My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 730: Ziyu's governance is no less than Kongming's

If Zhao Yun wanted to achieve great things in Youzhou, especially in Liaodong, the biggest difficulty was not in military terms, but in logistics and productivity.

The Northeast is bitterly cold and road transportation is inconvenient. Even if we eventually conquer the place, much of the land would not be suitable for farming and development given the productivity conditions at the time.

If these problems are not resolved, Zhao Yun will not be able to defeat Gongsun Kang and the Fuyu Kingdom by force alone.

In other words, even if some military victories could be achieved, there would be no way to monetize the results of the war, obtain substantial benefits, and use them to feed back to the Central Plains battlefield in the future.

Obviously, Zhuge Jin is the only one in the world who has the vision, courage and coordination ability to solve these problems.

However, in the 14th year of Jian'an, when the Jingbei Campaign had just ended and Zhuge Liang had just returned to Chengdu to govern Shu, Zhuge Jin also had a lot of things to worry about.

It was not until at least the 15th year of Jian'an that Zhuge Jin had time to focus his main attention on Hebei and Liaodong.

……

Let’s get on with the topic and return to Xiangyang in the summer of the 14th year of Jian’an.

After his second brother returned to Shu, Zhuge Jin had too many things to worry about.

Therefore, he stayed in Xiangyang throughout the summer and autumn of that year to assist Liu Bei in maintaining control of the central government.

During this period, Liu Bei's main task was, of course, to appease the people and talents in the newly occupied Nanyang County and other places, and to continue to win over the hearts of the people in Zhangling County where Xiangyang is located, and to completely digest Liu Biao's legacy.

Other institutional reform work and farming work to promote advanced productive forces were all handed over to Zhuge Jin for overall coordination.

With Liu Bei's personal charm, it was natural for him to do the job of stabilizing people's hearts. Most of the work went smoothly and there is nothing worth elaborating on.

The only surprise here is Liu Qi’s life span - in history, Liu Qi eventually died of illness in the 14th year of Jian'an, which was the year after the Battle of Chibi.

There are many conspiracy theorists in later generations who say that Liu Qi's death was related to Liu Bei, but a careful analysis will reveal that this is pure nonsense. If Liu Qi could live a few more years, it would definitely be of great benefit to Liu Bei.

After all, in history, when the Battle of Chibi just ended, Liu Bei recruited the four counties of southern Jingzhou under the banner of helping Liu Qi restore his father Liu Biao's foundation. Liu Qi died just one year later, which gave Sun Quan more excuses to argue with Liu Bei about the Jingzhou issue. Liu Bei would never harm Liu Qi, so Liu Qi's life span was indeed his own problem.

In this life, there is no need for Liu Bei to harm Liu Qi. Liu Bei has the absolute power to control his nephew. Liu Qi has always had a clear understanding of his position. He knows that he is just a pawn of his uncle Xuande and is very content with this status quo.

After Uncle Xuande won Jingzhou back from Cao Cao, he was humble and hoped that Liu Qi would be promoted. But Liu Qi insisted that he could not take up the position that his father Liu Biao had once held, and he was content to be the governor of Nanjun.

Liu Qi said publicly many times that when his father passed away, Jingbei was about to fall into the hands of Cao Cao. Zhangling County and Nanyang County were all taken back from Cao Cao by Uncle Xuande with his own troops, not inherited from his father Jingsheng.

How could Liu Qi have the virtue and ability to ask for the territory that his uncle had taken from the traitors by force?
After several such public concessions, Liu Bei was helpless and finally stopped insisting. He just gave Liu Qi a higher title of county marquis and increased his fiefdom.

In the end, Liu Qi did live one or two years longer than the same period in history. By the second half of the 15th year of Jian'an, he still fell seriously ill due to excessive drinking and sex. It was the kind of disease that overdraws the body and causes the gradual failure of some of its organs, which could not be cured by the medicine or food at the time.

Later, Liu Bei sent famous doctors to see Liu Qi many times, and even invited the elderly Hua Tuo to travel from Guangling on a stable large ship via the Yangtze River and Han River to Xiangyang to diagnose Liu Qi.

After seeing the doctor, Hua Tuo hinted that Liu Qi's illness was similar to Emperor Ling's excessive alcoholism and sex. With Hua Tuo's medical skills, he could only prescribe some warming and tonic medicine to relieve the pain. Liu Qi finally managed to survive for another half a year, but died in the 16th year of Jian'an. Even so, he had lived two years longer than the same period in history, which was considered a good deal.

