Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2016 Wang Jiaping's Purpose Inside and Outside the Palace (卌九)
"The problem of Lianghuai salt administration is far more than Huai'an, and none of the three places can escape... However, I planned to play it later."

Gao Wushi's answer was not evasion. He did know that the Lianghuai salt administration was very problematic, or it should be said that he knew that the entire Ming Dynasty had serious problems with the salt administration.

He did have some thoughts on the reform of the salt administration, but he originally planned to deal with this matter after he completely overwhelmed the Heart School politically—otherwise, there was a high probability that it would not be possible.

What he didn't understand now was why Wang Jiaping suddenly brought the topic to the Yanzheng. Shouldn't today's topics be about the emperor's dragon body, when the emperor's son will be crowned prince, and so on?These two things have nothing to do with the Yanzheng government!
However, at this time Wang Jiaping didn't seem to notice Gao Yushi's vague intention of not wanting to talk about the salt administration issue now. Instead, he asked with great interest: "Risin is good at managing money and reforming the system. It has been criticized by the world for a long time, and it often affects the country's major plans. Its restructuring is an urgent task. Since Nixin has great insights, why don't you share with me a little bit, or you can see the sun and see it."

When he asked such a question, Gao Yushi became even more strange.The salt administration is indeed a major issue, but as Wang Jiaping himself said, the Ming Dynasty’s salt administration has been a long-standing problem—anyway, the problem has dragged on for a long time, and it’s not too late!What are you trying to pursue now?Figure 160?
Gao Pragmatism feels that there is a problem here. It is related to Wang Jiaping's sudden mention of Wu Chongli's impeachment of Zhao Zhigao's son Zhao Fengwei for corruption. meaning.

But the problem is that this is not necessary at all!The current conflict between the School of Reality and the School of Mind is already intense enough, so why is there any need to add fuel to the flames?

If not against factions, then it should be against individuals.Does Wang Jiaping want me to fight Zhao Zhigao?But what's the point of me doing this?

Although Zhao Zhigao's qualifications in the Mind School are old enough, and his nominal status is high enough, but his physical condition is very bad, and his official position is not too ostentatious. In contrast, his sense of presence is not as good as that of Shen Yiguan who ranks behind him.

Shen Yiguan is not only shady and scheming, but judging from his historical performance, he may be defined as the biggest black hand who pushed the party struggle in the late Ming Dynasty to a high level.

Therefore, even if I, Gao Pragmatic, want to launch a targeted targeted suppression of the Mind School, it should be aimed at Shen Yiguan. As for Zhao Zhigao's issue, it can be put aside for now.

Anyway, Zhao Zhigao can only fight the wind in such matters as party struggles, and do something to add icing on the cake, expecting him to become the mainstay, or to do some business for the Heart School, which is unlikely to be possible.

To put it simply, this person is not very threatening, not to mention that he can't be the main T, and he has no ability to be the main C. He can only play as a support, or even the kind of support that may drop at any time.To be honest, unless this kind of opponent jumps in front of his eyes with residual blood and can be dealt with with a single blow, Gao Yushi will not pay attention to him at all.

However, the doubt now is that Zhao Zhigao's situation is not only understood by Gao Pragmatic, Wang Jiaping naturally understands it too, so why does Wang Jiaping suddenly have the intention of directing Gao Pragmatic's firepower to Zhao Zhigao?Although Wang Jiaping and Zhao Zhigao are not from the same faction, they were colleagues in the Imperial Academy for many years at the beginning, so there is no need to do this.

What's more, Wang Jiaping will retire soon, so there is no need to offend a cabinet official who seems not to bow down for the time being.

There was no answer to this question for a while, so Gao Wushi had no choice but to perfunctoryly say: "Since Long Wan, especially since Wanli, there have always been people who say that the new policies of the country and the dynasty are the system of changing the ancestors in vain. In theory, this is 'respecting the original intention of the ancestors, but not necessarily following the old system of the ancestors'.

The world never changes, and so do the affairs of the state and the people.Therefore, politicians should adapt to the situation and adjust the major policies at any time in order to adapt to the current situation and lead the people to achieve well-being.

The system established by the ancestors at the beginning of the founding of the country was naturally in line with the current situation at that time, but the situation after 200 years is very different from that at that time, and the original excellent system may not still be applicable now.Moreover, the system has been used for a long time, and the accumulated disadvantages are inevitable. If you want to reverse the disadvantages, such as scraping the bones to cure poison, it will inevitably be a temporary pain.

