Summer goes and autumn comes, autumn goes and winter solstice. In a blink of an eye, the New Year is coming.

Since the end of the Battle of Zhou, wars in various parts of the world have also ended one after another. Zhao Ming not only recovered the territory of the Ming Dynasty before the Jiashen Kingdom's Reform, but also recovered the outside of the pass and Hetao areas, which can be said to have completed the unification in the traditional sense.

At the turn of summer and autumn, Wu Sangui fled to the Western Regions. Zhao Ming forced Meng Qiaofang to commit suicide by cesarean section. After recovering Guanlong, he changed Chang'an to Xi'an. He sent another 10,000 troops to Hetao's military farming and led his army back to Jiangnan.

Along the way, the people and officials and gentry welcomed each other, and the states and counties were like handing over their hands, leading Zhao Ming back to Nanjing.

Since the Wanli period, the Ming Dynasty gradually declined. Later, the Liao incident occurred, and the bandits in the pass caused chaos, and the world fell into chaos for half a century.

Over the years, the people have been repeatedly suffering from the Jiannu and the bandits, which is extremely miserable.

Now, with Zhao Ming's nearly twenty years of hard work, the world has finally been unified, and the people are no longer suffering from war, which has made the gentry and people in the world support Zhao Ming from the bottom of their hearts, which has made Zhao Ming's prestige reach its peak.

Zhao Ming returned to Nanjing and the world was settled, but he did not relax. Instead, he began to prepare, implement new policies and realize reforms.

Over the years, reforms have mostly required a relatively stable environment. If the environment is unstable, reforms will be easily disturbed and interrupted.

During the Warring States Period, Qin was able to succeed in using Shangjun's reform. The big reason was that Qin was located in Xikiao and the external environment was relatively peaceful, so Qin could concentrate on reform.

South Korea's reform was also very successful earlier, but a war destroyed the achievements of South Korea's reform and made South Korea's reform fail.

When Zhao Ming was the King of Han, he always advocated reforms in politics, but after serving as a regent and gaining power in the Ming Dynasty, he did not take any reforms, because the environment was still unstable, and Zhao Ming himself did not want to delegate power.

Over the years, reforms will inevitably touch the interests of some people and will be counterattacked by domestic conservative forces. At this time, there were hostile forces such as the Qing Dynasty and Zhou State outside the Ming Dynasty, as well as the royalists such as Zhu Yihai and Longwu within them, so Zhao Ming did not mention any of the reforms.

Because of rash reform, it may be collusion between hostile forces inside and outside, which leads to the failure of the reform and shakes his position.

Now, Zhao Ming has eliminated hostile forces at home and abroad, and his prestige is at its peak, and the time for reform is ripe.

Any dynasty or society will have problems when it develops to a certain level and stage, and at this time, reformists will appear.

If the reform is successful, the dynasty can prosper and continue to move forward.

If the reform fails, the dynasty will collapse due to the increasingly intensified internal contradictions, and in the end it will either die in an internal uprising or be taken advantage of by external forces.

The Ming Dynasty was founded for more than 300 years ago. As early as the Jiajing period, internal conflicts had seriously intensified and reached the verge of destroying the country.

It was during the late Jiajing Dynasty that the Ming Dynasty began to reform and dominated the Longqing period and started the new policy of Longqing.

With the efforts of Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng and other reformists, the powerful, the gentry clans and maritime smuggling groups were all curbed. However, under the deception of the conservatives, Emperor Wanli finally completely denied the achievements of the reformists, which made Zhang Juzheng's reforms was wasted.

Since then, the gentry clans in the southeast basically broke away from the control of the court, and the powerful gentry and powerful forces in various places have also begun to counterattack. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened, the allocation of social resources has been unfair, and internal conflicts have been heavy, which eventually led to the surging refugees, and Jiannu outside the pass has also taken advantage of the situation.

Since Wanli personally calculated the reformists, in more than half a century, there has been basically no voice from the reformists within the Ming Dynasty. Although the struggles in the court were fierce, they were all spokespersons of the gentry and wealthy families. It was just an internal conflict between them, and no voice for the people and the long-term consideration of the court.

Now, after half of the world's chaos, especially the war in the past thirty years, the world has been reshuffled to a certain extent, eased social contradictions. However, this passive reshuffle is actually not complete.

In the north, the original vested interests were awakened by a group of people in the peasant uprising and the Qing Dynasty's war to enter the pass. Zhao Ming destroyed the Qing Dynasty and conquered the Zhou Kingdom, and then cleaned up the remaining group.

