Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2281: Economy and Party Struggle () Tailor-made Killing Knife

Zhu Yijun was stunned when he heard this, and said in astonishment: "Although the land belongs to the imperial court, it refers to the land without an owner after all. As long as there is an owner of the land, the imperial court cannot forcefully occupy it. In this way, the valuable land is in the hands of the original owner. It would be good if the imperial court could get some pasture left by the Mongols after they died in battle and fled. The rest is probably just desert land. What is the use of this land? Who would spend money to buy it?"

Gao pragmatic sighed and said: "Your Majesty, you should know that I spent more than ten years building a Dingnan city in southern Xinjiang, right?"

Zhu Yijun nodded and said: "Of course I know about this. It is said that this city is second only to the Northern and Southern Capitals of the Ming Dynasty? Is it really yours... How much money did you spend on this city? Five million taels? Or is it? Ten million taels?”

Gao pragmatic replied seriously: "It depends on how the emperor wants to settle the account for his ministers."

"How do you say this?" Zhu Yijun said in surprise: "What you spend is what you spend. What does it have to do with settling accounts?"

"That's a big deal." Gao Pragmatic shrugged and said: "If the emperor only asked how much manpower, material and financial resources were spent to build this city, there is no doubt that it is a huge amount - 730,000 local people have been used. , the entire construction period lasts for more than ten years, and the total construction funding can be equivalent to approximately 13.64 million taels of silver. "

Zhu Yijun exclaimed: "Well, Gao Rixin, you are so rich! Just to build a city with so much money? You must have bought a lot of antique pearls and jade to decorate your 'Dingnan Palace', right?" ? What’s the matter, the floor is paved with gold bricks and the walls are made of beautiful jade?”

Gao Jingshi hurriedly said: "Hey, Your Majesty, you don't want to be unjust in this matter. The residence of Zhuo Jing in Dingnan City is the palace of the King of Siam, which was built by the King of Siam himself. However, Siam The king of Luo usually lived in the royal palace in Dacheng, the capital of his country, which was called the "Great Palace", so the Dingnan Palace was useless. He saw that his minister Zhuo Jing and others had no fixed place to live in Dingnan, so he was grateful to Jinghua for helping him regain his kingdom. Well, I lent the palace to my minister for temporary use..."

"Come on, as long as you don't openly hang up any plaque for Dingnan Palace, I don't care whose property that mansion belongs to." Zhu Yijun waved his hands repeatedly and said, "I'm just wondering why such a huge sum of money was spent."

It's no wonder that Zhu Yijun was surprised. After all, the construction costs reported by Gao Pragmatic were hard to find anyone comparable to when Chengzu moved the capital and built the Forbidden City. Even if Zhu Yuanzhang built Nanjing City, the serious "financial expenditure" could not compare with this amount. Of course, the reason here is that the emperor does not need to pay wages for using manpower, and in some cases, he does not even pay rations - this is corvee service.

However, Gao Pragmatic did not do this. Even if he used local people in Siam as husbandmen, he would still give them some money. It's just that because Siam's national system is different from China's, and is more like the European feudal system, which is divided into layers, Gao Pragmatic's money actually went to Siamese nobles at all levels.

Not only that, Gao Pragmatic also allocated two additional sums of money, which were distributed to civilian husbands without going through the local nobles - in fact, they should be said to be serfs: one sum was used to provide food and accommodation, and the other sum was used to provide clothing. Of course, the food and housing are not good, but they can provide enough food and shelter from wind and rain. Clothing is not for daily use, but is given after the entire construction period, so that they can go home in a more dignified manner.

These two sums of money are neither too much nor too little. The reason why I say more or less is because there is a grain-producing area near Dingna City. After Beijing took control of Siam, the aristocratic party members who originally followed Naresuan had their homes confiscated and all their property was confiscated by Jinghua. Therefore, Jinghua alone was There is a large amount of fertile land - in fact, through the same method, Jinghua controls a large amount of fertile land in various kingdoms in southern Xinjiang.

Dingnan City itself is located in the Chao Phraya Plain. To the west is the Irrawaddy Plain of the Bago Kingdom, and to the east is the larger Mekong River Plain. The three plains are all super grain-producing areas with excellent endowments - this does not even include Annan. The Red River Plain in the north.

Therefore, there is no problem with the food supply in Dingnancheng. Especially after Jinghua brought advanced farming technology, the food was so abundant that it almost overflowed. And this is one of the reasons why southern Xinjiang's grain output has increased day by day in recent years, to the point where it has even had to export grain to the Ming Dynasty and Japan.

