Just when Chen Zongdao stood in front of the mirror, looking at his image fixedly. Empress Zhou Zhiruo hung a horizontal knife with a somewhat worn handle and scabbard on his belt, and then hung another almost identical horizontal knife on her waist - Chen Zongdao and Zhou Zhiruo's martial arts were very good! Chen Zongdao once won the first place in the Naval Academy's sword competition, while Zhou Zhiruo won the championship of the Heavenly Dao Court knife competition. The two of them came together because of this common hobby.

Chen Zongdao looked back at his beloved wife's beautiful and moving goose egg face, the years seemed to be frozen on this face, obviously she was about to be thirty years old, and she was also a mother of six children, but she looked no different from when she was eighteen or nineteen years old. The only difference is that the body has become plump, but it is also more pleasing to Chen Zongdao.

So Chen Zongdao, who has been the prince and the emperor for two years, now has only one woman, Zhou Zhiruo. If it weren't for diplomatic necessity, he would not have been willing to accept the women offered by the Holy Heavenly Dao Kingdom, the Japanese Heavenly Dao Kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Great Yuan Kingdom.

Chen Zongdao looked at his beloved wife and sighed softly: "It's enough for me to have you, I really don't want those demon girls!" ”

Zhou Zhiruo said softly: "That's all the responsibility of the saint...... Otherwise, how to demonstrate the suzerainty of the Ming Empire? ”

"What kind of suzerain's power, it doesn't live up to its name at all!" Chen Zongdao shook his head, "Emperor Taizu was just creating the Chinese world in the past, and the Ming Dynasty was in ruins, so he had to let it go. Today, the population of our Ming Dynasty is nearly 30,000,000, the financial income is as high as 1.8 billion, and the army has a million tigers. The navy has three major fleets, namely the Pacific, the Small Western Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean, and hundreds of large and small warships. Global deployment, invincible in the world! How can the prosperous era be comparable to the Ming Dynasty since ancient times? I am the king of the Ming Dynasty. It should be a veritable world honor, not a few women who can cope with the lord of wood carving clay sculptures in the past! ”

Listening to Chen Zongdao's words, Zhou Zhiruo just sighed in her heart, she was fine when she was not the emperor, and she didn't seem to have any ambitions. But now, after two years of being the emperor, this ambition is out of control. is no longer satisfied with nominally dominating the world, but going one step further and making the monarchs of the world obedient and obedient at their feet.

"Saints. This world is so big, how can I manage it? If there weren't so many feudal lords......"

"I'm from the navy, so I know how big the world is!"

Chen Zongdao interrupted his wife's words. He didn't intend to unify the world, and that would certainly not be the case...... However, he could not tolerate the disobedience of those vassal states to him. On the surface, he is submissive, but secretly resists the authority of the Ming Dynasty.

"The two generations of emperors of the Ming Dynasty are too good at talking, although they have been peaceful for decades. But it has made many feudal states forget who is the lord of the world! ”

Zhou Zhiruo's eyebrows frowned, the Ming Empire has been peaceful for almost a hundred years. Although the two major factors of population reproduction and land concentration caused the gap between the rich and the poor in the Ming Dynasty to widen, a large number of landless peasants poured into the cities and could not find jobs to make ends meet. So much so that the outflow of people to the New World (North and South Mingzhou and Oceania) is increasing year by year. But in general, the Ming Empire is still in a peaceful and prosperous era, and the people who live and work in peace and contentment are the majority. I'm afraid that not many people are willing to support the imperial court to fight, right? In particular, the object of the imperial court's crusade is still thousands of miles away......

"Sage, who do you think is the most unappeased among the vassal states?"

"Naturally, Yuan Guo is the most unappeased!" Chen Zongdao sneered. "A hundred years ago, if it weren't for the fact that the Ming Dynasty had no roots in the West, Emperor Taizu would not have tolerated this country at all. Now that our Huaxia has been able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of strong troops in the West, it's time to clean up the tyrannical yuan! ”

Zhou Zhiruo shook her head slightly. She is a Ming matchmaker, so she can naturally participate in politics. He is also very knowledgeable about international affairs. The Chinese states were indeed able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops in the west, and the Qing Dynasty alone could mobilize 300,000 troops. The Divine Heavenly Dao Kingdom can also mobilize an army of 200,000, and the two Persian Kingdoms, the Great Stone Kingdom, and the Great Kang Kingdom can also send troops ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

In addition, although dozens of Chinese countries and West African kingdoms in Mingzhou in the north and south could not send troops across the ocean, those countries had food, and they could be asked for military rations from millions of troops.

