These days, Zhao Huan is in a rather good mood. He used to be busy with official duties all day long and was a complete workaholic, but now he has started to make time to spend with the beauties in the harem.
Take Empress Zhu for example. She was a rather introverted person, or as we would say in ancient times, very quiet and unhurried. She had a particular fondness for appreciating flowers, and Zhao Huan made time to accompany her to admire them.
Not only that, but he also summoned Tang Ke and Xu Churen and asked them to come up with a plan: to build a garden outside the city of Tokyo, specifically for the Empress.
This matter originally fell under the purview of the Ministry of Works, so why did the emperor summon Tang Ke, the Vice Minister of State Affairs? Because Tang Ke now holds a very important position as the Minister of Commerce, and the Ministry of Commerce has an important department called the Department of Commerce and Resources, which is specifically responsible for managing these matters.
The emperor is now considering many things from an economic perspective.
For example, to build a garden, the Ministry of Commerce would first need to prepare a financial plan, which would then be submitted to the Three Departments for approval. After the review, the Ministry of Works would design the garden, and the Department of Commerce and Resources would then recruit merchants from the public to form a construction team to carry out the specific work and manage the entire process.
The final settlement amount was deducted from the budget of the State Affairs Hall. Why was it deducted from the State Affairs Hall? Because Zhao Huan set a target for Xu Churen: within two years, the income of the people in Jingdong Road, Jingxi Road, and Jingji Road should double.
The construction of fortifications by the imperial court boosted employment; this is a fundamental understanding for any adult in later generations.
Anyway, Zhao Huan confiscated a lot of money from Qingzhou. This money was all taken from the people and now it can be considered to be returned to them.
Besides planning the Queen's Garden, the Council of State has been planning quite a few construction projects lately. Ever since being spurred on by the Qingzhou case, Xu Churen has been working like a man possessed.
For example, regarding the expansion of Tokyo, the Council of State Affairs had already designated all the vast open spaces and begun to make overall plans. This plan had been in the Council of State Affairs for more than a month and had been shown to the emperor several times.
According to Zhao Huan's idea, a piece of land in the south of the city should be reserved for the construction of a university. Although there will only be two universities this year and next, it can be planned in advance. At least ten universities will be built in Tokyo in the future.
As for primary and secondary schools, they can be built in or near the outer city, which would facilitate management and ensure safety.
From an overall perspective, Tokyo City needs to extend outwards by at least ten times!
In the next twenty years, the population of Tokyo will increase at least fivefold, exceeding five million. In order to curb housing prices, the imperial court must reserve a reasonable range.
It is precisely because the housing prices in Tokyo have reached an outrageous level, seriously threatening the city's economy, that Zhao Huan decided to accelerate the expansion of his territory and disrupt the supply and demand relationship of land.
How high are housing prices in Tokyo right now?
As early as the mid-Song Dynasty, with the development of commerce, land prices skyrocketed. Take the veteran official Ouyang Xiu as an example. After passing the imperial examination, he rented a house in the capital city of Bianjing (Kaifeng) for more than ten years before he finally bought a house.
Su Shi and his sons fared even worse. When they came to Tokyo to take the imperial examinations, the three of them lived in a small cubicle in a bathhouse for a whole year before they finally moved out.
It has been estimated that if an ordinary person in the Song Dynasty did not eat or drink, it would take 150 years to afford a house.
Qin Guan, Zhang Lei, Huang Tingjian, and Chao Buzhi were collectively known as the "Four Scholars of Su School." None of the four scholars owned property in Kaifeng; they all rented houses. Qin Guan rented a house in the city center, Huang Tingjian rented a house in Chisi in the west of the city, and Zhang Lei and Chao Buzhi rented houses in the southern suburbs.
Scholars in the Song Dynasty had a very high social status, second only to the imperial family, yet they still ended up in such dire straits. This gives us a glimpse into what life was really like for ordinary people!
When Zhao Huan wanted to expand the capital city of Dongjing, the ministers naturally opposed it. They argued that if the expansion extended to the outside, the new city would be without walls for defense in the event of war, which would be extremely dangerous.
The emperor then made a bold statement to his ministers, saying that for the next ten thousand years, the capital city of Bianjing would no longer be threatened by foreign tribes. The establishment of the five war zones would completely reverse the situation, and from then on, the Song Dynasty would only expand outwards and would never shrink inwards.
The ministers cursed inwardly, "You think you can believe me? Besides bragging, Emperor, you force everyone to brag with you. What else can you do? Oh, right, you can also behead people!"
Finally, Zhao Huan overruled the objections of his ministers and forced them to agree to his plan to expand Tokyo.
From the initial construction of the Bureau of Arts and Crafts, to the planning of schools, to the Queen's Garden, and then to the basic welfare society, some of the projects were already in operation, spearheaded by the imperial court.
Even the planning of the new city's territory and the prices for selling to private merchants have been determined, which will be a huge source of revenue for the imperial court, estimated to exceed 70 million strings of cash.
When the figure came out, Xu Churen was shocked. He had no idea that the imperial court could make money in this way.
Moreover, according to this plan, it would cost at least 70 million strings of cash!
The biggest problem now is that merchants need to be willing to buy land. Merchants are profit-driven, and if there is no money to be made in the new city, they will naturally not be willing to buy. Therefore, the government has a very important task now: to attract people from the surrounding area.
Fortunately, the founding of the Song Dynasty had some good aspects. For example, the Song Dynasty's household registration system was much more humane than that of the Tang Dynasty.
In the early Tang Dynasty, there was a distinction between good citizens and lowly citizens in the household registration system. However, this distinction disappeared in the Song Dynasty. Instead, there were only urban households and rural households, which are the so-called urban and rural household registrations.
Moreover, the movement of people was no longer restricted and no official documents were required. Rural households could freely enter and leave cities, and even migrants could do so, which was almost the same as in later times.
This open household registration system greatly helped in the expansion of Tokyo City.
All economic activities are interconnected, and the prime ministers now deeply understand this statement. From the expansion of Tokyo to the land sale plan to the demand for population, everything is linked together.
If we want more people to gather here, we must liberate them from heavy corvée labor and from the land where they can only make a living by farming.
Having figured all this out, Xu Churen truly began to feel that the emperor's vision and thoughts were as profound as the vast ocean and the magnificent starry sky.
No wonder the emperor was willing to kill so many people and defy the world to abolish corvée labor and reduce taxes. Only in this way could the people be freed and create more value.
When the people have money, the national treasury will naturally be full!
After figuring these things out, Xu Churen was in a great mood every day, as if he had opened the door to a new world. He ate more and began to respond to the emperor's call to conduct strict assessments of his officials, laying off those who did not perform well.
The expansion of Tokyo made the prime ministers truly realize the importance of population; it was no longer just a resource for war, but also extremely valuable for economic and commercial development.
Therefore, on July 13th, the Council of State Affairs collectively drafted the Great Song Dynasty's population census plan and a plan to increase the population, and submitted this idea, which has long-term strategic value for the future of the Great Song Dynasty, to the emperor.
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