The videos I watched became popular in ancient times

Chapter 194: A Thousand Years of Agricultural Taxes, a History of Blood and Tears of Destruction

A new day starts from early morning.

As the sun rises, ancient people from all dynasties begin their busy day.

The emperors of various dynasties were particularly busy, not only busy building a nationwide communication network, but also busy searching for mineral deposits across the country.

As for the common people in various dynasties, they seize the time to deal with the day's farm work.

I will watch the video later, they are very interested in the abolition of agricultural taxes in future generations.

In their understanding, ordinary people in all dynasties have to pay agricultural taxes. They cannot imagine why agricultural taxes can be abolished in later generations.

It is precisely because of this that they look forward to the videos that the anchors will play.

They do not expect that the current emperor can learn from future generations and cancel the agricultural tax. They will be thankful if the emperor can lower the agricultural tax a little after watching the video.

In fact, what ordinary people are most interested in is to know the reasons for the abolition of agricultural taxes in later generations and see if they can learn something from it.

The video for teaching simplified Chinese characters was still played at the beginning of the morning. The entire video lasted for several hours, and children from all dynasties complained incessantly.

In order to speed up the progress, Su Chen could only adopt the method of rushing ducks to put on the shelves.

He did not expect that ancient people from all dynasties would be able to master daily knowledge through Tianmu study.

In fact, the efficiency of Tianmu learning is very low, and it can only give ancient people from various dynasties a general understanding of simplified Chinese characters.

There may be some academic masters in each dynasty who can absorb knowledge very well, but they are only a minority.

If you want to fully master simplified Chinese characters, you need face-to-face teaching from teachers, and you need teachers to supervise reading and literacy every day. Just watching the teaching videos of Tianmu is not enough.

So he sped up and went over the simplified characters just to facilitate the rulers of each dynasty to keep records, and then set up schools to teach students this knowledge of simplified characters.

He believes that with the strength of each dynasty, it is completely possible to achieve comprehensive universal education.

Crop seeds can provide each dynasty with endless food, and the world map can provide each dynasty with endless money.

If these two most important problems are solved, the education industry of all dynasties and generations will surely usher in explosive development.

He believed that before long, every county in every dynasty would have a school, and every child of school age would be able to go to school.

When the knowledge learning video was about to end, ancient people from all dynasties stopped what they were doing and looked at the sky in unison.

Agricultural taxes are closely related to ancient people in various dynasties. Everyone wants to see how future generations will cancel agricultural taxes.

[Thousands of years of agricultural tax, a history of blood and tears]

[An official in the late Ming Dynasty, when facing the peasant army who revolted because of excessive taxes, said this sentence: "If you don't starve to death, you will be like the mantis with its arms."

It means that instead of living like a starving ghost, you actually dare to rebel by using a mantis as a chariot.

From today's perspective, this sentence is simply heinous.

However, in the eyes of officials, farmers in the feudal period were really nothing more than tax consumables. If they could work, they would pay taxes. If they couldn't work, they would starve to death, so as to save the court from worry.

The conflict between the two sides ultimately lies in the word tax.

In ancient China, there were generally two taxation ideas.

One is the head tax and labor tax that represent the thinking of small farmers' economy.

The other is asset tax and business tax that represent commodity economic thinking.

The philosopher Hegel said something when talking about Chinese history. He said that Chinese history has no history in essence. It is just the continuous repetition of the destruction and replacement of kings. This sentence has a little truth. of. 】

Yang Sichang: That's nonsense. When did I say this? There must be some villain deliberately slandering me.

He once wrote a poem, the first line of which is "If you don't behave in a peaceful manner, you will surrender, and you will imitate the mantis with its arms." This is not at all about making people starve to death.

As a cabinet minister who respected the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, how could he say such unconscionable words?

At first glance, it seemed that someone was smearing him and deliberately throwing dirty water on him.

At first, he recommended Xiong Wencan to be responsible for suppressing bandits. With his agreement, Xiong Wencan adopted a recruitment strategy.

In the end, he successfully recruited a large number of bandits, including Zhang Xianzhong, which can be regarded as his political achievement.

Everyone was happy at first, but after Zhang Xianzhong was appeased, he rebelled again when he received the court's promise not to break up the army, to have a separate garrison, to take care of his own taxes, not to listen to orders, not to listen to propaganda, and other preferential policies.

In this case, what he said about not surrendering would be to scold Zhang Xianzhong.

I don’t know which treacherous official changed this sentence to "Don’t do An An starve to death", which made him inexplicably infamy.

When they heard the first sentence of the video, the people of all dynasties were all angry and wide-eyed.

