Money was a tremendous problem.
For the moment, the Revenue Ministry actually had things fairly easy. Revenue Minister Huang Zicheng, Right Vice Minister Zhuo Jing, and the others were still relatively relaxed. There was no other reason: the foundations Zhu Yuanzhang had laid deserved recognition. At the very least, the court currently lacked neither money nor grain.
It made sense. The Jianwen Emperor and Zhu Di had fought for four years, and their supplies of money and grain had kept up throughout. Surely a few reforms would not leave him penniless.
But living off inherited reserves was no solution either. If Great Ming continued to operate solely under Zhu Yuanzhang's institutions, its national fortunes would remain unchanged, and the suffering inflicted on its people would still come to pass.
That was not the outcome Zhu Yunwen wanted. Establishing the status of merchants, changing Zhu Yuanzhang's policy of emphasizing agriculture and restraining commerce, and vigorously developing industry and commerce would therefore become his inevitable choice.
Yet the development of industry and commerce required abundant goods and freedom of movement.
Under the three hereditary registration categories Zhu Yuanzhang had established-military, farming, and artisan-generation after generation had to remain in the same occupation.
If you were a farmer, you would still be a farmer ten thousand years later. If yours was a military household, even if your entire family died out, you still had to find someone to serve in your place. Whether that person was your paternal or maternal nephew did not matter.
Without reforming household registration, commercial reform could not move forward.
And reforming household registration also involved land reform and the land tax system.
The problems came layer upon layer. Simply loosening the restraints on merchants would not make the economy grow, the markets flourish, and tax revenue fall effortlessly into his lap.
"In the end, we still have to free up the labor force first."
Without freeing the farmers, problems at the grassroots would keep arising;
Without freeing the farmers, the cities would have no surplus labor;
Without freeing the farmers, commerce could not develop...
Behind this chain of interlocking links lay the question of land.
Zhu Yunwen turned his attention to the land tax system.
Agricultural taxation in the Ming Dynasty consisted primarily of the land tax.
The land tax followed the two-tax system: the summer tax was collected in the eighth lunar month each year, and the autumn grain tax in the second month after the autumn harvest.
The tax rate was roughly five to ten percent of the total harvest.
In the early Ming Dynasty, both the summer tax and the autumn grain tax were paid in grain-in other words, taxes were collected in kind. At tax time, people wheeled carts or shouldered loads of grain to make their payments, and the authorities transported the grain they collected to Nanjing by various means.
The court used that grain to pay the stipends of imperial relatives and civil and military officials, as well as soldiers' provisions and wages.
When payday came, there were fixed quotas for how many sacks of rice a first-rank dignitary received and how much a sesame-seed-sized ninth-rank official could collect. Everyone simply brought sacks to collect their share.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the basic unit of officials' salaries was often not the monetary unit "tael," but the grain measure "shi."
Of course, paying salaries in grain did not mean the emperor was stingy. At the time, grain was hard currency.
To put it plainly, if you carried grain into the street to buy vegetables or tofu, people would sell them to you.
By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, silver gradually became hard currency, and some people no longer had to pay in grain, instead converting their obligations into taels of silver.
Of course, this had not become a uniform system, and its implementation was quite a muddle.
Besides the land tax, there were also the head tax and corvée obligations.
If Zhu Yunwen wanted to change all this, he had to address agricultural taxation.
In the early years of Great Ming, agricultural taxes accounted for the overwhelming bulk of central government revenue. Commercial taxes were little more than loose change-the sort one could wipe away without a pang.
Changing the agricultural tax system was not something a few words could accomplish.
How should he change it?
In later times, farmers had delivered grain to the state for decades, supporting the development of urban industry and commerce. Later, the cities had supported the countryside in return, and when the time was ripe, the agricultural tax had been abolished. That category of tax no longer existed.
Could Zhu Yunwen abolish agricultural taxes?
Did he dare?
Abolishing them would strip away the very foundation of Great Ming's rule. It would be a miracle if the dynasty did not collapse.
But what method could he use to loosen the restraints on farming households?
Zhu Yunwen thought of Zhang Juzheng, Great Ming's greatest statesman and reformer. The "single whip law" implemented during the reforms of this most formidable of grand secretaries had received extremely high praise in the history books of later ages.
And that praise contained one striking expression:
Epoch-making!
After the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty continued the single whip law, later developing it into apportioning the head tax into the land tax.
"Summon the grand secretaries, the revenue minister, and the vice ministers."
Zhu Yunwen made up his mind to bring the "single whip law" onto history's stage one hundred and eighty-three years early.
The core of the single whip law was to consolidate the land tax, corvée obligations, and miscellaneous levies of every prefecture and county into a single assessment, collecting them together in silver calculated according to acreage.
When the single whip law was laid before the Grand Secretariat, Revenue Minister Huang Zicheng, and Right Vice Minister Zhuo Jing, no one spoke for a long while.
"Your Majesty, this system seems to contain hidden subtleties and considerable ingenuity. Nevertheless, I do not recommend implementing it."
Only after a long period of reflection did Huang Zicheng speak cautiously.
Zhu Yunwen had not expected them to accept it immediately. He asked, "Tell me your thoughts."
Huang Zicheng spoke frankly. "First, the single whip law may not be suitable for the entire country. The lands south of the Yangtze are fertile and productive, so conversion on this basis would naturally be easy. But north of the Yangtze, much of the soil is poor and yields little. Would such a conversion not be unfair? Second, if the single whip law proves unable to provide sufficient revenue and additional corvée obligations and taxes are imposed, would that not harm the people?"
