Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1967 Behind the Smile
After a seemingly inadvertent episode, Gao Wushi, Dong Yiyuan, and Liu Ting went to make a report.This is the proper meaning of the question, after all, it is under the banner of returning to Beijing to report on work, and there must be procedures that should be there.

However, although there was great joy in the palace today, the General Secretary and the Supervisor of Rituals seemed to be a little unusually efficient in their work, and a big eunuch came to deal with it not long after.

The visitor was none other than Liu Ping.The last time Liu Ping went to the North Korean front line, he was too pragmatic. At that time, the emperor wanted to take away the Japanese landing ships captured in the Sacheon naval battle, which required a highly pragmatic performance.

But that time, Gao Yushi did not agree with this idea.Of course, he didn't refuse bluntly, but after raising some problems he would face in doing so, he gave another plan that could better relieve the emperor's worries.

The situation at that time was that the emperor wanted those ships because he hoped to get involved in first-hand sea trade, and the fundamental purpose of mixing in sea trade was to increase revenue—to make money in human terms.

At that time, the emperor put forward the statement that he wanted to build a trade fleet led by the inner court, and also get a share of the sea trade.

Although Gao Pragmatic's refusal seemed to be tactful and gentle, and he said it in a soft-spoken manner, in fact, his attitude towards this matter was very resolute, and he carried out the plan of insisting on dissuading the emperor.

Even Gao Wushi had made a plan to resign once the emperor disagreed - not a pretentious resignation, but a real resignation, that is, if he was not allowed, he would not mind taking the crown and leaving.

Why did he, who has always cooperated with the emperor, be so resolute that time?Because although the motivation behind this incident is simple, the final development will definitely go out of control in the view of high pragmatism.

Losing control is the most intolerable thing for Gao Yushi, especially the loss of control of a behemoth like Da Ming, the serious consequences are simply unimaginable.

Gao Pragmatism believes that if the emperor wants to recruit the eunuchs of the inner court to engage in the Royal Fleet at this time, and not to engage in the navy, but to engage in maritime trade, then this matter will eventually go out of control.

Why?Because the Ming royal family has a criminal record in this matter: Zheng He's voyages to the West are criminal convictions.

Zheng He's voyage to the Western Seas itself is naturally a great feat in the history of Chinese navigation. Later generations have done a lot of research on this and gave it a very high evaluation.

But the problem is that the distribution of the benefits brought by Zheng He's voyages to the West has been seriously unbalanced. Instead, it has brought different degrees of benefits to other interest groups other than the royal family—whether civil servants, military generals, nobles, or common people. harm, this is going to be serious.

Gao Yushi believes that there are three important points about the problems brought about by voyages to the West:
In particular, as I just said, the trade benefits brought by Zheng He's voyages mainly benefited the royal family, but had more impact on private affairs.

Judging from the goods brought back by Zheng He's fleet, most of them are luxury goods such as sumac and pepper. These materials can basically only be consumed and played by the upper class, and it is difficult to have direct output.

This is why Liu Daxia, who was still working as a driver during Xuanzong's time, dared to openly question Zheng He's voyages to the West: "Three guarantees to the West cost hundreds of thousands of money and food, and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians died. Even if you get a rare treasure, it will benefit the country." ?”

Liu Daxia was often criticized in later generations. It is true that he himself was conservative in thinking, but his question was not wrong, especially the last sentence: "What good is it for the country?"——Your royal family has indeed made a lot of money, But it is the whole country that pays the price unilaterally!

In addition, Zheng He's voyages had a great social impact.Since a large amount of silver and gold flowed into Daming through trade surplus, it not only solved the shortage of precious metals in China since the Tang and Song Dynasties, but also caused the currency to depreciate by nearly [-]% during the Yongle period.

At the same time, due to heavy shipbuilding tasks, a large number of craftsman households in the southern shipbuilding area fled, and the number of shipbuilding households in the Nanjing area dropped by more than three quarters, which affected the social economy to a certain extent.

