Why did the "Huang Zongxi's Law" exist in Chinese history?

Author: Ni Yuping (Vice Dean of School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Professor and PhD Supervisor, Department of History)

【Abstract】 The "Huang Zongxi's Law" believes that the tax burden of the common people in Chinese history will increase with the reform of taxation in successive times. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the phenomenon of "Huang Zongxi's Law" that appeared due to the adjustment of the tax system appeared repeatedly. The fundamental reason for this phenomenon in China's history lies in the system itself. Only by getting out of the historical circle of "Huang Zongxi's Law" can the people really live a good life. In 2006, the agricultural tax was officially abolished, and the burden on Chinese farmers for more than two thousand years was finally written off.

"Huang Zongxi's Law" is a theory with influence beyond the scope of the discipline of history. This assertion originated from Huang Zongxi's article "Ming Yi To Be Visited: Tian Zhisan". In the article, he enumerated the situation from the reform of the rent adjustment and the two tax laws to the one whip law, pointing out that the establishment of the rent adjustment in the early Tang Dynasty, and the change to the two tax law in Yang Yan, "although the name of the rent adjustment is not clear, in fact, it is not transferred into the rent"; the Ming Dynasty practiced a whip law, "those who are not old enough, the miscellaneous service is still complicated ... Woohoo! When the amount of tax has accumulated so far, there will be few for the people to have a living" (1). In his view, in the past tax reforms in China's history, every time the reform was carried out, the tax burden of the people increased once. This is the core content of "Huang Zongxi's Law".

The essence of "Huang Zongxi's Law" is that the government continues to raise taxes

The famous historian Mr. Wang Jiafan once listed This simplification of Huang Zongxi's description as the following formula:

Two taxes = rent adjustment + horizontal levy (extralegal levy)

One whip = (renting + horizontal levy) + horizontal levy

Spreading into the mu = (renting the yong adjustment + horizontal levy + horizontal levy) + horizontal levy

Universal: B = a (1 + nx) (n is the frequency of change, x is the horizontal sign)

Mr. Wang Jiafan pointed out in the book "A Hundred Years of Turbulence and The Reciprocation of a Thousand Years", "The two tax laws, one whip law, and the diding system (spreading the land into acres) should be affirmed in the sense of the evolution of the taxation form, but it contains the increase in the absolute value of taxation, which is also undeniable", "The arithmetic progression of the absolute value of this tax actually offsets all the positive results brought about by agricultural growth since the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties" (2).

In addition to Huang Zongxi, there are many people who hold similar views in Chinese history. Taking the two tax laws as an example, Lu Yan and Wang Fuzhi both believe that this is a method of accumulating wealth by legalizing illegal taxes. Lu Yan pointed out in the article "Six Articles of Equal taxation and compassion for the people, On the Disadvantages of the Two Taxes Must Have a Revolution" that the two tax laws "adopt illegal orders of power as a system of economy; and the total nameless violent endowment is established in order to establish a permanent rule" (3). In his view, the inclusion of "illegal" taxes in the "economic system" is an unavoidable maladministration of the two tax laws. Wang Fuzhi wrote in the "Reading Through the Commentary" that "the law of the two taxes is a temporary extra-legal law and included in the law" (4), expressing a similar view. Because of this, Fu Zhiyu believes that the generalization of "Huang Zongxi's law" itself is not comprehensive, and "it is probably a bit narrow to summarize Huang Zongxi's own opinions and family's words as 'laws'" (5).

Of course, there are also scholars who do not agree with the "Huang Zongxi's law". According to Du, farmers' taxes generally change cyclically, and "it is difficult for this law to be true in its original sense" (6). Zhou Xueguang pointed out that "systematic and meticulous research work has not found the historical trend of increasing tax climbs described by Huang Zongxi's law" and "there is no convincing historical basis for the phenomenon of 'accumulation and no return' described by Huang Zongxi's law" (7).

However, in the author's opinion, observing the "Huang Zongxi's law" requires a long-term perspective. The "Huang Zongxi's Law" does exist in Chinese history, because the government revenue in China's history is indeed increasing, and the actual burden of the people is also increasing.

