During the Ming and Qing dynasties, as the rulers adjusted the relations of production, the social economy was further developed. Until the eve of the Opium War, the Gross National Product of the Qing Dynasty was even more comparable to that of Britain.
In the fifty years of Qianlong, the Qing Dynasty's gross national product accounted for 32% of the world's total, while Europe at this time accounted for only 22%, and the gdp of one China was 10% higher than that of the eleven major European countries. The year was 1785, and although the United States had been born, the Qing Dynasty was still in an absolute hegemonic position.
At that time, there were only ten cities in the world with a population of more than half a million, and there were eight such cities in Asia, except for Edo in Japan and Madras in India, the rest were in China: Nanjing, Beijing, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing. It can be seen that China's economic development level at that time was at the forefront of the world.
A country's economic level is among the highest in the world, and of course, the level of affluence of farmers is also the highest in the world. And all this prosperity and prosperity are almost all due to the adjustment of the relations of production.
First, the Ming Dynasty introduced the "One Whip Law", a measure that was initially implemented by Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant of the cabinet. When Emperor Muzong died, emperor Wanli was still very young, and Zhang Juzheng, as the crown prince's master, shouldered the legacy of the former emperor's dying orphan. At that time, he advocated the implementation of a whip law throughout the country, that is, to merge the former servitude, field endowments, and miscellaneous taxes into silver, and to divide the silver collected by each household on the fields and acres, according to the number of fields and acres.
According to the two tax laws levied by the person, the personal income tax is levied, that is, the property of the individual farmer. A whip law levied silver, i.e., farmers would have been required to serve in servitude, but they could also pay silver instead of serving instead. Previously, servitude was originally served according to the people, but a whip law distributed the silver paid on the fields and acres, to a certain extent, indicating that the role of the people in taxation was gradually declining, and the role of the farmer's assets was increasing.
In short, a whip method is levied according to the field mu and the people, and its main function is to "levy silver by conscription". This approach not only contributed to the development of the commodity economy, but also promoted the commercialization of agricultural products and the germ of capitalism.
Secondly, it is "cashier service", which has the same function as the two tax laws mentioned above, and it also alleviates the personal dependency relationship between farmers and the state. This measure can not only reduce the burden of rural households to serve, but also ensure agricultural production, which can be described as a two-pronged measure. However, on the other hand, paying the silver two will increase the burden on farmers. If the grain harvest of the peasant household is bumper, the grain price will fall, and at this time, if the grain is sold for silver and handed over, the peasant household will obviously suffer losses.
By the time of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, the Qing Dynasty began the second step in adjusting the relations of production:
The land of the ming dynasty was redistributed to farmers for farming, and called it "renamed field". The main reason for this move was that the Ming Dynasty's feudal lords frequently annexed land, causing many farmers to lose their cultivated land.
For example, Zhu Yuanzhang, he had a total of twenty-five princes in his lifetime, and these twenty-five princes each gave birth to seven or eight sons, and so on, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were countless descendants of the Zhu clan, and Zhu Yuanzhang alone produced hundreds of thousands of people. If it is according to the system of the Ming Dynasty, there will be countless princes who will be crowned kings.
In this way, the land was full of fiefdoms of the kings of the clan, and the peasants naturally had no land to plant.
According to the experience of too many fiefs of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the eight iron hat kings who have been crowned since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, only the Prince yi of the Yongzheng Emperor, and the king of Gong, Qing and Alcohol at the end of the Qing Dynasty are the iron hat kings. This also shows from the side that only twelve princes in the Qing Dynasty were raided by the times, and the other princes were demoted generation by generation.
For example, if you are a prince, your son is the king of the county, your grandson is Baylor, and your great-grandson is Bey. The prince will eventually be demoted to the Duke of Zhenguo, and the king of the county will eventually be demoted to the duke of Fuguo. Although it will decline from level to level, it will not fall again when it comes to the Auxiliary Duke. Although the Fuguo Dukes were hereditary, their treatment with the prince was much worse.