But the problem is that the six countries of the Divine Heavenly Dao Kingdom, the Great Qing Kingdom, the Two Persian Kingdoms, the Great Stone Kingdom and the Great Kang Kingdom are all sacred countries, and can they really listen to the words of the Ming Emperor who supports the scientific school?

In addition, the internal problems that the Ming Empire is facing now are really not small! Just take a look around the ever-growing slums in Jiangdu City and you'll know that there are still a lot of bad things about the country!

However, the king of the Ming Dynasty and his ministers now seem to be too lazy to care about the serious poverty problem in Japan, only the increasing financial revenues and the powerful and invincible army and navy......

……

"Xiao Zhao, are you a little disappointed?"

"Hmm. My daughter only heard about how prosperous and rich the city of Daming was and how the people of Daming lived and worked in peace and contentment. But now I only feel that it is exaggerated, except that this Jiangdu is indeed a big city......"

The Holy Maiden Xiao Zhao and her mother Dai Lisa stood in Jiangdu City, on top of a high tower in the Nantian Dao Palace, looking east at the city that was waking up in the morning light, Xiao Zhao's face showed a disappointed expression.

Jiangdu City is far from being as good as it is said! This is not an earthly heaven, but a king-size slum!

Right! Jiangdu is a big slum! Not only Jiangdu is a slum, but Beijing, Mingdu, Lin'an, Qingyuan, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Leizhou, Kaifeng, Daming, Jiangling, these densely populated metropolises distributed throughout the Ming Dynasty are all places where the poor gather!

More than 100 years ago, the great era that emerged because of Chen Dexing has obviously profoundly changed Chinese society! The small-scale peasant economy, which coexisted with the imperial examination system and bureaucratic politics, was completely broken - the foundation of the ancient Chinese economy was not always the small-scale peasant economy, for example, for most of the Han Dynasty, the large-scale agriculture of the Haoqiang manor was the economic foundation!

It is only natural that small agriculture cannot compete with the large estates of powerful landlords, and that the efficiency of large-scale production is in most cases higher than that of small-scale production. If it weren't for the combination of the imperial examination system and bureaucratic politics, it changed the rules of the game for the distribution of wealth in China, and basically decoupled the distribution of wealth from productivity and closely integrated it with the fame of the imperial examination. Then the collapse of the yeoman farmers by Haoqiang Manor will definitely come and go. And so it happened over and over again.

Of course, in the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. The life of the small farmers was just as difficult, but the middle and upper classes in the countryside were busy reading the books of the sages and taking the imperial examinations. I don't have the time to be a strong manor, so I can still be a tenant after the small farmer goes bankrupt. And the bureaucratic landlord class, which became big landlords through the imperial examination, did not bother to run agriculture...... Actually, it won't! Making a fuss and running a farm are not the same thing at all!

But this system, which allowed the economy of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties to be based on the small peasant economy, did not exist in the Chen Ming Dynasty established by Chen Dexing! The Chen Ming Empire was not a country with bureaucratic politics, at most it was a country ruled by bureaucrats, nobles, and gentry. The local bureaucracy was simply powerless to usurp the property of the petty aristocracy and gentry.

Moreover, the Ming Empire did not have any concept of inhibiting annexation and valuing agriculture over commerce...... The Ming Dynasty and the Huaxia countries have land, so they don't have to worry about not having food at all. In addition, developed maritime trade was also the only way to strengthen the ties between the Chinese countries and maintain the hegemony of the Ming world.

Without thriving maritime trade, the Ming Empire would not have had the need or financial resources to maintain a strong global navy. And without a powerful global navy, the world empire of the Ming Dynasty would immediately disintegrate.

It does not suppress mergers and acquisitions, and does not despise commerce. It also encouraged maritime trade and overseas colonization, and the result of the development of the Ming Empire more than a hundred years later was to turn the Ming Empire into a capitalist country with all evils...... Of course, it is still the initial stage of capitalism! And it is also very rudimentary capitalism.

Because now the industrial revolution of the Ming Dynasty is still in the extremely early stage! The progress of various technologies has also slowed down significantly after the death of Chen Dexing, the big golden finger. For example, the simple steam engine appeared as early as Chen Dexing's lifetime, but it was not until a few years ago that the "vacuum steam engine" that could be used in the coal mining industry appeared. However, in other industries, the cost of using the "vacuum steam engine" is too high to be widely used, due to the lack of coal that is cheap enough.