The historical practice of the Ming and Qing dynasties has proved the existence of the "Huang Zongxi Law"

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, due to the adjustment of the tax system, the phenomenon of "Huang Zongxi's Law" appeared repeatedly.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, in order to recruit and assign conscripts, the Ming court compiled a detailed fish scale atlas and a yellow book, which firmly limited the common people to the land. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor took the lead in plundering real estate, setting up a large number of imperial estates, large landlords hiding taxes, and government revenue decreased, while expenditure increased day by day. Peasants throughout the country have gradually become the strong will of officials and people in various localities from fleeing to resisting endowment and resistance to military service, from "stealing mines" to armed resistance to "mining prohibition" and "mountain closure," and from resisting rent to arming "seizing land in the fields." The most important measure of Zhang Juzheng's reform was the implementation of a whiplash law on the assignment of conscription, the specific content of which was: the conscription of conscription; the peasants could pay for the conscription, and the force difference was borne by the government; the field endowment and the servitude were all levied; the silver of the service was "measured by the land", and the Ding and tian shared. Although a whip law simplified the procedures for the collection of conscription and changed the previous method of separate collection of conscription and conscription, so that the two were combined into one, the peasants' burdens were not reduced in the slightest, but only the illegal taxes previously paid were legalized.

This was followed by the famous "three salaries" plus pie. In order to deal with Nurhaci, who had raised troops in the northeast, the Ming Dynasty launched a levy on "Liao". The "Liao's salary" is levied three times, the first and second times are levied three cents and five cents per mu, and the third time is increased by two cents per mu, for a total of nine cents on the third occasion. In the third year of Chongzhen (1630), the Ming court forcibly levied three percent of the "Liao Salary" in addition to the nine percent levy; in the tenth year (1637), in order to suppress the peasant rebellion, the "Suppression Salary" was levied, and more than 3.3 million yuan was dispatched every year; in the twelfth year (1639), the Ming Court re-added the training salary in addition to the "Liao Salary" and "Suppression Salary", and levied more than 7.3 million silver per year. The "three salaries" were sent up to 20 million taels, several times more than the positive amount, and the people were miserable, which became an important reason for accelerating the demise of the Ming Dynasty. When the Qing army entered the customs, the regent Dolgun issued an edict declaring that the "three salaries" would be exempted in order to win the hearts and minds of the people, but in fact it was only to avoid notoriety, change the "Liao salary" to "nine percent silver," "nine percent of the salary, or "nine percent of the land acre," and increase the levy as usual; the training salary was not only levied as usual, but also greatly expanded the amount of additional acres. (8) This is undoubtedly another practice of incorporating illegal expropriations of large amounts that were originally temporarily apportioned into the system.

During the Kangxi Dynasty, he compiled the "Concise Complete Book of Enlistment" as a basis for the expropriation of diding silver. In the fifty-first year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1712), the Kangxi Emperor announced the edict: "The famous Ding in the book of money and grain collected will always be the quota, and the people born thereafter will be exempted from increasing the money and grain", and the policy of "breeding people and never adding endowments" will be implemented from the fifty-first year of Kangxi, and those who reach the age of Ding will no longer undertake Ding service. Yongzheng continued this policy and expropriated it into the land mu in order to "spread the land into the mu". The amortization of the mu is not to abolish the tax on people, but to fix the amount of silver that is easy to move into the land to ensure income. At that time, the national people's tax was 3.29 million taels, and all of them were apportioned into the field to give 26.36 million taels of silver, which was equivalent to increasing the burden of the field with 11%.

The appearance of lijin in the late Qing Dynasty is another embodiment of the "Huang Zongxi's Law". In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), due to the Taiping Army uprising, the military expenditure was not available, and Lei Lei, the right attendant of the Punishment Department who assisted in Yangzhou military affairs, founded Lijin as a source of courage to raise the salaries of the recruited soldiers. Because there are large profits to be tapped, the gold system has been gradually promoted, and from the initial collection of only the merchants to the squatters, to the simultaneous establishment of bureaus and cards, the collection of live cents from the merchants, the tax has risen sharply, collecting nearly 20 million taels per year, and the field endowment and customs are in tandem with the trend, becoming the magic weapon for the Qing court to survive under the pressure of the Taiping Rebellion. With the pacification of the Taiping Rebellion, it was a natural thing to abolish the Lijin, but when yan guan asked for the abolition of the provincial bureau, it was categorically rejected by the Qing court. The number of drawbacks caused by the collection of gold has become a regular system, and the number of drawbacks caused by the collection of gold is too numerous to list. It was not until 1931 that the gold was abolished, but the central government changed it to a unified tax.

