Ying Fusu

"Kanto..."

Fusu spoke frankly, revealing his plans, which caused Zhang Han to fall into deep thought.

After a long pause, he tentatively asked, "Does Your Majesty mean that there might be unrest in the six kingdoms of Kanto?"

Although he asked the question aloud, Zhang Han was surprised by Fusu's concern.

Kanto?

Therefore, the lands of the six states?

Now that everything is unified, what variables could possibly arise?

Just twenty years ago, when Guandong was still part of the territory of the six states, the Qin army's military might still made this land tremble with fear.

Then, the Qin Dynasty spent eleven years and countless manpower, material resources, and financial resources conquering the six states one after another and unifying China.

If the six states were unified by the Qin Dynasty through political means—such as persuasion to surrender—then there might still be some hidden dangers.

But Qin's conquest of the six states was undoubtedly a military unification!

Apart from Tian Qi, which ultimately had no choice but to surrender due to its own inability to hold out, the other five states—especially the two powerful states of Zhao and Chu—were all territories unified by Qin through iron-fisted suppression.

How could there be any hidden dangers?

Especially after the First Emperor unified the country, almost all the surviving nobles of the former six states were relocated to Guanzhong and settled in the area of ​​the old capital, Liyang.

Although they were said to have settled down, their activities were actually restricted to the county of Liyang, and they were constantly under surveillance.

Even if we take a step back and assume that these nobles of the former six kingdoms are still in Guandong and still in their own territories;

The six states that once ruled the Guandong region could not stop the Qin cavalry from sweeping across the land and unifying China. Now that they have lost their rule over the Guandong region, what kind of trouble can these nobles and even royal families of the former six states stir up?

With this thought in mind, Zhang Han's gaze toward Fusu became increasingly tinged with a dark scrutiny.

Of course, Zhang Han wouldn't say directly: Your Majesty is overthinking it.

However, not saying it doesn't mean that Zhang Han wouldn't scrutinize the Second Emperor Fusu, who was the new ruler.

The First Emperor's ambitions were unprecedented in history.

The vast Qin court, with its hundreds of officials and ministers, saw no one expecting the Second Emperor of Qin to reach the heights of the First Emperor.

However, with the First Emperor's brilliant achievements preceding them, the expectations of the Qin court officials for the Second Emperor inevitably rose accordingly.

Clearly, at this moment, Zhang Han was beginning to feel that "the Second Emperor was far inferior to the First Emperor."

Fusu vaguely realized that Zhang Han was scrutinizing him, or rather, looking down on him, and he secretly found it amusing.

However, he was not angry about it;

After a moment's thought, he slowly nodded with a sentimental expression.

Then, he picked out several bamboo scrolls from the imperial desk in front of him and handed them to Zhang Han one by one.

With each scroll of bamboo slips handed out, Fusu would also provide a brief summary.

"You shall observe it."

"This volume contains the number of registered households and people in our Great Qin last year, as well as the taxes collected from various prefectures and counties in the east."

"—Since the unification of the six kingdoms eleven years ago, the population and household registrations of the world have decreased rather than increased."

"On the contrary, taxes and levies have increased more than tenfold since eleven years ago."

...

"The number of households and people has decreased, but taxes and levies have increased by more than double."

"The fewer and fewer people there are, the more taxes they are paying for our Great Qin."

"This is one of them."

As Fusu finished speaking, the first scroll of bamboo slips was taken and unfolded by Zhang Han.

With just a quick glance, Zhang Han realized the crux of the problem.

—Over the years, the taxes and levies collected by the Qin court have increased year after year, which is hardly a secret inside or outside the court.

Zhang Han, in particular, was fully aware of this.

As the Minister of the Imperial Household Department, Zhang Han could not possibly be unaware of how much tax revenue had been sent to the Imperial Household Department's treasury over the years, and how much it had increased compared to the previous year.

With the increase in taxes received by the Imperial Treasury, there's no reason why the tax revenue from the Prime Minister's treasury should decrease.

Looking at the continuous increase in taxes and levies, no one would think it's a bad thing.

On the contrary, they might feel that: in the past few years—after Qin unified China, Chinese civilization has developed better and better.

With the government's treasury revenue increasing, the central government has more and more money and grain at its disposal, which naturally enables it to better govern the country.

However, the bamboo scroll that Fusu showed to Zhang Han mentioned a situation that was inconsistent with the continuous increase in taxes and levies, and theoretically should not have occurred at the same time.

—Negative population growth, or rather, population decline.

The reasoning couldn't be simpler;

Under the premise that taxes and levies are constant—or at least maintained at a relatively stable collection standard, i.e., tax rate—the tax revenue of the imperial court must be positively correlated with population and land area.

The larger the population and the more farming households there are, the more taxes and levies will be collected.

The more land a farmer has, the more grain he can grow, and the more agricultural taxes he can collect.

vice versa.

However, according to the bamboo slips provided by Fusu, over the past decade, the growth of taxes in the Qin Dynasty was negatively correlated with the number of households and the amount of land.

The population and number of farmers are decreasing, and the number of cultivated land and farms is also declining slightly.

However, the taxes collected by the Xianyang court increased year after year, doubling in just ten years!

This is like saying: Ten years ago, the Qin court collected a tax of one hundred coins from one hundred people—an average of one coin per person.