"Third, converting grain payments into silver would certainly save considerable trouble. But farmers have no silver. They could only go to merchants to exchange their grain before paying taxes. If the price of silver were deliberately driven up, making silver dear and grain cheap, how could the people live in peace?"
Zhu Yunwen looked at Huang Zicheng. He had not realized that the man actually had some insight into economic matters.
Xie Jin shook his head and rose. "Your Majesty, everything Minister Huang just said was reasonable. Nevertheless, in my view, the benefits of the single whip law outweigh its drawbacks. It should be implemented."
Zhu Yunwen looked at Xie Jin and nodded. "Go on."
Xie Jin spoke candidly. "The single whip law combines the land tax, corvée obligations, and miscellaneous levies into one, preventing lower-level officials from collecting repeatedly and squeezing the people again and again. This would help lighten household burdens. In Great Ming, assessments of silver payments for service obligations are primarily organized through the lijia system. The wildly unequal burdens borne by households in different units are a particularly serious problem. This method could alleviate that problem, benefiting agriculture. That is the first point."
"Second, replacing payments in kind with silver currency would avoid the annual losses incurred when money and grain are transported from the various regions to the Capital. If the court needs grain, it need only pay the people to transport it, with local authorities arranging delivery. Farming households would no longer toil for nothing."
"Third, implementing the single whip law could reduce the costs of tax collection. The authorities would issue a list of tax and service obligations, and each household would fulfill it. First, village heads would not need to intervene; second, grain chiefs would have no opportunity for fraud; third, there would be no losses of tax grain. For these reasons, I believe this law is worth adopting."
Zhu Yunwen gave Xie Jin an appreciative look, then turned to Grand Secretary Yu Xin. "Senior Secretary Yu, you are a former revenue minister. Please speak freely about any insights you may have."
Yu Xin smiled faintly, greatly appreciating the new emperor's openness, as receptive as a valley. "I concur with Secretary Xie. This law is indeed feasible. Shamefully, our abilities are mediocre, and we never thought of such an ingenious method. Upon careful consideration, Minister Huang's remarks are also pertinent. Certain problems do indeed need to be resolved."
"In my view, although this law is new, it appears substantial and sound. If those above and below work with one heart, it can certainly be implemented. My only concern is that once it reaches the prefectures and counties, lower-level officials will have fewer opportunities to squeeze the people. They may resist maliciously, misapplying the law in Your Majesty's name and disturbing and harming the populace."
Zhu Yunwen's pupils narrowed slightly. Yu Xin was indeed seasoned. He understood the single whip law's effects and shortcomings. More importantly, he understood that the key to whether it could be implemented lay not with the central government, but with the cooperation of local authorities.
If local officials, powerful families, and unscrupulous gentry led the opposition, even the best system would be useless if it never reached the people at the bottom. It might even harm them!
Zhu Yunwen nodded gravely and rose. "Gentlemen, you have seen only the present, not the future of development. Every day, every year, princes, officials, landlords, and wealthy merchants continue to annex land, even devising every possible means to take it from farmers. Once farmers encounter famine or flooding, they can only sell their fields and become tenant farmers with no freedom at all."
"Heh. The absurd thing is that tenant farmers toil away, only to end up destitute. The grain they produce ultimately falls into the hands of princes, officials, landlords, and wealthy merchants. Some of those people pay no taxes; others evade them. When most of the land is in their hands, how much tax revenue will the state have left?"
"And consider the north. The northern Mongol forces still exist, and they will inevitably invade our frontiers from the south again and again. Along the coast, pirates and Japanese raiders will also appear. Officials need salaries, and armies need money and grain. How can we sustain Great Ming's realm with meager revenue against enormous expenditure?"
"We cannot! That is why we must reform not only agricultural taxation, but also the land system and the commercial system! I tell you, if we want a powerful, prosperous Great Ming, we must have the courage to usher in a flourishing age! We must dare to walk a road no one before us has traveled!"
As Yu Xin, Zhang Zhen, Xie Jin, Huang Zicheng, and Zhuo Jing looked at Zhu Yunwen, brimming with ambition and resolve, a fire kindled in their hearts as well.
His words made it clear that he saw not merely the issue of agricultural taxation, but the problems of the entire empire! His gaze rested not only on the present, but also on the future!
To serve such an emperor was a minister's good fortune!
"I give you one month to draw up a workable plan. Identify the problems and propose solutions alongside them. If the Grand Secretariat and the Revenue Ministry still cannot resolve everything, pool your wisdom and recruit some students from the Imperial College to participate."
Zhu Yunwen issued his command.
Although Zhu Yunwen was firmly resolved to reform, he was in no hurry to take the first step.
What still bound his hands and feet was the problem of the vassal princes-specifically, Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan!
On the sixteenth day of the eighth month, Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, left the Capital. After crossing the Yangtze, he traveled day and night, heading straight for Beiping Prefecture. Just as Zhu Di reached Xuzhou, Ping An and Sheng Yong began their operation in Beiping Prefecture.
On the fifth day of the ninth month, Sheng Yong dismissed or transferred thirty-two military officers in succession, then selected talented men from the army and entrusted them with important responsibilities.
On the sixth day of the ninth month, Ping An mobilized his troops to take over Beiping's defenses. The troops previously responsible for its defense marched to Linqing and other places for training.
On the seventh day of the ninth month, Qu Neng conducted intensive military drills at Shanhai Pass.
On the ninth day of the ninth month, Ping An received the order to implement the new recruit policy and began carrying out the New Army policy around Beiping Prefecture.
Before you continue