Daming Yuanfu

The monarch and his ministers chatted about other things for a while. Zhu Yijun suddenly seemed sleepy and interrupted Gao Pragmatic, who was talking, and said that we should stop here today. I am a little tired and will take a nap first.

Seeing him yawning again and again, Gao Pingshi didn't doubt that he was there. He casually said a few words about asking the emperor to take care of his dragon body and then withdrew. After leaving the Qianqing Palace, Gao Pingshi suddenly felt a little puzzled. The emperor's sleepiness came so suddenly. One moment he was very talkative, and the next moment he was yawning profusely. Could it be that one of the concubines who was lucky enough to be here last night was too tired?

Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic immediately began to reflect on himself: I am also the chief minister of the imperial court after all. It is really unreasonable to arrange His Majesty the Emperor in my mind like this. I'm sorry.

After walking a few more steps, Gao Qingshi remembered something was wrong. Normally, if Zhu Yijun talks to him until this point, he will definitely stay in the palace to have lunch with him. This is already a privilege that he is accustomed to among the officials in the capital - because the emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Generally, the ministers were not allowed to have meals with them. Even if a banquet was given to the cabinet elders, the meals were usually sent directly to the cabinet in Wenyuan Pavilion for duty, and the ministers were not allowed to come to Qianqing Palace to eat with the emperor.

However, an exception was made today, which is very unusual. If the outside world knew about it, I'm afraid they would still suspect that Gaoge always lost his holy family, or was there some urgent matter that the emperor had told him to handle immediately?

It is said that details determine success or failure. Although Gao Pragmatic did not think that such a small matter could influence the capital officialdom to make wrong judgments on the relationship between the emperor and his monarchs, the less trouble the better, so he gave up his plan to go back to the cabinet for dinner. He ordered the eunuchs around him to send him directly out of the palace, and at the same time informed the cabinet not to wait for him.

He was not afraid of having nowhere to go. After leaving the palace, there was naturally a motorcade arranged by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take him anywhere, and he chose to go to the head office of Jinghua Bank - this place is "one team, two brands", and it is also The headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of China.

The share capital of the Ming Fed is very complicated, and the emperor's internal funds also account for a certain proportion of the original shares of the Ming Fed. Therefore, when he comes here, it is difficult for the outside world to judge whether the emperor is asking about something.

In fact, he was not here to talk about official business, but to talk to Gao Guoyan about the financial war against Japan. Of course, speaking of financial war is somewhat deliberately exaggerating. In fact, Gao Pragmatic was just a grassroots cadre in his previous life and was not good at financial war. What he wants to do to Japan now will definitely be quite childish in future generations.

However, this is not the 21st century, and Gao Pragmatic believes that his plan can still have some effect.

To put it simply, Gao Pragmatism needs to use some economic means to cooperate with Kaiji, so that she can better control the scale, intensity and even the rhythm of Japan's civil war.

There are two prerequisites here first. The first prerequisite is that through years of continuous economic penetration, the rice produced in southern Xinjiang has occupied most of the "commercial rice" on the Japanese market. By the way, it has become a high-end food that only the samurai class and above can eat. The price of rice has dropped a lot.

The second prerequisite is that the large copper mine in Luzon, which has been successfully mined in the past few years, has provided Gao with a large amount of copper. In addition to using it in casting cannons, Jinghua also uses these copper mines to cast copper coins - - Don't get me wrong, it is not casting Wanli Tongbao, this is illegal - Gao Pragmatic casts Yongle Tongbao specifically for the Japanese market. You read that right, it is Yongle Tongbao from the time of Emperor Chengzu Zhu Di.

Why is Yongle Tongbao specially prepared for the Japanese market? This is really worth talking about ancient times, because the issue of Yongle Tongbao is actually not only related to Japan, but also has a certain relationship with southern Xinjiang, Nanyang and even India and Persia - of course, the biggest impact is on Japan.

Yongle Tongbao was coined after Zhu Di launched the Jingnan Campaign to seize the throne of his nephew Emperor Jianwen and changed the Yuan Dynasty to Yongle. "Ming Huidian" records that Zhu Di cast Yongle Tongbao coins in the capital Nanjing in the sixth year of Yongle (1408). In the ninth year of Yongle, he sent officials to Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian to cast coins. However, the "History of Ming Dynasty·Shi Huo Zhi" only records that "Yongle coins were minted in the ninth year" and omits the fact that coins were minted in the capital in the sixth year of Yongle.