The whole process was clear to everyone in the world, and it had nothing to do with Liu Bei. It was all caused by Liu Qi's lack of self-control and his indulgence in pleasure in his early years.

But no matter what, Liu Qi was gone after all, which forced Liu Bei to spend more energy on appeasing the people in Jingzhou and mastering the talents in Jingzhou.

Throughout the second half of the 15th year of Jian'an and the beginning of the 16th year of Jian'an, Liu Bei could not leave. It was not until the next war between Cao and Liu that Liu Bei thoroughly sorted out the personnel and public sentiment in Jingzhou to ensure absolute internal unity.

During this period, the internal affairs of Liu Bei's camp in the Guandong states were entirely controlled by Zhuge Jin.

Zhuge Jin was very organized in his work. He had estimated at the time that the entire truce and farming period would last at least two years, or even two and a half years.

Anyway, in the next two years, Cao Cao basically has no ability to take the initiative to attack Liu Bei. Even if Cao Cao is not calm and really attacks, Liu Bei's territories have certain geographical obstacles to defend. In addition, the various armies have always maintained a considerable level of vigilance and dare not relax. At that time, they can definitely counterattack Cao Cao and weaken him faster, so there is nothing to worry about.

Since he knew that he had at least two years to slowly get things done, Zhuge Jin had already roughly set a timetable for arranging the priorities of domestic affairs in the summer of the 14th year of Jian'an.

In the second half of the 14th year of Jian'an, he first planned to worry about the comprehensive promotion of the two reforms, "the rent and labor system" and "the money for labor service".

As mentioned earlier, when the rent-and-labor system and the substitute labor fee were first introduced, in order to avoid too much resistance, Yizhou under the rule of Zhuge Liang was chosen as the focus for the two-year pilot program.

Although some places in the Kanto provinces have also started pilot projects, such as Jingnan, they are still a long way from full promotion.

This is also to prevent taking too big a step, pushing things forward without thinking through many details, and leaving loopholes.

In the future, if we rush to plug the loopholes, it will be easy for us to change our orders every day, which will damage the credibility of the court.

Therefore, let Zhuge Liang, who is cautious and meticulous in his work, first test the waters in the places where the system of substitute labor money is most needed, run it in thoroughly, make complete revisions to the system, and plug all the loopholes that need to be plugged.

In the 14th year of Jian'an, Liu Bei's camp, taking advantage of the prestige of defeating Cao Cao, used just one or two years to extend the rent and labor system and the money for substitute labor to all the states under its rule.

Zhuge Jin made a little plan and decided to fully promote it in Yangzhou and Xuzhou in the 14th year of Jian'an.

Because these two places were Liu Bei's oldest territories and had been governed for many years, all the large-scale construction projects that needed to be completed had basically been completed.

For example, when the Zhuge brothers first built water conservancy projects in Guangling County, and later regulated rivers, controlled water, and opened copper mines in Yuzhang County, that was more than a decade ago. These places were already well built, so there was less demand for corvée labor, and the people were richer.

Therefore, if the government allows the people to pay more money and grain in exchange for not serving in the army, the people will definitely be relatively happy. In this way, more military grain can be stored for the future Northern Expedition, and more copper coins and steel can be saved.

After it was thoroughly promoted in Yangzhou and Xuzhou, the following year, by the 15th year of Jian'an, Jingzhou, Qingzhou, and Runan County in Yuzhou occupied by Liu Bei were also able to fully implement this law.

Among these states, Qingzhou and Yuzhou were occupied late, had a short governance period, the people were not wealthy, and there was great resistance to reform. Qingzhou in particular was taken over peacefully from Yuan Tan, and the original local interests were preserved, making it difficult to intervene and one could only delay.

Jingzhou was originally as prosperous as Yangzhou and Yizhou, but it was only in the 14th year of Jian'an that Jingzhou ended the war and regained the last two counties from Cao Cao. As a post-war territory, stability is the most important thing. Reforms were definitely not allowed that year, but it would be fine if it turned the page the next year.

According to Zhuge Jin's subsequent plan, Bohai County in Jizhou and the entire Youzhou were the last to implement the rent and labor system and the labor service fee. On the one hand, because the local area was relatively poor, few people were willing to pay to be exempted from labor service, so even if you started collecting labor service fees a few years earlier, you would not be able to collect them.

