Chapter 485 Do Everything I Can To Stop Tian Koshi From Getting Smaller
Chapter 485 Try every means to prevent Tian Tian from becoming smaller and smaller
Author: East Zhejiang Pifu
Chapter 485 Try every means to prevent Tian Tian from becoming smaller and smaller
Zhu Shuren assisted the new monarch in carrying out the reform very smoothly, and in the blink of an eye it was the autumn of the second year of Xiaokang.
One day in September, Qiantang County, the seat of Hangzhou Prefecture.
Zhang Shipeng, the prefect of Hangzhou, who was about to complete his three-year term, received an uninvited guest in his government office.
This uninvited guest is none other than Yao Qisheng, who was not even ranked as high as county-level treatment more than a year ago. But now, not only does he have the responsibility of being the judge of Tianfu, but just a month ago, the regent Zhu Shuren also paid extra
He was given an official position and given the title of Yuanwailang of the Ministry of Household Affairs, so that he could go out on official business at any time and handle financial and taxation reform matters.
He was promoted quickly twice in one year. If it wasn't for the cruel staff to be evil, he definitely wouldn't have been promoted so quickly.
Therefore, when Zhang Shipeng received a letter from the prince in private, saying that the prince was sending Yao Qisheng to Zhejiang to assist him in the tax reform of abolishing Ding classification, he knew that he was being seriously targeted.
However, since the palace has still sent him private messages, it means that he himself is definitely not under suspicion. He is only asked to be cautious in his actions and encouraged if not, so Zhang Shipeng has nothing to worry about.
As soon as the two met, Zhang Shipeng also gave the other person a compliment: "Mr. Yao, it's a pleasure to meet you. I heard that the speed of your promotion is really enviable to me. This time, I also need to ask for more advice, so that I can better serve the court."
, to share the prince’s worries.”
Yao Qisheng knew that the other party had a strong foundation, and his family had been Zhu Shuren's die-hard allies in the early years, so he did not dare to make excuses at all, and put himself in a very low position in his words.
This Zhang Shipeng is about the same age as Yao Qisheng, he is also thirty-seven or eighteen years old. He himself is not a big deal. He did not even pass the Juren exam at the beginning. He was directly a graduate of the Imperial College and was qualified to participate in the subsequent examinations as a Juren.
Moreover, Zhang Shipeng, the prison student at the time, was even a "yin prison", and he was of the same type as Zhu Shuren when he entered the Nanjing Imperial College - just because his father was the former Minister of the Ministry of War and the former governor of Zhejiang and Fujian Zhang Guowei, who was the only one demoted by Chongzhen before Emperor Chongzhen died.
Those who went to serve as officials in the south escaped unscathed.
Zhang Guowei was once Shen Tingyang's boss and a family friend in Suzhou. Later, when Zhu Shuren advocated the Lijin Reform of the Zhen Dynasty, Zhang Guowei, as the Minister of Household Affairs in Nanjing, was also a major support ally. Later, after the Nanjing imperial court was established, Zhang Guowei also helped Zhu Shuren stabilize his position.
The situation in Zhejiang.
If Zhang Guowei himself was still alive, he would be over seventy years old now. However, he did not live that long and passed away four years ago.
He left two sons. The eldest son, Zhang Shifeng, passed the official examination and is now serving as the minister of the Ministry of Works in the court. The second son, Zhang Shipeng, was a little less successful and failed in many tests. When the Qing Dynasty was wiped out a few years ago, Enke was
Fortunately, he was promoted quickly and stayed in his hometown in Zhejiang to become the prefect of Hangzhou.
There is no doubt that the Zhang family brothers continued to be rich and powerful because of their father's good standing in line, and they were favored by Zhu Shuren.
But there is no problem. Zhu Shuren needs to be in power stably and slow down the Y chromosome of the old Zhu family. Of course, loyal people must be reused in special times.
He also knew that the Four Books and Five Classics themselves were of little use, and were just a screening tool for those with lofty ideals. On the surface, they looked ugly, and it was enough to convince the Confucian scholars all over the world that this set of ascending channels was useful, but in fact it was not important.