There is no way, no matter how great the impact of the Little Ice Age is on the Ming Dynasty, it will not affect the equator. In fact, the impact of the Little Ice Age was much smaller in the south of the Ming Dynasty than in the north.

With such a huge controllable grain output, Gao Pragmatic is naturally willing to invest. However, he did not expect at the time that ordinary people in Siam had never met such a kind-hearted master. Through this incident, he was actually grateful to Gao Pragmatic - what, the master asked us to do things but he still took care of the food? This is simply the life of Buddha!

As for clothing, Gao Youshi was obviously not as generous as he was in giving out food. In fact, he had originally intended to "uniformly distribute work clothes", but after the Secretariat conducted some research and calculated the accounts and reported to him, he gave up the idea.

First of all, weaving in these days is not as good as that of later generations. Even with the Jinghua version of the spinning jenny, considering that there are too many serfs to do the work, the total cost is still too high; secondly, local reports say that these serfs usually do not work at all. They don’t wear much clothes, because it’s hot enough in Siam, and they only need a pair of underpants when they go to work. If they wear too much, the heat will be unbearable.

As for arranging accommodation, this is even simpler. All you need to do is mark a piece of land and let the serfs cut wood around it and build simple wooden houses. Of course, Jinghua needs to send some carpenters to guide the construction - this may not seem important, but it is actually quite important.

Although there were very few serfs who could build simple wooden houses, professional guidance was needed on how to build a wooden house that was large enough, saved wood, and strong and reliable. With mining and reclamation all over the world, some special methods for building simple wooden houses have already been formed. Based on the principle of using local materials from different regions, there are more than a dozen processing modes, just follow them.

To some extent, this is also the benefit of scale.

However, after Gao Pangshi explained these things, Zhu Yijun still couldn't understand and asked: "Even if you can't mobilize the local people to do corvee service, these measures have saved you a lot of money, why did you still spend so much money in the end?" What? Besides, weren’t we discussing the sale of land in the Western Region?”

"Your Majesty, please be patient. I decided to Ding Nancheng just to explain the land sale." Gao Pragmatic smiled and said, "Your Majesty now knows that I spent 13,640,000 taels of silver to build Ding Nancheng, but Your Majesty Do you know how much money Ding Nancheng has earned for me?"

Zhu Yijun frowned slightly, pondered for a moment, shook his head and said: "I can't guess this. After all, I don't know how many Dingkou and fields there are in Dingnancheng, but how can I guess? You can never decide that Dingnancheng will pay you. Can the tax be higher than that in Suzhou?”

Suzhou, the most heavily taxed prefecture in the Ming Dynasty, was also the prefecture with the highest taxes. Although there are some differences over the years, most years the land tax is between 200 million and 280 million shi of rice. The price of rice in the Ming Dynasty was about 0.7-1 tael per stone in the north and 0.5-1 tael per stone in the south. As an average, it is 0.7 taels per stone.

So, Suzhou's annual tax, converted into silver, is about 200 million taels - again, this is just a prefecture in Suzhou. To put it simply, the tax paid by a government is even higher than that of some poor provinces, because some poor provinces are not only unable to provide taxes, but may even be "losing money" in total. [Note: Those who are interested in the above information should check their own information, so I won’t quote them. ]

"Your Majesty, the taxes in Dingnan City are collected by the King of Siam, so I am not talking about this." Gao Pragmatic listened to the emperor's words, coughed lightly, and said: "What I want to say is: Dingnan City is built in phases, and each time After the completion of the construction period, Chen will sell most of the land in the area that has been built. With the completion of the entire construction period, Chen will also sell most of the land in the city. In the end, the money for selling these sites will not only be evenly distributed. We even made 4,750,000 taels of silver from the construction appropriation.”

Gao Pragmatic made two mistakes here: First, the taxes in Dingnancheng are indeed collected by the King of Siam in name, but in fact the King of Siam has no real power at all. The taxes in Dingnancheng are "collected by the Jinghua Group on behalf of Secondly, the money Gao pragmatic sells for land is not entirely silver, or even “money”. As mentioned earlier, many Siamese nobles showed their status by buying land in Dingnan City, so the land prices were extremely high. However, these nobles did not necessarily have so much "currency" to provide, so many people pawned part of their homes. The territory is given to Jinghua. They are not very willing to pawn fertile land, but they don't care about mountains and so on. Therefore, a lot of the land that is pawned is mines, ports and even lakes that Jinghua likes.

