Nor does it meet the real needs of the market!

What is the real need?

"Silver!"

Spit out two words slowly, Zhu Mingzhong said.

"Now there is a need for not only a lot of copper coins, but also silver, because there is not enough silver in the market to circulate."

The king's answer made Smith nod and say.

"Now, the most serious problem in the market is not the lack of money, but the shortage of silver! In the words of Gu Senjun and others, it is a "silver shortage". ”

Silver Waste!

Since the end of the Ming Dynasty, the silver shortage has been plaguing the Ming and Qing dynasties, so that many officials and scholars have advocated abolishing silver and reusing copper coins. During the Chongzhen period, Chen Zilong suggested that the government reissue paper money, while Qian Bingjian, a talent in Tongcheng, wrote "Money and Money Discussion" to discuss the money law and the money law. Huang Zongxi simply put forward the non-gold and silver theory because of "silver exhaustion", and Gu Yanwu also held this proposal. Why is that? In fact, it is because of the serious consequences of the "silver shortage" that these people of insight advocate the abolition of the use of gold and silver.

"King!"

Taking a deep breath, Smith continued.

According to Gu Shenjun, he personally experienced the "silver famine" in Shaanxi: although Shaanxi had a bumper harvest at that time, there was a phenomenon of "the people selling their wives at the same time", the reason was that the people could not collect the required silver endowment. During the Longqing period, ministers Tan Lun and Jin Xueyan talked about the problem of "silver famine". It was pointed out that Haoyou took advantage of the "silver famine" and hoarded grain, endangering the people. Even now, the Jiangnan region is still "within the four seas, increasingly poor...... But now, silver is scarce and unusable." Why is there a more serious "silver shortage" phenomenon now? Personally, I think there are a lot of reasons for this......"

Maybe Smith is not really a Ming man, but after he came to Qinghe, he quickly integrated into the role of "Ming man", although his motivation to do things is to be richly paid, even now, it is to be appreciated by the king, but these motivations make him more focused on looking at China's financial problems with European financial concepts.

"The king, the Ming Dynasty was founded less than three hundred years ago, and at the beginning of the use of treasure money, that is, paper money, but due to military pressure and the unique power mechanism of traditional society, the paper money issuance system and management are not perfect, and the paper money itself does not have sufficient reserves, resulting in serious depreciation of the currency value. At this time, from the time of Yingzong, the taxes collected by the imperial court began to be converted into silver. During the Jiajing, Jingtai, and Zhengde periods, officials and laborers also began to use silver. When it came to a whip law in the Wanli period, the people could only use silver. And we all know that China's silver production is not abundant, and it needs a large import of silver from overseas to meet domestic demand. ”

When Smith was telling all this, Zhu Mingzhong just nodded, and when he looked at Smith, his expression changed slightly, this accountant from England is really very attentive. Not to mention anything else, just now he can use the names of Yingxi, Jiajing and other years, coupled with this fluent official language, all show that since he came to Daming, he is working hard to become a "Daming person". Whatever the starting point, this effort alone is commendable. Well...... In the future, if Europeans are recruited to China, they can use him as a standard.

“…… Since most of the supply depends on overseas imports. If overseas supplies are unstable, the dynasty will inevitably fall into a heavy economic and financial crisis. In fact, that's exactly what happened. During the time of Sizong, Spain was deeply involved in the European theater, which led it to use large quantities of silver for warfare rather than trade with China. At the same time, Japan was also closed off due to the Tokugawa shogunate, which caused the overseas silver passage to be interrupted one after another. At this time, the Ming government consumed a huge amount of silver due to the war in Liaodong, and the treasury was gradually empty, so it had to transfer the crisis to the people, that is, to levy Liaoyu, coupled with natural disasters and man-made disasters, which led to the invasion of the capital by the Liukou and the subsequent Jiashen Tianbian of the Qing captives. ”

Drinking tea and moistening his throat, Smith looked at the king who was listening carefully, and the whole person suddenly became excited and public, he was like a child eager to be rewarded by adults, and worked hard to show off his learning achievements in the past year.

“…… The silver crisis caused by the construction of the monetary system on silver is an important reason for the "Jiashen Heavenly Change". This is not only because most of the supply of silver depends on overseas lifelines, but also because the good storage properties of silver, a precious metal, make the Ming Dynasty's finances continue to fall into the crisis of fiscal contraction. Because of the reduction of overseas white streams, coupled with the storage of a large amount of silver, the circulation of silver in the market has been reduced, which has led to a serious shortage of silver in the market, and then produced a series of problems, even until now, these problems have not been solved, many provinces are still suffering from a shortage of silver, but it does not include Jiangbei. ”

Smith then went on to explain why Jiangbei was not short of silver.