In the late Qing Dynasty, there were miscellaneous taxes and miscellaneous donations in addition to the gold, which was also an extralegal levy. Miscellaneous taxes and miscellaneous donations are varied. According to the statistics of scholars, there were more than 2,000 kinds of miscellaneous taxes and miscellaneous donations in this period alone. The fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty increased from 20 million taels in the early Qing Dynasty to 40 million taels in the Jiadao period, 70 million taels in the Tongzhi period, exceeded 100 million taels in the late Guangxu period, and approached the mark of 300 million taels by the end of the Qing Dynasty, an increase of more than ten times, which is inseparable from the emergence of lijin and the breeding of miscellaneous taxes and miscellaneous donations. "The wool is out of the sheep", and the fiscal revenue continues to rise, which obviously means that the burden of the people is increasing.

The fundamental reason for the emergence of the "Huang Zongxi's Law" lies in the feudal system

In order to ensure the loyalty of all officials to the imperial court and the supervision of power, the feudal dynasty must maintain an administrative pattern of upper and lower phases, stacked beds and houses, and people overstaffing. In China's history, there is a clear phenomenon of the continuous expansion of the number of officials and the continuous rise in the ratio of officials to the people. The total number of officials in the Han Dynasty was about 7,000, about 18,000 in the Tang Dynasty, and about 34,000 in the Northern Song Dynasty; by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the total number of officials had reached 100,000. The absolute increase in officials far exceeds the rate of population growth, and the ratio of officials to the people continues to rise, and the burden of the people's conscription will inevitably increase. ⑨

At the same time, China's traditional tax collection has always had the characteristics of "light open taxes, heavy hidden taxes, and bottomless pits for cross-collection and miscellaneous factions.", in addition to the "positive taxes" expressly stipulated in state laws, there are also miscellaneous taxes in various names, which not only increase the burden on the people, but also open the door for officials at all levels to levy and loot and enrich their own pockets. If the miscellaneous factions are not controlled, they will eventually intensify the contradictions and endanger the stability of the regime. Therefore, the simultaneous tax ex-fee and the simplification of the tax system have become the basic ideas of the tax system reform in previous generations.

Because the starting point of China's fiscal reform in the past is not "tax reduction" but "tax consolidation", that is to say, it is not from the perspective of the people to limit the state's power to increase taxes, but from the perspective of the state to ensure fiscal revenue. The reform of the two tax laws in the Tang Dynasty was to combine the rent adjustment shared by the central and local governments, as well as the various miscellaneous taxes that the localities collected and self-supported, into "summer taxes and autumn grains", and monetized some of them, and then the central government increased the proportion of transportation, resulting in the addition of various names such as "emergency preparation, supply to the army, discounting, claiming, and entering the service" and reborn. Wang Anshi implemented the law of exempting people from military service, changing the labor levied by local and grass-roots units into a currency tax, and then the central government increased the proportion of transportation, and all military roads had no money to hire people for labor, so all kinds of compulsory miscellaneous service were reborn. Zhang Juzheng was implementing the "one whip law" and the Yongzheng Emperor was implementing the "spreading the land into the acres", which was the same idea.

By merging the positive and miscellaneous light and dark taxes into simple taxes, and at the same time ordering that no other taxes should be levied, although it could achieve results in the short term, it could not solve the fundamental problem of the excessive burden on the people, especially the power to institutionally constrain the government and officials to levy new taxes was never mentioned. With the passage of time, the rigid growth of fiscal expenditure and the emergence of miscellaneous factions, and so on, the burden of the people is snowballing. Every time a reform is introduced, a mixed upsurge is created, and the burden on the peasants is heavier than before the reform. China's taxation is caught in an infinite cycle of light taxes and heavy fees - and taxes and fees - miscellaneous breeding - heavy taxes.