Zhu Di minted money in the capital in the sixth year of Yongle, and three years later in the ninth year of Yongle, he minted money in the four provinces along the southeastern coast. This seemed to be a very ordinary thing, but in fact there were extremely complicated reasons and backgrounds behind it. This was the first time that the Ming Dynasty banned coining coins after Zhu Yuanzhang officially banned copper coins in August of the 1394th year of Hongwu ().

As we all know, Zhu Di tried his best to implement most political arrangements in accordance with his father's orders and ignored Zhu Yunwen's reforms, because this could add points to his "legitimacy." So why did he go against his father's prohibition on coining money?

In fact, it is precisely because of "legitimacy". Precisely because he was extremely worried about the lack of "legitimacy", he wanted to erase the suspicion of being a usurper by officially minting a coin with his reign name, and in this way, he wanted to show the world that his succession to the throne was both orthodox and legitimate. legitimate.

Some people may raise questions: Can it really play such a big role just by casting a year-name coin?

Coins, especially year-name coins, are different from ordinary items and have a very strong political connotation in ancient China. Therefore, whenever a new dynasty is established, a new emperor ascends the throne, or even a year is changed, a new coin must be minted. Because only in this way can it have the symbolic meaning of replacing the old with the new and changing dynasties, and can it show the legitimacy and legitimacy of its regime. It was precisely because Zhu Di understood this meaning that he would rather violate Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestral precepts, break the money ban, and mint his reign coin.

Combining two things, we can see how important this matter is. One is that after the success of the Jingnan Campaign, Zhu Di directly abandoned Zhu Yunwen's reign name "Jianwen" and replaced all four years with Jianwen as the reign name with the Hongwu reign name.

Therefore, the Hongwu reign was originally only thirty-one years old, but ended up being thirty-five years old. This means that Zhu Di's "Yongle" reign was directly inherited from Zhu Yuanzhang's "Hongwu" reign. Hongwu Tongbao was minted in the Hongwu era, and no money was minted in the Jianwen era in the middle. Therefore, he cast Yongle Tongbao to show the world that he, Zhu Di, was the legal heir of Emperor Hongwu.

Although Zhu Di cast Yongle Tongbao, a year-name coin, which ostensibly broke Zhu Yuanzhang's money ban, in actual currency circulation, Zhu Di continued to implement Zhu Yuanzhang's policy of circulating and using banknotes. Therefore, the Yongle Tongbao coins he minted were not circulated and used domestically at all. Instead, they were all given to tribute missions abroad. This also proves from one aspect that Zhu Di's purpose of casting money was political considerations rather than economic needs.

Another thing is that after Zhu Di ascended the throne, he immediately sent Zheng He to lead a huge mission overseas to "connect well with other countries and be gentle with people far away." His purpose is to declare to the world that he is the legitimate emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

The best way to achieve this goal is to use his reign money to reward countries along the way. Therefore, in Zheng He's seven voyages, starting from the third in October of the seventh year of Yongle, he carried a large amount of Yongle Tongbao money. This is also the reason why Zhu Di was in Nanjing, the capital, in the sixth year of Yongle, and then in the ninth year of Yongle, he cast a large number of Yongle Tongbao coins in the four southeastern coastal provinces.

After a large amount of money is spread out, more tribute envoys will inevitably be attracted. During the Yongle Dynasty, four kings came from across the sea, three of whom were still buried in the Ming Dynasty. In order to receive the tributary envoys, Zhu Di set up three municipal shipping departments in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong, namely Laiyuan, Anyuan and Huaiyuan, and set up Huitong Pavilion in the capital to treat state guests. In addition, a Siyi Pavilion has been set up, responsible for translating the languages ​​​​of various countries and ethnic minorities. These envoys will not return empty-handed, and most of them will be rewarded with Yongle Tongbao.

It is precisely because the purpose of casting Yongle Tongbao is to use Zheng He's fleet to go overseas to promote the country's prestige, and to reward tributary envoys and show kindness to people from far away. Therefore, it was not used in domestic circulation. Therefore, in later generations, only a small number of Yongle Tongbao was unearthed in China, and it was even rarer to find it in coin hoards during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. However, a large number of Yongle Tongbao was found overseas.

