The Moon in the Qin Dynasty

Chapter 597 Land Household Registration System (Part )

Civilians were also encouraged to reclaim wasteland. If they reclaimed unowned wasteland outside the scope of their own allocated land, they were allowed to own more land. The reclaimed unowned wasteland was also allowed to be bought and sold, but it could not be passed on to descendants. If it was not sold, the government would take it back upon their death.

Of course, in special areas like the Hetao region, Yunzhong Yanmen, and the Hexi Corridor, the local living environment is more suitable for semi-nomadic and semi-agricultural life.

In addition to distributing land, pastures, or pure pastures, will also be provided, but the household registration will belong to the farmers, and local people are encouraged to engage in animal husbandry. After all, Daqin still needs livestock, and it is visible to the naked eye that the demand for livestock will continue to expand, especially cattle, horses, mules and donkeys.

The breeding and cultivation of livestock are also underway, which shows the advantage of the vast territory of the Qin Dynasty. It is possible to adapt to local conditions and cultivate more suitable livestock across the country.

For example, different types of horses are suitable for different environments.

Agricultural horses, transport horses, and military horses are all different, and there are more subdivisions. Those that are suitable for harsh environments, those that have good endurance, and those that are fast all need to be bred and subdivided.

At present, Daqin has a total of fourteen horse-breeding areas, including horse-breeding areas and livestock breeding areas in Central Plains, Hebei, Northern Frontier, Southwest, Northwest, Hexi Corridor and other places.

The above mentioned are the treatments for civilians.

The Qin Dynasty's management of all its people does not allow you to develop as you please, but requires you to enjoy corresponding treatment based on your identity.

This applies to all aspects of life, including food, clothing, housing, transportation and daily necessities.

Now it is not that you can do anything unless it is prohibited by law, you can only do it if it is allowed by law! This is of course for better management!

Titles and official positions represent authority. The higher the title, the more you have and the more you can enjoy.

Only by reaching a certain rank can one enjoy certain treatment and use certain equipment.

Nobles have some privileges in politics, economy, law, status, etc. The higher the rank, the greater the privilege. People are different, and the higher the rank, the more powerful!
Of course, the military merit and nobility of the Qin Dynasty were mainly rewarded with preferential treatment and benefits, rather than power and autonomy.

Among all the rewards and privileges, land is the most important. The most important thing is land. The most important means of production in an agricultural society will always be land, and the most valuable thing is also land.

Only by reaching a higher rank will one be granted more land.

The land owned by all is divided into three categories.

The first category is the basic granted land, which is granted to commoners. The most basic type is prohibited from being bought and sold. The second category is self-reclaimed land, which allows free buying and selling. The third category is the granting of titles or special rewards. Becoming a noble of different levels will receive additional rewards, which also allows free buying and selling. This is a privilege given to the nobles.

Ying Zheng changed the most important tax among the privileges of the nobles. Regarding the land tax, everyone was treated equally and had to pay it. There was no exemption. Senior nobles could own more land, a lot of land, but they had to pay the land tax! And there was no reduction. Everyone was treated equally!
As for the head tax, it can be reduced but not exempted. You still have to pay at least one penny to prove that you are a subject of the king. The same is true for reducing the head tax to one penny for people over seventy years old.

Even children had to pay a head tax. The Qin Dynasty law stipulated that the head tax for children aged one to eight was one coin, the head tax for children aged eight to eighteen was reduced by half, and the full amount was collected at the age of eighteen. However, in order to encourage childbirth, the head tax for children aged fifteen and under was reduced to one coin. This is a policy adjustment.

The best thing about policy adjustments is that they can be changed at any time in a reasonable, legal and sensible manner.

Among the most important changes in the empire's policy was corvee labor. Ying Zheng came up with the idea of ​​replacing labor with money in advance.

As the territory of the empire grew, the biggest problem regarding corvee labor had been exposed, which was the long journey!
You have to know that corvée is unpaid labor, and you are responsible for your own food, clothing, housing and transportation on the way. In the past, the country's territory was small, no more than a hundred miles, and the people served in the army, and they could walk for a day or a few days at most to reach their destination. They served for a few days and returned home, which was not a heavy burden on their families and themselves.

But the empire is now thousands of miles away, and the travel costs are outrageous. If we do this again, someone will die, and it may even implicate the entire family.

In this case, we need to be more flexible and allow people to pay money to pay for corvée labor. Depending on the type of corvée labor you perform, such as military service, labor service, etc., each type has several subdivisions, plus the length of service, the government will charge an appropriate fee and use this money to hire others to work for you.

This fee is relatively reasonable, as it saves the journey, and the government is also happy to save trouble. After all, recruiting directly at the corvée site is better than having people travel thousands of miles away, where their working capacity will be greatly reduced.

If you don't want to pay, it's fine as long as you can find someone to serve for you, as long as the service requirements are met.

