Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 221 What dynasty lasts forever?!
The Ten Tax Law ostensibly divided national taxes into ten categories, but in reality it stripped the Six Ministries and local governments of their power to collect taxes, consolidating the power of taxation into the Ministry of Revenue.

Other officials objected for the same reason. When they were restricting the military, they were incredibly adept at manipulating finances. But when it came to their own, they were bound to be furious. After all, nobody wants to be manipulated. If the Ministry of Revenue completely controlled taxation, then the Minister of Finance would become the de facto prime minister. What would become of the other five ministries?

Zhu Youjian understood this, but he didn't care much. He was terrible at maintaining balance and mainly did whatever he wanted. He hadn't learned any of the art of being an emperor!

Xu Guangqi hasn't yet risen to the position of Minister, mainly because there are no vacancies. There's nothing he can do about it. The Western learning school has always been on the fringes, and things are only starting to improve now. Perhaps the Ministry of Works would be more suitable for him. This guy is a polymath, and he even knows theology. He can pretend to be a charlatan. In order to fool Westerners, he really has Confucius in his heart!

"How much does Your Majesty intend to raise the regular tax?" Xu Guangqi asked cautiously.

"How about a tithe?!"

"Too high!" "Too low!" Xu Guangqi and Bi Ziyan said in unison. They paused for a moment, then simultaneously offered politely, "Brother Zixian, please go first!" "Jingzeng, please go first!"

"Good heavens, what are these two old men up to?!" Zhu Youjian thought to himself. He was "pointing out the soldiers" and had his name called on Xu Guangqi, so he said, "Minister Xu, you go first."

Xu Guangqi's words were not appropriate to be spoken here, after all, there were still many idle people from the Hanlin Academy. He could only say tactfully: "Raising the regular tax rashly may not be conducive to the investigation of land, and the common people's miscellaneous taxes are mostly related to military supplies, so we must also be cautious."

"What's detrimental to the land survey is that the land tax has increased, and the gentry are unwilling to pay taxes!" Zhu Youjian knew perfectly well that the court mainly exploited the people in two ways: land tax and corvée labor. Corvée labor was now being converted into silver, which was beneficial to the landlords, since they had a lot of land and few people, and the land tax in the Ming Dynasty was so low.

After listening to Xu Guangqi's words, Bi Ziyan calmed down considerably. He admitted that his considerations were flawed. The reason he said it was less was because he was referring to the land tax rates of other dynasties. This was his consistent style of doing things: only considering economic factors and ignoring human relationships.

Zhu Youjian, as the number one liar of the Ming Dynasty, a practitioner of the "laissez-faire" policy, and a patch-up artist for a dilapidated dynasty, could only compromise in the end:

First, abolish the corvée labor system in exchange for silver, and change the regular tax to one-fifteenth of the original tax. Currently, the corvée labor system in various places is generally "four parts for the laborers and six parts for the grain." Abolishing the corvée labor system and changing it to one-fifteenth of the original tax will not have a significant impact on the people. However, money will not increase out of thin air; it will only be transferred. Naturally, this will benefit the landlords!

The corvée labor system, which was essentially a poll tax, was abolished. The replacement of the poll tax with the land tax was a powerful weapon to address the conflict between population and land.

In fact, corvée labor should not have been converted into silver. Zhang Juzheng originally intended to convert corvée labor into silver in order to solve problems such as "the time spent by households on corvée labor and the impact on production" and "local officials taking the opportunity to extort money". It seemed to benefit the people, but in reality, it caused great harm to both the people and the court in the end.

The corvée labor of the people was actually a manifestation of the imperial court's control over the people's personal lives, and a reflection of a country's control over a region, profoundly affecting the country's organizational and mobilization capabilities.

Of course, the corvée labor for military households was never abolished. When there was a real need for people to do the work, the court did not allow payment in silver. At most, people could find loopholes and hire substitutes. The key was that there had to be people! Corvée labor originated from ancient collective labor, perhaps during the time of Yu the Great's flood control efforts. Therefore, initially, corvée labor was only conscripted when needed. In many places, people did not need to perform corvée labor, or did not need to do so every year. For these people, payment in silver was just a burden, making people who did not need to perform corvée labor bear the debt of corvée labor.

This is no less impactful than making those who have never eaten shark fin soup reflect on their actions, or making those without houses bail out housing prices. Furthermore, the practice of converting corvée labor into silver is a convenient excuse; when local governments are short of funds, they often use the heavy burden of corvée labor as a pretext to levy higher taxes!

Of course, the policy was not so rigid, and Zhu Youjian was not so kind. The corvée labor in silver was abolished, but the corvée labor itself was not abolished. It was just the other way around. If you actually participated in corvée labor, you could be exempted from tax. Depending on the difficulty of the corvée labor, you could even be exempted from land tax. The extra tax collected was called pre-payment of tax!
After listening to the emperor's confession, Bi Ziyan began to meow: "Wonderful, wonderful! Your Majesty is wise! How could I not have thought of that?!"

Zhu Youjian thought to himself, "That's because you're a local!"

As for Lao Zhang's military reforms, they were rather unremarkable. He lacked initiative and creativity, and seemed more like he was forced to act by the situation, with his various measures filled with helplessness.

For example, due to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty's garrison system, he chose to replace the conscription system with a recruitment system. This reversed the military decline at the time, but it also brought profound disasters to the Ming Dynasty later, and put immense pressure on the entire empire's military expenditures.

Furthermore, recruited soldiers can eventually become corrupt, and conscription can also be effective in combat. The soldiers of the early Ming Dynasty, fighting in the south and north, were fearless. Unfortunately, that's how times are; there's only forward movement, forward movement, and no turning back.

Zhang Juzheng's reforms, in general, were based on "finance as the core, official governance as the guarantee, and military strength as the support." However, they had several drawbacks: they relied heavily on his personal authority, as "Zhang Juzheng held power in Jiangling, and all matters, large and small, were handled by him"; and the reform methods were radical, resulting in significant side effects.

Zhu Youjian, on the other hand, adopted a strategy of "playing dumb"... oops, I mean, based on Huang-Lao philosophy, adhering to the principle of "governing a large country is like cooking a steamed bun," gradually encroaching on the territory to avoid making any big moves that could backfire.

Zhang Juzheng's reforms prioritized improving the bureaucracy before addressing the economy and military, which was undoubtedly correct, but it was not suitable for Zhu Youjian.

Because Zhang Juzheng himself was one of the officials, his efforts to rectify official corruption did not raise any alarms. By the time his subordinates realized what was happening, it was too late. Zhu Youjian, on the other hand, needed to secure his own power first. He could only pretend to be a good boy at first and dare not offend anyone. Only after the army was in place and he had military force in hand did he dare to start causing trouble.

Therefore, he used the military as the cornerstone of his reforms, suppressing other dissenting forces and forming a community of shared interests with the army. He transformed reforms driven by his personal prestige into reforms driven by a class system. In essence, this was not much different from the Manchu Qing dynasty's preferential treatment of the Manchu bannermen; it was about forming factions and suppressing others, favoring the capable and bullying the weak.

As for whether his policies will cease to exist after his death, probably they will. But he's already dead, why worry about so much? What dynasty lasts forever?!

(End of this chapter)