History has its own life, it is like a person, both easy-going and self-respecting. ——Yu Qiuyu
The ordinary people of the feudal dynasty asked for nothing more than wives, children, a hut, grain to feed their stomachs, and coarse cloth and linen clothes to be acquainted, and if they could have a cow ploughing the field and eat a meal of meat from time to time, they would certainly sing the praises of the emperor and the imperial court.
In ancient times, when science and technology and productivity were low, such a simple need could be met enough to flaunt the history books of the Taiping Dynasty, but in fact, not many ordinary people in ancient and modern China and abroad had this blessing.
First, let's talk about the prosperous kangqian
After three generations of governance by kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, the Qing Dynasty ushered in the last prosperous era in China's feudal history - the kangqian shengshi, known in the West as "High Qing".
Kangqian flourished
On the surface, the population exceeded 100 million for the first time, and broke 300 million consecutively, abolished the untouchable system, liberated the lowest class of society, the empire reached an unprecedented expansion, second only to the Yuan, the absolute monarchy reached a historical peak, it seems that Jin Ou Yonggu, the gross domestic product accounted for more than one-third of the world, the national treasury financial reserves are sufficient, maintained at 60 million to 70 million yuan all year round, and the annual fiscal revenue is as high as 20 to 30 million.
In fact, this is a false prosperity, and the superficial light is difficult to hide the failure.
The country is rich and the people are poor. In 1793, when a delegation led by George Macartney, in the name of wishing the Qianlong Emperor a happy birthday, tried to negotiate to open the Chinese market (but to no avail), they saw a terrible poverty. The people of the Qing Dynasty would even jump into the sea to retrieve the dead chickens and ducks discarded by the mission, snatch the used tea leaves and brew them and thank them. At that time, ordinary people only earned more than thirty taels a year, but the cost was more than this number, they needed to live by borrowing debts, and in the year of disaster, they would be destroyed and killed, and the scene of selling children and daughters was far more tragic than the plain four words in the history books.
Political decay. It is mainly manifested in the excessive deformity of the monarchical centralization and the rampant corruption. Officials at all levels are insatiably greedy, and even blatantly embezzlement and bribery, and bend the law for personal gain. Ideologically, the "literal prison" has stifled cultural and humanistic development, and the development of science and technology has been repeatedly suppressed and abolished, and the level has lagged behind the West for more than two hundred years. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that advanced scientific knowledge was slowly introduced from the West to China.
Military decline. As early as the Kangxi Dynasty quelled the "San Francisco Rebellion", the military discipline of the Eight Banners of Manchuria had been dispersed, and the military strength was much worse than before. Later, the Qing court mainly relied on the Green Camp in the war. But in a decaying social environment, the Green Camp also quickly became corrupt: withholding military salaries, colluding with soldiers and bandits, and enriching corruption. When Jiaqing was still the crown prince, he accompanied the Qianlong Emperor in a military parade, but what he saw was a situation of "shooting arrows, arrows are false; galloping horses, people falling to the ground" situation. When Ma Jiaerni came to Zhenjiang to watch the Qing army's exercises, he found that the Qingfang city wall was on the verge of collapse, the soldiers were not neatly dressed, the main equipment of the team was cold weapons such as bows, arrows, halberds, spears, and swords, and a few backward muskets were also in tatters. Assertion: "Chinese society has been stuck and cannot move forward", "its prosperity is over", "here can be easily landed".
The economy is weak. In 1757, the Qing government officially implemented a policy of closure, and the Qianlong Emperor announced that Western merchant ships were allowed to berth and trade in Humen, Guangdong, which seriously hindered the development of China's economy and missed the opportunity to learn advanced Western technology. The total output of industrial products, two indicators of iron and cloth, has never even returned to the level of the late Ming Dynasty. Until around 1840, China's industrial output was only 6% of the world's total. Neither the total output nor the proportion in the world is as good as that of the late Ming Dynasty 200 years ago.
The gap between rich and poor. Officials at that time were very extravagant about eating, and there were many meat dishes for several meals a day, while the public ate chaff dishes. There are only two kinds of houses that Macartney saw when he visited China, one is the rich family and the other is the poor family. "Where we pass and on both sides of the river, most of the houses are grass huts with earthen walls and grass roofs. There are also a few tall, paint-decorated houses that may be the residences of the wealthy. It is rare to see a house of a middle-class family." Macartney's deputy envoy, Staunton, believed that the gap between rich and poor in China was the most severe in the country they had ever seen.
It is no exaggeration to say that both in terms of the quality and quantity of prosperity, the prosperity of the Qing Dynasty had a trend of total decadence and collapse that was rare in history.
However, the Macartney delegation visited China because of the kneeling ceremony, and when the Qianlong Emperor heard the news, he was furious and ordered that the reception standard be lowered
No wonder Macartney said: "Since the Conquest of the North or manchurian Tatars, at least in the last 150 years, there has been no improvement, no advance, or rather, regression; As we march through the arts and sciences every day, they are in fact becoming semi-barbarians," "a tattered first-class warship," predicting that sooner or later it will "no longer be disciplined and safe" and that "Britain will benefit more from this change than any other country."
