how to eat in a poisonous world? What else can we eat? New Deal on Finance and Culture: Governing the Country by Culture? In the past 3 years, China has created a miracle of economic growth, and China's wealth ... In a small way, the economy is to dress and eat; Generally speaking, the economy is related to the national movement and the rise and fall of the nation. The downfall of a dynasty and the collapse of a society, in many cases, are triggered by economic crisis. The demise of the Ming Dynasty, the last Han dynasty in China, is a typical example. Unbalanced economic structure In modern countries, international trade is an important means to develop the economy and accumulate foreign exchange. China's reform and opening up 3 years ago conformed to this trend of the times: it carried out extensive trade activities with the world, exchanged needed goods and got what each needed. The same is true of the Ming Dynasty more than 4 years ago. Many people feel that China before the Opium War was a closed and isolated country, and its economy was completely independent of the global economy. Actually, at least in the late Ming Dynasty, China's economy was quite open and closely integrated with the world economy. As we all know, the Ming Empire was destroyed by two hostile forces: one was the peasant uprising army led by Li Zicheng in the northwest, and the other was the Manchu Eight Banners in the northeast. The direct cause of the peasant uprising is the serious shortage of food caused by frequent natural disasters before the demise of the Ming Dynasty. Since the mid-Tang Dynasty, the main grain producing areas in China have shifted from the Yellow River valley to the Yangtze River valley, especially in the south of the Yangtze River. This trend reached its acme in the late Ming Dynasty. However, Jiangnan, a land of plenty, mostly stopped growing grain in the late Ming Dynasty. What is it? Driven by the huge interests of international trade and domestic commercial interests. Because China's exquisite cotton and silk products became the best sellers in the international market at that time, and the profits were quite rich, a large number of fields in the south of the Yangtze River were replanted with cash crops such as cotton and mulberry. As a result, the rice planting area in the whole Jiangnan area is less than 3/1 of all fields, and even less than 1/1 in some areas. Not only in the south of the Yangtze River, but also in areas with low grain output, such as Guangdong, Fujian, Shaanxi and Jiangxi, cash crops such as sugarcane (sugar), tobacco and fruit are also planted on a large scale for export and domestic trade, and high profits are obtained. The low profit of planting grain has caused all kinds of cash crops to replace grain crops, and the grain output has dropped sharply, which has great agricultural risks. Of course, the low price of grain can only appear when there is a bumper harvest or a steady harvest. Once natural disasters come and grain production is reduced, the consequences will be unimaginable. As we can see, in the 164s, in the last few years of the Ming Dynasty, famine came unexpectedly. Suzhou, once the richest grain-producing area and the most active bridgehead of international trade, was incredibly raised to 1 copper coins per catty because of the serious food crisis, and many people starved to death, but many luxury villas were sold at low prices but nobody cared. Rich Suzhou has fallen into such a serious food crisis, not to mention the barren northwest, and the peasant uprising in Li Zicheng is natural. Before the tragedy, businessmen all over the country expected to get high or even excess profits from international trade without restraint. However, the Ming government was also happy to see it, only seeing short-term benefits, but failed to comprehensively consider the national food security and international trade balance, and failed to make a reasonable overall plan and balance the domestic agriculture and commerce. Bread is the staff of life. No matter whether the Ming government ever realized that once there was a shortage of food in a famine year, it would bring a fatal blow to national security, as we have seen, when the country's administrative capacity and various technical capabilities have not reached a certain level, the Ming dynasty intentionally or unintentionally waded into the muddy water of international trade. The excessive international trade and domestic commercial consumption, which did not match the domestic economy, made the Ming dynasty lose the most fundamental material for national survival-the supply of food, thus taking the primary responsibility for the collapse of the Ming dynasty. The "deflation" of currency is completely opposite to the manifestation and fuse of modern economic crisis-inflation, but an important feature of the economic crisis in the late Ming Dynasty is the deflation of currency. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, silver became the currency of China. This is probably a helpless choice. Originally, in the early Ming Dynasty, the central government issued "banknotes", but it died because of the dual problems of system and technology. Just at this time, China's huge surplus in international trade made the international hard currency-silver-flow into China in large quantities. Originally, China was able to mine silver, but compared with the development of commodity economy, the domestic mining volume was only a drop in the bucket. While the central government of Ming Dynasty was having a headache about currency, silver, the fruit of China's foreign trade, poured into China fiercely, and solved the most important problem in Ming Dynasty's economic life once and for all: the source of money. However, its side effects are also obvious, that is, China's economy at that time was heavily dependent on imported silver, and even overseas silver became the lifeline of the Ming economy. I don't know if it was bad luck or somehow it had its own arrangement. While the Ming Dynasty was at home and abroad, Spain, the largest supplier of silver in China, lost to the emerging maritime power Holland in the global maritime hegemony. The Netherlands cut off many international maritime trade routes that traditionally belonged to Spain. Originally, between 1591 and 163, Spain's income from selling silver in its colonial American continent averaged more than 4 million pesos per year, but in 1631, it fell to only 2 million pesos. Most of the silver sold by Spain has flowed into China. This shows that the global supply of silver to China has seen an avalanche-like sharp decline. And this is absolutely disastrous for China. With the shrinking supply of silver, in the 164s, the most difficult period of the Ming Dynasty, a very strange situation appeared in the market: currency was seriously lacking and scarce, while prices (mainly food prices) remained high. In this situation, ordinary people have no "silver" at all, while basic necessities such as food are becoming more and more expensive. Under the adverse influence of natural disasters, the depression of the market has an accelerated effect, which has caused people's grievances to boil and various social contradictions have collectively erupted. Uneven tax burden In such a depressed market, the Ming Dynasty was unable to effectively intervene and stimulate the market economy. The reason is simple: neither the central government nor the local governments have money. To tell the truth, the private capital in Ming Dynasty was quite abundant. After more than two hundred years of commodity economy development, by the end of Ming Dynasty, big businessmen and big noble were even as rich as an enemy. However, like all dying dynasties, the wealth gap between the people is huge. An important reason for this evil result is the uneven tax burden. The privileged class, such as Fu Wang, the precious son of Emperor Wanli, owns 4, hectares of farmland, but pays little tax, even without paying tax, and passes the tax grain on to ordinary farmers. Nobles such as Fu Wang also concealed a large number of fields, which made the court often unable to grasp the total amount of tax fields. Although after Zhang Juzheng's reform in the late Ming Dynasty, a large number of hidden land properties surfaced, but after Zhang Juzheng's death, the annexation and concealment of land were even more intensified and retaliated. At that time, Fu Wang was captured alive by Li Zicheng, who copied more than 22, pieces of silver and a large amount of gold from his mansion. However, the central government is always like a cat on hot bricks financially, with no money to spend, supply the army, and pay for various government expenses and purchases. In addition to the imperial clan nobles, Donglin Party members in the late Ming Dynasty also collectively resisted the taxation of the imperial court. A large part of Donglin Party members came from the families of big landlords and businessmen in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. One of the important contents of their so-called party struggle is to speak for themselves and other big landlords and businessmen in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, reduce their taxes and hide their land and wealth. If the state can't effectively tax the big landlords, it can only make a fuss about the small farmers. However, even if the tax quota of small farmers is increased, it is impossible to ensure the overall tax revenue and fiscal revenue of the country, because the big taxpayers should all be aristocrats, big landlords and big businessmen, and only if they do not evade taxes can the national finance improve. However, we have not seen this situation. On the contrary, small farmers rose up and abandoned their empire because of the rising tax burden and prices and the serious food shortage.