Using a forging press to make silver and copper coins was naturally the best way to reform the currency system.
But there is an obvious question. I have neither eggs nor rice. How do I cook egg fried rice?
There is indeed a Tongshan County in Sichuan that produces copper, and it is true that some areas produce silver. But the small amount of silver and copper production disappears as soon as it is issued. The more exquisite the coins are, the faster they disappear, and they are all hidden in cellars by wealthy households.
went.
In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, iron coins were circulated throughout the country, and copper coins were gradually issued.
Sichuan just can't change this, because the copper coins produced by the Money Making Supervision are all issued close to the copper-producing areas, and the cost of transporting them all across regions is too high.
As a result, no matter how many copper coins were issued by the coin minting agencies in Sichuan and surrounding areas, because the quantity was too small compared to the market, once they were issued, they would disappear without even a drop of water. Once those copper coins went into the pockets of big households, there was no chance of taking them back.
Come out and use it.
Even high-quality iron coins are kept at home by wealthy households and they exclusively use the rotten iron coins.
This is the literal meaning of bad money driving out good money.
In the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, due to the shortage of money, the area where iron money was used continued to expand.
At first, iron money was distributed to the Western Army, and the imperial court used iron money to purchase military supplies in Shaanxi, and then gradually expanded to the Nanxiang Basin. By the Southern Song Dynasty, Lianghuai also began to use iron money.
Since Cai Jing is targeting iron money, he will naturally not let go of paper money.
Jiaozi was completely abolished in the hands of Cai Jing, and Qianyin was used instead. This is also a kind of paper currency, and it is issued nationwide, except for Gyeonggi, Zhejiang, Jinghu, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian. Even Jiangdong and Jiangxi are also banknote areas.
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Then it exploded and there was not much reserve fund.
The copper-producing areas of the Southern Song Dynasty were occupied by the Jin Kingdom, and Zhao Gou could only use iron money and paper money to support the finances. Not only did iron money circulate in the Huaihe River, but paper money was issued nationwide. The paper money in the Southern Song Dynasty was called Huizi. It was used until the fall of the Song Dynasty.
, and then picked up and inherited by the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.
In ancient China, the effective use time of banknotes was at least three hundred years!
"It is not necessary to use Sichuan brocade, silk is more common and is also a hard currency," Zhu Ming suggested. "Salt can also be used as an endorsement, and Sichuan salt is an important economic guarantee."
Zhu Guoxiang said: "There is also gold. Yangzhou, Jinzhou produces gold, and Fangzhou also produces gold. Using gold, grain, silk cloth, and Sichuan salt as reserves is enough to ensure the credibility of banknotes. There is also the issue of anti-counterfeiting, which must be adopted
Special paper, special patterns, and special inks are used for printing. It is best to invent overlay color printing technology."
Fangzhou's gold output ranks high in the country, far greater than Yangzhou and Jinzhou.
"Jinghu and Jiangxi must be captured as soon as possible, as they are important copper and silver producing areas," Ju Ming said. "By occupying these two places, copper and silver coins can be forged and circulated in parallel with banknotes. It would be better if we can capture Yunnan, Yunnan
There are enough copper mines.”
Zhu Guoxiang shook his head: "It's difficult."
At this time, the entire Guizhou was in the hands of barbarians, and there were also a large number of barbarians in southern Sichuan. Yunnan was almost surrounded by barbarians.
The degree of Chineseization in Dali is extremely high, but it is only in the major cities, and barbarians are everywhere in the country.
It may be easy to conquer, but it is extremely difficult to govern and the administrative costs are too high. The only way to overcome this problem is to use the chieftain system. While conferring chieftains, the army and people were moved to colonize, allowing the Han people to occupy key areas and radiate influence to the surrounding barbarians.
Immigration and settlement was very difficult in the early Song Dynasty, mainly due to high mortality caused by miasma.
Now gradually gaining experience, officials already know how to prevent miasma, and many decoctions have been explored and summarized by doctors.
But even if we want to immigrate for land reclamation, priority will be given to Hunan and Hubei, which are vast and sparsely populated. If there are people, money and food to immigrate, of course the core areas must be developed first, and places such as southern Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan will have to come later.
The father and son began to discuss this, and Zhu Guoxiang said: "First of all, we should gradually sinicize in southern Sichuan, especially in the salt-producing areas. Even Yibin and Luzhou are full of barbarians, so what about Guizhou and Yunnan? I plan to open schools in these places and let the barbarian leaders send them
When children come to study, they serve as hostages and can also spread Chinese culture. All barbarian leaders and familiar barbarians must change their surnames to Chinese and take Chinese names. Especially the familiar barbarians who are close to each other must all be registered as households to integrate the people."
Ju Ming said: "It may provoke rebellion. There are only three armies in southern Sichuan. I don't know if the army is enough."
Zhu Guoxiang said: "Suppress the rebellion if it arouses it. There are troops in eastern Sichuan that can be transferred at any time. In Lizhou you governed, the five tribes were the first to establish households. They are all familiar with the Qiang people. Not only can they speak Chinese, but they have already
After abolishing the hereditary system of chiefs, many of the Five Barbarians are still serving as soldiers. As long as certain tax exemptions are given, it will be relatively easy to organize households and people. Let all the Five Barbarian soldiers of Tengxiang Army write letters home."
When Ju Ming was in Lizhou, he had already organized the five tribes of barbarians into households and unified the people.
But that’s just a show of hiding a large amount of land from a large population.
