Chapter 187: The Partial Truth Behind the Great Ming

When the sovereign baits with power and profit, his ministers respond with studied guesswork. Between ruler and subject, it is like standing on the edge of an abyss, like treading on thin ice — and yet both parties plunge in with tireless relish.

The grandees crowding the court scrutinize their sovereign's every word and gesture, probing for hidden depths of meaning.

What they do not know is that their sovereign is studying them in turn — by methods they cannot begin to fathom.

The Hall of Earnest Reflection, Western Park.

Zhu Youjian sat behind the broad imperial desk, quietly leafing through a somewhat crudely bound booklet in his hands.

His finger drifted slowly down the page, then stopped abruptly on one column of figures.

"Why, for the jinshi examination of the forty-seventh year of Wanli, was the dismissal rate for candidates of Guangxi origin one hundred percent?"

— "Percentage" was a new concept Zhu Youjian had introduced to the inner palace and the secretariat after the third Daily Lecture.

The idea itself was not complicated, yet it was far more precise than the "seven or eight parts in ten" phrasing the Ming people had been accustomed to using.

Gao Shiming, hearing this, hurried over, glanced at the entry, and bowed as he replied:

"Your Majesty, this particular figure I happen to remember."

"In that examination, Guangxi produced only a single jinshi. That man was later dismissed, so for that year and that province, the dismissal rate naturally came to one hundred percent."

A look of sudden understanding crossed Zhu Youjian's face.

That made sense.

Places like Guangxi and Guizhou were sparsely populated and culturally backward; in any given year, very few candidates passed the jinshi examination. A single solitary seedling for an entire province was perfectly normal.

Seeing that the Emperor seemed intrigued, Gao Shiming added with a smile, "Your Majesty, this figure has another interesting feature — which is precisely why I remember it."

"Oh?" Zhu Youjian raised his eyes to him. "Why? Was this man so remarkable?"

"Your Majesty sees ten thousand li with perfect clarity," Gao Shiming offered the ritual flattery before revealing the answer. "That man was none other than Yuan Chonghuan."

Zhu Youjian's eyebrows lifted slightly — he was somewhat surprised.

"I recall he was a native of Dongguan in Guangdong, was he not? How could he be a Guangxi jinshi?"

Gao Shiming shook his head and explained, "His actual household registration was in Wuzhou Prefecture, Guangxi, so he had to return to Guangxi to sit the provincial examinations. Therefore, in this… 'Provincial Dismissal-Rate Perspective Chart for Each Jinshi Examination,' as Your Majesty calls it, he ought to be counted under Guangxi Province."

"So that is how it is." Zhu Youjian nodded. So it was examination-residency migration — not hard to grasp.

The name Yuan Chonghuan stirred only a faint ripple in his mind, then subsided in an instant.

Any man, even a Yue Fei or a Yu Qian appearing before him, would still have to be hauled in for an interview first — he would judge the quality after seeing for himself.

As for Yuan Chonghuan, let him huff and puff his way from that backwater of Guangdong to the capital first.

Supreme Commander Yuan was probably just now passing through Fujian.

Zhu Youjian quickly gathered his attention and buried his energies once more in the fascinating chart before his eyes.

The reader may well be wondering: "Provincial Dismissal-Rate Perspective Chart for Each Jinshi Examination" — what sort of thing is this, exactly?

In truth, among the many decrees Zhu Youjian had issued since his ascension, some were short-term, some long-term, some earth-shaking, some as quiet as the moistening rain.

But if one were to ask which had the most immediate and far-reaching impact, it was neither the capital's New Policies, nor the Northern Metropolitan Region's New Policies, nor even the Ji-Liao New Policies still confined to paper.

It was precisely that seemingly inconspicuous measure — the reassignment of the thirteen Provincial Administration Commissioners across the realm.

The Great Ming's annual expenditures and annual revenues both stood at nearly nine million taels on the books.

