From the restoration of the Holy Land by the Crusaders to the Treaty of Todesillas, the first motives for the invasion of the East by the West, the dominant factor in this great wave of expansion was not the merchants and capitalists, but the Christian aristocracy and missionaries who wished to spread the glory of the Lord. Spain and Portugal are typical Catholic strongholds, with a very obvious religious war color to the global expansion, but the economic colonial color is very weak. There is no commodity dumping and capital export, it is almost simply the destruction of backward civilizations, the squeezing of colonial wealth, and the establishment of a regime does not exist to maintain a prosperous colonial market, and almost all the work is to prevent the colonies from revolting and competing with the backward production capacity of the country.

The church must be at the center of the colonial city and is the most splendid building, and the rest of the municipal works and infrastructure are basically around the church and the governor's palace. There is basically no contribution and expenditure to the local agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors.

This kind of policy, which is bound to lead to internal discontent, is very funny, and it is undoubtedly a step backwards in the eyes of those who have traveled through the public and future generations. However, at that time, the advanced civilization was represented by the two countries of Spain and Portugal, which had entered the era of centralized empire, rather than the various colonies that were in a primitive society to the feudal era. The colonial government, which had the power to set the rules of the game, was extremely advanced if it did not implement a genocidal policy like that of the Mongols.

At the heart of Christianity is the redemptive missionary mechanism that makes all human beings Christians, and has nothing to do with the technological flow of a prosperous economy. The most advanced technology was used in the colonies not where people lived, but the plantations, mines, and docks that extracted wealth from the colonists.

The legacy of this primitive method can still be seen in the words of economists 700 years later in the West: 'Oceania has our sheep farms. There are our cattle on the grasslands of Argentina and western North America, Peru sends its silver, and gold from South Africa and Australia goes to London. Indians and Chinese grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar and spice plantations are located throughout the East Indies. ’

The tone is just a statement of facts, but the triumph that exudes is tantamount to a clown's showmanship in the eyes of the people who have been baptized by the current economic theory. No modern person who has received an education in economic common sense will choose this inefficient way of shearing sheep.

Devout Christians in Spain and Portugal played the role of Xiao He and answered that sentence. The establishment of colonial empires was fueled by religion, but it was also ruined by the rigidity and extravagance of religion.

Far from fueling the economies of Spain and Portugal, the vast colonial wealth made the upper echelons of Spain and Portugal extravagant, and greed and stupidity often went hand in hand. A large inflow of gold. It did not translate into capital at home to stimulate industry and commerce, but on the contrary, it caused a sharp rise in prices. the high cost of industrial goods; At the same time, it has diluted people's attention to the development of industry and commerce, allowing foreign commodities to flood the market and money flowing to foreign countries, forming a vicious circle.

The elites of both countries used their easily accessible wealth to buy large quantities of luxury goods and consumer goods. The woolen, grain, timber, and metal products produced and trafficked by Britain, France, and the Netherlands at good quality and low prices have sucked up the wallets of everyone up and down in both countries.

The divine kingship of the two countries constrained the development of industry and commerce. The denial of the right to autonomy of the city. depriving cities of their creative and exemplary role in economic life; the inability to eliminate local separatist forces, the lack of a unified domestic market and the lack of the necessary social order for economic development; The huge military expenditures required to maintain the imperial system undermined the expectation and confidence of capital accumulation and investment in industry and commerce; The mass deportation of the infidels forced hundreds of thousands of enterprising skilled artisans to flee the country with capital.

The two countries lack the human background of modern economic development. The national fervor developed in the Reconquista was conducive to overseas adventure and expansion, but it was also characterized by chivalrous arrogance and a prejudice against industry and commerce in favor of luxury. While the Reformation was taking place in Europe in favor of the capitalist economy, the Catholic Church permeated all spheres of social life in both countries.

Spain's decline also stemmed from its involvement in Europe's endless wars for supremacy and the heavy financial costs it paid to maintain supremacy at sea. The suppression of the Dutch Revolution failed, the Armada was completely annihilated, and the Thirty Years' War was lost. Overseas colonial hegemony passed into the hands of the Dutch and British.

For a variety of reasons, the Catholic Church bears at least one-third of the responsibility. This extravagant, xenophobic Catholic approach is no match for the austere, practical nature of Protestantism. The Dutch even bowed down before the Manchu chieftains in order to trade with China. The British were willing to act as pirates for the sake of primitive accumulation, and the Catholicism of France was a major reason for its backwardness and Britain.

If China wants to open up colonization, it needs a spiritual impetus that cannot be supported only by relying on windfall profits and making money, but must learn from the Western path of grasping both spiritual and material hands, and in addition to making money, it also needs a spiritual belief to support the ideological field of the colonial cause. Later literature shows that without a devout belief in God, the success of many explorers is questionable. In the face of sepsis, tropical diseases, and many other dangers, the formal faith sustained the last persistence of these colonists.

As a result, the Congregation drafted a new religious strategy suited to national conditions and Asian traditions. Unlike Islam in West Asia and North Africa, and Catholicism in Europe, the old rivals of the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism, which can match or even surpass the number and quality of believers, has taken on this important task. The core of Han Buddhism is to enter the WTO and practice, with simple and practical attributes similar to Protestantism, leading people's spiritual world guidance work in reality, and having the same advanced nature as Protestantism.

Zhao Shouzhong, who was in charge of propaganda and ideological work, and Li Ji co-authored a far-reaching book entitled "The Spirit of Buddhism and the Spirit of Datongism."

