In this way, the answer to the elimination of civil unrest is about to come out - that is, to let the people have enough to eat.

The Chinese people can be said to be the best people in the world, for thousands of years, they have worked diligently and diligently on the land, creating the unrivaled value of the ancient world, and establishing the supreme glory for countless dynasties.

And the cost of obtaining such value is extremely low, as long as they have a full meal and a full meal with dignity.

Then the question arises again, how to make the people of the whole country have enough to eat?

It's almost an unsolvable problem.

Ji Qingwen once personally investigated that in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, when traditional agricultural technology had almost reached the extreme, in the south of the Yangtze River, where the land was rich, the grain produced by one acre of land was only three or four hundred catties. However, if it is placed on the high slope of the loess where the land is barren, the yield per mu should be reduced by one-third to one-half.

Moreover, due to the influence of temperate and subtropical monsoon climates, China's weather and climate are extremely unstable – in fact, since the Han Dynasty began to have detailed climate records, the so-called "wind and rain" years without major meteorological disasters in the whole country for nearly 2,000 years have been less than 40 years in total.

However, the fragile traditional agricultural production that depends on the weather for food, once it encounters natural disasters, it will greatly affect production, and even lead to the phenomenon of no harvest.

This is why it is said that in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, which is said to have entered the meteorological "Xiaoice Age", there will be so many and such severe disasters and famines; This is why, the Ming court was not effective in suppressing bandits, but it was never able to extinguish the peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Well, without this so-called "Xiaoice period", there would have been no peasant uprising?

Not really.

In fact, in ancient China, after the birth of a new feudal dynasty, it would basically usher in a period when various contradictions were relatively relaxed - this was the so-called rule and prosperity of the feudal dynasty. And during this period, the population of the dynasty will increase dramatically. However, in this era when there was no Yuan Longping and no hybrid rice, grain production could not increase with the increase in the number of people, and China's foreign expansion reached a limit, so there was no way to solve the problem of feeding more and more people.

In this way, it falls into a contradictory situation - it seems that how vigorous and prosperous a dynasty is, how miserable and miserable the demise of this dynasty will be.

Such a cycle has been repeated, repeated, and repeated again and again in Chinese history, and it is almost impossible to see the hope of change and innovation......

This is known as the cyclical law of history.

In order to crack this law of historical cycles, there are many people with lofty ideals and talents in Chinese history, who have gone forward and succeeded, but they have never been able to come up with a perfect answer.

However, Ji Qingwen, as a traverser who systematically studied Marx's historical materialist view of history in college, was born with an insight into the laws of history.

He didn't have to meditate on it, he didn't need to learn about things, he didn't need to practice hard to get to know it, he already knew the answer to this difficult problem, and if he wanted to break the law of historical cycles—he himself knew—there were three sets of answers: upper, middle, and lower.

The best policy is to fully increase productivity, especially agricultural productivity, so that the grain produced can satisfy everyone's food and drink under the premise of a certain amount of waste, and this satisfaction is not just to make people full, but to eat "good". In addition to rice, flour, and grains that can satisfy hunger, there should also be various vegetables, meat, wine, and non-staple foods. However, although the theory is beautiful, the reality is very bleak. In the 21st century, the productive forces of mankind have not developed to the level of being able to feed the seven billion people on the planet, let alone the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century.

The middle strategy is to carry out land reform and liberate the population from the land. In this way, a large number of free labor will be created to enter the new industrial and commercial activities. The products produced by industry can be exchanged for real money through commercial channels, and grain can be imported from sparsely populated countries overseas to feed these workers who have been detached from the land. This road is the path of capitalist development, and it is also in the process of Ji Qingwen's active promotion and implementation with an eye on the current situation.

The strategy is simpler, and it is also the path that China has inadvertently taken in history, that is, to import one or two high-yielding crops from abroad, which can produce food stably in less than ideal weather conditions, and avoid major famines and civil unrest. Such crops are sweet potatoes, corn, peppers and other crops introduced from South America. These crops were introduced to the Central Plains in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, but they were not popularized on a large scale, and it was not until the early Qing Dynasty that they were really widely cultivated throughout the country.

Therefore, the Qing Dynasty, which took a great advantage, although its ruling technology may not have improved much compared with the Ming Dynasty, with the direct help of these crops, created the so-called Kangqian Prosperous Era, which pushed China's total population to the order of 200 million people, and entered the final climax of China's feudal society.

The Qing Dynasty, with its backward culture and technology, was able to live in the Central Plains and sit firmly in the country, which can be said to have scratched a lottery ticket of five million. But now, this lottery ticket is pinched in Ji Qingwen's hand - Xu Guangqi, a cabinet scholar with knowledge throughout ancient and modern times at home and abroad, has found overseas crops such as sweet potatoes in the process of summarizing Chinese and foreign agricultural water conservancy technologies, and has entrusted a few foreign missionaries to introduce a few plants to plant in his own courtyard.

However, although Xu Guangqi is very knowledgeable, he does not realize the important role of sweet potatoes in alleviating to a certain extent, but not completely reversing, the laws of historical cycles, but only sees its most basic role as a high-yielding crop.

