In the Qingfeng Tavern, a famous tavern in Warsaw, Shu Kingdom, Ji Qingyuan, a teacher from the National University, was standing in front of the microphone and giving a speech.
"Compatriots, during this period of time, I came into contact with a new theory.
Mi Youde, a scholar from Chu State, believes that European countries are now in a state of false prosperity.
He predicted that the false prosperity would be exposed and Europe would surely enter turmoil.
If I could walk in front of a Milton scholar, I would loudly tell him that this is not a prediction, but a fact that is happening.
Our country of Shu is at the stage where its false prosperity has been exposed.
Why did our prosperity collapse so early?
Because our Shu Kingdom is only an agricultural country, and its industrial scale is not as large as that of a county in the empire.
However, the imperial court wanted to go all out with force and expand the army.
Weapons and ammunition cannot be produced by oneself, and a large amount of weapons and ammunition must be purchased from the empire.
The money spent on this last year was as high as two million taels of silver coins.
With such an aggressive military campaign, Shu's fragile economy, which looked prosperous, was like the moon in a mirror and could not be sustained at all.
What can we do now?
The only thing that can be done is to fight against the war.
With the protection of the empire, as long as we do not want to join the war, we will not be threatened by the war and can develop ourselves stably.
The imperial court's militarism has put all of us in danger.
Shu is an agricultural country with low war potential, but it competes with industrial countries.
This is like hitting an egg against a stone. We are shattered to pieces, but no one else is harmed.
When everyone came to Shu, they just wanted to have a farm, marry several wives, and fill their house with children and grandchildren.
Once war comes, as an agricultural country, we will pay extremely heavy casualties.
When the time comes that we die in battle, our property, wives and children will all be at the expense of those Westerners.
Think about it, everyone, the Xiyi people who work as farmers on the farms, they sleep with your wives and beat your children."
Ji Qingyuan's words were extremely inflammatory, especially his last sentence, which directly caused many people to break their guard.
Just as Ji Qingyuan said, due to various reasons, Shu's industry has never developed.
Factory owners, a major group in other countries, are very rare in Shu.
The current backbone of the Shu Kingdom are farmers who own at least 500 acres of land.
They are the ones who control the wealth of Shu.
Ji Qingyuan knew that these people were a different kind of gentry. After they gained wealth, they wanted to make their voices heard.
Ji Qingyuan also knows that he must have the support of his basic base in order to achieve his goals.
He hit it off with the farmer, which led to this tavern meeting.
Ji Qingyuan did this to unify his thoughts and unite more farmers to achieve his goal.
As soon as he finished speaking, many farmers immediately raised their hands and asked questions.
Ji Qingyuan randomly named a few people and asked them to come to the stage for consultation one by one.
These people are not trustees, but truly randomly selected people.
Only by doing this can we mobilize more support from farmers.
Ji Qingyuan was eloquent and could defend his theory without any preparation.
What's more, he has already prepared answers to all kinds of tricky questions in this tavern meeting.
Relying only on the knowledge of these farmers, the questions he asked were not difficult for him at all.
Instead, he will ask the questions he wants to answer because of his speaking skills.
The first question came from a fat man wearing a military uniform.
"Mr. Ji, you said that Shu has passed its stage of prosperity.
Why didn't I feel why the Shu Kingdom was so prosperous and the shelf life was so short?
It went by in a flash, and it doesn’t have as long a shelf life as wheat, which is really strange.”
Ji Qingyuan has already prepared for this issue, and the information is very complete.
As long as you look at things from different angles, the same information can give completely different explanations.
Ji Qingyuan replied with a serious expression: "This gentleman's question is very typical, I think everyone also has this question.
At what time did Shu become prosperous, and why didn’t we feel the prosperous scene?
This question is easy to answer. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Shu Kingdom has been in a stage of rapid development and entered a prosperous period.
When I told this answer, no one could believe it.
How is this possible?
This is what things are like. Everyone should remember that our country of Shu is an agricultural country.
The economic crisis in the empire and other countries was caused by overproduction in industrial countries.
As an agricultural country, our country, Shu, has always been in a state of scarcity of industrial products, so how could it possibly become too prosperous?
It is precisely for this reason that the Shu Kingdom has not experienced an economic crisis. Instead, due to the economic crisis in various countries, the price of industrial products has dropped.
Our Shu Kingdom will have less money to buy industrial products, but it will become more prosperous.