On this point, if you compare the salary paid by Gao Yushi to Jinghua shipbuilders, you will know that it is much higher than that given by Zhu Di.It can be seen that the royal family went to the West, and the shipbuilders and even related industry craftsmen were actually accepting extreme exploitation. The degree of exploitation even reached the point where people would rather run away at the risk of beheading, but they couldn't continue to do it.

Similarly, this is the reason why the imperial court issued an edict that "all purchases, comprador objects, and construction materials such as sea boats, wood, and plant materials should be stopped" at the same time as Xuanzong's period, which is also admitted by the imperial court. The oppression and harm to the people and craftsmen are great.

In particular, the official overseas trade system of the Ming Dynasty greatly inhibited and affected the opportunities for private maritime merchants and powerful aristocrats to profit from overseas trade, making them resolutely oppose voyages to the West due to uneven distribution.

At that time, the official monopoly policy of overseas trade adopted by Zhu Di was very disrespectful of economic laws. Not only was it incompatible with the Song Dynasty's encouragement of private overseas trade, but it was also inferior to the "official-owned ship" system of official-private partnerships in the Yuan Dynasty that was criticized by later generations.

In any case, the "official ship" is better than a public-private joint state monopoly and mixed management system. The government pays the capital and ships, hires private maritime agents to operate, and after the profit is divided between the government and the private, it is more or less a bit There are traces of "market economy" in it.

However, Zhu Di's monopoly management system is tantamount to "eating alone". The boycott also allowed the private wind to spread among the people.

Of course, these social classes whose interests have been damaged will not sit still, so they use various means to oppose the voyage to the West, and thus form a solid community of interests. As mentioned in the first volume of this book, Xu Jie once directed his family to directly participate in the maritime private.

At that time, the coastal frontier defense, facing the private team with the central government as the umbrella, had reached the sensational point of "the guards dare not ask, the guards cannot stop, and the public law has been deceived for hundreds of years." As a result, the court lost a lot of customs duties. .

It was under such circumstances that Gao Gong felt at that time that instead of doing so, it would be better to announce the liberalization of overseas trade management rights, which is the so-called "listen to maritime trade and levy its own taxes", so that at least tariffs can be guaranteed.

It is also under such a collusion of interests that even if the emperor makes repeated orders and requests for a sea ban, what he can only face is the yin and yang violations of the civil officials.

Therefore, Zheng He's voyage to the Western Seas was actually an act of protecting the official maritime foreign trade from being obstructed by other forces. Of course, it would also be strongly opposed by the civil official group and the interest groups behind it.

The third is more direct. In order to deal with the decline in commodity prices brought about by excess imports, the imperial court resorted to internal dumping, that is, "discounting salaries".

Since Saiyang is a government-run trade, its planned business model and inefficiency brought about by bureaucratic management inevitably lead to a dead end of economic law.

For example, pepper prices continue to be low as a large number of peppers flood the market.In just two years, by the fifth year of Yongle, the price of pepper in Daming had dropped by 0.1 taels per catty, down to half of what it was during the Hongwu period.As a result, the profit margin has shrunk significantly, and the market has become saturated, and the pepper and sumac in the royal warehouse have piled up like mountains.

In order to solve the problem of pepper backlog, they did not want to reduce profits. Therefore, starting from the fifth year of Yongle, the Ming court used the method of "discount reward" and "discount salary" to distribute sumac and pepper as bonuses or assets to lower-level officials, especially the upper-level officials. civil and military officials.What's more, during the distribution process, the imperial court refused to sell it to officials and officials at all levels at a low price.

In the 0.1th year of Yongle, when the market value of pepper was already lower than 0.2 taels/jin, the price of [-] taels/jin in the Hongwu period was still used for the discount.This is too ruthless. You must know that the salary of the Ming court was the lowest in history.The big officials dared to be angry but did not dare, so they all regarded Zheng He's voyages as a way to cut their salaries.

In this way, Zheng He's voyage to the Western Seas instantly became an act of "wasting people and money" under the condemnation of officials.In the first year of Zhengtong, the cabinet, in the name of the young Emperor Yingzong, ordered the Nanjing garrison eunuch Wang Jinghong to stop buying and building, and the Western trade in the early Ming Dynasty officially ended.

