"What a pathetic man. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info" The girl sighed softly, as if it had penetrated Thomas's heart, making him feel that she was even more beautiful and moving in front of him.

"His sincerity in love is really touching." Chen Huan said to Thomas, "Please, Mr. Thomas, you must help him and let him return to his relatives safely." ”

"Don't worry, my dear, I'll do it." Thomas told the girl the story of the Russian, originally hoping to win her curiosity and sympathy, but he did not expect the girl to make such a request to him, although the Russian is now in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thomas still agreed.

But at this time, Thomas did not think of what kind of new storm he would cause for this poor Russian to help.

After the birthday banquet, Chen Tingxuan, Chen Hong, father and son, Nathan Sara father and daughter, and Lin Yiqing came to the secret room and chatted.

"What you've accomplished over the years can be described as 'great.'" Nathan said to Lin Yiqing, "It's really remarkable that you can use the power of the royal family to break the shackles of the industrial and commercial development of the Qianguo. ”

"Moreover, in extremely secret circumstances, they did not openly anger the conservative diehards of the Qianguo." Sara smiled, "This makes us a lot less resistant to achieving our great plans." ”

"Under the current situation in Qianguo, we can only adopt such a method." Lin Yiqing recalled the hardships he had gone through in order to break the shackles of economic freedom imposed by the traditional system of Qianguo, and he could not help but feel emotional.

Lin Yiqing's greatest achievement over the years is actually the realization of partial economic freedom. The reason why I say this is because the traditional or medieval Qianguo did not have freedom in the modern sense.

As far as the traditional economic sphere is concerned, the Qianguo people can, of course, run agriculture, commerce, and handicrafts, as in the West. However, there was one obstacle that came head-on: restrictions on property ownership.

The "Great Dry Law" inherits the tradition and clearly stipulates: "Where grandparents and parents are here, and their children and grandchildren do not set up household registration and divide property, they will be given 100 rods." If the parents are dead and the brothers do not set up a household registration, and divide the property, the rod shall be eighty. The reason is: "Grandparents and parents are here, and children and grandchildren are not allowed to have private property, and they are also courteous." If you don't set up a household registration and divide your property, you are not filial, so you have a sin of 100 or 80 rods. It is still possible to share wealth with all the people. "This is a regulation that seriously suppresses the enthusiasm of business. What was even more serious was that the imperial court of the Great Qian Empire had erected all kinds of obstacles to the development of the new economy. The conspicuous manifestation of this is that the approval system is implemented for the establishment of new-style industrial and commercial, communications, and financial undertakings, and monopoly privileges are often set up accordingly, and private capital is not allowed to enter freely.

For example, the dominant commodity in international trade in this century is textiles. Together with opium, it is the main factor in the Qianguo's foreign trade surplus. In order to compete with foreign businessmen for profit, since the 70s, relevant people in the government and the opposition have begun to prepare for the establishment of textile factories. In 9080, Shanghai machine weaving layout started production, which was the first cotton textile factory run by the Qianguo people themselves. From the time Li Shaoquan approved the preparation in 9076, it took 4 years after several tosses. In 9080, in order to set up such a factory, Li Shaoquan specially played the game, and with the approval of the emperor, he gave the bureau a ten-year patent, "within ten years, only Chinese businessmen are allowed to attach shares to set up, and no other bureau is allowed." In 9081, Zhang Zhidong appointed someone to set up a weaving bureau in Guangdong, and had to call Li Shaoquan to negotiate: "Reading the "Declaration", the layout of Shanghai has been approved by the Zun Department: 'Within ten years, no other bureau is allowed'; The establishment of an official bureau in Guangdong is different from a commercial bureau; And the imported cloth is more sold, and it is not possible for the Shanghai Bureau to give it, and Guangdong will use it for Guangdong, and I am afraid that it will not be given; When there is no invasion of the benefits of the Shanghai Bureau. Hope for speed. Li Shaoquan's reply was: "It seems that there is no harm in setting up an official bureau in Guangdong, which is far away from Shanghai. According to the stipulation that "no other bureau is allowed," neither side's rhetoric can withstand scrutiny. It's just that Li Shaoquan and Zhang Zhidong are both important ministers of the imperial court, and in the atmosphere of officialdom culture in a society governed by people, the contradictions can be successfully resolved.

