Economy under Hongwu's rule

At the end of Yuan Dynasty, there were many large-scale famines, famines, epidemics, plagues and years of wars in China. During this period, the production was severely damaged, the population was greatly reduced, the economy collapsed in an all-round way, and the people were in the process of displacement. After Daming established a unified country, Zhu Yuanzhang practiced a policy of rest and recuperation in the face of the bleak situation of sorrow everywhere, hunger and cold. Zhu Yuanzhang said: At the beginning of the world, people were miserable, just like a newly flying bird could not pluck its feathers and a newly planted tree could not shake its roots. We must adopt this policy now, and at the same time advocate storing wealth for the people.

Zhu Yuanzhang learned the lesson from the demise of the Yuan Dynasty and implemented a series of measures to recuperate and develop agriculture and industrial and commercial production, which enabled the economy of the Ming Dynasty to recover and develop rapidly. By 1393 (twenty-six years of Hongwu), there were 1605 households with a population of 60.54 million and cultivated land area of 8.5 million hectares, which laid a very solid foundation for the economic development of the Ming Dynasty.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the economy also recovered rapidly, and the national strength increased rapidly, reaching the best level in history. Zhu Yuanzhang established the Li Jia system to cooperate with the implementation of the yellow book of taxation, household registration and fish scale atlas, and to levy taxes and labor to maintain local public order. Liberating Productive Forces Zhu Yuanzhang put the development of agriculture in the first place in the process of restoring and developing social economy, so as to ensure that there are enough labor resources in the front line of agriculture. Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the whole country that landlords were not allowed to keep handmaiden, and all handmaiden kept were released as good citizens. Anyone who is sold into slavery because of hunger will be redeemed by the court; Strictly control the development of temples. It is expressly stipulated that each prefecture and county can only have one big temple, and it is forbidden for women under 40 to become nuns, and it is strictly forbidden for temples to adopt children and monks. If young people over the age of 20 want to become monks, they must get the consent of their parents and officials, and they have to take exams in Beijing within three years after becoming monks. Those who fail will become citizens. The implementation of these policies has increased the social labor force.

Against the background of great damage caused by large-scale war, agricultural production in the whole country has been greatly restored. In addition, during the Hongwu period, large-scale immigrants filled the wasteland and wasteland in the north of Huaihe River and Sichuan, which made the population grow steadily. The Ming government also vigorously promoted the reclamation policy. There are two main types of land reclamation: civilian and military. Folk villages include the relocation of farmers from areas with less land and more people to areas with less land and more people for reclamation, as well as recruitment and criminal migration for farming. 1388, the landless peasants in Zezhou and Luzhou of Shaanxi Province moved to, Calm, Linqing, Guide, Taikang and other places, and settled in the countryside to farm. Where immigrants plant seeds, the official will give cows and seeds, exempt from three-year rent tax, and then pay a barrel of tax per mu. The military camp is to let the soldiers of the health station plow the fields and be self-sufficient. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Wei Kaitun was widely set up in the abdomen and frontier. Sergeant wasteland points, each army one point; In some places, land is granted by households, and each household only gives two points. Generally, it is 50 mu per minute, and there are also 100 mu, 70 mu, 30 mu or 20 mu, depending on the actual situation of fertile land and distance. Cattle, seeds and farm tools in the barracks are supplied by the government. Garrison troops should pay taxes according to points, which are called "cultivated grain" or "cultivated grain". Barracks account for nearly one-tenth of the country's arable land. In addition, Shangtun is also quite popular. In exchange, the government lured businessmen to transport grain to the frontier to ensure the grain demand in the frontier. Ming Taizu also sent imperial academy to the countryside to supervise water conservancy construction and disaster relief, and reduced agricultural taxes. These measures revived many war-torn areas in the past and enabled the economy of the Ming Dynasty to recover quickly. Building water conservancy in the early Ming Dynasty, the government organized farmers to build water conservancy on a large scale many times. Lingqu in Guangxi and Dujiangyan in Sichuan were restored during the Hongwu period. After dredging, Shaanxi Hongqu weir can irrigate more than 200 miles in Jingyang, Sanyuan, Liquan, Gaoling and Lintong. Ningxia Institute of Health built channels and irrigated tens of thousands of hectares of land. Dongqian Lake dredged in Dinghai (Zhenhai) and Yinxian, Zhejiang Province can also irrigate tens of thousands of hectares. 1395 (twenty-eight years of Hongwu), 40987 ponds, 4 rivers162 and 5048 dikes were opened in all counties of China. This has played a great role in the recovery and development of agricultural production.

