380 Seventeen Eighty-One

December 26, 1780, this day is boxingday in modern Western society, which means the day of opening gifts after Christmas, and of course some Chinese lamely translate it as boxing festival. On this day, Xu Xin gave birth to a healthy baby boy for Bai Nan, Bai Nan named him Bai En, and the whole family was full www.biquge.info of joy, including the little girl Bai Xin, who was also satisfied that she finally had a little thug in the future.

In the joy of the birth of his son, the new year is coming, and Datang Yihuang has spent seven years in this time and space. And with it is the sharp increase in the national strength of the Tang Dynasty. At the end of 1780, the population of the three states on the west coast of the Tang Dynasty reached 203. 510,000 people. The total population of the two inland states and the three southeastern states is about 6. 60,000 people, with a total local population of more than 2.1 million. Among the several overseas territories, the Okuyu overseas territory has a population of 2.6 million, which is the most populous overseas territory, but all of them are Japanese and Japanese. The population of Guwei Overseas Territory is 680,000, mainly Manchu. The population of the three overseas territories in Southeast Asia and the three foreign territories in Oceania cannot be counted temporarily, and the actual population can be ignored, and Hawaii is theoretically not part of the territory of the Tang Dynasty, so it is not counted.

In terms of population alone, the Tang Dynasty, with a population of millions, is no longer a small country by the standards of the late 18th century. According to the calculation of the National Bureau of Statistics and the natural growth rate of the population, the population of the Tang Dynasty will exceed 7 million at the end of 1785 (not counting overseas territories and special regions). Even the people who single-handedly built the country found it hard to believe. Because in the middle of the 18th century, the population of Britain was only this number, half a century later. Great Britain has a population of 10.5 million. The estimated time for the population of Datang to exceed 10 million is 1787 or 1788.

This followed a large number of immigrants from the Qing Dynasty. And the country's high medical conditions and high level of social welfare are related to the fact that the Chinese still have a strong sense of fertility at this time. So. The Tang Republic will become a country with a population of 10 million earlier than the United Kingdom. And when the population of Britain exceeds 10 million, the population of Datang should steadily exceed 30 million, more than three times that of the United Kingdom.

Basically, when the generation of Bai Nan was in the prime of life, the generation born in Datang had already grown up, and Datang would be in a lasting demographic dividend, and provide manpower for the country to continue to colonize abroad. Under such population growth expectations, Datang leaders are more optimistic. Governance initiatives and national strategies have become more proactive and proactive.

Not only the population, but also the economic achievements of Datang itself are becoming more and more eye-catching. Only one item of state finance is taken here as an explanation.

In 1778, when Qianlong suspended trade with the Tang Republic, the financial revenue of the Tang Republic was about 390 million Tang Yuan. According to the calculations of the national economic department, in the past fiscal year, the total fiscal revenue of the Tang Republic has reached 12. 3.8 billion Tang Yuan, equivalent to nearly 1 pound sterling. 700 million. That is, more than 500 million taels of silver. Considering that the total financial revenue of the Qing State during the Qianlong period was 60 million taels of silver, then in 1780. Datang is a country with a population of more than 2 million, and more than half of them are new immigrants, and its fiscal revenue is more than eight times that of the Qing Dynasty, which has a population of nearly 400 million.

This achievement made many Tang people rejoice, and it took only six years for the Tang people to accomplish the feat of earning more than the European powers combined. This does not even include the figures of the financially autonomous local government of the United China Special Administrative Region, nor the revenues of a few overseas territories, but the profits from trade. Of course, Datang's cheats that have achieved this number are also flying.

In the pie chart of fiscal revenue, the country's normal tax revenue and the profits of state-owned enterprises totaled more than 200 million Tang Yuan, which is not large considering that the effective tax rate of Datang is relatively low, and most of the new immigrants are in the tax-free group. It is worth mentioning that enterprises involved in trade will list their trade income separately and will not be counted in the normal profits and taxes. This is because the price of Datang commodities when they are supplied to China is low, or it is in the normal category. And after exporting, it is often several times the price of the cost.

