In the summer of 1865, it is impossible to overemphasize the evolution of the Ming Empire and the world's financial and monetary system. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info. As we all know, the predecessor of the Ming Empire, the Puppet Qing Empire, was one of the world's top economies - if you don't count the entire colonial empire, the scale of Britain's local economy is far less than that of the puppet Qing behemoth. Even if the entire empire is counted, there are different opinions on whether the economic aggregate of the British Empire exceeds that of the puppet Qing Dynasty.

And now, after 20 years of development and expansion. The economic scale of the Greater China Customs Union Zone is already the absolute first in the whole world! The British-American Empire, which had just been founded, was left far behind. Even the industrial scale of Greater China is rapidly catching up with the British-American Empire. This is a large market of nearly 600 million people, and there are almost unlimited resources and land in this era, and after nearly 20 years of hard work, the talents and foundations needed for industrialization have been solid. The only thing lacking was a monetary system that would free the Ming Empire from the constraints of the gold and silver standard and stimulate economic growth.

The land voucher reform undoubtedly installed an incomparably powerful engine on the super giant ship of the Ming Empire. It can be said that the driving force of economic growth in the Ming Empire is even stronger than that of the era of reform and opening up in history, because there are almost no bottlenecks restricting the economy -- there is no shortage of capital, resources, land, technology, market, talent, and even no imperialist threat to the Ming Empire. No one has heard of the island chain or anything, and the army of the Ming Empire is stationed in North America!

The only thing that makes the Chinese feel unpleasant. It is the gate of Malacca that blocks the westward advance of the Ming Dynasty. And the Kingdom of Hawaii, a nail stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's just unpleasant, though. There is no threat to the security and development of the Ming Dynasty. And with a shipbuilding industry of almost the same scale as Britain (the technology is still inferior to that of the British), it is only a matter of time before the Ming Dynasty breaks the door and pulls out the nails.

Therefore, when the news of China's partial breaking of the gold and silver standard land voucher reform reached Europe, it immediately attracted the attention of all European powers. And no one dared to take Zhu Jishi's invention of the land voucher as a joke - because everyone knew that the Chinese emperor was not an economic layman, and that while he was emperor, he also created the largest consortium in the history of the world, the largest bank in the history of the world, and the largest university and scientific research and technology center in the history of the world.

It can be said that everything this character has done since he was born. All have been a great success. At the same time that Europeans regarded Zhu Jishi as a yellow peril defense, there was also a craze for studying Zhu Jishi. Of course, it is not to take Zhu Jishi into the laboratory for research, but to study his doctrine and his past...... It's just that all the research on Zhu Jishi can only be traced back to the day he appeared in Oxfordshire, England. Previously, there was no record of him. Where did he come from? How did you get to Europe and the UK? And where did you get your education? Where he spent his childhood and adolescence is an unsolved mystery. And curious Europeans even called Zhu Jishi the biggest mystery of the 19th century. There are also many scholars and writers who have studied the mystery of Zhu Jishi. A lot of books about this "mystery" are best-selling hot publications. There are even people who have become famous because of this, such as a man named Jules. Verne's French novelist used Zhu Jishi as the prototype to create the best-selling science fiction novel "The Kingdom of Seris".

In this immortal masterpiece, Verne's mind was opened. The fantasy is a kingdom of Seris (Seris is the name given to China by the Romans) on an unknown island in the Pacific Ocean, founded by the princes, scholars, and most brilliant craftsmen of the fallen Ming Dynasty. It has inherited all the essence of the entire Chinese civilization, and has spent 200 years to push the Chinese civilization and technology to a level that surpasses Western civilization. However, due to a tragic natural disaster, it was suddenly destroyed like the Atlantean civilization. And Zhu Jishi (in order to avoid trouble. A pseudonym, of course) is the prince of the kingdom of Seris, who fled alone with all the knowledge of the kingdom and went to Europe...... Of course, this novel made Verne rich, and it also made the "Zhu Ji Shi Mystery" craze in Europe reach an unprecedented **.

In the Ming Consulate General in the embassy district of Constantinople, it was arranged as a scene for a buffet, but a room full of guests did not have the mood to eat, and let the carefully cooked Chinese and Western delicacies exude fragrance in the air. Already slim, Juisa is holding a glass of Dutch water poured into it, surrounded by a group of blonde Russian aristocratic chicks, frowning and helping her father in fluent French...... There's no such thing as a kingdom of Ceris on the Pacific islands! But when these curious Russian girls asked about his father's past, Her Royal Highness the Ming Empress couldn't answer.

In fact, she herself is also very strange, where did her father spend his teenage years? Is it really adrift in the South Seas? But why is there no trace of his father's early activities in the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, or the British Straits Settlements? What a strangeness! After you go back, you must find a way to investigate, and ask your mother, she is the concubine who claims to know her father best!

In another corner of this hall, Zhu Guoxiong, the crown prince of the Ming Dynasty, was holding a glass of wine with ice cubes, and was chatting very friendly with the Russian crown prince dressed in military uniform. The two crown princes were very familiar at first sight. After a short time together, they talked like a pair of old friends. And the content of the conversation between the two certainly has nothing to do with the science fiction novel "The Kingdom of Seris". They were all about to become kings, so it was natural that they would have to discuss some national affairs.

"Nikolai. Aleksandrovich, I don't understand, why do you want to introduce the kind of one-person-one-vote elections in the rural communes? Now that neither the Russian aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie have the right to vote for parliament, how could democracy have been practiced first among the lowest peasantry? ”

Crown Prince Nikolai laughed: "What's so strange about this? His Majesty the Tsar granted freedom to the Russian serfs, and thus the peasants became the staunchest supporters of our Russian Empire, so they could confidently exercise the autonomy of the rural communes. By the way, you seem to have a similar system, right? ”

The crown prince of the Ming Dynasty nodded slightly: "It's just that there is a relatively perfect rural autonomy system in some places. ”

Basic "autonomy" has always existed in China, because China is so vast that top-down rule cannot penetrate down to the grassroots level. That would mean unaffordable management costs and inefficiencies. Therefore, although the current Zhu Ming Dynasty has engaged in the government to go to the countryside, it has only built the most basic government to the town (township), and it is still autonomous below. In Han where there is the power of the traditional gentry clan, the autonomy of the gentry is naturally implemented. In the border provinces, as in Russia, self-government is exercised by votes and village assemblies.

Zhu Guoxiong paused for a moment and shook his head again: "Indeed, grassroots autonomy is a very troublesome issue!" Whether it is relying on the squire or using the ballot, it is a headache. Maybe that's the trouble of a big country like ours? The country is so big that the rulers on high simply do not know what is really going on below. Nikolai, you know what? My eldest brother now rules a small but rich city, he is a dictator and enacts draconian laws, but he manages everything in good order. Just like the King of Ceris in the novel. Because everything in Hong Kong is under his nose.

My great father, on the other hand, could only learn about the great changes taking place in his empire through freely published newspapers and bipartisan debates in Parliament and a secret service...... I think that the best thing that a vote with property restrictions, a parliament with little real power, and a newspaper that likes to be alarmist is to make the emperor know about his country and its people. (To be continued.) )