Looking back at the entire history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is not difficult to find that the finances of the Ming Dynasty were much tighter than those of the Qing Dynasty. As we all know, war is the most profitable, but it is also the most laborious and costly. However, since the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, it has experienced many major battles such as the Battle of Salhu, the Battle of Bingzi, and the Battle of Pingding San Francisco, and the Ming Dynasty does not seem to have frequent wars.
Then, compared with the Qing dynasty, which aspired to be strong through war, the situation of the Ming dynasty seemed to be more stable and more suitable for farming and living. But the fact is that the Ming Dynasty's finances often had deficit crises, while the Qing Dynasty's treasury was extremely adequate.
Of course, the Ming Dynasty also racked its brains to solve the financial problems that were constantly emerging. During the Jiajing period, the Ming Dynasty introduced the famous "One Whip Law" to increase taxes. The most effective implementation of this law was Zhang Juzheng, a whipping method that he vigorously promoted, which brought the Ming Dynasty's fiscal revenue to its peak.
In addition, in order to solve the financial problem, the Ming Dynasty even took over the mining package of gold, silver and copper to the imperial court, and even added more than 20 additional tax items. However, all efforts have not been able to resolve the fiscal crisis as hoped. What is even more confusing is that contrary to the practice of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchus did not try to increase taxes after entering the customs, but greatly reduced taxes. The war worked hard and lost money, and tax relief benefited the people, but the Qing Dynasty's treasury was almost always full.
So, how did the Qing Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty achieve such diametrically opposed practices, but they were able to achieve the result of the prosperity of the people? Where did the Qing dynasty's confidence come from? As the leader of an ancient dynasty, the words and deeds of the emperor are important to a country, so are these differences related to the emperor's concept of governance?
Next, let us "be in charge" together, allocate the abacus of fiscal revenue and expenditure in the clear and clear dynasties, and find the reasons for such differences.
01. There are great differences in all aspects of fiscal expenditure in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Open source and throttling are not only the secret of a family's wealth, but also for a court. So, what are the main huge financial expenditures of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and what are the differences between the financial expenditures of the two dynasties?
If from the "Qingshi Record. If we look at the records of the Holy Ancestor, we can know that the financial expenditure of the Ming Dynasty was mainly spent on raising clansmen, officials and clan kings, while the Qing Dynasty was mainly spent on the war to strengthen the country.
Although the degree of emphasis on civilization and light on martial arts is not so serious compared to that of the Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty is not much different from the Song Dynasty in the degree of emphasis on civilization and light on martial arts. Because the rulers of the Ming Dynasty valued civility over martial arts, the royal family was extremely extravagant. Therefore, the amount of food and clothing they spent on the royal court was very huge.
According to the Qingshi Record. The Record of the Holy Ancestor recorded: "There are 9,000 palace women in the Ming Ji Dynasty, and 100,000 internal prisoners. Its palace used 400,000 taels of silver and supplied millions of taels of silver. "But with the Ching Shi Record. The difference between the records of the Holy Ancestor is that the data recorded in the "Chinese Financial History" is that the court fat powder silver is as high as more than 4 million taels per year.
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty took this as a lesson and focused on reducing the number of court attendants, and the number of eunuchs was directly reduced from more than 100,000 to 3,000, and the number of palace maids was only a few hundred. The court expenses of the Qing Dynasty were greatly reduced, from the initial "more than 600,000 taels" to 70,000 taels during the Kangxi period. However, during the Qianlong period, the amount of court expenses began to rise dramatically, and by the late Qianlong period, the expenses of the Qing imperial family had reached 4 million taels per year. Most of the rulers of the Qing Dynasty built imperial gardens, so the treasury also spent a lot on this project.
Although the Qing court's treasury spent an astonishing 4 million taels of silver per year during the Qianlong period, if you look at the devaluation of silver, the amount of 4 million silver in the Qing court is only a quarter of the same period of the Ming Dynasty.
In addition to the huge amount of silver spent by the Ming Dynasty on the annual consumption of food and clothing for the imperial family, another person who made the Ming Dynasty's treasury have a great expenditure every year was the official of the Ming Dynasty.
