Chapter 8 Section 6 Blood-sucking officials

The third factor of China's impoverishment is China's huge bureaucracy.The development of the autocratic system made China's bureaucratic system precocious and complete unmatched in the world.The hugeness of the bureaucratic system made it separate from the imperial power to a certain extent, and became an independent interest group with an irresistible impulse to expand wildly.After the establishment of each dynasty, the number of bureaucrats increased linearly, and at the same time, the burden on farmers also naturally increased linearly.Those who live are few, those who eat are many.During the first 30 to 50 years of the Qingming Dynasty, the burden of farmers will be temporarily reduced, and some financial resources will be accumulated to improve their living conditions.But after the first one or two generations of emperors, the burden will increase rapidly, and the lives of ordinary people will be difficult to sustain.

Among the great unified dynasties of all dynasties, the Great Yuan established by the Mongols belongs to the category with relatively rough ruling techniques.The Mongols didn't know much about agriculture. When they first went south, they wanted to "treat the Han people as pasture land", that is to say, wipe out the farmers and transform the fertile land into pastures.It was only after Yelu Chucai's persuasion that he changed his mind.The main reason for Yelu Chucai to impress the Mongolian rulers is that it was changed to a pasture, and the income was not as great as that of exploiting Han farmers.

Based on this way of thinking, the Mongols exploited more nakedly than any other unified dynasty in history.The Yuan Dynasty divided the people of the whole country into Mongolian, Semu, Han, and Southerners, and openly implemented a policy of ethnic discrimination.In order to prevent the Han people from rebelling, the Mongols stipulated that the Han people were not allowed to learn martial arts, the Han people were not allowed to go hunting in the mountains, and even the Han people were not allowed to pass at night. "Yuan History Criminal Law Records" contains: All nights are forbidden, at one o'clock and three o'clock, the bell is cut off, and no one is allowed to go.At five o'clock and three o'clock, the bell sounds and people walk.

Offenders can be whipped twenty-seven times, and those who have officials will be redeemed.His official business is in a hurry, and he can't help it, such as disease, death, childbirth and so on. That is to say, from eight o'clock in the evening to six o'clock in the morning of the next day, ordinary people are not allowed to walk in the streets.In line with this one, people are not allowed to light lamps during the above period.The Han people live like slaves. Economic exploitation is more unbearable for the lower class than political discrimination.The Mongolian royal family was bold and extravagant, and their daily life was extremely extravagant. The expenditure of the court was astonishing. According to the report of the Central Government Council in the second year of the calendar (AD 1329), "the queen's daily needs required 100,000 ingots. 50,000 pieces of coin and silk, and 5,000 jin of cotton."They are even more unrestrained in doing Buddhist deeds. At most, they do over 500 Buddhist deeds a year.According to statistics in the fourth year of Yanxi Palace (AD 1317), 439,500 catties of noodles, 79,000 catties of oil, 21,870 catties of ghee, and two Seven thousand three hundred catties.

These costs are ultimately borne by the bottom society.Still take Zhu Yuanzhang’s family as an example: the Yuan Dynasty implemented the occupational hereditary system, and some households were registered separately to undertake certain professional corvee, such as station households (undertaking the corvee of post stations), mining and metallurgy households (mining iron, silver and other mines) .The ancestors of the Zhu family in Zhujia Lane were originally gold diggers, and according to regulations, they had to pay gold to the government every year.However, no gold was produced near Nanjing, so they had to rely on selling grain for money, and then went to distant places to buy gold to make up the money.After several years of tossing around like this, I lost all my little family property before I had to cross the Yangtze River north.However, nowhere can escape the search of the government.After fleeing to Huaibei on May 4th, the government began to collect taxes before they had lived a stable life for a few days.According to the regulations of the Yuan Dynasty, farmers in the north and south of the Huaihe River had to pay head tax, agricultural tax and departmental tax.The head tax is two stones per person, which is about 360 catties today.Three of Zhu's five or four families would have to pay 1,080 catties of grain.The taxed food must be transported into the warehouse by the tax households themselves. According to the national regulations, the consumption of three liters per stone of tax and four liters per share, but the actual collection is far greater than this regulation.Hu Zhizhen, an official in the early Yuan Dynasty, said: "Except for rat consumption and rations, two or three stones can be accommodated in one stone valley." In this way, 1080 multiplied by 125% becomes 1350 catties.The section charge mainly includes silk materials, silver packages, and officials' salaries, which are paid on a household basis.It is stipulated that each household has 1.4 catties of Nasi, including four taels of silver bills (two taels of silver bills combined with one tael of silver), and officials' salaries from five to one tael.Calculated by purchasing power, one tael of silver in the Yuan Dynasty was worth four stones of grain, while more than three taels of silver was worth 2,160 catties of grain.Therefore, the family of Sanding has to bear the burden of 3,510 catties of grain a year.We estimate that each labor force in the Zhu family could produce 2,000 catties of grain at that time, and more than half of the total output of 6,000 catties had to be handed over to the state.This is still a tax officially stipulated by the state, and the tax increases by various governments are not included in this list.

From the Warring States period to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, for more than two thousand years, Chinese farmers could have more than enough food and clothing only in the early days of the new dynasty established after the peasant uprising.For most of the rest of the period, they were in a situation where they could barely survive.According to Pang Zhuoheng's introduction in "Human Development and Historical Development", under normal circumstances, the annual surplus rate of Chinese farmers' products will not exceed 5%.In the Middle Ages, the net surplus rate of an ordinary British serf household who occupied all the land was 26%.They produce about 4,641 kilograms of grain a year, and after deducting taxes, seeds, and rations, they have a net surplus of 1,224 kilograms of grain.Judging from this figure, the living standard of Chinese farmers is much lower than that of European serfs.

It can be seen from this that the deprivation of the peasants by the Chinese bureaucracy is far harsher than that of the European manor owners.Chinese peasants were forced to use up all their potential in simple reproduction, so that they could not have the surplus financial resources to develop their intelligence and expand their space of action like the serfs in Western Europe, thus promoting the disintegration of the feudal system one after another. major historical changes.