Chapter 598: Governing a Great State Is Like Cooking a Small Fish

The shift in grassroots village governance from the township-official system to the corvée-office system was, in fact, a symbol of the reform of village governance in ancient China and of the further centralization of power.

Zhang Zhao had once been very puzzled by this. If the township officials in the villages were gone, did that not mean the government's control over the villages had grown weaker? How could it instead have grown stronger?

This still has to be viewed within the context of its own era.

In later ages, with developed transportation and rapid communication, when something happened locally it could theoretically reach the upper levels within seconds, and there was also enough tax revenue to ensure that township and village civil servants were full-time personnel.

The central government could naturally rely on township and village civil servants to firmly control the grassroots.

But in ancient times this was impossible. Locally, to say nothing of the villages, even when something happened in a prefecture or county, it was not easy for word to reach the central government.

And the extremely low rank and extremely meager salary of township officials meant they could not possibly be selected from far away; they could only be appointed from nearby, from their own village and own ward.

To send a man of the county far from his home village to take up office would already have been considered harsh governance at the time, let alone transferring him to a distant post.

In that case, what sort of people in the villages could serve as township officials?

They were necessarily the local strongmen and great households of the countryside, or bullies whose families could muster several dozen stout fellows and beat their neighbors into not daring to fight back.

Once a bully like that was draped in an official's skin, what would happen then?

For example, Emperor Gaozu of Han had been just such a typical bully in his day. He was originally a man of the rivers and lakes, and with the added authority of a township office, even the chief clerk of a county, equivalent to a deputy county magistrate in charge of personnel and other matters, Xiao He, had to show Liu Bang face.

And when such men were in the villages, in order to prey upon their neighbors, they inevitably covered up everything that went on in the villages and kept their superiors from knowing the truth clearly, while their superiors only sought to have the fixed annual tax and corvée quotas met.

Therefore, to a great extent, the township officials before the mid-Tang were not township officials at all, but local petty emperors legitimized by the government.

The only difference was that when the court was strong and official discipline was clean, the power of these local petty emperors was much smaller, and they did not dare do anything that would provoke overwhelming public wrath.

If the court declined, then there was no help for it. Even in the Tang dynasty, it happened frequently that a village head refused the court's normal conscription of laborers, and after being stripped of official status, resisted the court's newly appointed village head.

Thus after the mid-Tang, in order to better control the localities, increase tax revenue, and save expenditures, the court turned the township offices into corvée posts.

This was equivalent to stripping these rural strongmen of their official status, turning them into nobodies when facing court officials, and depriving them of the capital to bargain with the government.

For example, the earlier Later Tang court had stipulated that the Surveillance Commissioners of the various circuits should, in the counties under their jurisdiction, designate a household of means in each village to serve as village head. After discussing with the villagers, the household of means was to contribute surplus fields and seedlings to make up for the poor households whose land fell short of the required acreage.

Here the township official was no longer an official appointed by the government, but became someone jointly elected by the villagers, who also had to make up the poor farmers' tax payments and other shortfalls. From a lucrative post, it instantly became a bitter drudgery.

The later Later Zhou went even further, directly stipulating that in the villages of all prefectures and counties throughout the realm, every hundred households were to form one tuan, and each tuan was to select three great households to serve as elders. Wherever among the common households there were evildoers and thieves, the three great households were to investigate them; wherever among the people's fields there was shortfall or surplus, the three great households were to equalize them.

"Wherever among the common households there are evildoers and thieves, the three great households are to investigate them" — it looks like power, but in reality it is not worth a damn.

Because they could only investigate, with no power of enforcement, and still had to wear out their own feet going to the government office to report the case.

The latter part was even harsher. "Shortfall" meant those who could not pay their taxes; the missing tax money was to be evenly shared among the three selected great households.

In this way, the small rural strongmen who had originally been township officials went from being officials to being inescapable tax-paying benchmarks, stuck there in the fields and at the edges of the village.

The government did not care how many people in your village were too poor to pay taxes; they only needed to seize hold of you, the benchmark, and press you relentlessly.

In reality, this was the government feeding on the great households of the countryside, forcibly equalizing wealth and poverty in the villages, and of course it also had the effect of making tax collection more convenient.

