Travel through the Qing Dynasty and become emperor

Chapter 99 Currency Reform
In mid-October, after receiving a huge indemnity from Russia, Britain fulfilled its promise to pay the Qing Dynasty 1000 million pounds.Frankly speaking, after the Sino-British Burma War, the British hated the Chinese deeply.Guan Xuqing holds 1000 million pounds but can't buy anything in the UK, which can't help but give him a great headache, but they will definitely make a considerable difference if they use pounds to buy goods from Germany and the United States.Therefore, the currency reform of the Qing Dynasty is imminent.

However, it is still quite difficult to realize the reform of the currency, because the governors of various places are now earning money from the common people through "fire consumption" and "lijin" to fill their own pockets.Therefore, the reform of the currency has harmed the interests of governors in various places to a certain extent.

"Huo consumption" originated in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. After Zhang Juzheng implemented a whip method, taxation of silver was generally levied. Since the amount of tax paid by the people was not too much, most of the silver was small pieces of broken silver. In the state treasury, the broken silver has to be smelted into large pieces. The state and county officials require the people to make up for the losses that occur in the process of smelting the broken silver. Therefore, in addition to the taxable silver, the taxpayers have to pay more. Part of it is called "fire consumption", which is used to compensate for the loss of smelting broken silver and transportation costs.

According to the loss law of broken silver smelting, the general loss rate is about 1% to 2%, but the state and county officials wantonly overcharged, every two increases to two or three dollars, and the additional tax reaches 20% to 30% of the regular tax, sometimes even higher.In the early Qing Dynasty, the collection of fire consumption was even worse than that of the Ming Dynasty. During the Kangxi period, the collection of fire consumption in all provinces reached 30% of the general provinces.

As for lijin, it is another thing that harms the people.Lijin originated from the fact that Xianfeng raised military pay for suppressing the Taiping Army in Daying Jiangbei.At that time, the Qing court had no spare money to pay military expenses, and the Qing Dynasty had set the iron law of "never adding taxes" as early as the Shunzhi period.

So at that time, the court officials came up with a trick to set up bureaus in various places to persuade them to donate.It is said to be a donation, but it is actually a disguised gift.

There are as many as 230 bureaus nationwide.There are too many bureau cards, and too many people are employed.The errands of the bureau are the best, and the salary of the bureau is not much, and the huge sum of money is mainly obtained through erosion and cutting.If you get a difference of one percent, you can get ten thousand gold or three or five thousand gold every year.In the officialdom, there is a saying that "the lack of prefectures and counties in one year is not as good as that in one year".

In the same area, not only the donation bureau system is complex, but also there are various donations.Take Jiangbei as an example.There are four systems for collecting donations: Jiangbei Liangtai, Jiangnan Liangtai, Caohe Governor, and Yuan Jiasan Military Camp. The distance from Yangzhou to Huai'an is only [-] miles, and there are eight centicards in the middle; Suzhou to Kunshan is only more than [-] miles away. Cash cards everywhere.

Donations include finger donation, loan donation, mu donation, house donation, shop donation, boat donation, salt donation, rice donation, salary donation, card donation, gun boat donation, embankment donation, board per cent donation, and live per cent donation , Grass donation, Ludang donation, landing donation and so on.Even the Jiangnan and Jiangbei military camps, in order to compete for the source of salary, had disputes over crossing the border to set up checkpoints.

The tax is so heavy that it not only hinders the circulation of goods, but also inhibits the development of production.at the same time.Since the likin Chinese merchant tax came entirely from Chinese merchants rather than foreign merchants, this system hindered the circulation of local goods in the market and was conducive to the dumping of foreign foreign goods, thus strengthening the competitiveness of foreign goods against local goods.

After changing the monetary system, if silver is no longer used as the main currency in circulation, then the fire consumption will disappear.It lightened the burden on the common people, but it made the governors of all places lose a tool to grab money.

It was indeed a big blow to these officials. The Qing Dynasty originally gave relatively little salaries to court officials, but there was still a folk saying that "three years to clear the magistrate, one hundred thousand snowflakes and silver", which can be seen in the officials in other places. corruption.If there is no other corresponding policy introduced, if you withdraw and change the currency system rashly, you really don't know what troubles will happen, so Guan Xuqing decided to give civil servants all over the country a salary increase while withdrawing from the monetary policy!Lijin is directly cancelled.

Guan Xuqing used a method that seemed very simple and clear. The Bank of Great Qing withdrew banknotes of ten silver dollars, twenty silver dollars, fifty silver dollars, one hundred silver dollars, five hundred silver dollars, and one thousand silver dollars.

Common people can use silver to exchange banknotes at the Bank of Great Qing in various places, and the conversion ratio is based on one tael of silver for ten silver dollars.The copper plates previously circulated on the market are also no longer usable, and are replaced by newly minted one-yuan coins.

