A great migration of 30 million people almost changed the fate of the northeast

In modern China, there have been three relatively large-scale migration activities, namely breaking into the Guandong, going west, and going down to Nanyang. Every major migration will have a huge impact on the economy, especially the invasion of kanto that has lasted for more than 300 years, directly allowing the economy of the northeast to take off.

The so-called invasion of the Kanto refers to the population of the interior moving outside the Northeast Pass, and the Guanguan here refers to Shanhaiguan.

Why break in? Because the Qing government had several iterations of the matter of emigrating to the northeast, it was strictly forbidden to move outside the Guanxi in the middle period, so the people in Guanxi could only go secretly if they wanted to, so it was called "breaking into the Guandong".

According to statistics, the number of people migrating to the northeast has reached 30 million, and so many foreign people have a huge impact on the entire economy and culture of the northeast region.

To explain this history clearly, we must start from the beginning.

I. Great emigration of the Qing Dynasty

This place in the northeast has always been a bitter cold place, looking at the world, the population gathering is generally not in the climate is particularly cold, so the high latitude area has always been sparsely populated.

Most of the population of ancient China was gathered in the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin, which is easy to understand, one is that the climatic conditions are better and suitable for farming, and the other is that it is very convenient to develop agriculture close to the water source. In places like the northeast, there are naturally not many people.

1644 this year is more special, the Ming Dynasty died in this year, the peasant rebel army Li Zicheng became the emperor, just after 41 days, Li Zicheng was driven out of the palace by the Qing army, that is, in this year the Qing army entered the customs from the northeast region, and there were many families who came with the army, as well as slaves brought by the nobles, a total of hundreds of thousands.

The first emperor of the Qing Dynasty was the Shunzhi Emperor, and after he straightened out all the work of entering the customs, he looked back and found that the northeast was empty, and a large amount of land was deserted without anyone taking care of it, we know that the Manchus were fishing and hunting people, and they were not very good at farming, so many people moved to Guannei, and the Manchus who remained in the northeast even had a problem with their lives.

Just at this time, due to the wars and natural disasters at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were many landless displaced people in the provinces of Guannei, and the imperial court thought that the displaced people were more unstable and could just be sent to the northeast, so they successively issued decrees asking government officials at all levels to find ways to send people to the northeast to develop. In addition to the preferential policies for the people who reclaim the land, there are also rewards for those who organize immigration, and the imperial court issued a decree called the "Regulations on the Reclamation of the People in Liaodong Province", the core idea is "immigrant officials", and whenever the number of displaced people is recruited to reach a certain number, the imperial court will give the corresponding official positions.

This period cannot yet be called "breaking into the Kanto" in the true sense, because the state encourages it, everywhere is a green light, and the migration to the northeast is equivalent to contributing to the country.

Agricultural production in the northeast was quickly restored after the displaced people in Guannei went in, and the livelihood of the Manchus who remained outside the Guanxi was also solved to a certain extent, and there were different voices in the imperial court for the continuous migration to the northeast, some people believed that Liaodong was a place rich in ginseng, these ginseng were the treasures on which the Manchurian flag people relied for their livelihood, and now there are more and more displaced people, and more and more people go to the mountains to steal ginseng, which has endangered the survival of the flag people. There is another voice that says that the northeast is the land of the Qing Dynasty's dragon rejuvenation, which is related to the national fortunes of the Qing Dynasty, and now the Han people have run to the wasteland in large numbers, and it is very likely that the real purpose is to break the dragon vein of the Qing Dynasty.

The emperor thought about it and said it was reasonable, so the matter of encouraging displaced people to enter the northeast could no longer be done, and from the eleventh year of Shunzhi, the imperial court had certain restrictions on Han chinese immigration to the northeast.

The main practice is to dig a ditch along the Shanhaiguan pass, plant wicker in the ditch, form a fence wall, send troops to guard every section, and do not allow the Han people to cross the isolation belt at will, which is the famous "wicker edge" in history, of course, the imperial court also formed a series of supporting decrees for the "wicker edge".

The restrictions on immigration to the northeast by the Kangyong and Yong dynasties were relatively mild, and the Qianlong Dynasty began to adopt an absolute prohibition policy for immigrants from the northeast, and if it was found that they had sneaked over the edge of the wicker, they would be severely punished, and even the officials who guarded the customs would have to sit together.

Chinese have the idea of relocating to the land, and generally they are unwilling to leave their hometowns, so why do so many people have to migrate to the northeast even if they risk death? There is only one reason, that is, I can't live anymore.

Those who are familiar with Chinese history should know that the population of the dynasties in ancient China was not large, and once there were more people, they could not survive, and then there were famines and wars, and the cycle began again and again. The population has never been able to grow significantly, which makes the ancient dynasty generally only two or three hundred years old.

