With a newly transferred batch of grain from the Grain Industry Bureau entering Beijing, the problem of grain shortage in Beijing was completely solved.

Yan Song, Minister of Agriculture, began to promote sweet potatoes to Baoding and Zhending Prefecture.

In addition, the central court and local governments at all levels have also begun to open fertilizer factories and sell the fertilizers produced to farmers at the most reasonable price to promote grain production.

Zhu Houzhao believes that with the promotion of sweet potatoes, the people of the empire will no longer be a problem due to famine, and the population will also usher in a big explosion.

What's more, Zhu Houzhao has now been exempted from corvee labor, which undoubtedly increases the ability of self-cultivated farmers to raise more children.

Zhang Yousan got off the bed, tied his belt, and looked back at his two new wife's big 0 breasts, with satisfaction in his eyes.

Like most Ming people in this era, his current income is no longer different from ten years ago. Now, even if he works in a newly opened coal factory in the city, he can earn four or five silver dollars a month.

In addition, the three mu of my own land that could only grow order vegetables can now grow sweet potatoes once a year, and rely on sweet potatoes to raise one or two fat pigs at the end of the year.

Now every family has a high income, the demand for meat is getting higher and higher, and the price of pork is getting higher and higher. Zhang Yousan also sold a lot of money because of selling pigs. It was precisely because of this money that he, who had been single for 30 years, finally got married.

Although he married a widow, fortunately he was beautiful, Zhang Yousan didn't think it was bad either.

Of course, he also learned some words in the study class run by the county, knowing that some gentlemen in the city have begun to advocate widow remarriage, and saying that young women are widowed is equivalent to the reproduction of the population.

He himself didn't care whether he was a widow or a widow. He just wanted to have a son in the future, and to study in school. Like his cousin, he could pass the Jinshi all the way, enter the Beijing University, and be placed in the county magistrate.

Zhang Yousan's cousin Gao Jian did not expect that he was an apprentice who was originally just a Feng Shui master who learned to steer people through the feng shui master. Because he had no money to follow him, he had to go home to study. He knew nothing about classics and articles, but because of his good mathematics and physics, he went all the way to college, and now he has become a county magistrate and an official.

Of course, Gao Jian’s ability to become an official is also related to Zhu Houzhao’s reform of the imperial examination system.

As more and more scholars receive new education, especially those who graduate from higher education, more and more poor scholars are studying in poor families because of poor imperial examinations and the imperial court has subsidies for new education.

The court had to make changes in the social promotion system.

These poor scholars nowadays have a large scale. Because the imperial court still selected scholars through imperial examinations, they had to continue to participate in the imperial examinations, or stayed in school to become new school teachers, or entered the low-ranking official rankings of Ming Dynasty officials through civil servants.

However, if these poor students who receive new-style education want to become senior officials, they still have to go through the scientific examination and become Jinshi.

In order to reduce the number of scholars who received new education to re-learn eight-legged essays in order to become Jinshi, the cabinet chief assistant was instructed by Zhu Houzhao and announced that starting from the 16th year of Zhengde, the Ming Dynasty's imperial examination system was divided into two ways to select scholars. One was to still use the original model to select scholars, that is, to go through the palace examination and take the eight-legged essays to facilitate students who received old-style Confucian education to take the exam.

This type of candidate is mainly the children of bureaucrats.

The other type changed the content of the exam, no longer used eight essays to select the bachelor's degree, but used the exam to select the bachelor's degree in liberal arts and sciences. The liberal arts and sciences took the five subjects of Chinese studies, arithmetic, Qian Fa-People Theory, History, and Geography, while the sciences took the five subjects of Chinese studies, arithmetic, physics, chemistry, and biology.

This type of candidate is mainly poor.

Zhu Houzhao felt relieved for these scholars that because the Ming Dynasty was still the center of world civilization in this era and still represented the most advanced productivity and ideas, they did not need to learn foreign languages. Unlike later generations, even if they studied their own history and literature, they had to learn foreign languages, and both undergraduate and graduate students had to learn.

Because the two methods of taking scholars in the imperial examinations were parallel, this reform did not arouse great opposition from conservatives, after all, it did not block their way.

For poor students who are eager to realize their ideals, it is undoubtedly like a long drought and rain.

Zhu Houzhao prefers to call the latter imperial examination method the Ming version of the college entrance examination, because the latter imperial examination is entirely based on the score line for each province to decide whether he can become a Jinshi, and he is also divided into three. However, there are no more than three Jinshi in the first grade, but the top scores are ranked high according to a certain proportion of the number of students in each province. Of course, there are still some top scores in the second grade, but only the top scorers in the provincial top scorers and second graders.

