After leaving the Political Affairs Hall, Xu Ping returned to his official office. He just handled the official documents and it was time to go home.

I flipped through the case table and found a letter from Wang Anshi, the new magistrate of Gong County. Looking at it, it turned out that it was a major operation of Jingxi Road industry and commerce, and Wang Anshi had different opinions.

Previously, under huge financial pressure, industry and commerce in various places were basically controlled by the government. Especially for service industries such as restaurants and residences, almost all cities above the county and above were owned by officials. Even if the shops opened by the people themselves, as long as the officials felt that the profits were considerable, they would use various means to accept them.

Most of these restaurants and residences were asked to be pointed out by the people, that is, contracted out, and the official charges fixed profits. Larger stores have a slightly stronger profitability and are run by the government. The biggest harm in doing so is not to mention the economic constraints. In order to ensure profits, the government forced the wealthy households in the country to use their property to protect the restaurants and residences. The normal growth of the business is fine. Once there is a loss or the profit drops, the difference will be made up by the government.

This is different from the state-owned economy in Xu Ping's previous life. These restaurants were directly used as cash machines by the official. In the excessive places, they did not specify the profits to be paid in a year based on the performance of previous years. If they could not achieve this, they would directly use the property of the Yaxian family to charge the accounts. In many places, they directly became extra taxes to wealthy households in the country.

In addition to the banned franchise, a large part of the financial income of the Song Dynasty came from this.

Such consequences are the abnormal prosperity of the business that has not been intervened by the government and the dilapidation of the service industry. In addition to the few Beijing prefectures that adopted special policies, most prefectures and counties have underdeveloped service industries. Even strange things are more prosperous than in the city because they are not under the control of the official.

In the pilot industrial and commercial reforms at Jingxi Road, Xu Ping learned from his previous life experience and adopted a policy of focusing on the big and letting go of the small. In addition to the four capitals, all restaurants and restaurants in the local area that were operated by the people were sold and the official tax was collected.

Generally speaking, the county level retains an official restaurant and an official residence. The state level retains two to five places according to the level. If the number exceeds the number, sell the small ones and expand the large ones to form a large-scale operation. All of the official businesses no longer use the yaqian, but hire special personnel to manage and formulate reward and punishment systems.

The problem of the Song Dynasty is that in cities and towns, officials account for too much economic share, and the government plundered profits, which made industry and commerce unable to develop. By transferring small industry and commerce to the public, the vitality of the economy is stimulated.

Corresponding to the opening of industry and service industries to the public, through Sansipuzi and various private social economies, the dominance of abnormally prosperous business was taken from the hands of some large merchants. They used the official power to implement guild monopoly, and while obtaining excess profits, they cracked down on and suppressed the development of industry and service industries.

To Xu Ping's surprise, Wang Anshi expressed different opinions because he felt that it was not enough to delegate rights and concessions to the people. He took Gong County as an example and believed that there was already an inn, and the official residence and food supply were guaranteed. It was unnecessary to retain one of the official restaurants and residences. If this market was completely placed to the people, the people would benefit even more.

Xu Ping read the letter several times, but really didn't believe it was the opinion put forward by Wang Anshi. It was not the case in his impression. Wang Anshi's reform was to take all the private industry and commerce into the official position and go further than himself.

Chinese history has a completely different trajectory from Europe. In the Song Dynasty and the dynasties before, the government occupied a huge share of the economy, whether it was agriculture or industry and commerce. The Song Dynasty was a peak, and Wang Anshi's reform directly brought almost all of the industry, commerce and finance to officials. At the same time, the Baojia method was implemented in the countryside, tying farmers to the land.

If Xu Ping wanted to learn from his practices when the founding of the People's Republic of China in his previous life, it could be fully implemented in this era, and Wang Anshi had actually done it. The problem of that reform was that after collecting economic power, he did not use this money to develop social production, but only allowed the country to grasp the lifeline of the economy. The huge reforms, which are truly related to development, are only the Farmland Water Conservancy Law and other measures. If production cannot develop, reform will inevitably be opposed by the old party. This opposition has a social foundation.

If Xu Ping remembered the complete set of industrial technologies in his previous life, he could have done Wang Anshi's reform decades ahead of time. After the rural land division was divided, the Baojia method was implemented, and the industry was developed as fast as possible by using the gap between industry and agriculture. When Xu Ping was old, he might be able to start the stars and seas. The income from going out to colonize is likely to be less than the income from concentrating on developing China's local area. The result was that a land god kingdom was built in China, and other places were all raw materials. Most of the economy was taken over. In this era, there was no institutional and ideological resistance.