Mi Youde, a scholar from the Chu State, observed that his experience in society was based on the judgment of an industrial country.
He simply does not have enough experience in the development of an agricultural country.
This is also the reason why he made a misjudgment about Shu.
From this perspective, the environment in our country of Shu is still very good.
Just because the imperial court recently wanted to realize its ambition of royal hegemony, it began to become militaristic.
This caused the originally prosperous period to suddenly take a turn for the worse and the market became depressed.
As long as the Shu Kingdom disarms, it will become a permanent neutral country protected by the sovereign state.
Without the millions of taels of military expenditure every year, we can all live a good life.
Because there is no war, everyone does not have to worry about losing lives and property.
You don’t have to worry about your home being in ruins and your wife and children being displaced.”
Ji Qingyuan's words are still very inflammatory.
Some farmers immediately shouted: "Permanent neutrality, abolish the army."
When Ji Qingyuan saw the lively scene, the corners of his mouth raised slightly.
As a scholar who was deeply influenced by traditional Confucian thought, he did not want to see rivers of blood in Europe and the Han people killing each other.
He considered various methods, and the best method was to put down their weapons.
As long as there is no threat of war, the world will surely become prosperous.
His ideas have been labeled as heresy, but he has recently received funding from knowledgeable people.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! He knows that these people’s funding purposes are not pure.
But in order to realize his ideals, he accepted all this funding.
Ji Qingyuan saw the excited expressions of these farmers, and they all resonated with this matter.
A dark-faced young man was given the opportunity to ask questions, and he asked in a serious tone: "Mr. Ji, the Kingdom of Shu has always been the Kingdom of Shu.
I know that economic prosperity requires extremely high investments.
When the Shu Kingdom was founded, in order to suppress the resistance of the Western barbarians and the empire's European war, the French dug up the main river embankments in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This resulted in major floods in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which affected many places.
This amount of disaster relief funds is higher than the current military expenditure, so how come there are no problems in the court?"
When Ji Qingyuan heard this question, he knew that this farmer was definitely not an ordinary farmer.
But this problem still didn't trouble him.
Ji Qingyuan stood in front of the microphone and replied confidently: "I borrow the words of Chu scholar Mi Youde.
He said that all European countries are now experiencing false prosperity.
I said that the Chu State has been in false prosperity from the time of its founding to the present.
It is very simple to draw this conclusion, because the funds for the development of Chu State did not come from itself, but from the empire.
Everyone knows that if you want economic prosperity, you must invest in advance.
Whether it is building factories or promoting the development of industry and commerce.
Or build water conservancy projects to promote agricultural development.
All this requires a huge amount of money, at least tens of millions of taels of silver coins.
Without investment, we still want economic prosperity.
This kind of thing can be dreamed about during the day, but it will never happen in reality.
Where did the money come from from the imperial court, except the money from the major families to support the King of Shu.
I also took out a loan from the Imperial Bank of Commerce, and I didn’t even have a small amount of money with me.
A loan just announced last year amounted to 20 million taels of silver coins.
The total interest on the ten-year loan was as high as eight million taels of silver coins.
Why did the empire's banks lend money to the imperial court? They were not afraid that the imperial court would default on the loan if it did not pay back the money.
Because the imperial court used minerals and taxes as collateral.
From this situation, it can be seen that the imperial court's self-hematopoietic ability is very poor.
Our previous economic prosperity relied entirely on loans from the empire.
To put it simply, the prosperity of Shu is based on the debt of all the people.
When each of us is born, we owe the empire a debt of several hundred taels of silver.
This is a huge amount of expenditure, a small part of it is actually implemented, and most of it is divided up by the powerful.
Those powerful people supported King Shu in establishing the country. Why did they do it?
Of course it's for the benefit of their own family, you can't say they're doing it for the likes of us.
It is precisely because they are greedy and not only want to gain the interests of Shu, but also want to seize the interests of other countries, that they will desperately support the army.
The army is the pawn of these powerful families.
As long as we can get the court to abolish the army, these powerful people will become tigers without claws, and we can easily deal with them.
We must not allow them to continue to deprive us of our benefits."
Ji Qingyuan knew that each of these farmers had their own ideas and interests.
He should try his best to find the greatest common denominator and unite the power of most people.
Ji Qingyuan was giving a high-spirited speech on the stage. The farmers in the audience were extremely excited and kept waving their arms as Ji Qingyuan spoke.
