Munitions Empire

Chapter 2018 - 1881: Unknown Future

Millions of prisoners are busy building the Great Tang Empire on the Eastern Continent, while tens of millions of people on the Western Continent have already started preparing for the coronation celebration of their Emperor.

No one can suppress this feeling, they really did it, they unified the world, turning the entire world into one country.

The Dragon Banner of the Great Tang Empire flies everywhere, and from now on, all people and all races will have only one country, with no threats of war and no limitations of borders.

What a magnificent achievement this will be!

Many places are decorated with lanterns and streamers, and many places are preparing for grand celebrations. However, there are still many people busy with this unified world... They are facing a future that has never been seen before.

For many, unification is a tremendous blessing, but for some, unification is not so comfortable.

Humans, or humanoid races, have been facing a problem since their birth, which is population growth. This issue in the past was resolved through ways like "famine," "disease," and "war."

Land conflict, a seemingly simple issue, in fact, holds deep and complex social roots. When land resources can no longer bear the ever-expanding population, social stability is disrupted, and chaos erupts.

This chaos, like a merciless storm, devours those who cannot find space to survive on the land, while the survivors must seek stability in the ruins and continue their lives. In ancient times, those glorious dynasties often could not solve this fundamental problem, so they could only experience the cycle of prosperity and decline repeatedly, eventually heading towards destruction.

Population gradually evolved from a dividend into a disaster, eventually engulfing a flourishing dynasty, only to rebuild a new empire on the ruins.

The issue of disease is equally easy to understand. Due to backward medical technology, civilization has always been passive in preventing diseases, with very minimal success.

A widespread epidemic is enough to reduce the population to a relatively safe level. Historically, plagues that killed millions were not uncommon. These diseases seemed to be a kind of sterilization method by nature, destroying the intelligent beings parasitic on it, much like bacteria.

As for war, its causes are even more apparent. When population growth reaches a certain point, to solve the human-land contradiction, expansion of living space is necessary. Occupying others’ land and killing others’ people is undoubtedly the most cost-effective way.

Of course, if a war is lost, it is not a big deal, because a large number of surplus populations would already have been lost in the war, and those remaining would naturally not face land scarcity issues. This is also a win-win situation.

However, in modern society, the Great Tang Empire, established as a unified world empire, has already blocked all these traditional solutions to the human-land contradiction. The Great Tang Empire has achieved global unification, so, in the short term, it has no possibility of waging external wars or expanding territories.

This means that the old method of reducing the population through war is no longer applicable. In this unified world, people must find new ways to resolve the human-land contradiction to avoid repeating the tragedies of history.

At the same time, through persistent efforts and innovative research and development, the Great Tang Group has successfully introduced a series of advanced drugs that have significantly improved the healthcare standards of the people.

Today, the average age of the population in the Great Tang Empire has increased by seven or eight years, and this number will undoubtedly continue to rise in the future. With continuous advancements in medical technology, the average life expectancy of civilians is expected to increase further, reaching seventy or eighty, or even eighty or ninety years.

However, this will bring with it the immense and unimaginable population pressure that the Great Tang Empire will face.

At the same time, the population explosion has brought another problem. Due to the limited arable land, as the population continues to grow, the pressure on arable land will become increasingly severe.

If food production cannot meet the ever-growing population demand, internal turmoil in the Great Tang Empire may fully erupt.

Fortunately, Tang Mo still has time to address this challenge, as the global population has not yet reached the point where the dangers are apparent. Currently, the Great Tang Empire is still in a state of vast lands and sparse population, with plenty of arable land available for further development. There is still great potential for agricultural development, which provides enormous potential for future food production.

Historically, there is a fundamental difference between the Great Tang Empire and previous empires. This difference is that the Great Tang Empire is not only a powerful industrial empire but also has the potential to become a powerful information empire in the future, possibly even ushering in a new era of the universe.

Both industrial and technological development require a large population for support, and this population provides countless job opportunities for the country. Therefore, the land pressure in the Great Tang Empire is not as significant as people imagine.

As long as the yield of food products is sufficient to meet consumption demand, a large population is not a real problem for the Great Tang Empire. Because under Tang Mo’s governance, the population has been divided into two main categories: non-agricultural population and agricultural population.