On the other hand, the local corvee pressure is indeed quite high.

In the future, Zhao Yun will prepare for war against the Fuyu Kingdom in northern Liaodong, which will definitely require a lot of road and river improvements, as well as civilian labor to transport grain, which will require the service of the people.

Bohai County in Jizhou is not suitable for implementing new laws for the time being because the Changlu Salt Field is still under expansion.

The Changlu Salt Field in Tianjin was built over many years, and eventually almost all the beaches along the Bohai Sea in Tianjin and even Cangzhou were used. The scale of sea salt produced was enough to supply the entire Hebei Province in the future.

Zhou Yu has been building the Changlu Salt Field in Bohai County for several years, but the scale can still be expanded. He needs so many corvée laborers to open salt fields and work as salt workers, so of course he can't collect labor fees. Instead, he will use the money from selling salt to speed up construction and "expand reproduction."

But this kind of thing does not require support from legal reforms, you can just pay money to hire people.

By the 16th year of Jian'an, the southern states had pushed forward the two new laws, and all resistance had been removed. The time was ripe, and then the northern states of You and Ji could do the same, and everything would fall into place.

……

Zhuge Jin spent several months drawing up a timetable for the comprehensive implementation of the two economic reforms, rent and labor service and labor service payment, in all states under Liu Bei's rule, and personally supervised the initial implementation of this plan.

By the time these tasks were completed, it was already the autumn harvest of the 14th year of Jian'an, which coincided with the winter farming season in Xuzhou and Yangzhou.

While worrying about promoting the reform, Zhuge Jin was also busy with "developing advanced productive forces".

Because he knew very well that for relatively wealthy states, after promoting the substitute money, you have to find some other jobs for the people to do in the winter that can earn money, so that the new law can be most effective.

This is easy to understand: relatively wealthy people would rather spend money than serve in the military, and only a small number of them do so just to rest for the entire winter.

With the productivity of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the people were not rich enough to just lie down and relax. More people did not want to serve in the army because they wanted to spend the same amount of time doing other odd jobs to earn money.

Therefore, the government must provide and create more opportunities for the people to do odd jobs.

When Zhuge Liang was in Yizhou, he built so many steelmaking factories using fire wells, salt boiling factories, and the flourishing Shu brocade and Shu cloth textile industries, all for this goal.

Now that Zhuge Jin wants to transplant his second brother's successful experience to Xu and Yang, he certainly cannot copy it completely. He must also combine it with local conditions and the latest scientific and technological achievements in productivity.

The transportation in Xuzhou and Yangzhou is much more convenient than that in Shu, so there is no need to pursue characteristics such as high value density of outputs and low dependence on transportation capacity.

Moreover, if Xu and Yang also made those high-priced specialties, Liu Bei would have to worry about "insufficient domestic demand". People like Zhuge Jin, who have common sense of economics in later generations, would naturally not make such a low-level mistake.

"Shu Brocade" is a luxury item of this era. If too much luxury item is produced, even if the national strength data on paper looks good, it will be false.

Therefore, Xuzhou and Yangzhou provinces need to develop more productive forces related to people's livelihood, even if these productive forces do not seem so high-end.

When Zhuge Jin was making the plan, he simply sorted it out and found several directions to work towards.

First of all, his second brother Zhuge Liang, that year in Shu, used the large amount of high-quality steel produced by the gas well steelmaking factory in Jianwei County, combined with new technology, to tinker with the long-bladed battle axe forged by the "sandwich steel method", and equipped it to mountain warfare troops such as the Bantun Barbarians and the Old Soldiers. Later, he planned to use these troops to pacify Nanzhong.

The idea of the steel-clamp method was actually provided to Zhuge Liang by Zhuge Jin at the beginning, but he just gave a few general directions. The subsequent specific technical research and development was still slowly developed by Zhang Yi, the governor of Qianwei County, under the supervision of Zhuge Liang.

After the technology matured, its uses were of course not limited to forging battle axes. Zhuge Jin got the specific technology shared by his second brother, and considering that Liu Bei's camp had a surplus of steel in recent years, he thought of using the clamping steel method to mass-produce some farm tools, spending the surplus steel and improving productivity.

The original farm tools during the Eastern Han Dynasty were mainly wooden handles wrapped with some pig iron, and very few were made of steel.

For example, a plow for tilling the land has an iron head. Once the iron is worn away, the efficiency of plowing the land will be sharply reduced if it relies solely on the wood inside.

