Chapter 2: Can the Great Ming Still Be Saved? (Seeking Favorites, Seeking Recommendations)

Zhu Yaofei — or rather, he should now be called Zhu Cilang. He had already wolfed down a most delicious imperial meal. A simple three dishes and a soup, plus a bowl of crystal-white rice, with no heavy or spicy seasoning and nothing novel about the dishes, yet it was cooked to absolute perfection. Even the finest delicacies served by the high-end clubs of later ages could not compare to this seemingly simple three dishes and a soup!

It seemed the Crown Prince's job perks were not bad at all — excellent food, spacious lodgings, a grand residence inside Beijing's First Ring. In later ages, no amount of money could buy a place like that!

Although in a few more days this grand residence would belong to Li Zicheng. But the Great Ming still had plenty of assets. The fall of Beijing and Chongzhen's hanging were merely the end of the Ming as written in history books; they did not mean this two-hundred-seventy-year-old establishment of the Great Ming had gone completely out of business.

Afterward there was still the Southern Ming. Though it fared poorly, it held on for over a decade. And if one counted the Zheng family's power on the island of Taiwan, there were nearly forty more years of kicking about to be had!

Those forty years of perseverance had been achieved without Zhu Cilang's brilliant leadership. Now that the Great Ming had an outstanding and far-sighted successor like Zhu Cilang, surely it could hold on for quite a few more years? No — not just hold on for more years, but restore the Great Ming to glory and create brilliance anew. That was a must!

"Right!" Zhu Cilang set down his rice bowl and slapped the table. "It must be saved! We must save it at any cost, by any means necessary... Huang Dabao!"

Eunuch Huang, who was attending at his side, was startled. His Thousand Years had always called him "Companion Huang" — why was he now calling him by his full name? Moreover, ever since His Thousand Years had woken up, something was off. His tone of voice and his expressions were not quite the same as before... It was as if — as if he had become a different person! And he kept saying such strange things, like a madman!

After that moment of shock, Eunuch Huang quickly recovered, gave a slight bow, and asked, "Thousand Years, what orders do you have?"

"Tell me — our Great Ming has fallen to its present state. Where exactly does the problem lie?"

Was there even any need to ask? The problem obviously lay with that emperor father of yours... This blunt truth, Eunuch Huang did not dare to speak.

"This, this..." Huang Dabao stammered.

Zhu Cilang shot him a glance. "Enough with the 'this and that.' Speak! Say whatever you have to say. No need to be afraid."

In his previous life he had worked in finance. That line of work required studying not only markets but also policy and company fundamentals, which meant conducting research all over the country. From his years of experience, he knew that in many large companies, the high-and-mighty chairman and general manager did not necessarily have a clear grasp of the actual situation — it was often the middle and lower-level cadres who knew the score... they just weren't willing to speak up!

"Then — then this slave will speak." Huang Dabao said, "The realm has fallen into such chaos entirely because of a lack of money."

"A lack of money?" Zhu Cilang nodded slightly. At the mention of money, a string of figures surfaced in his memory — all data from the sixteenth year of Chongzhen: the annual revenue of the Imperial Treasury, the three surtax levies, and various miscellaneous expenditures.

It turned out that from the fifteenth year of Chongzhen onward, Zhu Cilang had frequently accompanied Chongzhen to court. When Chongzhen annotated memorials, he often summoned Zhu Cilang to observe as well, and frequently instructed him. And Zhu Cilang had an excellent memory — he could remember the general meaning of every memorial he had read, so he remembered some of the Ministry of Revenue's memorials.

Zhu Cilang carefully recalled for a moment: it seemed... they weren't particularly short of money after all! Last year's regular taxes plus the three surtax levies were worth over ten million taels of silver.

"Bring brush and ink!" Zhu Cilang ordered.

"Does Thousand Years wish to compose an essay or paint?" Huang Dabao asked.

"Neither essay nor painting," Zhu Cilang said. "I want to conduct an analysis."

Analysis? What did that mean? Huang Dabao was utterly baffled.

Zhu Cilang could not be bothered to explain to him. He picked up a writing brush, spread out a sheet of xuan paper, and began writing and drawing on it. First he hand-drew a table for SWOT analysis. Then, drawing on his memory, he listed every "strength," "weakness," "opportunity," and "threat" of the Great Ming that he could think of, and proceeded to analyze them in different combinations.

In his later life he had been a veteran finance drone with a financial analyst certification, and had produced countless company research reports. Finding opportunities and risks amid a tangled mess was how he made his living. In this life, the skill of analysis was one of the golden fingers he could rely on.

Having a golden finger really did make all the difference!

With just a simple round of analysis, Zhu Cilang discovered that the Great Ming's fundamentals were actually not so terrible — it could hardly be said to be rotten to the core...

In later ages, many people, when speaking of the late Ming, liked to blindly reach the conclusion that it was "rotten to the core." All of that was layman's talk. Never mind a country — what is the foundation of a company? The chairman's ability? The general manager's integrity? So if you get a foolish chairman and a corrupt general manager, the company is rotten to the core?

That is not how it works at all. A company's management can indeed ruin the company — that is true. But it cannot be said that the moment a company encounters bad management, it is immediately rotten to the core.

By the same logic, it is also not true that a company with an excellent management team will necessarily flourish. And a company that even an excellent management team cannot save — that is one truly rotten to the core.

Based on Zhu Cilang's experience, a company's true foundation is one thing alone: whether its products can capture the market!

If the Great Ming were viewed as a company, then its products were undoubtedly capable of capturing the market.

The silk and porcelain produced by the Great Ming sold throughout the world. From the mid-sixteenth century, when the great silver mines of the Americas were opened up, vast quantities of silver began flowing into the Great Ming in exchange for bulk trade goods led by silk and porcelain. In just a hundred years, over ten thousand tons of silver flowed in — roughly four to five hundred million taels, meaning an annual trade surplus of several million taels.

And this market share would historically be maintained all the way until the final years of the Qing dynasty, when it would finally turn into a long-term trade deficit and silver outflow.

In later ages, who would consider a company whose products had lost their market to be high-quality, while at the same time claiming that a company whose products held an extremely high market share and could continue to dominate the international market for two hundred years was rotten to the core?

If such a person exists, they should absolutely never take up any work related to business or commerce... Contentment with poverty can also be a happy way of life.

And in later history, the fact that the Qing dynasty, after entering the Central Plains, could in a very short time produce the Kangxi golden age also proves that the late Ming's foundation had not rotted at all.

A company whose foundation has not rotted, whose market has not been lost, and which has not piled up a mountain of debt — only when its management team is too incompetent and runs into difficulties will it, after a change of management, rapidly turn losses into profits and create brilliance anew.

If it were truly rotten to the core, how could a mere change of management bring it back from the dead at once?

On the contrary, it was the mighty Great Qing that, played out to the end, was truly rotten. Not only had its own products lost the international market, but even domestically all manner of foreign goods held sway, and it had also piled up a mountain of foreign debt — principal and interest amounting to at least two billion taels of silver, nearly exceeding the total silver stock within Qing China at the time. The country's various sovereign rights were all mortgaged like collateral to the foreign powers. Even inside Beijing's Second Ring there was a patch of ground called the Legation Quarter occupied by foreign troops, an enclave beyond the law on Great Qing soil.

That was what it meant for products to have no market at all, for finances to be severely insolvent, for all movable and immovable assets to be seized by the banks, and for company operations to fall into severe difficulty... Only after more than a hundred years of bitter struggle did the great Chinese nation finally return to a golden age. One can imagine just how rotten the assets left behind by the Great Qing were.

(End of Chapter)