The newspaper industry in the Ming Dynasty was very prosperous, and among the 14 counties in Guangfu, except for a few counties such as Conghua County and Zengcheng County, newspapers appeared in other counties, but they were the most active in the Kowloon Port District, which was centered on Kowloon and included Chiwan and Shekou. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

One of the biggest reasons, in addition to the fact that it is the most economically developed here, is also that it is close to Hong Kong, and those newspapers running in Hong Kong still surpass those newspapers in the mainland in terms of freedom to this day. In addition, Hong Kong is, after all, a British colony, where a large number of foreigners live, and newspapers in Hong Kong are more susceptible to the influence of foreigners' ideological concepts, and many of these newspapers are actually written by foreigners and translated by Chinese.

Therefore, at present, one of the largest circulation newspapers in the Ming Dynasty, the headquarters of the Chinese and foreign new newspapers still continues to be located in Hong Kong, and at the same time, another new newspaper has also begun to rise rapidly, this newspaper is called the circulation daily, and he has become the most profitable newspaper as soon as it appeared, because his chief writer is a very powerful pen, long before he ran his own newspaper, he was already a famous commentator.

This person's name is Wang Tao.

If there are enlightenment thinkers like Japan's Fukuzawa Yukichi in China, there is Wei Yuan in the front, and Wang Tao will be pushed later.

This person is not from Guangdong, but from Suzhou, and he is also a small talent, at the age of eighteen, he got the first place in the county examination and became a showman, but after that, he repeatedly failed and was disappointed in the imperial examination. Four years later, he followed his father to Shanghai. His father was a teacher who opened a museum in Shanghai to teach and met some foreigners. Introduce Wang Tao to work in the Mohai Library hosted by foreigners.

Mohai Shuguan also has a very important position in Chinese history, because he presided over the translation of many Western science books, such as algebra, calculus, botany, etc., and also translated some Western history books, which contributed to the introduction of Western humanities.

Although Wang Tao is only a young talent, it is also a treasure for foreigners, and it is difficult for them to find a scholar with Chinese status, let alone such a scholar with merit and fame. Therefore, their foreign translators immediately cooperated with Wang Tao and translated a large number of Western books.

Wang Tao worked at the Mohai Library for thirteen years, and did not leave Shanghai until 1862, when he anonymously advised Li Xiucheng, the Taiping army occupying Suzhou, to form an alliance with the foreigners and learn the advanced management of the foreigners, only to be discovered by the Qing court and forced to flee to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, Wang Tao continued to translate books for the church and served as the chief writer for the Chinese Daily. Because he has been working with foreigners since he was very young, he can often use more modern concepts to explain problems, and he himself has received a traditional education, has a deep foundation in old learning, and his writing is also very good, so his articles have a unique angle and are very marketable.

What really made Wang Tao famous was that he was invited and sponsored by a friend to travel to Europe in 1867. He visited Singapore, Penang, Ceylon, Aden, Cairo, Italy, France, the Louvre in Paris, the Sorbonne Sinologist Julian, and then continued by train to the port of Calais, then took a ferry across the English Channel to the port of Dover in the United Kingdom, and finally to London.

Wang Tao traveled in England for two years, leaving a wealth of travel notes with gorgeous rhetoric, which became the material for his later writing and the memorial of his thoughts.

He has also been invited to give lectures at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh.

He returned to China in 1870 and continued to be the chief writer of the Huazi Daily, and at the same time began to sort out what he saw and heard in Europe, compiling the French historical work "French Chronicles", and because Prussia defeated France in this year, causing a sensation in the world, Wang Tao began to write the article "The Chronicle of the Franco-Prussian War", which was serialized in the Huazi Daily and was reprinted by the declaration.

In 1873, James Lee, the presiding officer of Yinghua College, returned to China, and Wang Tao, as a close friend, bought the printing equipment of Yinghua College and started his own newspaper, which was named Circulation Daily. Wang Tao served as the chief writer and published political opinions in the "Circulation Daily", and his political essays were short and concise, each with about 1,000 words, and he was considered to be the creator of the political style of China's journalism.

He not only has good writing, but also has a long translation experience, which makes his words have both the beauty of Chinese and the rigor of Western style, and have a unique perspective. At the same time, his extensive knowledge allows him to often quote from the sidelines, and unlike other people's comments, he can not only criticize, but also propose solutions to problems. He could often give answers to such questions as how France had solved the problem, and how Britain had dealt with it.

Wang Tao's comment, at this time in China, should be a must, more thorough and approachable than the declared comment, so the influence is greater, later generations are respected as China's first newspaperman, even in the world, is also a man of the hour. In 1875, he successively published three well-known political treatises, "Reform the Law and Self-Improvement", "Reform the Law and Self-improvement", and "Reform the Law and Self-improvement", and put forward the slogan of "reform of the law" for the first time in Chinese history, and can be said to be the first person in China to call for reform of the law.

After the Meiji Restoration in Japan, advocating the imitation of Germany, so he was very concerned about Wang Tao's Franco-Prussian War Discipline, this book was excerpted from the newspaper, published a single book of 210,000 words, sold tens of thousands of copies in Japan, and also made Wang Tao very famous in Japan, and later at the invitation of the Japanese, visited Japan.

