March 1861 was a month of excitement and change for the Chinese Empire, because it was during this month that the Chinese Empire presented a series of new changes that made people stunned, both in military and foreign affairs.

First of all, on the day of the lunar equinox, the Chinese Imperial Government issued the No. 1 Order of the State Council and the No. 2 Order of the State Council, thus starting a vigorous agricultural large-scale production movement.

The so-called Order No. 1 of the State Council is mainly an order on agricultural production, and later it was also called the Order on the Promotion of Modern Agriculture.

Specifically, this No. 1 decree refers to the fact that within the territory of the Chinese Empire, it is necessary to first ensure that 10 million mu of land is planted with high-yield hybrid rice, give priority to ensuring the production of staple food crops, strengthen the cultivation of cash crops and animal husbandry on the basis of ensuring staple food crops, increase the propaganda of scientific planting, and advocate scientific agriculture.

For the promotion plan of 10 million mu of hybrid rice, the policy of compulsory promotion, payment after collection, diversified cooperation, unified purchase, and tax exemption is implemented, so as to increase the enthusiasm of farmers for planting.

The so-called compulsory promotion refers to the implementation of the order of compulsory planting of high-yield rice in the designated areas suitable for the growth of high-yield rice, and anyone who hinders the cultivation of high-yield rice is a reactionary who undermines the country's agricultural construction and will be imprisoned.

As for post-harvest payment, it means that all the high-yield rice seedlings are provided by the government, and you don't need to spend money to buy them when you plant them, and after the harvest, you only need to return the seedling money to the government, and the rest of the harvest is yours, which is called post-harvest payment.

Diverse cooperation means that the way of farming can be diversified.

For example, if a person who owns the land grows or hires someone to farm the land exactly as before, he or she can also be bought by the government at a high price to buy your land, and then hire you back as an agricultural worker in the land to farm the land, and even several companies can use the land as collateral to set up an agricultural company and borrow money from the bank to buy agricultural materials such as farm tools, ploughing cattle, and fertilizers. Increase food production.

Unified purchase means that after the harvest, the government will pay a guaranteed purchase price to purchase grain in a unified manner according to the different conditions in various places, so as to ensure that the grain can be sold at a good price after the harvest, so as to avoid the situation of cheap grain hurting farmers.

It is easy to understand that all tax exemptions are easy to understand, farmers who grow high-yielding rice. There is no agricultural tax, that is, you grow food and earn everything yourself.

In short, this means that except for the compulsory planting of high-yield rice in the demarcated area, and no other things can be planted, there are no mandatory requirements in other aspects, no single planting mode, and no compulsory annexation of land, such as large-scale production by agricultural companies.

This illustrates the land question of the Chinese Empire. We will not make compulsory requirements, we will not engage in the practice of cracking down on local tyrants and dividing up the land, we will still practice private ownership of land, and maintain the legitimacy of the landlords' land ownership. You can plant it according to your own wishes, at most the harvest is not as good as other methods. In doing so, it is possible to ensure the stability of grain without arousing the resistance of the landlords. Maintain social stability and do not cause excessive turmoil.

On the basis of ensuring the planting of 10 million acres of high-yield rice areas, for other staple foods and cash crops. The state has also implemented a tax exemption policy, which means that other crops such as cotton, soybeans, wheat, sorghum and other crops will no longer be subject to agricultural tax, but will be charged a low land use tax.

Land use tax means that as long as you have land, then according to the nature and quality of the land, you must pay a certain amount of use tax every year, even if you abandon the wasteland and use nothing, you must pay this tax.

In other words, the more land you have, the more taxes you have to pay, but if you can use the land efficiently, then the land use tax is negligible, and if you don't use it, you have to pay it for nothing.

However, this land use tax only refers to the land that has been registered in the Chinese Empire at present, and if it is newly opened wasteland, then it can be exempted from tax for three years, and after three years, it will be assessed according to the average yield of the land, and the minimum land tax will be charged according to the assessment.

However, this system was only implemented within the Chinese Empire itself, and the colonies were not within this scope, such as the Hawaiian Concession, so this set of rules was not used for the time being.

For cash crops, priority is given to the promotion of soybeans, tea, mulberry, peanuts, and apples, and those who grow these five crops can use the land as collateral to obtain interest-free loans, and can negotiate with the empire for high-yield seeds or seedlings.

Because these five cash crops are promotion projects, after all, they are excellent seeds and seedlings obtained in modern times, so the principle of trial planting first and then giving money is still implemented. In the case of non-promotional projects, these incentives are no longer available.

In this, soybeans and peanuts are oil crops, which can not only supplement fat to the Chinese people, but also supplement protein to the Chinese people, which is very good for strengthening the physique, and apples have a long shelf life, resistant to transportation, and are excellent vitamin supplement foods.

