Chapter 211: All Prepared and Testing the Waters

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If the policy of requiring scholar-gentry and commoners to pay land tax equally is implemented, the court can extract land tax revenue from the scholar-gentry, easing fiscal pressure. It can also change the previous situation where taxation relied heavily on commoners, broadening and balancing the tax base, reducing the tax burden on commoners, and enhancing the stability and sustainability of fiscal revenue. Moreover, when commoners see the scholar-gentry no longer enjoying privileges, they will feel greater fairness, potentially strengthening their identification with the court.

The policy of incorporating head tax into land tax, by merging the head tax into land tax collection, lightens the tax burden on landless or small-holding farmers, which can somewhat alleviate the contradiction of excessive wealth disparity and further liberate farmers, promoting social equity. Moreover, it ensures stable tax revenue, increases fiscal income, and prevents tax arrears caused by population mobility and hidden household registrations, making tax administration simpler and more efficient, thereby enhancing the court's capacity to raise fiscal funds.

Yet the scholar-gentry class holds high status and enjoys numerous privileges; implementing equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax infringes upon their interests, provoking their dissatisfaction and resistance, intensifying their conflict with the court, and potentially complicating their tensions with commoners. They may also redirect their grievances onto the commoners—by other means such as raising rents—to indirectly shift the burden onto them, leaving commoners still economically affected.

The scholar-gentry class has many representatives within the court; implementing equal land tax will inevitably face resistance from the bureaucratic elite, triggering internal debates and divisions within the ruling group, weakening the court's cohesion and administrative efficiency.

In short, from the perspective of institutional design, equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax can increase fiscal revenue and optimize the tax structure, but they will encounter massive resistance, triggering a series of social, political, and economic problems. If poorly implemented, their effectiveness may be greatly diminished by various factors.

Long ago, Zhao Yu had discussed land reform with Zhang Chun and Ye Shi Yun, because this was the greatest problem of the Zhao-Song dynasty—and the unavoidable issue if the Zhao-Song wished to grow strong. Without resolving it, the hundreds of peasant uprisings in history would continue to erupt, continuously draining the Zhao-Song dynasty like bloodletting, turning it into a pavilion built on sand, trembling and precarious. Should a foreign invader strike, this grand edifice, seemingly prosperous but fundamentally unstable, would collapse under the dual blows of internal unrest and external threat, leading to national ruin and ethnic extinction.

From the very beginning of Zhao Yu's reincarnation, he had submitted a Memorandum on Land Reform to Zhao Xu.

At that time, Zhao Yu naively sought to forcefully implement land consolidation restrictions—namely, the land quota system: setting landholding limits according to official and commoner ranks. For example, a first-rank official's household would be limited to fifty qing of land; a commoner household, based on the number of male members, would not exceed twenty mu. Households exceeding the limit could retain a modest amount of ancestral and hereditary land; the rest must either be sold to landless poor peasants or purchased by the government at fair prices and resold to the impoverished.

Later, Zhao Yu showed his Memorandum on Land Reform to his five wives. Zhang Chun, Li Lin, Ma Xiao Jiao, and Yuan Qing Cheng all felt Zhao Yu's idea was sound—it was merely land redistribution, aligning perfectly with their vision of an ideal society.

But Ye Shi Yun rejected it from an economic development perspective, saying:

"Equal land distribution appears fair, but violates the logic of economic operation. Since the founding of our Great Song, commerce and industry have flourished, towns have thrived—this is the lifeblood of our economy. Forcibly enforcing equal land distribution is like cutting off the water flow, plunging the economy into stagnation."

"Moreover, land is not homogeneous: southern paddy fields are fertile, yielding several shi per mu; northern dry fields are barren, producing only one or two tenths as much. If land is forcibly equalized regardless of fertility, the wealthy will hide their good land and abandon the poor, while the poor receive infertile plots and still starve—total agricultural output will plummet. When food supply falters, grain prices soar, prices become unbalanced, and the entire economic system descends into chaos."

"Furthermore, economic development requires specialized division of labor. Today, our Great Song has countless workshops and merchants traveling everywhere; countless commoners have left farming to pursue other trades, generating far greater wealth than pure agriculture. If land is forcibly equalized, everyone will be forced back to the fields—workshops will lack laborers, trade routes will go unmanaged; commerce and industry will wither, and social specialization will regress. When all labor is bound to the land, who will refine machinery or drive technological innovation? Without commerce and industry, how can the economy prosper?"

"Land circulation follows its own economic logic: wealthy households consolidate land, often introducing advanced farming techniques and irrigation systems, raising overall output. Forcibly equalizing land disrupts this market mechanism; new landholders lack capital and technology, unable to develop the land effectively, wasting resources. Meanwhile, restricted land transactions block capital mobility, clogging channels of wealth creation and robbing the economy of momentum."

"Our Great Song's economy is like a cart: land, commerce, and labor are its wheels. Forcibly altering land distribution will only unbalance and overturn the cart."