In the 20s, during underwater archeology in Dongsha and XSQD, copper coins believed to be left behind by the sunken ships of Zheng He's voyage to the West were discovered, among which the number of Yongle Tongbao coins was extremely large. According to statistics, among the 70 ancient coins cleared by XSQD for the first time, 80706 were Yongle Tongbao, accounting for 49684%; among the 62 copper coins with legible characters cleared for the second time, as many as 1995 were Yongle Tongbao, accounting for 1215%. 61%. Among the coins cleared in the Dongsha Islands, Yongle Tongbao is also much more numerous than Dazhong Tongbao and Hongwu Tongbao.

Yongle Tongbao is not only found in large quantities in the Xisha and Dongsha Islands in the South China Sea, but can also be found everywhere in countries and regions surrounding the Indian Ocean. For example, from Kenya and Tanzania to Oman and Iran, from Sri Lanka and India to Thailand and Malaysia, there are a large number of records of Yongle Tongbao coins unearthed.

Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Yongle Tongbao coins were the common currency in the East Asian tribute system constructed by the Ming Dynasty. They undoubtedly played an extremely important role in the hierarchical East Asian tribute system led by China. As Zheng He's voyages to the West deepened, a large amount of Yongle Tongbao coins became the common currency of Southeast Asian countries, thus starting the journey of Yongle Tongbao becoming popular in Asia.

Compared with Southeast Asia, Yongle Tongbao money plays a greater role in Japan and has a more far-reaching influence. This is because at the same time that the Ming Dynasty entered the Yongle era, the Muromachi shogunate that ruled Japan at that time also ushered in the heyday of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's rule, and also joined the East Asian tribute system established by the Ming Dynasty. In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan's two expeditions to Japan ended in failure, and official exchanges between China and Japan were cut off. Later, Zhu Yuanzhang was always wary of Japan because he suspected that the Japanese were colluding with Prime Minister Hu Weiyong in an attempt to usurp the throne. The tense relationship of mutual distrust between China and Japan was finally eased by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the third general of the Muromachi shogunate, who professed his vassalage to the Ming Dynasty in 1399.

Attention, knocking on the blackboard, this is very important, because this is the first and only time that Japan has formally surrendered to China, so this matter is also an unusual and controversial event in Japanese history. Many Japanese in later generations, especially Japanese right-wingers, were very reluctant to mention this matter.

So why did Ashikaga Yoshimitsu surrender to the Ming Dynasty? Of course, it was to carry out trade with China, and the purpose of trade was to obtain China's copper coins.

Eh? It’s just coined money. Why doesn’t Japan make it itself and has to use Chinese copper coins?

This issue originally needs to be discussed from the Tang and Song Dynasties, but I won’t go into details here. A simple summary is eight words: limited materials and poor technology.

In short, in the end, as a large amount of Song money and Ming money flowed into Japan, it had an important impact on Japan's monetary economy, land rent, and tax system. For example, Japan has gradually developed from the previously popular physical currency form of barter to copper coins as the main means of circulation. Not only are copper coins widely used in official and private transactions, but also the sale or mortgage of land and houses are mostly paid in copper coins.

In addition, Japan has accelerated its transformation from physical land rent to monetary land rent, and copper coins have become the main means of payment for land rent. Under natural economic conditions, the land rent of feudal manors was originally paid in kind such as rice. Later, with the development of the monetary economy, many manor owners with scattered territories began to collect monetary rent taxes, and the use of copper coins to pay land rent became increasingly popular.

Finally, with the development of the commodity currency economy, by the end of Japan's Warring States Period, coins have been widely used in Japan as a means of payment for taxes and for transaction settlement. Therefore, people are willing to carry coins when going out.

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu urgently needed the Ming Dynasty to agree to explore and trade with him. Among the items returned by the Ming Dynasty, what Japan wanted most was copper coins, because Japan's "money shortage" was already very serious at the time, and he had to solve this problem before he could secure his position. country.

As a result, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu surrendered to the Ming Dynasty, which was equivalent to recognizing Zhu Di's legitimacy. This made Zhu Di happy. While canonizing Ashikaga Yoshimitsu as the "King of Japan", he also rewarded a large amount of Hongwu Tongbao money, which has been given to tributary countries since then. It became a custom to reward people with copper coins.