Ming Taizu has also taken measures such as encouraging farmers to grow cash crops to promote the development of agricultural production. There were two kinds of land system in the early Ming Dynasty: official land and private land. Official land includes the original official land since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the land without hostile political groups after the war, the land confiscated by officials and criminals after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the land abandoned in the war, and the newly emerging Shatian and Hutian in the rivers and lakes. In addition to being rented to farmers for farming and collecting rent, these official fields are also used as official fields instead of salaries, as border officials to raise cheap fields, as pastures for guards' horses, as alfalfa fields for horses to grow feed, as study fields in counties, as farmland for kings, princesses and princes, and as wasteland occupied by soldiers or people and businessmen. Private land belongs to bureaucrats, landlords and small farmers and is allowed to trade. Official land belongs to the state, but it is illegal to buy and sell private land.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there was generally little difference between the land tax of official land and that of private land. People's land is collected by three liters and three combinations, and official land is collected by five liters and three combinations. Land tax is paid twice a year, in summer and autumn. Paying wheat in summer is called "summer tax"; Autumn rice is "autumn grain". Those who pay grain are called "true colors", and those who fold them into silver, banknotes, silk, cloth, cotton and bamboo are called "folding colors".

In order to provide a basis for collecting land tax, the Ming government fabricated an atlas of fish scales. "Atlas of Fish Scales" is based on the principle of "dividing areas by grain" and is made up of tax, grain and mangoku, which is called the first area. After surveying the land in each district, it was drawn into an atlas of fish scales. This book includes the names of all fields, surrounding areas, fertile land and householders in Fiona Fang. The land on the atlas, where buying and selling, must go through the formalities of over-cutting of land tax with the local government.

Ming Taizu also adopted the method of "governing good people with good people" and established grain growing systems in Nanzhili, Zhejiang, Huguang, Jiangxi, Fujian and other places. Generally speaking, every grain harvest is regarded as an area, and the landlord who chooses to collect grain is the grain chief, who is responsible for collecting the tax grain in this area and supervising the transportation to Beijing. Over time, grain chiefs often rely on power, collude with officials and village heads, extort money from farmers, and spread their taxes to small farmers' accounts. Zhu Yuanzhang, a frivolous tax collector, knew well the pain brought by famine to farmers. After he ascended the throne, he often reduced or exempted taxes or provided relief to farmers in disaster-stricken and war-torn areas. Large-scale tax exemption has been implemented many times nationwide. The second year of Hongwu was the first large-scale tax exemption in the early Ming Dynasty. In the following three, four and nine years, Yingtian, Henan, Beiping, Shandong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang were also exempted from taxes. By the twenty-four years of Hongwu, the farmland in the world had reached 3,874,746 hectares. The development of agriculture and handicrafts also promoted the prosperity of commerce and urban economy in the early Ming Dynasty. At that time, Nanjing was the capital of the country, with a population of nearly 200,000. It was densely populated, with rows of houses and a hotel bed, which cost several thousand yuan a month. In order to collect business tax, the Ming government set up a propaganda department in Kyoto, a tax department in the government, and tax bureaus and warehouses in various counties. During the Hongwu period, the commercial tax was relatively light, "one out of thirty". In the Ming Dynasty, he also cast "Hongwu Bao Tong Qian". Due to the heavy weight and small value of copper coins, it is not convenient to trade in large quantities. Ming Taizu decided to issue paper money to create a "Daming Treasure" and prohibit private use of silver.

However, the reason why the Ming Dynasty closed the sea originated from Taizu: It was because the imperial court needed a stable attack on the Northern Yuan Dynasty and was unable to wipe out the remnants of the anti-military forces such as Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen who fled to the sea, so it ordered the implementation of the sea ban. This also caused the coastal civilians to have no livelihood in the middle and late Ming dynasty, and the disaster of the Japanese pirates had a deep impact, which also made it too late for the Ming dynasty to develop capitalism. Zhu Yuanzhang also created a strict household registration system to ensure that these refugees can be tied to the land and not moved again. This is the Yellow Book system. The emperor ordered the household registration department to require all registered families in the country to register with the local government and receive official family stickers, which listed the names, ages and property of adult men. 137 1 An existing household in Qimen County, Huizhou City, Anhui Province posted that the head of the household owns 0.854 mu of cultivated land, a straw shed and a head of cattle. Therefore, the household mail system requires providing and recording detailed information that the country is interested in when making financial plans.

In addition to the Yellow Book, Zhu Yuanzhang also followed the "household system" of the Yuan Dynasty, that is, the household registration was divided into civilian households, military households, craftsmen households and other categories according to occupation. Different families and generations must engage in the same kind of work and bear such taxes. This is because the Yellow Book of the Ming Dynasty is not only a household registration book, but also a tax book. All the dingkou listed in the yellow book must bear the taxes of the state. If you don't report it, it is equivalent to tax evasion.

The yellow book system played an important role in stabilizing state rule and rapidly restoring economy in the early Ming Dynasty. It has greatly reduced the seclusion of the strongmen and the migration of the population, greatly increased the national tax revenue, and can classify and collect taxes roughly fairly according to the actual situation of households, thus curbing all kinds of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous fees. "Ming History" called it "Fuzhou County has a small number of books, and its production is thick and thin to suit its strength."