In addition to cash crops, there are also priority promotion projects in animal husbandry, which are fish, duck, chicken and pig farming.

Needless to mention the fish farming industry, the promotion of largemouth catfish in the south of Shandong, the promotion of four large fish and grass carp in the north of Shandong, fish farming usually has to be mixed with chickens and ducks, if fish farming and chicken and duck raising at the same time, then you can get a certain amount of small low-interest loans.

Pig raising is naturally to promote the big white pig, this kind of pig fat meat, can produce enough oil, pig skin and pig hair are useful, the benefits are countless.

Originally, I still wanted to raise cattle, but considering that the consumption of cattle is relatively large, the production cycle is long, and it does not conform to the current national conditions, so it is not among the vigorous promotion for the time being, but there are still many cattle farms near the barracks of the Praetorian Guards, which are basically raising cows, and providing pasteurized milk for the Janissaries and their families, which is regarded as a welfare of the Praetorian Guards.

Apart from these high-profile projects, science promotion may seem less visible, but it is the most important part of the order.

Because in this order, the rural areas will set up agricultural stations according to the situation, and the agricultural station is a small library, which will provide some books on scientific planting and breeding, and the central government will also send some people who are literate and have good planting skills to enter the agricultural stations in various places as station directors to help everyone learn how to plant scientifically and how to breed scientifically, so as to achieve the goal of common prosperity.

Of course, at the beginning, due to the lack of sufficient technicians, it is certainly impossible for agricultural stations to bloom everywhere, so it can only be the first trial operation in some economically developed areas in the south of the Yangtze River, especially the first surprise training of a group of technicians, and then send them to various places to train more technicians, so as to achieve the goal of comprehensively popularizing scientific agriculture.

Agricultural technicians are food and belong to the civil service sequence, and there is also a field allowance for being stationed in the field, which ensures that the income of the technician can be slightly higher than that of the primary school teacher, and at the same time, the technician is also given a variety of lofty honors, so as to mobilize the enthusiasm of the reader to compete for this position.

As for the No. 2 Order of the State Council, it was a declaration of emancipation of slaves and maids that was widely praised by later generations at home and abroad.

The so-called declaration of emancipation of slaves and maidservants means that all the subjects of the Chinese Empire who had become slaves or maidservants voluntarily or involuntarily for various reasons in the past had become free citizens since the date of the decree was issued, and the original master-slave relationship of personal dependence was automatically changed to a master-servant relationship of the nature of employment, and a new law on the protection of employment relations was implemented.

To put it simply, all the slaves and maids of the Chinese Empire, whether they are inferior people, have become free people, and the original owner and you can only have an employment relationship, and both parties must be protected by the employment law, and the original owner cannot buy and sell the original slaves and maids at will, and the original slaves and maids also enjoy the rights and obligations of all free people.

In other words, the original slave and maid abolished the personal dependence between the slave and the master, and changed it to the employment relationship between the master and the servant, although it may not have changed much in substance, but the binding relationship has become relatively looser.

This is naturally to liberate the labor force, so that more labor force can move freely, no longer fix the labor force to the landlord and the land, facilitate the migration of the population, and remove obstacles for the future immigration policy.

As for whether this would reduce the authority of the emperor and provoke the landlords to revolt, thus causing unrest? This will not be, because the situation in China is different from that of the United States and Russia, although there are also slaves, but the number of slaves and maids among the people is relatively small, and most of them are free people, and because of the factors of social unrest, the restrictions between masters and slaves are not strict.

Of course, such a policy will certainly cause dissatisfaction among some landlords, especially the big landlords, but because of the factors of social turmoil, the landlord class has been greatly weakened, and the military strength of the empire is too strong.

Moreover, this policy has not changed much in essence, because the lord is still the lord, and the subordinate is still the subordinate, but the subordinate is a free citizen and cannot be bought and sold at will.

That is to say, even if the subordinate has a free body, but in the case of pennilessness, he still has to rely on the old man to live, it is nothing more than that the old man must be slightly better to the subordinate in the future, can not buy and sell at will, can not play the law at will, lynching, can not shout and kill the next person, but because of traditional thinking, the Chinese themselves are not harsh on the subordinate, and compared with the Russians and the Americans, it is much worse.

Therefore, after the second order of the emancipation declaration was issued, the turmoil caused was not great, and a small number of large families at most whispered a few words in private and accepted them willingly, while most of the common people shouted the emperor's sage, thinking that this was a great virtue that was rare for eternity, especially those slaves and maids, who were even more grateful to the emperor.

On the contrary, this kind of order will not have much impact on the imperial rule, after all, the emperor is originally a special existence on the high ground, according to the constitution of the Chinese Empire, China is an imperial system, that is, all subjects are the emperor's subjects, so this system only allows the emperor's subjects to maintain a superficial equality, but the class still exists. (To be continued......)