But now, they have collected at least two hundred coins from ninety or even eighty people—more than two coins per person on average.

The taxes collected by the imperial court in Xianyang doubled, but the taxes that ordinary people and farmers had to pay more than doubled.

What weighed heavily on Zhang Han's mind was the specific number of households and people whose numbers had decreased, as recorded on the bamboo scroll.

—From the time when the First Emperor destroyed Qi and formally unified China to the present, only eleven years have passed;

The number of registered rural households and the number of people dropped sharply from more than 6 million households and more than 34 million people to less than 5 million households and more than 27 million people, respectively.

More than one million households and seven million farmers disappeared from the Qin court's agricultural census.

Where did all these people go?

After Qin conquered the six states, the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, which lasted for hundreds of years, came to an end, and peace descended upon the land of China. How could the population not decrease but increase?

There is only one reasonable explanation for this problem.

—It's not that the actual population is decreasing, but rather that the number of people registered in the household registration system is decreasing.

For example, a farmer might conceal the fact that he or she had a newborn child in his or her household in order to pay less tax, and fail to register the new family member's household registration.

Therefore, the population of Qin decreased by 1.

For example, a farmer, driven to desperation by the increasingly heavy taxes and corvée labor imposed by the Qin court, decided to take his family and hide in the mountains—to become wild people in a certain "paradise".

Therefore, the number of farmers in the Qin Dynasty decreased by 1, and the population decreased by 5/6.

Similar events did not only occur after the Qin Dynasty unified China.

—For hundreds of years during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the states were constantly at odds, and wars never ceased.

To escape the ravages of war, countless farming families have lived in seclusion in the mountains and forests over the past few centuries.

However, after Qin unified China, such situations became more frequent and more common.

Besides farmers who were overwhelmed by taxes and corvée labor and could not survive, there were also 'criminals' who inadvertently broke the law and had to become outlaws to escape punishment.

For example, there was Liu Ji, the head of the Sishui Pavilion in Pei County who fled to Mangdang Mountain, and Xiang Liang and his nephew Xiang Ji, who went to the Wu region.

...

Considering all of this, it becomes immediately clear what the first bamboo scroll that Fusu handed to Zhang Han actually meant.

—The burden on ordinary people has become increasingly heavy, and has more than doubled in just ten years.

As a result, a considerable number of ordinary people and farmers were willing to give up their legal status, namely household registration, and would rather hide in the mountains and forests as wild people than openly become Qin citizens.

Even worse, all of this has created a terrifying vicious cycle!

As the burden of life becomes heavier, more and more hermits are retreating into the mountains.

The more unregistered households there are, the fewer registered people there are, and the heavier the tax burden is borne by farmers.

—The heavier the tax burden, the more unregistered households there are; the more unregistered households there are, the heavier the tax burden becomes; the heavier the tax burden, the more unregistered households there are…

It loops infinitely, and the speed keeps increasing.

In addition, the Great Wall, the Straight Road and other money-guzzling projects caused the Qin court's expenditures to increase day by day, and the demand for fiscal revenue to increase day by day.

Ultimately, this leads to a vicious cycle that is accelerating at an unbelievable pace.

Initially, tens of thousands of households and tens of thousands of people disappeared from the household registration every year;

Ten years later, the rate of decline is now reaching tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of households and millions of people per year.

If this continues for a few more years, the registered population of the Great Qin will probably be less than half of the actual population.

When that time comes, the central government in Xianyang will be forced into an extremely awkward situation.

—In order to effectively rule the world, it is necessary to maintain a sufficient number of bureaucrats;

A sufficient number of officials require the central government to provide them with adequate salaries;

This, in turn, requires sufficient fiscal revenue to sustain.

But by then, the population had dropped to half of what it used to be, and the heavy taxes and corvée labor had already made it difficult for the people to breathe.

What should Qin Ting do?

If left unchecked, the population will decrease and fiscal revenue will decline.

If officials cannot be paid their salaries, the central government's control over the country will gradually weaken.

Given a declining population, maintaining the number of bureaucrats requires raising taxes to ensure fiscal revenue doesn't decrease.

But increasing taxes will only accelerate the population decline.

This led the Qin court into a vicious cycle where the more taxes were increased, the fewer people there were, and the fewer people there were, the more taxes were increased.

...

Conversely, to curb population decline, taxes must be reduced to alleviate the burden on the people.

However, doing so would cause a sudden decrease in fiscal revenue, making it impossible to maintain the number of officials, and the imperial court's control over the Kanto region would rapidly weaken.

Having lost control of Kanto, it was naturally impossible to collect enough taxes from Kanto.

Fiscal revenue will inevitably decline. If the government wants to maintain its rule, it will either increase taxes on the Qin people in Guanzhong, thus falling into a vicious cycle of tax increases, hidden households, and more tax increases.

Alternatively, one could accept the harsh reality that the Qin court could no longer control Guandong and only nominally "ruled the world," but in reality, it was not even as powerful as the Zhou emperor.

In short: if it really comes to that, it will be inevitable that the world—at least the Guandong region—will break away from the control of the Qin Dynasty.

The only difference is: whether it's pulling back from the brink, making amends after the fact, reducing the burden on the people, and thus instantly losing the ability to control the Guandong region?

It's like taking a slow poison, perpetuating a vicious cycle of tax increases, hidden accounts, and further tax increases, slowly and steadily heading towards a dead end.