85: Chapter 85 Tax Avoidance Methods of the Nobles

After the large-scale meeting of three to four hundred people concluded, Zhao Fusu, Li Si, Feng Quji, and Feng Jie held a smaller meeting.

They sat around a conference table.

"His Majesty the Head of State."

Li Si said, "The various commanderies and counties have begun their summer harvests one after another."

"Mm."

Zhao Fusu asked, "I want to see the cultivated land area of each commandery and county, as well as the grain yields over the years."

"Understood, His Majesty the Head of State."

Feng Jie was in charge of this information, so he led some people to retrieve the records.

Zhao Fusu pondered slightly.

He had never dared to touch land reform.

Land conflict has been the primary and long-standing conflict throughout five thousand years of history.

Ancient empires fought one another to seize land—especially arable land—to gain a larger population and collect more poll taxes.

For thousands of years, the dynasties of the Central Plains fought in every direction, occupying every territory suitable for farming.

As for the original owners of that arable land, they were driven into high mountains or tropical rainforests.

The First Emperor wanted to conquer such a vast territory specifically to collect grain taxes.

After the First Emperor had Meng Tian seize the Hetao Plain, he relied on the high mountains and lofty ridges north of the Yellow River to build the Great Wall.

From the perspective of grain production, the grasslands could not grow crops in ancient times.

Even during the Republic of China era, the grasslands were unsuitable for grain. The Young Marshal once led troops to plant grain on the Horqin Grassland; the Horqin people opposed it to the death, and a violent conflict erupted between the two sides.

The Young Marshal suppressed the Horqin people with his troops and reclaimed the Horqin Grassland, which ultimately turned it into a desert.

The First Emperor must have known that the grasslands could not grow grain.

Collecting taxes from the grassland tribes was even more impractical.

They were nomadic people, and their retreat routes had not yet been cut off by the eastward expansion of the Yaksha Kingdom.

They could migrate at will. Even if the First Emperor defeated them, he could not collect poll taxes from them.

The First Emperor simply built a national border wall to keep the Xiongnu people out of the territory suitable for farming.

The core of agrarian civilization is farming.

In the thirty-second year of Qin Shi Huang (215 BC), the emperor recorded these words in the Jieshi Stone Inscription: 'Men delight in their fields, women attend to their tasks, and all affairs have their order. Benefits reach all products, fallow fields are long combined, and none are not at peace in their place.'

'Men delight in their fields, women attend to their tasks' meant that men focused on farming while women focused on domestic handicrafts like weaving.

'All affairs have their order' meant that by issuing the 'Eighteen Statutes of Qin Law,' the populace was divided into classes such as scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants, strictly limiting professional mobility to ensure national resources were concentrated on agriculture and warfare.

'Benefits reach all products' meant that state policies benefited all types of production, such as unifying weights, measures, and currency to promote economic circulation.

'Fallow fields are long combined' meant the integration of land resources, recultivating 'Laitian'—or fallow land—and distributing the lands previously occupied by the royal families of the Six Kingdoms to those without land.

'None are not at peace in their place' declared that the common people lived and worked in peace.

In reality, this was not the case.

Why did the world call the State of Qin the Tyrannical Qin?

Before Shang Yang's reforms, the State of Qin, like the other six kingdoms, implemented the well-field system.

Arable land was divided into multiple square fields of a certain area, with boundaries on the outside and ditches in the middle, crisscrossed by paths like the character for 'well' ( well).

Each 'well' was about 900 mu, cultivated by eight peasant households together. The center was the public field, and the remaining eight were private fields; the public field would contain buildings like public offices and ancestral temples.

Regarding taxes, one-tenth of the grain grown by the farmers was taken by the nobles.

After Shang Yang's reforms, the State of Qin abolished the well-field system and adopted the Land Grant System and a method where the people reclaimed wasteland themselves to obtain land.

The State of Qin would send grain officials to take away two-thirds of the grain.

After the First Emperor annexed the Six Kingdoms, the people of those kingdoms, like the people of Qin, lived the bitter life of having two-thirds of their grain taken away.

'The world has suffered under Qin for a long time'—this phrase was definitely not just talk.

Nor were all landlords willing to have so much grain taken from them.

After the First Emperor abolished the well-field system, land became private property.

The First Emperor did not send people to measure the acreage; instead, he let the landlords report how much land they had and then collected poll taxes based on how many households lived on that land.

To pay less poll tax, a large number of landlords risked execution by not truthfully reporting the specific number of farmers they had, hiding a vast number of unregistered persons to evade taxes.

Zhao Fusu originally didn't know these secrets.

It was only after the recent incident of sky-high grain prices in Guanzhong that he realized how deep the water truly was.

He had never been able to figure out how the nobles could produce so much grain as if by magic.

It turned out this grain was what they had obtained through tax evasion by hiding the population.

Zhao Fusu knew, but he turned a blind eye and did not pursue the matter.

Right now, the world was like a powder keg about to explode; at any moment, a single spark could set the whole world ablaze.

The corvée labor of the Qin Dynasty was divided into three types: Gengzu, where once a year, one served for a month in their own county or commandery.

Zhengzu: once in a lifetime for a period of one year, mainly participating in military training and maintaining local security in their own county or commandery.

Shuzu: once in a lifetime for a period of one year, either stationed in the capital or guarding the frontiers.

By becoming a Shuzu, one could be exempted from the poll tax.

Consequently, a large number of commoners went to serve as Shuzu.

In history, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, who ignited the Great Qin powder keg, were on their way to serve as Shuzu.

According to the regulations on military service in the 'Eighteen Statutes of Qin Law': those who miss the deadline shall be executed.

The nine hundred-plus people led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were left with no choice; since it was death either way, they could only rebel.

This led to the explosion of the Great Qin powder keg.

Zhao Fusu did not want to pursue the nobles' responsibility for hiding unregistered persons and evading taxes, lest these nobles collude together to save their lives and ignite the Great Qin powder keg.

It is a rare form of great wisdom to remain 'knowingly confused'—to see everything clearly yet act as if one has seen nothing.

For instance, the death of Sun Ce was exactly like this.

Knowing full well that Yu Ji held immense prestige in the hearts of the Jiangdong people—that whenever Yu Ji traveled, the entire city's population bowed, and even Sun Ce's own mother bowed to him—Sun Ce insisted on killing Yu Ji in a fit of rage. This incited public indignation, and Sun Ce himself suffered such immense psychological pressure that his old wounds reopened, and he passed away.

If only Sun Ce had caused Yu Ji's reputation to collapse by exposing that Yu Ji seduced married women, had 'Longyang' proclivities, and made sows scream in the night every night, letting the people gossip and find solid proof...

Yu Ji's image as an 'Old Immortal' in the hearts of the people would have crumbled.

Then, as the walls came tumbling down, Yu Ji's disciples could have revealed that Yu Ji had no immortal arts and that the talisman water used to treat illnesses was all a setup involving hired shills.

They did all of this just to cheat their 'family members' out of their money.

While the people were angry and confused, Sun Ce could then have stepped forward as the official representative. Through various evidence-gathering, he could have proven that Yu Ji had messy sexual relations and liked to establish abnormal relationships with different species.

Once Yu Ji's reputation collapsed, his status in the hearts of the common people would have plummeted.

While Zhao Fusu was lost in these random thoughts, Feng Jie returned.