When the country was founded, Taizu said that Tibet was rich in the people, and when Wang Anshi changed the law, he wanted to send out the wealth of the people to help the poor. By wealth, we actually refer more to money than to physical objects. The fragmentation of the market and the underdevelopment of the commercial economy will make a large amount of social wealth actually not denominated in money. The backwardness of commerce has caused a large amount of money to be precipitated, which cannot form capital and inhibit industrial development.

How much money did the people of the Song Dynasty precipitate? Much more than the amount in circulation. At the turn of the two Song Dynasty, the imperial court added endowment, and there was a widow who was willing to pay money for the whole county. As soon as he opened an inventory, he paid all the money, and there were still several warehouses of cash in his house. A small rich man in the countryside who was inconspicuous saved cash to fill a few houses, and the people at that time were also surprised.

The amount of money in circulation should be equal to the number multiplied by the velocity of circulation. In this era, most people have not yet realized the importance of circulation speed.

Du Zhongxiao's opening of a shopping mall on Jingxi Road to increase the speed of flow is on the one hand, and the other is to break the monopoly of guilds in various states and counties, break down local barriers, and form a unified market. Once the unified market is formed, the situation will take on a new look.

Listening to Du Zhongxiao talk about the significance of his various measures, Wang Anshi kept nodding. Having been a local official for nine years, with enough experience and seeing all kinds of malpractices, Wang Anshi has been looking for ways to improve maladministration. Many practices of Jingxi Road made him refreshed and formed a lot of ideas. Along the way, observing the place and observing the people's feelings, it is still a perceptual understanding. Listening to Du Zhongxiao's analysis of the pros and cons, he slowly began to form a rational understanding. With these understandings, we can put them into practice after arriving in Shuzhou.

Shuzhou is located on the edge of the Anhui River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, that is, the Anqing area of the later generations, and the geographical conditions are similar to the Xiangzhou area, and many of the measures of the camp field affairs can be directly transplanted there. Wang Anshi's plan is precisely to take advantage of this general judgment and combine the experience of camp and field affairs to find his own method of governing the country in practice. Only by truly understanding the place and accumulating enough experience will Wang Anshi be willing to go to the capital as an official.

Compared with Du Zhongxiao, Wang Anshi's ideals are much more ambitious, and he is much more proactive.

In history, after one term in Shuzhou, and then as a governor, Wang Anshi entered Beijing, and soon wrote the "Book of Ten Thousand Words of the Emperor", systematically putting forward his own ideas of governing the country. The Book of Ten Thousand Words is a style in which officials write to the emperor, which is more formal, not a long speech. This time is a critical moment for Wang Anshi to accumulate experience and reform his own ideology and theory of maladministration.

After Du Zhongxiao finished speaking, Wang Anshi said: "According to the opinion of the people, the guild controls the local area and divides the country's commerce into one state, one county, and even one town and one village, so that the traders will not work, and it will be unfavorable to the country." If you break the control of the guild and seize the right to trade of the tooth people, you can make the goods circulate all over the world. However, in this way, the government will not be able to control the private trade, so that the merchants will not be able to get out of the eyes of the imperial court. Merchants are profit-seeking by nature and do not produce, if the common people chase the profits of the merchants, delaying farming, it will be very disadvantageous to the world. ”

Du Zhongxiao said: "Jiefu, businessmen are profit-seeking, aren't other walks of life profit-seeking?" There is a folk saying that money is like a secret, and a drop is sweet, which one in the world doesn't like it? Farming has the profit of farming, business has the profit of doing business, and the production of goods in the factory also has profits. As long as the government adjusts from it, it will not differ too much. As for the government's inability to control trade, it is the meaning of opening a market. There are shopping malls opened by the imperial court itself, and there are shopping malls opened by ordinary people, each with its own benefits. has its own shopping mall, and the government can influence the world's commerce by adjusting the amount of profit extracted. Then through taxation, official buying, official selling, lending to the capital, and so on, control the rest. ”

Wang Anshi listened and didn't speak for a while. With Wang Anshi's cultural background, his character is more convinced of the means of direct control. Du Zhongxiao's indirect control method is not to his liking.