Because the common people had a lot of broken silver when they went to the Bank of Great Qing to exchange banknotes, Guan Xuqing made one-yuan coins according to the ratio of one cent of silver and nine cents of lead.

With the UK's 1000 million pounds as foreign exchange reserves, the currency reform has also been quite successful.With the new currency system, a single currency circulation market can be formed in the country. It is no longer necessary to use cents in one province and half coins in another province as before.A unified currency has a great effect on business development, and can better integrate the domestic market, and the country has the right to issue currency, and it has a stronger ability to regulate the national economy.

The country has introduced banknotes, and the people pay taxes with banknotes, so there is no need to charge more money under the pretext of "fire consumption".After the introduction of this policy, it aroused the sympathy of the people across the country, and there were runs on the Bank of Qing Dynasty in all provinces.Overnight, mountains of silver were piled up in the banks of the provinces, and the banknotes printed were all the rage all over the country.

However, the communication channels at that time were too single, except for the notices at the gate of the yamen, and various newspapers.There is no radio, let alone television, and many rural areas do not know such things as issuing banknotes, and some still use silver.Or some people don't know that one tael of silver can be exchanged for ten silver dollar banknotes, and their fellow villagers exchange ten taels of silver for ten silver dollars.

There were some troubles in some places, but overall, this cargo reform has achieved certain results.The people have also seen that practical things are being done for them, and sometimes the people are easily satisfied.

At that time, as long as we had enough food and warm clothes, there were no other requirements.

But in Guan Xuqing's view, this is far from enough.What he needs may even be the whole world! !

In the political and economic reform of any country, the inherent social ideology is always the most difficult to change, and it is also the root cause of obstructing reform measures.

In short, it is people's will that determines the success or failure of reform.Before the Meiji Restoration, Yoshida Shoin, Nagai Masaku, Takasugi Shinsaku and others had made ideological preparations for the people for more than ten years. Even further, it can be traced back to the "Lan" study that has been circulating for more than 100 years, Tokugawa Although the shogunate was also civilized by adopting the policy of "closing the country", they also exceptionally advocated the Western knowledge brought in by the Dutch. From this understanding of the development of the Western world, it is no wonder that the Meiji Restoration came naturally.

Looking back at the Reform Movement of [-] in Chinese history, it was only the small group of people at the top who really had a sense of reform, and they did not yet have a dominant position, and the people were still ignorant, so it was no wonder that it was like a farce. end.

The same was true for the later Xin Revolution. From Lu Xun's "The True Story of Ah Q" and other literature, it is not difficult to see that this was another revolution of the upper class, so it failed to change China.

In fact, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen and others all knew that social change must be based on ideas. The publication of books such as Yinghuan Zhilue is not inspiring.

But they miscalculated their own difficulties. From some historical materials handed down from later generations, it can be seen that whether it was Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao or Sun Yat-sen, they all had traces of imitating others, and all reform measures were often compared with others. No matter how big it is, maybe it can be awakened with the help of more than ten years of teaching by people of insight, but it may take at least a hundred years for China to turn into spring wind and rain. Education is also the most complete and thorough in the world.

This makes it even more difficult to promote national awakening through cultural thoughts.Many people in later generations found sadly that it is almost impossible to set off an enlightenment movement in China like that before the French Revolution.

There are too many people in China, so it is even more difficult to be united. It is difficult to have one thing that everyone pays attention to. The final conclusion is that if the Chinese people are to consciously awaken, the only way is to rely on war to put them in the face of life and death. situation.If there were no decades of continuous wars such as the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolution, the Eight-Year War of Resistance, and the War of Liberation, the people's consciousness would not have been as high as when New China was founded.

This is the so-called inferiority of this nation.

However, this also reflects one of the advantages of this nation, that is, its identification with the country. This nation whose cultural thought has never been broken for thousands of years has never appeared.The identity of the country is beyond the imagination of any foreigner.

In Western countries, many outstanding talents are employed by other countries, and sometimes even make enemies of their own country, which is forgivable in their eyes.They are even praised for their professionalism, but such things will never happen in China. "Everyone is responsible for the rise and fall of the world" is perhaps the best portrayal of this nation.

The policy adopted by Guan Xuqing is slightly different from the conclusion.After all, the cost of conducting such a subversive war is too high.Guan Xuqing only needs the people to feel the sense of crisis.The real awakening is still accomplished by the education promoted by the state machine.

Change to any other feudal emperor.No one is as keen on the awakening of the people as Guan Xuqing is.They always put the consolidation of their own rule first, and "the superior is wise and the inferior is stupid" is the classic they believe in.

It is precisely because Guan Xuqing's special experience cannot be replicated.Therefore, his reforms cannot be replicated. Even if history repeats itself, without the appearance of such a person, China would not be able to miraculously rise.

(End of this chapter)