Xia Yunyi followed Lu Qi to the second floor, and after sorting out his clothes outside the door of the reception room, he stepped into the door. Although he had previously served as the emperor's imperial secretary, his main job had been to read letters from all over the world, submit summaries of them, and sometimes write replies for the emperor.

For more than half a year, he served as the emperor's assistant, correctly conveying the emperor's will to the cabinet and various ministries, so as to form realistic measures. In a way, he became the embodiment of the emperor to the outside world, and thus really came into contact with the center of power in the country.

Standing on flat ground, standing on the roof, and standing on the top of a mountain, the scenery that can be seen is different. At the local level, at the periphery of power and at the center of power, the political meaning of looking at the same thing is also different.

After moving back and forth from top to bottom, although Xia Yunyi has not yet been able to become a sophisticated politician, he can finally understand that the perspective of the same thing from the local to the central government is different, and there are great differences in their ideas and handling methods, which is not entirely because of personal selfishness, nor is it the difference between smart and stupid, what really matters is the game between the overall interests and local interests.

In the past six months, assisting the emperor in handling the affairs of the Disaster Relief Emergency Committee has brought him two biggest benefits, one is that he has learned how to coordinate the cabinet and the six ministries to carry out an order; The other is to be familiar with the emperor's way of doing things and personal character. The former is an administrative ability that the central ministers must have, while the latter is to ensure that they do not disagree with the emperor everywhere when handling government affairs, so that the two sides can resolve disputes in a more tacit way.

Of course, in the frequent contact with the emperor, Xia Yunyi was finally able to treat the emperor as an ordinary person, and no longer thought as before, the emperor should be a moral example above the world, and the specific government affairs should be handled by the gentlemen below, which is the so-called vertical arch rule.

At this time, Xia Yunyi had already vaguely realized that whether it was the power represented by the cabinet or the monarchy held by the emperor, it was not a blessing for the country to let either party dominate.

Of course, the deeper the understanding of politics, the more cautious Xia Yunyi's words and deeds become. Because he knew that he was not qualified to make irresponsible remarks about the political structure of the country, and the will of the emperor he now represented gave special meaning to his words and deeds. If he is not careful, every word he says may be distorted by someone with a heart and used to attack him or the emperor himself.

What's more, the emperor transferred him back and forth from the central, local, and central governments, and each transfer allowed him to take a step forward after returning to Beijing. Even Xia Yunyi himself realized that Chongzhen was trying to train him to be the future central member of the imperial court. If an encounter like his is not envied and secretly ruthless, it is a surprising thing.

The higher he is, the more calm and composed Xia Yunyi becomes, and he will never give others a chance to take advantage of it. When Chongzhen saw Xia Yunyi in the reception room, he found that this close minister was becoming more and more boring.

Although Chongzhen, who was sitting behind the desk, turned this thought in his mind, he never stopped saying: "Gong Yu is back, has the work report of this year's Disaster Relief Emergency Committee come out?" Pick up some key points and let me hear them. ”

Xia Yunyi knew very well what the emperor had summoned him to the upper floor, and had already brought a brief copy of the work report he had written. As soon as he heard the emperor's request, he agreed to open the abridged book in his hand and sat up for Chongzhen to report.

“… This year, there are about 216 prefectures and counties affected by droughts, floods, locusts and other disasters, accounting for about 15% of the number of prefectures and counties in the world, with more than 40 million affected people and nearly 500 million yuan in economic losses...

As of last month, based on the reports of counties, prefectures and provinces, as well as the sample survey conducted by the working group sent by the committee, we have reason to believe that the number of unnatural deaths in the disaster areas this year ... It should be between 2.1 million and 3 million people.

Among them, the number of unnatural deaths of the victims in Henan should account for nearly one-third of the total, and the number of unnatural deaths in Kaifeng accounts for nearly one-third of the total number in Henan...

Beginning in April, peasant uprisings of varying severity occurred in the border areas of Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, Anhui, Guangdong, and Fujian. By July, the local militia had occupied 33 prefectures and counties, and the number exceeded 100,000.

On August 14, some rioters mixed into the vicinity of Kaifeng, trying to incite hundreds of thousands of refugees outside Kaifeng to revolt... On September 16, Wang Qi mobilized the armies of Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu to break the army of rebellious people outside Kaifeng, thus defeating the nearly 200,000 rebellious army in the area into 13 troops, and the rebellious people outside Kaifeng began to disperse in all directions.

After the largest militia in Kaifeng Prefecture was dispersed, the militia in various places also began to flourish and decline, and after they ate up the grain stocks in the areas where they were entrenched, they had to retreat to the mountainous areas or areas outside the Saiwai because they could not open up the various transportation nodes guarded by the official army.

In accordance with the orders of the General Staff, the officers and soldiers of the provinces mobilized elite troops to pursue them, and after breaking up these people's rebel armies, they gathered and annihilated their leaders, and finally recovered most of the prefectures and counties. And most of those people who fled to the deep mountains and forests and Saiwai were captured by our officers and soldiers...

