Population surveys sound like a relatively ordinary thing.

But as the emperor, after understanding the goal that Li Kuan hopes to achieve, he knows that this matter is not that simple.

The Tang Dynasty has a vast territory, so how should we do this investigation?

Will the officials below fill in some numbers to deal with the tasks of the court?

Because if this work is done steadily, it will cost a lot of manpower and material resources.

But if you commit fraud, then you can do it in one day just by working behind closed doors.

The key is that it is difficult for you to distinguish between some data.

For example, the population of Yuzhou may actually be 500,000, but the clerk wrote 400,000 based on his feelings. How do you know the true or false?

You just want to verify it, and it's extremely difficult.

The most troublesome thing is to verify it, and it also involves timely limitations.

According to Li Kuan's idea, this census work will be completed by the end of the 22nd year of Zhenguan.

This has been given a year to investigate.

If various verification work is involved later, I don’t know when it will be completed.

Besides, in this year, there have been various populations born, died and moved, which invisibly brought great trouble to population surveys.

So even though Li Shimin learned about the benefits of population survey work, he actually didn’t have the confidence to complete the work smoothly.

"Kun'er, please explain to all the ministers the significance and promotion plan of the population investigation. This not only involves the Ministry of Revenue, but also closely related to the yamen of various prefectures and counties. It also requires the General Police Department and the Calculation College of Guanshishan Academy to cooperate in the implementation."

On the third day after summoning Li Kuan, taking advantage of the rare visit of Li Kuan to attend a court meeting, Li Shimin kept Fang Xuanling, Changsun Wuji, Xiao Yu and other ministers to discuss the matter of population investigation.

The new official took office for three fires. In Li Shimin's view, this population survey was the first fire that Li Kuan burned.

It's just that this fire has no particular object.

"My son obeys the order!"

Li Kuan glanced at everyone present and knew that Li Shimin actually supported him.

That's enough!

Now is the feudal era, and it is not the time to pay attention to the so-called democracy.

When the current son and the current prince decide what to do at the same time, it is impossible to continue.

Now it is clear that it is just to make this work go smoothly.

"The Tang Dynasty is now in the prosperous Zhenguan era. After 21 years of rapid development, the situation in various prefectures and counties has changed a lot.

Just like Dengzhou, it used to be a state prefecture where people were living in poverty and could not eat enough, but now it is a top-notch state in the Tang Dynasty. Whether it is population or economic scale, it is no longer comparable to that of the past.

For example, Zhenbei Road, which was the territory of the Turks back then, has now been officially incorporated into the rule of our Tang Dynasty.

For example, in Puluo and Nambajin overseas, there were basically no traces of our Tang people's activities there before, but now hundreds of thousands of Tang people live overseas.

The court must formulate a policy, and it is necessary to formulate policies in accordance with the situation in each place and formulate policies in a category to promote them.

To give a specific example, if the Ministry of Education wants to build academies and schools in various places, it must consider the corresponding scale in combination with the population.

We cannot go to a prefecture with a population of only tens of thousands to build a college that can accommodate tens of thousands of people. That is a waste of manpower and material resources of the court.

However, if a large prefecture like Liangzhou is built, it is obviously not enough if the academy is built that can accommodate hundreds of people.

For example, the Ministry of Personnel needs to assess the political achievements of officials in various places. In addition to comparing the absolute value of taxes and the number of people reported by various places, it is naturally necessary to verify the specific number of people in each place.

Although we have been doing demographic work throughout the dynasties, there has never been an accurate data for this work.

Although it is impossible for us to conduct a population survey to obtain a completely accurate data, it is already considered a success to be able to increase the accuracy of this data to a level that everyone can accept.

The Tang Dynasty was so big, how many people did it need to support, what ethnic groups and which foreign countries lived here?

These issues are all hoped to be clarified through this population survey.

At the same time, we also want to use this survey to confirm the population composition of each place.

Whether a prefecture is dominated by Han people, Turks, or others is dominated by others, is also of great help to the court to formulate some policies.

In addition, the age structure of the population is actually a very important parameter..."

Li Kuan has done a good job in a vain case, and now he is naturally very knowledgeable.

It took him nearly half an hour to explain the purpose and benefits of the population survey.