Let them starve to death. I don’t know who the bastard said this.

If they knew his name, they would definitely curse this evil official on the barrage right now.

Especially the common people who rose up in rebellion at the end of each dynasty, saw this sentence and cursed one after another.

They didn't want to rebel, but the government pushed them to death, so they had to rebel in order to find a way to survive.

But now there are evil officials who exploit them and dare to let them starve to death without shame. Who can bear this?

[Although China has a history of five thousand years, from the time when the Qin Dynasty unified the six countries until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the centralized imperial power system based on the small-scale peasant economy and taxation has never undergone any substantial changes.

Countless people have tried to promote the transformation of taxation towards a commodity economy, but few have succeeded.

Therefore, ancient Chinese civilization was also firmly suppressed in the shackles of focusing on agriculture and suppressing commerce, and could not wait for upgrading.

The emphasis on agriculture and suppression of business is actually the result of the conflict between two taxation logics.

On the surface, the suppression of business is because businessmen are not engaged in production, but will also siphon off the agricultural population, ultimately leading to insufficient food production.

In essence, it was because most merchants had no fixed residence and their business activities were complex and diverse, which made the cost of levying commercial taxes extremely high in ancient times.

On the other hand, agriculture, a typical type of real estate, can be used by monks but not by temples. The tax base is stable and the collection cost is low. Therefore, China has long regarded agriculture as a key tax target.

However, the so-called emphasis on agriculture and suppression of business does not focus on farmers, but on the tax revenue brought by agriculture.

They earn the lowest returns, do the most tiring work, and pay the heaviest taxes.

Therefore, ancient Chinese farmers have been constantly switching between resignation and intolerance. 】

Liu Che: The essence of focusing on agriculture and suppressing business is mainly because grain production is insufficient to feed the country's population. Therefore, a strategy of focusing on agriculture and suppressing business must be adopted so that people can farm with peace of mind.

As for the commercial tax issues mentioned in the video, they are not the most important.

The Han Dynasty levied taxes on merchants buying and selling goods. No matter whether the cost of collecting commercial taxes was high or not, they could always collect some commercial taxes.

In fact, the root cause is that food production is low, and many people still have no food to eat.

In this context, it is inevitable to focus on agriculture and suppress business.

Only by allowing people to focus entirely on the land can they grow as much food as possible.

Otherwise, when the people see how profitable business is, they will all rush to do business, and the already insufficient food will be even less.

Many officials from various dynasties agree very much with what the video says. Farmers are indeed constantly switching between resignation and intolerance.

The people of China can be said to be the most law-abiding people. If they are not pushed to a dead end, they will continue to accept the situation.

But once the people are forced to a dead end, the power they unleash is amazing, enough to change dynasties.

[There have been three major agricultural tax reforms in Chinese history. Each reform was not only accompanied by blood and tears, but also represented a clear conflict between the thinking of the small-scale peasant economy and the thinking of the commodity economy.

The first reform occurred in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, Zhang Juzheng, the most powerful official in the Ming Dynasty, single-handedly fought against the entire civil servant group and the power of the landlords and gentry, and took the lead in implementing a whip method to reduce the burden on farmers.

As a result, after Zhang Juzheng's death, interest groups exhumed his grave and completely liquidated him.

The second reform was forcibly implemented by Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty who spent his whole life and was known as the upgraded version of the one-whip method.

In order to implement this policy, Yongzheng killed countless people.

And he even approved the memorial day and night, and finally died of exhaustion.

The first two times, one failed and the other barely succeeded.

It was not until the third reform that China completely abolished the agricultural tax that had been in place for more than 2006 years in 2600, leveraging the momentum brought by the three millennium-level historical opportunities of land reform, reform and opening up, and joining the WTO, and the commodity economy finally took hold. 】

Zhang Juzheng: What? My grave was dug up and my body was exhumed?

Zhang Juzheng froze on the spot with his mouth open, as if he had been struck by lightning. No matter how many people around him shouted, there was no response.

He couldn't believe what he heard. After all, he was also the chief minister of the Ming Dynasty, but he ended up like this after his death, being dug out of the grave and exhumed.

After a long while, he finally came back to his senses and sighed deeply.

He couldn't believe it at first, but when he thought about it carefully, he had expected this tragic result, but he didn't expect it to come true.

The moment he forced the reform, he predicted that his end would most likely end in tragedy.

After all, since ancient times, those who reform have not had a good end.

Because once reforms are implemented, they will inevitably be attacked by vested interest groups.

Under such circumstances, it is extremely difficult to implement reforms, and it is almost impossible for reformers to have a good outcome.

But even so, he still wants to push forward reforms and use powerful means to suppress opposition.