Trade is the second largest fiscal revenue, with trade income of about 3. 1.8 billion Tang Yuan. Among them, the United States is now the largest market for Datang, and Datang's trade and financial profits in the United States are about 1. 300 million Tang yuan, various industrial products and other commodities from Datang sold well in the United States, and European products were defeated. From the tea and coffee that Americans drink, to the kitchen utensils used by Americans, the electric lights and coal-burning stoves at home, the cars running on the streets, the machinery in various factories, and the weapons of the American military, Datang provides Americans with almost everything they cannot produce themselves. The second market is Europe, which is about 1. 0.5 billion trade profits. The third is the newly restored Qing State, with a trade volume of 80 million Tang Yuan, but the tea and silk monopolized from the Qing State also gave the Tang people a lot of profits. The Qing court's military procurement of more than 10 million yuan accounted for a considerable part. The rest of the trade with other colonies and small countries was relatively small, accounting for only more than 3 million Tang Yuan.

In the process of arms procurement, because it is apportioned over the years of subsequent production and delivery, the profits from arms sales of the Qing Dynasty, France, and Britain are calculated cumulatively.

In fact, the Tang Republic accounts for the largest part of the fiscal revenue, which is the mining income of gold, silver and precious metal mines. Datang is a gold standard country, so the gold mines mined are all cash, and they can be used to print money directly. Of course, the Datang Central Bank can't mess around, because the productivity level of Datang is relatively high, if it really uses pure gold mine production as a monetary means, and there is no other means to check and balance, then Datang custody will be inflationary. But the reality in Datang is a moderate deflationary situation, which is due to the fact that the government, which has a relatively strong planning capacity, is desperately developing infrastructure, accommodating new immigrants, and creating a large number of new jobs. Of course, despite this, some of the country's economic conditions are still out of balance, and the more typical one is the price of grain. At present, the major farms are basically relying on the cigarette factories, textile factories, and food processing factories to which they belong to make profits, because if their grain floods into the market, the price of grain can be hit to such a terrifying point as a penny and a pound in an instant.

The government has no good way to deal with this, and of course the state can't let the grain really become a penny and a pound. Therefore, the method of administrative pricing plus subsidies is used. Fortunately, the influx of new immigrants has led to an increasing demand for food. It will not affect the development of the country's agriculture.

Like grain, Datang's domestic market is full of strange phenomena, some commodities are unusually low, while others are very high, which stems from the uneven development, of course, in the depths, in order to balance the production of a large number of precious metals under the gold standard, to prevent inflation. And the planned economy of a super-large area has also led to this situation. But fortunately, Datang's economic system is both the market and the plan, if it really engages in a free market, then Datang will have an economic crisis in an instant, the price of gold will plummet, prices will skyrocket, and foreign countries will find that Datang's gold is cheap, and then quickly let Datang's hard currency outflow, and finally it is equivalent to cutting off a large piece of meat on Datang's economy.

Of course, abolishing the gold standard and implementing a credit money system is also a way to do so. But what is also unavoidable is the collapse of the price of gold. This is a matter determined by the gap in the level of productivity and the amount of resource reserves, and it can be said that the method used by Datang now is the best among the current means. Try to keep all the meat rotting in the pan. And gold mine production under the gold standard is actually equivalent to the country's cash harvest. By expanding the scale of the economy, investing in infrastructure construction, increasing jobs and state welfare, the state is actually returning this round of cash to the people to a certain extent. The final result is to make the cake of the national economy bigger, even if the number of people who share the cake becomes 2 million, or even 5 million or 10 million in the future, they will get enough of the cake.

After talking for a long time, how much is the annual gold production of the Tang Republic?

25 million ounces, or more than 700 tons of gold. This figure is nearly double the annual gold production in China in the 21st century. The reality is that the entire gold deposit on the West Coast is in better condition than most of China's gold mines. And now Datang's gold mining capacity is not much worse than that of later generations.