Only a crisp gunshot was heard, followed by the sound of the pub door being kicked open.
A roar spread from the loudspeaker throughout the noisy tavern.
"The Criminal Department is looking for important criminals, so everyone squats down with their heads in their hands."
After saying this, the gun-wielding patrol officer from the Criminal Department immediately rushed towards Ji Qingyuan on the high platform.
When the farmers in the audience saw this scene, they all opened their mouths.
They saw the gleaming muzzle of the gun in the patrolman's hand, pointing directly at them.
These farmers acted very conscientiously. They immediately squatted down and held their heads, not daring to make any resistance.
They are both extremely wealthy and relatively soft-spoken.
I have some courage to support certain people in doing things, but I don't have the courage to do things myself.
A truly brave person would not say that he would gather people and go to Africa or other places, or an island, to carve out his own country.
They have already joined the army and are ready to make great achievements.
When Ji Qingyuan saw this scene, he was not surprised at all.
He knew that when such a scene occurred, it meant that he had made a mistake in judging the situation.
His previous idea was that King Qian Mingyi of Shu would make the Qian family the royal family of Shu forever for the sake of the inheritance of Shu.
Qian Mingyi, the king of Shu who was a civil servant, believed that with the abolition of the army, Shu would be permanently neutral and the resistance would not be so fierce.
Now, regardless of the impact, the Ministry of Punishment directly sent people to arrest him.
The dignitaries of Shu cannot do such a thing.
If they could really do it, Ji Qingyuan wouldn't be able to get to where he is now.
In this case, King Qian Mingyi of Shu must have taken action.
King Qian Mingyi of Shu made his attitude clear, and there was no room for maneuver in the matter.
Ji Qingyuan saw through what happened, but he did not show any signs of decadence.
Things don't come to the last moment, accidents may happen at any time.
Ji Qingyuan saw the people who came to arrest him.
He raised his head and said loftily: "The people in the audience are all innocent people. I will go with you."
After Ji Qingyuan said this, he said the last words to the crowd crouching on the ground.
"Compatriots, you must never give up the struggle.
Others will not give up their rights. Only by continuing to fight can they gain more rights."
Officials from the Ministry of Punishment saw that Ji Qingyuan was still so presumptuous.
He urged with displeasure on his face: "Take him away immediately, and we must not let him continue to confuse the public with his monstrous words."
The officials from the Ministry of Punishments only urged him, and he did not torture Ji Qingyuan.
This case has attracted the attention of the whole country of Shu. The Ministry of Punishment must handle the case meticulously and there must be no problems.
…
King Qian Mingyi of Shu was discussing the current situation in Europe with his ministers.
He heard the eunuch come in and report that Ji Qingyuan had been caught.
He said happily: "Okay, this is simply great.
We must not allow this guy to continue to deceive the public with his lies and dampen the enthusiasm of the people to join the army."
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! The Prime Minister of Shu, Li Li, poured wine and the King of Shu, Qian Mingyi, said this.
He immediately asked: "Your Majesty is so happy because Ji Qingyuan, who deceived the public with his evil words, has been brought to justice."
King Shu Qian Mingyi nodded and said: "It's okay, I can't stand Ji Qingyuan anymore.
Although his reputation is high, fame is definitely not a talisman.
He used to just promote some ideas of equality.
I can still tolerate this kind of thinking.
Ji Qingyuan is now promoting the abolition of the military.
Without military protection in Shu, not only will the fate of our monarchs and ministers be unpredictable, but the lives of the people who are now living happily will also become difficult and even face the risk of war.
Even if the empire may take revenge on us afterwards.
But by that time, we are no longer here, so what's the use of revenge.
I will never put the safety of Shu into the hands of anyone, not even the empire.
The fate of Shu must be in its own hands."
Prime Minister Li Jiu agreed: "Your Majesty is right.
We Shu people must control our own destiny.
Ji Qingyuan is just a rotten scholar who talks too much.
Such people have never been able to achieve anything since ancient times."
King Shu Qian Mingyi waved his hand and ordered: "There is no need to continue discussing this matter, its impact is not that big yet.
The most important thing to discuss now is the situation in Europe.
The intelligence we can see now all points to a result.
All the major vassal states in Europe are preparing for war, and the war is about to break out. All that is left is the trigger."
King Qian Mingyi of Shu was more concerned about the next development of the situation in Europe.
The monarchs and ministers of Shu have discussed it more than once, but still cannot reach consensus on some issues.
