Chapter 38 The last overall supporting system reform

The reform carried out by Wang Anshi was very ambitious and had an unprecedented pattern. It was an overall supporting system reform involving government agencies, industries, finance, prices and circulation. In a sense, it was also the last overall supporting system reform during the imperial period. His first reform was a reorganization of economic power.Among the six central ministries, economic power is concentrated in the Ministry of Households, which has three departments. The Ministry of Households is in charge of fiscal revenue, the Department of Branches is in charge of administrative expenditures, and the Department of Salt and Iron is in charge of state-owned franchises.Wang Anshi broke the original division of labor, centralized the power of the three divisions, and established the Regulations Division of the Three Divisions.This is equivalent to setting up a small "State Council". In the reform and opening up in the 1980s, there was an Economic System Reform Commission, referred to as the "Restructuring Commission", which followed this idea.

There are more than ten laws and regulations promulgated by Wang Anshi, namely, the law of equal transportation, the law of market exchange, the law of young crops, the law of farmland water conservancy, the law of exemption from labor, and the law of equal taxation on square land.The most important of these are the first three. The word “Junshu” comes from Sang Hongyang, which means that the state established the Ministry of Materials and the Price Committee to control the production and sales of important means of production.After the implementation of this decree, the country has completely monopolized the production and sales of important resources. The commercial system of "buying", "money quotation" and other commercial systems that have been implemented for many years has been changed. , unified purchase and marketing, and state-run monopoly; the Market Exchange Law is a state monopoly on the retailing of urban commodities. Delineated by the Shiyi Division; the Green Crops Law is a change in the agricultural field. Before the summer and autumn harvests every year, farmers can borrow cash or grain from the local government to subsidize farming.The interest on each loan is 20%, and can be borrowed twice a year.Of the three major policies, the first two are the revival of "Sang Hongyang's version", and the young crop law is Wang Anshi's original creation.

Like all masters of the planned economy, the original intention of "Wang Anshi's reform" is actually two: first, to increase fiscal revenue as much as possible; second, to attack the rich and narrow the gap between rich and poor.And the results are the same two: the goal of the former is quickly achieved in the short term, but doomed to failure in the long run; the goal of the latter is never achieved. Specifically, after the reform was implemented, the national treasury was indeed full. The income obtained by the Shiyi Division alone was equivalent to 30% of the total income of the annual summer and autumn taxes. There was so much money, food and silk that came up, that 52 large warehouses had to be built.

But soon, the disadvantages appeared. The method of equalization makes the Yamen a "government-type company" with unprecedented power expansion. It competes with the people everywhere. The official purchase price runs counter to market fluctuations. The market price received rebates, and the rice was shipped to some food-deficient areas by the dispatcher. The sales price doubled compared with before, and the normal market operation was completely disrupted.Officials in the Song Dynasty were already happy to do business, and the Junshu method just gave them a good opportunity to fill their own pockets.

The Market Change Law "receives all the goods in the world", making the government the largest store, bank and logistics center. Its business scope is getting wider and wider. Even fruits and sesame are monopolized, and the city's commercial order is completely destroyed.Zheng Xia, a scholar of the Song Dynasty, recorded in "Xitang Collection" that since the implementation of the Market Exchange Law, merchants are unwilling to do business in Bianliang. They were all escorted to Shiyi Division.Later, these situations were reported to Song Shenzong, and even the emperor himself felt that it was too much. Once, he said to Wang Anshi: "It is too trivial for Shiyi to monopolize even fruits. Abolish it?" Wang Anshi said: "The key to enacting laws is whether they are harmful to the people, and they should not be abolished just because they are trivial."

For ordinary farmers, the most harmful thing is of course the Young Crops Law. The original intention of this law is that the state allocates a certain amount of money to lend money in the local area, so as to prevent the poor from being exploited by the rich with usury.But when it comes to the implementation stage, it completely changes.Officials at all levels release old moldy grain to farmers, but what they take back must be new grain. When they put it out, they are not enough to weigh it, but when they harvest it, they deliberately weigh the scale. The actual interest rate is higher than that of borrowing money from the rich. .In order to release the money, the central government issued loan quotas, and the local officials had no choice but to make apportionments. The people suffered unspeakably. If there was a flood or drought, the local government would arrest people everywhere in order to recover the principal and interest, and the farmers had to sell their land and children.