Ye Shi Yun advocated implementing only equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax, while vigorously developing agriculture and technology, redirecting surplus labor toward industry, infrastructure, even foreign expansion and migration—the market would naturally find balance. If the scholar-gentry tried to indirectly shift burdens onto commoners by raising rents, the market would teach them a lesson.

In addition, Ye Shi Yun proposed the concept of stamp duty, saying:

"Scholar-gentry often conceal land and evade taxes through 'fraudulent land registration' and 'fictitious contracts,' leaving large loopholes in the land tax base even after incorporating head tax into land tax. Stamp duty, levied upon official sealing of contracts, requires all land sales, leases, and pledges to be verified and stamped by the government to be valid. This forces the scholar-gentry to bring previously hidden land transactions under official oversight, exposing vast amounts of 'black land' and providing a more accurate tax base for incorporating head tax into land tax, while giving greater legitimacy to equal land tax enforcement, preventing evasion through land transfers."

"Frequent land transactions are a major path for scholar-gentry wealth accumulation; the progressive nature of stamp duty, taxing based on transaction value, imposes higher costs on excessive land consolidation. To reduce tax expenditure, scholar-gentry will voluntarily limit land expansion, causing idle or inefficient land to re-enter the market. This not only eases the contradiction of land concentration, creating conditions for implementing the principle of 'more land, more tax' under incorporating head tax into land tax, but also weakens the scholar-gentry's motivation to resist equal land tax through economic leverage."

"Revenue from stamp duty can be used in three ways: first, to subsidize self-cultivating farmers whose tax burden increases under incorporating head tax into land tax, reducing grassroots resistance; second, to invest in irrigation repairs and famine relief, alleviating public outcry that the scholar-gentry are 'competing with the people for profit'; third, to offset administrative losses and hidden tax leakage during the early phase of equal land tax implementation. This 'tax-funding-tax' model strengthens the court's fiscal resilience and provides material guarantees for the long-term stable implementation of both reforms…"

Ye Shi Yun's stamp duty proposal lit a spark in Zhao Yu's mind—he thought, "When the Propaganda Department publicly announces that only land registered with the government will be protected by the court, the difficulty of implementing equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax will surely drop significantly."

Zhang Chun did not want Ye Shi Yun to monopolize the spotlight; she also proposed preparing a sufficient number of reserve officials to replace those who fiercely resisted equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax, and to end the situation where imperial authority did not reach the countryside—otherwise, implementing equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax would be as hard as climbing to heaven.

Fortunately, one of the Zhao-Song dynasty's greatest problems was bureaucratic bloat.

Moreover, since the reign of Emperor Shenzong, three successive Zhao-Song emperors had vigorously pursued educational reform: expanding school education nationwide, establishing a nationwide school network, replacing the old imperial examination system—a remarkable modern innovation that cultivated a vast pool of reserve talent for the Zhao-Song dynasty.

Crucially, when Zhao Yu ascended the throne, he had already reviewed officials and held a large reserve of replacement candidates.

Even more crucially, at the start of his reign, Zhao Yu had, under the guise of anti-corruption, replaced the entire Zhao-Song officialdom with his own trusted appointees.

Furthermore, the Zhao-Song dynasty's establishment of township offices and village committees in Longyou could extend imperial authority into the countryside.

This gave Zhao Yu some confidence to confront the scholar-gentry class.

One could say that Zhao Yu dared to consider implementing equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax precisely because he held several trump cards and backup plans.

But then again, even though Zhao Yu was extremely well-prepared, since the Zhao-Song dynasty was in fact co-governed by the emperor and the scholar-official class—the scholar-gentry being the very foundation of Zhao-Song rule—attacking the scholar-gentry meant attacking the dynasty's ruling base, and Zhao Yu remained extremely cautious.

Only after Zhao Yu had reclaimed Xi Xia and the Eleven Prefectures of Yan-Yun, recovered all back interest and principal extorted by the Liao, and forced the Liao to cede territory, pay reparations, and offer royal marriages—no longer restrained by external threats—did Zhao Yu finally resolve to implement equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax.

Even then, Zhao Yu dared not propose it himself, nor had he leaked a word to Chancellor Zhang Dun or any other high minister. Instead, he personally selected Chen Gongfu, a brash newcomer recommended by Zhang Chun, and spoke with him alone about equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax. Seeing Chen's strong support, Zhao Yu released him now, at this moment of perfect preparation, to test the ministers' reactions.

Zhao Yu had already decided: if any minister supported equal land tax and incorporating head tax into land tax, he would seize the opportunity to push the policy forward; if all ministers fiercely opposed it, he would have no choice but to sacrifice Chen Gongfu—abandon the pawn to save the king—and wait for another opportunity to implement the policy, or… abandon it entirely.

Zhao Yu was not cowardly—he knew that to accomplish such a great undertaking, one must follow the current; fighting against it would only lead to self-destruction.

Now, the stone Zhao Yu had thrown to test the waters had been cast—now he waited to see how the ministers would react…

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(End of Chapter)