This is related to the previous tax system, before the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court's taxation of the peasants was based on the number of heads, one more person had to pay an additional poll tax, the land of the general peasants was unchanged, the consequence was that a family had to pay more and more taxes to the imperial court as the population grew, and the productivity did not increase, this tax was mandatory, and in the end the peasants could only sell land or borrow money to pay taxes, and the peasants' land was constantly transferred to the landlord's hands, and the more peasants without land had to rise up and rebel By changing dynasties and changing dynasties, the population was sharply reduced to reach a balance with the land, and the new imperial court could be stable for hundreds of years.

During the Kangxi Dynasty, it was realized that the old tax system was still a little cruel to the common people, and the imperial court began to carry out tax reforms, gradually overcharging the tax according to the head of the people to collecting taxes according to the number of land, which historians called "spreading the land into the acres". Simply put, the new tax system is that no matter how many people in your family, taxes are only based on the area of land, and sharecroppers who do not have land can not pay taxes. This tax system greatly reduced the burden on the peasants, and as a result, the population exploded in a short period of time.

By the middle and late Kangxi Dynasty, the population of the Qing Dynasty exceeded 100 million, and by the end of the Qing Dynasty, the population exceeded 400 million, which was unprecedented in ancient Chinese history.

The final result of the increasing population is that there is not enough land, especially in Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi and other places in the Yellow River Basin, the population density is increasing, and more and more people who do not have enough to eat are also increasing, and these people have become displaced people without exception.

Another reason for the increase in displaced people is famine, although the yellow river basin is fertile, but there are many disasters, the Qing Dynasty almost every year the yellow river basin disaster.

In the first year of Guangxu, there was a huge famine in Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan and other provinces, known in history as the "Ding Shu Qi Famine". The entire famine lasted for four years, and some places did not receive any grain for a year, according to historical records, this time the famine caused at least 10 million people to starve to death, and 20 million people became displaced people.

These displaced people can only migrate to the outside world for their own survival, and the first choice is of course the northeast. At present, the ancestral home of northeast people is mostly Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other places, especially Shandong, 80% of the people who have moved to the northeast region in the country are Shandong nationals, which has a lot to do with the close distance between Shandong and the three eastern provinces.

In the late Qing Dynasty, there were many major events within the imperial court, the provinces of Guannei were full of peasant uprisings, the control of the frontier was already very weak, after 1840 it was often hanged, the finances of the imperial court were also very problematic, more northern Russia has been fighting the idea of the northeast, Japan is also not idle and wants to occupy the northeast, the imperial court began to allow or even encourage immigration to the northeast, after all, there are still a large number of land in the northeast that have not been developed, and the past Han people cultivated land to create taxes for the country. At the same time, there are more people and they are not afraid of foreigners. In the Republic of China period, this trend of immigration did not weaken at all, with the construction of railways, it was more convenient to migrate to the northeast, and the government even encouraged immigrants with half-price discounts on tickets at that time.

The entire invasion of the Kanto did not last until 1931, when September 18 had already taken place and the Northeast had fallen. The turbulent years that followed were largely impossible to carry out large-scale population transfers, and this great history came to an end.

Outside the Golden King's Han border

Although the wicker edge was established in Shunzhi, the imperial court generally adopted the measure of turning a blind eye to the Han people who continued to invade the Kanto, because a large number of displaced people always had a place to evacuate, and the northeast just undertook the task of evacuating the displaced people.

Although secretly, these people are still illegal on the surface, so there are not many people who can really get the land in the northeast, and most of them have become sharecroppers who help the flag people manage the land or become the stewards of the flag people, after all, the flag people really have no talent in farming and taking care of household chores. At that time, the banner people and nobles in the northeast had a housekeeper in the central plains, which was also a status symbol.

Most of the people eventually became various coolies, especially in the three industries of mining, logging, and medicine digging, and Kannai's coolies were the most. As mentioned earlier, the northeast is rich in products and always requires a large number of labor to develop.

By the way, some other people in the northeast look at others, whether they are sharecroppers or hard laborers, making money is always very hard, and these people think that it is better to grab it directly, which is also the biggest source of bandits in the northeast. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, there were thousands of forces of bandits in the northeast, with a total number of 100,000, and some bandits slowly developed, and finally mixed into a big warlord (Zhang Zuolin was a bandit), who could control the entire three eastern provinces.

Among all the gold diggers who broke into the Kanto Region, there was one person known as the Golden King, and this person was Han Xianzong from Dengzhou, Shandong.

Han Xianzong's reason for going to the northeast is no different from others, that is, he fled with his parents, when he first came, he worked as a child laborer for a rich family, and when he was young, he was also very good at gambling, once in order to escape gambling debts, he ran to the mountains to dig ginseng, digging and digging even digging gold.

Around 1847, in order to pan for gold, Han Xianzong went to the Jiapigou in Jilin to start his gold panning career. To put it more, the Jiapigou Gold Mine is known as the first gold mine in China.