After the initial communication between Zhang Shipeng and Yao Qisheng, he quickly raised a question: "I wonder why Your Majesty pays special attention to our reform in Zhejiang this year? Could it be that he thinks it is easy for us to make mistakes?
I think I am quite diligent in this aspect, and the registration and production analysis are all implemented very solidly, so it will not be worse than that in Jiangxi."
Yao Qisheng did not make any pretense, and said very frankly: "The prince indeed did not find any specific inappropriateness in your province, and he was just trying to encourage me.
Last year, Yingtian Prefecture received a small punishment and a big warning. This year, there will definitely be no problems in other prefectures in South Zhili. Moreover, Susongchang Town is a plain and fertile land, and there is no problem of dividing mountain counties and flat counties. The situation is simple.
Although the Jiangxi side is mountainous, Jiujiang Prefecture and Nanchang Prefecture are located in Poyang Lake and Ganjiang Plain, so there are not many complicated problems. Poor farmers generally have ten to eight acres of paddy fields.
There are a few counties in the west of the two prefectures, which are slightly more mountainous and the land is not easy to concentrate. However, those places are close to Wuchang, and Wuchang was the base of the prince before he started his career, so most of the people there were repeatedly beaten by the imperial court.
The prince looked around and found that within the scope of this year's pilot, the one most prone to problems is your Hangzhou Prefecture. Among the three prefectures in Zhejiang participating in the pilot, Huzhou and Jiaxing are all plains, and the land is easy to concentrate.
The western part of Hangzhou Prefecture is surrounded by mountainous areas. From Hangzhou City, past the West Lake, there are mountains to the west. The terrain is complex and the cultivated land is broken. Even the tea farmers on Longjing Mountain may not be able to raise two tea farmers per family.
Ten acres of mountain land.
Therefore, the prince decided to focus on "encouraging the people to annex and consolidate land on a small scale, squeeze out the population and change it to work status, and the court provides loan turnover to help the people transform" on the Hangzhou government trial."
After Zhang Shipeng heard these words, he couldn't help being shocked: "I already know that the reason why the prince originally set the policy of 'farmers with less than ten acres of paddy fields in the plains will be taxed on the basis of ten acres, and the lower limit in mountainous counties will be halved'."
The purpose is to encourage and induce people who only have a little land to give up their land and go to work in the city.
However, the prince actually encourages land annexation? Since ancient times, land annexation has been a hidden danger to the long-term harm to the country in all dynasties. Could it be that no one advised the prince?"
Although Zhang Shipeng was a close confidant of Zhu Shuren, he still found this matter a bit bizarre.
Mainly as a Chinese, I have read history books since the Han Dynasty, and I know that as early as in the food records of "Historical Records" and "Hanshu", all dynasties described a collapse scene at the end of the dynasty as "
The rich have endless fields, but the poor have no place to stand.”
Even in the 21st century, there are still many people who, as long as they see the words "land annexation", they don't need to read further and just start complaining.
Of course Zhu Shuren would not make stupid mistakes, so what he allowed Yao Qisheng to do was completely different from what Zhang Shipeng thought.
Yao Qisheng also had a look of admiration and pride on his face, and couldn't help but show off: "Don't be surprised Zhang Futai, what you think and what the prince thinks are actually not the same thing. How can the prince not know the disadvantages of land annexation?
Therefore, the means he hopes to pilot on a small scale in Hangzhou this year and in the next two years are not truly indiscriminate land annexations, but only 'allowing mutual land annexation between middle and lower poor peasants'.
A formal announcement from the court will be issued soon. It will require that starting from this year and within the next three years, all land transactions in Hangzhou Prefecture must be reported to the prefecture and county. Self-guarantees in towns and villages are no longer allowed. Private transactions must be done first.
All land sales registered in the county and recorded in the government will be deemed illegal and invalid.
On this basis, the Prince will further request that the Hangzhou government freezes the channels for large households to buy land from poor people within three years and prohibits such transactions. Instead, only middle- and lower-level peasants with an average household ownership of less than ten acres of paddy fields and less than twenty acres of mountain fields are allowed to purchase land from the poor.