However, whether it is a Jinshi admitted to the old-style education or a Jinshi admitted to the new-style education, all of them must enter university study since the 16th year of Zhengde. Jinshi admitted to the old-style education have been uniformly assigned to the liberal arts study in various universities.

The Jinshi admitted to the new education are selected by themselves to apply for various universities from the central to local and provincial levels, and are admitted according to the scores and quotas of each school. It takes four years to graduate to officially obtain the Jinshi dress and the Ministry of Personnel’s documents, that is, you must become a real Jinshi after graduating from university.

And these are all under the responsibility of the school department.

Zhang Cong, the Minister of Personnel, was responsible for distributing the work of these old-style and new-style education graduates after admission.

The Ming Dynasty is still in the early stages of education reform, and there are still a few people receiving higher education, so it is still distributed uniformly by the court.

Most Jinshi will still be appointed as officials.

Nowadays, officials of the Ming Dynasty not only cover the army, but also cover official positions of the nature of an official enterprise manager.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty still showed a large number of officials in the utilization of talent resources.

Basically, because the Jinshi admitted to the old-style education were mainly Confucian scholars of Neo-Confucianism, they were mainly placed in colonies, outside the pass or in places with more chieftains in the southwest.

Most of the Jinshi admitted to the new education are left in the pass and become officials, especially the Jinshi in the two mature schools, Peking University and Nanjing Central University, who are basically staying in Beijing as Beijing officials.

Of course, this education reform was chaired by Kang Hai, and the emperor Zhu Houzhao has basically retreated behind the scenes.

Because of this.

Many Confucian officials were extremely dissatisfied with Kang Hai's reform. After all, although the court did not completely abandon Confucianism to eliminate their path to advancement, it also greatly reduced the chances of these Confucian officials to advance to high-ranking officials.

Therefore, many people are calling Kang Hai a traitor, and Kang Hai was even attacked by angry Confucian scholars.

But as long as Emperor Zhu Houzhao doesn't want to touch Kang Hai, no matter how fierce the Confucian scholars scold Kang Hai, it will be useless.

The reason why Kang Hai is willing to change this way.

The main reason is that after Zhu Houzhao popularized universal education and the development of capitalism, the participation of common people and businessmen in politics became increasingly strong, resulting in the imperative of education reform.

besides.

Although Kang Hai was a Neo-Confucian official who was the top scholar, he was not a self-proclaimed Conservative Party. He studied at the Beijing University for a period of time. Like Xia Yan and other officials, he advocated Neo-Confucianism as the body and sage as the use.

In other words, we must not only make Confucian Neo-Confucianism the mainstream thought of the country, but also improve production based on the theory of sage.

Successfully, Zhang Cong, the Minister of Personnel, was also such an official, and supported Kang Hai's behavior and basically granted positions of real power that required actual administrative abilities to Jinshi who were good at using sages and received new education, while Confucian scholars were sent to positions with relatively little real power such as education and cultural management, diplomacy.

Zhu Houzhao did not expect that after he established the first natural science development base in the Ming Dynasty, the Royal Industrial Experimental Base and later the Capital University, the elites of the Ming Dynasty would summarize a set of governing concepts of "Neo-Confucianism as the body and sage as the use".

"If you use a steel material, think about whether you can directly bore a cylinder using a boring machine. This may ensure the air tightness of the cylinder. If possible, you may be able to use the power of this steam to promote the movement of the connecting rod, and then use it on the water pump and spinning machine!"

Zhu Houzhao told several high-tech talents in Daming Engineering College about his suggestions on steam engine development projects to several Daming high-tech talents wearing bullfighting uniforms.

Now, Zhu Houzhao has basically handed over the internal affairs to the cabinet, and is only responsible for the judiciary and the military. Therefore, much of his energy is focused on the scientific and technological revolution.

Zhu Houzhao therefore specially added the Ministry of Science and Technology, with Wang Wensu as the Minister of Science and Technology, and was specifically responsible for the management of the scientific undertakings of the Ming Dynasty.

The industrialization of the Ming Dynasty had basically begun to get on the right track and a basic industrial system was established.

There are corresponding factories from steel smelting to the preparation of two acids and two alkalis in chemical raw materials, as well as auxiliary mechanical and chemical products.

And they are basically large factories run by the government.

The reason why it was mainly an official factory was mainly because Zhu Houzhao was the emperor. He could directly exert the power of the state. Before the merchants and inventors of this era realized new things, they directly established an official factory.

Then, the official factory used its political advantages to directly control the entire industrial economy.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that the Ming Dynasty itself was a centralized country. In this period when the agricultural civilization was still very developed, merchants who rely on the empire could not establish such a huge industrial system.