The implementation of various new policies has made the loose economic environment no longer exist, and free industrialists and businessmen have suffered a devastating blow. The scholar Wang Xiaotong of the Republic of China summed it up in "Chinese Business History"-since Wang Anshi's reform, "Commerce entered the country early. In a state of decay." Wang Anshi still couldn't listen to different opinions, but he was better than Shang Yang. The latter murdered the river to change color. Wang Anshi just drove all those who opposed the reform out of the capital.Sima Guang was driven to Luoyang, where he lived for fifteen years and wrote a book.At that time, public opinion was very open, and ministers were very presumptuous. Sima Guang was tired of writing, so he wrote an open letter "Book with Wang Jiefu" scolding Wang Anshi.At that time, there were five ministers in power in the court. Everyone called these five people "life, old age, sickness and death". Except for Wang Anshi who was "born", the other four were useless.Wang Anshi also personally drafted the examination questions for the imperial examination, and incorporated reform thoughts into it. The most exaggerated thing is that he also moved his own image into the Confucian Temple as a "companion sacrifice" for Confucius.

It can be seen from all these that Wang Anshi is really a very powerful totalitarian.The reform went on for 17 years. In 1085, Shenzong died and Zhezong succeeded to the throne. Both the empress dowager and Zhezong disliked Wang Anshi, so they abolished the new law and re-introduced Sima Guang. After Mr. Sima came back, he did a very interesting thing. He appointed a person named Li Gongze as the secretary of the household department. Li Gongze studied elementary school and knew nothing about finance. A professor came to be the Minister of Finance, so the government and the opposition were in an uproar.Sima Guang explained: "I just want to use this method to tell everyone that the central government's policy has changed." From this detail, we can see how incompetent Confucianism is in economic governance. I haven't been able to find a way, and I have been saying over and over again that "the agriculture is the foundation, the corvee is light and the tax is light, and the country is governed by benevolence and righteousness."Confucianism opposed the law very violently, even at the expense of their lives. However, once they took power, they could not come up with novel and constructive solutions. This was a major conflict point in China's economic governance in the past dynasties: The ideology of ministers has formed a pillar role in the centralization system politically, but it cannot match the economic ideology.

One year after Zhezong ascended the throne, Wang Anshi died in depression, and Sima Guang died with him four months later.Those who opposed the reform could not come up with any plan to govern the economy. In the ninth year of Zhezong, the imperial court reactivated the royal party headed by Cai Bian and Cai Jing.Cai Bian is Wang Anshi's son-in-law. Cai Jing is a well-known corrupt official and treacherous official in the history of the country. He pushed Wang Anshi's nationalism to the extreme, and transformed into a powerful economy without any suspense.In this world, the greed of human nature requires a system foundation. A good system will curb people's evil, and vice versa it will catalyze and amplify it.In this sense, what is more terrifying than human greed is institutional greed.The upright official Wang Anshi created a greedy centralization system, and his successors will push this greed and centralization to the extreme, and will inevitably produce alienation. This is a "road of inertia".

Cai Jing did a lot of extreme things. He completely implemented the state monopoly of the salt and tea industries, and did not share profits with the people, making them the exclusive possession of minority interest groups.The Jianghuai area is the most important tea-producing area in the country. Cai Jing turned it all into a government market and prohibited private operations. One year, he felt that the current salt banknote system allowed private salt merchants to share too much profit, so he brazenly ordered, Abolish the current salt banknotes, and those businessmen who hold the old salt banknotes will become impoverished overnight, and there are many people who hang themselves and jump into the river.

From 1069, when Wang Anshi began to reform, to 1126, when Cai Jing was dismissed (the first year of Jingkang), the extreme state-owned monopoly system was implemented for 57 years, and this was the 57 years when the Northern Song Empire went from half-decay to extinction. In 1127, the Jin army in the north broke through Bianliang and captured Song Huizong and Song Qinzong. The Northern Song Dynasty died like this.