Chapter 229: Inviting the Helmsman to Be Called Mountain Chief

Little Val's face was pale with fright, and he stammered, "What? No, it wasn't me, everything I said is true!"

He then went on at length explaining matters of cooking and identifying poisons.

In short, among everyone, Little Val's hands were unstained by blood—clean as could be.

After all, he was the only survivor, so he could spin the story however he liked; no one could verify it.

Lin Qian smiled without comment. To him, this was just an amusing tale, and leaving it with an open ending was fine.

As for Little Val, Lin Qian ordered him taken to Zhuqian to work off his sins alongside the other Spanish captives.

After Little Val withdrew, a guard stepped closer and asked in a low voice, "Helmsman, what about the gold mine that Frank mentioned?"

Lin Qian said, "It's merely a legend."

The guard clasped his fists and said, "This subordinate understands. I shall report back to Governor-General Chen at once."

At the source of the river of gold—was there really a gold mine?

Without a doubt, there was!

No logical reasoning needed—the Japanese found this gold mine in the 20th century, with the ore vein located around Mount Pingfeng in the upper reaches of the Liwu River.

But this vein was never mined even into the modern era, because the difficulty of extraction was too great and the cost too high.

How harsh the natural conditions were could be glimpsed from the fate of this Spanish expedition.

And the placer gold in the lower reaches of the Liwu River was of extremely low grade, far from having commercial mining value.

There was nothing to regret about that, after all, the most profitable industries of this era were already firmly in Lin Qian's grasp.

Maritime trade, arms dealing, coal—ask yourself, which of these isn't comparable to a gold mine?

Mining gold required considering reserves and grade, with a finite total, while the industries Lin Qian controlled had far greater potential than any gold mine.

And now, Lin Qian was further extending his reach into taxation.

The Great Ming's taxation was mainly divided into land tax, commercial tax, miscellaneous taxes, and so on.

The land tax was further divided into payments in kind and payments converted to silver.

Commercial tax included business tax, transit tax, customs tax, salt and iron monopoly taxes, and more.

Miscellaneous taxes were a hodgepodge covering everything imaginable—for instance: mining tax, fishery levy, wine and vinegar levy, real estate deed tax, and so forth.

After more than two hundred years of operation, the Great Ming's tax system had been patched layer upon layer, new taxes stacked on old ones, until it resembled a mountain of shit-code.

When the court levied taxes, it no longer cared about popular resentment, fairness, or rebellion—as long as the money came in. Toward the common people and self-cultivating farmers, if they couldn't be taxed to death, they were taxed to the brink.

To reform in this era—even if Zhang Juzheng were reborn, he couldn't do it. It had to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

The new tax system had to conform to four major principles: legality, efficiency, equity, and substantive taxation.

The principle of tax legality included both the legality of tax elements and the legality of procedures.

Simply put, any type of tax could only be implemented through legal enactment; localities could not arbitrarily impose new taxes, and the tax collection process itself had to strictly follow the law, without arbitrary increases or reductions.

The efficiency principle emphasized economic efficiency—that is, promoting development—and administrative efficiency—that is, facilitating collection and management.

The equity principle emphasized that taxpayers should bear burdens according to their ability and be treated equally.

The substantive taxation principle emphasized determining tax burdens based on the taxpayer's true capacity to bear them, not merely considering appearance and form.

For example, the most prevalent practices in the Great Ming's land tax—"fraudulent registration" and "flying registration"—were tax burden transfers achieved by changing form.

These four principles struck precisely at the heart of the Great Ming's tax system's ailments. Or to put it bluntly, the Great Ming hadn't achieved a single one of them.

Of course, these four principles weren't Lin Qian's original creation—he was simply copying the fundamental principles of our nation's tax law from later generations.

Based on these four principles, adapted to the specific conditions of Fujian and Guangdong.

