After the Lantern Festival in the ninth year of Ankang, Zhu Jingyuan packed up his things and left Edo and went to Xi'an, Shaanxi Province to take office.

This time I was going inland, so I had to take a boat to Suzhou to go ashore first, and then change to a special train to Xi'an.

Now there is no high-speed rail, and the whole journey from Suzhou to Xi'an is more than 1,500 kilometers, and you have to sit on the train for a whole day.

However, the special train of the royal family is to pull Zhu Jingyuan's family, and the facilities in the carriage are also of the top room level.

Aside from the unavoidable sound of the train itself, it's like resting indoors for a whole day.

Zhu Jingyuan sleeps at night, and during the day he enjoys the scenery along the way while thinking about his future work.

From Suzhou to Xi'an, from the coast to the inland, from the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River to the Central Plains, from the Yangtze River Delta to the Loess Plateau, the environment on this road is very different, and the natural landscape can be said to be very rich.

However, Zhu Jingyuan himself paid more attention to the differences in social and cultural aspects of the Ming Dynasty's native interior.

Differences between different regions, as well as differences with memories of past lives.

After the Ming Dynasty in this world began to develop colonies, the fields that were not very good in the local area were gradually abandoned.

The terraced fields in the southern hilly areas have long been completely degraded into mountain forests.

Only in plain areas with a large enough area can there be large-scale farms that are not in sight.

From Gangnam to the Central Plains, there are large farms that belonged to the royal family, and mechanization has been rapidly completed in the past few years.

A large number of agricultural workers have been sent to the cities, reducing the employment gap in some cities.

As the train travels through the Great Plains, it is not uncommon to see large tractors and agricultural planes spreading pesticides.

and the occasional small civilian aircraft that seem to be used for play or training in the sky.

The small-scale peasant economy here has completely disappeared, and even in the local area, only large corporation-run farms remain.

This is the biggest difference between the Ming Dynasty in this world and the country where Zhu Jingyuan lived in his previous life.

After Zhu Jingyuan recovered his memory, every time he thought about it, he felt a tingling sensation on his scalp.

The production method of yeoman farming, although it seems to be an absolute backward production capacity in the industrial age.

However, in the traditional dynasties of the East, it is an important foundation for the stable survival of the dynasty.

According to the sociological theories of later generations that he had studied, the nature of yeoman farmers was "petty-bourgeois".

Because they own the key means of production such as land, and at the same time, most of them will also have their own various agricultural tools, which is also a typical means of production.

On the contrary, the managers and shopkeepers in the manufacturers, as long as they do not get the shares of the manufacturers, no matter how decent and exquisite their lives are, they all belong to the proletariat in nature.

Because they do not have the means of production, they are completely dependent on the wages paid by the proprietors.

The real largest petty-bourgeois group is the yeoman peasants.

Once the land has been completely annexed, the yeoman peasants have all become "long-term workers" and become proletarians in nature.

Homesteaders are a very stable part of society, while long-term workers are obviously very unstable.

After Zhu Jingyuan confirmed the situation of the Ming Dynasty, the first thing that came to mind was those countries in Nanyinzhou in his previous life.

After the independence of these countries, the original plantation economy remained largely unchanged, and the land was in the hands of the farmers.

After the start of the Second Industrial Revolution, a large number of agricultural workers lost their jobs and had to go to the cities in search of opportunities, so these countries quickly completed "urbanization".

But if these people can't find work in the cities, then the whole country is in a state of extreme precariousness.

Many countries in Nan Yin Chau do not have industrial development, and the state does not have land to distribute to workers who cannot find work, so they can only live in urban slums in a state of waiting for relief.

The situation is similar in the United States and European countries, but the size of the slums is slightly different.

The slums of typical European and American societies are places where people who have no land and cannot be workers gather.

There is no such concept in the countries surrounding China, because most of the countries have completed land reform, and workers will return to the countryside to work as farmers if they cannot find work.

Zhu Jingyuan once discussed with Zhu Zhongliang after retirement, expressing his worries in this regard.

After all, according to his own personal experience, the premise of wanting to develop industry and commerce is to divide the land first.

This is to provide a stable social basis for industrialization.

From the Meiji Restoration in Japan to the miracle of the Han River in South Korea, even if it was a bald head, he had to carry out land reform after running away.

At that time, Zhu Zhongliang's answer was that the current industrial development of the Ming Dynasty was able to digest the surplus agricultural population.