In fact, in an industrial nation, the population not engaged in agricultural-related work can be three times the agricultural population or more. Therefore, even if the population of the Great Tang Empire increases by another billion, it may not feel too much population pressure.

However, the issue of war consumption is a tricky problem. The Great Tang Empire has not found a truly effective solution. Tang Mo cannot initiate civil wars to consume the population without actual necessity, can he? Such an approach is obviously irrational.

So, after Tang Mo raised these issues, both the current Vice Imperial Chancellor, Chu Muzhou, and Nangong Hong, who is about to take over the Vice Imperial Chancellor position, found that their smiles were no longer so natural.

Even though they are all exceptional individuals, very intelligent high-ranking officials, they still lack sufficient experience when facing the unified world of the Great Tang Empire.

This is very similar to the situation Emperor Qin Shi Huang faced: The empire has defeated all powerful opponents, so what should be done in the future? He didn’t know, nor did his officials. Everyone could only take one step at a time.

Did the Qin Country perish because of tyranny? Simply understanding Emperor Qin Shi Huang as a brutal and crazy lunatic is clearly one-sided. He certainly wasn’t a fool sitting on the throne thinking every day about how to brutalize his people; if he were, what would the heroes of the Six Kingdoms, whom he defeated, be like?

A part of the reason for Qin Country’s demise was its lack of experience. There was no previous centrally unified dynasty before it, so after Qin Country annexed the Six Kingdoms, it showed obvious symptoms of maladaptation.

Even Emperor Qin Shi Huang himself couldn’t solve the problems due to lack of experience, so he and his ministers could only adopt the least risky approach: following the rules and conventions.

This is why Qin Country continued its own laws and experiences, applying the wartime economic and organizational framework of the King Qin State to the Qin Empire, which should have recuperated after unification.

As a result, the conquered Six Kingdoms’ common people naturally felt subjected to tyranny: a whole lot of new rules that had never existed before were imposed on their heads, with threats like detention or death for those who were late to comply, and with the aristocratic families of the Six Kingdoms discontented with Qin Country’s pen-and-knife embellishments... This is how Qin Country’s image was passed down.

Finally unified, in order to maintain the wartime economy, they resisted the northern deserts and campaigned in the southern forests, building wonders and grand cities... This wasn’t merely a pursuit of grandeur, but rather a relentless militaristic escalation driven by the system and economy.

Could Emperor Qin Shi Huang stop? If he stopped, so many ranks awaited promotion, so many rewards awaited to be dispensed, who dared to stop?

Who explained to those frenzied officers who took pride in slicing off ears as proof of merit, "The country has no fields left to distribute to you, would you mind just letting your military achievements go? Just go home and live a stable life..."

Letting the common people repairing the Great Wall return home was easy, but was it as easy to get those officials who oversaw the Great Wall repairs and awaited achievements to build their careers to return home?

This set of practices began with Shang Yang, and Emperor Qin Shi Huang had neither the courage nor the capability to reform it, and neither did Li Si and his ilk. Everyone clung to this outdated practice, waiting for death, and the final outcome could only be a dead-end.

Never assume that negating one’s past successful experiences is an easy thing. In fact, humanity has made similar mistakes countless times throughout history, yet there are very few who step forward to confront the entire vested interest group to correct the mistakes.

During World War II, the Japanese Navy leaders were not fools. The battleship doctrine they believed in was solidly successful right up until the moment of failure, who dared question it?

Similarly, in the real world, Western countries have crafted their societies into what they are today, and who stands out to question whether the "ancestral laws" can change?

Now, the Great Tang Empire faces similar issues: Tang Mo and his subordinates face an unprecedented unified era, where they need to rethink how to resolve "class issues," "population pressure," and "wealth distribution."

Issues that could be resolved through violence and barbarity in the past must now be pushed forward in a subtle, almost invisible manner; for the rulers, this itself is a test.

Before annexing the Eastern Continent, these issues were not issues at all, but now that the Dragon Banner of the Great Tang Empire is planted worldwide, Tang Mo has no choice but to consider things that even he has never thought about before.