu of high-quality land per household and 150 mu of low-quality land per household?

Now, the more realistic problem is that Dashun has no "wormhole" or "portal", and even no convenient sea transportation conditions like the Mediterranean.

This means that North America and Australia, do they have land?

Yes.

Is there a billion acres?

Not only yes, but also more than 10 billion acres and tens of billions of acres.

But the problem is.

The rich don't want to go, because their money can go there, and their tools and horses can be brought there.

But there is no way to transfer the social conditions and population size of Dashun to Fusang.

And the poor can't go, and can't afford to go.

Because... because they really can't afford to go.

Including saying that Liu Yu's policy of immigration to Fusang relies on "finding ways to make capital profitable", "If capital doesn't know how to make a profit, then I will find a profitable direction for you, digging gold, drying salt, growing cotton in the Central Valley of California and selling it to South America, brewing wine in the prairie provinces and selling it to the French to exchange fur and ginseng with the Indians and sell it back to Dashun", and so on and so forth.

The east coast of North America can be engaged in indentured servitude and slavery.

It relies on the European market, the triangular trade, and the most basic point - the Atlantic Ocean is much narrower than the fucking Pacific Ocean.

The distance from Europe to the Caribbean Islands and the east coast of North America.

It is about the same distance as the merchants of Dashun who went to Banga to buy tin and then returned to Suzhou, Wuxi and other places. In fact, after the mid-Qing Dynasty, the "dead money" and "burning ingots" in Jiangnan were basically made of Nanyang tin.

Connecticut can grow grain and raise cattle to sell to sugarcane plantations on Caribbean islands; southern states can grow tobacco and sell to Europe.

What can Dashun grow on the west coast of North America that can be sold back to Dashun to form a complete trade cycle? Make capital profitable and willing to engage in contract slaves to cultivate land?

This has always been a big problem that has been on Dashun's head after the reforms over the years.

Fortunately, relying on the gold of the Golden State, the silver of the Silver State, the fur of the Great Plains, and the ginseng of the Great Lakes, Liu Yu found a breakthrough point.

But how many immigrants can this trade volume support?

Historically, one of the important reasons for the outbreak of the European and American financial crisis in North America in 1857 was that the gold on the west coast was mined too quickly, resulting in a large number of railways being "unprofitable" - at the beginning, everyone thought that the gold and silver would never be exhausted, so a large amount of European capital went to America to build railways. As a result, the gold was mined very quickly, and the railway bonds and stocks plummeted by 80% in an instant.

In Dashun, when talking about free trade and Saint-Simonianism's "private ownership under the 'inducement' of capital to flow to industries that are beneficial to the development of the whole society", we have to talk about a problem that was deliberately avoided by the previous British free trade school.

That is, the problem of "the sea as a natural tariff, otherwise the whole of Europe will use Chinese goods" as Hume said.

Inducement, how to induce?

North of the Songliao watershed, there are thousands of miles of fertile land, suitable for growing soybeans. Now, northern Jiangsu, Japan, Shandong, etc. are in urgent need of soybeans to fertilize the fields, and are in urgent need of using photosynthetic products to transfer phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and other substances in the northeast to the cotton fields in northern Jiangsu, rice fields in Japan, and tobacco fields in Shandong through soybeans.

There is definitely no shortage of sales and markets for soybeans.

The question is, can the fertile land north of the Songliao watershed be used for free and without tax?

Assuming that soybeans are grown on the banks of the Heilongjiang River and transported to northern Jiangsu, how much freight would it cost? How much freight would it cost to transport soybeans from the banks of the Heilongjiang River, across the Songliao watershed, and then into the Liaohe River system?

When the Dashun army conquered the Western Regions, the freight for transporting grain from the Central Plains to the Western Regions was nearly 20 times the original price of the grain.

Without the Liaohe River system, even the soybean industry in Liaodong, which relied on the markets of Jiangsu and Shandong, could not develop.

With this reality, how can we lure capital to invest in the "right" place for profit?

Not to mention Fuso.

With this sailboat, it will take a year to go back and forth from Weihai, taking the most mature Manila sailing route.

Go to Fuso to plant soybeans, and use a sailboat to transport them back to northern Jiangsu... A ship can only carry about 1,000 tons, about 10,000 shi, even if it is sold in northern Jiangsu at 8 qian of silver per shi, this ship can only sell 10,000 taels of silver in total.

