There are many ways to increase your financial resources.However, in Zhu Youxiao's view, the establishment of a government-run business is more in line with the long-term development needs of the Ming Empire.After all, it is a fact that the new social wealth of the Ming Empire has been concentrated in commerce.Because the current Ming Dynasty is not the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the nineteenth century, which lagged behind the world's advanced countries.Today, Daming is still the most advanced country in the world, with the world's most advanced productivity.Because the Ming Dynasty has thousands of years of technological precipitation, before the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, it was the representative of the advanced productive forces of the Iron Age!
Therefore, after the great geographical discovery, global trade was opened, and almost all the world's silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty.According to Zhu Youxiao, some historians have said that Western colonists took almost all the silver looted from the Americas to China in exchange for Chinese silk and porcelain.It is precisely because of this that it can be said that because of globalization, Daming has made a lot of money.Like the developed countries of later generations, because they occupy the upper reaches of the productive forces, they have made a windfall by taking advantage of the spring breeze of globalization.But it's a pity that most of the money earned by the Ming Dynasty was privately owned and concentrated in the hands of the powerful gentry.However, these powerful gentry are also exempt from tax evasion.Therefore, the Ming court did not enjoy this benefit at all.Naturally, the common people could not enjoy it even more, and they would even be forced to be more desperate by the richer and more powerful gentry by annexing the land.And Zhu Youxiao, as the emperor, if he wants to make the imperial court more dominant and make the distribution of wealth and interests of the Ming Dynasty more fair, he must take over the benefits after the start of global trade.In addition, although the main income of the Ming court was still agricultural tax, it was impossible for the Ming Dynasty to increase a lot of income in agriculture.Because Daming has limited land, and agricultural technology cannot be improved overnight.Moreover, agriculture is greatly affected by the climate, but for a long time to come, the climate is not friendly to agriculture.What's more, with the continuation of the empire, there are more and more powerful gentry with tax exemption status in the Ming Dynasty, and they occupy more and more fields.Therefore, under normal circumstances, the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty can only be reduced and decreased, unless the agricultural tax is increased, it can be levied all the time, the people of the Ming Dynasty will rebel sooner or later, and the ruling system of the Ming Dynasty will collapse sooner or later.Therefore.If the Ming Dynasty wants to survive and continue to be strong, it can only open up financial resources in business.There are two ways to open up commercial financial resources, one is to increase the commercial tax, and the other is to engage in government-run commerce.Wanli has already engaged in commercial taxes, and sending eunuchs to various places to collect mining taxes is an example.However, the opposition was so strong that after Taichang ascended the throne, the Donglin Party immediately instigated Taichang to abolish the system.Of course, because the eunuchs were not professional tax collectors, it is also true that they caused a lot of problems in the process of collecting taxes.Moreover, the eunuchs themselves are also vested interests, so many times the additional mining taxes are transferred to ordinary workers, making the contradictions at the bottom more acute.Therefore, Zhu Youxiao did not plan to restore the mining tax and increase the commercial tax at the beginning, after all, this requires a large number of professional tax collectors and a complete tax system to be established in order to realize the collection of taxes on the gentry and magnates, rather than being exploited by the gentry and magnates by this opportunity.Therefore, Zhu Youxiao chose the second option, that is, to engage in government-run business.This is also the one suggested by Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi.It can be seen that Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi also knew the pros and cons of increasing commercial tax, so they did not directly suggest that Zhu Youxiao let the imperial court increase commercial tax.Of course, as for whether Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi did not want the imperial court to increase commercial taxes because they were also members of the powerful gentry, and only accepted the way to let the imperial court and his family make money, Zhu Youxiao did not know.Originally, Zhu Youxiao did not plan to let civil officials such as Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi do official business for him, but directly let the eunuchs and clan nobles do it.However, after thinking about it, Zhu