As mentioned earlier, there are many people who run to the northeast to become bandits, and there is also a group of bandits in Jiapigou who often harass the digging miners, and under the repeated requests of the gold panning workers, Han Xianzong decided to get rid of this gang of bandits, and finally used the "fire rope meter" to eliminate the bandits in Jiapigou.

Han Xianzong's prestige, which had destroyed the bandits, suddenly increased, and he sat on the top seat on the Golden Mountain of Jiapigou.

After Han Xianzong became the boss of the gold mine, he did not follow the routine of bandits, but established his own ruling institution centered on Jiapigou, vigorously expanded his military strength, and also promulgated his own laws, which were also very simple, that is, rewarding good and punishing evil, never exploiting the local people, but supporting them to employment.

Han Xianzong's reputation spread farther and farther, attracting a large number of displaced people to come to his aid, and the strength of Jiapigou became stronger and stronger. Han Xianzong also got a name called "Han Bianwai".

It was impossible for the Qing court to watch Han Xianzong sit on the throne, and from the tongzhi period onwards, the imperial court began to fight with Han Xianzong, and Tongzhi recruited Han Xianzong with six military industries, and in the Guangxu period, he rewarded Han Xianzong with a five-pin official, and since then Han Xianzong has submitted to the imperial court.

Han Xianzong, who had the official title of the imperial court, was more comfortable with doing things, openly recruiting displaced people to settle in Jiapigou, welcoming his family, spending money on education in the ruling area, and in order to take care of the lonely and widowed elderly, he also ran a large number of "idle people's rooms" to resettle the elderly, which was also the first in modern China.

Han Xianzong was not only a man who could engage in business, but also had patriotic feelings, and during the Sino-Japanese naval battle, Han Xianzong vigorously recruited troops in his own jurisdiction in order to support the Qing government, and his grandson Han Dengju even joined the army himself.

In those turbulent years, there were many stories like Han Bianwai, which were also special examples in special times.

Three huge impacts

The impact of this migration movement on the Northeast is enormous.

The large-scale migration of the population can be said to have played the most critical role in the economic development of the northeast, and agriculture, handicrafts and industry and commerce have all been greatly developed, and from 1912 to 1930, the grain production of the northeast has doubled. The northeast had become The main grain producing area in China at that time, and at its peak, the northeast's soybean exports even monopolized the world.

In terms of industry and commerce, from 1910 to 1931, the northeast was under the control of the Fengzhi warlord Zhang Zuolin, and the situation in the northeast was relatively stable in the past twenty years, during which the total economic volume of the northeast reached half of Japan's, the military industry, steelmaking, and shipbuilding have all been greatly developed, grain production is the first in East Asia, and the fields of transportation, industry, and finance are also at the leading level in the whole of East Asia, which is much better than the provinces in Kannai.

In addition to the huge economic impact, the national border defense has also been consolidated to a certain extent.

In the late Qing Dynasty, the imperial court began to encourage emigration to the northeast for a key reason to consolidate border defenses. After a large number of Northeast Banner people entered the customs in the early Qing Dynasty, the northeast has always been a small number of people, and many places are even no man's land for many years, resulting in the country's border defense strength in the northeast is very weak.

Although in 1689, China and Russia signed the Treaty of Nebuchu to demarcate the border between the two countries, but the Tsarist Russia often sneaked across the border to mine and dig medicine, although the imperial court expelled it as soon as it was found, the key problem was that the northeast was too big, and there were too few people, and many times the Qing soldiers could not find that the enemy had come.

After the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty was basically beaten by various countries every year, and Tsarist Russia first seized a large area of land in Heilongjiang by force, and then Tsarist Russia obtained shipping rights, mining rights and other powers in the northeast, followed by Japanese occupation, and Japan even tried to emigrate all of its excess population to the northeast, which could alleviate the domestic overpopulation and achieve the purpose of actually controlling the northeast.

Under these circumstances, the Qing court decided to re-emigrate to the northeast, and those who moved over could produce and build on the border defense line, so why don't we occupy the land ourselves instead of letting foreigners occupy the land? The later period did play this effect.

Endgame

From the process of breaking into the Kanto, we can see that the population will play a very key role in the development of the regional economy, and the cities that have developed in recent years, in addition to the cities like the coast, which are extremely convenient for water transportation and transportation, can eat the dividends of globalization, the capital cities of the provinces with large populations in the central and western regions have also developed, such as Chengdu, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, these populous cities. The huge population can easily form the scale advantage of the industry, as long as the advantage of the industry is identified, the urban development is very fast.

Now there is a trend that you don't know if you have found, that is, the provinces are grabbing people, the provincial capitals are also reducing the restrictions on settlement, and now everywhere is aware of the stimulus of maintaining population growth on the economy.

End of this article. If you think this article is not bad, give it a thumbs up