I'm sure of the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong!

Chapter 673 Population and Japan

"Your Majesty, this is this year's national household registration yellow roll statistics."

"Send it over!"

Zhu Yijiong flipped through the household registration memorial submitted by the Ministry of Household Affairs.

There is no longer a population census every five years, but a national census every ten years.

The memorial book is very thick and only records key data, as well as some account books and directories.

If you want to see specific details, you can directly follow the catalog to view the detailed brochure from the Household Department.

After coordination by the Ministry of Household Affairs, the total registered population in all provinces across the country is 167.83 million. This census does not include the newly occupied areas of Mobei and Beihai, nor does it include the grasslands, Heilongjiang, and Tibetan snow areas.

But even so, this is very surprising. After all, the national population of the Manchus calculated by the Qing Dynasty twenty years ago was less than 50 million (there must be a Tibetan massacre population), but now it has more than tripled.

Among them, the population of the northern provinces has almost recovered. Although the North Zhili region has not recovered to the level of its heyday, it has a population of 100,000 registered residents in the city, plus residents of surrounding villages and towns that rely on Beijing.

The Han population in Liaoning and Lelang provinces has gradually increased to over three million in recent years, basically returning to the level of Liaodong during the pre-Ming Dynasty.

Next, there is no need to continue to the north and spend money on official immigration. Let the northern provinces slowly reproduce and restore their population.

The Han population of the two overseas governor-general offices, Luzon and Yecheng, also took advantage of this census and counted them. Because many naturalized people who can speak Chinese are included, as well as mixed-race Han people, the total number of Han people in the two governor's mansions has exceeded one million.

Moreover, the population continues to grow, with a large number of new mixed-race children being born every year, or the indigenous people who have learned Chinese request to be registered as households and all residents can be included in the population.

After all, in the area under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Mansion, Han people are so popular that even mixed-race Han people have the same rights. Even naturalized people who can speak Chinese can get preferential treatment, and they are at least "second-class" people. Waiting for citizens”.

The "second-class citizens" of the Chinese dynasty are no better than the people at the bottom of small countries.

The Governor's Office of Bengal is newly built, so it is ignored for the time being.

After reading the household registration books, Zhu Qiajiong thought for a while and wrote a reply: "We should encourage Heilongjiang, the snowy areas of Tibet, Qinghai, grasslands, and the areas under the jurisdiction of overseas governor-general governments to educate and educate the indigenous people and surrender to the people of the Celestial Empire. "

To rapidly expand and digest these overseas and border territories, we must not only display force appropriately, but also reflect the inclusiveness of the Celestial Kingdom.

Even Yan Boyong, the governor of Coconut City who killed countless people in Nanyang before, first violently expanded and then "civilized" the Nanyang natives by force, making them voluntarily become common people of Ming China.

As long as you can speak Chinese, learn Chinese characters, wear Hanfu, and abandon your original name and culture, then you are a Ming Dynasty person!

The emperor's decree refers to Dazhang's education, but it naturally has different meanings in different places.

Anyway, the first reaction of Governor Zhang Xicheng of Coconut City when he received the Taiwanese message was to wave the butcher knife at the Nanyang natives.

But then I thought again and felt that it was too fast. I had just taken office, so I had better educate and govern the people for a year. If the barbarians did not listen to the education, it would not be too late to use the butcher knife.

Well, Mr. Clear Soup!
Speaking of population, another crucial point is that the Yellow River problem, which has been a headache for all dynasties, was solved in the Ming Dynasty and the New Dynasty.

Although not even half of the river control project has been completed so far, and even if it is completed, money will still be spent on maintenance every year, but the results are obvious.

Just say it! Today, the Yellow River has not burst and overflowed for five years.

The people of the two Huaihe Rivers experienced this most deeply. In order to control the Yellow River, the imperial court forcibly relocated the people of several local cities from the beginning, and returned a large number of fields to the lake. This caused a lot of dissatisfaction with the government in the two Huaihe areas.

It was just dissatisfaction, because the government did keep its promise and compensated him, even quite a lot.

In Henan, we directly returned twice the amount of land, and it was all good land. There was a tax exemption policy for the first two years, and cattle were rented for free to the immigrants for farming. With such a multi-pronged approach, although the people of Lianghuai were dissatisfied, they did not dare to say anything more.