He had no other reason but to hope that through reforms, the Ming Dynasty could resolve the crisis and continue the country for a longer period of time.

The reason why he worked so hard to reform was because he saw the problems faced by the Ming Dynasty and had to reform.

Although he had already been mentally prepared, he still felt unavoidable sadness when he learned that his body would be exhumed after his death.

Thinking about it, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the Ming Dynasty and the people all over the world. He worked hard and did not hesitate to offend the entire class of officials and gentry.

But the final result ended up like this, which has to be said to be sad.

But soon he regained his confidence, his eyes were deep and firm, and he exuded an indomitable momentum.

Even if there are mountains of swords and seas of fire ahead, he must move forward bravely for the sake of the Ming Dynasty and the people of the world.

Even if he is liquidated after his death, what does it matter?

In order to realize his ideals and ambitions, he risked his life without any regrets.

Yongzheng: I was exhausted to death because I approved memorials day and night. Are you sure you are not joking?

No matter how he looked at it, he felt it was a little ridiculous. He had never heard of an emperor dying of exhaustion because of too many memorials.

Even though Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, approved so many memorials every day, he never died of exhaustion because of this.

You know, Zhu Yuanzhang is famous for his diligence, and he can't wait to deal with government affairs for twelve hours every day.

But even in this situation, Zhu Yuanzhang was not exhausted to death.

Although he was diligent and loved the people, he was not like Zhu Yuanzhang who spent all his time dealing with government affairs.

He spent his whole life trying to promote the idea of ​​dividing households into acres.

After all, the policy of apportioning one person to another touches the interests of the entire gentry class and is opposed by almost all civil and military ministers.

If he doesn't keep an eye on him at all times, there will definitely be officials who are doing something secretly and acting against his will.

It is indeed true that he approved memorials day and night.

There was no other way, he had to do this for the smooth implementation of the policy of sharing the land from one person to another.

Now information from later generations tells him that he died of overwork.

Although he doesn't quite believe it, he still needs to pay more attention to the so-called careful sailing.

In this case, he can just rest more in the future, so that he won't be exhausted to death!

But there was one thing that puzzled him. What did it mean to barely succeed?

Success is success, there is no such thing as reluctance.

He couldn't help but think in his mind, could it be that the reform was not thorough and that the reform in some places was compromised?

He thought for a long time but didn't understand that the current reform was very thorough under his strong implementation.

But if this is the case, where does the statement that it was barely successful come from! Ancient people from all dynasties were extremely interested in the third agricultural tax reform and were very energetic.

The first agricultural tax reform refers to Zhang Juzheng's reform, which ultimately ended in failure.

The second agricultural tax reform refers to Yongzheng's method of apportioning a small person to an acre, and it finally received a barely successful evaluation, which is obviously not the answer that everyone expected.

Only the third agricultural tax reform completely abolishes agricultural taxes, which is what everyone has been waiting for.

In particular, the common people of various dynasties were most concerned about the agricultural tax reform in future generations, and they all pricked up their ears and listened carefully.

From what is described in the video, we all know that the most important reason why later generations were able to successfully reform agricultural taxes was to seize three millennium-level opportunities.

Land reform, reform and opening up, and accession to the WTO.

It can be called a millennium-level historical opportunity, which shows how important these three aspects are.

Among them, reform and opening up are unclear. They don’t know what is being opened up, and they have no way of knowing.

Joining the WTO makes me even more confused and I have no idea what it means.

Only land reform is what they care about most, and you can get a rough idea just from the literal meaning.

They were very curious about what kind of land reform led to the complete abolition of agricultural taxes in later generations.

What are the specific contents of land reform? This is what everyone wants to know most.

Especially the rulers of various dynasties have an even more urgent answer to this question.

The land issue has always been a top priority for them and is closely related to their country and country.

If you know the content of land reform in later generations, you may be able to learn from it to alleviate the land problems faced by their dynasties.

[In ancient times, emperors and powerful ministers always said the same thing, so why was it so difficult to change the tax system?

First, let's take a look at how they do it.

Hai Rui once made a comment to Zhang Juzheng: He is good at working for the country but not good for his own life.

This means that Zhang Juzheng is a man who is obsessed with reforming and planning for the country, but he is really not good at making a name for himself.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Juzheng, who came from a poor family and was a powerful man and a veteran of three dynasties, pushed for agricultural tax reform.

However, after his death, his whole house was ransacked, his wife was disfigured, and the eldest son couldn't bear the humiliation and chose to commit suicide.

What did Zhang Juzheng do to make people so hateful? The most important thing was to spread to the whole country the whipping method that was said to have been imposed on the Ming Dynasty for sixty years.