Thus, with the township officials, those middlemen, gone, the court's control over the villages actually became more direct.

Without the township officials taking a cut, the taxes collected by the state also began to increase.

Zhang Zhao could not help scratching his head with some irritation. This method of governance was indeed simpler and more convenient; it also eliminated the middlemen of the township-official strongmen, saved government expenditures, increased the amount and stability of tax revenue, and further removed destabilizing factors in the villages.

For the court, it was a method that killed many birds with one stone. In the more than one thousand years that followed, only the extremely loosely governed Mongol Yuan did not implement the corvée-office system; all the other dynasties basically continued the corvée-office system that began in the mid-Tang and matured and was perfected by the Northern Song.

But... the corvée-office system had one very great drawback, and it was one Zhang Zhao had to consider carefully.

Originally, when the township officials were there, although they were a hidden danger and were themselves preying on the common people, the state still had to spend money to support them.

But as long as they were there, the grassroots mobilization capacity was guaranteed.

Now that the township officials were gone, the villages had no leaders. Government runners might not even go down to the villages once in a month or two, and when they did go down, it was to find the elders serving in corvée posts and the like. They still understood very little about the actual situation in the villages.

At the same time, the elders serving in corvée posts went from being local strongmen draped in official status to being wealthy households squeezed from both sides.

In the eyes of the common people, most of them were not officials at all, but unlucky fellows with a bit of spare money, and they themselves had little power to rally others.

This meant that when the court had need of something, to say nothing of conscripting able-bodied men or levying supplies from the villages, it had practically no connection at all with the common people of the villages.

In any case, with the corvée-office system stuck in place, no matter who came attacking, they paid the same land tax. As long as the soldiers did not come down into the countryside to kill people, they might even be able to pay less tax for a while.

Since that was the case, then go ahead and fight! Who cares what you fight it out into?

Of course, it was not that no one could see the drawbacks of changing the township-official system into the corvée-office system, but the benefits were too great, too trouble-saving, too useful.

So the Two Songs and the Ming dynasty merely patched the corvée-office system with a small fix while maintaining it.

That was to expand the influence of the imperial examinations to the utmost, returning a portion of the former township officials' power, through the channel of the examinations, to the rural scholar-gentry who made their living through the examinations.

In the hope of mobilizing the strength of the villages through them.

Doing it this way was not really a big problem, and at first it was still workable.

It only went bad in the end because of that fellow Zhao Er, who pushed the exaltation of civil officials and suppression of the military too far, causing the rural scholar-gentry to become nothing but sour scholars.

So even in the Two Songs and the Ming dynasty, it cannot be said that few among the scholar-gentry class gave their lives for the country.

But their abilities were truly limited, fundamentally insufficient to at least preserve the core territory as in the late Han and the Five Dynasties; they could not even preserve the situation of the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

One of the important reasons the Southern Ming was rapidly destroyed was that the military strength and mobilization capacity of the Ming countryside, especially south of the Yangtze, which had long been at peace, was simply too weak, almost nonexistent, so that the Qing troops only needed to chase down that bit of Southern Ming military force and strike at it.

Seeing Zhang Zhao's brows tightly knitted, Zhang Xichong, Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs and concurrently Minister of Personnel, spoke up.

"Sage, the current situation is very clear. There are quite a lot of rural households fleeing, and there are no great households at all that can bear the corvée posts.

Whether the taxes of each prefecture and county are completed depends entirely on whether a household can be found in the villages that can bear the corvée post.

And those who can be selected by the government to bear the corvée posts are all, without exception, ordinary wealthy households with a bit of property but no power to protect it. When one household is selected, one household is ruined.

Those with real strength can use all sorts of methods to escape, and if they cannot escape, they will join bandit gangs like Li Renshu's.

Therefore, your subject believes the corvée-office system at least needs to be suspended. Otherwise, if it continues, the court will completely lose control of the villages."

Zhang Xichong had long served in the military provinces, so he knew very well what the corvée posts in the villages were like. In fact, even if Zhang Zhao had not convened this meeting to discuss the matter, he had been prepared to submit a memorial.