For new tax categories, the land tax should be the key reform target: first conduct a comprehensive land survey, then grade the land into tiers, establish a tax threshold, abolish the poll tax, and abolish gentry exemptions.

For commercial tax, unify it into just two types—income tax and customs duty. Encourage large merchants to maintain standard account books, taxing primarily on business profits with storefront and location as secondary factors, at proportional rates. Small vendors would mainly be subject to fixed-sum taxes.

Customs duty would target maritime traders, modeled on Zheng Zhilong's flag system, levying a fixed proportional rate based on vessel tonnage and cargo value, with passage permitted by flag throughout Fujian and Guangdong waters.

Monopoly taxes represented by the salt tax would follow the Foshan model: official supervision and merchant operation at the production end, free trade at the distribution end, abolishing the hereditary monopoly of the salt certificate system.

At the same time, abolish assessed tax quotas, switching to ad valorem fixed rates, to avoid salt price fluctuations caused by rigid apportionment.

Additionally, abolish corvée labor.

The Great Ming's corvée system had low economic efficiency—forcibly conscripting labor disrupted agricultural production, and the laborers' low motivation resulted in poor project quality. It also bred social injustice and administrative corruption, as local officials' power to assign corvée and convert it to silver payments became a tool for extortion.

Binding labor to uncompensated service hindered the formation of a labor market and the development of handicrafts and commerce.

The harm of corvée was nearly a consensus among the Great Ming's men of insight—Zhang Juzheng's promotion of the Single Whip law had precisely the intention of monetizing corvée. At the same time, corvée made the lower classes gnash their teeth with hatred, and abolishing it could further consolidate the legitimacy of Nan'ao's new regime.

It could almost be said to have a hundred benefits and not a single harm.

As for after abolishing corvée, who would build local public works?

Then let professionals do professional work—use fiscal money to purchase market services.

For confidential and high-precision industries, specialized, semi-militarized technical teams funded by the treasury would handle construction.

For temporary and seasonal projects, such as river dredging and post-disaster repairs, the government would publicly recruit short-term laborers at market rates, supplemented by the military. Livelihood and commercial projects would go through market bidding.

Including the entire associated process—budget preparation, public bidding, project supervision and acceptance, vertical fund disbursement, and independent auditing—Lin Qian was already so familiar with it all it made him sick.

As the saying goes, take too big a stride and you'll tear something down below.

The above tax reforms changed too much at once; one had to mind the methods and approach, advancing slowly. Seeing results would probably be even slower than technological progress—it would inevitably take years of accumulated effort.

Communicating, compromising, negotiating, and bridging gaps with various interest groups—these were matters that would consume enormous amounts of energy.

If Lin Qian had to do it all himself, he'd be exhausted to death—and then what talk of the stars and the sea?

So, Lin Qian found a suitable chief person in charge for the tax reform—Ye Xianggao.

Ever since his two brothers-in-law—one taking up a post in Guangdong, the other at the newspaper—the ideals of the new policy and the realities of the old system had fallen like snowflakes onto Ye Xianggao's desk in letter after letter.

Opening it today, Ye Yisun had published an article titled "On the Harm of Accumulation Without Return," criticizing the tax reforms of successive dynasties—how old taxes were merged, new taxes spawned, layering upon layering, with tax amounts only ever increasing, never decreasing.

He proposed the four great principles of tax law, and also reducing tax rates while broadening the tax base.

Ye Xianggao read it, nodding again and again.

The next day a letter arrived, Ye Yifan complaining that the gentry of Guangzhou were resisting the land survey, asking what good strategies his grandfather might have.

Ye Xianggao's brows were knit with worry.

The day after, Lin Qian personally went to Fuqing, bringing Shang Zhouzuo along; the three of them shut themselves in to discuss the details of the "Interim Regulations for the Provisional Collection of Fujian-Guangdong Taxes." The day after that, Ye Zhen came carrying her great-grandson to see him, praising Ye Xianggao's sturdy health and having Lin Shaoyuan call him "Great-Grandfather" in his childish voice. After this round-robin assault, Ye Xianggao truly could not hold out any longer, and agreed to come out of retirement—though not to hold any official post under Lin Qian.