When the tide of civilization hits the whole world, many people will have the illusion that the development process in all parts of the world will be the same. The Mongols captured most of the land in the Eurasian continent. It was very likely that most people also believed that their slave agency system could last for generations. In fact, only a few hundred years have passed, and all of this disappeared in the long river of history.

Using feudal society to refer to a historical period should be roughly accurate to analyze history. But then feudalism is real feudal, like China, who bid farewell to feudalism since the Qin Dynasty, must be another form and another process. Productivity determines the relationship of production, and this productivity is relative and related to human desires, not absolute. Europeans believe that history has a clear end point, which is the inertia of their monotheistic civilization, but they just think so.

The opinions raised by Wang Anshi surprised Xu Ping because his current views were different from those learned in history. When he put forward such opinions, it means that his thoughts were no different from those of Sima Guang and others at this time. Xu Ping didn't know what happened in history, which caused Wang Anshi's later thoughts to make a 180-degree turn.

After thinking about it, Xu Ping decided to reply to Wang Anshi.

This idea starts with Guan Zhong, the famous prime minister of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period. Of course, it may be back to a longer time. Xu Ping cannot explain it clearly, and there is no need. The idea starts with action from Guan Zhong, to Baili Xi, to Sang Hongyang, and the final success of the salt and iron method during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. Simply put, it is to control the world, and the court must hold the national handle. Salt and iron are not just a monopoly system for specific commodities, but to allow the regime to control the economy and directly control part of the economic activities.

The country advances and the people retreat, the country retreats and the people advances. This sentence that Xu Ping often heard in his previous life has actually been talked about for two thousand years in Chinese history. It is completely unreasonable to make arguments based on the system of foreigners. This is a part of China's political civilization, that is, if the regime wants to be stable, it must control the power of the world. Salt and iron hold economic power, the system of recommendation and imperial examinations hold cultural power. The only problem is that the military power has not been found yet. The conscription system and the system of government are difficult to sustain for various reasons. The new military system cannot solve the problem and eventually becomes various strange phenomena of the imperial guards. To put it bluntly, the reform of the military system means that the regime holds military power through various general training systems, so that the regime can freely develop military power.

Why should an economic entity controlled by the government be placed in society? Because the regime only needs to have a handle, and all control exceeds actual capabilities and cannot promote production development. Wang Anshi's reform proves this. From the beginning, he wanted the court to control industry, commerce and finance, thereby promoting development, and finally became only seeking control, not development.

All prefectures and counties must retain a certain proportion of the official economic components, which is to allow the court to hold economic authority and be able to dominate economic development, and not be manipulated by the economy in turn. When the economic prosperity is over and faces difficulties, use this authority to receive the economic entities of society to the official business, use official profits to promote production development and drive the next round of prosperity.

If the destiny is not there, the cycle of governance and chaos greatly affects the legitimacy of the regime. Then the regime must control the cycle of governance and chaos and cannot face it passively. To control, one must have a leader, which is the official economy developed from the theory of salt and iron.

Wang Anshi had just started working as an official in the local area, but had not had the opportunity to enter the central government office of the court, and could not look at economic issues from the overall perspective. His current view is still the traditional view of competing for profit with the people, and profit is not in the people but in the officials.

The faction that has always supported the theory of salt and iron also opposed it. The extreme situation in history was that Wang Anshi reformed the country and captured all the economic authority of the world into the court. His thoughts were abandoned, and the regime after the Song Dynasty gave up salt and iron, and the finances mainly relied on tax revenue, and the consequences had been answered. Facing a social crisis, the regime had no economic ability to solve the problem at all, and could only watch the world chaos.

The production and distribution of the economy are ultimately a matter of production satisfying the desires of the people, both in front of the people and in the long run. Politics is to follow the will of the people and follow the desires of the people. Everything else is just a tool and means, and it is put before the horse as faith.

If a regime wants to govern the world, it must hold the national authority. If it loses its grasp, it will be too unimaginable to hold on. The redistribution of social wealth by taxation is far from being compared with the direct holding of economic authority.

Economic, military, cultural and ideological, and the regime holds these three steles and grasps the general trend of the world and is difficult to shake. Only then can we govern calmly, show justice in the world, win the hearts of the people, and establish a solid sense of identity.
Chapter completed!