To take another example, in the early 19th century, the United States was not a major producer of gold. In 1847, the year before the California Gold Rush, the national gold production was 4. 30,000 ounces, almost all of which are by-products of base metals. However, by 1848, due to the discovery of gold in California, that number had swelled to 48. 40,000 ounces, which increased to 19,000,000 ounces in 1849. In 1853, production had reached 31 million ounces, worth almost $65 million, while the federal government spent only $48 million that year.

In 1844, the U.S. government's fiscal revenue was only $29 million, and in 1854 it increased to $73 million, doubling in just ten years, which was naturally inseparable from the gold rush. The California Gold Rush was dominated by private miners, who received the vast majority of their gold privately, and the federal government received taxes from their gold mining.

So what's the situation with Datang? In the early years of Datang's existence, the gold company had not yet begun to mine on a large scale, and the initial output could only reach a few hundred kilograms per year. But then the gold company started to make a difference, and it really understood what it was like to sit on a gold mine. Due to Datang's strict restrictions on the mining of precious metal resources, the gold company is basically the main force in the domestic gold mining industry. And all gold belongs to the state profit. There are only small areas of gold, which are limited to private mining and have relatively high taxes. Gold theft is also a serious social problem in Datang, and every once in a while, some people are arrested for illegal gold mining.

Therefore, for gold alone, Datang simply earned as much as 700 million Tang Yuan, which also made the gold company a state-owned enterprise directly under the State Council and under the supervision of the State Council.

In addition, Datang is now focusing on gold in Jiazhou. In fact, the West Coast from Jiazhou to Alaska is full of gold, and the entire West Coast gold panning has been going on for half a century. Similarly, in Luanzhou, that is, Nevada, another plane, the annual output of gold here has reached more than 5 million ounces, and most of the associated mines here are gold and silver, where Datang has developed Rochester, Comstock and other famous historical rich mines, and the annual output of silver is also more than 1,000 million ounces, equivalent to about 20 million Tang Yuan.

Of course, the Tang people are not very thirsty for silver, and if the Tang people are interested, they can completely explode the annual output of hundreds of millions of ounces of silver, but that is useless except to destroy their own economic order. The gold and silver mines are lying there, and it is not a problem when they want to mine them. And because the Tang people's trade is in a serious surplus, a large number of precious metals have been brought into the country, especially silver coins, which also makes the Tang people more cautious about the development of silver mines, because the price of silver has collapsed many times in history, the gold-silver ratio at the end of the 18th century was 1:15, and by 2015 this ratio became about 1:75, which can be seen how serious the collapse of silver prices has been in recent centuries. Of course, this trend is inevitable.

At least for now, it is preferable for Datang to mine gold, silver and precious metals and systematically invest these currencies in the national economy to accommodate more new immigrants. In the period of credit money, the total amount of social wealth is used to determine the total amount of money, and the former is not so easy to determine, especially in the rapid increase in the population and economic scale of the Tang Dynasty, it is impossible to determine, so it is more realistic to use the gold standard as the monetary system, in the case of moderate deflation or moderate inflation, to hold up the economic take-off.

And debt currencies like the US dollar, since the Tang Republic has never been a capitalist country, are not considered at all. Although this debt currency has fattened the United States, it is not a reliable system, and after the 21st century, the US federal government is facing hundreds of billions of dollars of annual Treasury bond interest repayment pressure, and its control over the economy has been reduced to a certain extent.

The long-term development strategy of Datang's national economy is to focus on expanding domestic demand and consumption, and constantly expand its own economic aggregate. Giving each household an adequate income while enabling them to keep spending while saving a limited amount of money to promote economic growth. The income from gold and silver will not last, and the income from trade, after a period of rapid growth, will face the inevitable consequence of expanding the economy of the people with whom it trades in order to increase their spending power. Of course, this is a very troublesome matter, and Datang does not want to have too strong competitors, and at the same time cause a lot of trouble for itself in the international political arena. But keeping other countries in their primitive state is obviously a much more stupid approach. (To be continued.) )