So, how arrogant can the Ming Dynasty spend on official salaries?
On this point, we can get a general idea of the number of officials in the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, becoming an official was definitely a popular way out for people at that time. How popular is it? If we look at the current background of our lives today, the enthusiasm of the Ming Dynasty people to join the public examination and become an official is comparable to the army of public examination compilation and postgraduate examination in the past three years of the epidemic. But the difference is that the Ming Dynasty seemed to be more successful as an official than today's "examination party".
From the perspective of the number of officials in Chinese dynasties, from the Western Han Dynasty, the main officials of the state institutions at that time were about 7,000, but this number of officials developed from the Western Han Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty, but the number reached a staggering number of 34,000. This horrific number of officials has a technical term: "redundant officials". Although as early as the Song Dynasty, the number of redundant officials had reached a terrifying level.
However, during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, the number of redundant officials was three times that of the Song Dynasty. If the number of redundant officials during the Chenghua period is shocking, then if we look closely at the number of redundant officials during the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, it will be incredible.
During the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, the number of military attachés alone reached 100,000, in addition to a civilian group of more than 20,000 people. The most direct result of the increase in the number of officials is that it has led to a sharp increase in the expenditure of officials.
During the Qing Dynasty, the number of "redundant officials" began to drop significantly. According to the Guangyang Miscellaneous Records, the total number of civil and military officials during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty was as many as 15,600, and only another 2,000 were added during the Jiaqing period. In contrast, during the Ming Dynasty, the number of redundant officials reached 120,000.
The great contrast between the number of officials in the Ming and Qing dynasties was 10 times, which made the Qing Dynasty's expenditure on official salaries far less luxurious than that of the Ming Dynasty. Taking the 31st year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty as an example, in that year, Qianlong gave 900,000 taels to the princes and officials, 120,000 taels to the princes of the foreign domain, 3.47 million taels to cultivate honesty in culture and governance, and 800,000 taels for military duties, a total of 5.29 million taels. This also included the total expenditure of tribute from the clan dynasty.
But the financial expenditure of the Ming Dynasty was completely different from that of the Qing Dynasty, so the Ming Dynasty spent a lot of money on the provision of officials, is it because the population of the Ming Dynasty is larger than that of the Qing Dynasty, so more officials are needed to manage?
According to the "History of Ming", the largest population of the Ming Dynasty appeared in the Taizu period, but it did not exceed 70 million people, while the peak of the population of the Qing Dynasty reached about 400 million, but all the officials of the Qing court combined were less than the number of hundreds of thousands of officials during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty. From this, we can conclude that the huge expenditure of the Ming Dynasty on official salaries was not due to the large population of the Ming Dynasty and the need for a large number of officials to manage.
The reason why the Ming Dynasty's treasury was huge day after day, in addition to redundant officials and court food and drink, another huge expenditure was on the support of the clan king and diplomatic expenses.
So, what kind of huge sums of money did the Ming Dynasty spend on the support and diplomatic expenses of the clan king? In terms of army spending, how did the Ming Dynasty behave?
The cutting of the domain of the Ming Dynasty has always been a long way off, starting from Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty to ending with Emperor Zhu Zhanji of Ming Xuanzong, it took five generations of emperors to achieve certain achievements. Before the rulers of the Ming Dynasty had cut the domain, the cost of supporting the lord of the clan was always expensive. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the rulers at the time gave at least one-third of the Ming Dynasty's fiscal revenue to support the vampire-clan clique lying on the body of the Ming Dynasty.
In the 41st year of Jiajing, "the world's wealth was 4 million stones per year, and each of them was 8.53 million stones." "In the later years, as the number of lords increased, the amount of this expenditure became even greater.
It can be seen that for the imperial court, the existence of the clan king has long lost the meaning of the blood and family relationship originally used to connect the emperor and the heir, so as to jointly expel foreign enemies and defend the homeland, but it is like a moth, making the imperial court not only like a man, but also raising tigers. Therefore, it was imperative for the Ming emperors to cut their domains.
However, in addition to the expenses of the clan king, the Ming Dynasty also spent a lot of money diplomatically.