Because of the lessons learned from the past, Gao Yushi insisted on recruiting a large number of people to engage in maritime trade. On the surface, the main "partner" of Jinghua is the Xungui Group, but secretly there are many other shareholders who are held by Gao Yushi on behalf of others. "Practical school officials have been involved in it for many years.

According to a highly pragmatic point of view, the more important people involved, not only the less pressure he will face in the DPRK, but even if these people do not run factories or farms, but only purchase goods in their hometowns or spheres of influence, they will not be able to Can strongly stimulate the local economic development.

Therefore, Gao Wushi never eats alone in the maritime trade area, not to mention the nobles and officials of the real school, the nobles, chaebols, and maritime merchants in Jiangnan can also join Jinghua's caravans to sail together (but as I said before, Jinghua is A certain percentage of escort fees will be charged).

What is his purpose in doing this?It is natural to allow maritime trade to benefit a wider range of people, so that more people can see the benefits of maritime trade and be benignly affected by maritime trade, thereby stimulating trade and invigorating the economy.

And the emperor wants to build an inner court trade fleet, although its scale is of course limited in the short term, but in the long run there will be great hidden dangers.

Just ask: Do the emperor's trade fleets have to pay taxes?If you don't pay taxes, how can other fleets that need to pay customs taxes compete with the Royal Fleet over time?You know, because of the high profits of sea trade, the high-practical customs tax is the highest proportion of direct taxes in the entire Ming Dynasty.

So, can the emperor also pay taxes?Theoretically speaking, it is impossible. This is like the income of Huangzhuang and Huangdian is directly taken over by the internal funds and has nothing to do with the Ministry of Households.If the royal family has a trading fleet, there will be no household affairs, and all business activities and income will be borne by the internal funds themselves.

The above is still the case that the emperor does not engage in trade franchises. If one day the emperor says that a certain commodity can only be franchised by the royal fleet, it will almost be a problem caused by the voyage to the West.

Therefore, it is precisely because imperial power has no limits in theory, so many things have to be guarded against incipient development, and there must be no sign of it, and it must be extinguished in time.

In fact, Gao Yushi has always believed that the power of imperial power can be large or powerful, but it must have boundaries.There must be clear and definite boundaries, what matters the imperial power should manage, can manage, and must manage, and what the imperial power cannot intervene, interfere with, or even exert influence on.

The so-called disputes between imperial power and ministerial power that have been common in China since ancient times, or other disputes between imperial power and ministerial power, are essentially due to the fact that there has never been a set of power boundary rules recognized by both sides and strictly abided by.

You also want more power, and I also want more power. Even though everyone knows that the two sides actually cooperate to benefit both, in fact, they often fall apart...Why bother!
At present, it is too difficult to reform such a method. Gao Yushi can only continue to make detours, using his "[-] hectares of reclaimable arable land" in Nanyang to divert the emperor's attention.

Of course, those lands do exist, and how to use them can be decided in one word, but the practice of high pragmatism itself kills two birds with one stone.Although Jinghua worked hard to emigrate to the southern border, he never minded that His Majesty the Emperor personally came to help.

Nowadays, in the southern Xinjiang countries on the Indochina Peninsula, because there were some ethnic Chinese in the past, coupled with the continuous immigration and "naturalized household registration" in the past ten or 20 years, the proportion of "Han nationality" in the broad sense has greatly increased. As long as this situation continues Just go on, don't need to be pragmatic and think of another way.

However, in the newly conquered Nanyang region, which is the so-called Indonesian archipelago in the original history, the proportion of Chinese and Chinese descent here is too low, and it needs to be strengthened quickly.Otherwise, the localization cannot be carried out, and it can only be made into a colonial nature, which is not in line with the high-level pragmatic grand strategy.

After all, colonies are not secure. Whether it is the rise of nationalist trends that will inevitably occur in the future, or the deliberate intervention of external forces, it will lead to instability in the local situation.