Why bother, since the government can open shopping malls, it can directly produce and buy goods, and the government will do the business. Wouldn't it be simpler for the imperial court to come forward directly to control and manage large-scale commerce, and only those small businesses that do not make money are released to the people to operate?

Doing industry like an iron supervisor, doing business like a shopping mall, plus farming like a field business, agriculture, industry, and commerce are all run by the imperial court set up a yamen, and all the big merchants, guilds, and tooth people are thrown aside.

Wang Anshi thinks so and is ready to do so. This time I came to Zaoyang, one is to take a look at the mode of farming, and the other is to look at the operation of the village community. Learn from experience, after arriving in Shuzhou, integrate all industries in the territory and give it a try.

Listening to Wang Anshi say his thoughts, Du Zhongxiao had the illusion that he was talking to the leader of a large state-owned unit that he was familiar with. It's just that Wang Anshi's thinking has no ideological factors, but believes that wealth precipitates among the people, and the court is poor and weak, which is the biggest problem in the world now. As long as the wealth is in the hands of the imperial court, it can enrich the country and strengthen the army, and reform all the evils.

Wang Anshi is prone to extremes, and once he feels that which method is good, he pushes it to the extreme. Du Zhongxiao's approach of doing this on the one hand, and on the other hand, trying to restrict everywhere made him extremely incomprehensible. Since there are so many benefits of the government camp, why should there be room for non-governmental development?

Where does Du Zhongxiao have the theoretical skills to persuade Wang Anshi, he can only vaguely go to the past, and he must always change his understanding through practice.

The Song Dynasty was said to be poor and weak, but in fact, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, why wasn't it poor and weak? In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, was it poor and weak? Even in later generations of Europe and other countries, after the Cold War, were they poor and weak? Compared to their early stage, it is the same situation.

The regime does not control the economic lifeblood, and it will inevitably come to this point. The Song Dynasty used guilds and Yaren to control industry and commerce, and most of the social wealth was inevitably divided between the merchants and Yaren, and there was not much left in the hands of the government. Over time, it will deteriorate step by step. In this case, even if the government participates in some economic activities, whether it is industry or commerce, it will be squeezed out of profit by various means, or even lose money, and become the nourishment for the accumulation of wealth by non-governmental forces. It had to be abandoned, thus making the official quota of social wealth smaller.

Wang Anshi and these people went to the other extreme. In that case, it should be distributed directly by the government, eliminating the merchants and factory owners who were profiting in the middle, and completely controlling the entire chain of production and consumption, with all profits in the hands of the imperial court.

How is this possible? It is nothing more than the integration of production and consumption and the intermediate circulation links into the official system. In the past, people outside the system shared wealth, but people inside the system shared wealth. Without the means of control, are the people in the system less desirable and not greedy than those outside the system?

Du Zhongxiao's method is that the government controls a part of the economy, so that it can control the wealth of society. Through this system, the proportion of official extraction of profits and accumulation, the proportion of investment and consumption, is adjusted to affect social production. The government cannot control such an independent system, and either it is powerless against the economy, or it becomes dependent on a certain stratum and becomes a tool.

The regime is not supported by taxes, which is the characteristic of political power in China's history. If necessary, capable, the regime will step forward and take direct control of the means of production. Direct control of land, the equalization of land and the sub-feudal system, are all based on the ownership of land by the political power. Factories were directly set up, starting from the Zhou Dynasty and then successive dynasties, there were large-scale government-run industries. There is only commerce, and it is difficult for the government to control it, so there is heavy agriculture and suppression of business.

After the chaos of the late Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty did not establish the land system and did not suppress annexation, and lost the conditions for direct control of land, and the bureaucracy always had the urge to regain control. The important goal of several reforms was to restore direct control of the land by the imperial court.