If there is a large-scale economic or political crisis, and there is a critical situation that neither the royal family nor the imperial court can cope with and control, the emperor can choose to divide the land among the unemployed and displaced people.

Then Zhu Jingyuan suddenly reacted that the Ming Dynasty in this world was spontaneously completed industrialization, not the previous life when Shenzhou and surrounding countries entered the industrial age as a chaser.

If the land annexation and industry and urbanization are completed spontaneously and spontaneously, the result is indeed the current state of the Ming Dynasty, and the same is true of the pre-industrial countries such as Germany, Britain, and France in the original history.

However, the Ming also has a huge difference with them, the land of the Ming Dynasty has indeed completed a complete annexation, but more than half of the part has been annexed to the imperial family, and the emperor can choose to divide the land when necessary.

This is actually an attempt by the royal family to save an extra hand in the case of "foresight".

In Zhu Zhongliang's view, this is another hole card in the hands of the royal family, a hole card to quickly stabilize the social system at a critical moment.

But Zhu Jingyuan was worried, could this field be divided by the emperor's words?

Zhu Jingyuan is worried that when it comes to that state, such measures may not be able to take effect quickly.

Therefore, if you can try it or not, if you can solve the problems in the city, you should not be involved in the countryside.

In normal times, it is necessary to carefully maintain the balance and development of the whole society, and prevent the slightest slight.

As the train continued to travel westward, gradually penetrating into the inland areas of the Ming Dynasty, the size of the cities encountered on the way began to shrink significantly.

Zhu Jingyuan also realized again that compared to his previous life, the Ming Dynasty of this world did not attach much importance to the interior of the mainland.

After defeating Lucia during the Renwu Dynasty, after completely controlling the eastern coastline of Shenzhou and Xianbei, he really maintained peace with Lucia for more than a hundred years.

After helping Persia to quell the rebellion, he did not find a way to annex Persia and turn it into an internal domain, and also allowed Kazakhstan, Khiva, and Persia to retain a high degree of independence.

Compared with Lucia, Daming's desire for inland land seems to be very restrained.

If the Ming Dynasty is a landlocked country, or if the maritime power is very weak, if the surrounding sea routes are controlled by hostile or uncooperative countries, then it is necessary to focus on the inland.

No matter how inconvenient the inland is, the resources of the inland must find a way to develop, just like Lucia in later generations.

But in this world, after the rebuilding of Emperor Shizu, the Ming Dynasty soon built a rather powerful maritime force.

Since then, the Ming Dynasty has expanded most of its overseas land.

After all, the ocean is a natural low-cost transportation platform, and it is easier to go from Yingtianfu to the Western Cape than to Yili.

In particular, successive emperors knew where the world's most important resources were.

After industrialization, a large amount of iron ore may be needed in Tiannan, and a large amount of oil required by the future industry is in the big food country.

Precious metals such as gold ore to ensure currency stability are mainly in Yinzhou and Mozhou, and copper mines used to make low-grade coins and important industrial raw materials are also mainly in Yinzhou.

And these resources are produced not too far from the coastline.

After the popularization of steam sailing ships, it was much easier to transport these overseas resources back to China than to transport them from Xixianbei to the southeast coast.

The coal and iron ore needed to start the first industrial revolution can be provided in the eastern Liaoning region.

Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places are also very rich in coal mines.

The Ming Dynasty's aim of controlling the inland territories west of Shaanxi, as well as the retention of the three independent khanates of Anxi, was largely based on geostrategic considerations.

It is necessary to control the commanding heights of the entire Shenou continent in his own hands, and also control the mountains, rivers and plateaus around the core area of the homeland.

Of course, the inland land that has been controlled by the Ming Dynasty will not be deliberately suppressed.

It's just that I didn't put too much effort into building it.

Without the special care of the imperial court and the special resources in the interior, the normal speed of industrial and commercial development would certainly not be comparable to that of the coastal areas with convenient transportation.

Therefore, after arriving in the Great Plains of the Central Plains, it is rare to see large-scale cities.

In some places, Zhu Jingyuan even felt as if he had regressed from an industrial society to an agricultural society.

However, it is also understandable that the current industrial level of the Ming Dynasty, the most high-end part has reached the Cold War era.

But these aspects were forcibly pulled up by Zhu Jingyuan relying on the experience of later generations.

Before Zhu Jingyuan intervened, and where Zhu Jingyuan did not directly intervene, the industrial base of the natural development of the Ming Dynasty had only just begun the second industrial revolution.

Therefore, the southeast coast is now focusing on the construction of high-tech industries, which seems to have surpassed the era of World War II.