Beginning in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, land was highly concentrated, and the emperor took the lead in plundering real estate and setting up a large number of imperial estates.

The officials and gentry also followed suit and annexed land on a large scale.

Farmers continue to lose their means of production, but their tax burden has not been reduced.

As long as the local chronicles show that the land belonged to your ancestors in the past, even if the land no longer belongs to you, you still have to pay the land tax.

In order to avoid this unfair tax, farmers began to flee everywhere, becoming refugees, and even evolved into bandits, and the government's fiscal revenue also declined rapidly.

One of the important innovations in the One Whip Law was that the tax object of land tax was changed from people to land property.

In fact, it means changing the labor tax into an asset tax, which is actually very similar to the property tax we are talking about now.

If you have more real estate, you will pay more taxes. If you don’t have a house, you will not pay taxes. This will increase the cost of holding wealth for the wealthy.

The one-whip law is essentially intended to curb land annexation and prevent a small number of people from controlling most of the assets.

In addition, the One Whip Law also promotes monetized taxation, which is intended to reduce farmers' hidden expenses.

Starting from the Qin Dynasty, farmers who paid taxes had to bring grain or finished products to a fixed station for face-to-face counting.

In ancient times, grain was measured by volume in order to extract oil and water from farmers.

At that time, there would be a small official who was good at kicking sitting at the official grain collection station. Whenever the measuring container was full, he would go over and kick it.

The purpose is to pack as much grain as possible into the container to achieve the purpose of collecting more taxes.

Moreover, during this kicking and beating process, farmers still cannot take away the food spilled.

This part is called surplus, which is one of the most important sources of gray income for local governments and officials.

A whip law stipulates that all land taxes, corvées, and even miscellaneous taxes must be converted into cash transactions.

The emergence of currency eliminated most of the possible losses in physical transactions and relieved farmers of some burdens.

This move was more controversial in later generations, but it did have short-term benefits for the Ming Dynasty at that time.

After the government collects cash from taxes, it can go directly to the market to purchase supplies as needed.

This is equivalent to giving the government the power to actively inject liquidity into the market, which was almost unimaginable in the past.

It can be said that Zhang Juzheng's New Deal has reflected the prototype of the commodity economy idea.

Zhang Juzheng’s plan is to increase the disposable income of the bottom class, while forcing the rich to take their wealth back into society and recirculate it, and then use an efficient method of monetization to significantly increase the speed of economic expansion.

After social wealth increases, some social conflicts will naturally be bridged and supplemented by the court's methods of stimulating domestic demand.

If it can be done, the Ming Dynasty will still be saved.

However, Zhang Juzheng's thinking is too advanced, and the policies he pursues are not just as simple as touching the interests of others, but are simply taking food directly from the mouths of the interest classes.

The reason why it could be implemented at that time was entirely due to Zhang Juzheng's overwhelming power, which temporarily suppressed all opposition voices.

Therefore, the whip method quickly disappeared with the death of Zhang Juzheng, and the landlord class made a comeback.

Ironically, the Ming Dynasty ultimately died of poverty because it could not collect taxes.

Fiscal revenue is not enough to pay the military, so we can only continue to exploit farmers.

The higher the agricultural tax, the more refugees there will be.

If there are more refugees, it will be even harder to collect agricultural taxes.

As Li Zicheng's rebel army grew larger, it was finally out of control. 】

Hai Rui: Although Zhang Juzheng had some shortcomings in his personal behavior, it must be said that Zhang Juzheng was an outstanding talent in the court at that time, with outstanding talents in politics and economics.

Zhang Juzheng had just recovered from the tragedy of digging up graves and exhuming corpses. When he heard that his house was ransacked after his death, his wife was disfigured, and his eldest son committed suicide in humiliation, he was so angry that he trembled with rage.

Why is this the result?

Why would those opponents harm his family?

He closed his eyes in pain, his heart was extremely sad, and he was completely struck by the cruel reality.

He could tolerate his own death for his ideals, but he couldn't tolerate his family being implicated because of him.

At this moment, he couldn't help but doubt himself, had he done something wrong?

In order to serve the Ming Dynasty, he did not hesitate to offend the entire gentry class.

But in the end, not only did he end up miserable, but his family members were also affected, dying and being injured.

Is it worth it for Daming?

And the most distressing thing for him was that the emperor he had taught since childhood would actually raid his home. This was the most important reason for him to break through the defense.

He taught His Majesty carefully, but why did Your Majesty treat him like this?

At this moment, he was confused and didn't know whether the reform should continue.

