Zhu Houwei sighed, born in the royal family, he was destined to have no friends.

But he really longed to have a real friend, how good would it be if Yan Tianyuan was still the scheming and chattering Yan Tianyuan before.

It's just a pity that this is impossible, in fact, with Yan Tianyuan's character is not suitable to be the commander of the Jinyi Guard at all, if you want to sit firmly in this position, you have to have a black belly, six relatives do not recognize, you have to be ruthless, and if necessary, you have to lose your conscience!

But there is no way, Yan Tianyuan became the commander of the Jinyi Guard, although it was the result of his game with the civil officials, but it was also because he had no one available.

It is meaningless to say this now, Zhu Houwei can only hope that Yan Tianyuan can be trained in office and become a qualified commander.

"After I go back, I will give an order to thousands of households in various places, let them secretly verify the number of hidden households as much as possible, and then clear the land, and report it to me after verification."

"The last will obey!"

Zhu Houwei nodded, the population record of the Ming Dynasty can be called extremely weird, he investigated the file of the transfer department, the file recorded that in the fifteenth year of Chenghua, the number of registered population was 71.85 million, but in the first year of Zhengde, the population dropped to 46.8 million!

In other words, in the past 25 years, the population of the Ming Dynasty has dropped by 25 million!

It's incredible!

The middle of the Chenghua Dynasty to the Zhengde Dynasty is the Hongzhi Dynasty, and in the later generations of the Hongzhi Dynasty is also called Hongzhi Zhongxing!

There was no mega-disaster, no super-war, no rebellion or peasant uprising that swept the world, and no large-scale plague, so the population of the Hongji Dynasty was sharply reduced by one-third?

What a international joke!

What's even more terrifying is that more than half of the 25 million people who have dropped sharply were in the sixteenth year of Hongzhi and the seventeenth year of Hongzhi!

When the famous Wang Shizhen wrote "The Strange Stories of the Emperor", he said that there are people who are not credible in the national household registration, and bluntly said that the creation of the book by the department and the inspection of the household department and the household department are all just child's play.

Mao Yuanyi in the Chongzhen period also said that the world's household registration is not included in the copyright registration, not as much as it is today.

He Bingdi said in his 1959 book "A Study of the Chinese Population from 1368 to 1953" that the official statistics of the population in the Ming Dynasty were only for natural persons at first, and then quickly changed to only taxpayers, and eventually became statistics on the share of taxes measured in the form of population, which in essence could no longer be regarded as population statistics.

How many people in Daming don't pay taxes?

The family of meritorious scholars is not an individual but the entire family, all the armies, including the soldiers, as well as the descendants of the Zhu family and countless nobles!

This is only on the surface that they do not pay taxes, in fact, there are countless people who rely on large households to evade taxes.

Some experts who have studied the population of the Ming Dynasty have said that after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the actual population was at least 170 million, and may even be as high as 300 million.

Even if it is 170 million, it is less than 50 million recorded in the current household register, more than twice as much, minus those who do not pay taxes, Zhu Houwei can be sure that the number of tax evaders is at least 50 million!

So Zhu Houwei wanted to find out these hermits, and then use bloody evidence to swell the faces of the Manchu ministers.

Of course, it doesn't make much sense to slap the minister's face, Zhu Houwei's real goal has never changed, his goal is always to pay taxes!

However, the roots of this tree are too deep, and it is too difficult to pull it out, even if it can be pulled up, Zhu Houwei also knows that it will inevitably be eaten back if he does not have enough backhand!

There is also the land of Qingzhang, Zhang Juzheng has done this, and of course Zhu Houwei has to do it, he just wants to find out how much land has been hidden in the world, how much tax-free land these meritorious scholars should have, and how much land there is in fact.

In the same way, Zhu Houwei wants to use real evidence to slap the minister's face, and to make the civil interest groups shut up in front of the iron-clad evidence, so as to achieve the goal of his reform!

"Ome."

"The slave is here." Ren Xing immediately came over.

Now Zhang Yong is still the chief eunuch of the master of ceremonies, but the commander of the East Factory has been unloaded and handed over to Ren Xing.

"Did you find the chart?"

"No, the Ministry of Household is still looking for it, and the archives of the Ministry of War can be determined to have been destroyed."

Zhu Houwei sighed, the nautical chart is naturally the navigation route map drawn by Zheng He in the Western Ocean, for Zhu Houwei, who is roughly familiar with the geography of the earth and knows the land distribution map on the earth, the value of this nautical chart is not as great as imagined, but this nautical chart that gathers Zheng He's life's work is gone, after all, it is still a pity.

He took a scroll from the bookcase, and spread it out to reveal a map, a map that looked a little rudimentary compared to the maps of the world in later generations.

"I want you to send someone to do something."

"That's what the master commands."

"This is Luzon." Zhu Houwei pointed to the location of Singapore and said: "I know that there is a crop called sweet potato here that is extremely high-yielding, and you send Fanzi to find a way to get Daming to cultivate, and here." Zhu Houwei's finger pointed at the Americas.

It is still decades before Columbus discovered the American continent, which means that the Americas are still an uncivilized and wild land, and there are high-yield crops such as corn and potatoes in this land.

At least in the year of the catastrophe, there will be no displaced people, and with high-yield crops, the population of the Ming Dynasty will grow rapidly.

Of course, if hybrid rice can appear, it will be very good, but it is a pity that Zhu Houwei knows almost nothing about farming, so he can only say the theory and let people study it, but it has been seven or eight years, and there has been no progress.

If someone has silver, Zhu Houwei has the confidence and capital to conquer the world.

The only bad thing is that the American continent is too far away from Daming, and it is too difficult to reach the new continent safely with the ability to travel on the sea in this era.

"This is an uncultivated land, no smaller than the Ming Dynasty, there are a lot of crops in this land that the Ming Dynasty does not have, you send thousands of people to divide into dozens of batches, and find a way to cross from here!" Zhu Houwei's finger pointed at the Bering Strait.

This is the most likely way for Zhu Houwei to think of success, today's Ming Dynasty does not have a sea ship that can cross the ocean, and it is too difficult to reach the new continent through the ocean, and the storm at sea can easily tear the wooden structure of the sea ship into powder.

If you want to take the sea route, you first have to build a treasure ship like the Zheng He era, and Zhu Houwei is not in the mood to develop a wooden sea ship, so he directly gives up the sea route.

"This strait may freeze in the winter, and Dongchang Fanzi can jump across the ice at that time, and it depends on the will of God whether or not he can successfully bring the seeds back......

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