A Way to Reform the Abuses
"Cough—cough..."
"Father! Are you all right?"
The old man's face was a sickly leaden gray, and the coughs kept tearing out of him.
"...Cough. I'm all right. I'm all right."
Lin Quansheng smiled up at his son, Lin Hu, who stood over him with worry written across his face.
"The body may fail me, but the heart is at ease. Do you not see it at last—the signs that this turmoil in Fujian is drawing to a close?"
"Father, put aside whatever happens beyond these walls. Is this not the time to rest, and to mend?"
Gaunt as he was, the old man's expression was bright.
It had been barely two months since he dragged his aged body to Fuzhou, was received by the Duke of Yue, and urged that the Red Turban rabble be rooted out before anything else. The hero who looked, to the eye, scarcely more than a green youth had in those two months not only driven off the Red Turbans seething through Fujian's interior, but was tearing out their remnants by the root.
"His Grace came to this land of Fujian in the third month of this year, did he not? To have pacified the greater part of Fujian in half a year—truly, he is a man sent down by Heaven. Cough—cough..."
"Father. Drink the decoction first."
Lin Hu raised his father from the bedding, helped him take the medicine, and then spoke with open displeasure.
"Your son resents His Grace. If you had not gone that long road to seek him out yourself, the illness would never have sunk so deep..."
"Enough! You fool! What nonsense is this? Did His Grace summon this old man? I went of my own accord—and you speak of resentment?"
Lin Hu looked at Lin Quansheng and let out a sigh.
"And you, who ought to be giving yourself to recovery—what have you been doing, night after night, awake until the small hours? Is that not all because of the task His Grace laid upon you?"
"What time or toil is there in recommending a few men worth the using? It was only that I lay turning over the regrets I still carry from my years in the state's service, wondering whether His Grace might not set them right—and so sleep would not come."
To stand beside a young hero as he pacified a disordered age and gathered in a people sunk in misery. Was that not the hour every scholar trained in the classics had dreamed of?
"I know this body of mine. I shall not outlast the coming year."
He had once thought, hearing that the court meant to invite eminent scholars to compile the dynastic history, that it would be no bad end for a scholar to burn what remained of his life in that work. He had judged that an old man such as himself could do nothing in this Fujian fallen into chaos.
But the moment the Duke of Yue came to his home country and began to put the turmoil down, a hot ember flared in the breast of the old scholar who had lost all will. If he was to leave anything behind after death, ought it not to be for the people of this homeland—for those who had trusted a worthless man like him and followed him, who had boasted of Lin Quansheng as a talent their own country had produced?
"Father..."
"And this is no stranger's land, is it? It is the ground on which my children, and my grandchildren after them, must live for generations."
Lin Quansheng lay on his sickbed and smiled.
...Fujian's soil is barren and its people poor, and yet corrupt officials have been especially given to colluding with the great local clans, exploiting the people and swelling their own fortunes. The censors who ought to have inspected this, far from inspecting it, made it their daily business to range through the prefectures and counties like market-wives, haggling over bribes and egging the abuse on.
This came of officials' salaries being meager, of the jiaochao paper notes being issued without restraint until their worth collapsed, and of Mongol and Semu high officials buying their posts with bribes and then seeking to recoup the cost. The Censorate of the Jiangnan Branch, which ought to have investigated them, was for the most part of one company with them, so the burden on the people grew, and when drought or flood brought famine they could endure it no longer.
The broad outline I already knew. What mattered was that it carried the seasoned judgment of an official who knew Fujian on the ground.
Of course, if one can generously supplement the salaries of officials and clerks, as Your Grace did in governing Zhedong, that abuse can certainly be lessened. But if the root is not cut, it will be no more than pouring water into a jar with a hole in its bottom. How, then, can it be sustained?
Lin Quansheng went on, point by point, through the defects of Fujian's system of taxation.