In this book, Zhao Shouzhong discusses the generative relationship between religious ideas (Buddhist ethics) and a certain psychological drive (capitalist spirit) hidden behind the development of capitalism. The main body of the book is divided into two parts, with a total of seven chapters. Using analytical statistics, Lee Ki sought to establish the fact that there was a certain correlation between capitalist interest and success and the Buddhist context. "In any country with mixed religious elements. A cursory glance at the statistics on their occupations reveals a situation of business leaders, capital appropriators, high-skilled workers in modern enterprises, and especially managers with higher technical and commercial training. The vast majority are Buddhists. The more capitalism is letting go, the more this situation is becoming more pronounced. Li Ji gave many examples to analyze the reasons for this phenomenon, pointing out that on the surface, it seems that due to the fact that other religions focus on the afterlife, Han Buddhism focuses on the material pleasures of the present, but at the same time there is a striking combination of ascetic afterlife and deep pockets, extreme piety, and no less than inferior business skills.

This combination allows one to speculate: "in the so-called conflict between asceticism, asceticism, and religious piety on the one hand, and the acquisition of physical capitalism on the other." It will eventually be shown that the two sides actually have an extremely close relationship. The question, therefore, can only be: "The awakening of the spirit of hard work, the spirit of aggressiveness (or whatever it may be called) is often attributed to Buddhism, and must not be understood as the enjoyment of the pleasures of life, as is popular belief." If there is any intrinsic connection between the spirit of Buddhism of the old days and the capitalist culture of the past. In any case, we should not look in the so-called sensual pleasures with a touch of materialism or at least anti-asceticism, but in their purely religious character. ”

Li Ji cites the words of the former Song Dynasty religious scholar, the great usurer, and the supreme Zen master who presided over the Great Xiangguo Temple to analyze the spirit of capitalism. Li Ji argues that while it is difficult to say that the spirit of capitalism is fully contained in the words of the Supreme Zen Master he cited, these words do preserve the spirit of capitalism that we are looking for in an almost typical purity. This is the "responsibility of the individual to increase his own capital." And increasing capital is an end in itself. Violating one's heart is considered to be a forgetfulness of responsibility", a peculiar ethic, and a spiritual temperament. That is, what Richi called the spirit of capitalism. It refers to the individual's efforts to increase his capital and his activities for the purpose of doing so as a conscientious action, and making money as an end in itself, as a professional responsibility, and as an expression of virtue and ability. "The responsibility of a person to his vocation is the most representative thing in the social ethics of bourgeois culture, and in a sense, it is the fundamental foundation of bourgeois culture," said Lee. ”

Idealism (another translation of capitalism) defined by Li Ki is strictly restricted, not through robbery, plunder, and other violent means to obtain primitive accumulation, but to calculate income and expenditure rationally. It is characterized by the orderly arrangement of production and business activities, this economic behavior of modern rational capitalism. It is completely consistent with the well-organized and systematically arranged ascetic lifestyle of the Buddhists. The Buddhist ethics of asceticism provides a psychological driving force and moral energy for capitalist entrepreneurs, thus becoming the spiritual driving force for the rise of modern rational capitalism, and also one of the important conditions for the emergence of modern capitalism.

Both rational capitalism and Buddhist ethics are found only in Eastern civilizations, and, in Li Ji's view, almost all the factors related to rational capitalism are also unique to Eastern civilizations. From the self-government system of the village elders that has continued since the Western Zhou Dynasty to the commercial means such as stocks, checks, and bonds, which embody the soul of rationalization, all reflect the characteristics of rationalism. The general characteristic of Eastern civilization that distinguishes it from other civilizations is rationalism. Its origins can be traced back to the entire tradition of Eastern civilization. Different forms of civilization have their own unique spiritual cores, and religion has played a huge role in them. The Buddhist reforms that took place in East Asia were originally motivated by religion, but the spirit of asceticism and the rational arrangement of ethical life expressed in Buddhist ethics inadvertently promoted the development of economic activities, and Buddhist ethics gave a reasonable secular purpose to the pursuit of business and profit. However, the ancient religious ethics of Hinduism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and other major religions that have not undergone religious reform have played a serious role in hindering the capitalist development of these nations.

China's rulers of the past have regarded religion as an instrumentalism, and this thing can be used if it is easy to use, and suppressed if it is not useful. Naturally, he will not be as stupid as Emperor Wu of Liang, and it is imperative to carry out religious reform, and it is also in line with the needs of the times. The cohesion and immortal system of Taoism were too poor, and the expansion and compatibility of the gods and goddesses of other civilizations in the colonial era were too poor to become a universal religious tool needed for the expansion of the empire, and could only be used as a partial supplement to the local religion in China. Confucianism's hypocrisy of being ashamed of words and interests is not well suited to the needs of the times, and can only be used as an aid to educate the people's morality and ethics, and as an opposition party to prevent the empire from becoming a counter-unhealthy trend of money worship.

In ancient Asia, Buddhism engaged in business and lending (Zen Buddhism taught land for tenant rent, the usury of Daxiangguo Temple is not a special case, but a common phenomenon, and the temples in Japan and South Korea are even more ugly) has a long history, and the talent is a team without a base salary that is respected by many later generations of management scholars, and it is the only group of people who can compete with Yici Le Ye people in terms of business level (see Shaolin Temple admissions website for its level). (To be continued......)