More than a year of round trip, sailors eat, drink, defecate, and take risks in the sea, go, go, how much money can be left? With a 1,000-ton sailboat and a year of capital turnover, not to mention buying land and collecting rent, or opening a pawnshop to lend money, if I have this ship and this capital, I can make more than this money by going to Southeast Asia and India, right?

Even if I just quit, I would invest this 10,000 taels of silver in national bonds and war bonds, how much money would I make?

Am I sick? In this day and age, I would go to Fusang to open a farm, hire people to immigrate there, and then become an agricultural capitalist? Am I doing charity here?

Liu Yu's logic for immigrating to Fusang at this time was "a contract worker works for seven years, and after seven years, he spends 50 taels to buy land. As long as you deduct the food, drink, and defecation, and then deduct the 50 taels of silver wages for the land for seven years, the rest of the surplus value, can't you squeeze out even this little surplus value after digging for gold?"

If you go to Jinzhou to dig gold, if you are a contract worker for seven years, you can't even create a total value of three or five hundred taels, what kind of "San Francisco" is it?

Therefore, Li Li's thinking is much simpler.

Since the problem is that "the rich are unwilling to go, and the poor can't go".

Then, if I reduce the "logistics costs and freight", won't this solve the problem?

I build a railway from Shaanxi to Yili, I build a railway from Henan to Heilongjiang, I build a transport fleet that only takes one or two months to cross the Pacific Ocean...

Wouldn't that solve the problem?

Once the railway to Yili is built, cotton can be directly planted in the Yili River Valley, and a cotton textile factory can be built in Shaanxi. Isn't there anyone willing to pay to go to Yili to cultivate land, plant cotton, and hire landless refugees to plant cotton there?

Once the railway or canal across the Songliao watershed is built, soybeans can be directly planted there and transported to Yingkou. Isn't there anyone willing to pay to go there to cultivate land, plant soybeans, and hire landless refugees to plant soybeans?

In fact, isn't the idea of ​​"agricultural industry army" mentioned by Na San in "On the Elimination of Poverty" also applicable?

Na San's idea is that there are 150 million mu of "wasteland" in France, and it is "valuable, and its products can participate in market circulation".

Then, France is that big, and Dashun is much bigger.

With the development of new means of transportation and infrastructure, can it be regarded as a kind of "shrinking the earth"?

Using railways and steamships as "shrinking the earth".

Taking the conditions envisioned by Na San, after being blessed by the fairy method of "shrinking the earth", can that condition be transferred to Dashun?

When the British classical political economy and the free trade school were arguing with the British mercantilism.

On the one hand, the social existence and shipping conditions in Europe made them somewhat careless about the concept of transportation costs, at least not focusing on it - when talking about the jokes related to Wu Dalang, do we need to deliberately emphasize Wu Dalang's height? Isn't this a condition that does not need to be considered, just like the sun rises from the east?

On the other hand, in view of the problem raised by Hume and other early anti-free trade factions that "the eastern handicraft technology is advanced and the purchasing power of the eastern silver is stronger", Hume's rhetorical question was deliberately avoided: if there is no sea as a natural tariff, from Sweden to Spain, all use Chinese goods. Until one day, the per capita wealth of Europe is the same as that of China.

The former is inadvertently ignored.

The latter is a matter of right and wrong, and must be avoided.

Even Adam Smith had no solution to this problem, and the solution he gave was completely against the invisible hand: First, China should give up the shipping industry, let Europe do the most profitable shipping industry, and invest capital in agriculture and industry; second, Britain should be the trade middleman between the East and the West, that is, Britain should control the shipping of East-West trade.

This sentence, "Let Europe do the most profitable shipping industry, and invest capital in agriculture and industry", is not wrong.

But it is about how much profit and return rate of East-West trade are, and Adam Smith really doesn't know? Since we are talking about the invisible hand, then how can this invisible hand make capital not run to the shipping industry and East-West trade, but to agriculture and industry?

Second, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759 and "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776, at this point in time, what level are you in Britain? What is the yield per mu? What level of cotton textile industry do you have? How dare you say that the East is inferior to Europe in industry and agriculture? If you dare to open up free trade in 1776, even if China fell asleep, died, and was removed from the world, the cotton textile industry in Mumbai, Surat, and Dhaka could kill the whole of Europe. Don’t you know that?

Do you really think that it is the advanced industrial productivity of Britain that killed the Indian handicraft industry? It is clearly the bayonets, warships, and tariffs under the administrative power of the East India Company, as well as the cannons and warships that can maintain this administrative power.

