Chapter 32 Liu Yan's Reform: The Return of the Monopoly System

In 755 A.D., An Lushan and Shi Siming, who guarded the north, launched a rebellion, ending the prosperous Tang Dynasty single-handedly, known as the "Anshi Rebellion" in history. From the perspective of the system, the occurrence of this chaos is the result of excessive decentralization.During Tang Xuanzong's reign, he did not change his generals for more than ten years, and all the military officials used Hu people. An Lushan also unified the five military officials, and had one-third of the military power in the world, which made him have different ambitions. .What's even more frightening is that in addition to leading the army, Jiedushi is also in charge of civil affairs and finance, just like a prince.From an economic point of view, the population has grown rapidly over the past 100 years, land annexation has reappeared, and the central government's light taxation and simplified administration have created prosperity for the people, but it has also exposed the shortcomings of the unified system-caused by weak control. Weak stems and strong branches".This scene is actually a replica of the late period of the "Wenjing Zhizhi".

The "Anshi Rebellion" brought devastating disasters to the country. "Hundreds of miles of prefectures and counties were all in ruins."After the rebellion was quelled, the spirit of the prosperous Tang Dynasty had been exhausted.Sima Guang described the scene at that time in his book: "The local separatist regime suddenly became stronger, the central government's fiscal revenue dropped sharply, and the ethnic minorities outside the border frequently provoked wars. Everything is stretched thin." There could never have been a worse situation for a unified empire.

It is against this background that after the mid-Tang Dynasty, various franchise policies were re-introduced one by one. During the "Anshi Rebellion", the imperial court was in a hurry to spend money, and the first way it came up with was to imitate Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty's "Calculation Order" and collect property taxes from wealthy businessmen.After Suzong ascended the throne, he sent people to the Jianghuai and Shuhan areas where the wealth gathered to collect taxes on the wealth of the wealthy businessmen according to their assets. Observation envoys also collected more taxes from merchants for military use, or calculated money and collected taxes on major transportation routes and trading places. The scene of "traveling thousands of miles without using rulers" no longer appears.

In addition to this extreme approach, restoring the state-owned monopoly policy is another convenient way.In 758 A.D. (the first year of Emperor Suzong of Tang Dynasty, Emperor Qianyuan), the imperial court re-established the post of salt and iron coin casting envoy, and exercised exclusive control over the national salt industry - "discussing the world's salt". The franchise system has changed.In the early days, the policy was basically the same as that of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. The government set up salt courtyards in salt-producing areas, and stipulated that all salt produced by private salt-producing households ("ting households") should be sold to the salt courtyards, otherwise it would be considered a crime of piracy.As soon as the order came out, the price of salt rose tenfold, which in turn caused the price of food to rise, and people starved to death among the people.Later, Liu Yan, who was in charge of the national finance, partially revised it.

First of all, he changed the unified purchase and marketing policy to "private production-government revenue-commercial sales", which greatly reduced the personnel and administrative costs of the salt administration. Secondly, he set up inspection courts in thirteen important salt-producing areas across the country, on the one hand to crack down on illegal salt, and on the other hand to protect the interests of salt merchants who have obtained policy licenses. Third, he formulated the "Changping Salt" system to ensure the salt price and salt supply in non-salt-producing areas and prevent speculators from hoarding salt for profit.

Compared with the previous policy, Liu Yan's Salt Law is a government-business partnership model that is more efficient and pays more attention to the distribution of benefits.These measures really had an immediate effect, and the income from salt monopoly increased year by year, increasing by fifteen times in more than ten years, so that it accounted for half of the national fiscal revenue.This was also one of the periods in fiscal history when the salt tax accounted for the largest proportion of treasury revenue. Liu Yan is a master of financial management in the style of Sang Hongyang. He has been in charge of the country's finances for more than 20 years. He is the chief financial officer with the longest tenure in the Tang Dynasty.In addition to the government-run salt industry, Liu Yan also controlled the production and sales of important commodities across the country, re-importing Sang Hongyang's equalization and equalization system.He established Changping warehouses in various places, which are equivalent to storage and logistics centers, and set up Zhiyuan officials to keep abreast of the price trends of various commodities, and then "sell cheap and increase expensive" to make profits.According to the "Old Tang Book·Liu Yan Biography", "He has a comprehensive grasp of the supply and marketing trends of commodities, the government has obtained significant benefits, and market fluctuations have been stabilized. This is a truly brilliant governance technique." After the "Anshi Rebellion", Liu Yan did not fall into greater chaos, which had a lot to do with Liu Yan's decisive monopoly policy to quickly improve the central financial situation. Therefore, historians gave Liu Yan a Sang Hongyang-style evaluation: Useful enough."

After the financial situation improved slightly, the central government tried to "reduce the vassals". In 781 AD, the young and vigorous Emperor Dezong personally hosted a banquet in Chang'an to reward the soldiers and horses who were conquering, and started the campaign to reduce the vassals by force.Jiedu envoys from all over the country joined forces to fight against the imperial court, and the central army was invincible, and even broke into Chang'an two years later.Dezong was forced to leave, and he also issued the "Sin Has Been Edict", declaring that "I am not a king", pardoned those rebellious feudal towns, and promised that "everything will be treated as before".Since then, the trend of local separatism has not changed. The monopoly rights of the central government on resources such as salt, iron, and wine have been forced to be transferred to the local governments, and the three rights of people, property and property have been lost.According to the statistics in "New Book of Tang Geography", during the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the country was divided into 15 provinces, totaling 316 states, and only about one-sixth of them could be actually controlled by the Tang imperial family.

When political centralization was lost, the central finance became a "begging finance", and finally fell to the point where it could only be maintained by selling officials and bribes from local princes. "Cefu Yuangui · General Department · Corruption" records that at that time, a Chang'an businessman named Li Yong bribed the central government after he made a fortune, and then he became the governor of Heyang and became a prince of one party-"Bribe traffic, and then went to Fang town". "Taiping Guangji Guo Shijun" also records that an illiterate rich man became the governor of Hengzhou by paying bribes.

The so-called "extorting bribes from local princes" is the "surplus system". "Xianyu" means "the fiscal surplus after the local government's revenue and expenditure are balanced", which is actually a special tribute to the emperor by Jiedu envoys in addition to the normal financial handover. "New Book of Tang·Shihuozhi" records that various envoys from all walks of life either list new taxes, or intercept the money of the household department, and donate one-fifth or three-tenths of the income to the emperor himself. Saying "Xian Yu" is actually offering bribes openly.Song Dynasty scholar Ouyang Xiu commented on this: "Even the emperor has to accept bribes, so the common people will be even more miserable."

With the Tang Dynasty, it finally failed to solve the problem of warlord separatism.After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, there were five dynasties and ten countries, and more than a dozen countries emerged in more than 50 years. The Central Plains competed for the throne, and the world was miserable.