In fact, because these non-field lands were not valued, the prices offered by Jinghua were ridiculously low. The "4,750,000 taels" of pawn land that Gao Jingshi mentioned here, even according to the market price of Daming (which is actually not high), would probably be five times higher, not to mention the income that could be brought in once the development is completed.

At this moment, Zhu Yijun's eyes widened and he couldn't believe it at all. He stammered: "Damn, just by selling land in the city, you, you actually made a small five million taels?"

The high official nodded and confirmed again: "Yes, Your Majesty, I made a total of 4,750,000 taels."

"How is it possible?" Zhu Yijun continued to stare wide-eyed and asked loudly: "Such a new city with nothing in it, how can you get so much money just by selling land? I don't think there is that much money in Siam, right?"

Gao Pragmatic explained the situation of the Siamese nobles pawning their ancestral properties in exchange for land, and then sighed: "Your Majesty, after all, you are a noble person. It seems that it is still difficult to view the value of these lands from an ordinary person's perspective. That said Well, if the emperor wants to build a new capital now, and you promise that I can give priority to buying land around your palace, then even if the land is expensive, I will not even blink an eye at the price - the later dignitaries will definitely be willing. Spend more money to buy these lands from me."

Zhu Yijun already understood something, but he still asked smoothly: "Why is this?"

"Because they need to show the dignity of their status and their status in the court and even in front of the emperor." Gao pragmatically said: "This is priceless to them."

"Oh..." Zhu Yijun suddenly realized, then he pondered, and after a while he frowned and said: "But it seems that these lands should be given to them by me. Otherwise, how can we make them appreciate the holy grace?"

"I'm just giving an example." Gao Pragmatic curled his lips and said: "According to this hypothetical situation, the emperor naturally needs to consider the 'Holy Grace', but the situation I face is completely different. Although I built Dingnan City, it is not Siam. King Luo, I don’t need to think about showing favors to Siamese noble officials – I only need to earn back the money I spent.”

Zhu Yijun was quite satisfied with this answer and laughed: "Before, there were always people saying that you are the 'King of Kings' in the countries in southern Xinjiang. I see what you are doing... That's it. That's all. If you don't lose money, you still have to make money. , which is also a good thing." When he said this, he couldn't help but shook his head, and it seemed that he completely denied the statement "someone always said."

Gao pragmatic just laughed with him. After Zhu Yijun laughed for a while, he suddenly stopped smiling and asked: "So what you mean is that in the future, we will build a new city in the Ili Valley, and then sell the land back to Ben, even make a fortune?”

Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Of course." After a pause, he added: "But selling land in Yili City is still different from Dingnan. After all, there is no emperor's palace there... We have to find another way to raise the price." Land price.”

Zhu Yijun looked a little nervous and asked: "How to raise it?"

Gao Pingshi smiled and said: "We must first determine the target group and cater to their needs."

"What do you say?" Zhu Yijun immediately asked.

Gao pragmatically said: "Your Majesty, who do you think will be able to spend a lot of money to buy land in the city and build mansions in the Western Regions at that time?"

"Is this..." Zhu Yijun was speechless. It seems that although Emperor Wanli loves money, he still lacks some talent in how to make money. Ah, this is easy to understand, otherwise in the original history, he would not have only thought of sending eunuchs to collect mining taxes in various places, which resulted in anger and resentment in various places.

Gao Pingshi smiled and said: "It's actually simple. In the early days, there were only two types of people with such financial strength - one was the local powerful and wealthy, and the other was the high-ranking guards sent by the imperial court."

Zhu Yijun was stunned for a moment and said in surprise: "I can understand the first one, but how is the second possible? The high officials sent by the imperial court in the past were all floating officials, and they could only serve for a few years, and they also had their own yamen to live in. , why spend huge sums of money to buy land and build a house?”

"No, no, no, I'm not talking about this kind of guard officials." Gao Pragmatic shook his head, and then said: "I'm talking about the guard officials who moved westward from the Tumut and Ordos tribes - Your Majesty. Forgot, they are also appointed by the imperial court."

"Ah...yes, yes!" Zhu Yijun suddenly realized and slapped his thigh: "These guys have sold cattle, sheep and horses for more than 20 years, and also sold many mines and salt lakes to you. They have already made a lot of money. , I have to kill them hard this time!”

Gao Pragmatic smiled and said nothing, thinking: This is the money they earned from "free trade". It's really a bit too much for you, a dignified emperor, to care about their legitimate income.
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