Since the sagely dynasty's rule began, the Emperor Shizu wished to lighten the burden on the peasants of Jiangnan, long worn by war. From one mu of paddy—roughly a sixth of an acre—one harvests some two or three shi of rice, and what the state takes in tax is a mere five sheng.
Thus the autumn tax gathered across all of Fujian comes to about two hundred and eighty thousand shi, not even a tenth of the three million three hundred thousand shi of tax grain the whole Jiangzhe Branch Secretariat shipped to the imperial capital before the age of chaos. Seen thus, the people's burden ought not to be heavy. In truth, it is nothing of the sort.
The gray-haired man who had served long as a local official looked at me and gave a bitter smile.
"The miscellaneous levies, and the corvée..."
"The regular tax has a clear standard fixed in the law of the state, but miscellaneous levies and corvée are vague. It is an easy thing for a clerk to work his tricks, or for corrupt officials to fill their private greed through them."
The letter Lin Quansheng had sent seemed to carry, item by item, the wish of an official to lay before me the abuses over which he had brooded.
The tax assigned to the land is sent to the imperial capital or allotted to the finances of the branch secretariat, so a local office's revenue depends entirely upon miscellaneous levies and corvée. Unlike the regular tax, the upper limit of that burden follows the discretion of the local yamen, and all the people's suffering springs from there.
The offices press them, in place of bearing harsh corvée, to offer money, grain, or raw silk, and the great clans collude with the local officials to shove the burden onto poor farmers. In the end the great clans and the rich farmers slip free of the miscellaneous levies and the corvée, and those who actually bear the load are the poor dirt-farmers with no one at their back.
Nor is that all. They are told to present raw silk, silver, medicinal herbs, and local specialties under every manner of miscellaneous levy, and they are forced to buy salt at a dear price and then charged for the salt besides. How are the people to bear it? In truth no salt is given. Each person is compelled to pay according to a count of heads. This they call the salt levy.
Every village is assigned a fixed salt levy, and if someone cannot endure it and flees, the remaining households of the district are pressed to make good the share. What follows? One by one they flee and hide in the mountains, and when that bitter anger fills to the brim, the poor rise, swearing they will kill the corrupt officials and the wealthy and chew their living flesh.
The old man's letter was steeped in the self-reproach and guilt of a man who knew the abuse and could not cure it.
This old man ate the state's salary, and yet could only strive with stopgaps to lessen the people's pain, and watch the abuse go on. It was because my spirit as a scholar was not sufficient, and because I never found a remedy for what is, at the root, the want of revenue in the local offices.
I have heard that Your Grace is no mere warrior flaunting martial might, but has long governed Zhedong admirably and practiced upright rule. Unlike this incompetent old man, you are accomplished in both letters and arms, and I trust you hold the wisdom to resolve Fujian's old abuses.
Before this old man dies, he sends this letter clinging to one scrap of hope, in case it may be of some small help. I wish only for the day when the people of Fujian recover their peace, labor with all their strength by day, and at night fall asleep with their hands on full bellies.
Toward the end of the letter the characters wavered, and the strength in the hand grew faint. Like an old scholar dying.
"Well. What do all of you think?"
"Hmm..."
The civil officials who had passed the letter around and read it sank into thought, their faces grave.
"As Master Gakhyeon says, reforming the internal administration is of course important. Even so, I believe that completing the pacification now underway must come before all else."
There was sense in that, coming from Ban Baeksu, the man who oversaw Fujian's civil government. Apart from Xinghua and Quanzhou, six of Fujian's routes had come under the court's rule—more precisely, under my influence—but the suppression was still not wholly finished. Fuzhou, taken first, had for the most part been cleaned out, but in the four routes of Jianning, Yanping, Shaowu, and Tingzhou the hunting of Red Turban remnants, rebel gentry, and bandits was still going on. Nor were there few righteous armies that, court or Red Turban alike, had clung to neutrality and defended only their own districts to the death.
"My lord's policies have already proved their worth in the Fuzhou route. For now, the first task is to reorganize the righteous armies into the Patrol Army and the militia, take hold of military authority in the prefectures and counties, and restore order."