The tax course bureau Lin Qian had created—Ye Xianggao had no wish to go there, and he had even less interest in any administrative affairs hall.

Ye Xianggao was only willing to serve as a behind-the-scenes strategist, helping handle letters and official documents related to tax reform.

Lin Qian naturally agreed with alacrity.

Once aboard the pirate ship, how much or how little work he did would no longer be up to Ye Xianggao.

Just like Xu Guangqi—originally he had agreed to come to the island because Lin Qian funded his research on agricultural texts.

Later he was asked to help compile a trigonometric function quick-reference table; it was a trivial task, so Xu Guangqi agreed without a second thought.

Then he was asked to advise on water conservancy projects, and then to translate Latin mathematical books—Xu Guangqi gradually found himself overwhelmed.

By the time Lin Qian took Guangzhou, he finally realized he had boarded a pirate ship!

The core principles of Lin Qian's tax reform were basically the same as Ye Xianggao's original political positions.

After reading it, Ye Xianggao even felt an inexplicable sense of finding a kindred spirit—this was also an important reason he relented and agreed to help.

But compared to Lin Qian's radical policies, Ye Xianggao sought greater stability.

He had lived through the Wanli era and knew deeply that any good policy, once it reached the grassroots, was bound to change in nature—for instance, after the Single Whip law was implemented, miscellaneous local levies proliferated, and the people's burdens actually grew heavier.

Lin Qian had long known Ye Xianggao's stability-seeking character, so matters like military reform and raising troops in rebellion were never allowed to involve Ye Xianggao.

But for matters fraught with internal contradictions, like official governance reform and tax system reform, using Ye Xianggao was sure to be right.

He had twice served as Chief Grand Secretary—what had he mediated?

In the Wanli era he mediated between the Emperor and the court officials; in the Tianqi era he mediated between the eunuch faction and the Donglin Faction.

Those two tasks were practically hell-mode dungeons—not work for human beings.

Now he was mediating between reformers and conservatives, between gentry and peasants, between landlords and maritime merchants—wasn't this a max-level veteran wandering into a newbie village? In the two provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, most gentry participated in maritime trade, and the purely conservative landlord faction was not large to begin with.

Nan'ao was also a new regime, its bureaucratic corps newly assembled, and with the Qingping Bureau keeping watch day and night, laying a good foundation—reform resistance was low, interest conflicts were few, and grassroots officials had fewer crooked thoughts.

New bureaucrats represented by Ye Yifan lacked ability; facing such a situation, merely maintaining stability gave them splitting headaches, let alone pushing reform forward. But for Ye Xianggao, in his entire life he had never fought such an easy war.

Late at night while reviewing official documents, Ye Xianggao would often sigh with emotion—his life's time had basically been consumed by meaningless factional strife, and he had already grown disheartened with the court situation. He never imagined that past seventy, he could still stretch his ambitions and do real things for the people.

Whenever he thought of this, his drive grew even stronger.

After seeing off Little Val, Lin Qian returned to the study and continued reviewing official documents.

Reading too many documents strained his eyes, so Lin Qian simply called Ranqiu in and had the documents read aloud to him.

Lin Qian lay back in the reclining chair, closing his eyes to rest.

He heard Ranqiu open a document, her voice crisp: "My lord, this is from Yandun Bay.

The two ships Candle Dragon and Tianyuan have finished repairs and left the dry dock; the San Felipe was too badly damaged and needs another half month for repairs.

Uncle Huang asks whether the Spanish name on the San Felipe's sterncastle should be removed?"

Speaking of it, the San Felipe was also an "old acquaintance ship" of Lin Qian's.

Back in the day, when he kidnapped the Manila governor's daughter, the governor had sent this very ship to pursue him.