The Ming Dynasty promoted "thick and thin" diplomacy, giving the tributary country a lot of wealth with an attitude of reward, so as to show its "heavenly kingdom" spirit. According to the " History of the Ming " , the number of tributary states was as high as 148 , all of which received a huge amount of silver from the Ming Dynasty, and the number is unknown. The example of Japan paying tribute to the Ming Dynasty to tide over the difficulties is enough to show that the Ming Dynasty was "generous" to the tributary country for the sake of the false name of "Heaven".
During the Yongle period, there was an economic crisis in Japan, and they chose to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty, and they quickly overcame the difficulties. For this reason, Geng Zhi's attendant Zou Ji hurriedly gave advice: "Money going out of foreign countries has been forbidden since the past, but now it is exhausting everything in the world to do with it, which can be described as a loss of convenience." But it doesn't seem to have stopped his yearning for fame.
However, the Ming Dynasty's generous use of tributary countries, who can say that it is not to maintain the majesty of the so-called "Kingdom of Heaven", beating the swollen face and filling up the fat? However, the Qing Dynasty seems to be much more low-key than the Ming Dynasty's diplomatic spending.
The Qing Dynasty was very principled in diplomacy, with strict restrictions on the size and amount of tribute. As a result, there are only seven tributary states, and the cost is almost negligible.
The fact that the Qing dynasty behaved in diplomacy did not mean that they did not care about the majesty of the country. However, the Qing Dynasty placed more emphasis on the maintenance of national majesty on the enhancement of military strength.
In order to train a strong army to maintain the country, the Qing Dynasty has always attached great importance to military spending. Military spending is between 13 million and 24 million taels, and usually about 17 million taels. It is understood that during the Kang Qian dynasty, he even more supported military spending. The "Records of the Kangxi Dynasty" states, "Ranking eight with soldiers' salaries". The proportion of miscellaneous expenses and military expenses is enough to show the importance it attaches to it. During the Qianlong period, military salaries were paid 67/10 for living in the country. During the entire Qianlong period, the military expenditure amounted to more than 150 million taels of silver. Throughout the Qing Dynasty, military spending was the most important amount of its financial expenditure.
Compared with the Qing Dynasty's military spending, the Ming Dynasty paid less attention to it. This can be seen from the records of his military expenditure, the "Financial History of China" believes that the Ming army spent a total of 1.8 million yuan, while Liu Zehua's "Ancient Chinese History" believes that it was 2 million.
It is understood that the military expenditure of the Ming Dynasty had a process of increase, and in the early stage, due to the implementation of the tuntian system, the military expenditure was not much. During the Chenghua period, the military expenditure was only 400,000 taels, and it increased during the Longqing period, but it only reached 2.8 million taels. It was not until the late Ming Dynasty, perhaps because of the proximity of the war, that military spending was greatly increased, and at this time, about 4 million taels were spent on Jiubian alone. Although the military expenditure of the Ming Dynasty increased after the implementation of the recruitment system, this amount was still too small compared to the tens of millions of military spending of the Qing Dynasty.
After looking at the various expenditures of the Ming and Qing dynasties, we seem to understand the reason for the total emptiness of the Ming treasury. The Ming Dynasty spent too much money, and much of its spending was to damage the national capital rather than generate income. Although the Qing Dynasty was keen on war, it was able to expand its territory as a result, and there were spoils as subsidies even if it was not good. In contrast, the high and low opinions.
It is said that the richer the more stingy, but since you can't throttle, then open source is also a clever sect. So, in terms of revenue generation, can the Ming Dynasty be superior to the Qing Dynasty?
02. Ming and Qing dynasties also have different income generation and income generation methods
From the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, we can understand the fiscal revenue of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Kangxi period of fiscal revenue was roughly between 30 million taels and 40 million taels, and the peak occurred in the Qianlong period, with a value of 47 million taels, of which agricultural tax (Diding Yin) accounted for 85%. The fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was roughly between 20 million taels and 40 million taels a year. Its highest income year is the sixth year of Wanli, but its amount only exceeds 40 million taels, of which agricultural taxes account for 90%.