"I think the same."
At Ban Baeksu's words, Zhang Yi, who had likewise labored over the pacification of the Fuzhou route, nodded.
"If reform is to be carried out, seizing each prefecture and county must come first. In Fujian the local magnates of every prefecture and county have long built stockades, armed their followings, and privately collected taxes and corvée. Until that is cut out at the root, no reform is possible."
Fujian was, in effect, over-armed, thanks to the righteous armies that had sprung up everywhere. Men who had once worked at their livelihoods now took up spear and sword, collected taxes as they pleased on the pretext of protecting other people, and had become more fearsome than the corrupt officials of the days before the chaos. In the Fuzhou route, too, they had met this by disbanding the righteous armies of each place, turning some into the Patrol Army charged with public order and the rest into militia, a body of self-defense against emergency. Command of them lay with the Patrol Army officers of each prefecture and county, men who drew their salaries from me. In exchange, those among the righteous-army leaders who were of use were appointed civil or military officials and suitably rewarded, and any who dug in and refused were swept away by the Tiger Hunting Army, the Garrison Army, or the navy.
"That work is already underway. Let us move on to what comes next."
"Once order is restored and military authority is in hand, the local officials posted to each prefecture and county must restore the people's livelihood."
"What do you take to be the first of those tasks?"
At my question Ban Baeksu answered at once, without hesitation.
"In my view, nothing is more urgent than the waterworks, left untended for so long. The wars dragged on, the local officials fled, and apart from men such as Luo Liang, route commander of Zhangzhou, most of the great clans spent their strength on nothing but armament. Reservoirs, canals, and dikes have lain abandoned for years."
"Waterworks..."
"Fujian's ground is steeper and more rugged than Zhedong or Zhexi. Rain runs off quickly, and there is little flat land, lake, or marsh in which to keep water. Heavy rain brings flood with ease, and light rain brings drought, so setting the waterworks in order is exceedingly important here."
At Ban Baeksu's point Zhang Yi nodded, yet his face showed the difficulty of it.
"Lord Ban's words are surely the orthodox view, but there is a problem. It is not yet a full month since Your Grace put the turmoil down, and the people have suffered for a long time. If we mobilize them for the waterworks..."
"Hearts will waver."
"The people of Fujian are watching Your Grace with half expectation and half worry. If at this moment Your Grace raises a great work, those who are disappointed will not be few."
The eighth lunar month was early autumn. In Fujian it was the season for harvesting the late rice planted at the start of summer, and after that, until the next year, comparatively less rain would fall. If the waterworks were done now, in advance, next year's farming could be prepared for.
"There are quite a few refugees and captives being resettled in the various places just now, are there not?"
"There are. As the suppression forces hunt the remnants, they are also rounding up the refugees who hid in the mountains..."
"We have to feed them until next year anyway, don't we? Release the grain, pay it out as wages, and raise the works that way."
Forced onto the corvée, they would nurse resentment. But if the relief grain that would have had to be issued for their settlement in any case was divided out as wages, and they were hired, that was another matter. Existing farmers might even volunteer, for the sake of the pay.
"My lord, but can we bear the whole of that cost? Grain is being shipped in from Zhedong, yet if we consume it in this fashion the stores will hit bottom in no time."
"Is there not the autumn tax to be collected in Fujian this year?"
At my words the civil officials shut their mouths like mutes who had swallowed honey, and looked at one another.
"Then the tax grain, all of it..."
"Is this not an emergency? Sending the tax grain of a Fujian only just pacified off to Dadu would be too much."
Ban Baeksu, foremost among the civil officials posted to Fujian, was in practice no different from my own retainer. The young official, the Assistant Administrator, stood at nearly the same level. Liu Ji, on the other hand, and Zhang Yi, who had not long been in my service, wore reluctant eyes.
"Your Grace, there will certainly be talk behind our backs. You have already dismissed or sent away most of the existing officials..."
