The foundation of any dynasty in the Chinese Empire must lie in the central government's effective control over the people and land of the country. The more firmly the central government controls this, the stronger its national power will inevitably be.

However, the rule of the Yuan Dynasty was too rough, crude, and rough... Compared with the previous founding monarchs, Lao Zhu's administration was undoubtedly the worst. The Ming Dynasty did not receive the household registration of the Yuan Dynasty at all. There was no household registration.

What tax? How to feed the people without collecting money and grain? How to feed officials? How to feed soldiers? How to feed the Zhu family's relatives and children?

Lao Zhu had no choice but to start from scratch.

In the third year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang issued an imperial edict in vernacular, which roughly means: Now that society is stable, everyone will live a good life. Officials from the Ministry of Household Affairs, please design a form and submit it to the emperor for my review and approval.

Print it and hand it over to the following prefectures and counties. Officials of each prefecture and county must fully publicize and mobilize within their jurisdiction in advance. Then organize the people to fill in the form carefully. After the people fill it out, the Yamen at all levels will hand it in step by step.

Summary. After that, the emperor will send people in the army who are literate and numerate to conduct a review. After that, the person in charge of the army will hand over the review report to me.

The form in this imperial edict is called a household post. It is one foot three inches long and one foot two inches wide. After being folded in two, it is divided into three pieces: right, middle and left.

On the right is the imperial edict of Emperor Hongwu. In the middle part, the place of residence of a certain household, the name of the head of the household, the number of men and women in the family, their names and ages, and what household you belong to (civilian household, military household, craftsman household)

households, etc.), what kind of industry they engage in, where they live, etc.

The left third is for signatures of officials at all levels. Except for the names of the Minister of Revenue and the Minister of Revenue, which are printed in advance (it must be printed, otherwise the hands of the two officials will definitely be broken),

Others start from the doctor, the wailang, the chief officer, the county magistrate, the county magistrate, the clerk, the official... officials at all levels are drawn up layer by layer.

This is not something you can draw casually. For example, if you are the county magistrate, after the county magistrate hands you the household registration of your county, you must review it carefully. If you find out the problem in time, you can ask the county magistrate to hold you accountable.

.If you didn’t find out the problem or even signed it in a daze without even looking at it, haha, when the officials from the Ministry of Household Affairs find out the problem, they will cause trouble for you and the county magistrate!

Each household registration is made in two copies, one to be handed over to the government, and one to the common people. There is a seal between the two copies, and there is a row of vertical font sizes in the middle. After the two copies are torn apart, the font sizes will be different.

Half of it: This makes it easier to collate and prevent forgery to the greatest extent.

In short, officials at all levels supervised each level. In the end, there were personnel sent by the army to conduct re-examinations and even conduct random inspections on the spot. The household quota system has begun to be implemented.

From the beginning of the third year of Hongwu to the end of the fourth year of Hongwu, all the areas effectively controlled by the Ming government at that time handed over their household registration certificates. According to the statistics of household registration certificates, the total population of the country was more than 55 million.

Of course, this is definitely not the actual population of the country, but it is quite remarkable that the Ming Dynasty has effectively controlled such a large population not long after the founding of the country.

However, the household stickers only counted the population. They did not count the land conditions under the population. The imperial court could not effectively collect land taxes based on the household stickers alone.

This is certainly not an oversight by Lao Zhu. On the contrary, it is precisely his performance as a mature, steady and shrewd politician!

When the Ming Dynasty was just founded, the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in the north still had considerable strength. Not to mention that Lao Zhu was in a mess, and there was still a super shortage of talents. At the same time, in the ruling areas of the Ming Empire, starting from the late Yuan Dynasty, various places

There are still a large number of Wubao built by powerful powers. In other words, local forces are still quite strong.

No one is stupid. Emperor, what do you want to do if you want to count our population, land and even the output of the fields? Do you really think we don’t know? Why should we cooperate? The main force of your army is in the north at the moment. What if

You have pushed us into a panic. Do you believe that we will rebel collectively?