In the sixth year of Yongle, the capital began to mint Yongle Tongbao. In May of the same year, Japan paid tribute for the third time. Zhu Di rewarded 15000 copper coins. This was probably the first time Yongle Tongbao flowed into Japan. From then on, whenever trade missions came to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty, they would quote the story of Yongle's gift of money and ask the court for more copper coins.

Among them, the eighth-generation shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who was already in trouble in the fourth year of Chenghua (1468), said it more straightforwardly in his letter of credence requesting for copper coins: "Books and copper coins have been given to the country for a long time. Today Asking for two things, Fu Xi made a memorial to satisfy his desires. The bibliography can be seen on the left. During the Yongle period, many copper coins were given, but this has not been done in recent times. Therefore, the public treasury is empty, how can it benefit the people? I look forward to Zhou Ji (Ji)."

How much influence did Yongle Tongbao have on Japan? I mentioned a particularly famous point before: Oda Nobunaga, the most important figure in Japan's Warring States Period, in order to promote his mercantile thoughts and change the traditional physiocratic concept, painted Yongle Tongbao money on the military flag to promote " The political philosophy that money talks. In addition to the military flag, the Yongle Tongho coin is also painted on the armor and back flags of the Oda family samurai.

After all, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who truly unified Japan after Oda Nobunaga, also came from the Oda family. Therefore, the status of Yongle Tongbao has become more stable, making Yongle Tongbao the main copper coin currently circulating in Japan.

Faced with such a situation, even if Gao Pragmatic is not good at financial means, if he cannot think of some ways to dig a hole for Japan, it would be really unreasonable.

A few years ago, with the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank of China, Jinghua Bank also opened its doors in Japan. Jinghua Bank copied its practice in the Ming Dynasty, first publicly displaying huge amounts of gold, silver, and an even larger physical reserve of "Yongle Tongbao" - the display method was to fill armed transport ships with these money, and invite famous names and practitioners from all over Japan. Visit the ship with wealthy businessmen.

Using this method, Jinghua Bank immediately established a strong financial reputation and quickly promoted "Ming Fed banknotes" in Japan. In the following years, it quickly attracted deposits and used a large number of banknotes to recycle a large number of Yongle Tongbao circulating in the Japanese market. Waiting for copper coins.

Now that Gao Wuzhi came to Gao Guoyan, the first thing he wanted to do was to ask the executive chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of China and the president of Jinghua Bank. How much of the "currency in circulation" did the banknotes of the Federal Reserve Bank of China account for in the Japanese market at this time? Whether the Japanese branch of the bank has the ability to cause huge fluctuations in the Japanese currency market in an instant.

Gao Guoyan was stunned for a while, and subconsciously wanted to ask what his cousin, the first assistant, wanted to do, but he soon suppressed his curiosity, made a careful calculation, and replied: "If what Rixin wants to ask about is just the coins in circulation, proportion, then I think it should account for more than half. However, I have to explain how many famous people and wealthy merchants in Japan still have hoards of copper coins. This is something I cannot understand and cannot judge. "

Gao pragmatically nodded. It’s really impossible to know how many copper coins are hidden in the homes of various famous people and wealthy businessmen, but it doesn’t matter, as long as the proportion of coins in circulation on the market is high enough, because I not only use copper coins to fight this financial war, I also have rice to cooperate. .

"So, please tell me two things in detail. If the Japanese branch suddenly announces that due to the outbreak of the Japanese civil war, our bank has no trust in its operations in Japan, so it will suspend the normal redemption of Ming Dynasty Federal Reserve banknotes and Yongle Tongbao and other copper coins. At the same time, the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance also announced at the same time that it would suspend the import of rice from southern Xinjiang to Japan for the same reason..."

Gao pragmatic stared at Gao Guoyan and asked, "What will be the consequences?"

Gao Guoyan was taken aback and asked subconsciously: "Ah... Why do you do this?" Then he immediately reacted and said, "I mean, doing this will also do great damage to our business reputation. In the future, all major Japanese companies will do this." I’m afraid wealthy merchants will no longer dare to trust our banknotes.”

Gao pragmatic shook his head and asked calmly: "Do they have a choice?"

"Uh... that seems to make sense." Gao Guoyan was stunned by the question, but immediately frowned and said, "But maybe some smart people in the future will think of joining forces to create their own banknotes to compete with us."

Gao Pragmatic sneered: "Three brothers are wrong. Without military hegemony, there will be no monetary hegemony."
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