Other middle and lower peasants buy land. And after purchasing, the upper limit of the land they can own shall not exceed 20 acres of paddy fields or 40 acres of mountain fields.
What the prince wants is for the poor peasants to merge with each other, so that the number of rural households is reduced, and the per-household competitiveness becomes stronger. The farmers who are squeezed out can switch to work and become workers. Instead of letting the big landowners also borrow money
The plane is big——
However, if large landowners also want to buy land from other large landowners and merge and transfer it to each other, or if some landowners need to split up their families and change part of the branch population of the clan to work status, then the court will still support it, but before such a level of transaction,
, you must first go to the prefecture and county for approval. If you sell more than 1,000 acres of land, you need to register it with the county seal; if you sell more than 10,000 acres, you need to register it with the seal of the prefect."
Zhang Shipeng listened very carefully and had an incredible feeling after listening.
But it is normal for Zhu Shuren to think of this kind of "targeted encouragement of mergers." Who makes him a time traveler? The trick he thought of is actually similar to the "real estate purchase restrictions" of later generations.
Land annexation is not all bad. It is bad to let big landowners annex more and more middle and lower peasants. If the middle and lower peasants themselves merge with each other, some people will withdraw from the market and others will become slightly stronger, which will increase the risk of confrontation.
competitiveness, then society will only be more stable.
Of course, any purchase restriction will definitely have a chain reaction. For example, if real estate purchases are restricted in future generations, housing prices will definitely be slightly lower than under the same circumstances without any purchase restrictions at all.
Because some competitive potential buyers are blocked from the trading venue by administrative compulsory orders, there are fewer buyers available. The price offered by the buyer will definitely be slightly lower, and the land will not be sold at a high price. But anyway, it is mid- to low-end.
The annexation between farmers can be regarded as rotten in the pot.
Zhang Shipeng thought for a long time before he came up with a drawback, or a point that was not feasible at the implementation level: "But... it's all mergers between the middle and lower peasants. The middle and lower peasants can't make much surplus money, so what should they do? They want to buy
No money either.
And if there are poor people who have to sell their land when disaster strikes, because there are no big landowner buyers, they can’t sell it at a high price, wouldn’t it make things even worse?”
Yao Qisheng then realized: "So, Xiaguan actually discussed with the prince last year that he could use the green seedling method of the former Song Dynasty king Jinggong in a new way to eliminate the waste and retain the essence.
As long as you are a good citizen with good credit, even if you are poor, as long as you have no tricky record, you can apply for a "business loan" similar to Qingmiao money from the court. This kind of special loan is only lent to those who own three to ten acres of paddy fields at home.
Ordinary households, those who exceed the property limit are not allowed to borrow.
It is best not to put the borrowed money directly into the hands of the borrowing people. Instead, it is best to use it directly to buy land from other poor peasant neighbors, and merge the small fields that are currently not concentrated enough and cultivated inefficiently to facilitate large-scale farming.
Farming.
The court can keep the interest rate very low, but the period of repayment can be extended. In the end, it will take ten or twenty years to repay a total price equal to four or five times the original land price.
Sleepy."
The interest rate of Wang Anshi's green crop method was very high, easily reaching 30% to 50% per year. Wang Anshi himself thought this was very merciful at first, because in the Song Dynasty, the landlords directly lent usury to farmers, and the interest rate was often 30% to 50% per year.
times interest.
This money can only be said to be for emergency relief, not to help the poor. They are all borrowed because they have no choice but to turn over money, or they cannot afford to buy seeds for spring planting, hoping to pay back the seeds after the autumn harvest with double the value.
If Zhu Shuren wants to engage in commercial credit for farmers, he must not be able to make an annual profit of 30%. That would be a direct and compound interest. Therefore, the most he can do is pay back the interest at an interest rate of more than 10% for ten years, and in the end he will have to pay several times.
of principal.
This is definitely several times higher than the mortgage interest for buying a house in later generations, but it was definitely an unprecedented benevolent government in the Ming Dynasty. The specific amount can also be adjusted during the subsequent implementation process - even the mortgage interest rates in later generations can be appropriately adjusted according to the economic operation conditions.
Cutting interest rates is not just a matter of words. As long as the economic data feedback is real enough, it can be adjusted on an annual basis.
On the other hand, the imperial court has imposed purchase restrictions. Because buyers are restricted, those poor farmers who sell their land cannot get a higher price. In fact, the transaction amount will be several percent lower than the actual value of the land. Over time, both the buyer and the seller will lose less.
The matter is over.
Zhang Shipeng pondered over and over again and finally understood the feasibility of this unprecedented and creative policy. He just sighed in confusion:
"The prince never fights an uncertain battle. Since he dares to make this determination, he must have thought of how to be on guard against the methods of the unscrupulous businessmen who took advantage of Wang Jinggong's young crops, right?"
"Of course I thought of it." Yao Qisheng admitted proudly, and then described it a little more.
The specific content was almost the same as when he chatted with Zhu Shuren last year, but it was slightly improved and refined, so I won’t go into details again.
Zhang Shipeng chose to believe, no longer struggled, and was ready to implement it first, taking it one step at a time.
He couldn't help but look up to the sky and sigh: "In order to solve the problem of poor farmland and weak resistance to disasters and diseases, the prince forced the poor to concentrate on the fields and allocate the excess population to work. It can be said that he has spent a lot of effort."
Yao Qisheng: "Actually, what we mentioned today is nothing. The prince is willing to use all kinds of means for this. He is thinking about big plans for at least a hundred years from now. His foresight is beyond human wisdom.
For example, before I came here, I heard that the prince had discussed a measure with the people from the Ministry of Punishment and the Ministry of Household Affairs, but I haven’t dared to come up with it yet. It is said that in the future, the imperial court hopes to adopt a ‘reverse grace order’ for poor farmers:
Wasn't the purpose of the favor order issued by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to divide the princes and distribute the fiefdoms of princes and kings to all their sons, and then the divisions would become smaller and smaller, so as not to threaten the court in the end?
And the reverse order of grace that the prince wants to target the poor is to force the people not to do it because the more sons they have, the less the land will be divided, resulting in the descendants' ability to resist risks becoming weaker and weaker. "Nowadays, people have five sons.
There are many, and there are five sons. The eldest father is still alive and has twenty-five grandchildren. Therefore, the people are common and have few goods and wealth. They work hard and have little support. Therefore, the people fight, and although they are rewarded and punished many times, they are not immune to chaos.
If this order is implemented, the imperial court will set restrictions on how farmers can inherit acres in the future. No matter how the inheritance is distributed after the death of farmers, they will not be allowed to divide and establish a separate land area of less than ten acres of paddy fields or twenty acres of dry fields.
.
In other words, if a farmer owns less than ten acres of paddy field, he must allocate the ten acres to one son to inherit, and cannot divide the ten acres among several brothers to inherit.
Except for the son who inherited the land, the other extra sons must not get any share of the land——
Parents can leave them money, food, and houses, and they can also send them to study, learn crafts, and make a living with a skill during their lifetime, but they cannot allow poor farmers with less than ten acres of paddy fields to share their land equally among their sons.
The extra sons must be forced to register as workers or in the military. In this way, the land of poor farmers will not be diluted, and the ability to resist risks will become weaker and weaker from generation to generation."
The reverse operation of the strong pushing the favor means that the weak must concentrate on inheriting it. This is well understood.
After Zhang Shipeng heard this, he was so shocked by this wild idea that he was speechless.
He felt that this was too harmful to the traditional Confucian "filial piety". Brothers should be humble and friendly. Even if Mr. Tian was left behind by his parents, how could the eldest brother be stipulated to monopolize all the land?
Fortunately, it is still in the discussion stage and has not been implemented yet. If it were put out now, the opposition would probably be even stronger.
The regent has to fight against the Confucian ethics that have been in operation for two thousand years, and even the basic moral code of filial piety and brotherhood. How big is the resistance?
"This method is too dangerous. Everyone loves their children, so who can let their young children be poor and weak?" Zhang Shipeng couldn't help but sigh.
Yao Qisheng also felt leisurely and fascinated: "The prince's thoughts are far beyond what most people can fathom. However, I heard that the prince has focused on the Academy of Sciences to focus on chemical engineering and biology in the past two years. It seems that one of the projects is also related to this future inheritance and reform.
.
It seems that the prince is asking the Institute of Biology of the Academy of Sciences to publicize more about how to prevent women from getting pregnant and how to exercise moderation as much as possible, so that after the new law is implemented in the future, the poor people who are compassionate can have fewer sons.
The people who do not have enough land to allocate themselves know that giving birth to more than two sons is harming their sons. If they can only control one child, they will not be able to support them.
There are some foreign barbarians in the Western Regions, such as the Great Cannibals. The famous religions they believe in are very different from those in China. They also grew up in a land of scarcity and barrenness. They feel that the first male is born between a man and a woman.
Afterwards, one should exercise moderation.
In the Central Plains, we believe that having no heirs is the most important thing, so we cannot be so strict. However, we should also promote restraint if the poor have two sons, or one son and multiple daughters. This is also to prevent their fields from becoming thinner and thinner, and they will not be able to withstand some famine in the future.
, had to sell all his land and become a tenant farmer.
In addition to biological abstinence, the prince now also ordered the craftsmen who study rubber at the Institute of Chemistry to try to use processed rubber or fish bladders to help people who are unable to abstain from abstinence control their children. All this is to prevent poor farmers from overstepping their boundaries.
The divisions are getting thinner and thinner. I really have never seen any ruler in the world who is as worried as the prince about continuing to divide the fields."
——
PS: The above is already 5,000 words long. Let me explain a little bit. Last time, a reader kindly provided some year numbers, and I also wanted to use the ones with high praise (actually the highest was only three to five likes. At that time, my book was also
Not much interaction).
But then I searched Baidu and found that the highly praised "Datong" and "Datong" cannot actually be used, because they were used by the ancients. Datong was used by Emperor Wu of Liang, Xiao Yan, who was considered a half-ruined king, and Datong
It was even used by Yelu Deguang.
One thing that is very troublesome about choosing era names in ancient times is that they have to avoid those used by predecessors, especially the era names of the declining kings, which are particularly unlucky. Zhao Kuangyin was so angry that the reign name of "Qiande" was used by the former Shu king's family. He criticized Zhao Pu and praised Dou Yi and Tao Gu, saying that "prime ministers need scholars."
So I was so angry that I didn’t clearly write down the year that I changed. Later, I wrote down the year of Xiaokang in the second and third years. But this was definitely not a fool’s errand, because “Datong” and “Xiaokang” were both different terms in the Book of Rites. The description of the ideal society at this stage has its source, not a modern word, so don’t talk about "key politics", key politics really has no origin.
In the Confucian definition of "Datong", "people do not just kiss their relatives, and each child has his own children." "Xiaokang" means "everyone loves his relatives, and each child has his own children."
Datong means that people make the best use of their talents, things are put to their best use, and distribution is based on needs. A well-off society at least means "taking the wise and courageous to know, taking merit as one's own. It is based on its righteousness, its trustworthiness is tested, its faults are recorded, punishments are benevolent, and concessions are made, and the people are shown that there is permanence." Translated in vernacular, it means that we still need to rely on system construction.
To put it bluntly, Datong is the advanced stage of Confucian ideal society, and Xiaokang is the primary stage.
The protagonist can't achieve great harmony. After all, he is developing the bud of capital. In the final analysis, he still uses the rule of law to benefit others, so he should keep a low profile and be well-off.
And it just so happened that ancient emperors were very fond of great achievements and looked down upon Xiaokang. If they wanted to be successful, they would just go all out and flaunt their own Datong. Therefore, Xiaokang had not been used by the emperors of the previous two thousand years. (Even people like Yelu Deguang had the nerve to say that they were Datong. )
It's better for the protagonist to be more modest in life, but he should do what he says. We don't have the same experience as Yelu Deguang and others.