The Disaster Relief Emergency Committee raised a total of 60 million yuan, of which 3.37 million came from private donations, 2.2 million from the salt industry and customs donations, 1.57 million yuan from the Ministry of Households, 8.47 million yuan from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 12 million yuan from the issuance of long-term treasury bonds, and about 32 million yuan from the issuance of short-term treasury bonds.

As of last week, there are still 16 million yuan in the committee's account, and as long as the situation next year is not as bad as this year, then this fund can last until April and May next year, but the source of funds after that is still uncertain..."

Zhu Youzhen listened to Xia Yunyi's report silently, and only then did he interject here: "This year, we forced the wealthy businessmen in China to replace the gold and silver on hand with paper and pencils with an order to confiscate gold and silver, and I remember that the three major banks replenished more than 80 million taels of silver reserves for this purpose, of which nearly a quarter was used to buy treasury bonds.

If there is a real need, we can continue to assess the demand for short-term treasury bonds in March and April next year, and I think the banks will be able to support it for the time being.

In addition, the silver exchange agreement reached between China and the Commercial Bank of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Spain has come into effect. The first batch of silver from the Viceroyalty of Peru has been safely shipped back to Shanghai this year, including 315 tons of silver for the property of the Kingdom of Spain, 136.7 tons of silver for personal property, and hundreds of kilograms of gold, with a total value of more than 12 million taels of silver.

In spite of this hard currency, we had to ship silk, tea, porcelain, spices, and other goods to Europe and turn them into cash payments to the Spaniards. However, basically in the next 10 years, such a sum of money will be imported into China every year in the Americas, so it should not be a big problem to issue one or two short-term treasury bonds as collateral for this exchange business.

At present, the biggest problem is that the transportation capacity in various places is insufficient, and the lack of water conservancy facilities has made it impossible for us to transport grain from the south and overseas to the disaster-stricken areas in the north, and agriculture in various places still needs to rely on the weather for food, and this is the biggest problem that has led to the inability of the imperial court to provide timely relief to the disaster-stricken areas after the expansion of the disaster area this year, and the inability to guide the victims to help themselves..."

When Chongzhen talked about economic issues, even Guo Yunhou, the head of the household department, could only prick up his ears and listen. After all, the improvement of the country's finances in the past ten years is, in the final analysis, a plan made by Chongzhen, and the household officials are just following the prescription prescribed by the emperor.

And today, the basic means used by Chongzhen to improve the country's finances can be regarded as basically a little bit from top to bottom. The first is to issue treasury bonds and bind them to paper money, so as to divert future money to the present; the second is to monopolize gold and silver, so as to stabilize the value of paper money, so that the market can obtain enough money, so as to promote the vitality of the economy; The third is to take advantage of the dominant position of the Ming Dynasty to the surrounding and overseas countries, and export paper money to the surrounding and overseas countries, so as to harvest the wealth of these small countries to fill the financial gap of the Ming Dynasty.

Although the sophistication of this financial system is far from comparable to that of later generations, it is already a very outstanding financial design in this era. It is with the support of this financial system that Daming not only raised a large amount of capital to invest in the national economic construction project, but also firmly supported the large amount of funds needed for military reform and foreign wars, and even maintained the national economy without collapse in such a serious natural disaster this year, and successfully carried out a large-scale relief operation.

So, when Chongzhen planned to raise the source of funds for next year's committee, although it sounded like these funds were almost stealing wealth from the people and the Kingdom of Spain, Xia Yunyi carefully took the emperor's words to heart, and did not raise the question of whether it was ethical to use these funds.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that after the Ming Dynasty opened the country, the idea of absorbing overseas wealth to make up for the lack of the Ming Dynasty became the consensus of the Ming Dynasty. Even a righteous gentleman like Xia Yunyi doesn't think there's anything wrong with using foreign wealth to help the poverty and difficulties of the Ming people at this moment.

On the contrary, after such a thrilling disaster relief this year, the bureaucrats, gentry, and common people of the Ming Dynasty began to realize that if there was no food and materials from overseas, then in the event of a large-scale disaster like this year, the people in the disaster area could only wait for death, and the surrounding areas of the disaster area would not get any benefits.

Whether the victims of the disaster rise up to make trouble, or the officers and men are forced to borrow grain and money, a man-made disaster will be spread out in the areas that have not been affected by the disaster. As a result, people have to turn their attention overseas for new sources of food, supplies and wealth. The shift in the mainstream values of society can be regarded as completely marginalizing the old gentry who still wanted to close themselves off from the country, and the movement to open up overseas has set off another wave.

However, Chongzhen did not focus on this at this time, and he was busy finishing up this year's disaster relief operation. After talking about the financial open source issue, he quickly shifted the topic to the post-disaster epidemic prevention work.

(. = )