In theory, so long as the taxes and levies from every locality could be collected in full, and with the addition of the Gold Flower Silver and the outer treasuries of the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of War, the Court of Imperial Entertainments, and Shuntian Prefecture, the money would absolutely be sufficient.

The problem, however, was that this "theory" was nothing but theory!

Later generations, lumping the late-Ming fiscal collapse under the blanket heading of land annexation, may appear to be applying a materialist view of history, yet in fact they fall into the error of mechanization and rigid thinking.

Any modern person possessed of the spirit of "seeking truth from facts" will try to probe the deeper question — "Why could the taxes not be collected in full? And were the reasons the same in every place?"

Rather than mindlessly blaming everything on the sweeping and correct-sounding clichés of corruption, landlord annexation, fraudulent registration, and tax evasion.

Zhu Youjian was precisely such a person.

Take Shandong, for example. It bordered the Yellow River, and under the principle that the Grand Canal took priority —

in lands adjacent to the canal, if there was drought, water could not be drawn for irrigation, because the canal had to be preserved.

If the flood season brought high waters, the land would be inundated — again, because the canal had to be preserved.

The crux of Shandong's troubles, then, perhaps lay in water management, in the conflict of interest between the canal transport system and the locality.

This also explained why, among the historical memorials the Hanlin Academy had compiled, officials of Shandong origin had ceaselessly, one after another, petitioned for the opening of the Jiao-Lai Canal.

Once the Jiao-Lai Canal was opened, maritime transport would flourish, and Shandong could free itself from the shackles of the Grand Canal.

Of course, where there was a Jiao-Lai maritime faction, there was a Grand Canal interest faction — but the machinations behind that contest could be set aside for now.

Or take Henan: princely fiefs abounded, the imperial clan was everywhere, taxes were crushing, and the common people scattered and fled — a desolate, depopulated landscape that yet presented a bizarre spectacle of "teeming vitality."

The emphasis there, perhaps, should be on curbing the princes, surveying the fields, restructuring the taxes, and recruiting people to reclaim the wasteland.

Or again, the emphasis in Fujian and Guangdong was maritime trade; in Shaanxi and Shanxi, drought prevention; in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, the native chieftains and mineral resources…

In short, every place had its own character, its own unique problems.

It was absolutely not a matter of simply dispatching a high official and crudely ordering him to apply maximum pressure on the ground until the grain and silver were squeezed out.

That was Chongzhen's logic of action — it was certainly not the logic of the Eternal Prosperity Sovereign.

Therefore, before the actual provincial grandees were confirmed, Zhu Youjian himself had to first understand each province's distinctive features and general present condition, so that he could tailor the assessment targets for each province accordingly.

Naturally, he would not set them arbitrarily on his own.

The grandees' own administrative dispatches, the representations of officials native to that province, the proposals of officials who had previously served there — all had to be gathered, collated, and debated point by point.

Repeatedly publicized, discussed, confirmed, then publicized again, discussed again, confirmed again — cycling back and forth until the final draft could be settled.

In such a forum, with its complex sources of information and diverse claims of interest, the civil-official bloc could not possibly unite as one to conceal the truth.

He, Zhu Youjian, had the confidence — and the means — to uncover the truths hidden behind those elegant compositions.

And the birth of the "Provincial Dismissal-Rate Perspective Chart for Each Jinshi Examination" actually originated from a very simple conjecture of Zhu Youjian's.

— In those places where tax arrears had historically been severe, could it be that too many of their officials had been dismissed?

After all, putting himself in their shoes, if he, Zhu Youjian, were dismissed from office and sent back to his home district, whether the local taxes were paid or not — what the hell did that have to do with the great Squire Zhu?

Since there was no longer a seat for me at the table of power, naturally I would stall as long as I could and shirk wherever possible.

The more the local fiscal administration fell into ruin, the more it proved that dismissing me in the first place had been a mistake, did it not?

If the dynasty did not decline, how could we scholars in the wilderness demonstrate our integrity and worth, and how would we ever get the chance to be restored to office?

Of course, this was only conjecture.