Even if Nanyang is very close to Nanjiang, as long as Nanjiang is strong enough, Nanyang can be strongly suppressed if something happens, but how to calculate the cost of governance?Once the cost of governance has greatly increased to a certain critical point, it may be the same as Xuanzong's treatment of Jiaozhi. After much deliberation, it is better to give up.

Gao Wushi felt that leaving such a hidden danger might not be seen in his own lifetime, but it would be hard to say in the longer term.Therefore, it is better to think of a way now than to be unable to remedy it in the future, and making good use of the emperor's power is a win-win choice.

Zhu Yijun just wanted money, and he would not care too much about the difficulty of implementing the relocation of the people.What's more, under the current circumstances, disasters within Daming keep coming one after another, if you don't relocate those refugees who have become proletarians because of the disasters, there may be troubles instead.

After this matter was handed over to Liu Ping, Liu Ping rushed back to the capital, and has been busy with this for a while.

Of course, his ability to "busy inside and out" shows that Zhu Yijun has agreed to this plan.Still the same sentence, the emperor's current intention is very simple, just want to make money.As long as the money can be made, it doesn't matter whether the money comes from ocean trade or overseas Huangzhuang - don't care where the money comes from, isn't it all money?

This is a big deal, especially for Liu Ping who is personally in charge of it.In fact, Liu Ping has been looking forward to Gao Yushi's early return, and he has many details to discuss with Gao Yushi.

After all, the real master of Nanyang right now is none other than this Marquis of Nanning!Without his approval and help, Liu Ping, the new "imperial envoy and supervisor of Nanyang Huangzhuang eunuch" could do nothing.

"Master Hou, you are here!" Liu Ping greeted him with a smile all over his face, ignoring Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting, who seemed to be guarding Gao Yushi on the left and right, and said bluntly: "The emperor is here today. I planned to go out of the city to welcome you. Unexpectedly, the empress gave birth to a son-in-law early in the morning, so I really have no way to do it... But the emperor specifically explained that our family is waiting for you near the Secretary of the General Administration, and said that as soon as the prince comes, I will invite you there immediately. The face of Kunning Palace."

Gao Wushi listened to him with a smile on his face at the beginning, but he couldn't help being taken aback when he heard the last sentence, hesitatingly said: "It's not appropriate to go to Kunning Palace to face the saint... Is it appropriate? Or I will go to the cabinet and wait for the emperor Let's talk when you're free?"

"Ah...here, Lord Hou, you should stop embarrassing your servants. The emperor said that you should always go to Kunning Palace to face the saint." Liu Ping coughed dryly, and added: "Actually, there is nothing inappropriate. Yes, after all, Kunning Palace is full of people inside and out right now. Not to mention us slaves, the emperor, queen mother, concubines, and several princesses are all in Kunning Palace now."

Gao Wushi smiled wryly, "Isn't that even more inappropriate?"

"Hey, you are really old, the emperor thinks it is suitable, then it is appropriate. Besides, the Kunning Palace is so big, the emperor may not want you to meet directly with the female family members of the Tian family! It doesn't matter whether it is the side hall or the ear room. Where can't it be used to meet your boss? You say yes!"

This is true, the empress and the emperor are enemies of each other in terms of political attributes (not in the meaning of hostility), so the Kunning Palace where the empress lives is basically the same as the Qianqing Palace where the emperor lives. "The Kunning Palace is so big" is no joke, there is indeed enough room for the emperor to meet Gao Yushi nearby.

Since this is the case, Gao Yushi will not be entangled in these etiquette issues, but he has always cared for his subordinates, and before he left, he remembered to ask: "Liu Bingbi, what do you think of Dong Zongrong and Liu Zongrong?" arrange?"

Liu Ping unexpectedly found out that Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting still existed, he suddenly took a look at them, and said casually: "Oh, these are the two chief soldiers who accompanied you back to Beijing to report on their duties, um, yes, yes , looks very majestic..."

