Chapter 155 Zheng Zhilong

In the early years of Chongzhen, the price of grain in the heartland of the Ming Dynasty was generally stable at around one tael of silver per stone, and the people could only get six stones of grain after working hard for a whole year.

And these six stone of grain are not only needed to provide food and drink for several people in a family, but also all the food, clothing, housing, transportation, firewood, rice, oil, salt, birth, aging, sickness and death, and even weddings and funerals. All of them have to come from these six stone of grain.

One can imagine how hard life was for the people.

And this does not take into account the unexpected events that the people may encounter, such as various natural disasters and man-made disasters.

this period.

With the advent of the Little Ice Age.

Farmers throughout the Ming Dynasty had extremely poor risk resistance. Even in the absence of natural disasters or man-made calamities, they were always on the verge of starvation.

Not to mention that once you encounter natural disasters or man-made disasters, you can basically just wait for death, or live a life worse than death.

It is no wonder that the peasant uprisings in the late Ming Dynasty were among the highest in all dynasties in terms of both scale and frequency.

Back to the topic, from this we can imagine that although the imperial court seemed to have only reduced the Liao tax by 9 cents per mu, for the people it was enough to save their lives at the critical moment.

Moreover, it is this chance to survive that will make countless people who have been saying "we can still survive" give up joining the bandits.

This small change may bring about unimaginable changes like a domino effect in the near future.

Could the dwarf Li Zicheng, the King of Rebellion, and Gao Yingxiang still gather hundreds of thousands of refugees wherever they went?

Will the situation of "hungry people are afraid that King Chuang will not arrive" occur again?
This will have to be verified by time, but it is a fact that people all over the world are happier than during the Chinese New Year when they hear this good news.

The system of allocating land tax to farmers, which ordinary farmers could not yet understand, was like the loss of their parents to the vast majority of gentry and landlords who heard the news.

Among these people, those who owned the most land even owned tens of thousands of hectares. For example, Zhu Changxun, the third son of Emperor Wanli and the Prince of Fu, who was later thrown into an iron pot and boiled into meat soup by Li Zicheng, received 20,000 hectares of land as a reward from Emperor Wanli when he left the capital. If converted into mu, it would be a full 2 ​​million mu!

In addition to the land he had painstakingly annexed after he became a fiefdom, the total amount had already exceeded 20,000 hectares.

However, this part of the land is just hidden land, not recorded in the imperial books, or it is registered under the name of someone else and is unknown to the public.

Those who have less land, such as ordinary rural landlords, may own hundreds or thousands of hectares.

Originally, these people used various means to enjoy various preferential policies for exemption from corvee labor and land taxes.

However, with the implementation of the equalization of land tax and the principle of "serving as one and paying taxes as one" included in the equalization of land tax, even royal family members and scholars no longer enjoyed preferential policies and had to pay taxes according to the actual area of ​​arable land they owned.

According to the land tax standards set during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, five liters, three he and five scoops of land were collected per mu for official land, while three liters, three he and five scoops of land were collected for private land.

According to the land tax set by Zhu Yuanzhang, the tax was indeed not heavy.

Ordinary people could only collect one dan of grain for every thirty mu of land. However, according to Song Yingxing's "Heavenly Creations", in a year with normal weather, even the poorest land would produce more than one dan, and in the rich southern region, it could even reach three to four dan.

It is lower than the commercial tax of "one out of thirty", but it has become more serious as land annexation becomes more serious.

The landlord and gentry class often adopt various tax avoidance measures, or register the land under the name of ordinary people and let ordinary people pay taxes on their behalf.

Although ordinary people knew how much land they owned, local officials would often only tell them a number they needed to pay. The people themselves often did not understand how the specific land tax was calculated, and they paid taxes on behalf of the landlords without knowing what was going on.

However, the land-based tax system clearly stipulated the taxes that needed to be paid by the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty based on the fertility of the land in different regions, and it was clearly announced to the world that the people only needed to pay taxes according to the actual cultivated area, and those without land did not have to pay taxes.

As a result, most of the tax evasion methods used by royal families and wealthy people will become ineffective, and they must honestly pay taxes based on their actual land ownership.

For them, this was like the sky falling.

It should be noted that the land tax stipulated by Zhu Yuanzhang did not include the capitation tax and miscellaneous items. With the strict implementation of the Single Whip Law and the land-based capitation tax, the amount of tax to be paid would far exceed the range stipulated by Zhu Yuanzhang.

Even if the tax was levied only according to Zhu Yuanzhang's standard of five liters, three he and five scoops for official land and two liters for private land, it would still be an extremely terrifying number for landlords with many fields.

For example, King Fu owned 0.0535 hectares of land, which were all given by his arm strength and therefore belonged to the government. The tax collection standard was liters, he and spoons per mu, which can be understood as shi.

Then the land tax that King Fu should pay every year is two million acres multiplied by 0.0535, which equals shi!

Calculated at one tael of silver per stone, a total of 107,000 taels of silver would need to be paid.

Some people may think that this amount of less than 110,000 taels of silver is not a lot, but you have to know that Mao Wenlong supported more than 100,000 or 200,000 people on Pi Island, and the court only gave him 180,000 or 190,000 taels of silver every year.

At that time, the annual income of farmers was only eight taels of silver. These 110,000 taels of silver were equivalent to the annual income of more than 13,000 ordinary peasant families!
If calculated based on a family of four, these 107,000 taels of silver would be enough to feed 53,500 people for a whole year!

And this is just Prince Fu. There were as many as twenty-seven princes of similar level to Prince Fu during the Chongzhen period!
Of course, there are obviously only a few who can be as wealthy as Prince Fu, and even among the twenty-seven princes, he is only one of the best.

Moreover, there are a large number of other royal family members of lower ranks, as well as countless powerful landlords of all sizes.

Adding all these together, even if there were only one hundred Princes of Fu, it would bring more than 10 million taels of revenue to the Ming court every year. How terrifying!
The above figures are only calculated based on the land tax standards promulgated by Zhu Yuanzhang. If various levies, taxes, and miscellaneous items are added, the number would be almost doubled.

It is hard to imagine how powerful the Ming Dynasty court would be with an annual income of 20 million taels of silver!
As the news of the tax reform spread across the country, Xiong Wencan, who was far away in Fujian, had already arrived at Zheng Zhilong's hometown in Nan'an, Fujian with Chongzhen's imperial edict.

As soon as Xiong Wencan received Chongzhen's imperial edict, he immediately rushed to Nan'an in a simple carriage and informed Zheng Zhilong in advance.

Although Zheng Zhilong was still a huge pirate gathered along the coast in the eyes of the court at this time, Xiong Wencan was not afraid at all.

Because as early as when he served as the Left Governor of Fujian Province, he had actively cooperated with Zheng Zhilong to relocate coastal residents of Fujian to Taiwan for farming.

(End of this chapter)