“…… In the beginning, heavy industry was subsidized with the proceeds of light industry. When our heavy industry, especially the machinery manufacturing industry, has developed, it can in turn support the light industry, not only the vast majority of machinery and equipment are no longer controlled by people, but the rapid development of the railway and ship transportation industry has greatly reduced the logistics cost, which is the guarantee of hardware. In the meantime, the efficiency of the government has also been continuously improved, and the relevant supporting systems such as education, medical care, and social security have gradually improved, and the software has also kept up little by little. In addition, we have long planned and laid out the two core industrial belts of comprehensive development in the Bohai Rim and the Yangtze River Delta, focusing on the construction of Tianjin, Shenyang and Shanghai, three model industrial cities, to form a strong scale agglomeration effect......"

"So even if the advantage of labor cost is weakened later, we can still produce the cheapest light industrial manufactured products in the world, plus the release of some advanced designs and inventions, cabbage price fans, refrigerators, and bicycles are popular all over the world, enough to control the trade balance under less-than-ideal tariff conditions."

Speaking of this, Ma Feng glanced at the two visitors in front of him, obviously seeing the questions on their faces, so he raised his head slightly and signaled, "It's okay to ask questions."

Fang Tianhua and Yang Yuxiang glanced at each other, nodded resolutely, and said with a moral and righteous expression: "It's a little unbelievable...... Even if it is a partial mortgage tariff, that is, the ability to set your own tariffs will be affected. This is a great obstacle to the industrial development of backward countries, is there no other way? ”

Ma Feng smiled faintly: "Foreigners are not stupid, they borrow so much money out of thin air to buy you complete sets of machines, and let you set tariffs at will, isn't that lifting a stone to shoot yourself in the foot?" If you don't mortgage tariffs, do you mortgage mine railways? Those international banks who have been playing for hundreds of years are just waiting for us to buy a bunch of high-priced machines, and then the things produced will not be able to compete with them, so that they can harvest us. In addition, we will have to export industrial products later, and our 'reasonable' tariffs can be regarded as one of the bargaining chips. Of course, the most embarrassing people became angry, stopped playing with us, blocked everything, and forced the repayment of debts in the name of the European war - no, it became the way it is now. ”

Before the words fell, I only heard the "Han God of Wealth" on Ma Feng's left-hand side, who still maintained the figure of the telephone pole - Chancellor of Finance Han Lang - sneered in his nose: "Light industry subsidizes heavy industry? Old horse, don't mislead them, at the beginning, they all rewarded industry and commerce, and there were a lot of preferential conditions, except for tobacco, salt, sugar, and other monopoly monopolies, they couldn't collect much tax, and the bulk of the subsidized industry was agriculture. ”

Ma Feng shrugged and smiled, tilting his head to signal, "Then you can pull it." ”

Han Lang took a long sip of tea, leaned back, and shot like a machine gun.

"In Japan at that time, the most important source of industrial capital was agriculture, and it was only in 1872, when the Meiji Restoration began, that is. Land tax accounted for 72 percent of the government's total revenue, and in the following years it even reached about 80 percent. After the completion of the land tax reform in 1881, the land tax collected once accounted for 34 percent of the value of agricultural output. Even in the 1910s, when the value of agricultural output accounted for less than 30 percent of the country's net output value, the proportion of land tax in agricultural output value remained at about 20 percent. In addition, from 1888 to 1902, agricultural surplus resources mobilized by taxes accounted for about 60 percent of non-agricultural investment, indicating the extent to which agricultural surplus contributed to Japan's industrialization. ”

"In the middle of the eighteenth century, that is, during the Qianlong period of the previous dynasty, whether it was official statistics or estimated actual levies, the land levy accounted for about 74 percent of the fiscal revenue, and the annual approved levy was about 50 million taels, of which the proportion of grain in kind in the total land levy was about 30 percent. However, in 1891, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the total income of Tianfu was only 30 million taels, accounting for only 35 percent of the total fiscal revenue. In 1911, when the Qing Dynasty fell, in the budget approved by the Advisory Council, although the revenue from land was restored to nearly 50 million taels during the Qianlong period, the proportion of the fiscal revenue was further reduced to 16.5 percent, and the collection of grain in kind was completely abolished. ”

"Due to the decline of central power and the deepening of officials**, additional surtaxes increased significantly, and a large amount of land revenue was not included in the official statistics, according to later scholars, before and after the Qing Dynasty. The actual amount of land levy was about double the official statistics, that is, about 100 million taels, an increase of about 50 million taels over the Qianlong period. ”

Even so, even in the 10 years after Gengzi, the Qing government increased the amount of land taxes in order to pay reparations and raise funds for the New Deal, but the proportion of land taxes in agricultural output value did not expand, and even declined, with the actual estimated amount of 100 million taels, the proportion of agricultural output value was only 2.3 percent, which was only more than one-tenth of the proportion of Japan's land tax in agricultural output value during the same period. Even in the early fifties of the twentieth century, in our war-torn new republic, the actual amount of agricultural taxes collected as a percentage of the total agricultural output was between 11 and 13 percent, five or six times as much. ”

Fang Tianhua blinked when he heard this, and sighed with his hands: "It is known in the book that the Qing government at that time was 'incompetent'" I didn't expect it to be abolished to such a point......