Until now, with the imperial court surrounding several sections of the Yellow River, building dams and dredging river channels and ditches, the entire Lianghuai River has not been flooded by the Yellow River for many years.

There were only one or two small-scale floods, and most of them were blocked by newly built dams. The disaster was far less severe than the flooding caused by the Yellow River breach in the past.

Without the flood problem, the population in the Huaihe and Huaihe areas has increased visibly. Even Kunshan County, which was once nicknamed "Beggar Kunshan" (whenever there is a flood, the place will be flooded, and the whole county will become beggars and go to other counties to beg for food). In recent years, industry and commerce have also begun to develop.

The money invested in regulating the Yellow River every year has finally seen some results, and all the civil and military officials in the dynasty praised the emperor for his sage.

And they are generally sincere, because floods in the Yellow River have been a major national event in all dynasties. Treating the Yellow River will not only be famous in history, but also benefit the country and the people. Even if we consider it purely from a personal perspective, many of these officials have their hometowns in areas threatened by Yellow River floods.

The Yellow River has visibly stabilized. Even if they secretly cursed the emperor as a tyrant, they still had to praise him by saying "living in the present time is beneficial to the future."

On the other hand, it was Sun Jiagan, the first river governor of the Ming Dynasty. This guy traveled to the Yellow River waterways every day. Due to overwork and illness, his health has become worse and worse in recent years. The imperial doctor sent by the emperor to treat him may not return for a few years. .

Zhu Yijiong planned to wait for the completion of the second phase of the project, and then formally order him to return to Beijing, promote him to the cabinet, and increase his official rank (title), which would be worthy of his ten years of running around the river.

But it was said that the Ming Dynasty had another year of peace and prosperity in China, but across the sea in Japan, a ronin uprising was brewing in the Satsuma domain.

The former Satsuma clan was beaten up by the Ming army because of the Ryukyu Islands. Not only did they pay compensation and cede territory, they also completely lost the Ryukyu Islands as a cash cow.

In order to repay the huge war reparations and foreign debts borne by his ancestors, Governor Shimazu had no choice but to unilaterally increase the volume of smuggling trade with China through Ryukyu.

It was precisely because the Shimadzu family's actions were too big that other coastal daimyo fell into disgrace.

Governor Shimazu's actions were not without cost. Although he was able to make huge profits from the smuggling trade due to his proximity to the water, and finally paid off the war compensation five years ago, at the same time, the information in books on China's side was also exposed. A large amount of it flowed into the Satsuma domain.

The prodigal common people may not understand China's concept of sharing land among the people, but the Chinese emperor allocates fields to the people, exempts them from corvee service, frees slaves, and abolishes the status of untouchables... All people are common people living under the emperor's rule on an equal basis. .

Anyway, when the book was translated into Japanese, it had this general meaning, and then those ronin got excited.

Why can the Chinese emperor be so kind to the common people and ronin, but the Shimadzu family treats them like pigs and dogs?

This is not a distance that creates beauty, nor is it a gap caused by contrast.

From the Edo period to the Overthrow Movement, there were more than 1400 riots by ronin and peasants in various feudal territories in Japan in the past two hundred years. On average, there will be at least seven Japanese people or ronin rebels every year.

Moreover, the density of rebellions tended to become denser and more organized toward the late Edo period.

The reason for this is just four words: extortionate taxation and excessive extortion, not just ordinary extortionate expropriation and extortion.

In summary, the Japanese people in the Edo period were a mixture of tenant farmers and serfs.

All the land belonged to the feudal lord, and the common people could only farm it on a tenant basis, but they could inherit the farming rights to their descendants, forming permanent tenant fields.

Then, here comes the interesting thing. For the land that the common people farmed, they not only had to pay rent to the daimyo, but also paid land tax to the daimyo.

Even in ancient China, this was a pretty explosive model, and this was just the tax you had to pay. In addition, there were various other exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, such as fishing, cutting grass, chopping wood... you had to pay taxes on everything.

After paying the tax, you still have to perform corvee service. It is the real kind of corvee, not the civil affairs infrastructure in ancient China (most of the corvee service is actually civil affairs infrastructure), and the feudal lord does not distribute a grain of grain at all.

Even according to the laws of Qin in ancient China, strong men who built the Great Wall had to be given two kilograms of grain a day, and women one and a half kilograms, otherwise the common people would have run away.

(End of this chapter)