But the problem has not really been solved, and other people who run businesses are not so lucky. Guo Yunxian was the first foreign envoy of the Daqian Empire and a second-rank senior member. After returning to China at the end of his term of office, he said in a letter to Lin Yiqing and Li Shaoquan: "The convenience of the ship is well known to the world. Foolish as the Hunan people, they are also accustomed to knowing their benefits. It was ten years ago that the gentry were hindered; In the past 10 years, the obstruction of difficulties has been exclusively in the official. Where three petitions are ...... Under the mediation of Lin Yiqing and Li Shaoquan, Prince Chun went out and approved the Prime Minister's Naval Affairs Yamen, this Hunan non-governmental shipping company was successfully opened.

These two examples are universal. Ultimately, it's a matter of the system: there is no economic freedom in traditional China. Therefore, all walks of life in order to run the new economy at that time encountered the difficulty of official approval.

How was this barrier broken? After the pacification of the coup d'état in Jiashen, under the covert impetus of Lin Yiqing, the Daqian court, which was deeply aware of the role of the navy and the new army and the economic benefits brought by the "New Deal of Korea", issued an edict on October 9, 9085...... For example, building railways, minting money, building machines, opening mines, folding grain, reducing troops, creating postal services, training the army, reorganizing the navy, and establishing schools; It is about the urgent task of raising salaries and training troops; Based on the compassionate business and benefiting the workers. This should be held in a timely manner. Marked by this holy decree, the economic policy of the imperial court of the Great Qian Dynasty changed from suppressing private capital, i.e., depriving the people of their freedom of economic activities, to "caring for workers and benefiting businessmen," that is, striving to protect and nurture private capital. There are still many obstacles and difficulties, but they are generally moving in this direction.

The reason why Lin Yiqing was able to promote the issuance of this important edict was because he pulled the imperial family of the Great Qian Dynasty into the water as a whole - many investors in private new enterprises were members of the imperial family, and out of the protection of their own investment interests, they also wanted to help Lin Yiqing urge the imperial court to issue such an edict.

If we start from the debate in 9065 on whether or not to learn from the West and borrow the law to improve ourselves, it can be said that it took 20 years of debate within the Daqian court to come to such a conclusion. What is more important is that since the two anti-smoking wars, there have been several internal and external wars, and under the domestic and foreign difficulties, the economic policy of the Daqian imperial court has been forced to make major adjustments. In the words of a widely circulated piece that was approved and forwarded by the imperial court at that time: "Today, Confucius and Mencius are resurrected, and there is no way to govern the country except for wealth and strength, and there is no way to become rich and strong." In other words, it is the survival of life and death that forces this authoritarian government to loosen its grip and allow the people a certain degree of economic freedom. The codification of this right was followed by the promulgation of the Concise Articles of Association of the Chamber of Commerce, the General Regulations of Merchants, and the Company Law in early 9086. It stipulates that "any person who establishes a company to register with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs shall submit all the contracts, regulations, articles of association, etc. of the establishment of the company to the Ministry of Maritime Affairs for filing." "As with international practice, it is sufficient to register a business.

At the same time, modern property ownership has been gradually established. The "Daqian Civil and Criminal Procedure Law" stipulates in the section on "Sealing of Products after Judgment of Cases": "Where the property of the defendant himself is seized on the seal paper, if the product is the property of a family, the seal shall be entitled to a share in the name of the defendant, and no share shall be connected to others." "All the items listed on the left are not included in the list of seizures: 1. The property of my wife. 2. The belongings of my parents, siblings and relatives. 3. The things that my children and grandchildren have gained for themselves. "This shows that property ownership has shifted from family or even family ownership to being individual-based. Although it will take time for this provision to be applied not only in lawsuits, but also to become a common practice in society, the emergence of these legal provisions means that the dominant culture is beginning to recognize the legitimacy of individual property rights.