This time, it is serious. Population and land must not be concealed. But after all, these tribes are the first to take refuge, so they cannot go too far. Taxes must be reduced accordingly, and some autonomy must be left for them.
Zhu Guoxiang said: "This year I plan to establish an agricultural promotion department and train specialized agricultural officials. Priority will be given to promoting corn and sweet potatoes in mountainous areas. Most of the barbarians are in mountainous areas. Once the core areas are promoted, agricultural officers will be sent to barbarian settlements to treat them.
Barbarians cannot be stubborn, especially mature barbarians. They were severely oppressed by Song Dynasty officials. If you give them benefits and let them have enough to eat, some barbarians will definitely be grateful. With this kind of kindness, you can win over differences and crack down on stubbornness.
molecular."
Ju Ming's thinking was extremely fast. He was talking about barbarians just now when he suddenly thought of something else: "Get me some horses, good horses from the northwest."
Zhu Guoxiang said with a smile: "I have to make friends with Yao Gu, and I also have to make friends with the newly appointed tea master of Tijidu."
He cooperated with the tea and horse department of the imperial court, exchanged Sichuan tea for northwest war horses, and smuggled them all the way over.
The tea and horse divisions are very rich. In recent years, the tea and horse divisions have been promoted to big tea and horse divisions, all of which are served by the prime minister's confidants. In order to make money, they are most likely willing to cooperate. When the time comes to buy horses from each other, they will definitely sell the good horses to Sichuan, and then
The inferior horses were handed over to the Song army.
This kind of operation is too normal. Like those warlords in the Ming Dynasty, they secretly sold off the strong official horses, claimed to the outside world that they had been nourished to death, and kept begging the court to allocate funds to buy horses. Then they cooperated with Mongolia and Houjin to sell the inferior horses first.
Mongolia, after gold, and then use the court's silver to buy bad horses and get kickbacks.
Anyway, each one was more playful than the other, and in the end they were too lazy to do complicated operations, so they cut out all kinds of intermediate links and just asked for money to buy horses.
Ju Ming said: "The Nanxiang Basin is vast and sparsely populated, and many places are barren and grassy. In addition to allocating the land to soldiers and refugees, I also plan to temporarily set aside some land for pasture. Tengxiang's army will be transferred there, and there will be large tracts of pasture for it.
They are having fun. But this is just light cavalry. I also want to build some heavy cavalry, so I need a large number of northwest war horses. Establishing elite cavalry does not happen overnight, and it must be put on the agenda now. What is the best pasture?"
Zhu Guoxiang said: "Alfalfa is found all over the country, and it was originally introduced as pasture."
"Then arrange some refugees to be horse farmers and let them grow alfalfa in large quantities," Zhu Ming asked again, "How is the ordnance factory doing?"
Zhu Guoxiang said: "The Ordnance Department is about to be formally established, and Qian Chen would be a good person. Let him be in charge of the Ordnance Department. You can rest assured, and I can rest assured. I plan to set up seven ordnance stations in each state and county and issue private mining and smelting licenses.
Provide them with advanced smelting technology. Half of the pig iron and wrought iron smelted by private parties must be sold to the government. The government only needs to purchase raw wrought iron and let the Ordnance Institute make armor. This can not only improve efficiency, but also
Reduce financial expenses. Moreover, when issuing smelting licenses, we can also reward and control wealthy local households so that they can cooperate in the census of population and land."
The Northern Song Dynasty also wanted to run a state-owned salt and iron operation, but facts proved that the efficiency was extremely poor and corruption was rampant.
After every rectification, it would break again within ten years at most.
In the end, it could only be changed to a salt and iron franchise, and business licenses were issued to businessmen. The court only controlled the key processes, and the output of salt and iron could be greatly increased immediately.
Even Song Huizong's imperial tea garden is now in a mess, purchasing large quantities of private tea as imperial tea as tribute.
Because the quality of the tea from the Royal Tea Garden is far inferior to that of the private tea.
Even though many new tea products were actually developed by Imperial Tea Gardens, after two or three years of new product development, private tea gardens can complete learning, imitation and overtaking.
The father and son chatted for several hours, and the last part of their conversation was about sharing the same family.
Zhu Guoxiang already had a plan. After completing the land inventory, he would immediately implement allotment of land into acres.
This is a disguised increase in land tax, but it can reduce apportionment, which has both advantages and disadvantages for the landowners.
If the government could ensure that apportionment would not be random, the landlords would be extremely willing and supportive, but it is a pity that the ancient dynasties could not do this. The final result was that the apportionment would gradually recover while the landowners had to pay two shares. This would
This is the fundamental reason why landowners oppose the diversion of land into acres.
The father and son exchanged various military and political measures for several days.
After confirming each other, we can each do our own thing while still having some cooperation.
Now, the armor manufacturing factory on the site has temporarily stopped making ordnance and is frantically making farm tools.
There are also a large number of cattle, each county provides ten to fifty cattle depending on the level of wealth, and all of them must be transported to the Nanxiang Basin along with farm tools. Some cattle and farm tools have already arrived, and a large number of refugees are waiting for spring plowing.
All the prisoners who were originally from Jingnan Road have been released back to their hometowns.
The local refugees were also resettled. Every day, farmers from the North Beijing Road fled in groups from the imperial territory to the Zhuchi territory.
In particular, the landlords on Jingnan Road are extremely loyal to the Red Thief.
Just because Zhu Guoxiang ordered that there be no more things like Xicheng Institute, many landlords' taxes were halved.
Landowners who received benefits sent their children to Hanzhong one after another to express their loyalty and to seek official positions.