Ming Dynasty: Domination of the World from the Imperial Examination

Chapter 256 For whom the bell tolls? !
Return to the side hall.

Xia Zhibai finally met Hua Lun.

Since we last met, Hua Lun has changed a lot. His originally youthful face has now grown a beard. He looks less childish and more mature.

Seeing Xia Zhibai, Hua Lun looked at him with a complicated expression and bowed slightly to Xia Zhibai.

Xia Zhibai smiled and nodded.

Hua Lun said, "Brother Lian just told me what you are going to do. Do you really want to do something so radical? The South is extraordinary. It can even be said that the South is the foundation of the Ming Dynasty. Once chaos breaks out in the South, it will have a great impact on the Ming Dynasty."

Xia Zhibai took a few quick steps, saying as he walked: "That's why we have to do it even more."

"You know me."

“I always like to choose difficult things to do.”

"and"

"Don't you think the order in the world is too chaotic? The local grassroots are one system, the prefectures and counties are another, and the court is another. Because the mountains and rivers are far away, it is easy for the local governments to do something illegal behind the court's back, and the court is too far away to implement effective management."

"You are an official of the Ministry of Revenue, so you should know something about the accounts of the country."

"If I remember correctly, last year the Huguang Provincial Government had already conducted an inventory of local farmland and reported the area of ​​land on the register."

"I happened to see the data submitted by the Huguang Provincial Government in the "Responsibilities of Various Officials"."

“Do you know what I saw in that?”

Hua Lun shook his head.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Your Majesty has ordered an inventory of all the land in the country. However, the Ming Dynasty is vast, and after so long, only six or seven provincial governments have completed the inventory and reported the relevant land data.

Lian Zining walked up to the two of them and asked in confusion, "What did you see in there?"

“Is there anyone else cheating?”

He didn't quite believe it.

In a sense, the Ming Dynasty implemented a fixed tax system, where the tax amount for each region was fixed. Concealing or underreporting land would not change the amount of tax that needed to be paid in each region. Instead, it would cause the land of local gentry to lose protection and make it more likely to be seized by corrupt officials in power.

After all, isn't it the county magistrate who has the final say over the land that is not even listed in the fish scale book?

Moreover.

The Ming Dynasty had always granted privileges to scholars.

Even if there is no imperial scholar in your family, you can just find a scholar or juren in the surrounding area and send him a letter. There is no need to fake it.

Because of this.

The Ming Dynasty's Fish Scale Book was hardly ever questioned by the imperial court.

At this moment, Jie Min and Ding Zhifang also walked forward and looked at Xia Zhibai with confusion.

Xia Zhibai chuckled with a hint of desolation in his eyes. Hua Lun and Lian Zining were in the south and had some understanding of the situation in the south. They had never doubted the data in the fish scale book, let alone Zhu Yuanzhang who was not very sensitive to data.

The Ming Dynasty's Fish Scale Book has problems at its root.

And it’s a big problem.

It was so large that Zhang Juzheng racked his brains to no avail to find that much land.

Xia Zhibai said: "This is the evil of the world."

"It is also the evil of the officials and gentry in the world."

"From the data I found in the 'Responsibilities of Various Departments', do you know how much land the Huguang Provincial Administration Office reported?"

"How much?" Lian Zining asked without thinking.

Hua Lun hesitated for a moment and said uncertainly: "If I remember correctly, it seems to be 2.2 million mu."

"What's wrong with this?"

"Yes, and it's a big problem." Xia Zhibai said coldly: "Do you really know how many fields this is?"

“This is 2.2 million acres.”

Hua Lun looked confused. What was wrong with this data?
Xia Zhibai shook his head.

Hua Lun and his friends really had no idea about land.

In later generations, after the mechanization transformation of Hubei Province and Hunan Province, the total cultivated land area of ​​the two provinces was only 120 million mu. The Ming Dynasty relied entirely on human cultivation, and many places were not flat, but it was able to measure 220 million mu.

This is simply off the mark.

Xia Zhibai did not explain directly, and continued: "The data submitted by the Zhejiang Provincial Government is 40 million mu, but if you really know about farmland, you should know that this data is not realistic at all. This deviation cannot be explained by the error of manual measurement and the inadequacy of surveying and mapping officials."

"The Ming Dynasty has been through a long period of war, the population has declined drastically, and the land has been abandoned severely."

“The fields should have shrunk significantly.”

"Even if there was an increase, it is impossible for the same piece of land to have more than double the arable land compared to the previous dynasty and the Song Dynasty in such a short period of time."

Hua Lun's face changed slightly.

He looked at Xia Zhibai solemnly, puzzled, "Brother Xia, please don't exaggerate. How is this possible? What benefit does it bring to the local government if local officials report more land? Could it be that the previous dynasty and the Song Dynasty deliberately concealed the land, and because of the implementation of the fixed tax system in our dynasty, there is no need for the local government to conceal the land, so many of the land that was concealed in the past were reported as real?"

Hua Lun didn't dare to be careless at all.

The issue of land concerns the tax base of the Ming Dynasty.

The imperial court took this very seriously. If someone was found to have committed fraud, it would probably cause another bloody storm in the country.

Xia Zhibai said coldly: "No."