The San Felipe was a large galleon, 43 meters long, 13 meters wide, with a full-load displacement of over 1,100 tons, double gun decks, and fifty cannons. Back when Lin Qian sailed the Fujian junk Qingping, seeing such a sea monster left him no choice but to flee.

A mere seven years later, the tables had turned, and the San Felipe had become Lin Qian's war prize—truly a cause for reflection.

Considering the original ship name was a personal name, Lin Qian decided to rename it after someone worthy of commemoration in Chinese maritime history.

"Call it the Zheng He," Lin Qian said. "Also, once the Zheng He leaves the dry dock, conduct sea trials as soon as possible—the three main warships will soon have new missions." The Spaniards had run amok in Dongning, and Lin Qian had no intention of letting that go.

The Ahat fleet of Nan'ao was about to return, and with the capture of the San Felipe, their strength had grown greatly.

With one side rising and the other falling, the balance of power between Nan'ao and Manila was quietly tilting.

"Good." Ranqiu wrote down the handling opinion.

Then she picked up the next document.

"My lord, this is Regional Commander Lei's latest battle report—the new army has taken Zhaoqing and Luoding, and is temporarily resting near Gaozhou."

As Lei Sanxiang's forces advanced into western Guangdong, the front line's progress gradually slowed, with victories and defeats on both sides in several engagements.

Twenty thousand newly recruited soldiers were in intensive training; once training was complete and they were sent to reinforce the front, progress should speed up.

Lin Qian said: "Understood."

For the next document, Ranqiu paused, then said: "My lord, this one was sent by Grand Secretary Ye—it's the first draft of the Interim Regulations for the Provisional Collection of Fujian-Guangdong Taxes."

Lin Qian perked up, sat up straight, and said: "Well? What changes were made compared to the draft?"

The interim regulations were extremely long, as thick as a book.

Ranqiu read for a long while before discovering that Ye Xianggao had already compiled the main revisions into a separate summary.

"There are quite a few deferrals and suspensions, but only one major change—it doesn't include abolishing the gentry's tax exemptions."

"Understood—implement it as Grand Secretary Ye suggests." Lin Qian said.

Ye Xianggao's revisions were within Lin Qian's expectations. During the stage of conquering the realm, one couldn't offend the gentry too deeply—they had to be courted first. Because imperial power did not reach the villages in feudal dynasties, power at the village level had fallen into the hands of the gentry.

To sit firmly on the realm, even the Manchu Tartars had no choice but to cooperate with the gentry.

And cooperating with the gentry meant having to grant exemptions.

The gentry used their political and economic privileges to engage in large-scale land annexation, undermining social fairness, monopolizing channels of upward mobility, eroding the state's tax base, and thereby triggering the fall of dynasties.

This was a dead knot.

To escape this vicious cycle, the root solution was to take back grassroots power from the gentry's hands.

This could be approached from the judicial level—not to mention eliminating clan halls and gentry private justice, at least first send government officials into the "judicial" proceedings of the tea-mediation halls.

At the same time, expand the authority of local patrol offices, shifting from purely catching bandits to local public security management, handing village officials the "gun barrel"—and by funding grassroots officials directly through the government, protecting the village officials' "money bag."

Ultimately letting village officials stand tall with straightened "backbones," establishing the government's authority in the hearts of villagers and country folk.

This was the first step in dismantling the power of the gentry.

Economic foundations determine the superstructure; the problem of imperial authority reaching the countryside could not be solved by institutions alone.

So, after completing the first step, the next was to drive the development of productive forces—through massive infrastructure construction, building bridges and paving roads, lowering communication costs, and advancing the agricultural revolution and urbanization.

Compared to tax reform, this would proceed even more slowly, requiring decades at the very least.

But one could not refrain from doing it just because results came slowly—the effort had to be invested now!

Of course, this in turn raised a new problem: the question of personnel.