However, the most important thing to be cautious in governing the country is how much the pain will affect and how deep the pain is.Pi Rixiu has a poem saying: "It is this river that has been destroyed in the Sui Dynasty, and it has been laitongbo for thousands of miles."If there is no dragon boat event in the water palace, there will not be much meritorious deeds of Gong Yu. 'I think there are sentences in this poem that can be changed.

"Thousands of miles of Lai Tongbo so far" is of course "common Yu's theory of merit is not much", but is the death of the Sui Dynasty really because of the "Dragon Boat Incident in the Water Palace"?I'm afraid not necessarily.There was more than one cause of the Sui Dynasty's downfall, and the one related to the canal was that it was dug too fast.If the canal was dug slowly according to the original plan, how could it cause millions of deaths and injuries, so as to shake the foundation of the country and the hope of the people?
Since the Holy Majesty ascended the throne, there have indeed been many new policies related to finances, but these new policies have clear steps, which are introduced and implemented one by one. They always strive to benefit both the court and the people as soon as possible after the reform. This reduces the discomfort caused by the throes of reform.

So according to this idea, when it comes to the salt administration issue, we and other ministers should ask ourselves a question or two before acting:
Once the salt policy is reformed, whose interests will be touched?Are these interests reasonable and legitimate interests?If it is a reasonable and legal interest, how will the court compensate after being touched by the reform?Is the court capable of making compensation?
If it is not a reasonable and legal interest, then the court naturally does not need to compensate, but a large number of illegal interests gathered for a long time will definitely form an interest group. If these interest groups oppose the reform by various means, and even dare to make some vicious incidents, then How should the court respond?

In addition, we naturally have to calculate in detail first to understand the benefits that these reform measures will bring.For example, can the imperial court solve the military food supply in the border areas?Can the national treasury thus increase revenue?Can some criminals in the relevant yamen still take the opportunity to oppress the good?Can the local people and even all the people in the world stop worrying about salt?
In short, 'virtue is good governance, and government is to support the people'.Politicians have thousands of means and various measures, but they must not forget their original intention: to support the people.As I said in "The Collection of Uses": It is a tax that is neither owned by the court nor owned by His Majesty. This money is taken from the people and used for the people. "

Gao Yushi has said so much eloquently, but in fact the central idea is very unclear. Even if all the ministers are old foxes, they can probably only hear some things that they are not sure about.

Remove some of the official phrases they think, and the subtext of Gao Pragmatism is probably to say: the reform of the salt administration in his vision may involve a huge interest group, and this reform will definitely dig out their flesh and blood, so it is necessary to Think about how to deal with these people's counterattacks first, so it can't be launched and implemented immediately.

Different people have different understandings after hearing these words. For example, Shen Yiguan is very vigilant, Zhao Zhigao is very nervous, Liang Menglong is very calm, Zhou Yong is very indifferent, and Wang Jiaping is... well, he seems very interested .

Shen has always been very vigilant, because he felt that Gao Yushi might want to attack dissidents through this reform of the salt administration, which might implicate his old protege of Shen Ge;

Zhao Zhigao was very nervous, because he felt that Gao Yushi might have been eyeing his old Zhao family. After all, Wang Jiaping just said that his son Zhao Fengwei was impeached.Gao Yushi also said just now that Huai'an, Taizhou, and Tongzhou 'cannot escape any of the three places', which means that Gao Yushi also knew that there was a problem;
Liang Menglong is very calm, because his family has nothing to do with the salt industry and he is about to retire, no matter how big the matter is, it is not his business.This is a matter of high pragmatism, and he has always been confident in high pragmatism;

Zhou Yong didn't care much, because his family didn't have any salt related industry or business. He has always been in charge of military affairs, and was regarded by the outside world as a highly pragmatic respondent.And judging from his age, he, Mr. Zhou Ge, doesn't look like he will get involved in finances in the future.

Only Wang Jiaping's performance is unreasonable: he is also a person who is about to retire, and he has never paid special attention to finances in the past. Today, he suddenly jumped out from Zhao Fengwei to talk about the salt administration. What is his intention?