The impact of this change can be far-reaching. First and foremost, it has laid a good institutional foundation for economic development. The decisive factor in economic development is the system. A good system is a powerful promoter for the rapid growth of talents and the accumulation of funds; Otherwise, funds will dissipate and talent will be lost. Although there are still many disadvantages to economic development: strong and privileged foreign capital; cents and other exorbitant taxes; corruption of government officials due to the lag in political system reform; social unrest and unrest caused by wars and other emergencies, etc. According to the investigation and study of the Rothchild family, the current development rate of the national capital industry in the Qianguo should be 12 percent, which is slightly higher than the development rate of the Russian Empire, which abolished serfdom, and Japan after the Meiji Restoration. The development of other economic undertakings has also been relatively smooth. The main one is that the government no longer foolishly insists on the monopoly economy of government or government-supervised business-run as the orientation, but supports and rewards private capital and establishes a free market economic system; Coupled with low wages and raw materials; The market is vast; These favourables are more than offset by other institutional shortcomings, such as corruption and inefficient government.

What the Rothchild family attaches more importance to is the importance of this economic freedom to the liberation of the Qianguo people. In the book translated by the "Dian Shi Zhai Pictorial" about the economic freedom of the West, there are "even the people's livelihood and work, most of the people are left to their own hands, and do not ask", the Prime Minister Yamen Minister and the Ministry of Rites Guo Yunxian wrote with great emotion after reading it: "Reading this, we know that the East and the West are different, and the national qualifications are also very different. The king of the kingdom of Gaisi is only concerned with being the king; And the emperor of Middle-earth, as a king and outside, is also a teacher. And its society is also a society of solid patriarchal law, so it is also said that the Yuan Hou is the parents of the people...... Down to the guard, they are all responsible for the prince of heaven and earth...... The responsibility of the king of the pawn is infinite, and the power of the people has no reason to develop...... And it has no size in the country, and it has no right that must be taken away." Because without economic freedom, we can only rely on the will of the government in everything, and civil rights have no basis.

These tremendous changes have laid the foundation for the Luo family's "Sixth Empire" and the "Seventh Empire" of the 13 overseas elements represented by the Chen family to enter the Qianguo.

Despite his achievements, Lin Yiqing was not carried away by the victory. He was soberly aware that because of the traditional concept of Middle-earth, the distinction between public and private is regarded as the difference between good and evil; In addition, the modern enlightenment movement of the Qianguo country, which has risen repeatedly, is far from completing its historical task; The extreme importance of economic freedom has not yet been profoundly understood by the broad masses of intellectuals in Qianguo, and it is very likely that it will recur in the future.

His path of reform is still not easy.

"Although it is time to return to China for development, we still have to be careful about the 'Yixia Discrimination'." Chen Tingxuan has been through ups and downs for a long time, and he immediately said the key problem, "The lesson of 'Ding Wuqi Famine' is not far away, and it must not be careful. ”

Lin Yiqing certainly understood why Old Man Chen mentioned "Ding Wuqi Famine".

The "Ding Wu Famine" was a great * famine that was called "this strange disaster through the ages" by the court officials: from 9076 to 9079, it lasted for four years; It includes Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Zhili and Shandong provinces, and affects northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui, Longdong and northern Sichuan; Hundreds of millions of people were affected and at least 10 million died of starvation. Among them, 9077 and 9078 are the most intense, because their two years of dry branch are Ding Chou and Wu Yin, so it is called "Ding Wu Qi Famine".

This famine was a great test for the financially embarrassed Daqian Empire's government—the "famine government" under the traditional agricultural empire had long been dismembered and shattered after the Shengping Rebellion, and the modern social relief and security system was far from being established. Paradoxically, despite the countless small-scale popular uprisings in the four years before and after such a terrible famine, none of them developed into a "peasant uprising" in the traditional sense. At a time when government control is not at the bottom of society, this is a "miracle".

Why is this miracle happening?

The real cause of the famine was the indigenization of opium cultivation. While the prolonged drought is the most important cause of famine, the weight of man-made disasters cannot be ignored either. In 9059, the imperial court promulgated the Ordinance on the Collection of Taxes on Native Medicine, which legalized opium cultivation in the country. A short period of more than 10 years later, the peasants in Shanxi "abandoned half of their fields to grow opium poppies," and because growing opium poppies made more money than growing grain, "they often planted opium poppies all over the paddy fields, while the grains were reversed in all barren areas." By the early years of Guangxu, Shanxi had become an important opium-producing area in the Qianguo region. Liu Enpu, the imperial historian, said that the situation in Shanxi is "hundreds of thousands of hectares of paste-rich fields, and there is almost no arboriculture and grain soil"; People at the time estimated: "Since the prevalence of opium poppies, no less than three-tenths or four-tenths of the poppy are planted in the fields of each county, and the whole province should account for 150,000 hectares of land." After the investigation, Zhang Zhidong also said: Opium is cultivated everywhere in Shanxi, "almost no county."

