In the afternoon of that day, Zhou Yanru summoned several cabinet ministers in Beijing, the Minister of Household Affairs, the Minister of Industry, and the Minister of Industry to the main hall. Ruan Dacheng also brought a secretary to observe the meeting.
"Grand Master, can you tell everyone the general situation now and my attitude?"
"The old minister has already passed on the news."
"That's fine, I'll get straight to the point. Matters involving the resettlement of large numbers of victims in the past have been major national issues. The resettlement of the refugees in Shaanxi was not done well at that time, which resulted in a catastrophic destabilization of the country. Therefore.
This time Shanxi refugees must be properly resettled, and this matter will be the top priority of the imperial court. I believe that there are several main problems to be solved in refugee resettlement. It is necessary to formulate a detailed and operational overall strategy.
The court must take the main responsibility for pushing the matter to the lower levels of the government; secondly, it must plan and handle the resettlement of disaster victims from the perspective of developing and enhancing the strength of the court, and cannot simply regard it as a burden; thirdly, it must deal with the contradiction between natives and guests,
Disaster victims must be relatively concentrated and resettled, and flower arrangement resettlement is unavoidable, but the resettlement cannot be too scattered. It must be ensured that even the entire village must be resettled; fourthly, relatively long-term planning must be carried out, at least for a period of three years, and it cannot be said that it is the first step.
If we only deal with it for a year, it will inevitably lead to catastrophe."
The participants were all overwhelmed when they heard the emperor's demands. Of course they knew that resettling the victims was a major event, but to meet the emperor's demands, the court might not be able to afford it! Five hundred thousand
People at higher and lower levels have to eat, farm, and live. Is this something that can be easily solved?
Looking at the courtiers with bad expressions, Zhu Youjian was a little angry. Isn't it just to resettle 500,000 people? Looking at each of you, can't this matter be solved? "I think the resettlement of refugees can be done in four directions now.
The problems need to be solved. The first is lack of money, the second is lack of food, the third is lack of land, and the fourth is lack of policies and implementation agencies, yes or no?"
"Ordinarily, these are the four directions." Zhou Yanru reluctantly responded to the emperor, "Isn't this nonsense? These are the conditions that are needed for almost everything!"
"Let's talk about money first. According to my estimation, to properly resettle the refugees, we will need at least three million taels of silver dollars in the first year, maybe two million in the second year, and about one million in the third year. Let's talk about the first year first.
How to solve the problem of money? Previously, the Royal Bank borrowed a national debt, and most of it was used to build the railway. However, judging from the railway operation this year, the railway itself can make money. Therefore, I will prepare the money for railway construction alone.
Borrowing no longer accounts for the amount of the national debt. The railway operating rights are used as collateral, and the principal and interest will be repaid within ten years. Moreover, the borrower also has the priority to direct the railway operation, so it should not be difficult to borrow money. In this way, it will be easy to borrow money this year.
It is not a big problem to use two million of the national debt to resettle refugees. How to deal with the remaining one million? Don’t we still have money to repair water conservancy? The victims are also laborers, so give them a project worth about half a million.
It’s not very difficult. Therefore, the gap in the resettlement of disaster victims for the whole year is only about 500,000. My opinion is to start with things first, and then slowly figure out how to deal with the gap.”
"Your Majesty, who will repay the national debt to resettle the victims? I'm afraid the imperial court cannot afford it." Fu Shuxun, the Minister of Household Affairs, felt aggrieved when he heard about borrowing money to provide disaster relief. In short, he felt that the imperial court would be heavily in debt sooner or later according to the emperor's approach.
"We will talk about how to repay the debt after I have finished talking about this matter. The money problem has basically been solved, and food is the biggest problem. Most of the money raised is to buy food. It is estimated that even if you have money in Beizhi, it will be difficult to buy enough. It is a bit troublesome to have such a large share of grain at once due to the sea route. Therefore, the court took the initiative and found some relevant people as soon as possible to contact the maritime merchants, from the south, even Annan, Champa, and Japan. North Korea has a large amount of grain. It is guaranteed that in March and April, more than 500,000 stone grain will enter Beijing. This matter will be solved. The price of purchasing grain from outside is about three taels of silver dollars. Logically speaking, it should be You can buy food."
"His Majesty's strategic ministers believe that it is feasible. As long as the court sees the opportunity early and contacts more maritime channels to order grain in advance, it should not be a big problem to purchase so much grain." Zhou Yanru has done research in Tianjin Port. He still has no idea about purchasing grain by sea. confident.
"Now that we have solutions to the first two problems, let's talk about the land problem. Land, the wasteland here in Beizhili can actually be solved if we make good use of it. How to use it? It still needs to be combined with water conservancy projects. What I mean is Taking the lead from the disaster relief and civilian security departments of the imperial court, combined with the current water conservancy project planning, in some places with good water conservancy conditions, the victims were organized to clear up wasteland, cultivate and work intensively in small collectives. In fact, two to three hundred people were opened in the first year Ten thousand acres of cultivated land will solve a big problem."
After saying this, Zhu Youjian continued to speak without stopping: "The land problem is actually integrated with the subsequent problems. This time to resettle the refugees, I decided to use work-for-relief, opening up farmland and reassuring the people. Expand. To put it simply, the court provided money and grain, found a place, and recruited victims to open fields. In the first three years of opening the fields, the victims received money and grain according to their work. After three years, the opened fields were distributed to the victims according to the number of workers and population. They They need to pay 15% to the court every year, 10% of which is national tax, and the rest is land purchase fee. After twenty years, the land rights will belong to them, and they only need to pay national tax. The tax and land purchase fee collected, Pay off the national debt first, and it should be possible to pay off the national debt in ten to twenty years. The income from the land opening in the first three years will be used by the disaster relief agency to make up for the shortfall in the money allocated by the court."
"Your Majesty is wise!" After listening to Zhu Youjian's overall strategy for relocating the victims, the group of flatterers below began to praise him sincerely. In their opinion, this matter is indeed quite wise. Who can talk about such a thorn in the side after a while of nonsense? Can the hand problem be clarified? The key is that his nonsense is still very implementable.
"Don't rush to like it. The strategy is clear, but the key lies in execution. The cabinet is responsible for the resettlement of the victims. At the same time, the Jindi Refugee Resettlement Agency, which is directly under the jurisdiction of the cabinet, is responsible for overseeing and supervising the refugee resettlement work. , the Sixth Department needs full assistance. Today we need to elect the chief supervisor of the Resettlement Department first, so that the work can be started immediately. The number of victims is increasing day by day, so we must start work immediately."
"I have requested to supervise the Shanxi Refugee Resettlement Agency!" The person who came forward to recommend it was Chen Yan, the Deputy Assistant to the Cabinet. He had lived like a transparent person in the past two years. Since the resettlement of refugees was directly under the administration of the Cabinet, he wanted to step forward and take charge of it. Now that this burden has been borne, something should be done about this matter.
Faced with Chen Yan's self-recommendation, Zhu Youjian became embarrassed. This job cannot be left to him. The job of resettling refugees is a people-friendly job. Chen Yan has no work experience and no ability to work. It is difficult for him to do it.
. But where is the position? If there is no more suitable candidate, it is really difficult to reject him directly.