Chapter 159 Yang Tinghe regrets it too late

When they started arguing, Zhu Houcong looked at them quietly.

"Both the two battles at Tuen Mun were decided at sea and never invaded the hinterland. The annual grain quota in Guangdong in summer and autumn exceeded one million taels, and it was only worth one hundred thousand taels of silver to be transported to Beijing. Last year, the quota of grain and wages was more than 400,000 taels. In four years, Guangdong's

How much can we save on transportation costs? If we don’t send a little more this time, what will happen if the other provinces intend to follow suit and ask for taxes in lieu of payment in the name of banditry?" Li Hao was the first to retort.

Yang Tan also spoke: "Your Majesty's wedding will take place after the autumn grain harvest. The summer grain quota in Guangdong is only more than 5,000 dan. At this time, only places like Guangdong have the most people!"

Mao Ji said: "However, the land in Guangdong has been cleared, and everyone knows that the new law will be implemented. At this time, the corvee has increased. Doesn't it give the wealthy gentry an opportunity to incite the people to cause trouble?"

Wang Qiong joined the battle group: "It's just a matter of clearing the land, and it has not been restructured. If any wealthy gentry takes the opportunity to cause trouble, the sword given by Emperor Zhang Fujing will still be there!"

Fei Hong shook his head: "If this happens, won't all the provinces be frightened? Last year's rebellion by rebels and killing officials may happen again, and the whole world will be uneasy. The new law must be implemented, but we can only slow it down."

Jiang Mian: "There is also the matter of the daughter of Grand Scholar Sun becoming the empress. Who is it that breaks the ban on the Chinese language? Da Sinong, your Ministry of Household Affairs has invited all places to bring fragrant tea. Isn't this another reason for Guangdong to share the distribution? Chun

How time-consuming and laborious it is to pick and prepare tea, and the products that are donated need to be selected from a hundred! The strong men are working, and the women and children are picking tea. Who has time to plow the fields in Guangdong in the spring?"

Li Chong's heirs were all dumbfounded: Sun Jiao's daughter? Queen?

Besides, what's the etiquette for you to quarrel like this?

Uncle Zhang Zilin, didn’t you say that the monarch and his ministers were united in the national policy meeting?

Zhu Houcong watched their performance quietly.

In the local area, it was the conspiracy of the gentry and the local officials' desire for power to please the emperor.

In the imperial court, it was the backbone ministers in charge of practical matters in each department who secretly hid their selfish desires in national policy, and it was the central ministers who used them to fight.

How many people are thinking about reform to become stronger?

The concept of country is very vague in their minds.

The definition of people is also different in their minds.

Wen Yanbo said: Your Majesty wants to rule the world with the scholar-bureaucrats. On the surface, many people will not agree with this sentence, but they will silently praise it in their hearts.

And now, what is the background behind this superficial fight and quarrel?

Gui E couldn't see it, and neither Zhang Fujing nor Yang Shen could see it.

No one wants to harm anyone, it's all a tacit understanding.

Otherwise, why didn't the ministries report and the cabinet had opinions? Why did the emperor have to nod and agree to everything related to this year's wedding?

Zhu Houcong smiled when he heard this: You want me to take the blame, you want to make peace with me, you want to remind me in a subtle way of the fundamental difficulties of the new law.

"Okay, stop acting."

The emperor's words made the hearts of these veterans jump greatly.

Zhu Houcong stopped their further quarrel: "Guangdong is trying out the new law, and the provinces are uneasy. What is the situation now? The whole world is converging to block the effectiveness of the new law in Guangdong. In three to five years, the changes will get worse and worse, and I will stop.

Think about it, am I right?"

Zhang Fujing, Chen Jin, Mai Fu, and Zhu Qi are watching the situation in Guangdong. What Zhu Houcong wants to solve is the root of the problem: everything is because of the new law.

When the imperial study became quiet, Li Chongsi also felt the same as Cui Yuan did at the beginning: This minister who participated in the national policy meeting must prepare a few pills with him.

