choke element

Chapter 970 Dining Table (Part )

The Great Zhou used a strong army to suppress the four directions. In essence, a strong army comes from financial resources. Without the support of money, no matter how strong the army is, it is just a show. Just like a certain Maomin country in the future, it was angry and raised hundreds of thousands of troops to attack another Maomin country, but failed to win the battle, and then exposed its inner weakness, and inevitably became a laughing stock.

The Great Zhou was naturally very rich. When Guo Ning ruled Shandong, he made his fortune through maritime trade. In recent years, iron factories, carbon factories, and textile mills have sprung up all over the Great Zhou, and the scale of famous ceramic kilns has continued to expand, not to mention the huge source of wealth brought by the northern animal husbandry.

The huge amount of money that controlled the Central Plains and the North was naturally a benefit to the huge regime. The problem was that wealth did not necessarily bring stability, and sometimes even caused instability within the new dynasty.

After a large number of people left the land and moved to industry and commerce, the first result to be affected was agricultural production.

The core territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty had been burned, killed and looted by the Mongolian army in the past few years. With the brutality of the Mongolian army, the population of the people was reduced by half wherever they passed, which was an underestimation. In many places, the people were massacred in the whole city and village, and millions of acres of fertile land were abandoned, leaving only bones and bones buried in the wasteland.

At present, there are many people but a lot of land. It is the time to reclaim land and restore the country's vitality. However, many people have gone to sea and factories. With fewer able-bodied men, farming and land reclamation are affected. Moreover, agriculture is inherently unstable. If we don't make efforts in the next few years while the weather is still good, what will we do when natural disasters occur frequently? Local officials have many complaints about this.

On the other hand, after leaving the land, many young men had family backgrounds, organizations, knowledge, and courage, so they themselves became factors that disturbed the rural order. As for those who returned from the sea, most of them became fierce and unruly.

The subsequent impacts were both good and bad. The good thing was that local officials were restricted and it was difficult for them to cover up everything. Guo Ning was amused when he saw some officials getting into trouble. The bad thing was that many contradictions arose, and regardless of whether they were right or wrong, and the final result was good or bad, the process of handling them actually took up a lot of resources.

The disturbance caused by the people who were developing the port area near Tianjin is an example. The work was naturally hard, and the compensation given by the court was not small. However, when people made comparisons, their mentality changed and they were not so easy to be content with being slaves.

The purpose of Guo Ning's uprising was to stop the Han people from being slaves to other races. But no matter how hard he and his companions tried, the dining table could not be expanded indefinitely, and the wine and food on the table could not be increased indefinitely. Everyone wanted to be at the table, but there were always people who could not squeeze in; everyone wanted to eat meat or gnaw bones, but there were always people who paid more and gained less, and had to drink soup or even swill to fill their stomachs.

People who drink swill will feel resentful, and resentment will lead to unrest. When Guo Ning was wandering in the wild, he could feel sympathetic about this, but now he is the emperor, and the people around him are all rich. Now that his butt has changed, his perspective will change.

Earlier in Shandong, this was not a big problem. After all, Shandong was limited in size, and the resources imported from the sea by the Dinghai Navy were large enough; refugees from all over the country who had joined the Dinghai Navy, and even prisoners captured on the battlefield by the Dinghai Navy as slave labor, were enough to make up for the shortage of manpower.

At worst, there were the Jurchens and other ethnic minorities who were continuously introduced from the Northeast. Their backward culture and economy ensured that they were happy to squat under the table and do hard labor and drink slop.

But with the founding of the Great Zhou, the territory has expanded by more than seven or eight times. The places that could be ignored before are now included in the scope of overall consideration. The court cannot indulge in the wanton flow of human resources, nor can it allow any industry to extract human resources without restrictions.

But so many industries are springing up like mushrooms after a rain. If we slow down a step, we will miss the opportunities. The places that urgently need people are growing rapidly every day.

In other words, if you want to make the table bigger, you need people. But the wine and meat on the table are limited, and there are not enough people willing to work hard and drink swill.

In the past year, conflicts and contradictions have occurred between factories and rural areas. The newly opened large farms in the northern border seem to be competing for interests with the inland areas. Even the military men such as Yin Chang openly promoted the invasion to the south, which was probably due to the actual needs of the regime and the aristocratic group.

Fortunately, the Goryeo situation has been settled now.

Guo Ning couldn't help but smile.

This old man Yin Chang's ability in fighting is just so-so, but he has decades of experience in walking between black and white and countless cases of black robbing black. He is not short of cunning tricks both on the surface and under the surface.

There were frequent coups and internal conflicts in Goryeo, but their level was still at the level where the prime minister led dozens of people to kill political enemies, and the king sent a dozen monks to assassinate the prime minister. How crude was that? A man like Yin Chang was sent to Goryeo to kill people, but his hands were not stained with blood. All the people who should be cleaned up were killed... I don't know where his cleverness was!
Now that Goryeo was in his hands, a huge source of manpower was available to Guo Ning.

The country of Goryeo was small and poor, but had a population of more than two million. The people of Goryeo were generally oppressed by the nobles, and as the politics of Goryeo became increasingly absurd, their lives became increasingly difficult.

Not to mention the most despicable people of low status, even the good people who make up the majority of the two million people are struggling in extreme poverty, as lowly as animals. Many of them have long held the mentality of "whoever feeds you is your mother". Since the bigwigs above don't care about them, they don't care about the bigwigs above either.

Therefore, Goryeo was able to fight the Khitans at the beginning of its founding, but now only a few groups of Khitans' defeated soldiers and refugees can run rampant in its territory. It is obvious that no one is willing to fight to the death for the future of Goryeo.

In recent years, the settlement of Han merchants in Licheng Port has become increasingly large, and more and more Koreans have come here for refuge, out of a genuine need to make a living.

When Cui Zhongxian was in power, Han merchants made requests to the Goryeo nobles through various channels, hoping to expand their business and open up more sources of income within the territory of Goryeo, but they were continuously suppressed by the Dufang headed by Cui Zhongxian.

Now that Cui Zhongxian is dead, Han merchants can expand their business into Goryeo, and it is just around the corner for them to double their profits in porcelain, medicinal materials, etc. In this regard, the initial goal has been achieved. The Han merchants near Licheng Port must be so impatient now, and the Great Zhou Warriors Group standing behind the Han merchants must be so greedy that Guo Ning has to shake his head just thinking about it.

But if the conditions are right, why not do more?
The dining table of Da Zhou can accommodate many people. Koreans should also have the right to change their lives and the opportunity to win wealth.

The Han people could go deep into Goryeo, and the Goryeo people could also leave Goryeo on a large scale and devote themselves to a wider world. This is a win-win situation!
"Let the left and right offices work with our people in the Goryeo-Han Merchants to come up with a plan as soon as possible to set up a new trading company."

Guo Ning was thinking and said slowly, "Following the example of Shanghai Bank, the shares will be held by Da Zhou and Gao Li each in half. This trading company will not participate in any old business, and will only do one thing. That is to recruit workers, send Gao Li people out of Gao Li, and then split them up and place them in various places in Da Zhou... No, split them up and place them in any place where we need people."

(End of this chapter)