Li Hongzhang also knew Wang Tao as a person, and thought that he was praised for being "an immortal and full of talents", but it was a pity that Wang Tao did not accept Li Hongzhang's recruitment, but Li Hongzhang did his activities for him and canceled his arrest, allowing him to return to the mainland in his later years.

The person who dislikes Wang Tao the most may be the officials of the Ming Dynasty, because Wang Tao writes articles in Hong Kong newspapers, and the most criticized is the Ming government.

But Zhu Jinglun liked to read Wang Tao's articles very much, but he did not interfere with this person's growth path, did not adopt the recommendation of some officials, and hired Wang Tao to be an official in the Ming Dynasty.

Because Zhu Jinglun feels that the best stage for people like Wang Tao is to enlighten the masses through their words and thoughts, as an enlightenment thinker, not as an official. Zhu Jinglun even thought worriedly, thinking that people like Wang Tao and Fukuzawa Yukichi really made them officials, and if they didn't get it right, they would go from high-ranking thinkers to suddenly become a mouth-cannon party, which would be a pity.

Wang Tao is, of course, one of the leading Chinese scholars in this era, one of the Enlightenment thinkers, but such people are not one in China, but a large group.

It is a pity that a large group of Wang Tao, who did not play a role in China and did not pay attention to them at all, except for a few veteran politicians like Li Hongzhang, the power class was not interested in their ideas.

This is because China lacks a Fukuzawa-style enlightenment thinker compared to Japan because of the deep-rooted old cultural traditions, but there is a large group of people like the newspaper editor and Wang Tao, who did not enlighten the whole nation through a single book, but expressed their views through newspapers, and let their modern consciousness influence more people through newspapers.

It is also impossible for a character like Fukuzawa Yukichi to appear in China, because there is a tradition in Chinese culture that there is no first scholar, and it is difficult to form a person with the status of Fukuzawa-style ideological godfather in Confucianism and Taoism, even if it is a person like Zeng Guofan, when his prestige is at its highest, there are still a large number of people who disobey him.

Wei Yuan's writing of enlightenment books such as the Atlas of the Sea Kingdom, which had a mediocre response in China, caused a sensation in Japan, is a typical example, because there are many people in China who disagree with Wei Yuan's ideas, while the Japanese are very fond of elevating foreign ideas and cultures to a higher position.

This cannot simply criticize the Chinese as insensitive, mainly because of the different habits of the civilization center and the marginal peoples of civilization, the Chinese are used to creating their own culture and then sending it to their neighbors, and Japan is used to absorbing culture from the outside for its own use.

This different national habit is the biggest cultural factor in the failure and success of the Manchu Qing and Japanese reforms in modern history.

But the specific factor is clear at a glance, and the upper elites who hold power on both sides have completely different attitudes towards change.

In fact, the problems encountered by China are also encountered by Japan, and the obstacles to change encountered by China also exist in Japan.

Yukichi Fukuzawa, the godfather of Japan's spiritual reform, spoke of the difficulties of change in a letter to a friend in October '74.

"The situation in Japan is really difficult," he said. In order to enjoy equality in diplomacy, it is necessary to eliminate arrogance at home. If you think about internal affairs first, you will not be able to solve external problems. If you deal with external affairs, the domestic bastards will be ready to move, and if you think about one thing and the other, you will achieve nothing. It's so tough, but there's no reason not to try. ”

When dealing with international affairs, Japan has also encountered domestic bastards who are pulling their backs, but the Japanese are obviously more pragmatic, and they "have no reason not to work hard." With this attitude, despite the difficulties and the fact that no matter what you do, there are people who will pull you back, and still insisting on doing things, Japan has finally succeeded.

The failure of the Manchus was that the top level of the government was constantly arguing for reform, and arguing was not necessarily a bad thing, and the more they discerned, the clearer it became, but the problem was that they were just a strong argument. The reformists and the old-fashioned faction have been at loggerheads for decades, but the argument is an argument, that is, no one acts, everything is limited to empty talk. The only thing that really worked hard was the Westernization Movement carried out by a few local ministers, and it had to be carried out carefully, and it could not get the support of the whole country, and finally fell short in the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War!

Zhu Jinglun is very glad that although the Ming Dynasty is a part of the center of civilization in China, the people of the Ming Dynasty are the same as the people of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and they always have their own sense of cultural superiority in treating foreign cultures, and they have not stopped resisting and criticizing foreign cultures over the years, but under Zhu Jinglun's forcible promotion, not only have he always insisted on doing things, but he also taught them through his words and deeds, through sending officials to study abroad, through their contacts with foreigners in China, and through practical government reforms. It has affected a large number of officials, at least Chen Zhiting and other officials, although they have not yet let go of their sense of superiority culturally, they have not rejected the Western management system, and have even begun to take the initiative and consciously promote the Western management method.