Could it be, instead, that the very places with more officials in post were so entangled in deep-rooted networks that they had the nerve to resist the court's demands for tax payment?

Without investigation, there is no right to speak.

Any conjecture is less solid than hard, real data!

So Zhu Youjian first had Guo Yunhou of the Ministry of Revenue compile a table of tax arrears for the sixth and seventh years of Tianqi.

Who owed the most?

For the old military supply levies, it was Henan, Shandong, Suzhou, Huguang, Songjiang, Changzhou, and other places, totaling 1.13 million taels.

First place, Henan, 179,000 taels; second place, Suzhou, 148,000 taels; third place, Shandong, 130,000 taels.

Further down were Songjiang and Huguang, each owing 50,000 taels, and Changzhou, Fujian, Jiangxi, and others, each owing 20,000 taels or so.

Collection of the new military supply levies had been relatively effective; the places in arrears were Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Huai'an Prefecture, Zhejiang, and such, totaling 394,000 taels.

Among them, first place was Jiangxi, at 247,000 taels.

Shandong had suffered great floods, and Henan a minor drought this year; falling into arrears was not incomprehensible.

After all, once there was a disaster, however severe, it always provided an extra excuse for non-payment.

But your Suzhou-Songjiang region and your Jiangxi region enjoyed favorable weather in the seventh year of Tianqi, with no disasters or famines — on what grounds do you dare refuse to pay this year's share?

Do you think my sword is not sharp?

Therefore, Zhu Youjian had the Directorate of Ceremonial take all the jinshi from the past ten examination sessions — 3,544 men in total — and sort them entirely by native place, producing this "Perspective Chart of Jinshi Dismissals by Province and Examination Session."

(Attached chart; this data comes from my own scraping of historical jinshi rosters. Accuracy should be above 90%.)

(But after all, I am not writing a dissertation, and I truly lack both the ability and the time to verify each one individually; I ask your forbearance for any errors.)

A look at it indeed revealed some interesting problems.

For the two sessions of the second and fifth years of Tianqi, perhaps because most of the newly minted jinshi had only just been sent out to the provinces as county magistrates and few had been promoted back to the central government, the dismissal rate was not yet high.

In the fifth year of Tianqi only 2.57% were dismissed, and in the second year of Tianqi only 5.38%.

But the further back one went, the higher the dismissal rate for each session became; the peak appeared in the twenty-ninth year of Wanli, where a full 18.94% of that session's jinshi had been dismissed.

Curious, Zhu Youjian checked the attached roster and could not help laughing.

Liu Zongzhou, Nan Juyi, Zhou Qiyuan, Xiong Mingyu… good heavens, all from this session — you could practically call it the Donglin session proper.

But these findings, while interesting, were still not what concerned Zhu Youjian most.

He examined the list carefully, line by line, from time to time picking up the attached registers to leaf through and compare.

At last, he set down the register in his hands, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long breath.

Data does not lie.

Suzhou, Songjiang, and Jiangxi — these three major tax delinquents — did indeed show dismissal rates markedly higher than those of other provinces.

Among them, Suzhou Prefecture, with a staggering 18.68%, took the crown in this "dismissal tournament," leaving all other regions far behind.

Of course, there were exceptions.

Huguang and Shanxi, for example, also had quite high dismissal rates, yet their tax payments were passable, merely ranking in the middle tier.

This might have had to do with the tax structures of those two places.

Huguang was known as a land of fish and rice, had few princely fiefs, and its tax burden was light to begin with.

As for Shanxi, it supplied a large proportion of the civilian-transport grain for the three frontiers of Datong, Xuanfu, and Shaanxi, while the proportion borne by central-government disbursements was small to begin with; to see its true situation, one would probably have to wait until the Ministry of Revenue finished tallying the civilian-transport silver ratios before getting to the bottom of it.

A look of satisfied wonder spread across Zhu Youjian's face.

He had recovered a little of that pleasure from his later age — the pleasure of using big-data analysis to see through the underlying logic of things.

