Ladies and gentlemen, in order to better explain the policy shortcomings of the Ming Dynasty, as well as the deep-seated reasons for the decline from prosperity, a few additional articles have been added one after another, because they have little to do with the storyline, and those who don't like to watch it can skip it.

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The rise of the Ming Dynasty was in a stormy era.

The game of the Mongols winning the world immediately and ruling the world immediately has been unable to continue to sustain itself for more than 60 years, even if it is out of name, it is no longer able to return to the sky.

The so-called Mengyuan "lost its deer, the world chased it", when the wind and clouds met and the heroes competed for the deer, such as Guo Zixing, Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng and others, they were all heroes for a while.

Only Zhu Yuanzhang, the nickname Zhu Chongba, the leper monk of the word Guorui, relied on a set of strategic policies of "building high walls, accumulating grain, and slowly becoming kings", and finally shot this deer and became the hero of the first generation, with the capital of Nanjing, and the country name Ming.

Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang won the world, learned the lessons of the Yuan Dynasty, as an emperor from the lowest level of society, he knew the suffering of the people at the bottom, so he was very concerned about the people's livelihood, at the beginning of the founding of the country, he encouraged farmers to open up wasteland, vigorously reduce rent and interest, so that farmers in the harvest season, the grain left can still survive the winter.

Perhaps suffering from the hoarding of merchants in the famine years, he had a natural dislike for merchants, so at the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, he set the national policy of "valuing agriculture over business, and giving preferential treatment to scholars".

He explicitly ordered the agriculture as the foundation, suppressed the merchants, stipulated that the merchants were not allowed to wear fabrics above the yarn, in the Song Dynasty developed better, the social and economic operation mode with commerce as the link, after the destruction of the Yuan Dynasty, and the suppression of the early Ming Dynasty, basically disappeared, the self-sufficient small peasant economy, regained the absolute dominance of China's economic life.

In terms of taxation system, a series of policies and measures conducive to the recovery and development of production were adopted in the early Ming Dynasty, and the tax system was mainly based on the light taxation and recuperation, abolishing all the harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes of the Yuan Dynasty, reducing the burden on the people, and rewarding farming, which effectively promoted the rapid reconstruction after the war and made a good start for the nearly 300-year dynasty of the Ming Dynasty.

He also specifically stipulated that if the peasants could not afford to pay the taxes and silver, they could offset them with the grain, silk cloth, and other goods they produced.

As for industry and commerce, because the scale was compressed very small, the tax silver received was only a symbolic embellishment, so the commercial tax was set lower, and Hong Wuchu stipulated, "All commercial taxes, take one out of thirty, and those who pass will be judged as violating the order."

That era was definitely the era of Zhu Yuanzhang!

He came from poverty, jealousy and hatred, struggled all his life, and after ascending the throne, he continued to struggle, fighting with the Northern Yuan, fighting with meritorious officials, and fighting with corrupt officials, but there was no peace with the people.

He didn't want his dynasty to die like the Qin Dynasty, so he designed a system for the Ming Dynasty to feel good about himself.

He ruled the world with filial piety, and vigorously advocated the filial piety culture of "small filial piety, filial piety and dedication, and great filial piety and patriotism", he was very preferential to the scholars, and respected the scholars.

As an idealistic vanguard, he was extremely harsh on the incumbent officials, believing that being an official was to serve the people, and the wages offered were pitifully low, and he also believed that everyone would be as diligent in state affairs as he was, and the holidays given to officials were pitiful.

Want to be blessed? Yes, wait until you retire!

However, the world belongs to your Zhu family, how can you ask others to have the same consciousness as you? So there were really a lot of officials who violated the rules at that time.

But Emperor Zhu is a hero who can't rub sand in his eyes, and most of the officials who violate the prohibition are one word: kill! In order to create a clean and enlightened system, he stipulated that anyone who embezzled more than 60 taels of silver would be killed immediately! More than 100 taels, peel the daylily!

It is said that there should be a Qingping Sheji and a peaceful and prosperous world, right?

But in fact, on the contrary, idealism has encountered practical problems, officials have killed batch after batch, but there is no shortage of cases, and there have been a series of so-called nest cases and conspiracy cases, and by the time Hongwu was about 20 years old, tens of thousands of corrupt officials had been killed!

And Emperor Zhu's approach to practical problems is still the same, and he will not waver in killing words!

In fact, he always felt that something was wrong, in order to let this tyranny stop himself, his favorite successor was the relatively benevolent prince Zhu Biao, not the Yan King Zhu Di, who was closest to his personality.

He hoped that the Ming Dynasty would eventually rule the world with benevolence, and in order to give the crown prince a good governance environment, he killed the heroes, set up the Jinyi Guard, and abolished the prime minister who threatened the imperial power, and replaced it with a cabinet system......

In order to prevent the generals from rebelling, he ruled the country as a civilian official; In order to prevent being dictated by eunuchs like the Han Dynasty, he ordered eunuchs not to interfere in politics; In order to prevent his descendants from weaving straw mats like Liu Bei, he left titles for several generations of his children and grandchildren, and they were not allowed to go out to make a living......

In order to prevent land annexation, so that everyone could have land to grow and eat, instead of engaging in rebellious occupations, he drew up the Yellow Book and the Fish Scale Book, and his people, household registration and property were all clear, and everyone honestly paid taxes with household registration.

In order to reduce the contradictions between the government and the people, he also used the Yellow Book to stipulate that 100 households should be taken as one mile, and 10 households with more grain were selected as the chiefs, and the remaining 100 households were divided into 10 households, and 1 household was divided into 10 households, and one person was the head of the annual service, and one person was the head of the first household.

Zhu Yuanzhang thought that he had laid a foundation for his descendants for 10,000 years, and for his descendants, he personally completed the work mentioned above.

However, history often likes to joke with people, and the wise Zhu Yuanzhang never imagined that things would develop in the opposite direction he envisioned.

Zhu Di, the fourth eldest member of his family, seized his grandson's world and moved the capital from Yingtian to Beijing; He removed the post of prime minister, but it was the Ming Dynasty whose cabinet power was stronger than the imperial power, but this happened to achieve the era of the prime minister; Who knew that after a hundred years, the Zhu family would have a captive population of more than 100,000, and the imperial court could no longer afford it, and there were more than one or two descendants of the Zhu family who starved to death; He suppressed the merchants, but by the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was the merchants who had the money to wear those silk satins......

At the beginning of the founding of each dynasty, generally speaking, it was politically clear and the taxes were appropriate, so we can see that the dynasties that have been established for more than a hundred years have to go through the initial recovery period, prosperity period, and decay period, and there will be a special era called the Zhongxing period in the longer dynasties.

However, most dynasties, after the revival of the dynasty, will fall quickly, like the return of the dying person, looking ruddy.

In the Western Han Dynasty, after the policy of rest and recuperation after the founding of the country, the rule of Wenjing appeared, and then it was soon buried by Wang Mang; The Tang Dynasty had the rule of Zhenguan, and after the prosperity of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, the country name was almost not guaranteed; Like the Qing Dynasty, after entering the customs, after the prosperity of Kangqian and the prosperity of Tongzhi, a gunshot was fired in Wuchang, which cut off the country of Aixinjue Luo.

By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the reincarnation of various feudal courts had been reflected, the so-called stories of the previous dynasties, but the rise and fall of the replacement.

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(End of chapter)