Lao Zhu himself started his career as a rebel, how could he not believe it? Therefore, Lao Zhu, who was decisive and ruthless in the history books, tolerated it. I don’t know the acres of land, so can I just count the population?

When the common people and local powerful people heard this, they thought, oh, although this is not very comfortable, it is still much better than the previous dynasty. Well, let me count the population.

After the household quota system was implemented, Lao Zhu did not mention the matter of his father-in-law's land for ten years.

During these ten years, the central government of the Ming Dynasty used very crude methods when collecting money and grain.

Because the household registration system only counted the population separately and did not measure the land. Therefore, when collecting land tax, the Ming Dynasty government could only use folk methods. For example, the saving and twisting method, the mu-folding method, etc. It is to roughly estimate the output of one acre of land.

Then you pay taxes based on this output.

Of course, the common people tried every means to reduce their output, but in the face of this situation, Lao Zhu still endured it.

In the fourteenth year of Hongwu, Lao Zhu completely defeated the Meng Yuan Dynasty. The reform of the imperial court's official system was also completed. The imperial examinations were all passed. The Imperial College also had a large number of students as a talent reserve. The entire society gradually became stable and production began.

Not to mention recovery, Lao Zhu also carried out the Kongyin case and the Hu Weiyong case, and completely fulfilled his promise in the court.

At this time, Lao Zhu was not afraid that the people would rebel. So, he took action.

In the fourteenth year of Hongwu's reign, the Lijia system was implemented nationwide!

Didn’t we get the household registration card ten years ago? The number of households in the country is basically clear. So, based on this, every one hundred and ten households is a mile. It is divided into ten miles and one hundred ordinary households.

Among these 100 households, every ten households are one Jia.

With the Lijia system, first of all, the court's corvee service was guaranteed.

The head of the village is changed every year, and the head of the A is also changed every year. Every year, one household from each A is assigned to serve as a corvee from the government, and ten households are discharged from ten households in total. Then these ten households report to the rotating village chief for that year. They are led by the chief.

Go to the place designated by the imperial court to perform corvee service.

On the basis of the lijia system, a grain director was established. The main responsibility of the grain director is to go to the capital to collect documents and return to his own jurisdiction. He supervises the li chief and the head of the first class to raise taxes and grain. Then he leads a team to transport it to the designated warehouse:

That's how Tian Fu came.

Due to the inconvenience of transportation in ancient society, people lived too dispersedly, and the cost of grassroots management was too high. As a result, the imperial power was often unable to reach the county. The Lijia system and the grain chief system rooted in the household registration system allowed the Ming Empire to effectively control the grassroots

.

At this time, Lao Zhu ordered that the household post be upgraded. Of course, since it was the Ming Dynasty, there would naturally be no title of household post 2.0. Lao Zhu called the upgraded household post: Huangce.

When Lao Zhu did the household registration system, the country had just been established and there was a shortage of talents. So he could only do population registration: as long as the people sent there could count heads. By the time he upgraded to the yellow registration system, Lao Zhu's Imperial College had thousands of students.

.These guys can read and write, and can do arithmetic orally and do mental arithmetic without any problems. Moreover, they also roughly know how to distinguish the quality of land from bad, and can also draw simple pictures... This group of young talents plus the grassroots political power that has already begun to complete. Haha...

…There are more things in the yellow book.

Now, this household post 2.0, uh, no, the content in the yellow book does not just count the population of your family. In addition to the population of your family, it also clearly records how much self-cultivated land your family has and how much rented land it has.

land, and how much tax you should pay each year. Even which year you should go out to do corvee...

Aren't the peasants in a feudal country only responsible for the country's land tax, poll tax, corvee and military service? In the Ming Dynasty, when the guard system was implemented and military households were hereditary, the things counted in the Yellow Book were not what the feudal country demanded from the peasants.

All of them?

Then, Lao Zhu endured it until the 20th year of Hongwu. After the Lijia system matured and the yellow book statistics were on track, he officially followed the previous dynasty and compiled the fish scale atlas.