There were not that many men of vision with ideals and convictions willing to go down to the grassroots and play along with clan powers for a goal that would take decades to achieve.

What Lin Qian had to accomplish was a great undertaking that would take several generations and decades to complete—he had time to wait for talents to be slowly cultivated.

And so, schools came into being as the times demanded.

Lin Qian planned to establish a comprehensive university in Guangzhou.

This was not a spur-of-the-moment decision; Lin Qian had been gathering talent for it for a long time.

Whether they were local great Confucian scholars, pragmatic officials, maritime trade officers of the Shipping Bureau, weaponsmiths, or scientific pioneers in specialized fields—all had long since been collected by Lin Qian into his talent reserve.

Lin Qian had not yet formally contacted these people, but the list had long been drawn up.

Thinking of this, Lin Qian said to Ran Qiu, "Are there many more official documents after this?"

Ran Qiu flipped through the papers on the table and said, "There are still over twenty more, mostly reports from various places—from Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and also from Hirado and Ha Long Bay... nothing urgent."

"Mm. Summon Junior Mentor Xu."

"Yes, Master." Ran Qiu acknowledged and went out to deliver the message.

An hour later, Xu Guangqi arrived at the study in the residence, and the two exchanged greetings.

After taking his seat, Xu Guangqi felt rather puzzled—since coming to the island, Lin Qian had rarely disturbed his research.

Xu Guangqi had also thrown himself wholeheartedly into his own world, paying no attention to matters outside his window.

Unexpectedly, one day he happened to buy a copy of the Nan'ao Times.

The front-page headline reported that in the fourth month of the seventh year of Tianqi, Hong Taiji had invaded Guangning, recaptured it, and killed over eight thousand Ming soldiers of the Liaodong army. After Guangning was lost in the second year of Tianqi, Nurhaci had burned the houses, destroyed the city walls, and then withdrawn from the place; from that point on, Guangning became a buffer zone between the Jianzhou barbarians and the Great Ming.

In the sixth year of Tianqi, Ji-Liao Supreme Commander Yan Mingtai, taking advantage of the Jianzhou barbarians' western campaign against Chahar, "recaptured" Guangning—nominally recovering a vast swath of territory in western Liaoning—and the eunuch faction celebrated the occasion with much self-congratulation.

However, at that time, a commentary article in the Nan'ao Times had already pointed out that the three garrisons of Guangning, situated on open plains and too scattered, had no defensible terrain—it was a trap left by the Jianzhou barbarians for the Great Ming, and whoever rashly occupied it would surely be exploited by the enemy.

The fact that Sun Chengzong would rather build the Ningyuan defense line than recover Guangning, which lay within easy reach, also showed that Guangning was bait the Jianzhou barbarians used to set their trap. Sure enough, in less than a year, Hong Taiji impatiently pulled in the net, and the Ming army suffered yet another defeat.

The commentary articles after the news were again page after page of criticism of the government, comparing the Ming army's performance in this battle with that of the new army in the Three Days of Guangzhou Battle, and conducting a limited discussion on tactics for restraining cavalry.

After reading it, Xu Guangqi was dumbfounded—what was the Three Days of Guangzhou Battle?

By the time he learned what had happened in the few short months, his worldview had been violently shaken.

He had inexplicably boarded the rebel's pirate ship!

The ship sailed too steadily—with something as major as war happening, the rear had barely reacted, and the islanders went on living their lives as before. Xu Guangqi was both astonished and moved to lament how fate played tricks on people.

At this point, whether he stamped his feet and cursed or went on a hunger strike in protest, the label of rebel could not be washed clean anyway.

So he simply stopped thinking about it and continued his research on agriculture.

Lin Qian also frequently sent people to deliver European books on natural science, philosophy, and logic to Xu Guangqi.

Recently, for instance, he had sent a book written by an Englishman, Francis Bacon, titled *The New Organon*.