The local government can charge whatever they want for this fee. The people can choose not to pay and serve on their own. There is also strict supervision. The central government will issue specific implementation rules and strictly supervise them. Without supervision, no matter how good a policy is, if it cannot be effectively implemented, it will become a terrible tyranny.

Fortunately, the current Qin Dynasty has not yet become a Cthulhu-style regime, and policies can still be implemented within a reasonable range. In addition, for all those who are not eligible to join the army and serve in the military, the time they serve in the military will be converted into other types of corvée.

It is absolutely not acceptable to make less contribution to Daqin!
Regarding the nobility, the most important thing is the land policy. The people are given land, and a small family cannot occupy too much land even if they work themselves to death. The most important thing is to restrict the landlord class!

This is why land tax was collected on all land.

No matter what you do, as long as the land is under your name, we will take it! It doesn’t matter whether the crops have grown or not!
Anyone who has land is not allowed to keep it idle. The land is not allowed to be left vacant, and even if the land tax is paid, it is not allowed! The punishment will gradually increase. Fines, confiscation of land, demotion, demotion to slavery, exile, etc.

In this era, it is not allowed to give up, everyone must work!
Marriage is a must, and so is having children. Now Daqin lacks people but not land, so no matter how many people there are, there is no such thing as too many.

To encourage childbirth, we should simultaneously apply social moral pressure and encourage material rewards through policies. We should actively promote the idea that having many children brings more blessings, carrying on the family line, and that the three unfilial acts of not having descendants are the greatest. We should also give appropriate honorary rewards, low-level titles, direct money and grain rewards, etc.

The more children there are, the more stable the family will be, and the more stable the society will be.

Similarly, for a powerful empire or nation, the two most important things are always the territory and population. The population can determine the actual controlled territory. Without people, even great saints and leaders will be at a loss.

In addition to normal reproduction and the annexation of the Central Plains countries, they were also actively absorbing barbarians.

As long as the Hu peoples like the Xiongnu, Qiang people and the Western Regions are willing to join the Qin Dynasty, the Qin Dynasty will welcome them.

The requirements were very simple. As long as one had not committed any crime within the Qin's ruling area and could speak Qin fluently, one could become a citizen of the Qin. All treatments were the same, except that one could not join the army or become an official (only ordinary Hu people and under normal circumstances were allowed. Exceptions could be made for merits and contributions).

But the next generation received the same treatment: they were allowed to join the army, take exams, and become officials.

Of course, if there is too much land, one person cannot cultivate it all, and people with titles naturally have preferential treatment and privileges, which highlights the difference between nobles with titles and common people.

Nobles with titles would be assigned appropriate "bastards", that is, ordinary civilians without titles and civilians of lower status to help with farming.

Of course, even this is not enough, so we can only make the barbarians suffer. If there are not enough farming population, we can only buy barbarian slaves.

Of course, you can also hire people to farm.

In order to combat slavery, slaves were not given land until they were freed from slavery, and their existing land would be taken back. Their head tax was paid by their owners, and it was twice as much as that of ordinary people. Slaves also had to perform corvée labor, and the labor service time was twice as long as that of ordinary people, and the money they had to pay to pay the labor service was also twice as much.

Slavery was not listed as a separate category of household registration. On the contrary, it was listed under the category of city and business registration. This was also to protect the rights and interests of slaves. Even slaves were valuable tools of production and could not be killed at will.

In order to encourage slaves to secede from slavery, as long as they became free men, they could be allocated land and houses.

If they cannot cultivate the land no matter what they do, the nobles will only have the last resort of respectability - 'leaving the land fallow'.

The nobles were allowed to hand over the land they owned beyond their farming capacity to the government for management. In this way, they did not have to pay land tax, but there was no income either. Of course, the nobles could ask the government to take their land back at any time.

Of course, you can sell or buy it, which is a preferential treatment for the nobility.

The biggest restriction on the nobles’ ownership of land and the landlord class has come!

The titles of the Qin Dynasty were passed down from generation to generation and decreased. After the decrease, the land that could be owned would also be reduced according to the level of the title. However, directly taking it back would be too discouraging, so Ying Zheng made some preferential treatment.

For example, a noble originally could own 10 hectares of land, but after being demoted, it was reduced to 5 hectares. The extra 5 hectares did not have to be returned to the government, but the land tax would be doubled, and the land could not be increased within the amount allowed by the title.

For example, Niu Jia would be awarded an extra four hectares of land for his military merits, and he would reclaim one more hectare of land, plus his basic 40 mu, for a total of five hectares and forty mu. But when his next generation, Niu Yi, comes, he will be demoted to Gongshi, and the land that Gongshi can own is only one hectare of land plus the basic 40 mu. So the land tax for the extra four hectares will be doubled, and he is not allowed to own more land, only less.

If Niu Yi can achieve a higher title through hard work, for example, he is promoted to Shangzao, then he will be granted additional land that Shangzao should be granted, that is, two more hectares. The additional land is the normal land tax, but the other things remain unchanged, and the doubled land will still be doubled.

(End of this chapter)