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"Chinese mainland in the last years of the former Ming Dynasty was in an extraordinary period, in the atmosphere of feudalism, the old political system, production methods, ideology and culture all reached the peak of maturity at the same time, and at the same time came to the edge of decay. The fastest update of the apex is accompanied by the fact that the germ of capitalism is of course only a bud, and it is not appropriate to overestimate that it is slowly developing, and a group of enlightenment thinkers with a new spiritual temperament are waving goodbye to the old era like a brilliant star. Legends such as 'Three Words and Two Beats', which reflect the new psychology of the emerging citizen class, have emerged among the people, and this can already be preliminarily explained from certain angles......" On the 20th of the month, in the semi-enclosed dock under the Madang Fortress, Guo Puxia held a pipe and looked at the report in hand with some surprise.

The report was written by his adjutant and many staff officers collectively, and he had not yet had time to submit it.

To be honest, the beginning of the report is quite impressive, reflecting the style of his adjutant from the Corps Fort. At the same time, it can be seen that these people really have an in-depth understanding of traditional Chinese culture, and they even have a dabbling in market literature during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which is not easy. You must know that the knowledge they learned in the East Coast is still very different from that of the Ming and Qing Kingdoms, because they have devoted a lot of energy to learning the knowledge of many disciplines such as geography, nature, science, military, law, health, etc., and their learning of traditional culture is far inferior to that of the Ming and Qing people.

Taking into account the differences in social systems, economic foundations, and levels of productive forces, their three views on the world and the way they think about problems are also significantly different from those of the Ming and Qing people. That is to say, although there is no difference in blood between them and the residents of the Chinese mainland, the cultural difference is still not small (the people of the East Coast consider themselves to be the "evolutionary version" of Chinese civilization and are authentic, and the rotten Confucianism of the Ming and Qing dynasties has gone astray), so after coming to the Far Eastern Continent, many things need to be re-learned, and they also need to re-understand the Chinese mode of thinking, which undoubtedly requires a lot of energy.

“…… As far as Shunguo is concerned, because of the thirst for goods caused by the heavy pressure of war, the yearning for high-efficiency production mode, the frequent exchanges with our country, and the personal preferences of the monarch, the budding capitalism has had an obvious orientation to social development. For example, Jingdezhen's ceramic industry, Ganzhou's tobacco industry (which was developed after the introduction of tobacco from the east coast), Pingxiang's coal mining industry, Xiangtan's iron smelting industry, Changsha's gun manufacturing industry, Lingling's medicinal herb planting industry, etc., these are relatively high concentration of manufacturing industries, in addition to such as Xianning cloth, Changsha cotton cloth, Hengyang flower cloth, Jiangxi firecrackers, bamboo, gold leaf, paper flowers, carving, Hubei tinware, lacquerware, beekeeping and other small workshops and even individual handicraftsmen-based decentralized manufacturing industry, for many years marketing Shudi, Liangguang, The southwest and even Wuyue, the Central Plains and other Qing territories under the jurisdiction of the Qing State have obtained a lot of profits. These profits were basically spent on the spot and exchanged for all kinds of materials urgently needed by the Dashun regime, including daily necessities such as silk, tea, salt, oil, and wine, as well as military supplies such as weapons, military supplies, ammunition, war horses, and machinery, which were related to the success or failure of the war. ”

“…… I have to admit that under the rule of the Dashun regime, there are only three provinces, the population is only 10 million, Hunan is more than 3 million (the number after the migration of Hubei has been increased), Jiangxi is more than 5 million, and Hubei and some parts of Sichuan add up to nearly 2 million, but in terms of the degree of manufacturing and commercial activity, it is really a first-line level, and the per capita productivity level is higher than that of the Qing and Ming countries, there is no doubt about this. ”

“…… In the city of Hengyang, which produces flower cloth, according to the wide and idle houses, more cloth merchants from other provinces are rented as residences, and there are more than 10 provincial cloth merchants inside and outside the city, and the import and export are prosperous. Wuchang City, which is the fundamental place of the former camp of Dashun, has relocated a large number of Hankou traders and craftsmen to settle down in that year, and the commodity economy has developed rapidly, and there have been handmade brand-name goods and stores such as Luo Mingde Niu Candle, He Yun Brocade Boots, Hongtaihe Silk Thread, Luo Tianyuan Hat, Niu Tongxing Scissors, Wang Hengfeng Tobacco Bag, Ma Gongliang Incense Goods, etc. In Changsha, the capital of Dashun and also a center of industrial production, there are professional streets including clothes, shoes and socks, reed mats, straw paper, flower cloth, white cloth, etc., which shows the prosperity of industry and commerce. ”