Because, the prince can live in the royal palace, and the descendants of the prince need to move out of the palace to find a place to live on their own after being demoted. Therefore, in the Qing Dynasty, there was always one emperor and one dynasty prince, and there were at most a dozen.
In the Ming Dynasty, the crowned princes could divide the land in other places, which was not the same as the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty concentrated all the princes in the capital, so almost all the palaces of the Qing Dynasty were in Beijing, such as the Yu Wangfu and the Zheng Wangfu. The palace of the Ming Dynasty was not only set up in other places, but also allowed the descendants of the Zhu clan to purchase family property in other places and annex the cultivated land of farmers.
As far as the Wanli Emperor was concerned, he himself was particularly greedy for money, and when he was fine, he loved to dig pits in the palace and bury silver. His favorite Fu King, Zhu Changxun, gave him more than four million acres of land after the fiefdom of Luoyang. According to historical records, Zhu Changxun was as "gluttonous" as his father, and his weight alone exceeded three hundred kilograms.
At the beginning, when King Li Chuang was attacking Luoyang, a local general said to Zhu Changxun: "Now that Luoyang is under siege, only a heavy reward will appear brave." Your family is rich, so why not give some money to reward the soldiers? In this way, the generals would fight with Li Chuangwang. However, Zhu Changxun said that he had no money, and finally only sold some old furniture to reward the soldiers.
The inquiring general was finally furious and opened the door and surrendered.
King Li Chuang already knew that King Fu was greedy for money, so after he entered the city, he burned Zhu Changxun with gold.
Specifically, it was to pour the melted gold into his mouth, and after Zhu Changxun was burned to death, he did not understand the hatred, and Li Chuangwang chopped up more than three hundred pounds of his body, mixed it with venison and cooked it for the next person to eat, calling it "Fulu Feast". Because, forced to have no land to plant, these ordinary people hated these canonized descendants of the Zhu clan, which was also the real reason why the Ming Dynasty prince was killed.
Although the Qing Dynasty treated the Ming Dynasty royal family preferentially on the surface, but behind the scenes, it was merciless, so the descendants of the Zhu clan were all killed. The land that was once the king of the domain was also changed by the Kangxi Emperor to a renamed field cultivated by peasant households, that is, who planted it to whom, thus solving the problem that the peasants had no land to plant, and the Kangxi Emperor who promoted this move naturally won the support of the peasant class.
Again, people will never levy a poll tax. The Kangxi Emperor ordered that the poll tax should be fixed from the fifty years of the Kangxi Dynasty.
For example, if there are ten people in a peasant household, then, starting from the 51st year of the Kangxi Dynasty, they will have to pay a tax on the people of ten people. However, this fixed poll tax also has some drawbacks, if the farmer's family relatives die of illness, there are seven people left, he still needs to pay the ten people's tax on time, so such a provision is also unreasonable.
Finally, the Ding tax is spread into the fields. During the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor, he announced that the land would be divided into acres and abolished the previous poll tax. At that time, the poll tax could be levied at 3.35 million taels a year, which was a drop in the bucket for the imperial court, and even if it was abolished, it would not have an impact on the state finances. The expropriation of land and silver was no longer levied, the state's control over the people was also eased, and the number of hidden people was reduced.
Because, in the past, the poll tax, the people in order to pay less money, will falsely report the population of the family. After the exemption from the rending tax, the hidden population of the Qing Dynasty was immediately exposed. According to statistics, during the Kangxi period, the population of the Qing Dynasty was 21 million, and by the time Kangxi died, the national population had exceeded 100 million.
In the twentieth year of Qianlong, the national population was 200 million, and by the time Qianlong died, the total population had reached 300 million. The Daoguang Emperor was even more pronounced, with the population of the Qing Dynasty rising to 4.1 billion, or about 40 percent of the world's population.
Thus, during the Qing Dynasty, China was under enormous demographic pressure.
Resources:
[History of the Ming Dynasty", "A Brief History of Chinese Finance", "Chronicle of Jining Zhili Prefecture"]