"The silver in the Jiangbei market is sufficient, because the king obtained a large amount of silver when he confiscated the property of the traitors in Yangzhou, and these silvers were minted into the market, plus Jiangbei mastered the salt field, and all over the country to Jiangbei to buy salt need to pay silver, more importantly, with the development of Jiangbei's industry, glass mirrors, factory yarn and other products will lead to a large amount of silver inflow, and Jiangbei's silver has often been circulating in the market, few people store, plus paper money and other factors, so since the king ruled over, Jiangbei has never had a shortage of silver in the futureHowever, this is only limited to Jiangbei, and the south of the Yangtze River, where there is an occasional silver shortage, has been alleviated, but in areas far away from Jiangbei, the problem of silver shortage is still very serious. ”

Smith's explanation made Zhu Mingzhong nod his head and said.

Indeed, the silver shortage in various places is indeed extremely serious, and it can even be said that taxes are converted into silver, which increases the heavy burden on the common people, because the inherent contradiction between the transformation of peasants' grain and money has always existed. The grain cheapness hurts the peasants, often because the tax is converted into silver, and the people must first sell the grain to pay the tax, and then exchange it for silver, even if it is a good year, they will also suffer from the price reduction of the rice merchants, if there is a silver shortage, it is not just "the grain is cheap and hurts the peasants". ”

Zhu Mingzhong is no stranger to the silver shortage in Smith's mouth, in later generations, he has read some articles on the analysis, and after being in this era, he found that the silver shortage is more serious than he imagined, because the times are turbulent, and the rich are the first to smell the danger, so most of the people who hold silver think that the rising value of silver is very large, and choose to bury the silver and be hoarded by the cellar, which is quite a common risk aversion. This practice had a great impact on the financial and trade market in the late Ming Dynasty, which directly led to the interruption of the flow of silver. Of course, there is another reason for plunder, whether it is Li Zicheng after entering the customs to steal all the 6, 70 million taels obtained by the princes of Beijing, hundreds of officials, eunuchs and wealthy merchants, or after the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the hundreds of millions of taels of silver obtained by slaughtering the city all the way, most of them were hoarded by the princes and ministers of the Qing Dynasty, and there was even less silver circulating in the market.

"Now there is no shortage of silver in Jiangbei, and the problem of silver shortage in Jiangnan has been alleviated, and the problem before the Jiashentian change is the same, the geographical location of overseas silver inflow in that year is biased towards Jiangnan and the southeast coastal areas, so there is a serious shortage of silver in the northwest and Shandong Peninsula, which are far away. Therefore, Gu Yanwu's experience in the northwest will appear, and he will sell his wife and children to get silver taels to pay taxes in the harvest year. ”

Looking up at Smith, Zhu Mingzhong asserted.

"In the final analysis, the reason for the silver shortage is that on the one hand, the turbulent situation caused the silver to be hoarded for hedging, and on the other hand, because of the reduction in inflows, both of which had a fatal impact on the Ming Dynasty."

"King, therefore, the financial problems of the Ming Dynasty must be fundamentally solved! Otherwise, even if the king put the hundreds of millions of taels of silver seized in Shenyang into the market, in the end, it would still fail to solve the problem of silver, after all, silver will be stored and hoarded in times of turmoil, and in peacetime, it will be made into handicrafts and decorations......"

As long as you take a big silver mine and a big gold mine, you will solve the problem!

Zhu Mingzhong has not considered this problem, as the king of Huai, in so many reports every day, there will always be a few mentions of the "silver shortage", and for him, the key to solving the silver shortage is the "inflow", as long as the inflow exceeds the number of cellars and handicrafts, the balance of the market can be maintained, just like a few decades later, the development of trade led to a large amount of silver flowing into China, thus solving the problem of the silver shortage. Of course, Zhu Mingzhong will not wait until decades to solve the problem.

So in his plan, by next year at the latest, he will send a fleet to sail to Australia, and then establish a stronghold in North Australia, and the world's largest silver mine, the Cannington silver mine, is in North Australia, where the silver produced is enough to maintain the balance of the market, of course, South Australia's gold will also be mined in the future. The overseas supply of gold and silver will eventually make the silver shortage in the market disappear and the market return to normal.

However, it will take at least a few years to solve the problem by mining Australia's gold and silver mines, and now that Smith mentions this, he must have his thoughts, otherwise, he would never have traveled thousands of miles to Liaodong by boat.

"So, do you have any good solutions to this problem?"

"The king, the core problem of the Ming Dynasty is that there is no sufficient supply of silver, the Ming Dynasty is different from Europe, Europe relies on the gold and silver supply of the Americas, although Spain monopolizes the gold and silver mines in the Americas, but the king, Spain needs to exchange gold and silver from various countries for everything they need, and China's population is almost equivalent to the entire Europe, once Spain and Japan due to their own problems, resulting in the depletion of silver inflow, the silver shortage will definitely repeat again."

Smith did not give a direct answer to the king's question.

"Therefore, we must fundamentally solve the problem of silver shortage."

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