Chapter 3 Introduction

If we regard governing the country as managing a company, then China is a very large company that has been in operation for thousands of years.Of course, for thousands of years, companies have been reorganizing, changing their structure, and changing the market. The way we discuss history today is actually treating the Chinese government as a business model.If the country is a company, what are the products of the country?What is the country's market?If the country is a company, the government is the business unit, and the products of the country are services to the people, including security and prosperity; its market is the population of the country. In the past, it was the people of the country, and today it is the citizens of the country. .In such a structure, if the market is not satisfied with the company's management unit, the company will lose its market.Because its products are not satisfactory, so at this time, there is a revolution or the overthrow of the dynasty.

Among the services of the government are two: the security of the country, and the prosperity and stability of the people's lives.To maintain national security, it depends on whether the government can effectively defend the territory of the country and whether the people can enjoy a prosperous and stable life; it depends on whether the government allows the economy to develop properly and the people to live and work in peace. The state's taxation is used to maintain the management agency, which can also be regarded as the management agency's fees. If the fees exceed the market's capacity, the market will be overwhelmed.If there is a good balance between the load of the market and the costs of the regulatory agencies, the market will always exist and income will grow steadily; the government will be efficient and the people will support the government.On the other hand, if the market expands and the demand in the market increases, that is, the territory of the country expands and the population increases, the income will also increase.Therefore, countries in ancient and modern China and abroad often try their best to expand their territories, hoping to have more people and land.But this kind of expansion has to pay a price: to expand the country requires war, and war needs money, which will cause casualties, that is, the increase of costs and the loss of existing markets.Therefore, if a country wants to expand its territory and obtain the population on the territory, it seems to be beneficial in the long run, but when the short-term market is not stable, it will inevitably have to pay a considerable price.Sometimes, the price paid is too high to overwhelm the government.

From the perspective of company management, if a manager overwhelms the company's financial resources in order to expand the market and increase products, and the board of directors wants to remove the manager, another manager may enjoy the effect of opening up new markets.Therefore, the new dynasty may enjoy the benefits after the collapse of the previous dynasty. We often see such examples in history. Discussing China's history from this perspective, you can find that it is very similar to the company's management.The cost that the company has to pay, in addition to the cost of manufacturing products, has a large part of the cost of management.In order to create conditions of stability and prosperity, the government has to pay huge expenditures.Especially in defense, the required cost is considerable.The cost of management comes from how to establish a stable order, how to reduce expenses and increase efficiency, that is, increase profits.If a civil service system (that is, a management system) operates properly, the efficiency of the country will increase, the cost of management will be relatively reduced, and the accumulated profits will be relatively increased.It can be seen from the above that the politics of a country is exactly the same as running a company, so this book looks at China's history from the perspective of modern business management.

If we can find a business that has been in business for a long time to serve as a reference, we don't need to quote political history.It is a pity that until modern times, China did not have a corporate history long enough to be discussed. We can only borrow experience from the history of national management in the past dynasties to see the wisdom and strategies of predecessors.Therefore, the country is discussed in this book as a business unit rather than a political unit.