After some random nonsense, Liu Ping continued: "These two emperors didn't give any special instructions. Our family feels that we should follow the rules. You two will report to the Secretary of General Administration today, and then leave your address in Beijing. In the past few days, I will wait at the residence first. When the emperor has an oral order, our family will tell the younger ones to immediately notify the two of you to meet with the palace, and there will be no delay... Marquis, you always feel that this is terrible. it is good?"

He had been talking to Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting before, but after the arrangement was over, he turned around and asked Gao Yushi "Is this good?" Although it was only a small detail, Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting had a better understanding of Gao Yushi's status in the emperor's mind. deep understanding.

Obviously it was Liu Ping's performance, how could it be related to Gao Wushi's status in the emperor's mind?Because the eunuchs know best who the emperor cares about and who he values.

As one of the chief eunuchs, Liu Ping, the supervisor of ceremonies, if he wrote memorials to the emperor in other places, he would be able to call himself a "subject" according to the convention.When such a big eunuch faced Gao Yushi, he would say "you are old", so what weight Gao Wushi held in the emperor's mind, did it need to be said?

Gao Wushi didn't care about eunuchs who held pens, but Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting didn't dare.Not to mention the eunuch Bingbi, even if the eunuch guarding a certain place, or even the eunuch who supervises the army in their army, they can't offend any of them.

Gao Wushi didn't reply at this moment, but looked at the two of them, which meant naturally: What do you think?

"Bingbi's arrangement is very reasonable. He has taken good care of me and the two of us. I am grateful to the two of you at the end... Thank you Bingbi." The seniority is older, and by the way, I expressed my gratitude on behalf of Liu Ting.

However, Liu Ping still didn't care about their stance, but seeing that Gao Wushi had no objection, he immediately urged with a smile: "Since the two commanders have no other requirements, Lord Hou, let's go now, and we dare not let the emperor stay for a long time." Wait, don't you?"

Gao Wushi nodded, but said to Dong Yiyuan and Liu Ting: "Don't go to other places to stay these few days, just tell the Secretary of General Administration to live in my house."

This was actually something that had been agreed a long time ago, but since Gao Wushi said that, the two of them didn't know why, so they had to agree again.

However, although they didn't know why Gao Yushi brought up the old story at the beginning, they knew it right away.

As soon as Liu Ping heard that Gao Wushi let the two of them live in the Gaofu, he immediately looked at the two of them again, suddenly remembered something, and said to Liu Ting: "Oh, you are Liu Ting, the general soldier of Sichuan? Haha, our family wants to Wake up...Speaking of which, our family will often deal with Jinghua Secretariat in the future. We were a family again 500 years ago. When we are free someday, we must get close to each other.

Hey, don't change the day, our family suddenly remembered that our family will be free at noon tomorrow, Liu Zongrong...and Dong Zongrong, I wonder if the two of you would like to have a meal together for the sake of honor? "

If the eunuchs don't care about face the most, Liu Ping's attitude changed so quickly, not to mention that Liu Ting had never seen it before, even Dong Yiyuan, who had been in the officialdom all his life, was amazed.

Of course, this is not important, the key is that this is a good thing.The two of them now understand that what Gao Wushi did just now may be deliberately creating some kind of opportunity for the two of them. As for what kind of opportunity it is, I am afraid that we will not know until tomorrow when we go to the appointment.

The two quickly agreed, and immediately Liu Ping finalized the venue for tomorrow's lunch banquet, and the two parties said goodbye "reluctantly".

When Liu Ping took Gao Yushi to Kunning Palace, the little eunuchs around him were quickly waved away by Liu Ping, leaving them far away.

Liu Ping, who had been accompanying the smiling face just now, turned serious, even worried, and said hesitantly, "Master Hou, the empress gave birth to a son, there may be some disturbances inside and outside the palace, I wonder if you are always here..."
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PS: After seeing so many monthly tickets, I only noticed that it was already the end of the month.By the way, this chapter was written yesterday, and I made up 2K debts, and I still owe 7K. In the next few days, I will make up the debts from time to time and from time to time.

(End of this chapter)