MLMD -Chapter 110 The Reason Why

Yue Yang considered himself a person with a very strong psychological tolerance. Having seen all kinds of phenomena in modern society and the countless bizarre events exposed on the internet, he had long believed that he could remain unmoved by most things, or at least face them calmly. But today, Zheng Fakui gave him a solid lesson.

“What… commercial tax five hundred and sixty taels, agricultural tax three thousand five hundred and thirty-four shi?”

Yue Yang’s voice suddenly shot up, like a rooster being strangled.

He shook his head, feeling dizzy. Those numbers shattered his worldview in an instant. He asked again, carefully, and only then did he confirm that his ears were not playing tricks on him. Yes—this year, across the eight counties of Yingzhou Prefecture, the total commercial tax collected was only five hundred and sixty taels of silver, and grain tax amounted to just five hundred and thirty-four shi—a little over four thousand jin of grain.

A few minutes later, after steadying his mind, Yue Yang asked again, “Prefect, with taxes so low, aren’t you afraid of punishment from the court?”

“Afraid of what?” Zheng Fakui replied with a completely unconcerned expression. “The taxes collected in Yingzhou Prefecture are already considered quite a lot. Besides, when the one hundred thousand taels of salt tax that Lord Yue submitted last time were escorted to the capital, I was even commended by the court. And actually, our tax revenue really isn’t that small. Lord Yue, did you know? Last year, Pingyuan Prefecture only collected four hundred and seventy taels in commercial tax. Compared to them, we’re doing fairly well, aren’t we?”

“Clatter—”

The teacup in Yue Yang’s hand slipped from his grasp and shattered on the floor.

After leaving Zheng Fakui’s residence, on the way home, Yue Yang felt as if his whole body were weighed down. What he had just heard was far beyond anything he had imagined. He had never expected the nonfeasance of Ming officials to have reached such an appalling level.

In a whole prefecture, commercial tax amounted to only five hundred and sixty taels. Converted into modern terms, that meant a prefecture-level city with eight counties collected only about sixty thousand yuan in taxes over an entire year—and only a little over four thousand jin of grain.

It sounded like an absurd joke so cold it couldn’t get any colder, yet it was happening right before Yue Yang’s eyes. He reckoned that if such a thing occurred in the twenty-first century, everyone in that city government—including the mayor—would be dragged out and shot a hundred times over, and no one would speak up for them. Even letting a pig be an official would probably do a better job.

When Yue Yang asked why commercial and grain taxes were so low, Zheng Fakui explained helplessly. It wasn’t that the merchants refused to pay taxes outright; rather, they usually paid only a tiny portion—never the full amount—while promising to make up the balance later.

For tax arrears, the yamen would pursue collection for a period of time, but after two or three years, there was no longer any hope of recovering the unpaid taxes. In theory, the authorities could punish tax evaders—flogging them, imprisoning them, or even confiscating their property. Such measures were common in the West at the time.

But in the Ming dynasty, such practices were extremely rare. Anyone who did so would usually be branded a “cruel official.” In the ninth year of Hongwu, there was a clerk named Cheng Le in Pingyao, Shanxi. When his term ended, his superior praised him for being “capable of recovering commercial taxes” and recommended him to the capital to meet the emperor. The result? Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang criticized him harshly, declaring: “Taxes have fixed quotas. To call recovery ‘capability’ is to exploit the common people and fail in one’s official duty. The prefectural evaluation is wrong.” Not only was Cheng Le not rewarded, he was thrown into prison. Just like that—collecting taxes properly was seen as oppressing the people. When even Zhu Chongba himself set such a bad precedent, who would dare to truly collect taxes?

And so, year after year, Ming tax revenues dwindled further and further.

From Zheng Fakui’s words, Yue Yang sensed deep helplessness. But what made him even more helpless was that he could clearly see the ever-present shadows of the scholar-official class and the merchant class behind all this. Yue Yang was certain that in the present Ming dynasty, at least ninety-five percent of commercial taxes were being evaded. Under such circumstances, using tax rates to measure Ming commercial taxation had already lost all meaning.

“Ah… if the Ming doesn’t fall, there’s simply no justice in heaven!”

Even after returning home, Yue Yang still couldn’t figure it out. Did Ming officials really have no brains at all? Didn’t they understand that continuing like this meant shaking the very foundations of the state? That once a court lost its basic tax revenue, collapse was inevitable?

After thinking for a long time, Yue Yang still couldn’t understand how a perfectly good Ming dynasty had ended up like this.