Cars are already running all over the ground, large airliners are available for travel, private jets have even been raced, and wealthy families have access to washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners.

However, in inland areas where development is relatively slow, the internal combustion engine and electricity are not yet widely available.

Cars are rarely seen in the cities, electric lights are not yet available in the countryside, and horse-drawn carriages and bicycles still make up a very large proportion.

Zhu Jingyuan came to the Central Plains from Jiangnan as if he had returned to Shanghai from New York during World War II.

Zhu Jingyuan stood by the window of his room, looking at the urban and rural scenes outside the window and sighed:

"In the process of the prince's governance training, he really should go to different places, at least to the inland to have a look.

"If you stay in the east for the rest of your life and stay in the Jingshi City, you may misjudge the situation of the Ming Dynasty......"

gave Zhu Jingyuan the big food princess Wang Ya smiled and nodded and said:

"Of course, what His Highness said makes sense, it is better to travel thousands of miles than to read thousands of books, and I don't know how big Daming is without personal experience.

However, the concubine felt that the Ming Dynasty was too big, so it was impossible to be completely balanced.

"There are bound to be places where they are richer and places where they are poorer.

"We can't abandon those poor places."

Zhu Jingyuan's palace has formed a practice, and two new princes and concubines are selected every time they go to a training place.

But Zhu Jingyuan never had a chance to find a woman who seemed to want the other party to be the queen.

At the same time, among the concubines who already had around him, Zhu Jingyuan still felt that Wang Ya was the most suitable for him.

So now Wang Ya has been named the princess of the Great Food.

Zhu Jingyuan, a vassal king like a vassal pro-domain, can have one queen and four princesses.

Although the position of queen is still vacant, Zhu Jingyuan feels that he may never choose a queen.

Wang Ya, the princess, has become the natural head of Zhu Jingyuan's harem.

Although Wang Ya was not the first to follow Zhu Jingyuan, the older Liu Muyun and Yu Duxue not only did not have strong personalities at all, but even seemed more immature than Wang Ya.

After all, the life experiences between them are too far apart, and Wang Ya, an orphan without a father and mother, is much more precocious than Liu Muyun, a college student with complete parents and siblings.

Zhu Jingyuan also nodded lightly when he listened to Wang Ya's words, and at the same time identified some problems again.

The Ming Emperor and the imperial court did not care too much about the balance of regional development, which may also be the impact of spontaneous industrialization.

This may be problematic in the future.

"Of course, we should not abandon the poor areas, but should find ways to mobilize the power of the rich regions to help the relatively poor areas improve their industry and living standards......"

When Zhu Jingyuan and Wang Ya were chatting, the train made a continuous whistle again.

Zhu Jingyuan knew that it was close to certain stations or cities.

Sure enough, An Xiaona, who was following next to her, took two steps forward and explained the situation to Zhu Jingyuan:

"Your Highness, the next stop is Pingdingshan, Henan, which is a relatively large city in the Central Plains, if you want to get off the train and take a look, you can notify the train to stop, otherwise the train will pass through the city normally......"

Pingdingshan, in this world, is also a place where mines were first found, and then cities were developed.

It is also a very important coal mine and related industrial base.

Zhu Jingyuan thought about it, and finally shook his head:

"Don't stay, I'm not here to take office in Henan......"

The train went all the way, and when he really entered the Pingdingshan mining area and the urban area, Zhu Jingyuan was shocked by the scene in front of him.

It's already evening, and the street lights in the city and the mining area are on.

Shrouded in gray fog and illuminated by dense and bright lights, the outline of the industrial age city slowly unfolds.

Looking at the lights of the city in front of him, Zhu Jingyuan finally had the feeling of returning to the industrial society again.

Moreover, this flat-topped mountain city, on the whole, gives Zhu Jingyuan the feeling that it is very developed.

Double-track high-standard railways, tall and complicated pavilions, brightly lit streets, and endless traffic.

I have passed through the cities and rural areas that are like the agricultural era, and I don't seem to be in the same world as the busy and lively industrial city in front of me.

Zhu Jingyuan looked at the picture in front of him and once again thought of the problem he had realized just now.

In the absence of hard and fast regulation, in the era of rapid industrialization expansion, resource cities can be very wealthy.

The scale of a mining city like Pingdingshan is not small compared to the cities in the southeast.

It's just that this kind of city, compared with the place where there are no minerals around, the gap will be extraordinarily obvious.

(End of chapter)