Chapter 1707 - The New Currency System
Lin Baiguang listened to He Xin's report, nodded to indicate he could leave, and marked a symbol in his deerskin notebook with a pencil.
From Hong Kong to Guangzhou by water, nearly every Ming military checkpoint and garrison along the route had already reached a "defection" agreement with them. Even officers unwilling to openly submit to the Australians had stated they would never stand in the Yuan Council's way and "seek their own destruction."
On this eve of the coming storm, betrayal had become fashionable. The Guangzhou Campaign a few years earlier had broken the backbone of Guangdong's government troops, causing every soldier in the region to "turn pale at the mention of the baldies."
Whether or not they believed the Australians capable of "contending for the realm," very few were willing to die for the Ming in the face of Australian gunboats and cannons—that was a fact.
The more someone was a beneficiary of the current court, the less willing they were to die loyal to it in a crisis. Lin Baiguang had felt this acutely in his enemy-work operations. These people possessed too much wealth; when facing danger, they would do everything possible to protect their persons and property from harm. The Guanning Army, raised with tax revenues wrung from the people's very bones and marrow, had officers grown so fat they had entirely lost the courage to fight for the throne.
Though the Ming forces in Guangdong were not the Guanning Army, the military situation was much the same. Officers at each level seized what they could in proportion to their rank and power, embezzling military pay and exploiting their troops. Apart from maintaining their own personal retainers, they cared nothing for the lives of their subordinates. The army was rotten to the core. Once the Fubo Army launched its attack, it would sweep them away like dead leaves.
But Lin Baiguang and the transmigrators about to take over Guangdong were also well aware that, however rotten the government forces were, they were nevertheless local serpents entrenched for years. Many garrison soldiers came from local military households; they had been born and raised here with deep attachments to their homeland. Under pressure from a powerful enemy, there was no telling if they might fight to "defend the country" for the sake of "protecting their homes." During the First Opium War, the Eight Banners and Green Standards were already decrepit and collapsed at the first blow from the British, yet when the British attacked Zhenjiang, the local Banner garrison had fought to the death.
Destroying the enemy troops would not be difficult. But wherever the flames of war spread, lives and property would suffer great destruction. Moreover, routed soldiers scattering into the countryside would immediately turn into bandits, causing secondary devastation to rural areas and adding to the Yuan Council's law-and-order burden after taking power.
Therefore, the Military Control Commission's overall policy toward Guangdong's government troops was to use "peaceful" means as much as possible—to induce whole units to defect, then gradually reorganize and absorb them. At worst, they could be shipped off to Hainan to fill the labor brigades.
"In inducing them to defect and accept reorganization, genuine willingness is best, but half-heartedness is acceptable too," Wen Desi summarized at the transmigrator meeting of the Military Control Commission. "As long as they accept peaceful reorganization, whether they want to stay or run off, we can let them do as they please. Paying a little bribe is no problem either—buying off a few baihu or qianhu is cheaper than the military expenses and pension payouts of actual fighting. Once the troops accept reorganization, the rest is out of their hands."
Under this overarching principle, Lin Baiguang directed the intelligence network in a flurry of activity, essentially clearing the path for the Fubo Army's entry into Guangzhou. He wasn't worried about officials reneging—at every critical node he had planted sleeper agents. If officials changed their minds, there would be someone to incite unrest among the troops. The soldiers, years behind on pay and oppressed by their superiors, were full of grievances and could easily be stirred into "mutiny."
Entering Guangzhou would not be hard, and even occupying all of Guangdong wouldn't require much effort. The Ming army's feeble resistance could be treated as air. But Guangdong had a long reputation for "the fiercest feuds under heaven." The security situation facing the new Greater Guangdong Government would be extremely complex.
Historically, the prevalence of armed feuds in Guangdong was inextricable from the powerful economic and mobilization capabilities of the clan-landlord system, with its compact village settlements. This was especially true in the Chaoshan region to the east—not only were clan forces stronger, but the local culture was even more bellicose. Whenever Guangdong faced military conflict, the Chaozhou militia was always the first local armed force to be mobilized. Successive dynasties had leveraged Chaoshan men to balance against Guangzhou natives as a time-honored divide-and-rule tactic.
So the Fubo Army's real adversaries were not the Ming soldiers but the militia bands scattered across the countryside under the control of various local gentry.
Lin Baiguang had never served as an official in Guangdong, but back when he was on exchange programs, he had heard plenty from Guangdong local officials about these matters. Many villages were already at the point where government authority couldn't be enforced without deploying armed police. And that was in the twenty-first century, with its unprecedented state capacity. Roll back to this seventeenth century, where government stopped at the county seat, and the countryside was essentially countless independent little kingdoms. Without the backing of Fubo Army bayonets, the gentry wouldn't give a fig for any law.