"Then are you telling me to send to Dadu the tax grain of a Fujian whose finances are desperate this very moment? While Fujian's people starve, because I fear the court's grumbling, or the slander of scholars?"
"Th-that is..."
Zhang Yi was forty-six, three years Liu Ji's junior. Famed as one of the Four Scholars of Zhedong, he could find no answer, and only hesitated.
"In all affairs there is an order of first and last. If only my own granaries were ample, I should like to remit the taxes outright. That cannot be, can it?"
"......"
"For now, let this year's autumn tax serve as the revenue each prefecture and county will use—to pay the wages of the waterworks, and as the means to settle refugees and captives. The burden of hauling it will be lighter as well, so it ought to help a great deal."
"You mean to make the whole of the tax grain into the retained revenue of each prefecture and county?"
"Something of that sort."
Once I came to govern Zhedong, I had done a fair amount of studying myself. In essence, the regular taxes the Yuan collected in Jiangnan were divided into the upward tribute sent to Khanbaliq and the retained revenue left in the region as local finance. In the old days, when the Tang still had its military governors, the division was upward tribute, retained revenue, and the portion kept for the governor. When the Song pursued centralization, they abolished the governor's share, or so I had heard.
"Master Bowen, how were the upward tribute and the retained revenue originally apportioned?"
At my question Liu Ji, who had been sitting in silence with his gaze lowered, raised his head.
"Seven parts go to Dadu as upward tribute, and three remain in the locality as retained revenue. But the retained revenue is used for the salaries of the high officials posted to the region, or for military rations, so in practice it is not left in each prefecture and county. It goes to the branch secretariat."
"And isn't that precisely why the burden of miscellaneous levies and corvée grows? Why the clerks and the corrupt officials play their tricks, for that matter."
At my question some nodded, and some held their silence. Seen in that light, hauling vast quantities of grain to a distant capital in the name of tax grain was exploitative in no small measure. The essential works the state itself ought to perform in the region—keeping order, waterworks and the building of bridges, the payment of the clerks—the local official had to fill in with miscellaneous levies and corvée.
"For this year and through next, exempt each prefecture and county from the miscellaneous levies, and from the salt tax as well. Do not impose corvée unless it is truly urgent, and there is to be no collecting of miscellaneous levies on the pretext of commuting it."
"What? But then..."
"All the tax grain collected through next year will be turned over to the finances of the local yamen. Then, even without miscellaneous levies or corvée, the granaries of the prefectures and counties will not stand empty..."
Removing the abuse that tormented Fujian's people was, in truth, simple. When the central court took its taxes, it had only to set firmly aside the resources the local finances required, and collect afterward. The trouble was merely that this did not fit the great current, begun under the Song and inherited by the Yuan, of checking the growth of local power and drawing authority and revenue into the center. If local finances were left ample, and a local official diverted them to raise a following and run wild like the military governors of the Tang, that would be a problem.
In the territory I governed, though, a local official had almost no room to build such a following. The authority to move armies and the authority to govern the people were strictly divided. A local official did not even hold command of the Patrol Army charged with order; conversely, the chief military commanders had almost no authority on the financial side, and depended on the rations and salaries I issued. We would inspect rigorously lest the two groups collude, and Heukwol watched them in secret besides.
"I cannot recklessly alter the laws and institutions of the realm. But neither can I leave the people suffering, and let the spark of rebellion grow. Can I?"
"......"
"Is there anyone who does not agree?"
At my question Ban Baeksu stepped forward first.
"My lord is Manager of Governmental Affairs of the Fujian Branch Secretariat, so I believe this is a measure you are fully entitled to issue. Enact it first, then memorialize the court and receive its sanction."
I looked steadily at Liu Ji and at Zhang Yi.
"In an age of chaos, one must know how to meet the moment."
"I will follow Your Grace's command."
"But there must be a proper inspection of whether the local officials of each prefecture and county turn this to private use, or carry it out as they should. If the taxes collected are not properly used, and officials pocket them, they are to be punished without mercy."