Why is the world uniting to block Guangdong... In this national policy meeting, isn't it just that all the ministers are united to block the emperor?

The first assistant could only speak again on behalf of the people: "Your Majesty, I have said before that I am not willing to reform the evils and make new ones. However, the evils have been accumulated for hundreds of years, and this is the difficulty of the matter. The foundation of land tax, the purpose of corvee service, and the supervision of courses

Management, warehousing and transshipment, and military and political divisions are all entangled together. In Guangdong, there are also problems such as ban on shipping, shipping, and border guards. Where to start with the new law? It is not because that side is contrary to the so-called land of ministers.

And it’s difficult.”

Yang Tinghe seems to have really become a member of the reform faction now. It's not that he doesn't want to do it, but he has to explain clearly what the difficulty is.

"Shrinking ropes to hide fields, concealing households under false pretences, reporting famines on the pretext of disasters, spreading wildfires, widening lines...these local methods are collusion between gentry and wealthy households and officials. Last year, Guangdong only cleared Guangzhou Prefecture, Zhaoqing Prefecture and less than three prefectures.

The situation of farmland is already very worrying. The land allocated to the two governments has dropped by 20% compared to the Hongzhi period. This has already taken into account the result of part of the land being hidden and part of the land being seized without proof of sale."

"As for the farmland for military settlements in Guangdong, there were only more than 70 hectares in the early days of the People's Republic of China. Now? More than 70,000 hectares! I don't know how many civilian fields in Guangdong have been converted into military settlements over the years. However, even though the output of Guangdong's farmland has exceeded 150,000 shi

, the imperial court still needs to send food and wages to the country every year!" Yang Tinghe sighed, "Your Majesty, this is just the land that is less than three houses, and we have not yet implemented a new policy on taxes and servitude."

Zhu Houcong listened.

Fields are the assets that can provide the most stable output in this era. Even if you want to do business, the stable output of fields is guaranteed, but there is always huge uncertainty in doing business.

For a country, food is also the most important, and people must live first.

Zhang Fujing killed many people in Guangdong and collected a lot of stolen land as official land. This official land also needed to be cultivated by common people. When people cultivated official land, they not only paid land tax, but also paid an additional rent to the local government.

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that one mu of official land should be taxed at five liters, three in five spoons, and one mu of civilian land should be taxed in three liters, three in five spoons. As for the official land that was not registered, the tax standard was one mu, one dou, and two liters.

But only the last sentence of Yang Tinghe's words touches the root, only one word of it.

"Taizu once compiled the fish scale book and said that the wealthy people in Zhejiang and Zhejiang were afraid of avoiding corvee labor, so they often used their land property to cheat relatives and tenants, which was called iron-footed cheating. Over time, it became a common practice that the villages bullied the prefectures and counties, and the prefectures and counties bullied the governments.

There are many disadvantages, which are called "treacherous messages". As a result, the rich get richer and the poor become poorer. What Yang Ge said about shrinking the rope to hide the field, hiding the household with the sly message, using disaster to report famine, flying and spreading, and widening the line are generally the same.

These little tricks, right?”

"Your Majesty is very aware of everything." Yang Tinghe was silent for a moment, a little surprised, and then looked at him seriously after he finished speaking.

He really understands...

"In the beginning of the country, only officials in the capital were exempted from the tax, and only a certain number of acres were exempted, and officials from outside were reduced by half. By the time of the emperor's brother's reign, the first grade was only exempted from 400 acres. Those with official status, and those who were promoted to official positions with courtesy,

There are exemptions and exemptions for all corvees. Is that right?"

Wang Qiong nodded, already knowing what the emperor was going to say.

"In the early days of the Republic of China, it was also stipulated that supervisors, students, and officials could be exempted from corvee, right?"

Yang Tinghe looked at the emperor with a solemn expression.