"Xue Juzheng, you are the Minister of Revenue. Tell us your view. From the Tang to the Jin, were the villages entirely like this?"

Zhang Zhao called on Xue Juzheng by name, and his meaning was very clear: if conditions in the villages had already become so deeply entrenched, then how had the Later Tang and the Later Jin kept their courts running?

Xue Juzheng of course understood the implication behind Zhang Zhao's question, so he spread open a document in his hand and presented it to Zhang Zhao, while he himself began to answer directly.

"During the Later Tang and the time of Shi Jingtang, conditions in the villages were somewhat better than in our Great Zhou."

For at that time the land had not yet suffered the three-year great calamity of flood, drought, and locusts. Though there were military disturbances, it was not as it is now, with Khitan riders everywhere seizing fodder and grain.

Thus although the villages had many problems, they could still hold together.

Moreover, bandits like Li Renshu existed only in the Huai River's northern prefectures of Xu, Yi, Su, and Ying; the other prefectures and counties had no such great bandit gangs.

And the stretch along the river from Hezhong Prefecture to the eastern capital Kaifeng Prefecture, and even the prefectures of Chen, Xu, and Song, could still be counted fairly prosperous. Therefore in years without great calamity, the court's situation was still passable.

As for Huainan, Guanzhong, Hebei, and other places, although the court's reach could not extend there, they had Military Governors to keep order, and the silver and coin each military province sent to the court every year was basically never short.

Zhang Zhao understood: in the Later Tang and Later Jin periods, first, the common people were wealthier than now, and second, the court practiced a system of subcontracting.

That is, prefectures and counties that were easy to govern were directly administered by the court, while those that were hard to govern and bore heavy military responsibilities — such as Hebei, Guanzhong, and the Eastern Circuit of Shannan — were handed over to Military Governors to garrison.

A Military Governor was, in effect, the court's tax underwriter. The territory was given to you, and the annual tax quota to be delivered was also given to you. As for how exactly you managed it, that was for you to decide.

If your methods of extortion were clever, the profit was yours; if you ran a deficit, you had to make it up; if you stirred up a popular revolt, you suppressed it yourself; if you could not suppress it, the court would send someone else to pacify the people; if you harbored improper ambitions, the court would send a punitive expedition against you.

But Zhang Zhao was now precisely unwilling to establish Military Governors in the various regions again, and the powers of the existing Military Governors had also been reduced to varying degrees. Therefore the method of relying on Military Governors to deliver taxes could no longer be implemented.

Good heavens — Sage Zhang frowned. So when I proposed stripping the Military Governors of their powers, there was almost no opposition. So this is what they were all waiting for.

They were waiting for Zhang Zhao to fail to manage the situation, so that he would have no choice but to re-establish Military Governors, and then it would be their turn to make a comeback.

Zhang Zhao understood the reason after Xue Juzheng's reminder. As Zhang Zhao's foremost trusted civil official, the Vice Director of the Chancellery Fan Zhi naturally also knew this reason, so as soon as Xue Juzheng finished speaking, he stepped forward and said in a loud voice.

"Your Majesty, your subject opposes the Left Vice Director's proposal to restore village officials. Since the mid-Tang, after village offices were converted into corvée posts, the court saved a great sum of expenditure, and the countryside also tended toward stability.

The reason the corvée-post system can no longer continue is simply two things. First, after the Lord of Jin was taken north and the Khitan came south, the village population largely died or fled, yet the tax quotas were not reduced, so the village corvée posts simply could not bear the burden.

Second, the bandit Li Renshu, taking advantage of the court's internal disorder, seized a great amount of power in the villages. The villagers have long been trapped in fire and water by these bandits — how could they still pay the court's taxes?

Therefore, your subject does not recommend restoring the village-official system. That would only turn troublemakers into officials. They would grow contemptuous, and not only would the court still find it hard to collect taxes, the villages would also become even more unstable.

The court should select capable officials to conduct a new census of the realm's fields and population, set tax quotas according to actual conditions, and then send a large army to suppress the Huai River's northern bandits."

After hearing this, Zhang Zhao looked seriously at Fan Zhi, and saw his face full of righteous solemnity.

Not easy! Fan Zhi, who had always been somewhat constrained and unwilling to offend people, rarely showed such a firm side.