Sooner or later I would have to build an organ for inspecting officials, something in the manner of a Censorate. Not remonstrators who, with no experience of practical affairs, filed impeachments crying that some moral principle had gone unkept—and not the Yuan's Mongol censors, more corrupt than the corrupt officials themselves.
Then the young official who had been listening quietly, the Assistant Administrator, stepped forward.
"My lord, if the finances are run in that way, it will be a great help in settling Fujian. But the revenue to be had from Fujian will then be small, and raising the military funds to fight great foes such as Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang may instead become a burden."
"It may well be so. And we must station a considerable army besides..."
The civil officials' worries were not wrong. In truth, raising what was needed through miscellaneous levies and corvée was what every other contending lord was doing now. But I wanted a different direction.
"Raising the needed resources through miscellaneous levies and corvée is comparatively easy. As with the salt tax, assign each district a fixed sum according to the households on the registers and collect it, and one can fill the granaries without any particular hardship."
I set out, calmly, the harm of that system. Take as one's standard the headcount of persons entered and updated in the household registers, and taxes can be gathered and corvée imposed with relative convenience. But as Lin Quansheng had explained, let it go even slightly wrong and fraud springs up in the middle, while the burden settles on the poorest and most vulnerable, and social unrest follows easily.
"Fujian is especially vulnerable to this because the land is barren and the mountains rugged, so farming does not flourish, and yet the people living here are not few, and the poor are many. A method that lays a tax on human heads is bound to become the very source of their suffering."
"Hm..."
"Then how ought we to collect taxes in Fujian?"
In the long run the land tax, set far too low, would have to be raised. But that risked provoking Fujian's great clans, the ones who held the most land—the vested interests.
"Salt, after all..."
"A tax on salt is possible. But if we lay a salt tax on the people as before, or make that tax heavy, it will become a problem in the same way."
The salt tax was a commodity tax taken indirectly, but because salt was in fact a necessity of life it worked in the same manner as a poll tax. Make it heavy, or try to monopolize production and distribution, and salt smugglers of the stamp of Fang Guozhen and Zhang Shicheng were bound to run wild. Crack down on them, punish them, and the end of it would only be damage to the people's hearts.
"Farming does not flourish in Fujian, but no small quantity of goods was produced here. Fuzhou yielded tangerines, tea, paper, and silk; Quanzhou produced porcelain, and the wares of the southern barbarians flowed in; Yanping had iron and silver; Xinghua was a gathering place for sugar..."
Fujian was unusually poor for Jiangnan, and yet, conversely, its rich inland timber and minerals were sold outward, and industries of every kind had flourished there—textiles such as silk and cotton cloth, and the making of sugar. Now, after long years of war, those veins had been cut.
"Inland goods come down the Min and gather here at Yanping, then go on to Jiangnan by the sea road. From the coast they move straight to Jiangnan by sea..."
"You mean to lay taxes on those goods?"
"First we restore the industries that have collapsed. The local officials of each place are to survey the state of specialty production in their prefectures and counties, and work with the great clans so that production can be started again, and support that work actively."
"Understood, my lord."
The route commanders, Ban Baeksu foremost among them, nodded. Squeeze the poor and all one earns is curses and rebellion; what remains is not much. All the more in a place like this Fujian, where the farmers at the bottom are poor. Just as we had built great salt fields along the Zhedong coast and were supplying salt to the whole of Jiangnan, restoring cash crops, forestry, porcelain, and textiles had to come first. Draw in my own capital, with Heukwol at the center, and the merchants of Zhedong as investors; build the industries on a comparatively large scale; and levy the taxes in the course of moving the goods by ship. A shift of the fiscal structure from direct taxes toward indirect ones. And in that same process Heukwol would work its way into every corner of Fujian and become my eyes and ears.
"Good. Then what is the next item?"
In the sweltering late summer, I went on with a busy day's work, easing the heat with a fan.