Chapter 2011: The New Countermeasure

Since ancient times, natural disasters have often been accompanied by man-made calamities. This is nearly an unassailable hard truth, and in the Great Han it could even be called the norm. In the disaster-plagued Great Han, almost every time a calamity occurred, the officialdom of the affected region faced a dramatic upheaval.

Before, during, and after a disaster, large numbers of bureaucrats and petty officials were stripped of their posts or dismissed, even beheaded or exiled, for an endless variety of reasons. Of these, only a very small number were investigated and punished by the court purely for inadequate disaster prevention or relief; far more common were cases of officials lining their own pockets amid the catastrophe and treating human lives like grass.

There was, of course, a positive side to this as well — some officials who worried about the state and the people, who worked diligently and gave their all, would receive commendations and promotions. But compared to the overall sample, these were even fewer in number.

Although the Great Han's official governance education had always required bureaucrats to be loyal to the sovereign and love the state, to nurture the people as their own children, to understand righteousness, recognize the larger picture, and keep the overall situation in mind, in actual practice those who could truly achieve this were as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns.

And this was even in an environment where the Great Han's supervisory authority was formidable. As with every disaster in the past, last year's flood disaster in the Central Plains was likewise accompanied by the punishment of a batch of officials, the majority of whom were corrupt and venal.

The boldest among them even dared to embezzle the funds allocated by the Water Ministry and the Circuit Offices for river protection, dike maintenance, and tree planting. As the core ruling region of the Great Han, the court, under the leadership of the old Emperor, had always been willing to invest generously in its upkeep.

For instance, the policy of planting trees to firm the soil and protect the dikes along the Yellow River, the Bian River, and the Huai River had already been in effect for over thirty years, with funds and grain allocated every year, earmarked for specific purposes. At the same time, for water conservancy and bridge-dike projects that some prefectures and counties could not afford on their own, as long as they petitioned upward for assistance, no matter how long the queue, after approval they could always squeeze out some funds and grain.

Some even used their connections to specifically apply for funds through water conservancy projects in order to make up for shortfalls in other areas. The purpose of water conservancy projects is to prevent harm and obtain benefit; how much benefit is gained is often impossible to assess concretely. But when it comes to preventing harm, once the floodwaters arrive, who is real and who is fake becomes clear at a glance, and distinguishing who is loyal and who is treacherous, who is worthy and who is mediocre, becomes all the more convincing.

Every time he heard of such anger, he was both enraged at their greed and wickedness, and exasperated by these people's audacity and their failure to learn from past lessons.

By now, the Crown Prince, tempered through a thousand trials, when reviewing memorials submitted from the localities, had also adopted the attitude of believing five parts out of ten, or even less. Just like the old Emperor, the Crown Prince had no more confidence in the Great Han's bureaucrats.

Therefore, regarding those sordid affairs that occurred during the post-disaster reconstruction in the Huang-Huai circuits and prefectures, as obtained from Shangyang Palace, although Liu Yang felt indignation, he truly was not all that surprised.

The ugliness and evil on the surface could basically be resolved by dispatching supervisory imperial envoys to inspect and investigate. What was difficult were the things hidden beneath the surface, the things that never appeared in memorials.

And the problem of land annexation mentioned in the memorials of the Imperial City Office and the Wude Office. Without a doubt, a rain disaster and flood that ravaged entire prefectures and counties not only caused heavy losses to the affected officials and commoners, but also severely impeded the Great Han's tax reform.

In the Huainan and Huaibei regions, there was even widespread regression and backsliding. In the Huai River basin, land submerged by floodwaters reached a million mu. What was destroyed was not only the crops growing on the land, but also the pre-disaster land order.

In the twenty-eighth year of Kaibao, the tax reform in the two Huai regions had only just begun not long before, and the progress of land surveying was also very slow. But after one great flood, the meager fruits of reform went down the drain as well, vanishing along with those destroyed land markers and boundary lines, and those lost data, documents, and certificates.

The post-disaster reconstruction submitted by the Circuit Offices, in Liu Yang's view, looked more like a vulture's feast and a carnival for the conservatives. With over a million disaster victims, local governments simply could not rescue everyone; limited resources could only be spent on a portion of the lucky ones.

As for the remaining victims, they needed to help themselves and save themselves. If they relied solely on government disaster relief, people would have starved to death long ago. There was almost no local government that faithfully carried out the court's requirements for all-round disaster relief to the victims; such a thing appearing in a feudal dynasty like the Great Han was itself rather unreasonable.

Based on the experience of the past twenty years, being able to ensure the supply of relief grain as much as possible and reduce deaths from famine was already considered conscientious. In this flood disaster, the governments of the two Huai regions had indeed performed poorly.

When refugees returned to their hometowns, they faced a scene of utter devastation, basically destitute and penniless. If they wanted to survive, and with the government unreliable, they could only look to the local worthies and prominent clans for help.

This help was, of course, not free. The price was something that had cyclically repeated throughout most of Chinese history: selling off one's property, being reduced to tenant farmers, and personal dependency.

To be sure, under the current Great Han system, that kind of unchecked, bottom-line-less annexation was greatly restricted. But no matter how tight the supervision, there were always loopholes to exploit. There were too many things in this world that could not be constrained by a few statutes.

After undergoing the vigorous baptism of three years of tax reform, the landlord class of the Great Han had also snapped out of the initial shock, and after adapting,

methods like breaking up land holdings within a clan into small pieces to share the land tax burden, which had been used back then, had by now become outdated. As was happening in some places in the two Huai regions, after disaster victims returned home, the land was still given to them to farm, the ownership registered in the land registers remained theirs, and they were even provided with rental services for farm tools, seeds, and oxen. The only difference was that each season's harvest, after deducting the regular taxes paid to the court, also required paying a portion to the "creditor."