This also determines that the Ming Dynasty has inadvertently turned into an empire with public ownership as its main body. Invisibly, the main wealth and industrial manufacturing of the Ming Dynasty were actually controlled by the country!

This is very different from the economic structure of the capitalist empire that rose in the late Western era in history. Perhaps this is exactly the characteristic of the Ming Dynasty itself.

certainly.

This also leads to Zhu Houzhao still being an emperor with unrestricted monarchy, and the imperial power can still be guaranteed.

Because no Ming Dynasty capitalist dared to confront him, the emperor in terms of financial and manufacturing power.

Even the army now had to rely on the Royal Industries, which he controlled, to provide the most advanced rifled firearms and cylindrical bullets that only Royal Industries can produce.

Any vassal king or warlord who wanted to rebel, Zhu Houzhao could paralyze his army as long as he cut off their supply of firearms and bullets.

Rubber began to become an important raw material in the industry of the Ming Dynasty. Under the guidance of Zhu Houzhao, scientists from the empire discovered that if this material is made into a tire, it can indeed reduce the vibration caused by the carriage when driving, and can also be used as a conveyor belt in the industry.

This also made the Ming Dynasty's demand for rubber more and more, which led to the pace of Ming Dynasty colonization accelerating.

Now the merchants of the Ming Dynasty can only engage in foreign trade.

Because the production technology and political advantages they mastered could not compete with official factories in China, and the large demand for raw materials in official factories provided them with a lot of living space, merchants in the Ming Dynasty rushed to join the activities of foreign trade, which can also be called foreign plunder.

They transported a large amount of ore, rubber, coal, and oil from abroad (historically, they began to use oil during the Zhengde period, and Sichuan Leshan also dug out an oil shaft in the 16th year of Zhengde) back to China, and transported domestic high-tech products abroad, making huge profits through import and export trade.

It can be said that these Ming merchants have become coachmen of Ming foreign trade. Their merchant ships have begun to spread all over the world, and some even established colonies outside themselves.

If they were not for the purpose of becoming the people of the Ming Dynasty and thus able to continue to obtain the benefits of the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade surplus, they would have probably established their own country, but many people asked for the imperial edict to be the governor of a certain overseas place, saying that they had discovered a new continent for the court.

The Ming Dynasty court was naturally too lazy to pursue the matter. After all, this was also a good thing for the court. Appointing a governor can obtain long-term tax income from a place.

Zhu Houzhao knew that the Ming Dynasty has now entered an era of national expansion.

As an emperor, even the officials of the entire court, he could not stop this trend. As an emperor, the only thing he could do was to maintain the continuous development momentum within the empire.

The Ming Empire was like a huge black hole at this time, sucking the wealth of the whole world into the empire.

In this process, more and more businessmen made money, and almost every day the Ming Dynasty created a rich man who earned millions of silver dollars a year.

At the same time, many imperial officials began to voluntarily resign and go into business.

After all, the main industrial economy of the Ming Dynasty is in the hands of the court. Even if an official manages the Royal Industrial Company with advanced production technology, he is just a worker, and most of the value he creates is still only national income. If he wants to have more wealth instead of accepting bribes through corruption, he can only resign from office and do business.

Moreover, the laws of the Ming Dynasty have become very strict, especially the punishment for corruption, so these officials who want to pursue wealth can only resign and go into business.

Moreover, if these officials go into business and go to business, they can use their relationships in the officialdom to become super rich overnight.

"You really want to resign"

Zhu Houzhao asked Yuwen Zhong, who was demoted to the Fujian Maritime Warehouse for his poor grain guarding.

Yuwen Zhong nodded: "Your Majesty, please forgive me. Although I am willing to serve the country, I know that my ability is limited. The Maritime Bureau is an important local tax office. I am afraid that it will still miss the court at that time, so I might as well resign and manage other businesses."

"Since that's the case, I won't force myself to stay. The Ministry of Personnel approved Yuwen Zhong's resignation!"

Zhu Houzhao has received more than ten resignation memorials, and many of them are third and fourth rank officials such as the Governor and the Minister. Of course, there are more officials of the fifth and fifth ranks. However, Zhu Houzhao knew that this was the general trend of the world, so he couldn't stop him.

After all, the Ming Dynasty no longer had the idea of ​​ruling business and valuing agriculture. Seeing that his fellow villagers and friends became wealthy for a while, these officials from the professions were inevitably envious and began to fight to go into the market.

Zhu Houzhao now has to admit that historical development really has its inevitability, and the phenomena of the times he experienced in later generations do not seem to be a historical accident.
To be continued...