1042, Datang in the eyes of Westerners (3)
And just now the foreign businessman also said that every common person in China has his own land, which actually refers to the so-called uniform land system in the Tang Dynasty. And the land in the West belongs to the big aristocracy, and the common people do not have much land. And this can't be completely solved by Jingwen, because this is just the difference between the East and the West. In fact, all dynasties in Eastern China encouraged the small-scale peasant economy, and the small-scale peasant economy also knew from a historical point of view that the small-scale peasant economy did not last long. Successive dynasties encouraged the small-scale peasant economy, because as long as the people had land, they would not rebel because of land annexation.
However, the small-scale peasant economy has major drawbacks, that is, the small scale of operation of the peasants, the poor production conditions, and the lack of ability to accumulate reserves. As for the second one, that is, self-sufficiency, the production and operation model is old, and it is difficult to innovate in agricultural technology. The third is that the ability to resist natural and man-made disasters is very poor.
And these three are actually very deadly, and the later they get to the later in the era, the more lethal they are. The scale of production is small, which means that there is just enough food to eat, and there is very little food in reserve. This brings about a third danger, that is, once there is a natural or man-made disaster, the final result is that the peasants go bankrupt. This is the biggest danger for ordinary homesteaders, who need to sell their land to make a living in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. Those big landowners have a strong ability to resist risks, even if they also suffer from natural and man-made disasters, they can survive, and finally buy the bottom of those lands. And this is the reason why land is becoming more and more annexed, and this is the biggest drawback of the small-scale peasant economy.
As for the old production and operation model and the inability to innovate technology, this is also a very important issue. China's small-scale peasant economy has made it impossible for them to innovate their production technology quickly. The most obvious example is that in later generations, many agricultural machinery were invented, and the efficiency of using agricultural machinery is much better than that of ordinary manpower and animal power farming tools. However, the income of ordinary farmers simply cannot afford to buy agricultural machinery. Agricultural machinery is high input and high output, but the people simply cannot afford the high price cost of agricultural machinery. And knowing that agricultural machinery is very efficient. But they couldn't buy it because they owned too little land. And this small-scale peasant economy has finally caused those advanced agricultural machinery to be unable to be promoted.
Historically, advanced agricultural machinery has been costly and simply cannot be afforded by ordinary small farmers. Only those landlords who own a lot of land can afford this kind of high-input, high-output agricultural machinery, and other small farmers are low-cost and low-output, and in the end because they cannot accumulate enough capital to improve agricultural production technology, and finally the technology cannot be innovated.
Judging from Jingwen's later generations, the plantation economy adopted by the West will eventually be able to go to the end. In the plantation economy, they can use agricultural machinery with high input and high output, and use agricultural machinery in large quantities to increase land production. Then the management cost has dropped a lot, so that the overall food output and production cost are declining. And in this way, the people who lost their land were able to force them to go to industry, to become workers. But the East has been on the road of land concentration, then distribution, and then concentration, and then distribution. This is also the result of the frequent change of dynasties in history, and finally the formation of one cycle after another. Jingwen believes that in fact, this small-scale peasant economy is the result of the circulation of dynasties, so even if it is divided into fields, the final result is to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. So want to solve this problem completely. That is to say, to industrialize the country, and then the people who lost their land are workers, and this is fundamental!
Judging by later generations, the Western plantation economy had the last laugh. Because later generations of Jingwen have seen a number of jรน. The country's major grain growers and agricultural reclamation companies only used relatively little land, and then produced relatively more grain. So it's enough to show that the plantation economy is actually much better than the smallholder economy, or at least he can survive longer than the smallholder economy. In fact, the government of later generations also guided the peasants to gradually concentrate the land, and then through intensive cultivation to obtain greater yields. This is a variant of the plantation economy.
"Yes! Every ordinary person here owns land, and if we have so much land, why do we have to travel all the way to the East to do business? Another businessman also sighed.
In fact, these businessmen are all standing and talking, and they don't have a backache. Because they belonged to ordinary people and were not aristocratic landlords, of course they envied those aristocratic landlords. However, if they can own a lot of land, they will also be willing to take the initiative to cultivate the land honestly, rather than go thousands of miles away to do business. The reason why the West was able to start the colonization wave in the first place was because they were too poor, and their land simply could not support more and more people, so they naturally sent the population out to divert local pressure. But the East missed this, because the small-scale peasant economy in the East has kept the people in a state of starvation, and in the end they have not had the courage to go abroad. Therefore, the backwardness of the East after more than a thousand years, in fact, Jingwen does not seem to be able to completely reverse it by a certain person or a certain dynasty.
Jingwen did not clean the land, but from the perspective of the economic system, the small-scale peasant economy in the East was not at all suitable as the foundation of an industrialized country. The economic base determines the superstructure, so Jingwen believes that as long as the small-scale peasant economy is still the mainstream, the country's industrialization will be very slow. And Western industrialization and colonization, in fact, were not forced out!
If there is no Jingwen as a traverser, then the Tang Dynasty is actually destined to embark on a cycle of chaos and rule, and without a traverser to lead the change of the ancient small-scale peasant economic system, it can only be a continuous dynastic reincarnation in the end. Therefore, Jingwen knows that the uniform field system and other methods such as dividing fields are all ways to treat the symptoms but not the root cause, so Jingwen has always been making the country gradually industrialize.
"Yes! If I could live in Datang, how nice it would be! Not only land, but also a variety of abundant products, I can have a good life. Ordinary people here live a much better life than people in the West, and the people here are so happy. Caesar also said.
And Caesar's words made many people feel the same way, after all, who doesn't like this kind of life. Whether the living conditions are good or not, that is all compared. Anyway, in this era, Datang is much better than the West. (To be continued......)