Volume One: The Young Dragon Opens Its Eyes Chapter 136: Changes in Beijing

Chapter 136: Changes in the City of Beijing

From the moment the imperial decree of Zhu Qizhen was dispatched to Xiangyang, the Prince of Xiang set off from Xiangyang.

By the time he arrived in the capital, the autumn floods had already receded. The Prince of Xiang first went to the Mansion of the Ten Princes and submitted his plaque to the palace to request an audience.

He then returned to the Mansion of the Ten Princes.

The Prince of Xiang indeed still maintained a residence in the capital.

Barely had the Prince of Xiang settled into his manor when his subordinates reported that a visitor from the Shuntian Prefecture had arrived.

The Prince of Xiang was somewhat surprised.

A prince's manor was, after all, a prince's manor, and its threshold was exceptionally high.

Given the disparity in social standing, these petty officials would never dare to present themselves at his door.

The Prince of Xiang instructed the Grand Steward, "Go and see what this is all about."

Maintaining his formal demeanor as a eunuch before outsiders, the Grand Steward offered a slight bow and replied, "Understood."

After stepping out, the Grand Steward returned in mere moments and reported, "The Shuntian Prefecture has sent men to renew the household registration certificates."

Hearing this, the Prince of Xiang said with some puzzlement, "Shuntian Prefecture is currently under Yu Qian, isn't it? He can certainly be considered a capable official."

The system of household registration certificates had a long and venerable history.

Its origins could be traced back to the Han and Tang dynasties, and it had already been perfected by the Song dynasty.

It was much like a modern household register—no, it contained even more details than a household register. It recorded not only the number of family members in a household, but also the amount of farmland, the number of residential properties, and all kinds of immovable assets owned by the family.

Since the founding of the Great Ming dynasty, the Founding Emperor had inherited the household registration system. Prior to the third year of the Hongwu era, it was merely the practice of individual local officials, but after the third year of Hongwu, it was promoted nationwide.

However, having a system on paper and executing it in reality were two entirely different matters. Ever since the reign of the Founding Emperor, various systems of the Great Ming had consistently gravitated toward leniency.

Few people dared to reissue household registration certificates.

This was because the household certificates served as one of the primary bases for the various prefectural offices to collect taxes.

Anything that was not officially registered constituted the so-called concealed fields. Yet, how could the noble and wealthy families possibly be so honest?

The Prince of Xiang was a different story; his power base was not here, but in Xiangyang. Even so, he still owned one or two manors outside the city of Beijing. Not to mention the various levels of nobility and aristocracy deeply rooted in Beijing.

Their generations of wealth and privilege were not merely gifts from the imperial court; naturally, they had also engaged in enterprise, resulting in the imperial court's bestowed fields outside Beijing, as well as various lands they had forcibly annexed.

This was also an inherent problem of Shuntian Prefecture itself. For the Great Ming, land annexation was not yet critically severe during this era, but that did not mean there were no places where it was acute.

Nanjing and Beijing were precisely two of the regions where land annexation was most severe.

Just how much truth and how much falsehood lay within the household certificates here was known to most officials; thus, being an official in Shuntian Prefecture was no easy task. One might inadvertently step on the toes of some hidden power or divine deity.

Yet, for Yu Qian to accomplish even a fraction of what he did, his sheer courage alone far surpassed that of ordinary men.

The Grand Steward remarked, "Your Highness, you have misjudged Yu Qian. Far from being a capable minister, Yu Qian is clearly a fierce tiger. The bailiffs of Shuntian Prefecture have actually come to the Prince's Manor to demand money."

Frowning, the Prince of Xiang asked, "Demand money? What money?"

The Grand Steward answered, "The house tax. All residences within the capital must pay taxes according to their size; larger areas pay more tax, while smaller areas pay less. If a house is too small, however, it is exempted."

"How much silver?" asked the Prince of Xiang.

The Grand Steward replied, "Not much, less than ten taels of silver annually."

Gently tapping the back of his chair, the Prince of Xiang said, "This is certainly not something Yu Qian would dare to do on his own initiative; rather, it is the intention of that person deep within the inner palace. My courtyard alone requires ten taels. I estimate that if this is collected across the entire city of Beijing, it will yield an annual income of ten to twenty thousand taels. What a brilliant idea."

The Grand Steward countered, "Your Highness has miscalculated. There is one matter Your Highness has not considered."

"Oh?" the Prince of Xiang asked. "What matter?"

The Grand Steward said, "There is also the contract tax."

The so-called contract tax was a transaction tax. Whenever residential properties or farmland changed hands, the government required official stamping, and the tax rate generally hovered around three percent.

The Prince of Xiang immediately understood and exclaimed, "What a interlocking stratagem! The house tax provides a steady, trickling stream of revenue, but the contract tax is the true heavyweight!"

The Prince of Xiang was by no means an ignorant prince; he had once served as imperial regent and was no stranger to the operations of the imperial court.

He instantly grasped the logic behind this scheme: first, issuing household registration certificates to verify real property. Once the properties were verified, the house tax itself might not be huge—his own courtyard, being an imperial bestowal and built to a prince's specifications, was already a top-tier grand mansion, yet it only required ten taels. Across the entire city of Beijing, the total would only be around ten thousand taels. Such a sum was not much for an individual, nor was it massive for Shuntian Prefecture.

