- Luzon, 60 miles outside of Manila, on the beautiful beach of Anyang, sits the training camp of Nanyang Company.

This 100-acre enclosed base is a place for military training for the 20,000 land security forces of the Nanyang Company in Luzon. The 30,000 garrison of the Luzon Governor's Palace also often borrowed the excellent facilities here to train with military instructors.

After sending off his old guards, Shen Mo transferred to this place, because Zheng Ruo had thought that this was the best place to satisfy his rest and thinking, and at the same time absolutely guarantee his safety.

Here, Shen Mo reorganized his guards, and incorporated the original guards into the security forces of the Nanyang Company, where they would receive the most rigorous training and education, and then be assigned to branches in Luzon, Malacca, and Indochina countries, where they could fill various positions according to their abilities.

In order to cope with the new situation, his new guard is no longer the original hundred-man team, but a thousand-man army, all of whom have passed the most rigorous training of the Nanyang Company, and the loyalty and professionalism are incomparable, and Tie Shan, the eldest son of Tiezhu, serves as the chief of the guard.

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These days, Tie Shan was busy training his new subordinates, while Shen Mo recuperated in a villa by the sea for a few days before finally recovering. After dinner that day, he and Zheng Ruozeng went for a walk on the beach. Walking on the crooked coconut grove road, looking at the colorful clouds on the blue waves and golden sea, and the beautiful scene of returning gulls flying together, how can it not make people feel refreshed and happy, and even have more words.

"My lord, why can you resolutely give up your foundation in Beijing?" Seeing that he was in a good mood, Zheng Ruozeng finally asked the doubts in his heart: "You have worked hard for 20 years, and you just let go, don't you feel a pity?" ”

"Is it a pity? It's not a pity. Shen Mo smiled and said: "Building a foundation on the quagmire is not only difficult, but the more you struggle, the deeper and faster you will fall. The hope of the Ming Dynasty is in the southeast, in the school in Suzhou, in the newspapers that are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, in the books that inspire the people's wisdom, in the Huilian, in the Nanyang Company, but not in Beijing! ”

"Is it really going to get to that point?" Although he fully supports the political ideal of silence, Zheng Ruozeng, who was born as a traditional literati, still feels sad about what will happen in the future: "Everyone in the world knows that you can suppress the emperor to death, and what you can't do in the court is not up to you?" ”

"It is true that I have achieved suppression of the emperor, but it is my personal suppression, not the suppression of the system." Shen Mo shook his head and said: "Personal suppression is only temporary, as the emperor grows older, his resistance will become more and more fierce and more beneficial. And me? From the day I ascended to the position of first assistant, I had to make a clear distinction with the word 'power minister', because once I got into these two words, I would lose my morality, and if I suppressed the emperor too much, I would be attacked by the scholars. Because the emperor himself is moral, he has a lot of help for the righteous and little help for the unjust, and it is conceivable who the final victory belongs to. ”

"Only institutional suppression can last," Shen Mo sighed lightly, and said with infinite amazement: "Only when the emperor can't break through this kind of rule can it last."

Update"

"So, why not...... What about the establishment of such institutional repression? Zheng Ruozeng asked.

"Because the supreme power of the state is never in the hands of the minister." Shen Mo said abruptly: "No matter how great my power is, it is also because the emperor is young, and the first emperor ordered me to assist the government, in the final analysis, it is still borrowed from the imperial power." Even if I force this system, when the emperor grows up, he will overthrow it. ”

"It seems," Zheng Ruozeng said with some loss, "I really have to go that way......