On the surface he was opposing Zhang Xichong's proposal to restore village officials, but in reality he was opposing Zhang Zhao's re-appointment of Military Governors in the Henan region to carry out suppression. This was very much a matter of offending people.

Two choices had emerged in the court discussion. Zhang Xichong recommended restoring the village-official system, which in reality was a hope that Zhang Zhao would stabilize the Huai River's northern bandits like Li Renshu, first fight a decisive battle with Liu Zhiyuan, and only make adjustments after the realm was stable.

Fan Zhi, on the other hand, held that compromising with the Huai River's northern bandits now would violate the policy Zhang Zhao had always pursued. If they compromised with the Huai River's northern bandits, then would they not also have to compromise on the powers of the Military Governors?

And if they waited until after Liu Zhiyuan was destroyed, the villages would be too far gone to remedy, and by the time they came to clean things up, they would probably have to pay an even greater price.

But they were only the ones offering opinions; the actual decision still rested with Zhang Zhao. That was exactly what the ruler of a country did.

However, the matter was of great importance, and both Zhang Xichong's and Fan Zhi's proposals had their practical considerations. For a moment, Zhang Zhao truly could not make the decision.

He swept a glance over the assembled officials and quickly spotted Li Gu, who had once presided over the land-equalization work in Chuzhou.

He had come from Huainan and had worked there in depth; he certainly knew the local situation better than Zhang Xichong and Fan Zhi.

"Weizhen, you have come from Huainan. Tell us your opinion." Zhang Zhao warmly called Li Gu by his courtesy name, seeking his opinion.

Li Gu did not speak, but he could feel that at least two gazes were fixed on him with burning intensity.

One came from the Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs Zhang Xichong, and the other was surely from the Vice Director of the Chancellery Fan Zhi.

If he had a choice, he certainly would not wish to declare his position at this moment. Of these two men, one was the Emperor's veteran and weighty minister.

The other was the Emperor's trusted confidant, the two of them having already gotten close back when the Emperor first entered Liangzhou.

But at this moment he had no choice, and moreover he could not let the Emperor see any hesitation in him.

He must remember that since relinquishing the posts of Grand Army Transport Commissioner and Prefect of Chuzhou, apart from the prestige title of Grand Master of Silver and Blue Radiance that the Emperor had conferred on him, he still held no substantive office.

Therefore Li Gu stepped out of the ranks with extreme speed, and then swiftly produced a proposal.

"In reply to Your Majesty, from what your subject saw in Huainan, in places like Chuzhou in the Southern Tang state's former Huainan territory, taxes were far heavier than in our Huai River's northern prefectures of Xu, Yi, and Su, yet taxes could still be collected smoothly.

The reason, when investigated, is precisely that the Huai River's northern bandits are funded by the Lord of Southern Tang. They do not go to Huainan; they specialize in ravaging the Huai River's north.

The common people of the Huai River's northern lands have already been fleeced once by the Huai River's northern bandits. Even more, they no longer know whether the court has the final say, or whether this Great Official Li, Li Renshu, has the final say.

Now that the Sage has just brought an end to the chaos south of the Great River, the people's wealth, though not yet exhausted, amounts to only one share. If it is given to the Huai River's northern bandits, it cannot be given to the court.

If at this time we offer amnesty to the Huai River's northern bandits, who knows how great their appetite will be!

Therefore your subject recommends using both suppression and pacification in the Huai River's north: accept those who followed in blind conformity, so that they may turn back from their lost ways; severely punish the core bandits such as Li Renshu. Only by thoroughly crushing them can we make them behave.

Moreover, the Defense Commissioner of Chuzhou, Zhang Xiong, has had many dealings with Li Renshu. Your Majesty may issue an edict to Zhang Xiong, ordering him to assist in suppressing the bandits."

When Zhang Zhao heard this, he thought: right. In history, among the White-Armored Troops of Huainan, was Zhang Xiong not the great leader? And Li Renshu must certainly have been involved as well. If they were to strike Li Renshu, Zhang Xiong would surely be the first choice.

However, Li Gu was also a slippery fellow. He had said so much, yet the thing Zhang Zhao most wanted him to address — whether to restore the village-official system or continue the corvée-post system — he had not touched on at all.

