New Shun 1730

As the conversation continued, Li Li also found that Liu Yu was no longer interested in his discussion and explanation of the economy.

Having said that, Li Li tried to make an indirect approach.

But the direction and angle of his indirect approach were a bit tricky.

"There were many rumors before that our dynasty first conquered Russia, then pacified the Western Regions, and then conquered Japan and went to Southeast Asia. The reason for this was the grain transport."

"The national strength is limited, so there must be a priority. The north has been a major threat since the pre-Qin period for two thousand years."

"Therefore, we must first conquer the north before we can go south."

"After conquering Japan and pacifying the south, there will be no trouble on the sea, and then we can switch to sea transportation and abandon grain transport."

"Since the Ming Dynasty, many people have said: To control the Yellow River, we must first abolish grain transport; to protect grain transport, we must destroy the Yellow River."

"When grain transport was abolished, it was finally known that everything the Duke did was to control the Yellow River."

"Therefore, many people said that in the Duke's view, controlling the Yellow River is the top priority of the court in the future."

"But I don't know what the Duke thinks, if controlling the Yellow River is the top priority, can the road construction I mentioned be considered the second priority?"

This question sounds very ordinary.

But Liu Yu knew it well, and this question was not ordinary at all.

He said that the control of the Yellow River was the top priority, and asked whether the road construction could be ranked second only to the control of the Yellow River.

This is not the key.

The key is the prefix in front.

That is, the various preparations made for the control of the Yellow River.

In this process, external enemies were crushed, internal opposition was suppressed, and even the resistance of the people was suppressed in various ways.

As for the "preparation for the control of the Yellow River" that Li Li said from the beginning of the northern expedition to Luosha, it included a series of actions such as suppressing the uprising of salt workers, slaughtering gentry who hindered the control of the Huai River, and forcibly reclaiming the use rights of salt households to Caodang by salt administration reform.

If these are still acceptable, then the most criticized is Liu Yu's Ceylon Trojan Horse Plan. The whole process is regarded as a typical "tyranny" without any benevolence and righteousness.

Why didn't they attack Batavia directly to save the people when they had enough military strength at that time?

Why did the Dutch have to migrate the Chinese in Java to Ceylon, with so many deaths?

Because it costs money to relocate people, and the mortality rate is quite high.

Because Ceylon's water conservancy facilities have collapsed, the Dutch must use very brutal means to force the Chinese who migrated there to dig canals, dig canals, and cultivate rice if they want to use Ceylon as a base.

In the end, Dashun got the status of "savior", the Dutch canal from central to southern Ceylon, the restoration of farmland in the coastal plains of Ceylon, and the responsibility for nearly 30% of the mortality rate fell on the Dutch, and tens of thousands of "returning soldiers" loyal to Dashun, and basic stability after Batavia lost its status as a mandatory transit port and the status of the "capital" of the Dutch East Indies after going to Southeast Asia.

This is essentially not much different from Tian Dan's inducing the Yan people to massacre the Qi people to arouse hatred, and designing to induce the Yan people to dig up the ancestral graves of the Qi people to arouse common hatred.

And this is "out of line" tyranny.

Other things, such as suppressing the salt workers' uprising, have a bad reputation in the mainstream evaluation of Dashun, but they have not been criticized to the extent of "out of line" or "crossing the line" - this requires us to understand the mainstream ideology of Dashun, which uses the combination of kingship and hegemony, from the outside to the inside, which was born out of the reaction to the empty talk of kingship when the world was about to fall in the late Ming Dynasty, which made some scholars and officials approve of a certain degree of "hegemony". Therefore, the "out of line" and "crossing the line" of hegemony are the most "sensitive" things on the Dashun side.

Which behaviors are sensitive and which behaviors are not sensitive; which behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors are unacceptable. This depends on the specific situation and historical factors.

Moreover, Dashun's allegorical historiography likes to allude to the things in the late Ming Dynasty and the early Shun period.

This involves a historical allusion to the fact that Li Guo and Gao Yigong led their troops from Shaanxi back to Huguang. As a result, Nanjing was captured, Yangzhou was destroyed for ten days, Jiugong Mountain collapsed, and the order to shave the hair was issued. The troops that returned from Shaanxi suddenly burst out with combat effectiveness and killed Lekedehun in Huguang and began to counterattack. Your troops were able to resist Ajige from Shaanxi and retreat from Yulin to Huguang without dispersing, which shows that they had combat effectiveness. So what did you do earlier? Why did you have to wait until the hair was shaved, the city was massacred, and Jiugong Mountain was destroyed before you appeared and fought back to win the day? Another criticism of the Huaiqing counterattack later was that it exposed the fact that the Dashun army still had strength, which led to Duoduo who went south to help. It was criticized that it attracted the main force of the Eastern Tartars back, resulting in an ugly situation and almost destroying the country. What does your criticism mean? Duoduo later massacred the people of Yangzhou. Does your criticism of the Huaiqing counterattack mean that Duoduo should have massacred the people of Yangzhou earlier, destroyed Nanjing, forced the Southern Ming to borrow troops from Japan, and converted to Catholicism earlier, so that you could take the greater justice?

As the situation has become clearer in recent years, going to Southeast Asia is a thing of the past, and the past has become "history". Under the mainstream evaluation system of Dashun, Liu Yu's worst reputation may be a series of operations before and after the Ceylon Trojan Horse.