Nor were they afraid of inspection from above, after all, all of this was done in accordance with tax reform regulations. This was not annexation, merely debt repayment. The court wanted to suppress the "landlord-tenant" relationship, so surely this "clean and pure" debt relationship could not be prohibited.

The only problem, perhaps, was that the interest rate was a bit high, and could be adjusted at any time, to the point where it could never be repaid in a lifetime. Was this exploitation? Was this oppression? If not for the benevolent hearts of the worthies and clan elders, people would have starved to death. Even if it was exploitation, you first had to have the value to be exploited.

If it attracted the attention of the government — well, under normal circumstances, the government would not come looking for trouble. As long as taxes were paid in full and the bureaucrats were fed well, why would they care about the suffering of the common rabble?

Moreover, during a great disaster like this, their practices were rescuing the suffering and aiding the distressed, accumulating boundless merit. They saved the court so much trouble, reduced so much strife and unrest, and improved the restoration of public order — if anything, the government should commend and praise them.

All the local worthies and prominent clans needed to do was keep the mud-footed peasants on their turf in line, have them obediently farm and produce, duly pay their taxes and deliver their grain, and not stir up any major disturbances that would cause trouble for the officials or vex the court.

Everyone together, maintaining the "Kaibao Golden Age," jointly creating an atmosphere of peace and prosperity, of rivers clear and seas calm — that would be the Great Unity under heaven.

It seemed that the practices of the Huainan landlords were not an isolated case. This was like the instinct of feudal landlords; by drawing analogies, this was also not the only strategy for coping with the court's tax reform.

Even though he was not the main executor of the tax reform, Liu Yang still felt indignant at the various phenomena emerging in the two Huai regions. As Crown Prince, he had to view this problem from the standpoint of the court and the imperial house. Setting aside everything else, this behavior of racking one's brains to find loopholes and dig for ways to exploit them was itself a desecration of the court's authority.

Those who could scheme against the court's major policies could naturally also oppose the court in any other matter or any other domain. Overt compliance and covert defiance was intolerable to any ruler.

Beyond his indignation, Liu Yang also felt a great headache, because he clearly saw that if the local clans and powerful landlords all operated this way, the court, even if it wanted to rectify the situation, truly could not come up with many measures.

The Wude Office's investigation was also merely superficial — they knew such behavior existed, but to pin it down to specific individuals required investing multiples of effort, and to pin down more cases would cost even more dearly.

At the root of it all, the court's supervisory strength was limited, and its reach had boundaries. How difficult it was for imperial power to reach the countryside! Once those local strongmen in the villages mastered the methods for dealing with the court, trouble would follow.

Liu Yang could almost foresee that the tax reform in the two Huai regions, having suffered this setback, would face a bleak future if not checked and strengthened in supervision. He even began to doubt what kind of ending the old Emperor's forcefully pushed tax reform in his twilight years would ultimately meet.

The Great Han had dozens of circuits and over a thousand counties. Every year, countless disasters of all sizes occurred, and every disaster was a destruction of the old land order, easily bankrupting self-farming peasants and providing the landlord class with opportunities and convenience for annexation and expansion.

Natural disasters and man-made calamities intertwined, unleashing a destructive force on the regime that was difficult to imagine and impossible to eradicate.

For a brief moment, Liu Yang almost perceived the essence of the Great Han Empire's rule: no matter how much the Emperor worried about the state and the people, no matter what benevolent policies the court implemented to relieve the people's suffering, the people would always be suffering.

The Emperor could not bypass the nobles, bureaucrats, landlords, and clans to rule the common folk directly. As long as these rent-seeking strata stood in between, the people would never be free; even food and clothing would not come easily, let alone anything else.

If one were to overthrow the intermediate interest strata, that would be no different from digging one's own grave. The imperial system, after all, was not maintained by the hundreds of millions of common rabble.

"Water can carry a boat, and it can also capsize it" — this saying was certainly true, and an Emperor who could recognize this could all the more be called an enlightened sovereign. But the common people of the realm, in the vast majority of periods, did not possess the ability to "capsize the boat."

An Emperor could govern the state while upholding this concept of "loving the people," but he needed to understand that the ultimate purpose was still to maintain the rule of the imperial house, not to empathize with the common folk.

All the common people could do was struggle desperately. The so-called golden age merely meant that the degree of exploitation was relatively lighter. Even if they could not enjoy the fruits of their own blood and sweat, they still had the opportunity to look upward from the bottom.

Liu Yang was unlike the old Emperor; in his heart, he still harbored ideals, a beautiful hope for peace under heaven and well-being for all people. Therefore, although he felt troubled by some real-world problems, he adjusted his mindset quickly.

Even if many problems were deeply entrenched and difficult to eradicate, one must act when action was required, and the rules that had been established must be upheld. Even if it only ensured that the court had laws to rely on and principles to follow when striking hard in some limited domain, that in itself was the positive significance.

Next, more attention must be paid to the advancement and maintenance of the tax reform, Liu Yang said silently to himself. By the fourth year of the reform's progress, there was no longer much controversy at court — this was a consensus. Regardless of the pros and cons of the old and new tax systems, the Great Han's tax system must be unified. After all, this was a matter seriously related to the ruling order, and could not tolerate endless back-and-forth or excessive delay.