Therefore, under the current situation of Dashun, Li Li could not "reflect" on anything, why Dashun's agricultural per mu yield is not as good as Europe, why Dashun's cotton textile industry is not as good as Europe - how can people reflect on something that does not exist at all?

On the contrary, given the premature formation of the "domestic unified market" here, and the fact that Shaanxi did not impose a 200% tariff on Jiangsu silk, and northern Jiangsu did not impose a 200% tariff on Liaodong soybeans to counter Liaodong tussah silk.

This makes it possible to "come and go for profit" on the core basis.

On the basis of small real estate ownership and private ownership that is more radical than Europe.

Li Li had to turn his attention to infrastructure, logistics, and transportation.

It is both self-reflection.

It is also a historical journey - because the abolition of the canal and the sea is a vivid example, and it is also the biggest change that everyone has seen in the twenty or thirty years before the Dashun: the decline of Yangzhou, the collapse of northwest Shandong, and the great development of coastal areas.

Other places are easy to say.

And Yangzhou, which was once "a place with a hundred thousand strings of cash and a crane riding down to Yangzhou", was turned into this state by Liu Yu's reforms. This was a huge shock to the elite class of Dashun.

It can be said that in the past 20 to 30 years, watching the decline of Yangzhou, we have truly witnessed the changes of "the sea has changed a lot".

Under this historical process, the elite class of Dashun had to think about economic issues from the perspectives of logistics, infrastructure, canals, shipping, transportation costs, etc.

They are all cities, but their "influence" is different. The decline of Yangzhou, the feudal dynasty after the construction of the Grand Canal, made people think to a degree that is not comparable to other places. It also really made the elite class of Dashun experience the "sea has changed a lot" in the past 20 to 30 years, and the shock was actually greater than the test railway and the black smoke steam engine.

Dashun has its own national conditions here.

Just like if Liu Yu gave the emperor a pocket watch, the emperor would think it was a strange and ingenious trick, and it was quite fun; but if he gave the emperor a handful of fertilizer, the emperor would have to exclaim that the power of science and technology is so great.

Same.

Liu Yu talked about free trade, mercantilism, trade surplus, and trade deficit for a long time in Dashun. What do people think of it?

What is a trade deficit?

How could there be a trade deficit?

Why should I think about a mercantilism that is useless at all to prevent the outflow of silver? Isn't this just worrying about nothing and being bored?

But once the canal transportation was cut off, the economic belt from Yangzhou to western Shandong was abolished, and the transportation cost advantage of sea transportation became apparent, everyone suddenly felt that the world is indeed material. It is not that people in western Shandong were smarter or better at business than those in the eastern coastal areas of Shandong; nor is it that people in Yangzhou have more economic vision than those in other places.

So this world is material, right? It is not because western Shandong is the hometown of Confucius and Mencius that the local economy is far more developed than the eastern coastal areas of Shandong?

Social existence determines social consciousness.

You cannot think of mercantilism or free trade based on foreign trade on the basis of a social existence where there is no outflow of silver. It is even more impossible to write a book to criticize the court for protectionism in a social existence where the domestic unified market is based on relative and absolute advantages.

This is the national condition of Dashun, and it is also the historical journey of Dashun's economics, especially the historical journey under the shock of witnessing the vicissitudes of life in the past 20 years.

This makes Dashun's economics rack their brains to solve the problem mentioned by Liu Yu: "the poor can't afford to go, the capital doesn't want to go, the contradiction between people and land in the Nine Provinces is huge, and there are billions of acres of wasteland outside the sea where no one cultivates."

This is also the fundamental difference between the radicals and conservatives of practical learning since the development of Dashun.

The poor can't afford to go, and the capital doesn't want to go.

In the face of this problem, the radicals are "equal distribution of land, taxation, the court controls capital, people control capital and have to go, instead of capital controlling people, that is, they don't go to the Western Regions and Northeast Fusang to cultivate wasteland because it is not profitable."

The radicals merged with the Confucian retro school, the Wangtian school, and the Zhouli school.

The conservatives, this faction is more.

Li Xi's "developing transportation tools to reduce transportation costs, making it more profitable to buy grain over 30,000 miles, so that capital can actively go there to reclaim wasteland, plant crops, and relocate people to absorb labor" is one of the factions.

However, "compulsory redemption, land cannot be traded within 20 years, and the redemption fee is used as "industrial capital", and industrial bonds are forced to be given to landlords and gentry to force them to invest in industry and infrastructure" is just a branch of the conservatives.