Zhang Zhao did not think of it in terms of Li Gu fearing to offend people, because he did not feel that Zhang Xichong or Fan Zhi could inspire much fear in the assembled officials.

But he did sense Li Gu's hesitation, so he dropped the matter and prepared to summon him privately at some later time.

Just then, Empress Cao Yanxi had the Palace Food Service boil some mutton soup-cakes, and had personally brought them over with attendants. Zhang Zhao took the opportunity to announce the end of the court session and invited the assembled officials to eat something.

This small court session, which lasted over two hours, settled nothing at all except the determination to strike hard at the Huai River's northern bandits.

But this is the special nature of politics. The issuing of a policy certainly requires a great deal of deliberation. This is what is called "governing a great state is like cooking a small fish."

Having finished cooking his small fish, Zhang Zhao returned to the inner palace, his mind still weighing the gains and losses of the village-official system and the corvée-post system. In truth, Zhang Zhao inclined toward the village-official system.

This was not because he failed to understand the merits of the corvée-post system. A system that could be used by later generations for over a thousand years, and even used by the Republic in certain periods, absolutely had its merits — even great merits.

But in Zhang Zhao's heart was hidden a determination to encompass all four directions.

He wanted, within his lifetime, at least to stabilize the three territories of Hezhong, the Outer Northeast, and Jiaozhi, so that in every respect they would belong to the Chinese nation.

Even if he could only enfeoff a bunch of states there, and in the end they broke away from the court and formed separatist regimes, Zhang Zhao did not care.

As long as they were Han states, spoke the Han language, used Han classics, and considered themselves Han people, that would be enough.

But to spread branches and leaves outward on a large scale, he needed a strong village organization, one that could give the court the most detailed village data and mobilize a suitable population for migration.

While he was still considering this, a palace attendant came in to report that the Secretariat Director He Ning and the Minister of Personnel Feng Dao were outside the palace requesting an audience.

Zhang Zhao received the two men in the side hall, the Yuanzhen Hall. Looking at the dignified and imposing Feng Dao, Zhang Zhao knew that this old fox was ready to come out and work again, and he also knew that his regime had finally come to be seen by everyone under heaven as stable.

For when it came to reading the winds and protecting one's own position, no one could match Feng Dao, that man who never toppled.

However, though this man has talent, his problems are not small. The main issue is that Feng Dao's will is not firm; what he excels at is currying favor with both superiors and subordinates, and he is far too slick in his dealings.

He can recognize and employ capable men, but he lacks leadership authority. He and Zhang Xichong are exactly two extremes.

In Zhang Zhao's view, Zhang Xichong's understanding of state affairs and his breadth of vision cannot match Feng Dao's, but Zhang Xichong possesses one advantage that Feng Dao lacks.

That is, Zhang Xichong can make decisions. Once he has finished deliberating with Zhang Zhao, he will certainly carry the matter through to execution. If any official below dares to play tricks, Zhang Xichong will not hesitate to punish them decisively.

But Feng Dao cannot do this. He can make both superiors and subordinates remember his kindness and do him favors, but when it comes to making subordinates carry out orders resolutely, he cannot manage it.

Therefore, after Zhang Zhao entered the Eastern Capital, he did not put Feng Dao in an important post. Instead, he had him serve as Minister of Rites, handling matters of state ritual, laws and institutions, and the like.

He Ning, on the other hand, was the Later Jin minister Zhang Zhao valued most. This man was accomplished in both civil and military affairs. He was a literary man, but he could also mount a horse and shoot, had some understanding of military matters, and was extremely skilled in criminal law. Historically, he authored the Collection of Doubtful Cases, the earliest compilation of case selections in China.

Seeing the two enter together, Zhang Zhao quickly had seats brought for them, but the two did not sit down. Instead, after bowing with clasped hands, He Ning spoke.

"Sage, the two of us have come precisely because of the dispute over village officials and service posts."

"Oh? What views do the Secretariat and Master Youdao have?" Zhang Zhao had also guessed that these two had come most likely because of this matter.

He Ning glanced at Feng Dao, signaling him to speak first.