However, the contract tax had practically existed only in name among the common people. Because no one was willing to pay this extra sum of money, most people simply bypassed the government when transferring deeds.

These were the so-called white deeds, whereas official ones were red deeds.

Now, the bailiffs of Shuntian Prefecture were going door-to-door making inquiries; at such a time, white deeds would no longer hold any validity.

Furthermore, Beijing was unlike any other place.

In other regions, the frequency of real estate transactions might not be very high, but Beijing was different. With officials rising and falling amid the shifting tides of officialdom, no one knew how many properties changed hands every year.

Moreover, living in the capital was no easy feat. Within the city of Beijing, properties worth ten thousand pieces of gold were hardly nonexistent, and even an ordinary courtyard cost around several dozen taels of silver.

This bore an uncanny resemblance to modern Beijing housing prices.

Once all residential properties were officially registered and transferred through the government, this revenue would far surpass the house tax, likely amounting to several tens of thousands of taels of silver.

Ten thousand taels of silver was not much, but tens of thousands of taels was by no means a small sum.

It was enough to accomplish a great many things.

The Prince of Xiang suddenly let out a sigh and said, "The capital is not a place where I can reside for long; otherwise, I would also love to see what kind of feats my good nephew can ultimately pull off."

Even as the Prince of Xiang lamented the changes in Beijing, he had no idea that the transformations he perceived were merely the tip of the iceberg.

Shuntian Prefecture had integrated the Five-City Gendarmerie Command, alongside the brocade guard, the Eastern Depot, the Ministry of Works, and even tasks from the Ministry of Revenue. Yu Qian had exhausted countless mental energies just to forge the current局面.

At this very moment, Yu Qian was reporting his urban planning for Beijing to Zhu Qizhen.

After Zhu Qizhen assigned the task to Yu Qian, Yu Qian had pondered it thoroughly. His goal was to transition all temporary runners and petty clerks into officially established national civil servants.

The greatest difficulty lay not in how to dismantle these hereditary clerks.

Leaving aside the fact that the Great Ming had been established for merely seventy years, and that Emperor Taizong had moved the capital to Beijing only a few decades prior—meaning the various bailiffs and clerks in Beijing had at most inherited their posts for three generations and had certainly not reached an impregnable state—even if their networks were tangled and deeply rooted, to say that Yu Qian’s ability could not deal with them would be severely underestimating Yu Qian.

Clearing out these individuals was easy.

However, absorbing them as formally established officials of the court was rather difficult. The hardest part, above all else, was money.

Yes, it was money.

Within the city of Beijing—no, not even counting the various ministries of the imperial court, but merely within the Shuntian Prefecture yamen alone—there were well over a thousand petty clerks of all kinds, and perhaps even more.

Inside the Palace of Heavenly Purity, what Yu Qian discussed first was the condition of the various wards in the capital.

Yu Qian stated, "There are twenty-eight wards in the city, and Your臣 has established twenty-eight ward magistrates to govern them. Beneath each ward magistrate, there are three personnel: a document clerk, a tax clerk, and a thief-catching bailiff."

Zhu Qizhen thought to himself, "This is basically a street neighborhood committee."

Yu Qian continued, "Your臣 has established a Patrol Office at the former site of the Five-City Gendarmerie Command, responsible for handling fires, thefts, and murder cases throughout the city."

Zhu Qizhen muttered inwardly, "This is essentially a police department."

Yu Qian reported, "Your臣 has established six functional departments under Daxing County and Wanping County, along with a Patrol Office, and ordered the selection of Imperial Academy students to serve as clerks, or the selection of scholars from the county and prefectural schools to serve as clerks."

Zhu Qizhen had also heard that Yu Qian had used the excuse of many petty clerks performing poorly during the recent floods to dismiss a large batch of them. Of course, Yu Qian was not someone who acted recklessly; naturally, he had granted official status to those petty clerks among them who had performed well—such as the heads of the six functional departments and various other petty functionaries, including the personnel in the Five-City Patrol Office, who all attained official ranks.

Once they acquired official status, their various treatments and stipends naturally rose accordingly. By simultaneously suppressing and rewarding them, Yu Qian ensured that the group of petty clerks would not pose any significant resistance to his reforms.

Zhu Qizhen asked, "Is the tax revenue of Daxing County alone sufficient?"

When Zhu Qizhen asked this, he had his reasons. Yu Qian had actually already consulted the Ministry of Revenue, but the Ministry of Revenue was stubborn to the extreme; the tax revenues of each locality had their designated origins, and not a single penny could be reallocated. Indeed, even the tax revenues that Shuntian Prefecture was supposed to remit to the Ministry of Revenue could not be reduced by a single coin.

This was the attitude of many civil officials within the Great Ming; they had no desire for the emperor to stir up trouble. Since directly clashing head-on with the emperor was out of the question, they employed this method instead.

Zhu Qizhen had even broached this matter to Yang Shiqi, but Yang Shiqi had firmly and righteously refused.

Localities across the realm required no extra funds. If Shuntian Prefecture were to have funds allocated by the Ministry of Revenue for this reason, or be allowed to retain the tax revenues originally slated for remittance, how could the Ministry of Revenue refuse similar requests if other regions came asking for money?