Marx also once said: "A great empire with a population of almost one-third of mankind, regardless of the situation of the times, is content with the status quo, artificially isolated from the world, and therefore strives to deceive itself with the illusion of the perfection of the heavenly dynasty." Such an empire was doomed to be crushed in a deadly duel.
Let's talk about the more decadent end of the Qing Dynasty, why the fiscal revenue "leads the way"
The Jiaqing Emperor failed to effectively reverse the decline of the Qing government, and even the false prosperity of the Kangqian dynasty could not be maintained.
In fact, since the late Qianlong period, the continuous peasant uprisings throughout the country, such as the Miaomin Uprising in 1795, the White Lotus Uprising in 1796, and the Tianli Sect Uprising in 1813, have hollowed out the Qing Dynasty's family foundation.
Since the beginning of the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty has been repeatedly defeated, with land cuts and compensation, the transfer of sovereignty, and the mighty Taiping Rebellion in modern history, and the Qing government can no longer hold on.
By 1853, a large country with hundreds of millions of people and tens of millions of square kilometers of territory, the Qing Dynasty household department only had 220,000 taels of silver!
In the face of the uprising of the Taiping Army everywhere, since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the capital of Tianjing (Nanjing), the Qing government lost the largest source of fiscal and tax revenue.
Taiping Rebellion
Militarily, in order to suppress the uprising, the Qing government had to rely on local regiments to train their weapons, such as the later Xiang Army and Huai Army, but the Qing government itself could not give any economic help. Just as the so-called "soldiers eat food", without money, you can never fight a war.
In desperation, the Xianfeng third year (1853) Lijin finally came out, and the Qing government could not maintain the ancestral system of "never adding endowments" formulated by the Kangxi Emperor in form.
Lijin, also known as lijin, lijin tax, its initial tax rate is 1 % (1%), so it is called. Initially it was generally divided into centri (live) and sit (pallet). The former is a passing tax, which is levied on goods in transit and drawn from traders; the latter is a transaction tax, which is levied at the place of production or sale and drawn from the merchants.
Li Jinxian only set up cards in the Yangzhou area to collect taxes, and the goods were only for the rice trade, in order to raise the salaries of the Jiangbei camp to suppress the Taiping Army.
Later, it gradually spread to the whole country, and the scope was also expanded to department stores, salt, foreign medicine, and native medicine, taking Guangxi as an example, the levy items were twenty-nine categories, reaching 1,942 items, as small as handkerchiefs, purses, fan bags, and rice flour, vinegar, and garlic, all of which had to bear the burden of gold. In short, everything in the city is not expropriated.
What is even more frightening is that while the national circulation and taxation targets are expanded, the tax rate is not limited to one percent, and some are as high as more than twenty percent! The most terrifying thing is one card and one centimeter, that is, one deduction for one level at a time.
The power to collect lijin is delegated to the hands of local feudal officials, not only the tax rate and types of lijin are different, but the bureau cards are also set arbitrarily, such as Yangzhou to Huai'an is only three hundred miles away, and there are eight lika in the middle; Suzhou to Kunshan is only more than fifty miles, and there are four collection cards. It is really "five miles and one card, ten miles and one bureau" layer by layer, which greatly limits the development of domestic industry and commerce.
The Bureau of Gold levies the Centauri
The establishment of regimental training and the collection of gold gave the local officials of the Qing Dynasty military and financial autonomy. Putting the "barrel of the gun" and the "money bag" in his own hands, gradually forming a situation in which the lower keshang and the tail cannot be dropped, the future southeast mutual protection, and the fact that the Beiyang New Army has become Yuan Shikai's private army, it will not be surprising that the Qing court cannot command it.
Li Jin was a measure taken by the Qing government to quench its thirst, and it continued its own life for decades, and finally it also wanted its own life.
The most tragic thing is the ordinary people, the levy of the cents from the beginning, coupled with the increase of other harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the Qing government's fiscal revenue has repeatedly reached a new high.
In 1850, the highest income of the Qing government was only about 40 million taels, and by 1887, the number doubled to more than 85.78 million taels of silver, and by 1909, it had soared to 263 million taels!
At the beginning of January 1912, the Qing Tingdu branch announced the 1911 fiscal revenue: 301.91 million taels of silver, which is an unprecedented figure, and the financial revenue of the Qing Dynasty exceeded 300 million. More than a month later, on February 12, 1912, the Qing Emperor abdicated.
The total amount and proportion of fiscal revenue at the end of the Qing Dynasty
From the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Kangqian, especially from the Opium War to the Sino-Japanese War, and even the Republic of China period, China's national strength and the living standards of the people have almost declined all the way, and one of the fundamentals is the ruling class's wanton expropriation of the people.
Long-term exploitation and looting, war destruction and plunder, easy children and food frequently appear in the history books, ordinary people only have a dirty and torn pants, the big girl and the little daughter-in-law can not even go out during the day, every time they read this, it makes people cry.
China should be self-reliant!