Chapter 63: More than 2,000 years Sweating
The information he got from that Wang Mang's yellow robe had been filling his brain, and it was simply amazing. Wang Mang's reform was a comprehensive and profound reform, unlike other feudal reforms that only stayed at scratching the itch on the system, Wang Mang's reform was profound, had advanced vision, and also had a certain modern ideology of nationality, democracy, science, and communism.
Wang Mang had a tendency towards Hanism, especially hated the Xiongnu and Goryeo, and had repeatedly crusaded against the Xiongnu, intending to drive the Xiongnu out of the northern grasslands, and he was the most active after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He demoted the rulers of the Xiongnu, Goguryeo, Western Regions, and Southwest Yi who were originally subordinate to the Han Dynasty from the original "king" to "marquis". Even the Xiongnu Shan Yu was changed to "surrender slaves to obey", and Goguryeo was renamed "Xia Guli". He coerced the Qiang people to "donate" the land around Qinghai Lake to establish Xihai County. He even wanted to destroy Goguryeo at one point. However, because Wang Mang adopted a series of erroneous policies against the ethnic minorities in the border areas, it not only led to endless border wars, but also caused hundreds of thousands of troops to be trapped in the border for a long time, unable to get out, and spent a lot of manpower and material resources, and the national strength was declining.
Wang Mang encouraged scientific experimentation and invention. Attaching great importance to new technology, Wang Mang experimented with many new things that were regarded as strange and ingenious by Confucianism. During this period, science and technology developed rapidly. Wang Mang ordered the implementation of the only human dissection in the history of Chinese medicine, and many current medical terms such as duodenum and the like are named after that time, which is really unprecedented and unprecedented. In 18 A.D., Wang Mang learned that a craftsman could make a flying machine made of wings made from the feathers of a large bird, and then mounted on a human body, which could fly hundreds of steps. Wang Mang immediately summoned him and personally watched his performance to support his flight experiments. Wang Mang himself is also an inventor, he invented the vernier caliper, the intention is to unify the country's measurement, from the principle, performance, use, this vernier caliper is very similar to the modern vernier caliper, 1700 years earlier than the West.
Wang Mang encourages equality, cares about people's livelihood, and hates slavery. Human life is the most noble thing in heaven and earth, and this was the slogan put forward by Wang Mang! Buying and selling human beings is a criminal act that "goes against the will of heaven and against human morality," and must be stopped immediately. It seems that Wang Mang has the glorious idea that modern people are born equal. Wang Mang believed that buying and selling slaves and maids violated the general righteousness of "the nature of heaven and earth is precious", and stipulated that slaves and maids were "private belongings" and were not allowed to be bought and sold. Wang Mang attempted to restrict the expansion of the scope and number of slaves by restricting the buying and selling of slaves and maids, so that they would eventually die out naturally. In addition, it is stipulated that for unemployed vagrants, each person will be fined one piece of cloth per year, and those who are unable to pay will be forced to work by the government. During the period of servitude, the government provided food and clothing. Wang Mang was quite concerned about the people's livelihood, and he abolished the royal family's Huchi Garden, set up Anmin County instead, and relocated the poor to live. The food and drink along the way, as well as the necessary farm and house equipment and cattle seeds after arrival, were all provided or borrowed by the government. Wang Mang also ordered the construction of a total of 200 low-rent housing communities in five miles in Chang'an City for the poor to live in. Power began to tilt in favor of people's livelihood.
Wang Mang attaches great importance to education and expands the enrollment of Taixue, and the number of Taixue students has exceeded 10,000 in a record. He also ordered schools to be built in various places so that more children could read and increase their knowledge. In the capital, 10,000 houses were built for scholars, and many research institutes were built. Anyone who had expertise in classical literature was summoned to Beijing to do research, and thousands of people came before and after to discuss Confucianism every day.
Wang Mang is also a communist practitioner. He renamed the nation's land "Wang Tian," abolished private ownership of land, nationalized land, and forbade private individuals to buy or sell land. If there are less than 8 men in a family and the land exceeds 900 acres, the surplus land should be distributed to the landless people of their own clan or neighbors. Originally, those who did not have land were given 100 acres of land per man. However, this touched the big landlord class, which was later overthrown by powerful landlords in various places.
Wang Mang is also an economic thinker. He imposed government price control and forbade merchants from hoarding and speculating. He set up "Wujunsi City Envoys" in the six cities of Chang'an, Luoyang, Handan, Linzi, Wan, and Chengdu, that is, "Wujunguan", which was concurrently served by the original commander and chief. He is in charge of assessing prices, regulating the market, handling loans, collecting taxes, etc. Price assessment means that the Wujun Division should regularly assess the prices of the main products in the market; regulating the market refers to controlling the supply of the market, purchasing goods at a reasonable price when they are unsalable, and selling them at a fair price when the price of goods rises, so as to maintain market order; handling credit loans refers to handling interest-free loans or low-interest loans according to the actual situation to help the people and businesses alleviate their financial difficulties; and collecting taxes refers to the collection of Shanze tax and other miscellaneous taxes.
Wang Mang's most advanced thing is the currency reform. In the history of coinage, he created a "treasure system" that combined the main and auxiliary coins, which had a significant impact on the currency system of later generations. Wang Mang replaced the previous gold and silver bullion with some beautifully made but worthless currency, which is simply a copy of the recent token system reform. However, his biggest failure was the currency reform, and the world has been in chaos since then.
The emergence of new ideas in the history of the world is related to the development of social production at that time, and of course there are advanced ideas, but there has never been an idea that is nearly 2,000 years ahead like Wang Mang. Wang Mang's thoughts should never have appeared at that time, because his thoughts were completely out of touch with the social productive forces and the level of development at that time! All of Wang Mang's actions were so unpredictable that they simply made people's hairs stand on end in a cold sweat. You must know that Wang Mang of Lu Dao was already the emperor at that time, and the whole country was firmly in his own hands, so there was no need for him to carry out these reforms that were too advanced, which eventually led to his disrepute and was despised by future generations. Why did he want to retro the Zhou ritual system of the Western Zhou Dynasty to achieve his concept of governing the country and the world, what is this for?
Wang Mang was born in a wealthy family, Wang Mang's cousin Liu Biao of the Han Dynasty Emperor Liu Biao is the queen, the Wang family is the marquis of nine people, and the big Sima is five people. Since childhood, we have accepted Confucian culture at most, but why has such advanced thinking emerged? This kind of thinking like that of a modern person could never have appeared in an era when the feudal system was not yet perfect! Wang Mang's brilliant idea that everyone was equal would never have appeared in the head of a person who had lived in a wealthy family since childhood, and a relatively closed educational thought since childhood, and a world and soil where the feudal system was rampant, would never have appeared in Wang Mang's thinking!
"Could it be that Wang Mang is also a traverser like me!" Lin Yi was already in a cold sweat at this time. He didn't know which person from another time and space did he come from, and maybe he could only find his head to get an answer.
However, Lin Yi didn't think much about this at this time, he had been delayed here for a long time, but he was afraid that Zheng Yin and Ge Hong had been waiting for him for a long time, and Lin Yi picked up the dragon scales and accelerated back the same way.