It can be said that although the Ming Dynasty also has a lot of accumulated shortcomings, it has not completely solved the problem of official corruption, has not solved the problem of officialdom, and has not solved the increasingly acute social problems, but there is one thing that Zhu Jinglun can be sure of, that is, at least at the top level of the Ming Dynasty, from Zhu Jinglun to the six ministries, and even to the officials at the government level, they are all a group of people in power who do practical things.

This has been the case for a long time, from the emperor to the officials are doing things, and the biggest reason is that Zhu Jinglun, the emperor, knows very well what he wants to do, and he is sure of the effect he can receive after doing this.

Zhu Jinglun knows very well that what he wants to do is not to personally run factories and engage in industry, he does not have that kind of energy, what he wants to do is to always hand over power to these officials who can change their world view, just like during the Meiji Restoration in Japan, their state power was always in the hands of pragmatic politicians such as Okubo Ritsu and Ito Hirobumi, rather than in the hands of a group of mouth-cannon parties like Weng Tong and let them argue slowly for decades.

Zhu Jinglun is very sure that as long as he adheres to this practice, even if the Chinese with a strong sense of cultural pride change their thinking and culture are slower, or even never able to change, but give birth to a new culture compatible with China and the West, then at least economically and militarily, Daming will definitely not lag behind.

Because as long as these officials who are willing to do the truth hold power, they will inevitably introduce the best part of Western society, and will encourage the establishment of industry and the development of industry and commerce, so no matter what political system the Ming Dynasty exercises and what ideas the Ming people have in their heads, industry will definitely be able to develop, and the economy will definitely be successful. These have long been proven in later generations, and China can also create an economic power and a world factory by using its own system.

Zhu Jinglun firmly believes in this truth: The most fundamental sign of the success or failure of the so-called reform, revolution, reform, and reform is whether or not resources can be put in the hands of the most correct people and the most correct strata; to put it simply, whether the most efficient people can master social resources and determine the way in which these resources are used.

As long as we stick to this core of reform, Zhu Jinglun's reform will not fail.

At present, this reform has already had a considerable effect on the administration, and there are corruption accumulations in the officialdom, but they can always be exposed through various channels, and the anti-corruption department of the police system, led by Hurd, directly consults with Zhu Jinglun, and these government agencies are all playing a role.

Historically, after the Meiji Restoration, the collusion between officials and businessmen in Japan was serious, and it was not until ten years after World War II that Japan liberalized press control, a large number of corruption cases were reported in a concentrated manner, and a large number of politicians were arrested and imprisoned, which curbed the corruption that lasted for hundreds of years.

The last reason is that the higher civil servants are paid, so that officials do not need to be corrupt to live a more decent life, officials are always high-income and middle-class groups, there is no dilemma that they cannot live without corruption, so although corruption has always existed, and has always been exposed and cracked down, it has not been rampant, and has not formed institutional corruption.

In the tax system, considerable achievements have been made, from the customs established by HD to the national tax system, even in the world, it is considered a high level, it can be said that the tax system is no different from the tax system of the West, in terms of tax collection capacity, not lost to the level of Europe and the United States.

Legally, the common law procedural construction was completed. Diplomatically, he is proficient in the diplomatic procedures of the West. Militarily, weapons and equipment have kept up with the mainstream powers of the world, and efforts are being made to build a military system.

All this not only made Zhu Jinglun believe that the Ming Dynasty was on the right path, but also allowed the Ming Dynasty to seize the opportunity and dominate the entire Asian region.

The only thing that can threaten the Ming Dynasty is the approaching foreigner forces.

Zhu Jinglun's choice is that instead of passively taking away the interests of the foreigners, it is better to take the initiative to cooperate with the foreigners to develop, and the interests taken away can always be taken back, but the lost time can never be recovered.

Zhu Jinglun was confident that he would have an advantage in the cooperation and competition with foreigners, but the Manchu Qing Dynasty could not do it, but the interests that the Manchus were now selling were already the interests of the Ming Dynasty in Zhu Jinglun's eyes, so he was extremely unwilling to see the Manchus give their interests to the foreigners step by step.

The Ming Dynasty had no name or strength to stop the foreigners from constantly taking the opportunity to grab benefits from the Manchus.

Zhu Jinglun's previous method was to block the channels for foreigners to obtain benefits before they got certain benefits, so he put Qingdao, Dalian and other ports into the hands of the Ming Dynasty, because he was worried that in the future, these places with economic and strategic value would be forcibly seized by foreigners, blocking the possible expansion of foreigners in these areas.

However, this kind of passive defense method cannot block all directions, and can always leave a large number of vacancies and opportunities for foreigners.

Just after the Japanese invasion of Taiwan, the British got a good opportunity to expand their rights and interests in the Chinese mainland, and when the British Legation interpreter Margaret went to Yunnan to pick up a British expedition that planned to enter China's Yunnan region from Burma, he was killed by the local people in Yunnan, and the famous Margaret incident broke out in history.

If the British did not know how to take advantage of this opportunity to bite a piece of fat from the Manchus, they would really be ashamed of their pirate tradition.

The British Consulate made a proposal to the Ming Department of Foreign Affairs that the two countries should work together to build a railway through Burma and connect the Ming to India, which the British called the "Britannica Bridge".