For example, the steel output of the Ming Empire was tens of thousands of tons 100 years ago, and today a hundred years later. The steel output did not exceed 300,000 tons, and the reason for this is that there has been no breakthrough in steel smelting technology in the past 100 years, and even the most basic desulfurization and dephosphorization technology has not been perfected - although the technicians of Nanfen Xing discovered that it is possible to remove slag with lime and fluorite 80 years ago, it is difficult to reach the height of melting slag material due to the temperature of the furnace (which can be achieved during the experiment). However, it is difficult to achieve in large-scale production, and too high furnace temperature is easy to cause accidents), this method of desulfurization and dephosphorization cannot be applied to large-scale production.

But. The output of wrought iron in the Ming Dynasty has already exceeded five million tons, which is enough to provide enough cheap and high-quality agricultural tools for the Ming Empire and the New World on the other side of the ocean. In addition, the Ming Empire has been firmly controlling large pastoral areas for a hundred years. Therefore, there has never been a shortage of large livestock in the Ming Dynasty. In such a situation, cultivating large tracts of land with large livestock and high-quality farm implements becomes a fairly lucrative business.

Therefore. In the past 100 years, the small-scale peasant economy has almost collapsed in the Ming Dynasty! The large farms run by the gentry or gentry were spread throughout the Central Plains, Northeast China, Sichuan, Lianghu, and Lianghuai, which were originally relatively sparsely populated. Jiangnan, which has always had a lot of people and little land, has experienced rounds of bankruptcy of small farmers and middle farmers in the past 100 years! Large numbers of people either flocked to the cities to become proletarians, or left the New World to earn a living. Around the 100th year of Tiandao, there was also a situation of large farms in the countryside of Jiangnan.

Of the nearly 300 million people in the Ming Dynasty, more than 150 million people are now living in cities and towns with more than 10,000 residents. The urbanization rate is already close to 50 percent, and the labor force still engaged in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and other industries (excluding the rural population who cannot work) must be below 50 million.

Suffice it to say, capitalism has taken the lead in the countryside of the Ming Empire!

The capitalist countryside inevitably has a much smaller capacity to absorb the population than the rural areas of the small-scale peasant economy. A large number of bankrupt peasants had to flock to the cities to make a living.

The Industrial Revolution is just starting in the Ming Dynasty, and it is obviously unable to absorb so many foreign populations...... Just like the big cities of Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the big cities of the Ming Empire have become overcrowded slums.

Urban planning made hundreds of years ago, or even earlier, was completely inadequate to accommodate the influx of poor, and several metropolises were under-financed. Roads have become congested and dirty, urban drainage facilities are often paralyzed, garbage in slums has not been cleared, law and order has become somewhat poor, and there are not enough jobs to provide for so many workers. Even the "four-year free compulsory education" that has been in place since the end of Tran's reign is almost paralyzed in the slums of many metropolises...... Many young people from poor families are forced to work as apprentices and child labourers in handicraft workshops at a young age when they should be in school.

The high volume of child labour has further exacerbated the oversupply of the labour market, leaving many unskilled adult poor unemployed, and the massive unemployment has further depressed the wages of workers.

In short, the first impression of today's Daming big city is that it is "dirty and messy" and very crowded. Only a few rich and noble gathering areas and central business districts show a magnificent atmosphere. It's just that compared to the dirty slums and industrial areas, it gives people a very ominous feeling.

"Zhumen's wine and meat stink, and there are frozen bones on the road!" Xiao Zhao whispered Du Fu's famous sentence at this time. Her mother, Dai Lisha, laughed when she heard this: "There is a smell of wine and meat in Zhumen, but frozen bones are rare on the road to Daming." ”

"Not how?" Xiao Zhao wrinkled his nose, and the air was filled with a foul smell, mixed with the stench of garbage and feces and the smell of soot. In addition, Xiao Zhao also noticed that the water of several rivers to the west of Jiangdu City had somehow turned black, and the sky of Jiangdu was often gray. It's very uncomfortable! In her opinion, if the size factor was not considered, this Jiangdu City was not as good as their sacred capital, Salai. Sarai is small, but it's very clean, everything is in order, and everyone lives and works in peace.

Dai Lisa smiled and shook her head, as the head of the Holy Sect, her understanding of the Ming Empire was not limited to the superficial "dirty mess". (To be continued.) )