Zhuge Jin helped to slightly improve the structure of the plow many years ago. Later, under the rule of Liu Bei's camp, the traditional Eastern Han straight-beam plows became less and less common, and were gradually replaced by curved-beam plows, which also improved the production efficiency of farming and land reclamation.

Later, even Cao Cao's camp gradually learned to use the curved plow, and the grain production and land reclamation and cultivation of both sides increased. This is a story for later. In history, the curved plow did not appear until the late Northern and Southern Dynasties, and was not fully popularized until the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, this technological innovation can be regarded as a small benefit to the people.

Now, based on the curved plow, Zhuge Jin has made improvements at the material level and developed a plowshare with steel on the surface.

As the sharpness of the plow is improved, the force required to break the soil is further reduced. Even if a single ox is pulling the plow, it can pull a three-share plow and plow three rows of land at a time, which greatly improves efficiency.

The three-share plow also existed in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It was nothing more than carrying more plowshares at one time. This was not a structural innovation in itself. However, the original three-share plow required too much ox power, was not popular, and the efficiency improvement was not obvious. Now with the agricultural implements with steel plowshares, the effect is immediately different.

In addition to plows, Zhuge Jin also organized the moderate production of other farm tools needed for land reclamation using the clamped steel method or the wrapped steel method to consume the excess production capacity of the Qianwei County Gas Steel Plant.

These products were also sold at high prices along the Yangtze River to Jingzhou, Yangzhou and Xuzhou. Local wealthy farmers did not want to perform corvee labor and wanted to pay money instead. With better steel-clamped farm tools, they could do more preparatory work for land reclamation in winter and gradually expand agricultural production.

……

In addition to improving these agricultural tools and increasing production, Zhuge Jin also put some effort into shipbuilding, geographical exploration, and species discovery, and made a two-year plan.

Because he knew very well that these tasks could also provide great help to the war potential of Liu Bei's camp, especially helping Zhao Yun to deal with the four barbarians.

If we can find some new species within East Asia and carry out small-scale geographical exchanges, especially if we find cold-resistant crops, perhaps the Northeast region can also be developed in the future, with greater economic value and war potential.

At the same time, the development of shipbuilding and maritime exploration also requires a large amount of labor input.

Once the government increases investment, it can also drive the production of related shipbuilding, machinery, wood processing, canvas and ropes in the private sector. These will create jobs during the winter farming off-season, allowing the people to find more profitable job opportunities after "paying money to avoid military service", which can also indirectly help the reform of the military service fee system.

Considering that Liu Bei's camp has now generally occupied all the coastal states and counties of the Han Dynasty, Zhuge Jin no longer needs to worry about the issue of warships when he is thinking about improving shipbuilding technology.

Cao Cao does not have more warships and naval forces to fight against Liu Bei, and future wars will mainly be land battles.

But because he didn't have to consider the ship's combat effectiveness, Zhuge Jin could focus on the ship's seaworthiness. So he didn't have to make drastic changes, just slightly improve the existing ship model.

You can even just dock old ships and renovate them to make them more suitable for long-distance voyages and expeditions.

While further improving shipbuilding, Zhuge Jin also had a very clear exploration goal in mind - now, Liu Bei's navy could sail smoothly to the coast of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia, as well as to Yizhou on the opposite side of Minzhong County.

After all, Bu Zhi and Lu Yi had even found Linyi rice, so it would certainly not be difficult to find other tropical products whose origins were closer to Linyi.

However, Liu Bei's camp had done very little in exploring the cold coast of East Asia before. And the new cold crops were exactly what Zhao Yun needed to plant after solving the problem in the Northeast.

Therefore, Zhuge Jin focused on improving the seaworthiness of ships in the Sea of Japan, hoping that the new ships would be able to explore the coast of the Fuso Islands, as well as the Greater Khingan Range and the coast of Sakhalin Island further north.

Everyone in the shipyards in Donghai County, Guangling County and other places did not dare to hesitate or compromise on Situ's orders.

So from the winter of the 14th year of Jian'an to the entire 15th year of Jian'an, they were diligently designing and modifying new ships.

At the same time, he organized a geographical expedition and continued to explore the edge of the coastline in the northeast of the Han Dynasty. These improvements and explorations were not in vain and soon brought back rich rewards for Zhuge Jin.

And they are all the ones that Zhao Yun can use immediately.

(End of this chapter)