Li Li came up and talked about Liu Yu's ideas for controlling the Yellow River. So is Ceylon a condition for Dashun to control the Yellow River?

Obviously, yes.

To control the Yellow River, the canal must be abolished. To abolish the canal, it is necessary to ensure that there is no potential naval threat from the Tsushima Strait to Southeast Asia. Going to Ceylon is obviously a prerequisite for abolishing the canal, and abolishing the canal is a prerequisite for controlling the Yellow River.

Japan has a record of committing Japanese pirates, the Catholics have a record of overthrowing Luzon Lai in Macau, and the Protestants have a record of robbing Chinese ships and supporting pirates to block trade. These records confirm that if Dashun wants to abolish the canal system and change it to the sea, it must first ensure the These criminals with criminal records no longer directly threaten the South's ability to travel from the black water to the Bohai Sea.

Li Han is not talking about the Yellow River issue here, but about road construction.

I just made an abstract comparison between the problem of road construction and the problem of the Yellow River.

To put it simply, regulating the Yellow River requires a series of prerequisites.

Even if these preliminary problems are solved, when it comes to actual construction, we still have to face problems such as land acquisition, relocation, organization, logistics, food, compensation, North American gold and silver mine bubble financing, etc.

None of them are that simple, and they are all very difficult to do.

So, is it easy to build roads?

First of all, it’s a question of whether to practice or not to practice.

In recent years, the Practical School has actually begun to compete with the traditional imperial examination gentry school. The Practical School itself has become a group of “scholars” that cannot be ignored.

Since you are a scholar, it is not just as simple as knowing a few words. They have their own crude political ideas, or rather non-judgements.

For example, the Yellow River problem.

I can't see anything on this issue.

After all, there is no difference between the practical school and the traditional imperial examination school on the matter of repairing and controlling the Yellow River.

There is no doubt that the traditional school supports river management and the practical school supports river management.

The issue of road construction is somewhat different.

To repair or not to repair?

Is building roads the top priority after regulating the Yellow River and the Yellow River channel problem?

Is the priority of this matter actually much higher than other matters? Is it true that in the next twenty or thirty years, the Dashun court will focus on solving the problems of these infrastructure railways and canals?

This is different from regulating the Yellow River.

Ever since Liu Yu took on the most torturous pre-resettlement, relocation, and land acquisition issues of the Yellow River, and solved the problems of Shandong Saltworks and the reorganization of the Daqing and Xiaoqing rivers, there has been no difference between "treating" or "not treating" the Yellow River.

At most, it's similar to what Zhao Yi gave Liu Yu: Is it a river? The two rivers in the north and south are still preserved. The water in the north is excavated in the south, and the water in the south is excavated in the north. This difference has been fifty years each.

In other words, everyone within Dashun believes that the Yellow River matter, at this stage, will be the top priority in the next few years, or even ten years.

Everything should be centered on this.

Only in this way can many problems be solved and the whole country can make this happen.

However, building railways, infrastructure, and even canals is different.

This is not to say that everyone believes that this will be the key policy direction of the imperial court in the future. It should be analogous to the attitude of Dashun's Northern Expedition to Liaodong at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and put all the country's emphasis on this aspect.

Therefore, to cultivate or not to cultivate, this is first of all a question.

There are reasons to practice.

There are reasons for not practicing.

Li Han thought it was necessary to repair it, so he hoped Liu Yu would give him a message.

This is one aspect.

Secondly, Liu Yu himself has great influence among the people of the Practical School. Can the Practical School think that building roads is the biggest thing in the future besides building the Yellow River? Here, the radicals and retrosects are not considered for the time being. Instead of thinking that "equalizing land is the most benevolent government in the world" will inevitably lead to "revolution", we continue to consider it on the basis of conservative "reforms". It's not that equalizing land is bad or wrong, but that equalizing land is the most benevolent government in the world is inconsistent with Li Han's horoscope. To put it simply, he can carry out coups, mutinies, appeasements, declare Wumen, and snow in the capital, but he certainly cannot lurk in the Shangluo Mountains with eighteen cavalry and fight for thousands of miles to equalize land without food and turn the world upside down.

Therefore, when Li Han asked this question, he meant to ask Liu Yu: Do you think that if one day there is a disagreement on the issue of whether to practice or not to practice, do you think the Real School will follow me?

To cultivate or not to cultivate, this is the primary question.

The second problem is more complicated.

Assuming that the question of whether to cultivate or not to cultivate is solved, then there will be an explanation for how to cultivate.

We are not talking about issues such as land acquisition, steel plants, mining, coal mining, supporting and auxiliary industries.

Just say the simplest thing.

Building roads requires money.

Where did the money come from?

Who pays?

Who will own the built road?

Whose benefit?

If he returns to the imperial court, where will the money come from?

If the court is not expensive, how will the proceeds be distributed?

It seems like this is a small thing.

But actually, this is no small matter.

Because, we must first understand that before Liu Yu made a series of moves such as going to Nanyang, Dashun's annual income was almost overtaken by Britain, which did not have India and did not pay taxes in North America.

Even if you don't take into account the expenses of raising troops, disaster relief, maintaining stability, royal family, official salaries, etc., the financial income of the Dashun court is only a little over 20 to 30 million taels. The Dashun court is actually a poor group.

Where the money came from and who paid for it was a big matter that could not be ignored for the Dashun court.

And since it is a big deal, as long as you practice cultivation, big things will probably happen.

Only when something goes wrong can something happen.