The book criticized the classical deductive logic represented by the *Organon*, proposed a new methodology centered on experimentation and induction, and emphasized discovering the laws of nature through the systematic collection of facts.

Xu Guangqi was extremely enthusiastic about Western learning, and Lin Qian's behavior hit exactly the spot that itched, making it impossible for him to harbor any resentment.

Moreover, the research conditions Lin Qian provided were simply too convenient.

Apart from having to use his own brain, every matter great and small was handled by others on his behalf.

In Lin Qian's words, this was called reducing "opportunity cost."

Xu Guangqi escaped into his research, selectively forgetting reality.

This was still the first time he had met Lin Qian since the uprising began.

Lin Qian said, "Junior Mentor Xu, how is the agricultural research coming along lately?"

Xu Guangqi had been on the island for a year and a half now, and his research pace matched what would have taken five or six years before.

Thinking that this book could be published while he was still alive—that he could see with his own eyes the common people taught according to his agricultural manual, fields yielding more, lives improving, national agricultural taxes greatly increasing, the country enriched and the military strengthened, and the Jianzhou barbarians defeated—Xu Guangqi could not help but feel joy from the bottom of his heart.

"In another half year, the writing will be complete, and after one year of revision, it can be published!" Xu Guangqi said with slight excitement.

Lin Qian nodded and said, "Excellent. May I ask what Junior Mentor plans to do after the agricultural manual is completed?"

Xu Guangqi was startled by the question—he truly had never considered the matter. His ambition for officialdom had not yet died; he had originally planned to wait until governance was cleansed, then be recalled by the court and serve as an official once more.

Now that he was on the pirate ship, he feared there would never be a return.

Just as he was wallowing in private sorrow—

Lin Qian said, "Even with an agricultural manual, the common people cannot read it. The scholars can read it, but they would never roll up their robes and go to the fields to teach the people." Xu Guangqi caught the implication in Lin Qian's words: "You want me to go teach agriculture?"

Lin Qian smiled calmly and said, "Not at all. I want Junior Mentor Xu to serve as the headmaster of the university!

To enrich the country and strengthen the military, moral essays alone cannot achieve it. Just like agriculture—one must understand, master, and utilize the laws of nature to farm well and promote production. Junior Mentor Xu, this learning of investigating things to transform the world needs someone to carry it forward.

You must understand—establishing words only ferries those fated to cross, but establishing learning opens the way for ten thousand generations.

This endeavor that benefits the present age and profits a thousand years to come—are you willing to do it?"

Xu Guangqi, struck by this highly rousing speech, found himself momentarily unable to respond.

While he was still stunned, Lin Qian explained the meaning and vision of the university.

He showed Xu Guangqi the faculty list, the campus site selection, and the proposal plan.

The university would have four colleges: Letters and Law, Science and Engineering, Economics, and Natural History.

The majors offered included mathematics, mechanical engineering, architecture, botany and zoology, medicine, law, and accounting.

The teachers would be selected from Lin Qian's list.

The school adopted a four-year system with three progressive tiers. In the first two years, students studied foundational subjects such as mathematics, logic, philosophy, and Chinese.

In the third year, students chose their specialties and studied core professional courses.

In the fourth year, while continuing specialized study, students completed an internship before graduating.

Once admitted, students paid no tuition at all, received room and board, studied full-time without other work, and were assigned jobs upon graduation.

Lin Qian concluded: "The graduates of this university will no longer be xiucai or juren, but technical bureaucrats, engineers, scholars, and teachers—they will become the backbone driving the development of the Chinese civilization!"

Vice Chancellor Xu, you are one of the rare people in the Great Ming who has mastered both Chinese and Western learning, and you best understand how to incorporate diverse ideas and draw on the strengths of all.

I intend to place this university under your management. Are you willing to take on this heavy responsibility?"

Xu Guangqi was stunned for a moment, then smiled: "Vice Chancellor is a title of the past. From now on, please address me as Headmaster, Helmsman."

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen