After Zhang Shipeng understood the pilot idea conveyed by Zhu Shuren through Yao Qisheng, he didn't hesitate.
In the next two short months, as the Hangzhou government's autumn tax collection work in the second year of Xiaokang was gradually implemented, some new policies that benefited the people were gradually publicized, and soon the first group of people were willing to test the water.
"Eh? Have you heard that the imperial court actually launched a pilot project in our Hangzhou Prefecture this year? All farmers with less than ten acres of paddy fields and twenty acres of mountain fields at home can apply to ask the government after paying the full amount of taxed grain.
Loan money! I heard that you can borrow at least twenty taels!
If you have a few acres of paddy fields at home, and you can use these fields as collateral, it is usually not a problem to borrow fifty taels! I heard that in some cases, the highest loan amount was seventy or eighty taels!"
News like this quickly spread throughout all counties in Hangzhou Prefecture.
And whenever there is doubt when word of mouth spreads, someone will immediately come up with irrefutable proof that so-and-so from the next village or township really borrowed money, and then gave two neighbors who wanted to go to the city to work and change their work status.
The scattered fields were laid down.
I heard that a certain farmer in Longjing Mountain who originally only had seven or eight acres of tea growing land expanded to as many as twenty-five or six acres after annexing neighboring properties.
And I heard that after his neighbors were willing to part with the cost of selling the land, they went to the city as a joint venture and opened a tea frying business, and they did well.
Stories like this spread more and more, and most simple farmers began to believe them after hearing them.
However, no matter what era, there will always be voices that think they are calm and reasonable.
Especially in the Ming Dynasty, there were too many scholars in several prefectures in northern Zhejiang, and there were a lot of farmers who could read and write but could not even earn a child. Because they had no fame, these people had to continue to pay taxes and perform corvee throughout their lives, but the advantages of literacy
, so that they can at least understand the policies of the first and second courts, and not be afraid to speculate on the conspiracy with the greatest malice.
"This must be a sycophant in the court who wants to make achievements in promoting the new law and make the assessment indicators better to please the superior!"
"This kind of 'typical case' is probably spread deliberately by the government's mouthpieces. It is estimated that there may not be one in a hundred people. If they are caught, they will talk about it."
If ordinary people were not time-travelers after all, and couldn't speak professional terms like "survivor effect", they would probably just get angry.
There is nothing that can be done about this. After all, in the future, if a scholar insists on taking the provincial examination throughout his life, the probability of successfully passing the examination will be about twenty to one.
But Shaoxing Prefecture and Ningbo Prefecture can be so miserable that it takes seventy or eighty scholars to roll out a lifetime examination to get one successful candidate. Hangzhou Prefecture is not as tragic as Shaoxing Prefecture and Ningbo Prefecture, but it is still intense enough for fifty or sixty scholars to be successful in a lifetime.
Such an environment makes it difficult for ordinary people to be deceived, and there are too many literate farmers among the people.
Some people who were still wielding hoes during the day actually read the allusions of Su Dongpo, Wang Anshi and Sima Guang. So a group of the most active people immediately thought of the former Song Dynasty Wang Anshi's Qingmiao method of exploiting loopholes to harvest wool.
The imperial court dares to lend money to farmers? Then we must teach those losers in the court who are industrious and indifferent to grains what it means to be evil in the world!
This situation is probably similar to that of some "online loans that kill a village" in later generations in the 21st century. Most of the time, P2P online loans in later generations are people-eating people without spitting out bones, but there are also some hard-working old people.
Just to cure them.
These people often want money and their lives. They are actually the same type of people as the green-skinned scoundrels of the Northern Song Dynasty who gathered Wang Anshi's green crops and wool.
Although the laws for lending money to private citizens established by the court this time are still very different from Wang Anshi's Qingmiao Law. For example, it requires a farmer's registration and a family with less than ten acres of land to lend money.
In this case, singles who already have working status, or at least have no land ownership, will be excluded from the group of people applying for loans. This will also block most of the people who can take advantage of the loopholes.
Unfortunately, even so, it is impossible to 100% shield against fraud. The wisdom of the people is endless, especially in the confrontation of taking advantage of legal loopholes.
The law of nature is natural selection, which can quickly screen out feasible poisonous schemes.
Those with low IQs will be caught quickly, but those with high enough IQs and concealment will be able to succeed, and then their experience will spread, allowing others to react quickly and learn from it.
As a result, under the influence of natural laws, various bizarre evasive strategies soon began to appear under Zhang Shipeng's rule.
For example, some farmers originally met the conditions for applying for loans because they were not simply derelict, but still had one-third of an acre of land, or seventy-eight acres of land. This was allowed by the imperial court to "own land, but less than ten acres."
acres, so you can qualify for a loan to buy your neighbor’s land” range.
However, because they have too little land, it would not be a pity to give it up or resell it, or perhaps these people are already flexible and have the idea of converting to work or business, and have no intention of retaining their agricultural status.
As a result, there began to appear among the people, "There are obviously three neighbors, and A has the most fields. They want to buy the fields of neighbors B and C, and let B and C work in the city as workers. The number of paddy fields of A's family can also exceed ten acres."
But in actual operation, B and C, who only have one acre of land or a few acres of land, first apply for a loan, and then merge it once. Finally, A comes to take the concentrated fields of B and C into their pockets at once.
In this case, there is no problem with A. His loan is indeed to buy his neighbor's land, achieve appropriate concentration of cultivated land, and improve agricultural production efficiency. It is indeed in compliance with the laws of the imperial court, and there is no fault in it.
But the problem is that during this process, B or C did not ultimately want to buy land and run it well. They just acted as middlemen, passed the money a little, and after buying it, they sold it to other neighbors and replaced the fields with
money.
Then these people took the loans given by the government to help farmers buy land, and without the original constraints of one-third of an acre of land, they directly chose to take the money and run away in the future, and even thought about how to hide their names.
And the court could not stop this kind of thing, because the court could not prohibit the extremely poor from selling their fields short at one time.
What if the other party really wanted to take out a loan to buy more than ten acres of his own land, and then cultivate and manage it well? But after buying it, other accidents happened, and his survival was problematic, and he had to sell the land again.
Help, this is normal.
Just like the imperial court can issue purchase restriction policies,
But you can’t stop people who took loans to buy houses from cutting off their mortgage payments, right?
What’s more, we can’t prevent people who took out loans to buy houses from defaulting on their mortgages and being foreclosed upon, right?
In any dynasty, as long as the two tactics of cutting off confession or foreclosure are used, and there is really no worry about leaving one's hometown and ruining one's credit report, then a person who wants to cheat a loan and get a fortune will absolutely not be able to stop——
At least in the era before universal information digital networking, it was absolutely impossible to achieve this. The level of meticulous social governance in the Ming Dynasty was obviously still far behind.
…
When the tide goes out, you can see who is swimming in the water.
When floods occur, problems are easily hidden.
Zhang Shipeng was selected by Zhu Shu as the experimental field for the two-year trial of moderately prosperous loans and land annexation for poor peasants. Of course, his initial work had to focus on how to lend money, how to concentrate the fields, how to reduce the number of poor peasants, and squeeze out part of the population as
Industrial and commercial registration.
Therefore, his initial assessment indicators are also "how much the average farm area per household of registered poor farmers in Hangzhou Prefecture has increased, and how much the number of poor farmers have transferred to work registration." These two indicators are what determine whether his pilot performance is good or not.
, should you be promoted, retained, or devalued in a few years?
Forced by the KPI index that became the law, Zhang Shipeng could only adopt a relatively radical and loose credit policy at the beginning, lending as much money as possible to all qualified poor farmers who wanted to buy land, unless the principal allocated to him by the court was no longer enough.
In just a few months, he released at least two million taels of silver, involving hundreds of thousands of farmers in various counties in Hangzhou Prefecture.
The political achievements on the books are very obvious. After such a merger between poor farmers, the number of paddy fields owned by the remaining poor farmers in Hangzhou Prefecture has increased from more than two acres to more than five acres, which has more than doubled.
.
At the same time, at least 70,000 to 80,000 households were converted from agricultural status to worker status, adding full-time cheap labor for the industrial and commercial construction that the imperial court was promoting.
However, it is estimated that this kind of pilot project will not be promoted on a large scale in the future, and it will be flooded. Because the court simply cannot come up with so much capital for lending. If a Hangzhou government spends two million taels a year, it will be repaid every year.
There will be new mergers and lending, and the total in the final few years may exceed 5 million.
Then if Yingtian, Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo... these wealthy prefectures with dense population and little land per capita also join the pilot, they will not spend more than 20 million taels a year? The total over the years is 50 to 60 million taels? How can the imperial court be so that?
How much capital does it cost to lend?
Based on the imperial court's years of rest and peaceful construction, the balance has not yet reached 100 million taels. And the annual fiscal revenue is only tens of millions of taels——
This number is actually not low, because the Ming Dynasty's current population has not yet recovered, with a population of more than 70 million, and the annual fiscal revenue is in the order of tens of millions, which is already good.
In the parallel time and space of later Qing Dynasties, at the end of Qianlong and the beginning of Jiaqing, the fiscal revenue was only 70 to 80 million taels a year. Otherwise, He Shen's 800 million taels worth of confiscated properties could equal the court's ten years of income (in fact, gold and silver are now
Only a few hundred to tens of millions of taels, the rest are for the valuation of jewelry, curios and land. This is just an analogy to facilitate explanation)
Therefore, after the Ming Dynasty restored peace, the savings slowly accumulated in the past few years, in the next five years, even if there are no other accidents, there is no other place to spend money, it will only be used for Southern Zhili and Zhejiang.
A small number of governments are piloting this new law.
You have to wait for these loans to be recovered after ten or eight years, and the interest compounded to triple (if the loans can be recovered successfully, there will actually be bad debt losses) before you can start your business in South Zhili and other areas of Zhejiang, plus Jiangxi and Fujian.
Promotion. It will take another ten years before it can be rolled out to Huguang, Sichuan and Guangxi...
Therefore, this is definitely a more complicated and protracted project than the "abolition of Ding and separation of nationalities". If the Ming Dynasty did not create new currency, or find other financial resources, and rely on the self-owned interest of the fiscal balance to roll up, it would have been 30 years.
Can't finish.
Fortunately, this matter is just an introduction, and there is no need to rush it. The ultimate goal is to thoroughly implement the issue of abolition of Ding and segregation. As for how many poor farmers have borrowed money to help them buy land and squeeze out their neighbors, this indicator itself is actually
it is not important.
…
Zhang Shipeng took out the loan for several months, and while his performance KPI numbers kept rising, he was very aware of the tricky local customs and felt very uneasy inside.
Because he knew that there must be a big mine under his feet.
Therefore, in the first month of the third year of Xiaokang, after the Lantern Festival, he met Yao Qisheng, who was sent by Zhu Shuren to Zhejiang to inspect the relevant pilot work, by chance, and he confessed all his hidden worries about bad debts.
"Mr. Yao, the loan pilot and the encouragement of poor farmers to expand their farmland have been completed well. However, the 780,000 or 80,000 poor farmers have changed their work status, and the average farmland of the remaining poor farmers has more than doubled, and the price must be very high.
Although I am unable to obtain specific figures, I estimate that among the 70,000 to 80,000 workers who have changed their registrations, at most 50,000 to 60,000 are willing to stay and work in their hometowns.
There are at least 20,000 households who are fishing in troubled waters and taking advantage of the situation to get loans. It is estimated that there are many young and unscrupulous people. In the end, they will definitely want to make money and run away, or simply become rogues - because the loans I finally verified here were used to buy land and then sell it.
There are at least 20,000 households, and we can’t guarantee whether more people will sell their fields this year or next year before repaying their loans for the first time.”
Zhang Shipeng also knows that those who are at risk of bad debts may not necessarily withdraw their money now, because it is not urgent at the moment - the loans granted by the court do not start to recover the mortgages only one year after they are released. Because it must be considered
Many people have just expanded their production and have made relatively large investments, so they have all their money. If they directly force mortgage payments, they may not be able to pay back the mortgage payments, and may even cause trouble.
Therefore, for this kind of operating loan, the annual mortgage payment is usually collected only in the third year after the land is purchased. Since the loan was taken at the end of last year and it is not yet time to start repayment, there is no need for those people to be in a hurry.
Just run. You can wait and see again, or look for a better opportunity locally.
You can't just run away or change jobs casually. You can't look for an opportunity to get a "salary increase."
Therefore, in the face of Zhang Shipeng's worries, Yao Qisheng was not so nervous. He relayed to Zhang Shipeng with a look of admiration: "The prince has thought of this possibility for a long time. You are here as a pilot. As long as you are honest and selfless and do not make profits by defrauding loans."
Collusion.
Even if there is a small bad debt rate in the end, the prince will not blame you - whoever is the first to eat a crab will not be caught. However, the government must also do a good job in publicity to calm people's hearts and try to subtly publicize the repayment period as much as possible.
, tell people with evil intentions not to run away too hastily, even if you have done your duty.
In addition, when the repayment deadline is really less than one year away, the Hangzhou government should be ready to seal the territory. At that time, people who have left their hometowns will be strictly investigated and those caught who owe the court loans will not be allowed to appear on camera.
One of them needs to be guarded - that would be considered a malicious loan-delay and absconding. If necessary, you can also set up a trap a little in advance."
Yao Qisheng's past year or so was obviously not in vain. He was thinking about how to prevent loan fraud and bad debts from escaping every day.
In addition, he often asked Zhu Shuren for instructions, and after all, Zhu Shuren had hundreds of years of knowledge and precautions against financial fraud.
Often, an occasional hint can double the level of treachery of a traitor like Yao Qisheng.
So Yao Qisheng has actually thought a lot about how to plug leaks as much as possible.
After Zhang Shipeng was comforted by him, he felt a little relieved. However, he was vigilant and always made sure that he was not corrupted by selfishness. He knew that as long as he had no subjective malice, the prince's liquidation would not fall on him in the end.
Throughout the three years of being well-off, the tax reform, abolition of Ding classification, and credit lending continued in an orderly manner. Anyway, there was no need to pay back the mortgage this year, and the nervous scoundrels among the people were appeased as much as possible, and no problems were caused.
After all, these scoundrels are very poor, and it is not easy to travel far away. It is estimated that there is only one chance to make a bet in a lifetime, so how can one be too cautious? It is not easy to make up one's mind until a critical moment.
With this kind of procrastination of boiling frogs and putting aside conflicts, time has quietly come to four years of being well-off, and everything seems to be harmonious on the surface.
——
PS: It’s really depressing. My wife actually tested positive in early May. I took the test twice in the past two weeks. I thought I had escaped because the antibodies in my body must still be very strong. But I still got infected recently.
But it was much milder than the first time, which was a severe cold symptom. In the end, the antibody only lasted five months (my first positive infection was at the end of December last year). It took me five or six days that time, and I think I will need to rest this time.
Two or three days, maybe.
However, if I don’t update for three days in a row, I’m afraid that everyone will be impatient, so I thought about it and decided that I still have half a chapter to save. I’ll take the next day off and try to slow it down to update every two days, so that I won’t be too tired and repetitive.
.
So I will take leave every other day starting from tomorrow (31/2/4, actually three days), I will update on June 1st, and the 3rd, and the reply on the 5th will be completely normal.
Finally, I still haven’t saved the manuscript, mainly because I was busy preparing the new book for review, so I didn’t have time to save it.
But the good news is that the new book has finally passed the review this week. Unfortunately, it’s already June. It’s easy to hit the final season when starting a new book, so I’m going to wait until July 1st to start a new book (because July 1st is a weekend.
, so it may be postponed to July 3 at the latest, which is a Monday.)
I plan to start writing this book on June 5th, save it before June 20th, and finish it in early July. Then I will start polishing the new book and save the manuscript, and that’s it.