Among the emperors of the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng is the most arduous one, although his reign is not very long, but as an emperor, among the dozen emperors of the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng is a model worker, especially a method of governing the Qing Dynasty during the reign of Yongzheng, if it is continued in the future, the Qing Dynasty will most likely go to another glory again.
We know that a very fundamental reason for the backwardness of the Qing Dynasty is because of the policy of sea prohibition carried out for many years, in the Shunzhi era of the Qing Dynasty, in order to prevent the ming Dynasty's forces from resurgent, the Qing Dynasty issued an order to ban the sea, not allowing the coast to have "sails into the sea", and it was also very strict, and by the time of the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, the Qing Dynasty was still not very confident about the coast, and simply made a population move inland, which can be said to completely separate the inland from the sea.
And this situation continued until the Kangxi Emperor took back the other side, there was a hint of loosening, because the signs of rebellion of the Ming Dynasty have been completely gone, the Qing Dynasty can rest assured, so by the twenty-second year of Kangxi, the sea ban basically did not exist, and what followed was a prosperous maritime trade, because the Qing Dynasty itself was a self-sufficient production model, so when dealing with overseas trade, it was always exported more than imported, so that the financial revenue of the Qing Dynasty immediately rose and the ship rose. The Kangxi Dynasty began.
However, this situation was interrupted in the fifty-sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, mainly because although the coastal trade brought a lot of wealth to the Qing Dynasty, there were many advanced ideas that came in with a large amount of money, and this kind of thinking was the existence that the Qing Dynasty was wary of and hated, so, seeing this situation, the Qing Dynasty once again implemented the sea ban, so the coastal trade almost immediately disappeared, although it lost a lot of wealth, but in the eyes of the Qing Dynasty, it was worth it!
Under such a premise, the Qing Dynasty entered the Yongzheng Dynasty again, Yongzheng was a Ming Emperor, he soon discovered the problems brought about by the prohibition of the sea, the economic prosperity, resulting in the rise of the population, the shortage of land in the interior, so that the coastal idle population increased significantly, which itself has a great hidden danger to the stability of the Qing Dynasty society. Moreover, under such circumstances, the Qing Dynasty's finances were already stretched, and the imperial court had no money, which was a great embarrassment to Yongzheng.
While Yongzheng was suffering from no way, The Inspector of Fuzhou, Mao Wenquan, gave him enlightenment, and in the midst of the recital, Mao Wenquan suggested that the imperial court reopen coastal trade, so that people who had no land could go to sea to trade or fish for a living, so that on the one hand, they could live a stable life and not add chaos to the imperial court, and on the other hand, the restart of coastal trade could solve the financial crisis of the Qing Dynasty.
At this point, Yongzheng made up his mind: lift the sea ban!
Compared with Kangxi, Yongzheng's lifting of the sea ban can be said to be both strict and bold, and the strict aspect is that the Qing Dynasty gave the people who went to the sea a stipulation that they could only bring food and drink and the prescribed items to the sea, otherwise according to the theory of the crime of going to the sea, those who went to the sea to do business would return within the prescribed time, otherwise even the officials who let them go to sea would also be judged as guilty, so that they could ensure that trade would be carried out to the greatest extent without causing trouble to the Qing Dynasty.
The bold place is that this time the Qing Dynasty was almost fully open to coastal trade, and the prosperous and developed economy and trade not only saved the Qing Dynasty's financial crisis at once, but also brought a lot of wealth to the interior, and by the time Qianlong took over, the treasury of the Qing Dynasty had increased from 7 million to more than 60 million when Yongzheng ascended the throne!
However, all this made Qianlong fall into worry again, he was still worried about the problem that his grandfather was worried about, if the people in the coastal lands had too much contact with foreigners, they would be damaged, so Qianlong made another determination: he still had to ban the sea!
And this time Qianlong banned the sea more than Kangxi, in addition to defending his own people, even foreigners who came to Qing were also defended, perhaps only in this way can Qianlong sit back and relax, and the Qing Dynasty's coastal trade has disappeared in the policy of forbidding coming and going, but qianlong may not have thought that his own forbidden sea basically completely cut off the Qing Dynasty's contact with the outside world, turned a deaf ear to the development of the world, and eventually fell behind step by step, which led to the situation of being played by the Western powers at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
If from this point of view, if the original Qing Dynasty continued to follow Yongzheng's thinking, the Qing Dynasty would not be like this.