Youxiao had to admit that if he wanted to engage in government-run business, he could only let civil officials such as Xu Guangqi and Sun Chengzong do it.Because the eunuchs grew up in the inner court, where do they know what industry to operate, even if they are involved, they are to be someone else's umbrella and then participate in dividends or ask professional managers to run for themselves.The same is true for the clan nobles, and the clan nobles of the Ming Dynasty are almost useless because they have iron rice bowls.However, Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi are different civil officials, they have a network base linked by the relationship between clan teachers and students, can recruit talents and organizations that are good at business, recruit all kinds of craftsmen, and also have their own fields in these commercial areas along the coast of the south of the Yangtze River, and their own intelligence and ability are screened through various assessments.Therefore, if Zhu Youxiao wants to do a good job in government-run business, he can only rely on mobilizing some enlightened and loyal civil officials.This is the same as the Westernization movement in history, which was basically completed by Han scholars.Zhu Youxiao admitted that he had to rely on some civilian officials to compete with other interest groups.Therefore, after Zhu Youxiao adopted Sun Chengzong's suggestion to engage in government-run business and open up financial resources, he still asked him to do this.Originally, Zhu Youxiao was more interested in Xu Guangqi, who was born as a wealthy businessman in Jiangnan, but because Xu Guangqi had a more important task, he could only let Sun Chengzong, who took the initiative to put forward this suggestion.In addition, Zhu Youxiao also found out that Sun Chengzong's family was a big cotton grower and seller of cotton through the East Factory by asking Wei Zhongxian to strengthen the power of the East Factory, so he simply asked Sun Chengzong to open the first government-run cotton yarn factory in the Ming Dynasty.Of course, if Zhu Youxiao wanted Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi's human resources and land, and wanted his family to do things for him loyally, he naturally couldn't directly copy his family and confiscate his family property.Therefore, Zhu Youxiao thought of a way to give a small part of the shares of the government-owned industry to Xu Guangqi and Sun Chengzong.Let Xu Guangqi and Sun Chengzong participate in their own fields as equity capital, which can be regarded as reforming the business model of Daming society.At the same time, this is also Zhu Youxiao's conspiracy to tie the families behind Xu Guangqi and Sun Chengzong to the Ming royal family.Zhu Youxiao knew that it was impossible for him, the emperor, to fight against the entire vested interest group, and it was impossible to successfully transform the Ming Dynasty.Maybe even before the reform is completed, the whole world will be turned against it, and even if you die, you won't even know how to die.Therefore, in Zhu Youxiao's view, he needs to win over a group of people who have the motivation to reform the Ming Dynasty with him.In addition, Zhu Youxiao had to admit that the reason why the emperor of the Qing Dynasty was more comfortable than the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he went down to the south of the Yangtze River if he wanted to, he built the bank if he wanted to build a palace, he killed the gentry if he wanted, and he could even directly come to an official gentry to pay for food, because the emperor of the Qing Dynasty was a foreign emperor, and there was a Manchurian military aristocratic group behind them because they wanted to exploit the interests of all Han people and the emperor, so they unconditionally supported the emperor, so that the emperor of the Qing Dynasty could kill the Han gentry unscrupulously, And the Han gentry had no way to take these Qing Dynasty emperors.But Zhu Youxiao is not an emperor of an alien race, so naturally he does not have a power group that absolutely supports him but is different from most ethnic groups, so he can't have as much power as the emperor of the Qing Dynasty.Therefore, Zhu Youxiao is determined to organize a group of cronies who are absolutely loyal to him, and use the method of bundling interests and strengthening ideas, and the bundling of interests is the foundation; after all, human nature is to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and ideology is a theoretical means, after all, it is necessary to ensure that those who are loyal to themselves are people with absolutely excellent character and ability.And Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi are the kind of people that Zhu Youxiao wants to win over and bundle.Therefore, Zhu Youxiao took the initiative to give these two families wealth.Zhu Youxiao hoped that one day he would also have a strong enough imperial clique to counterbalance other power groups and maintain his power.In that way, he, the emperor, can go down to Jiangnan if he wants to, go to Chengde to escape the summer if he wants to, or go hunting outside the Saiwai, and no one dares to stop him.