In order to reform, the civil and military ministers opposed him. Even after his death, his grave was dug up and his body was exhumed. Your Majesty also wanted to ransack his home. His family members were either dead or injured.

All these things made his firm heart waver again.

Finally he sighed deeply, as if he had aged ten years.

No matter whether it was the tragic experience of himself or his family, he could not turn a blind eye.

But he was unwilling to give up his reforms and his ideals and ambitions.

For now, let’s wait until the live broadcast in the evening.

It won't be too late for him to make a decision once the anchor tells him the ins and outs of the reform.

Maybe by then, he can find a solution.

Not only can we successfully implement reforms, but we can also escape unscathed.

[The person who took over Zhang Juzheng’s legacy and improved it was the Qing Emperor Yongzheng.

As soon as Yongzheng succeeded to the throne, he implemented the policy known as an upgraded version of the one-whip method, which was to return fire expenses to the public, divide the land into acres, and never increase taxes.

Among them, Huohua was what was called surplus consumption during the Ming Dynasty. Although the policy of paying taxes was later changed to the use of silver, it was retained.

However, the local government used "the cost of heating materials and the loss of silver in the process of melting broken silver to cast official silver" as the reason to give the waste a new name and continue to take advantage of the people. This is a change of soup without changing medicine. .

Yongzheng's new policy announced that from now on, the state, as a tax collector, would take the initiative to bear this part of the loss and expenditure for everyone.

The so-called Ding refers to Ding Fu, which is the head tax for farmers.

On the basis of restarting the tax and land tax that had been abolished after Zhang Juzheng's death, Yongzheng also integrated the head tax that had to be levied separately in the past into the asset tax of land tax.

It is equivalent to truly matching the amount of production means with the amount of taxes, and preventing landlords from avoiding taxes by concealing population reports to the greatest extent. This is very close to the taxation idea under the framework of the modern commodity economy.

At the same time, Yongzheng also stipulated that land owners no longer needed to pay more taxes due to population growth.

In this way, the most direct effect is that farmers as a family unit can have more children and work more, and ultimately achieve more production, without having to worry about being squeezed out by the ever-increasing head tax.

To sum it up in today’s words, if you pay enough to the collective, the rest is yours. This is completely a tax strategy in a commodity economy environment.

Yongzheng's reforms directly stimulated the people's enthusiasm for reclaiming wasteland, and both the population and arable land area experienced rapid growth.

Emperor Yongzheng's implementation of such reforms was not without resistance. On the contrary, the resistance was considerable.

The vested interests of landowners, officials, gentry and nobles were greatly affected by the spread of land into land, so they obstructed it in every possible way.

Faced with this situation, Yongzheng could only use a butcher's knife to clear the way, and ultimately relied on absolute imperial power to ensure the implementation of the New Deal.

However, he himself was also notorious as the emperor who confiscated his property. After his death, there were endless negative comments about him.

Even to this day, Yongzheng in TV series appears as a ruthless and cold negative image most of the time. Even his son Shiquan Qianlong did not dare to fully take over Yongzheng's New Deal.

Under the lobbying and intimidation of vested interest groups in the small peasant economy, large landowners and nobles, Qianlong was forced to cancel some of Yongzheng's reform policies. 】

Yongzheng: I finally understand why the reform was said to be barely successful. It turned out that Hongli canceled some of the reform policies.

He became furious when he thought that the reform achievements he had spent his entire life being destroyed by his own son.

He worked hard all his life to successfully implement reforms.

But this ineffectual son actually compromised because of the opposition of interest groups, which greatly compromised the results of the reforms he had worked so hard to achieve.

As the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, how could he compromise because of opposition from interest groups? How weak is this.

Qianlong: So many civil and military ministers complained against it, so I had no choice but to compromise.

As soon as he ascended the throne, the civil and military ministers of the Manchu Dynasty requested that the reform policies of the late emperor be abolished.

After all, he had just ascended the throne at that time, and his foundation was not yet stable. Making some appropriate compromises could help him quickly gain a foothold.

Moreover, he did not completely deny the policies implemented by the late emperor, but only canceled some of them.

After reading the reform policies of Zhang Juzheng and Yongzheng, the emperors of various dynasties were thoughtful.

It is true that the reform measures of these two people can indeed greatly reduce the burden on the people, but the resistance they encounter is also huge.

If you want to implement a whipping method and share the land, you have to offend the entire gentry class, and you can imagine the resistance you will encounter.

Even if they were the rulers of a dynasty, they would not dare to implement such a reform policy easily.

However, compared to the first reform of Zhang Juzheng and the second reform of Yongzheng, ancient people of various dynasties were more interested in the third agricultural tax reform of later generations.

(End of this chapter)