“…… A large number of peasant populations and immigrants poured into many large cities, including Changsha, Hengyang, Nanchang, Wuchang, Baling, and Ganxian, and became hired craftsmen who sold their labor, bringing many problems while also producing a large amount of wealth. The handicraft industry that combines production and marketing, the market life with money as the axis, the cheap and abundant labor reserve army, the opportunity to make a fortune and the tragic end of falling into the streets, the immature capital relations and market system, and the hidden crises lurking behind the prosperous appearance, all these indicate the friction, collision and transformation between the old and new production relations. In the above-mentioned areas, there is indeed a large new force that is incompatible with the value scale and behavior pattern of traditional feudal society, which undoubtedly points to the future. ”

“…… Traditional conservative thinking is the biggest obstacle to the budding development of capitalism. As a traditional gentry in Changsha said: "Merchants are all in the world, department stores are piled up, and trade is a huge area." If there are many husbands, it is easy to gather; If there are many escapees, the wind speed is easy. Rich families, with huge sums of money, enjoy huge profits, do not know how to dethrone the floating and frugal for the world and cherish material resources, for the local good business, for the children and grandchildren for a long time; Arrogant and boastful, but the days are not enough. Middle-aged commoners, with their ears and eyes, envy at first, and then effective, with simplicity as ugliness, luxury as beauty, habits and sexuality, accumulation of heavy and difficult to return. It can be seen from this that the hostile attitude of the ancient and traditional natural economy and feudal society towards the nascent economy was quite obvious, and if it were not for the fact that Li Shun's regime was from the bottom and the military pressure was great, it might not have been willing to be so determined to reform, and of course this was the main reason why the local gentry had never forgotten the former Ming regime during their decades of rule over the three provinces, although they had now acted as the spokesmen of the landlord class to a large extent. ”

Seeing this, Guo Puxia put down the manuscript and took a sip of strong tea. This passage really spoke to his heart! For many years, because of the "original sin of birth", since the era of Li Zicheng and Li Guo, the gentry in Huguang, Jiangxi and other places have always been hostile to Li Shun's regime, and even have a hostile attitude. Therefore, while continuing to liaise with the local gentry, the Li Shun regime also placed a large number of dismissed sergeants (because of the characteristics of the peasant army, the army was huge, and there were both men, women, and children, and the quality was complicated) to the prefectures and counties of Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces, so as to reclaim wasteland and enrich the localities, and at the same time, it could also strengthen the control of the Dashun court over the grassroots.

Later, with the decisive intervention of the people on the east coast in the situation in China, the Qing army's large-scale southern expedition was blocked, and the Li Shun regime turned from danger to peace, after decades of hard work, the apparent hostility between the gentry of the three provinces and the Dashun regime was not so strong, and the cooperation began to gradually become somewhat harmonious. However, considering the previous situation, the upper echelons of the Li Shun regime have always lacked a sufficient sense of trust in these people, especially the veterans, old commanders, and even emperors (Li Guo, Li Laiheng and his son) who have experienced that period of time are still alive, so they naturally cannot have much good impression of the gentry.

On the contrary, they were born at the bottom, had a low level of education, and were not bound by the rules and regulations of Confucianism, and they were very interested in how to make money quickly, produce food, and make military supplies, that is, they preferred the one from the east coast. In addition, at that time, the east coast side also intended to support, transferred some technology and equipment to them, and at the same time helped train a group of cadres in Yantai College (formerly the Anti-Qing Military and Political University), these people combined with the originally relatively weak capitalist Mars in Huguang and Jiangxi, and it took a full 20 years to finally develop these small Mars into small flames, which was also quite difficult.

Objectively speaking, these capitalist workshops produced a lot of goods for the Li Shun regime and made a lot of profits by marketing the provinces, that is, the Li Shun regime was tantamount to using the commodity economy to suck blood from the surrounding provinces and then feed itself. Otherwise, do you think that with the assistance of the people on the east coast alone, Li Guo and Li Laiheng, father and son, can maintain such a large army, although the salary of those soldiers does not seem to be high.