Except in his previous life he had always analyzed things like conversion rates and impression rates, and in this life he was, damn it all, sitting here analyzing dismissal rates!

As for what lay behind this big data — the blood and tears of the Directorate of Ceremonial's beasts of burden in the Great Ming — that was truly not something to be spoken of to outsiders.

But… the beasts of burden had worked hard, and they truly deserved to be fed some hay.

Zhu Youjian raised his head, pondered a moment, and said to Gao Shiming:

"We have often tasked the Directorate of Ceremonial and the Depot and Guard with matters not entirely fit for the outer court to know of."

"If such matters were rewarded by the outer court's precedent of red and green commendations, it would be inconvenient to list the details, and it would not accord with the New Policies' spirit of openness and candor."

"Yet merit must be recorded, and merit must be rewarded."

Zhu Youjian paused, then continued:

"Companion Gao, go back and consult with Wang Tiqian and Tian Ergeng to devise a merit-and-reward scheme for internal use within the inner palace and the Depot and Guard. Let it be reckoned in 'black marks'; each black mark shall be tied to salary, reward silver, and promotion, modeled on the outer court's system, only not disclosed to the outside."

A warmth rose in Gao Shiming's heart; he hastily cupped his hands and accepted the order:

"This subject obeys the decree. This matter is easily done; with the outer court's scheme for reference, I expect a first draft can be submitted within ten days."

"Mm." Zhu Youjian nodded, then added:

"Additionally, for the next monthly examination, promote some of the high-achieving students from the Inner Palace School to supplement the Directorate of Ceremonial. The current staffing is truly somewhat insufficient."

"As for the various personnel of the Directorate of Ceremonial, in light of their toil and hardship since Our accession, draw up a list, and let each be granted an appropriate increase in monthly salary."

Gao Shiming's face was wreathed in smiles. "This subject thanks Your Majesty, on their behalf, for your solicitous care!"

Finally, Zhu Youjian tapped the register on the table with his finger and said:

"As for this register, it shall be produced once every half-year henceforth."

"But change it to record only two items for officials in post: native place and rank."

"The first edition may take its time; set it to be drawn up in the first year of Yongchang. By then, the appointments and dismissals of officials everywhere should have largely stabilized."

"As for the title, call it the 'Great Ming Perspective Table of Officials in Post by Province and Rank.'"

"As commanded." Gao Shiming bowed once more.

With this table, Zhu Youjian now had a reference for balancing the power of the various provinces across the realm.

Even the quotas for the imperial examinations could be used to make a point.

Three hundred men per session was still too few; in time, the quotas must be gradually increased until the jinshi degree became a thing of utterly no value.

—The same principle as the expansion of university enrollment in later ages.

As for the argument for expansion, it could be tied to the tax quotas of each province.

Beyond the base quota of three hundred, a separate "reward quota" could be established, granted according to how completely each province had remitted its taxes.

Only, there was no time for this in the first year of Yongchang; it would be far too rushed. It could be tried in the fourth year of Yongchang.

—No, perhaps not necessarily the fourth year of Yongchang; perhaps the third year of Yongchang would also do. After all, one session every three years was still far too slow.

It would depend on whether, by that time, he had accumulated enough prestige to push through something that so seriously offended the interests of sitting officials.

Zhu Youjian stretched, and the joints of his entire body gave off a series of crisp cracking sounds.

He was just about to call for Gao Shiming again, to have the personnel dossiers of the various officials in South Zhili brought over so he could make some advance preparations for the next stage of the chess game.

But suddenly, a young eunuch poked his head in from outside the hall door, his expression panicked.

"Your Majesty… a Priority-One telegram has arrived!"

Zhu Youjian and Gao Shiming exchanged a glance; the ease on both their faces instantly drained away, replaced by utter gravity.

"Bring it here at once!"

(Chapter 185: To Fight, or Not to Fight?! Zhu Youjian's Choice! (Thanks to Alliance Leader Xu_Yao!))