"This won't be easy to handle." Lin Baiguang gazed at his notebook in silence. Simple, brutal mass killing would certainly be the easiest and most effective approach—but a high body count had many after-effects. If mishandled, they might find themselves mired in a counterinsurgency quagmire. Especially now, when they were short of both troops and cadres...
The working conference had proposed "tempering strictness with leniency." Easy to say—hard to do.
"Chief, here's the proof of the proclamation." His secretary walked over and handed him a large rolled sheet of paper. He unrolled it. Printed in beautiful Song-style typeface was the Proclamation Against the Zhu Ming. On the slightly yellowed white paper, the black characters stood out crisp and clear—very handsome.
This proclamation—a symbolic declaration of war—had been drafted by the Great Library with the help of several transmigrators well-versed in classical Chinese. They had originally wanted Liu Dalin, that jinshi scholar, to "review and polish" it, but ultimately decided not to provoke him. If this model figure they had worked so hard to cultivate should take it into his head to commit suicide in a moment of despair, all their prior efforts would have been wasted.
"Has it been proofread?" he asked.
"Three proofs have been done."
"Print five hundred copies." Lin Baiguang signed the "Print Authorization."
"Yes, Chief."
This was the headquarters of the Guangzhou Intelligence Station, now located inside Guangzhou World. Lin Baiguang and his staff worked around the clock here, directing secret operations across Guangdong Province. The current focus was preparing for the takeover of Guangzhou.
Months earlier, a secret printing facility had been set up here. Various printing plates shipped from Lingao were used to produce the documents, forms, leaflets, pamphlets, notices, and credentials that would be needed by all levels of the Military Control Commission. In the warehouses, "occupation" printed matter was piled high. Even several dozen crates of the soon-to-be-issued new banknotes—"Silver Dollar Reserve Notes"—had been shipped in. According to plan, after the occupation of the Pearl River Delta was complete, the new currency system would be fully implemented.
Before that, Delong Bank had already begun gradually withdrawing the Food Circulation Vouchers in circulation in Guangdong. Of course, this paper currency had never circulated widely anyway; it was mainly used in Guangzhou in small quantities, primarily by enterprises under the Zizhen label, so the recall work was not difficult.
Economic work was the first priority after the takeover. Public order was closely linked to economic conditions, and issuing the new currency and implementing the new monetary system was the Yuan Council's foremost task after taking over Guangdong.
In the past, the Yuan Council had ruled only Hainan Island, and the money in circulation had a very small scope. Commodity flows were under strict controls, and the relationship between Circulation Vouchers and silver was governed by a mandatory exchange system. Silver entering the island had to be converted into Circulation Vouchers to be used in the market, and the Vouchers had no external payment function. Foreign merchants who made profits in Hainan either spent them by purchasing local goods or reconverted to silver.
Once Guangdong was occupied, they would hold the second-largest commodity market in seventeenth-century China. Both the volume and range of commodity circulation would far exceed Hainan's. Continuing the Food Circulation Voucher system could no longer meet economic needs. And so adopting a new currency system was officially placed on the agenda.
The new currency system would use a silver standard. This decision was made after comprehensively considering local natives' habits, their capacity for acceptance, and the demands of commodity circulation. Silver was a precious metal universally recognized by natives—unlike paper money, it did not require extensive time and effort for promotion and propaganda. Moreover, existing silver stocks were substantial, and coinage material was plentiful. With the Yuan Council's metallurgical and machining capabilities, they could easily produce silver coins that were low in silver content yet exquisitely crafted and looked "genuine." Merely by collecting circulating weighed silver and reminting it, the seigniorage revenue would be considerable.
The Finance Department's proposal to issue silver coins had additional advantages: through the issuance of silver coins, they could also issue bearer notes—so-called "Silver Dollar Reserve Notes." With physical silver dollars as backing, paper money would be more readily accepted, laying the groundwork for an eventual transition to purely fiat currency and full paper-money circulation.
Hundreds of kilometers from Guangzhou, in Lingao, an intense technical meeting was underway. Though most present were transmigrators from the machining and metallurgical departments, a few from Finance were speaking at length.
The meeting concerned the long-delayed issue of the new currency.
In Lingao, the only consensus reached in the currency debate was that a new monetary system must be adopted to replace the current Food Circulation Vouchers. Beyond that, there had been extensive arguments over whether to use a precious metal standard and what material to use for coinage. The debate had roughly three factions: one advocated a silver standard with silver coins; one firmly demanded abolishing coinage altogether in favor of a pure paper, fiat currency system; and the last advocated coining money from base metals—the so-called "Mithril Faction." However, since the Metallurgy Department could not produce stainless steel or industrially smelted aluminum, this last faction had already faded.
(End of Chapter)