"So what's the situation in the local area now?" Zhu Houcong looked at Yang Tan with a smile, "How much of the annual land tax for a large agricultural worker is actually paid by the official household and official land?"

Yang Tan felt sweating on the back of his head and answered bravely: "More than half..."

Zhu Houcong nodded: "Don't forget, sir, when I came to the throne, the first thing I did was to check the accounts. In the fifteenth year of Chenghua, my Ming household registration was more than 70 million. In the seventeenth year of Hongzhi, it was 60 million. In the first year of Zhengde,

, more than 46 million. In less than 30 years, what kind of natural disasters and military disasters occurred in the Ming Dynasty, so that a full 30% of the population was reduced? In the two years before the emperor's brother ascended the throne, more than 1,300 people died in the Ming Dynasty

Ten thousand people? During the ZTE period, more than 10,000 people died every day? Regardless of whether it was ZTE or not, no matter how much fewer people there were or how much less land they were entitled to, the land tax was never less and the annual income was never less. They were all very stable. Do you think it’s strange?

"

There was silence in the imperial study room, and everyone looked at the emperor with complicated expressions.

Stop being so weird, I know you understand.

As long as you can express your fear of avoiding corvee...

Zhu Houcong quietly looked at them who were embarrassed.

Where did the people in the Ming Dynasty’s census go? They didn’t die, they just escaped. Without legal status, they were all working as slaves.

Why? The land tax was very heavy, and the corvee was even heavier.

Taizu set a tax rate of thirty to one tax. This ratio is actually not high, so why do people want to flee their hometowns?

Because officials and gentry were exempted from corvee and official households had certain tax exemptions, it was most cost-effective to sell their land to official households.

Because the local government apportioned corvee labor, officials and officials would not allocate it to the tenants of official households.

What should wealthy households do if they don't want to serve in the military? Find officials, find people with meritorious titles, and "sell" their fields to them.

Many local wealthy households were actually tenants, or "partners" of the government gentry.

Many farmers are also willing to sublease land from wealthy households for farming, and wealthy officials and gentry households will also "cherish" their tenant farmers and "domestic slaves."

Because this is a profit chain, you can naturally cultivate more carefully and produce more without having to bear the burden of labor.

The tax rate on real private land is very low. But the proportion of real private land now occupied by private households is less than 40% on average nationwide.

Therefore, although the amount of land to be entrusted is getting less and less, the land endowment has been very stable.

If it is stable, it means there are no problems, and there will be no big checks on people in the local area who are illegally evading land taxes.

In fact, more than half of the taxes in the Ming Dynasty were paid by officials. The wealthy households and farmers who rented their land were executives and migrant workers respectively.

The situation is so funny. What is Daemingzhu stone?

Zhu Houcong also checked the accounts in detail and discovered that in the Ming Dynasty, there seemed to be no so-called exemption of land taxes and corvee for both officials and gentry in his memory!

He didn't know that this was a system of privileges and exemptions for officials and gentry that was originally formed in the 26th year of Jiajing and was further expanded during the Wanli period.

At that time, everyone from the capital officials to the foreign officials, from the scholars, to the civil servants to the miscellaneous officials, all had exemptions from the land tax. In the Wanli period, the first-rank official in the capital was exempted from the land tax of 10,000 acres, and the eighth-rank officials were exempted from the land tax of 2,700 acres.

Foreign officials are exempted by half. Jinshi who are not officials can be exempted from a maximum of more than 3,000 acres, those who are elected can be exempted from more than 1,000 acres, and scholars can be exempted from 80 acres.

As for corvee service, let’s not even talk about it. It’s called how many ding can be exempted, but in reality, who cares how many ding the officials and gentry have in their homes?

In this situation, how can the finances not collapse?

Zhu Houcong looked at them quietly: So why are they acting in such a tacit understanding now?

Half hoping that Zhu Houcong would see where the real difficulty lies, and half hoping to dissuade him from touching it.
To be continued...