Later scholars mostly believed that the direct cause of the Ming’s fall was fiscal collapse. Financial hardship led to famine, with no money for relief; war broke out, with no money to pay troops. No relief meant starving peasants revolting; no pay meant starving soldiers mutinying. When starving peasants and starving soldiers joined forces, large-scale internal rebellions erupted. The court’s armies lacked combat effectiveness, leaving the state unable to repel foreign invasions or suppress internal unrest.

Thus, fiscal crisis led to military crisis, which in turn led to an even greater fiscal crisis. In this vicious cycle, the Ming dynasty eventually marched toward its demise.

That was the surface explanation—but what was the deeper cause?

Today, Yue Yang reached a conclusion: the Ming court had already lost control over the localities.

And this loss of control did not refer to appointments of local officials or similar matters, but rather to the loss of control over grassroots society and the very bottom of the social structure.

The Ming government was a典型的大社会小政府—a large society with a small government. During the Hongwu reign, the entire Ming dynasty had only 5,488 local officials. After more than two hundred years of development, even in the late Ming, with a population of 120 million, the number of officials was only about 20,400, and clerks numbered just over 51,000. In other words, a total of only seventy thousand-odd officials and clerks governed a population of one hundred million. Compared to later times, with over thirty million civil servants, the scarcity of Ming officials could only be described as worlds apart.

And this scarcity directly led to the Ming court’s weak control over the localities. One example illustrated this clearly. China had always been a major tea-producing country, and tea tax was an important source of revenue in every dynasty. For instance, during the Tang dynasty, when tea drinking was not yet widespread, the government could collect six million strings of copper coins annually in salt profits from the Huai regions alone.

But what about the Ming? In the fourth year of Chongzhen, how much tea tax did the court collect nationwide? The reality was astonishing: Yunnan Province collected seventeen taels, and Zhejiang Province only about six taels. An official at the time summarized the situation thus: “For a long time now, inland tea households no longer know the distinction between official tea and private tea. As for those who speak of generating revenue for the state—none have even heard of it.”

Zhejiang, one of the nation’s foremost tea-producing provinces, collected only six taels of tea tax in an entire year. This was no longer merely a ridiculous joke—it was the tragedy of a country and a people.

Sitting in his chair, Yue Yang tried hard to recall what he had learned from history books, but the more he thought, the more a sense of powerlessness surged in his heart. Could such a Ming dynasty still be saved? Would all his hard work here ultimately just be making wedding clothes for someone else?

Originally, Yue Yang had felt some confidence. With the ability to freely travel between modern society and the Ming, and with the modern world as his rear base, he believed that even if he couldn’t win, at least he could always escape. But now? He had married—three wives at once. Add to that the old matriarch, his younger sister Yue Ying, and a large group of subordinates and servants. Worse still, the jade pendant was on the verge of breaking. All of this made his heart grow increasingly heavy.

“Damn it… I’ll probably still be able to make one more trip to the modern world. Next time someone really pushes me, I’ll just buy a machine gun. Whoever dares piss me off, I’ll mow them down!”

Yue Yang muttered angrily, but after a moment he deflated. Even if he had the money, where could he buy guns? Sure, he could buy them abroad—but how would he bring firearms and massive amounts of ammunition back into the country, and then into his suburban courtyard? He couldn’t exactly have a courier company deliver them to his door.

Lost in thought, Yue Yang drifted into a hazy sleep. What he didn’t know was that while he slept, in another place within the Ming, someone was mentioning his name…

Within Beijing, the Forbidden City had always been the center of the Ming court. On its northwest side stood a small palace called the Warm Fragrance Pavilion.

The name sounded cozy and warm, but it had another title—the Chongzhen Emperor’s study.

Unlike the grand and imposing Chongzheng Hall, which was the nominal imperial study, the Warm Fragrance Pavilion was modest in size, and its furnishings were not particularly luxurious. Most items were simply imperial yellow—likely due to the status of its owner.

The twenty-three-year-old Chongzhen Emperor sat on a soft-backed imperial-yellow chair, head lowered, writing continuously on a memorial. After a while, he placed the finished memorial aside. Before him lay a thick stack of memorials, each affixed with yellow slips bearing small characters.

Chongzhen was one of the most diligent emperors of the Ming. Regardless of importance, he personally reviewed memorials from all over the realm. But there were so many that he couldn’t possibly read them all in full, yet he also feared missing something critical. So he adopted a method from the Song dynasty: after the Transmission Office received memorials, they wrote the matter’s subject on yellow paper and pasted it at the front—called the yinhuang—and summarized the contents on another yellow slip pasted at the back—called the tiehuang. This way, he could first read the summaries; less important matters need not be read in full, ensuring that urgent military intelligence and dispatches were not overlooked.

Reaching out, he picked up another memorial, glanced at the yinhuang at the front, then flipped to the tiehuang at the back. On his already weary face, a trace of surprise could not help but appear.