As a consequence of the transfer of large amounts of arable land and labor to opium cultivation, grain production in Shanxi province declined rapidly. The "Declaration" once analyzed: "Since the widespread cultivation of opium poppy in Shanxi, the production of five grains has gradually decreased, and the people have no cover, and when there is a drought and famine, they will immediately see the clumsiness, and this is still harmful and not because of the opium poppy, who believes it?"

Although the spread of opium cultivation is the most severe in Shanxi, it is not a phenomenon unique to Shanxi. Henan and Shandong, both of which belong to the disaster area, are also important local opium producing areas. In the end, this deformed rural "economic development model" made it difficult for the people to find large grain storage households during the famine period, and naturally the phenomenon of grabbing large households could not occur.

Because the famine was too great and the government was unable to provide relief, the Western missionaries in Qianguo began to come forward to provide relief in various disaster areas, which was originally a good thing, but it immediately aroused the vigilance of the traditional scholars and doctors in Qianguo.

A gentry wrote in a letter to a friend: "[Upon hearing the news of the relief of the foreigners] I am deeply afraid of the favor of the enemy country, and I cannot remain indifferent to heresy. Gu Yicai's strength is meager, irretrievable, and it is difficult for him to speak. Soon, the gentry began to suspect that the foreigners had other plans for disaster relief, "The Westerners were providing disaster relief in Shandong, under the guise of disaster relief and compassion for their neighbors, and secretly engaged in a conspiracy to clean up people's hearts." If measures are not taken, I am afraid that it will lead to the loss of popular support, and the spread of paganism will eventually lead to a great disaster in Middle-earth. ”

The gentry suggested to the government that they should compete with the foreigners on the issue of disaster relief, "follow the relief service", and trace the route of the foreigners' disaster relief, so as to fight the disaster relief with disaster relief, otherwise it would not be enough to prevent the foreigners from deceiving the people of the country. They believe that this matter is the unshirkable responsibility and obligation of all patriots and doctors with a conscience.

In the eyes of the scholars, the first task of resisting the hearts and minds of foreigners under the pretext of disaster relief was to compete with the missionaries in adopting children affected by the famine. "After the disaster in Eastern Province, countless children were displaced, and hundreds of them were adopters of other ethnic groups. Stealing people's hearts and alien subordinates, and dissident theories are rampant, which is a great disaster for Zou Lu......"

In such a "grim" situation, they advocate that "the symptoms should be cured in an emergency", and this "target" is children, on the grounds that children are not intellectually enlightened, their feelings are not clear, and they are more likely to be bewitched by other races. They wrote excitedly: Seeing that these children have been driven into the "trap" by foreigners, and can no longer be human again, but those who have flesh and blood "can have no cone of heart and liver, erect hair, and urgently try to remedy it!" ”

Similar initiatives gained widespread acceptance in the circles of the imperial court. "Westerners want to adopt orphans of famine, and that is absolutely unacceptable. …… If we can adopt one more, we will have one less person to join the Church, and the merit will be especially great. ”

"It is still a small matter for a child to starve to death, but it is a big deal to lure him away for Catholicism, and whether he can be lured out of the church should also be considered, but it is very good."

With the support of the gentry, the gentry's relief operation was immediately launched. But they don't actually see the campaign they are initiating as a disaster relief campaign: "This trip is for the enemy, not for relief." Relief is to be benevolent, should be close to the people's will, the enemy only knows the righteousness, although the donation of elk heel, there is no resignation. In other words: the main purpose of this trip is to resist the Yiren, not to provide relief; Disaster relief is about benevolence; What is important about resisting the Yi people is righteousness, and for this reason, we must go to the soup and fight the fire, and we will not hesitate!

Whenever they encountered difficulties in their work, the gentry often used this to encourage themselves: "The will to destroy life must not be forgotten,...... (Now I have this opportunity) and if I miss it, I will be dead, and there is no need for this person in the world. (To be continued.) )