From then on, the Yellow Book and Lijia systems locked up the taxes, fees and corvee of the population, and the Fish Scale Atlas and the Grain Chief controlled the land rent. The Ming Empire's control over the people across the country reached an unprecedented level.

Of course, the fish scale atlas is better. After all, the land is there and the changes are not very big. But the yellow album is different. The basis of its statistics is population. And people are born, old, sick and die, and the number of people in each household is constantly changing.

changing.

Therefore, Lao Zhu stipulated that the yellow book should be updated every ten years. The updated content should be recycled indefinitely using the four-pillar method.

The so-called four pillars are: old management, new management - dismissal = reality.

For example, when a book friend traveled back in time to the 14th year of Hongwu, there was a traveler in his family, the traveler's cheap parents in that life, a younger sister, and a grandmother. His family owned five points of land and rented one acre of official land. Then

, this set of information will be read to you personally by the officials sent by the magistrate, under the joint witness of the head of the village, the head of the village, and the three elders in the countryside, and you will be asked to sign and stamp it. Then it will be written into the yellow book of the fourteenth year of Hongwu.

.Then your family’s poll tax, corvee, etc. will all be collected based on this information.

Of course, you are a time traveler. You can make a fortune just by making a few small inventions. Therefore, in the 24th year of Hongwu, when the country created a new yellow book, when the county officials came to investigate again, they would be shocked to find

: Your family’s own land has increased to 200 acres, your parents continue to build the land, your sister got married, and your grandmother passed away. But in addition to marrying a wife, you also took a concubine and gave birth to three sons.

Two daughters... there are seven new people, one person died, and one person married outside. Your family has a net increase of five people. Subtract five points from the two hundred acres of land, and your family has a net increase of one hundred and ninety-nine acres of land...

Therefore, the clerk will once again read to you the current population and property of your family under the witness of the head of the village, the head of the family, and the three elders. You will pay taxes and serve the country according to the information registered in the new yellow book.

After the new yellow register is compiled, it is reviewed and approved by various levels of government, and finally transported to the Houhu Yellow Register in Nanjing. It is then reviewed by the supervisors of the Nanjing Imperial College.

Why is there a need for student supervision review? Haha, as a person who worked his way up from the lowest level, how could Lao Zhu not know about the problems at the grassroots level?

Take the above example. The time traveler can spend so much money to buy so much land. In order to pay less tax, doesn’t he know how to bribe the head of the army, the district chief or even the county magistrate? He bought so much land, but

What if all these increases are wiped out by colluding with local officials?

You can erase local information. If you have the ability, you can sneak into Houhu and erase the pornographic books collected by the state?

Every ten years, a new yellow roll is put into the treasury. The main job of the supervisors of the Imperial College is to make calculations: the taxable land reported this time in your place is only 13,000 acres, which is 500 acres less than what was reported ten years ago.

.Why has no tax been paid on these five hundred acres? You have to tell me the reason! You said that you have a juren here who has obtained tax exemption qualifications, right? But you have a juren here in ten years, and his

The land has only increased by 300 acres! Say! Where did the other 200 acres go?

The number of households reported ten years ago in your area was 111, of which 11 were regular households, and there was one orphan household. This time you still reported 111 households, but the orphan household was missing.

, but there is an extra family of four. Say! Is the single family with widows dead? Is the extra family a military household who fled from nearby?

Okay, no need to say more. The importance of yellow books and the creation and counting of new yellow books every ten years no longer needs to be emphasized. As long as this system can continue stably, although due to various corruptions at the grassroots level,

There will still be some problems. But the foundation of the country will not be broken. With a stable foundation, no matter how hard the Ming Dynasty tries to die, it will at most suffer a temporary setback. Like Liu Bang, who was beaten to the point of annihilation and died within a few days.

It is completely possible to resurrect with full health.

But, in fact, there are huge loopholes in this system. The wisdom of the people is infinite, and officials also tried their best to destroy this system for various reasons. By the time Zhu Youdong came here, the foundation of this country had actually been completely rotten.
Chapter completed!