Compared with the two dynasties, the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was significantly lower. In addition, the value of silver in the Ming Dynasty was about three to four times that of the Qing Dynasty (because of the large influx of silver, which led to the depreciation of silver), so the Ming Dynasty's fiscal revenue was much weaker than that of the Qing Dynasty.
The same conclusion can be drawn from the national treasury silver of the two dynasties. In the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty, the national treasury of silver was only 2.48 million taels, and due to proper management of revenue and expenditure, it had risen to 27 million taels in the last year, and even rose to 70 million taels during the Qianlong period. The treasury of the Qing Dynasty grew stronger and stronger. But the Ming Dynasty was much inferior, and its highest national bank was in the last year of Zhang Juzheng's reforms, but it was only 13 million taels. It can be seen that whether it is the comparison of fiscal revenue or the comparison of national inventory and silver, the Qing Dynasty far exceeds the Ming Dynasty.
So, in order to generate revenue, what kind of measures did the Ming and Qing branches take?
During the Ming Dynasty, although Zhu Yuanzhang, who was a farmer, understood the difficulties of the people very well, he could not move the official eunuch at the moment, so he had to find another way.
He gave privileges to bureaucratic landlords and ladies, who were exempt from taxes on the basis of their status. In this way, all the taxes of the whole country fell on the peasants, and the bureaucratic landlords and so on did not have to painstakingly extract their share of taxes and fees from the peasants. Therefore, starting with him, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, on the basis of granting privileges to the nobles, started with the idea of reducing the tax channels and exploiting the noble officials again, so as to guarantee taxes and slightly reduce the burden on the peasants.
This practice did not form a formal legal provision until the Jiajing period, that is, a whipping law. This law benefited from the two tax laws of the Tang Dynasty, greatly simplified the tax system, and promoted the later progress of the tax law of the Qing Dynasty. However, due to the fiscal deficit, the Ming Dynasty had to add 20 additional tax items to increase revenue.
Unfortunately, the efforts of the Ming Dynasty still failed to change the empty state of the treasury, and even the fiscal revenue could not catch up with the Qing Dynasty. So, how exactly did the Qing Dynasty achieve this level?
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the institutional standard of the "one whip law" of the Ming Dynasty was still implemented, but miscellaneous taxes such as three wages were abolished, further reducing the burden on the people.
In addition, in order to further win the love of the people, successive emperors of the Qing Dynasty have made efforts. During Shunzhi's reign, he reduced taxes many times. When Kangxi arrived, inspired by a whipping method and reality, he began to try to implement the practice of "breeding people, never endowing", which can be described as a great attempt. In addition, he continued to exempt the people of the whole country from taxes through such means as calamity, encore, common worm, and squirrel. Kangxi carried out two rounds of general fighting, and a total of 150 million taels of taxes were reduced in the country.
In the Yongzheng period, he sorted out Kangxi's policies, formed a system of "apportionment into mu", and took advantage of the trend to comprehensively promote "apportionment into mu" (abolished the poll tax) and "fire consumption returned to the public", once again for the welfare of the people and the country.
Therefore, after the continuous attempts and reforms of these emperors in the Qing Dynasty, the burden of ordinary civilians was greatly eased, the peasants' enthusiasm for production was high, and the wealth created naturally increased.
From the above, after sorting out the income and expenditure of the Ming and Qing dynasties, we seem to understand that the Ming Dynasty has not experienced a major baptism of war, but the national treasury is far inferior to the Qing Dynasty.
The vast majority of the Qing Dynasty's financial expenditure was spent on military affairs, opening up more than 1,300 square kilometers of territory, and showing the Qing court's momentum to foreign countries with its mighty military might. In addition, successive emperors followed the precepts, but paid more attention to personal enjoyment, and worked hard to govern, accumulating sufficient treasury for future generations.
In contrast, most of the various financial expenditures of the Ming Dynasty were spent on the provision of the lord of the clan, the distribution of official servants, and the support of the court, in addition, a large amount of money was exchanged for "majesty" and "peace". On the other hand, in terms of military expenditure, the Ming Dynasty does not seem to spend much, which also laid the groundwork for the repeated defeats of the late Ming Dynasty and the collapse of the Empire State Building.