However, in the early stage of development, any kind of new thing will naturally face the suppression of traditional culture, ideology, and system, seriously hindering or even eliminating its development, unless you can find a white land like the Republic of East Coast of China, and establish the rules at the beginning, and then slowly fill it in, and carefully care for the maintenance of the original order does not change, so that it can develop steadily. However, there is no such condition in Shunguo, so it can easily lead to the collision between the new forces and the traditional society, and then it is so serious that it divides the entire society and causes countless problems. You know, Hengyang, Nanchang, Ganzhou and other places, there are often some workshops beaten, smashed, burned, robbed incidents, workers who go to the city to work are also claimed back by the rural patriarchs, at this time, because of the lack of talent reserves, many local state and county officials are gentry, they even favor those so-called village sages, patriarchs when dealing with such incidents, denounce the manufacturing workshop "all day long, corrupt the atmosphere" Yunyun.

In order to maintain Li Shun's regime, the people on the east coast once summed up a set of ideas for Li Laiheng through Guo Puxia to divide and disintegrate the hostile forces of the gentry from the ideological field, that is, to redefine the traditional Confucianism, and moved out the works of some thinkers in recent decades, such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Xu Guangqi, Fang Yizhi, Mei Wending, Yan Yuan, etc. In the local capital, he specially invited people to study and derived some new theories, focusing on criticizing the Song and Ming Dynasty theories that occupied the mainstream of the ideological circles at this time.

For example, they took out the "childlike theory" of Li Zhen of the former Ming Dynasty, and criticized the ideas advocated by physicists, such as "righteousness and friendship do not seek its own benefits, and clear its way does not count its merits", just as "the husband is born a person, and he has his own use, and he does not wait for Confucius to follow." If you have to take enough from Confucius and then foot, then there was no Confucius before the ages, and you can't care about people in the end? ”

Li Zhen believes that people cannot be bound by traditional etiquette and religion, advocates breaking through all traditional barriers, pursuing their own unique personality life, advocating the awakening of the soul, and praising the true life, which is full of humanist thoughts, which is similar to the Renaissance thought in Europe that broke through the barriers of the Middle Ages.

This kind of trick to disintegrate the hostile forces from the ideological field was also carried out for the first time for the people on the east coast. Led by the State Intelligence Administration, they used the Lee Soon regime as a large-scale social experiment to observe the effects of this ideological weapon. Of course, they are also fully prepared for failure, the reason is that the traditional Chinese conservative ideas are too deep-rooted, although there are changes in the ideological field of breaking through the traditional old order in the East and the West at the same time, such as humanist thought, but this kind of thinking has gradually become the mainstream in Europe at this time, but since its birth in China, it has always been a niche outlier, and has never been recognized by many people. It may take decades or even hundreds of years of uninterrupted baptism in the field of thought to make more people recognize it, just as the so-called west wind is gradually coming east.

Fortunately, the Li Shun regime also had more trust in the people of the East Coast, and it was more vigorous in implementing this so-called "new policy", and saw the benefits of it, and tasted a certain sweetness, so no matter how much the local gentry and the public opinion circles they controlled were criticized, they always firmly defended the new workshop manufacturing and merchant class. And these merchant class is also relatively clever, through the gathering with the Dashun warlords, they have gained political support, and then began to financially support the so-called "neo-Confucians" who believe in the enlightenment ideas of Li Zhen, Gu Yanwu and others, so that they can find ways to speak for their own group and speak out in the public opinion circles. At least, under the Li Shun regime, they are no longer the kind of "profit-seekers" who are slaughtered by others, have no social status, and carry original sin, and that is enough.

Guo Puxia's adjutant also focused on the social changes in the field of Shunguo's ideology, pointing out that this social practice carried out by the State Intelligence Administration seems to have had a positive impact on the Li Shun regime. And in the long run, if the successor of the Li Shun regime can ensure the continuity of the policy (i.e., the successor does not assimilate by the traditional gentry), it will certainly have a profound impact on the productive forces and production relations in the future, and this is the main dependence of their victory over the Qing state, which on the surface seems to be much stronger than them, and of course the support of the people on the east coast, otherwise nothing can be talked about.

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