Chapter 516: The Ruling Class Quietly Changing the Pattern of Economic Activity (Fourth Update)

As Zhu Youxiao expected, the turmoil in Panshui Tusi in Guizhou eventually turned into a fight between various Tusi, and the officers and soldiers of the imperial court only guarded a few critical areas, and gave some military salaries and grain and grass to the Shuixi and Shuidong Song clans in a timely manner, and did not participate in their fights.

The brute soldiers of the Panshui Tusi are indeed quite powerful, and they don't know how long they have been accumulating, and they even use artillery and other things, but this also shows that there are corrupt people in the Ordnance Department or the army, and they actually smuggle weapons privately.

Major Zhu Youxiao was not allowed to be strictly investigated by the Dongchang Joint Military Justice Department, and Zhu Youxiao adopted zero tolerance for this kind of corrupt behavior of smuggling main battle weapons.

Despite the support of the imperial court, Panshui Tusi is indeed quite powerful, and most of the thirteen villages of the Shuixian clan have been broken in a blink of an eye, and the Banzhou Yang clan has almost reached the moment of complete extinction.

However, the places directly ruled by the imperial court were still stable as usual, Chen Jiru was still teaching in the caves, and merchants from all over the country still brought goods into the major market towns.

With the arrival of Qin Liangyu's white pole soldiers, the scope of the war was further expanded, and the brute soldiers of Panshui Tusi had to engage in fierce battles with the white pole soldiers one after another, but the outcome was difficult to predict, this kind of jungle warfare, it was difficult to annihilate once and for all, basically when Panshui Tusi lost a thousand, the white pole soldiers would also lose eight hundred.

Fortunately, the white pole soldiers have the support of the imperial court, and the Panshui Tusi is a rebellion, and the white pole soldiers basically have the upper hand.

The war lasted for half a year, and the first to be disabled were the local officials who were attacked by the Panshui Tusi such as the Shuixi An's and the Shuidong Song Clan, and then the Panshui Tusi, who were beaten by the white pole soldiers to almost nothing left.

According to the strict orders of the imperial court, Panshui Tusi could not be appeased, so the white pole soldiers had to continue to pursue, and this also caused the white pole soldiers themselves to suffer certain losses, and it was not until a brigade of the Fourth Army was stationed in Chishui and Luzhou that the war ended.

But in this way, it also means that the situation in Sichuan and Guizhou is officially controlled by the imperial court, and the nearby Tusi, who have a little strength, including Shizhu Tusi, no longer have the ability to influence the local situation, and have to follow the will of the imperial court to recuperate.

During this time, Zhu Youxiao, who was in Guangxi, did not realize that he was not far from himself and the war provoked by himself was getting hotter and hotter, at this time he was enjoying the feeling of boating on the blue waves, and the loud singing of the Zhuang people floated in the distance, and the cry of the heron in the near distance made his body and mind a lot easier.

The quiet sunset sticks to the single peaks, and under the single peaks are the rice fields where dragonflies play, which is difficult to feel in the Forbidden City, and he is very intoxicated.

Moreover, according to Li Mingrui, from Wuzhou to Guilin, many rice fields were wasteland reclaimed by Huangzhuang and had been contracted to the local people, so the local gentry could not find tenant farmers, so they had to reduce rents and interest rates to attract strong labor tenants.

This phenomenon is not only unique to Guangxi, but also occurs in almost all other political envoys.

As the proportion of state-owned land increased and the imperial court's financial dependence on agriculture became closer to zero, it was difficult for the rural arable land to become a source of sustainable income for the gentry.

Many squires began to use the money they had saved no longer to buy land, but to operate, trade, and even invest in shares.

Just as after the real estate boom in later generations, people were unwilling to keep their money in the bank and go crazy to buy houses.

After all, after buying land, you have to spend money to hire people to farm, but the profits of agricultural products are not considerable, especially in the peaceful years, when food prices continue to fall, and the people may be able to earn a little money while being self-sufficient to subsidize their daily needs, but for the gentry who live in luxury, it is better to get enough wealth to support their huge expenses than the windfall profits of the shopping malls.

In the entire Ming Dynasty, no one did not talk about buying and selling, even if it was the rebellion of Panshui Tusi in Guizhou that occurred nearby, people in the nearby areas did not think about what to do if these rebels hit the neighboring provinces, but how to make a fortune by it.

Because of the start of the war, the price of iron, grain, and cloth in Guizhou will inevitably rise sharply, while the neighboring provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places are still due to the dividends after the colonial expansion of the Ming Dynasty, resulting in the price of various living and production materials such as iron prices are still falling.

As a result, there are many bold businessmen who risk being found out by the government to smuggle these means of life or production in order to make a profit by earning the difference in price.

But now the contradiction has changed, Panshui Tusi is not a Tartar, and these merchants are not rich Jin merchants, so the way to deal with them is different.

But it is precisely because of this that the war has only been fought for half a year, otherwise, one month is enough.

Zhu Youxiao naturally knew that there would be many officials and businessmen who would take advantage of this to make a fortune, but he had no other way than to let Dongchang carry out a certain degree of control, because this was also caused by himself, because because of his reforms, more and more people began to stop using land to make a fortune, but could only use war and trade to make a fortune.

Most of the wealth accumulated by the Panshui Tusi for many years and the wealth looted from other Tusi fed the nearby gentry who played the role of merchants and the officials who colluded with the merchants, and the real damage was not only the local Tusi but also the imperial court, which suffered a loss of tax revenue in Guizhou in the short term and also bore a certain amount of military salaries.

But this is not a problem, most of these local gentry will put their money in the Royal Bank or invest in the Royal Capital Enterprises after they have made a fortune, and the Royal Capital Enterprises will spend these investments on larger overseas colonization projects after receiving large investments.

As long as the total wealth of the society is increased and there is no problem with distribution, the whole society is still thriving, and local rebellions will not bring people a sense of chaos in the world, and even let the keen eyes shine, knowing that this is an opportunity to achieve wealth redistribution.

As long as they invested in royal capital, these businessmen could take advantage of this to share greater dividends, and it was through this that emerging officials such as Li Mingrui rose to become the new big bureaucrats and big capitalists, and they were close to the core of the empire, so it was naturally easier for them to get investment plans.

They would even use their prominent official position and strong relationship with the royal capital to raise funds to invest in the imperial court's royal capital enterprises, and the dismissed Hubu Shangshu Guo Yunhou played like this, and even set up the first private bank because of this.

Unfortunately, the cholera scandal led to the collapse of the Kwok financial empire he had worked so hard to run.