Now, the original powerful people in the north have almost been wiped out and have been reshuffled.

In the south, since the Ming Dynasty did not perish, many provinces did not fall and retained the original social structure, so there were still some problems.

Of course, Zhao Ming's reform was not to thoroughly cleanse the gentry and merchants, but to reform according to the national conditions of the Ming Dynasty so that the Ming Dynasty could enter industrialization and run ahead of the world.

Judging from Zhao Ming's experience, there are generally only two ways to achieve industrialization. One is to complete the original accumulation of capital, take the paths of Britain and the West, and the other is to carry out a thorough revolution and take the paths of the Soviet Union and China.

At present, Zhao Ming was also crossing the river by feeling the stones, but fortunately, the Ming Dynasty was still accumulating technology at this time, and it was far from the time when the industrial revolution broke out, so Zhao Ming still had time to conduct research and consideration.

After Zhao Ming returned to Nanjing, he began to inspect Jiangnan.

In mid-December, Zhao Ming, accompanied by a number of officials, was inspecting the Qian weaving industry.

Qian's Weaving Industry is a textile workshop controlled by JAC Cotton. With the support of JAC Cotton and the raising of a large amount of money from the stock market, it has developed rapidly in recent years and has become the largest textile workshop in Jiangnan.

However, in the past year, Qian's Weaving Industry, which had previously maintained rapid expansion, has encountered a bottleneck. This year, not only did it not maintain expansion, but it closed three workshops in Jiangbei.

At this time, Zhao Ming walked in the workshop and found that in the busy workshop, less than half of the looms started, and he couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

The accompanying Grand Secretary Chen Mingyu explained: "Regent, I have learned that the workshop has reduced production mainly because it expanded too quickly and produced too much cloth, which caused a backlog of goods, so it had to reduce production."

"This is overproduction!" Zhao Ming said in a deep voice, and then he even remembered some serious problems.

Chen Mingyu said: "In recent years, Lianghuai has been planting cotton in large quantities. Workshops in various parts of Jiangnan have vigorously produced cloth. However, the production of cloth has increased, but sales have not increased, which has caused the price of cloth to fall. The workshops cannot make money, so they can only close some workshops and stop some looms."

Zhao Ming nodded. This phenomenon occurred later in the UK, Denmark and other places.

Overproduction caused the price of cloth to fall, causing the workshop to shut down, and large-scale cotton planting and sheep breeding caused the price of cotton and wool to fall and the price of grain to rise.

As the decline and rise, the phenomenon of anti-urbanization occurred, and a large number of weavers left the city and returned to the countryside to grow grain.

This anti-urbanization phenomenon eventually led Denmark to return to agricultural society, while Britain finally survived and survived the industrial revolution because of its vast overseas market.

Zhao Ming frowned and said, "In recent years, the imperial court has regained the north and recently regained Guanlong. The domestic market should have grown greatly. In addition, China Merchants and Shipping Company has opened many routes overseas, and the overseas market should also be expanding. Can the growth of domestic and foreign markets still consume the cloth produced by Jiangnan Workshop?"

Chen Mingyu explained: "Regent, before the imperial court unified, the cloth consumed by the north was also purchased from Jiangnan. Moreover, the purchase price at that time was higher than now. After the imperial court unified, for the northern merchants, they also became merchants from the Ming Dynasty, so the purchase price was lower. Therefore, the imperial court regained the north, and the market did not increase much, and the workshop made less money. As for the overseas market, although the Merchants and Shipping Company opened many routes, the purchase of our cloth by the Westerners in the past one or two years has been declining every year. In the past year, almost no merchant ships in Spain and the Netherlands have come to the Ming Dynasty to do business."

Zhao Ming's heart was terrified. Could it be that it was because the British wool industry rose and that he had snatched the Ming Dynasty's job?

At this time, Zhao Ming was thinking, and Hu Weizong suddenly walked to Zhao Ming, handed him a secret report, and whispered: "Regent, the Western Regions of the Military Information Department will report in detail. Wu Sangui is about to proclaim himself emperor in Tianzhu, and the next step of the Zhou army is very likely to seize Uszang."

Zhao Ming was a little surprised when he heard the word. Wu Sangui actually ran to India and wanted to be emperor, which was beyond his expectations.

Zhao Ming did not expect that Wu Sangui would have such a vision, and Wu Sangui became emperor and coveted Uszang, which undoubtedly ignited Zhao Ming's anger.

"Wu Sangui dares to be emperor, it's so outrageous!" Zhao Ming read the secret letter, kneaded it into a ball, gritting his teeth.
Chapter completed!