For in He Ning's view, when the two of them had originally planned to send word to Zhang Zhao and provide a pretext for raising troops, that had been something they had done together.

But looking at it now, He Ning felt that the benefits seemed to have been taken by him alone, and Feng Dao had not received much favor.

Although Feng Dao said nothing, He Ning felt great pressure inwardly, so he had constantly spoken well of Feng Dao before Zhang Zhao, and everywhere yielded to Feng Dao, letting him take the lead before Zhang Zhao.

After weighing his words for a moment, Feng Dao said to Zhang Zhao: "The village official system was essentially abandoned after the mid-Tang, because it was in truth one of the important reasons why, during the Two Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, and Sui, the state was restless and unstable at the grassroots level, and the great clans were able to exist.

It was with the existence of village officials, who screened the countryside, that the great clans could control the localities. Using the clan as a bond, they placed their kinsmen in the villages as village officials and squeezed out village officials who were not of their clan.

At their height, the villages of Hebei and Qilu were a tangled morass. Several generations of Sui and Tang emperors could not touch them, and even Emperor Taizong the Civil was deeply uneasy. Now that the village official system has at last been basically dismantled, the Sage must on no account restore it."

Zhang Zhao smiled and asked Feng Dao: "How does Minister Feng know that I wish to restore the village official system?"

Feng Dao clasped his hands again. "The Sage's ambition was already very clear back in Anxi. If Your Majesty only wished to be an emperor like those of the later dynasties' illustrious temples, you would have sent troops into Guanzhong to seize it long ago.

Now you are so cautious, practicing benevolence everywhere, honoring the loyal and righteous, seeking to restore propriety — your ambition is to encompass the whole world!"

"If you wish to encompass the whole world, you must rely on village officials, so that manpower and resources can be drawn from the villages. Therefore Your Majesty certainly has the desire to restore the village official system."

The words that followed were spoken by He Ning: "Your servant begs Your Majesty not to be impatient. Such a matter is truly a great affair of state."

Zhang Zhao nodded and thought to himself for a moment. He Ning's family was all in the Eastern Capital, so he probably had no particularly deep entanglements with the localities.

Moreover, this was the age of military men, so this Secretariat Director of his did not necessarily have much power. Thus he asked He Ning directly.

"Since the Secretariat knows my heart, if the village official system is not restored, how shall we guarantee the mobilization capacity of the villages?"

"Your servant begs Your Majesty to grant two months' time. Minister Feng and Zhao Xuanhui may be sent out to the various circuits, prefectures, and counties for detailed investigation, and then submit their findings for Your Majesty's decision."

Zhao Xuanhui was Zhao Ying, also one of the meritorious officials from Zhang Zhao's entry into the Central Plains. However, he had fallen ill before Zhang Zhao even entered the Eastern Capital, and had since resigned and been recuperating at home. It seemed now that his illness was much better.

Zhang Zhao looked at He Ning and Feng Dao, and saw that both their eyes were shining. This was not the look one would expect from old men of fifty or sixty, was it?

Feng Dao even clasped his hands and said to Zhang Zhao: "We servants served a false dynasty, and our offenses are great indeed. Now that we still have strength, we wish to contribute our efforts to the ten-thousand-year peace of the new dynasty."

Zhang Zhao understood immediately. Now that his own Great Zhou dynasty was secure, these old ministers who had been paperhangers in the Jin state finally wanted, while they could still move, to come out and do something so as to leave their names in history.

Otherwise, their experience as chief ministers of the Later Jin — which Zhang Zhao had branded a rebellious false dynasty — would be a stain on the historical record that they could never erase.

After thinking for a moment, Zhang Zhao quickly made his decision. "Then let Zhao Ying be appointed Vice Commissioner of Military Affairs and Investigating Censor of the southwestern prefectures and counties, to go out to the thirteen prefectures of Xiang, Deng, Jin, Ying, An, Fang, and the rest in Shannan East Circuit, and inspect the conditions of the people.

Let Feng Dao be appointed Right Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs and Investigating Censor of the southeastern prefectures and counties, to go out to the seventeen prefectures and counties of Xu, Chen, Cai, Ying, Song, Yan, Yi, Mi, Lai, Deng, and the rest."

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