"There's no way around it." Shen Mo sighed and said: "Kaiyang, familiar with history books, should know that a country's system is only full of variables in the early days of the founding of the country, and then quickly solidifies, and in less than a generation, it can no longer be changed." And the future of this country, good or bad, and even the cause of its demise, is also doomed at this time. ”

"......" Zheng Ruo thought for a long time, nodded and said, "It seems to be true." ”

"In the early days of the establishment of a unified country, it was often a great chaos and full of vigor and vitality. If the architects of the state can establish a good system, then the regime may remain alive and the country can continue to progress after this generation. On the other hand, if there is a problem with the system that was established in the first place, it will become an incurable terminal disease for future generations, and the damage to the regime will increase over time, and eventually exceed the limit for the country to bear, and a devastating war will break out, and a new cycle will be started by changing the dynasty. Shen Mo stood still, looked at the burning sea and said: "The Ming Dynasty is no exception, the three major terminal diseases born from the mother's womb, the clan, the military system and finance, if they are allowed to run rampant, at most a few decades, they will be overthrown by the peasant uprising." ”

"I wanted to avoid disruption as much as possible, and in my more than a dozen years in Beijing, I tried to see if I could gradually alleviate these symptoms through internal reforms, but I couldn't find even a slim possibility. For example, those clan vassal kings, with more than one million people in their families, plus their slaves and relatives, occupy two-sevenths of the land in the world without paying taxes, and consume half of the country's taxes every year. In those provinces that had vassal kings, in order to provide for these vassal kings, taxes were collected for more than ten years. This kind of great harm in the world is known to everyone, and every chief assistant also wants to solve it, and the imperial court has tried all kinds of tricks to limit it, but it can't stand the surge in their numbers! In fact, everyone knows that if you don't sweep these blood-sucking rice worms into the garbage heap, any method will treat the symptoms but not the root cause, and you can't change the final result. However, just because they are the descendants of the Zhu family, their treatment is determined by Taizu, and they have become hardcore crops, and no one can cut them! ”

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"There are two aspects of finance, one is the tax system, and the other is financial power. There is a complete disconnect between China's fiscal and taxation system and the country's economic development. Emperor Taizu is a generation of Tianjiao, but he is an idiot in terms of finances! Far away from the mainland, on the island of Luzon, thousands of miles away, Shen Mo could finally put down his disguise and fiercely express his contempt for the imperial power: "In order to strengthen the centralization of power, as long as there is ability, the central government will definitely adopt the general revenue and expenditure of the central government. Only in this dynasty, the financial revenue was not first transported to the central government and then distributed, but most of the remaining places, or directly sent to the border towns, and only the part that was really transported to the capital was for the capital's expenses. ”

"The central government lacks a source of revenue, and it is difficult to come up with a large amount of money from its savings, so it is possible to survive when there is nothing to do in the four directions, but it is certainly unthinkable if there is a major war, disaster, or the need to build a large water conservancy project that requires a large amount of long-term expenditure. If it is not changed, the lack of funds will lead to a serious shortage of logistics support, and it will definitely be the culprit in defeating the Ming army in the future. ”

"In the eight years that I have served as the first assistant, the only achievement that can go down in history is that on the basis of Zhang Juzheng's whip law, the local financial power will be collected and the central government will collect and spend, so that the surplus of Taicang will increase from more than 3 million taels in the last years of Longqing to 12 million taels. This figure can cope with several local wars, but it is far from enough to guarantee the security of the country. The richest people in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangzhou, and Shanxi provinces are richer than the national treasury. This also reflects that the country's tax problem is more deadly than the fiscal problem! ”

"The country's tax is the most absurd tax in history, and it only collects taxes from the poor people, but leaves aside the rich businessmen, who account for more than 70% of the total wealth of society. Since ancient times, commerce has been regarded as the last industry, and all of them have been heavily taxed, but the Taizu of this dynasty has been arrogant and arrogant, thinking that he can eliminate the merchant class and make the society forever in the agricultural economy of 'the pure and pure people'. Therefore, he made up households for all walks of life, even prostitutes had a happy household, but he excluded merchants, did not admit the existence of such professions, and naturally there was no commercial tax to speak of.