At this moment, even Gao Yushi has to doubt that Wang Jiaping will not be old enough to start thinking about the problems with the Ming Dynasty's fiscal policy, right?Ah... why did you go there decades ago?
There is a problem with the fiscal policy of the Ming Dynasty, which has been considered by high-level officials for 30 to [-] years.From a certain height, in addition to the issues of commercial taxation, opening of the sea, and feudal bans that have been discussed many times, there are mainly the following three issues:

One is not paying attention to technical means.Specifically, it includes specialized economic knowledge and legal system.The establishment of the fixed-rate tax system has made many technical details irrelevant.A good tax system and local tax amounts should be flexible, but the quota system makes these nonexistent.

Second, fiscal theory deviates from practice.In the financial management of the Ming Dynasty, ideological prejudice, rigid sense of responsibility, division of scope of action, low official salaries, insufficient understanding of the actual situation, and insufficient public investment... All these reasons made the country unable to mobilize all the financial resources of the empire. Controlled resources are only a small part of it.

The low official tax rate in the Ming Dynasty caused the people's tax burden to rise continuously. At the same time, the imperial court did not get the money, and it was seized by the bureaucrats and gentry in the middle.Conversely, due to the low nominal tax rate of the Ming Dynasty, the public investment was very small. Apart from maintaining a grand canal and repairing the palace, the court had almost no other public infrastructure.

Moreover, the tightness of fiscal revenue caused the salaries of officials to be too low, so that officials were rampant in corruption and collected arbitrary taxes in addition to taxes.Zhu Yuanzhang adopted cruel policies to punish corruption, but still could not prevent the occurrence of the problem. It has to be explained that corruption is not only an ethical and moral issue, but also has its institutional reasons.

The third is that the finance of the Ming Dynasty was obviously negative.The main concern of the imperial court was its own stability, so the Ming Dynasty's finances were never considered in terms of promoting economic and social development.

The fiscal systems of the Tang and Song dynasties were actually more developed than those of the Ming Dynasty, so the economic capabilities of the Tang and Song dynasties were much stronger than those of the Ming Dynasty.However, the greatest enlightenment from the Tang and Song Dynasties to the Ming Dynasty was that too much local power would affect the stability of the central court. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty adopted a negative fiscal policy from the very beginning, making it impossible for the local governments to have enough financial resources to resist the central court.

However, while the Ming Dynasty solved the problem of the splitting tendency of the local court through the weakness of local finance and the high centralization of power, it also caused the central court's own financial mobilization ability to be weak. And perish.

Just when Gao Wushi began to wonder whether Wang Jiaping was suddenly interested in studying the fundamental problems of the Ming Dynasty's financial system, Wang Jiaping personally shattered his illusions.

After Wang Yuanfu praised Gao Wushi's "prudent administration" with a look of relief, he suddenly changed the subject and said: "I said that Rixin is good at financial management, and it really hits the nail on the head... You just said that 'the gathering of a large number of illegal interests will definitely lead to Formation of interest groups'. I agree with that statement very much, and I also know that it is now beginning to be seen."

Everyone was startled, even including Gao Wushi, everyone began to figure out what Wang Jiaping meant.

However, Wang Jiaping is still the straight-talking Wang Jiaping. He didn't keep the cabinet officials waiting for a long time, and he said to himself: "Didn't I just say that Wu Chongli impeached Zhao Fengwei...he didn't just impeach Zhao Fengwei One person, but he used this to discuss the complete corruption of the Lianghuai Salt Administration. Many of the Jiangnan generation of honorable officials and official families have extended their hands into the Lianghuai Salt Administration.

Today, there are countless salt merchants in Huaiyang, big and small, and almost anyone who can be called a name has someone behind him who secretly supports or controls them. "

Oh, you said this... Everyone looked suddenly enlightened.

This is indeed a big event, but the problem is that everyone has known about it for a long time!This is nothing new, you don't know about it until today, do you?
Of course Wang Jiaping knew about it a long time ago, but the focus of his discussion of this matter today is not the matter itself.Wang Jiaping looked around at the crowd, snorted softly, and said, "More than a month ago, many salt officials and merchants in the Lianghuai area seemed to have obtained some orders, and they took action one after another, wantonly manipulating the salt price for huge profits.

Then Wu Chongli discovered that these people had transported a large amount of money accumulated through this operation to the capital through various means.Colleagues, who can tell the cabinet that such a huge amount of money has suddenly poured into the capital... What are these people going to do? "
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PS: I was so busy that I even missed the nucleic acid today, and I have to find another place to do it tomorrow.

(End of this chapter)