As the sun rises, the shadows of the palace walls of the Forbidden City are stretched out very long.

Zhu Houzhao, accompanied by Liu Jin, walked in the angular shadow screen with his hands behind his back. He couldn't help but look at the blue sky and Liu Jin beside him.

The national strength of the Ming Dynasty is now booming and has officially begun to participate in the Age of Discovery. The empire is transforming from an agricultural society to a capital and commercial society.

But such a change is manifested in specific people and things, and the fate of the characters has changed.

Liu Jin was not executed by himself in the fifth year of Zhengde as in history.

In the original history, because King Anhua rebelled in the name of killing Liu Jin, and even deliberately exaggerated the momentum of King Anhua's rebellion by civil officials, the simple Emperor Zhengde thought that the world was really forced to lose the hearts of the people by Liu Jin, so that when Liu Jin was falsely accused by Zhang Yong and Yang Yiqing of the rebellion, he had to agree to kill Liu Jin to relieve the public's grievances.

In this life, although the Anhua King Rebellion was still deliberately exaggerated by the civil servants' groups, Zhu Houzhao, who was familiar with the direction of history, was no longer as easily scared by these civil servants as in history. She even used the mentality of civil servants to make Yang Yiqing voluntarily admit his guilt, and at the same time, she did not allow the civil servants to use the Anhua King Rebellion to kill reform officials.

The rebellion of King Anhua was still quickly quelled, and King Anhua himself was also executed, and the entire clan of King Anhua and his rank were demoted to common people.

The Ming Dynasty had less money from a vassal king, but more common people who could pay grain for work. In any case, this was a good thing.

Liu Jin did not die, and the powerful reformists who were hated by civil servants, such as Ma Wensheng, Jiao Fang, and Xu Jin, who were hated by civil servants, also ended up in a good end.

But Zhu Houzhao had to admit that even those who offended civil servants such as Liu Jin did not die, there had been great changes.

In terms of Liu Jin.

Because now, the emperor has not delegated power to the Silijian and the Cabinet, Liu Jin, who is the Silijian, is actually not as powerful as the cabinet ministers in the Cabinet.

On the contrary, Zhu Houzhao had to admit that because his emperor was increasingly shrewd, of course, it was probably because Zhu Houzhao was not shrewd and seemed shrewd just because he knew the direction of history. In short, Liu Jin and many Ming officials began to think that Zhu Houzhao was not an emperor who could be fooled and had ruthless and insidious methods and could be considered sensible. Liu Jin is now very cautious and not as arrogant as in history.

Especially, after witnessing his own eyes that the emperor punished the eunuchs such as Wang Yue and Zhang Yong who betrayed the emperor, Zhu Houzhao found that even Liu Jin became taciturn in front of him. As long as he didn't ask, even if he walked for another half an hour, Liu Jin would not make any noise, as if he had disappeared out of thin air. As long as he shouted, he would always appear in time, and it seemed that he had figured out his thoughts. As long as he said something, he could only give him a satisfactory answer, but Zhu Houzhao was increasingly difficult to see what he thought in his heart when he answered him.

Not only Liu Jin seems to have changed a lot from the original historical figures, but even the other eight tigers are far less true than Zhu Houzhao’s first encounter. They all wear masks. On the surface, they are even more afraid of Zhu Houzhao than before, but Zhu Houzhao is not sure what they really think of themselves as the emperor in their hearts.

The same is true for other civil and military officials. Zhu Houzhao found that the more military power he had and the dictatorship of the imperial power, the less people around him dared to get close to him.

Sure enough, the people at the top of the pyramid will not have friends.

After saying that, Liu Jin is still alive, which means that the eunuch group has not been completely suppressed by civil servants. The balance of the empire is still there. It is precisely because of this balance that Zhu Houzhao was able to establish the Ming military-industry system, solve the threat of the little prince, and allow the empire to begin to enter the maritime industry again.

Zhu Houzhao didn't know what level he would take the Ming Dynasty to next, but he had to admit that even the emperor could not fully control the development direction of the entire empire. Sometimes what he did was the best choice.

For example, under the deliberate arrangement of his emperor, the new Ming hand-crank vertical spindle spinning machine and the flying-screw loom machine made by imitating the Jenny spinning machine have appeared now.

Zhu Houzhao's purpose was naturally to let the Ming Dynasty enter the era of industrial revolution early, and to gradually achieve semi-mechanization and even mechanization of agricultural and industrial production in the Ming Dynasty.