"It would be of great benefit to local officials to report more land."

"Because the imperial court has more tax bases, and the Ming Dynasty implemented a fixed tax system."

"If there are many fields, the tax will be the same, so won't the tax amount levied on the people be less? What if the local government deliberately over-reported the number of acres, and the reported acres are not the actual acres, but are deliberately fabricated to meet your majesty's requirements of 'loving the people and reducing taxes' and 'reducing the burden on the people'?"

Xia Zhibai didn't lie at all.

If he remembered correctly, in the 26th year of Hongwu in history, Zhu Yuanzhang successfully completed the land inventory in the country. At that time, there were more than 10.6 million registered households, the population was as high as more than 60 million, and the land area reached more than 8.5 million hectares.

By the time Xuande ascended the throne, in just thirty years, with the help of Zhu Di's expansion of territory, the registered population of the Ming Dynasty had been reduced to more than 9.9 million, with the population directly decreasing by nearly 10 million. As for the land, it was suddenly reduced to more than 4 million hectares.

In less than thirty years, half of the land was gone.

True.

Zhu Di and Zhu Zhanji were both sons who sold their father's land without regret. They abandoned some garrisons in the north at will, but they would never lose half of the country at once. And losing half of the country did not mean that the tax base of the Ming Dynasty was reduced by half, because the farmland cultivation in the north was not as developed as in the north.

The South is the foundation.

During the period of Zhang Juzheng, Zhang Juzheng still respected the emperor's power and considered the excess as an achievement.

Local government offices vied with each other to change to smaller bows in order to gain more farmland.

Even with this extreme overstating, Zhang Juzheng was only able to collect 700 million mu.

During the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, he directly acquired 850 million mu of land.

This is not a sudden shrinkage of land.

Instead, a new emperor appoints new ministers. During the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, there was a trend of "loving the people" in the country, and local officials catered to his wishes.

After Zhu Yuanzhang's death, Zhu Di was a warlike man and moved the capital to the north. Therefore, local officials were unwilling to fool around anymore. Instead, they used this opportunity to lower the data and put pressure on Zhu Di to collect less taxes from the south. Otherwise, once public opinion became aroused, the court might not be able to suppress it. Historically, Zhu Di did compromise with the local officials in order to secure his throne.

Hua Lun's face turned pale.

His pupils shrank, his body trembled slightly, and he felt a sense of fear. He heard the subtext of Xia Zhibai's words. There was widespread fraud in costs in the Ming Dynasty. His Majesty hated the local officials' concealment and underreporting the most, so he deliberately created the "fixed tax system" to solve the false situations in past dynasties.

As the saying goes, there are policies from above and countermeasures from below.

Everyone in the world knows that Your Majesty loves the people and has always intended to reduce the burden on the people. How could local officials not cater to His wishes?
One mu of fertile land can be converted into three mu of tax and labor land, and one mu of inferior land can be converted into two mu.

By this calculation, it is indeed very possible that the South would suddenly have twice as much farmland.

Xia Zhibai said in a deep voice: "A lot of the data and information in the Ming Dynasty are fake, just to appease His Majesty. Moreover, reporting more land not only saves His Majesty's face, but also caters to His Majesty's sympathy and love for the people. If His Majesty values ​​it, it will be able to rise to the top and get promoted."

"If you were a local official, wouldn't you be tempted?"

"Other prefectures and counties report so much land, and you don't report more, so wouldn't that make you inferior to others?"

"When the world is muddy, clear water becomes a sin."

“This is the current state of the world.”

"I tell you all this just to tell you that the Ming Dynasty's intellectual class is corrupt from the root, and it is difficult to change. These people only care about the official robes, wealth and honor, and official positions and power."

"Many people in the world blame His Majesty for going back to the old ways."

"But if you really understand the Ming Dynasty, some of the actions of the current emperor may be helpless, because the Ming Dynasty has no one to use. The people who can be used by the Ming Dynasty are all those who only care about their own interests and only want to flatter and climb up."

"You may think that I am taking too much risk by targeting the South."

"But if we do nothing and allow these officials to continue to harm the people, that would be the real evil."

“I don’t want to be their accomplice.”

"Besides."

“Don’t think too highly of them.”

"These people don't have any great abilities. They just do a lot of dirty things and cause unrest in the places where they live. That's all. If they were asked to rebel, they would never dare to do so. They just rely on their ability to deceive the people and create some momentum for themselves."

"This kind of ability is vulnerable in the face of the state machine!"

"A new dynasty must have a new look."

"Isn't it the duty of the new dynasty to establish new rules for the world?"

"Perhaps His Majesty is thinking of the old friendship and is concerned about the stability of the region, but I don't have this concern."

"What I want is to break the old ecological pattern."

"Even if it's just a major blood transfusion!"

Xia Zhibai stood with his hands behind his back, a hint of contempt on his face.

He said indifferently: "I seem to have said too much today, but I can tell you with certainty that the current situation in the South will be fundamentally reversed. Not only in terms of geography, but also in various political ecological structures, it will continue to change in the future."

"I'm just going to sound the alarm for them this time."

"And next time."

“Maybe it’s not a wake-up call.”

"It's the death knell!"

(End of this chapter)