Han Lang stretched out his arm lazily, with a face of "You can't think of it", and his mouth still kept sweeping and shooting wildly: "However, because the growth of population greatly exceeded the growth of cultivated land, compared with the middle of the eighteenth century, the per capita cultivated land fell by nearly sixty percent in the late Qing Dynasty, but the average grain yield did not increase significantly during the same period. In this way, although the burden of land taxes at the end of the Qing Dynasty should have decreased significantly compared with the middle of the Qianlong period, taking into account the rise in grain prices, the per capita real agricultural output fell by one-third, which means that the surplus of consumption has decreased and the ability to bear taxes has decreased. ”

However, although the burden of the field endowment at the end of the Qing Dynasty was generally light. But the main beneficiary is the feudal landlords, according to conservative estimates, before the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the country's land rent income should be about 500 million taels, which is ten times the total amount of land endowment according to official statistics, a large amount of agricultural surplus is occupied by landlords, and the traditional Chinese ' The concept of 'having land and having wealth', with land as the only specific wealth, makes these social surpluses, which are not very large, not transformed into industrial and commercial capital, but into land capital, and precipitates in the land. ”

"However, in the past 25 years, our cultivated land has increased from less than 1.2 billion mu to more than 1.5 billion mu, 300 million mu of new barren land has been reclaimed, and the average grain yield per mu in a normal year has increased from more than 200 catties to about 400 catties, almost doubling. Excluding the planting area occupied by other crops, as well as natural disasters and other losses, the total grain output in 1913 reached 400 billion catties, equivalent to 10 billion taels of silver. Although the population has increased from about 400 million to more than 500 million during the same period, after deducting basic consumption, there is theoretically a surplus of about 200 billion catties of grain. Equivalent to five billion taels of silver, this is the largest capital for the development of our industry. ”

"According to the statistics of 1913, the government collected 30 percent of this agricultural surplus, which is equivalent to 1.5 billion taels of silver. In addition, a special product tax of about 560 million taels of silver was levied on the total output value of cash crops, which was about 2.8 billion taels of silver. Taken together, the proportion of agricultural taxes in the total value of agricultural output is about 16 percent, which is lower than the level of Japan in the same period of time and space, higher than the level of New China in the early 1950s, and seven or eight times that of the late Qing Dynasty -- correspondingly, the total value of agricultural output has increased to three times that of the late Qing Dynasty. And a total of 260 million taels of agricultural taxes. That's about 3 billion Chinese dollars or 300 million pounds, accounting for 81 percent of the total fiscal revenue that year. ”

In addition, in the name of collecting the land premium in installments for 15 to 20 years after the land reform, another part of the surplus was withheld. After deducting a small part of the land that had been paid in full and a small number of former landlords' self-reserved land, this part could still receive almost 570 million yuan, equivalent to about 400 million taels of silver, by 1913, which was slightly less than the total amount of land rent in the country at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and this part was mainly used to pay the landlords' ransoms. ”

"You all know the ransom money, but also paid in 15 to 20 years, of which about 20 percent is paid in grain and cash, and the remaining eighty percent is managed by the designated bank as the start-up capital for industry and commerce, and can only be used when investing in or opening a state-recognized industrial and commercial enterprise. Of course, this also requires strict supervision by government departments to beware of fraudulent cash-outs. In any case, most of the capital that had been deposited in the land or in the gold and silver cellars of the landlords was forcibly invested in industry and commerce, and most of the political and commercial chaebols of the empire and the vast number of small and medium-sized capitalists grew up step by step on this occasion. ”

"As for the rest of the agricultural surplus, since most of the cash crops are covered by the well-funded state-owned farms and the intensive farms of the political and business chaebols, the vast number of small farmers still mainly grow grain, so their agricultural surplus is mainly grain. After paying taxes and paying land premium, deducting basic consumption, that is, the part of their development of reproduction and consumption, this part is estimated to be equivalent to 1 billion taels of silver, calculated by 400 million peasants, more than 20 taels per capita, and calculated with 60 percent of them used to purchase manufactured industrial products, that is, 5 billion taels of silver or more than 7 billion Chinese dollars or more than 700 million pounds sterling. ”

Speaking of this, Han Lang raised his chin at the horse-faced man beside him who seemed to have entered the immortal - Tian Zhenghong, a fifty-one-year-old minister of industry and commerce: "Lao Tian, why don't you also talk about two paragraphs?" ”

Tian Zhenghong, who looked honest, smiled dumbly: "It's all finished by you." What else do I have to say? Let me say that this situation is like a developed coastal zone with a population of tens of millions of industrialists, which colonizes the vast interior of the country, where more than 400 million small yeoman farmers are distributed, and accumulates development funds through direct expropriation and the scissors difference between industrial and agricultural prices. Hundreds of millions of people add up, and the scale effect will go up. In the 1910s, the net income of Britain's trade with India, excluding the profits and interest of direct investment, was only £28 million, while the net profit of our various industrial enterprises from the rural market exceeded £150 million a year, which was almost equal to the profits and interest income of Britain's direct investment in the whole world combined. Without these super-profits from agriculture, it would have been impossible to sustain rapid industrial development under the pressure of huge external debt. ”

"However, this is not a long-term solution, with the gradual improvement of medical and health conditions in the country, explosive population growth is inevitable, the cost and difficulty of cultivating new farmland will become higher and higher, and the small-scale farmer economy will sooner or later fall into difficulties......

"Bell bell bell—"

The phone in the corner rang suddenly.