From a macro-historical perspective, this is undoubtedly a new thing that is conducive to the progress of the Ming Dynasty.

However, this efficient semi-mechanized production has also led to the bankruptcy of handicraftsmen of home-style spinning and weaving, which has caused the people's income to plummet.

What's more, the empire has implemented strict examination laws, which has led to the strict tax collection, so that tax resistance often occurs, especially in the Jiangnan region where handicrafts were launched.

In addition, some officials and gentry with ulterior motives encouraged them, and the tax resistance became more and more intense, which led to a large number of conflicts between officials and the civilians that had only occurred in the late Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao can act ruthlessly against civil servants, but cannot act ruthlessly against the people, because the common people are the largest group in the empire. Once they cannot get the support of the people, even if they are the emperor, they will easily be taken off the throne.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao now discovered that even though he knew that steam engines could change Daming Oil could change Daming, he really didn't dare to start the steam industry revolution directly.

How to truly benefit ordinary people in the process of industrialization and capitalization of the Ming Dynasty is a question that Zhu Houzhao has been thinking about. The only way he can think of now is to plunder and trade externally, turn a large number of people into workers, and at the same time expand the scale of production, increase workers' income, and then sell a large number of products produced to make profits.

After the emergence of new spinning machines and looms, Zhu Houzhao directly issued an order to exempt handicraftsmen from taxes for bankruptcy. Local governments are not allowed to tax bankrupt handicraftsmen to avoid intensifying conflicts and also make officials and gentry with ulterior motives lose the opportunity to provoke civil unrest.

At the same time, Zhu Houzhao asked the official weaving bureau to expand its production scale, recruit more handicraftsmen to enter the weaving bureau workshop, and even directly sold new spinning machines and fabric machines to the public, so that private weaving manufacturers would not go bankrupt due to backward production technology.

Due to the improvement of the production level of the entire weaving industry, Zhu Houzhao spent a lot of money on infrastructure construction. Because the new technology had the greatest impact on handicrafts in the Jiangnan region, the more unemployed people were unemployed in the Jiangnan region, Zhu Houzhao allocated more than 2 million yuan to Yan Song, the governor of Nanzhili, and ordered him to organize migrant workers to repair seawalls, dredge rivers after repairing seawalls, and build bridges and dry roads after dredging rivers.

Almost all the large amount of profits earned by the official weaving bureau in the early stage due to technological improvements were invested in this way. Although the large number of people were unemployed and reduced income due to technological improvements, the empire had a lot of more cloth due to the improvement of productivity, which caused a sharp drop in cloth prices and excessive supply.

In this way, the profit margins of the government-run weaving bureaus and even private weaving manufacturers have been greatly reduced. In this case, the Ming Dynasty also needed to trade and sell cheap cloths in large quantities at high prices to avoid damage to the domestic weaving industry and thus make more profits.

Therefore, before he knew it, the Ming Dynasty had become a capital empire, and he urgently needed to open up the international market.

Because of this, when Zhu Houzhao started border trade and allowed Guangdong and Guangxi to open up the sea, the domestic resistance was not so loud.

After a large amount of cheap cloth was sold to Mongolian tribes, he received scarce horses, cattle and sheep in the Central Plains, so that the empire was able to form more refined and larger cavalry. At the same time, the supply of meat for the people in the pass increased because of the large number of cattle and sheep entering the mainland of the Central Plains, so that by the ninth year of Zhengde, the physical health of the people in the Ming Dynasty generally improved.

The Dongchang Statistics Office, which specializes in part-time surveying various statistical data, has conducted a survey. Compared with the fourth year of Zhengde, the height of the people sampled by the Ming Dynasty in the ninth year of Zhengde is half an inch higher than that of the fourth year of Zhengde.

After Guangdong and Guangxi opened up the sea, the sale of a large number of cheap cloth also made the weaving manufacturers in Guangdong and Guangxi a wealthy family, and so the emergence of Guangdong and Guangxi Bank. The tariff revenue brought by Guangdong and Guangxi Maritime Manufacturing Department also increased the silver income of more than 2 million taels per year, which was far beyond the salt tax revenue in the past.

The Emperor of Ming Dynasty began to build large-scale construction and build public facilities, which allowed a large amount of treasury income to return to the hands of the people at high speed, especially the income of urban people increased significantly. In addition, the price of cloth and meat prices fell, allowing the people of Ming Dynasty to spend enough money to buy better cloth to make clothes and better meat to nourish their bodies, which also increased domestic demand.

