The most reckless man in the Ming Dynasty.

Chapter 384 Commercial tax is a good thing!
Kaiping City.

Minister of Works Li Shan arrived in person with his men.

Zhongshan Hou Tang Hao led his army to welcome Li Shan. After a day of rest, both sides immediately began to repair the military fortress.

Kaiping City is not an ordinary border town, but the former capital of the Mongol Empire!
This place is located in the Jinlianchuan grassland, on the edge of the Mongolian Plateau. Since ancient times, it has been a battlefield for repeated tug-of-war between farming and nomadic peoples. People at that time called it: "Controlling the desert in the north, protecting Yan and Ji in the south, with majestic mountains and rivers, winding for thousands of miles."

As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Xiongnu and the Donghu launched wars over the "Outuo" area where Jinlianchuan is located; during the Northern Wei Dynasty, a military town was set up here to defend against the Rouran in the north; later, Jin Shizong held summer and autumn hunting in Jinlianchuan many times and implemented a control policy to win over the Tatar tribe on the Mongolian Plateau.

The importance that emperors of all dynasties have attached to Jinlianchuan is enough to prove the importance of its strategic location.

Kublai Khan chose to build the city on the Jinlianchuan grassland, not only for the purpose of connecting it to Karakorum, the political center of the Mongol Empire, but also because the fertile and vast pastures here were sufficient to provide military supplies for the Mongolian cavalry as they marched south.

The Jinlianchuan Grassland is located on the main transportation route connecting the east, west, south and north of the Mongol Empire, and is an important strategic hub for controlling the Han area in North China.

During the Hongwu period, Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang stepped up the integration and improvement of the northern defense system, and established sixteen guards in the northwest. In addition to the Dongsheng Left and Right Guards, he successively established Zhenlu, Yunchuan, Yulin, Weiyuan, Xuande, Guanshan, Datong and other sixteen guards to Liaodong, as well as the thousand households under the jurisdiction of each guard, forming the eastern and northern defense lines.

To the west of Dongshengwei, similarly, it was connected with the Hexi Corridor in Ningxia and Gansu through the Qianhu Suo under the jurisdiction of Dongshengwei in Ordos, thus forming a strategic and tactical defense system of mutual support and echoing each other.

This line of defense resisted the Uriankhai in the east, resisted the Oirat in the middle, and contended with the Tatar in the west. This enabled the Ming Dynasty's northern border defense to expand from point to surface, connecting east and west and responding to each other, thus steadily advancing its entire northern border defense line hundreds of miles north of the Great Wall.

Unfortunately, due to the Jingnan Campaign led by Emperor Yongle, most of the Sixteen Guards were disbanded and moved inland. By the time Emperors Renzong and Xuanzong comprehensively withdrew their defenses, they were completely destroyed and had no choice but to resort to passive defense.

Among these sixteen guards, Zhongkaiping Guard and Dongsheng Guard are particularly important.

The personal arrival of Minister of Works Li Shan is enough to show the importance that His Majesty the Emperor attaches to Kaiping Guard.

It was the same plan as Dongsheng City. First, a steel city would be built on the old site, and then other bastions would be slowly built to ensure that this place would not be taken away by nomadic peoples again.

At the same time as Li Shan arrived, the Jinyiwei also delivered a secret letter from His Majesty the Emperor.

After Tang Hao opened it, he couldn't help but frown.

The gentry in the south of the Yangtze River began to make trouble again. The civil officials led by Xu Mengchun tried to force the emperor to stop recovering Hetao and coveted the East China Sea trade controlled by the emperor.

The Emperor Zhu Houzhao was furious and determined to give these Jiangnan gentry a severe blow. He wanted to reform the commercial taxes to make these Jiangnan gentry surrender!
Tang Hao looked at the secret letter and fell into deep thought.

The taxation of the Ming Dynasty mainly came from agricultural tax and salt tax, which accounted for about 90% of the main income!
Commercial taxes and mining taxes are called miscellaneous taxes, which are much less than the previous two types.

The main reason is that the imperial court did not attach importance to business and did not introduce any strict measures to strictly control it. As a result, the merchants in the south of the Yangtze River driven by the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River almost did not have to pay taxes, but these merchants were still rich!

However, as a person from later generations, Tang Hao naturally knew that when the country developed to a certain level, commercial taxes would be the main source of tax revenue. At that time, there would be no need to pay taxes for farming, and the court would even provide subsidies!

But there is a prerequisite, that is, this situation can only occur when the industry and commerce of the Ming Dynasty have developed to a certain level.

But now most people are bound to the land, and the land is in the hands of the gentry. Even self-cultivating farmers with a few acres of land have to rent some of the gentry's land in order to get more harvest to supplement their family income.

After all, the Ming Dynasty was an agricultural society. Whoever controlled the land had the right to speak. To put it bluntly, the gentry annexed the land not only for the land income, but more importantly, to control the right to speak over the common people. Only by controlling the right to speak over the common people could the gentry call the shots in the countryside. Every tenant who rented the gentry's land did not dare to offend the gentry, for fear that the gentry would no longer allow them to rent the land. Zhu Houzhao's desire to formulate a new commercial tax policy was indeed an opportunity to rescue the people from the control of the gentry.

When these common people find that they can work in factories, support their families, and even live a better life than before, they naturally will not want to go back to the hard life of slavery and exploitation.

However, the problem is that if a large number of people leave the fields, grain production will inevitably decrease. This is the negative impact of developing industry and commerce.

Tang Hao wrote down all his thoughts and understandings, including the pros and cons, and how to start if Zhu Houzhao really wanted to do it.

As for what Zhu Houzhao will choose to do in the end, that is not Tang Hao's concern.

Because His Majesty the Emperor is no longer the little emperor he used to be, Tang Hao can no longer treat Zhu Houzhao in the same way as before.

As a mature emperor, it is time to face the civil officials alone.

At the same time, in the capital city.

In a secret courtyard, many officials and gentry were gathered together, and the leader was none other than Xu Mengchun.

Xu Mengchun played with the celadon tea bowl in his hand without saying a word.

The atmosphere in the study was heavy. One official could not bear the heavy atmosphere and shouted, "How dare the emperor do this? Beating Han Lin to death in public?"

"Does he really want to be a tyrant?"

It has to be admitted that the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River are very confident and have always lacked respect for the royal family.

Xu Mengchun glanced at the man, then said calmly: "There is no need to mention these trivial matters. We have sacrificed our lives to see the emperor's determination, so it is not a loss."

"The problem now is how to make the emperor give up and stop the recovery of Hetao and give up the East China Sea trade!"

Interrupting the recovery of Hetao will not give military generals and nobles the opportunity to rise.

Giving up the East China Sea trade is the real goal of the Jiangnan gentry.

An emperor who is short of money, like the previous emperor, will be restrained and controlled by civil officials and gentry, and he must discuss anything he wants to do with them.

Instead of being like the Zhengde Emperor Zhu Houzhao, who had money and food in his own treasury, he would send troops to start a war at the slightest disagreement, and he would completely ignore the attitudes and ideas of the civil officials and gentry. He was so strong and overbearing that it was hard to accept!
Xu Mengchun's words were the final word, and everyone knew that what he said made sense.

The civil officials and gentry have experienced too many powerful emperors, such as Emperor Taizu Gao, Emperor Taizong Wen, and Emperor Chenghua, and they have had enough of living a cautious life.

They finally found an emperor who was in sync with them, but he died just as they expected.

The current emperor is even more excessive than Emperor Chenghua. He is even more overbearing, powerful, and unreasonable!

This is something that all the gentry cannot accept!
(End of this chapter)