However, when he talked about the plan to promote the population survey, Changsun Wuji finally couldn't help but jump out.

"Your Highness the Crown Prince, if you perform the mission of population investigations as you said, the manpower and material resources that the court needs to spend is very huge.

Every road, every state, every county, every township, and even every village needs someone to do this job specifically.

The personnel actions involved are at least a scale of hundreds of thousands of people, and there are countless money spent.

It is undeniable that if the population structure of the Tang Dynasty can be accurately understood, it will definitely be very beneficial to the court.

But whether such a lot of manpower and material resources is worth it for that little benefit is a matter of debatable or not.”

Changsun Wuji was cunning and did not directly jump out to deny the significance of the population survey, but instead proposed the difficulty of the population survey from a "very objective" perspective.

The Tang Dynasty had never conducted such a large-scale population survey.

It can even be said that the court has never done such a thing.

This is equivalent to someone from the central court to the grassroots villages, who need to cooperate seriously and execute it in order to complete this task.

Although after years of development, there are already clerks in each county government office that the court directly pays salaries, which is equivalent to the court's ability to govern the county level at this level.

But no matter how much it is improved, this intensity has not reached the township level.

Large roads such as Zhenbei Road and Liaodong Road are very large in area. To find out the situation inside, someone needs to travel through mountains and rivers to confirm.

The difficulty can be imagined.

So when Changsun Wuji asked this, many people couldn't help but nod.

"What Wuji said is not without reason. It is indeed a relatively difficult thing to accurately count the population situation of the Tang Dynasty.

The main reason is that there are too many things involved in all aspects, and it is very likely that a bunch of people will deal with the situation in the end.

In this way, our investigation is meaningless.”

Although Fang Xuanling supported Li Kuan, Changsun Wuji's concerns were not unreasonable, so he was actually a little confused.

"I heard that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has had a lot of discussions with the teaching staff and students of Guanshishan Academy of Calculation. These people are among the most sensitive people to numbers in our Tang Dynasty.

This population survey involves a large amount of data statistics and summary.

If there were no people arranged by the court to command, many people might not know how to carry out this work.

If you do whatever you want, even if they do their best to perform this task, the things they will eventually produce will definitely be diverse and will not achieve the effect that His Highness the Prince expected.

So if we really want to conduct this investigation, will the Ministry of Revenue and Guanshishan Academy of Calculation and School of Accounting be joined forces to arrange special working groups for each road and each state to guide the work?"

Although Xiao Yu is old, his mind is still relatively clear.

After his proposal was thrown out, many people immediately agreed.

"Xiao Xiang's words make sense. The Ministry of Revenue and Guanshishan Academy can work together to arrange a working group to go to various places.

Our General Police Department can also provide some police officers to cooperate with the working group.

At the same time, the General Police Department will also ask local police departments to cooperate with the work of the population investigation team."

Ma Zhou naturally firmly supports Li Kuan's work.

However, if Li Kuan's own people were shaking flags and shouting alone, the effect would be much worse.

So he didn't stand up and say anything first.

Now that Xiao Yu has raised the matters of the working group, he naturally arranged the police officers from the police station into the working group.

"In addition to Guanshishan Academy, there are many other academies everywhere, and these academies basically have calculation colleges.

Although their level of calculation academy is definitely not as good as that of Guanshishan Academy, they are definitely much better than ordinary clerks.

If there is not enough manpower at that time, local academies can arrange teaching from the School of Calculation to provide some training for local clerks, and even let them come out and take clerks to carry out their work.

As a result, the difficulty of population surveys will immediately drop significantly."

Xu Jingzong also appeared at the right time to supplement his opinions.

Anyway, what everyone said makes sense. It’s nothing more than discussing this matter thoroughly, then specifying a detailed improvement plan and starting to implement it as soon as possible.

"What you said makes sense. Through the implementation of these means, the work of census investigation can indeed make it easier.

But in the final analysis, the problems of input and output have not been solved.

The court has invested so much manpower and material resources, but it only produces a lot of data.

It is undeniable that these data have strong reference significance, but we did not have these data before the Tang Dynasty, and they also developed so well.

I don’t think that without these data, there will be any difficulties in the future development.”

As soon as Changsun Wuji said this, everyone's focus immediately shifted.
To be continued...