However, the increase in domestic demand only brought the cheap products produced by the Ming Dynasty's people back to the hands of the people. If the entire empire wants to truly increase and accumulate wealth, it still has to rely on foreign trade and expansion.

It is precisely because of this that Zhu Houzhao first established the Daming Sea Trade Company and asked Zhang Yanling to be responsible for the shipping of the Daming Sea Trade Company as the respect of his uncle. This not only trains Zhang Yanling's navigation level, but also shows the royal background of the Daming Sea Trade Company to the world.

The Ming Hai Trade Company followed Pires to the Flang aircraft this time, and brought twenty armed merchant ships filled with cheap and exquisite cloth from Daming. The purpose was to sell along the South and Indian Oceans throughout the Atlantic Oceans, and at the same time set up a base to regain control of the route to the Atlantic Ocean, which was controlled by the Ming Dynasty.

The first key control point of this route is the Malacca, and the Malacca was directly captured by the Ming Dynasty Guangdong and Guangxi Navy.

In order to meet the purpose of foreign trade and expansion, Zhu Houzhao also forced the Malacca to agree to borrow 20 million taels of silver from the Ming Dynasty to pay the military expenses of the Ming Dynasty's military expenses. Half of the military expenses plus interest can be compensated by the 50-year tariff income of the Malacca, while the other half plus interest will require the future king of Malacca to find a way to collect from his own people.

Moreover, Zhu Houzhao also stated that if the Malacca was unwilling to pay the military expenses, the Ming Empire would not send troops for it, and even if it sent troops, it would only regard the Malacca as a seizure, and from then on it would be included in the Ming Dynasty's own rule. If the Malacca rulers still want to have the power to rule over the Malacca, they must agree to pay the Ming Dynasty's military expenses.

The rulers of Malacca did not refuse in the end. There was no way. The rulers were all selfish. In order to continue to have the power to enslave the people of their own country, they could betray anything, let alone pay tens of millions of taels of military expenses. After all, the people who repay the military expenses would only be the people of Malacca's own country.

Zhu Houzhao also knew that this method of plunder was the best way, because this could not only gain a lot of benefits from the hands of the Malacca, but also avoid the resentment and large-scale resistance of the local people of the Malacca due to direct plunder. The Malacca people would only blame the hatred of their exploitation on the rulers of the Malacca.

The Ming Dynasty could even express its sympathy for the people of the Malacca and its insatiable criticism of the rulers of the Malacca in the form of white lotus, so as to gain the favorable impression of the ordinary people of the Malacca for the Ming Dynasty.

If the Malacca rulers increased the burden on the Malacca people and even fought to the extent that the war broke out because the Malacca rulers ruled in order to pay the Ming Dynasty's military expenditure, the Ming Dynasty could also take this opportunity to split the Malacca, causing the Malacca war to continue, and allowing the Ming Dynasty's weapons to gain a wider market.

Not only targeting Malacca, but the people of the Daming Sea Trade Company, who followed Pires west, were also looking for heroes of the nationality who fought against the Florian colonists everywhere, and sought opportunities to sell some weapons to these fighters who resisted the Florian colonial invasion, thereby destroying the Florian colonial base, thus allowing control of the route to return to the hands of the Ming Dynasty.

"Emperor! Cining Palace has arrived!"

When Zhu Houzhao was thinking about whether it was time to cancel the road-guiding system that was in name only and let more rural people enter the city, and whether it was time to open the sea in full and make the Ming Dynasty's maritime strategy go further, Liu Jin's sudden reminder brought Zhu Houzhao back to reality.

"I understand, you go back to Silijian," Zhu Houzhao said and entered Cining Palace.

At this time, Liu Jin hurriedly left and respectfully retreated.

Because the Ming Dynasty was prosperous, there was no need for Zhu Houzhao to prevent his royal life from improving. Therefore, he ordered a group of palace maids to enter the palace and serve as royal service personnel in the form of an employment system.

Therefore, there are many palace maids who are superior in terms of temperament and appearance near Cining Palace. When Zhu Houzhao appeared here, countless colorful embroidered cloud dresses had already saluted him. Zhu Houzhao was inevitably exempted from tribute. Then he met the Empress Dowager Zhang, the graceful Empress Xia, the concubine Liu Su, and of course four little princes.
Chapter completed!