But Ji Qingwen took this matter seriously, and after returning to Jiangnan, after taking care of the textile workshop in Suzhou City and the affairs of the Ming Wujun a little, he took his cronies to Xu Guangqi's old residence in Songjiang Mansion next to Suzhou to look for these legendary crops.

In fact, even if Ji Qingwen ran for nothing this time and did not find the sweet potato that Xu Guangqi planted a few years ago, then he still had to try his best to find traces of the sweet potato from the channels of missionaries such as Tang Ruowang and maritime pirates such as Zheng Zhilong - after all, although this is the "next policy" to alleviate this great crisis in the late Ming Dynasty, it is also the method with the least resistance and the strongest effect.

………………

Ji Qingwen also has some power in Songjiang Mansion, not to mention anything else, the Dianshan seaport that can bring Ji Qingwen hundreds of thousands, nearly a million taels of silver every year, was built by Ji Qingwen in Songjiang, and it can be said that it is the strongest stronghold for him to settle down.

Therefore, Ji Qingwen and others were like a spring outing, riding horses and riding carriages, starting from Suzhou, talking all the way, and enjoying the scenery came to the outside of Dianshan Port Wharf.

In order to prevent the Western, Oriental and South Sea pirates outside the dock from pretending to be maritime merchants to enter the Central Plains to cause chaos; In the process of building Dianshan Port, Ji Qingwen deliberately built a cofferdam outside the wharf and sent special personnel to guard it, in order to isolate the inside and outside, so as not to cause extraneous branches.

And the one who guarded the port of Dianshan Port was the Ming Wu Army under Ji Qingwen at the beginning. Later, after the Ming military became famous, and ordinary people did not dare to invade, they entrusted the important task of customs defense to the dock workers brought by Ji Qingwen from Shaanxi.

These workers were originally hungry people who rebelled with Li Zicheng, and they have always been the most unruly and unruly when they were thieves, except for Ji Qingwen, even the emperor Laozi did not take it seriously. At the beginning, Chongzhen sent Shen Liangzuo, a powerful eunuch around him, to lead 3,000 men and horses from the Jingshi Battalion, and wanted to seize control of Dianshan Port, but he was blocked by these dock workers outside the cofferdam for half a month, and he didn't let Shen Liangzuo step into the wharf for half a step.

Since then, Dianshan Port has been firmly under Ji Qingwen's grasp, and even Shen Liangzuo, the eunuch of the Qincha, can only build another house to live in outside the cofferdam, and dare not lead the officers and soldiers of the Beijing Division Battalion who are still powerful in the Beijing Division to step into the Dianshan Port Wharf for half a step.

Therefore, when Ji Qingwen settled at the dock of Dianshan Port, the first thing he encountered was Shen Liangzuo, who was camping outside the cofferdam.

Shen Liangzuo was originally a close eunuch beside Emperor Chongzhen, and he had his own direct access to the center of the imperial court.

Although this Shen Liangzuo did not hold the real power of the Dianshan Port Wharf, he was able to get tens of thousands of taels of silver and hush money from Ji Qingwen every year, and it was not a big deal to say a few good words against his will or heartfelt in front of real money.

Ji Qingwen was still pretending to be in his heart, so he only exchanged a few words with Shen Liangzuo, and then led everyone into the cofferdam of Dianshan Port.

The dock workers guarding the cofferdam naturally welcomed the benefactor Ji Qingwen when they saw that the benefactor Ji Qingwen was coming, and even put down the work at hand, and vigorously asked Ji Qingwen to congratulate him on becoming the new Fu Lubo.

These dock workers are Ji Qingwen's most trustworthy group of people except for the Ming Wujun and Yiwu miners.

Ji Qingwen had thought more than once that the Ming Wu Army had not yet become an army, and even if it was fully established, it would only be able to maintain an establishment of more than 3,000 people, and once it encountered a strong enemy, it could also put this nearly 2,000-strong dock worker team into battle if necessary. After all, these people were strong and well-disciplined, and they lived and worked together every day, and after a little training, they were an elite soldier not inferior to any army in the imperial court.

Therefore, Ji Qingwen was very happy when he heard their courteous congratulations, and immediately agreed to come down and give each dock worker an extra month's salary, which was regarded as a reward, so that they could participate in the grand event.

When these dock workers heard this, they were even more overjoyed, and they almost shouted long live.

The movement in the dock finally alarmed the missionary John Tang, who walked out of the church quickly and made a standard salute to Ji Qingwen.

Although this John Tang is a German missionary, he is a Chinese expert, not only the clothes on his body have been changed to the style of the Han people, but he also learned the official dialect of the Ming Dynasty without any accent, and even the local Jiangnan Wu Nong soft language in Songjiang Mansion is also well learned.

It was such a German missionary, yellow-haired and white-skinned, bearded and blue-eyed, but he wore authentic Hanfu and spoke authentic Chinese, which was quite joyful - but it is no wonder that John Tong came to preach, and he needed to seek official permission and obtain strong funding and support, so he dressed like this, firstly, for the convenience of preaching, and secondly, for the purpose of currying favor with officials and wealthy businessmen from all walks of life.