From an economic point of view, the emergence of "Huang Zongxi's law" lies in the lack of effective restraint on the bureaucratic class in traditional society, and imperial power is the only force that can compete with it, but the role of imperial power relative to the huge and bloated bureaucracy is extremely limited. At the same time, the common people have no bargaining rights and generally have no democratic rights, which will inevitably lead to the bureaucracy doing whatever it wants. Since the imperial court had almost "shipped" all the legal additions such as formal taxes and even envy, it could only turn a blind eye to the other local "income generation", resulting in the worsening of "limited supply and unlimited levies".

Some Western scholars believe that the problem in ancient China was that there was no competition between borrowers and tax collectors, ordinary people could not vote with their feet, merchants could not "choose the good lord and live", and tyrants and defaulters could not be "survival of the fittest". At the same time, because the foreign military threat is not large enough, the monarch does not have enough incentive to give up some political power to taxpayers and establish a representative body that "does not represent and does not pay taxes". As long as the three-way game pattern does not change, the effect of "Huang Zongxi's law" will not disappear.

It is precisely because of the existence of "Huang Zongxi's Law" that there are many illegal acts in the collection of taxes in ancient China, and the additional demands of officials are even more numerous. "Profit is not a hundred immutable laws, and the work is not easy to do" (10). Historically, China's agricultural farming technology has improved significantly, but the living standards of the people have not improved significantly. Ordinary people can only struggle on the line of food and clothing, struggling to survive. "Prosperity, the people suffer; death, the people suffer", only by getting out of the historical circle of "Huang Zongxi's law" can the people really live a good life.

It is particularly gratifying that in 2005, the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People's Congress passed a resolution announcing the abolition of agricultural taxes nationwide. Since January 1, 2006, the agricultural tax that has been levied in China for more than 2,600 years has been officially abolished, and the heavy burden that has weighed on chinese farmers for more than 2,000 years has finally been written off.

[Note: This paper is a phased result of the major project of the National Social Science Foundation of China "Research on Commercial Taxation in the Qing Dynasty and Its Database Construction (1644-1911)" (project number: 16ZDA129)]

【Notes】

(1) Huang Zongxi: "Ming Yi To Be Visited, Tian Zhi III", in The Complete Works of Huang Zongxi, vol. 1, Hangzhou: Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House, 1985, pp. 26-27.

(2) Wang Jiafan, "A Hundred Years of Turbulence and a Thousand Years of Reciprocation", Shanghai: Shanghai Far East Publishing House, 2001, p. 166.

(3) Lu Yan: "Six Articles on Equalizing Taxation and Compassion for the People", in Quan Tang Wen, vol. 465, Lu Yan Liu, Beijing: Zhonghua Bookstore, 1983, p. 4756.

(4) Wang Fuzhi: Reading through the Classics, vol. 24, Beijing: Zhonghua Bookstore, 1975, pp. 711-712.

(5) Fu Zhiyu, "Three Theories on whether the "Huang Zongxi's Law" is established", Financial Supervision, No. 6, 2017, p. 93.

(6) Du Gongcheng: Can the "Huang Zongxi's Law" be established? Studies in Chinese Economic History, No. 1, 2009, p. 153.

(7) Zhou Xueguang, "From Huang Zongxi's Law" to the Logic of Empire: Historical Clues to the Logic of China's State Governance," Open Era, No. 4, 2014, pp. 110-111.

(8) Chen Feng, "Examination of the Policy of "LightLy Moving lightly and thinly giving" in the early Qing Dynasty", Journal of Wuhan University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), No. 2, 1999, p. 81.

(9) Zhang Tingyu et al.: History of the Ming Dynasty, vol. 214, Liu Tiqian, Beijing: Zhonghua Bookstore, 1974, p. 5662.

(10) Zhu Shiru: The Final Edition of the Interpretation of the Book of Shangjun, Beijing: Ancient Books Publishing House, 1956, p. 3.

Source: People's Forum