This kind of behavior of covering up their ears and stealing bells is naturally deeply supported by the rich businessmen, and they justifiably do not pay business taxes. This is fatal to the country, because in recent decades the commodity economy has developed by leaps and bounds, and a large number of agricultural people and arable land have flowed to industry and commerce. There are fewer and fewer people providing fiscal revenue for the state, and industry and commerce, which account for an increasing proportion of the total economy, do not contribute to the state in the slightest, but instead embezzle the country's fiscal and tax base. When the development of the economy does not promote the strength of the country, but plays a role, as the economy develops more and more, the country will only become weaker and weaker, until it is strong from the outside and defeated by the weak enemy. ”

"My subordinates have also seen this problem." Zheng Ruozeng said: "Our Nanyang Company has an annual turnover of more than 40 million taels of silver, and the net profit is also about 8 million taels. Looking at the entire maritime trade, the annual trade volume is more than 500 million taels of silver, and the net inflow of silver into China must be 90 million to 100 million taels, and what does the royal family get from it? One million taels of silver for the use of the title. If this continues, the country will definitely be chaotic. After a pause, he hesitated a little and said, "Since the adults are clear, how can they ......" He didn't dare to go down.

"Why do you never see movement?" Shen Mo smiled and said: "Which class you rely on, you have to represent the interests of which class." Human nature is evil, everyone is self-conscious, and this is especially true for the business class that pursues profits. I stand in the position of Shousuke, representing the imperial court, and if I propose to collect business taxes, I will be immediately regarded as a betrayal by the big industrialists in the southeast, and they will not support me, believe in me, and protect my efforts. Everything I have worked so hard to build will be turned into a castle in the sky that will collapse with a bang......"

"Can you never take it?"

"No, the business tax must be collected, but they must be willing." It was getting dark, and Shen Mo walked back to Zheng Ruozeng: "But this is another problem that the current regime can't solve." Because of the opening of the trade tax, it will not be the maritime merchants of Fujian, Guangzhou, or Shanxi who will suffer, but the industry and commerce of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The imperial court has imposed heavy taxes on Jiangsu and Zhejiang all the year round, and the centrifugism of the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang has been very strong, and they think that this imperial court is already relying on itself to support, and if the commercial tax is opened again, there will definitely be a big mess. ”

"Yes." Zheng Ruozeng nodded with deep feelings: "Our hometown people have always been bold, ignorant of awe, bribing the government, resisting rent and taxes, this is what they often do. ”

"But I don't think it's time to introduce a commercial tax." His silent gaze turned to the far north, and a sneering smile hung on the corner of his mouth: "Seeing that Jinshan Yinshan has no share of his own, can His Majesty the Emperor, who has always been greedy for money, be able to endure your confusion?" ”

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"I may have understood the way adults think." After listening to Shen Mo's words, Zheng Ruozeng had some enlightenment: "There is one last question. ”

"Just ask." When it got dark, the silent face was no longer visible.

"What if, what if I ...... What kind of premise will it be under if there is a war? Zheng Ruozeng asked carefully.

"What is the premise......" was silent for a moment before he said slowly: "There are four premises, one is that the emperor cooperated and did that thing; One is that I have obtained the title of righteousness, and whether I can meet these two conditions at that time is clear and unambiguous. ”

"And what about the other two?"

"One is the call of the business class for power, I don't expect the common people, there is a demand for this at this stage, but as the cornerstone of future rule, the business class must awaken! One is the determination of the gentry class to dare to rebel against the imperial power, and I also do not expect the common people to demand this at this stage, but as the future ruling class, they must awaken! Shen Mo said softly: "They need to be seen with my own eyes, I need to hear them with my own ears, and I need my heart to feel them, if I can't feel the strength and hope, I will never bring war and disasters to this country and nation that has suffered so much." ”

"So, do you think these four conditions are possible?" Zheng Ruozeng's heart was about to jump out of his throat, and he asked the last question.

"Of the first two, one is no problem," Shen Mo smiled disappretently: "The other one still needs to work hard." As for the latter two, how many European books have I translated and how many have I written myself? There are also schools, colleges, newspapers, and pulpits, how much money does Huilian put into it a year, I have to hear a little noise, right? ”

When he walked to the door, he said to Zheng Ruozeng: "In the past two days, make arrangements, I will start to take a walk, I hope this can give me some confidence." ”

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The second update will continue tomorrow...... ro！