Chapter 1755 - Fiscal Challenges
In broad terms, the Guangzhou Municipal Government planned to launch a "New Life Movement" throughout the city.
"The name may be inauspicious, but I think it's quite apt," Lin Baiguang said with a smile. "We want to introduce a new philosophy of life to the citizens of Guangzhou—changing customs, changing habits—showing them what a 'civilized' way of living looks like."
Specifically, this meant mobilizing government personnel, military forces, and the populace in a city-wide cleanup: dredging waterways and clearing urban garbage.
"But I feel there's still so much more that needs to be done," Liu San said. "What about the long-term management of street sanitation, or the enforcement of food-hygiene laws?"
"This is only the first phase." Lin Baiguang replied. "It's far from sufficient for transforming the city. That's why we have a second phase—but we're shorthanded right now, and we don't yet understand the city in enough detail. We can only start with the easy targets. Promulgating laws is simple; what matters is that they're actually enforced. In the old timeline, there was no shortage of new regulations and statutes—all full of lofty principles but devoid of implementation guidelines, concrete methods, and enforcement that existed only on paper. Over time the government loses credibility, and you can publish as many laws as you like—the public will treat them as so much hot air. So we either say nothing, or when we do speak, we make certain it can be carried out."
"All right, no objections from me. I'll follow your lead." Liu San agreed.
After Liu San departed, Lin Baiguang carefully reviewed the Guangzhou Special Municipality Police Bureau First Phase Recruitment and Training Plan that Mu Min had submitted.
In fact, at the meeting earlier that day, the civil-service examination had sparked some debate. Liu Xiang's view was that holding the exam this early risked an influx of old-guard elements—he had advocated waiting three or four months, or even half a year, before taking this step. After all, the Senatorial Council's civil-service exams could not be based on the Eight-Legged Essay, nor could the Four Books and Five Classics serve as the examination syllabus. They would have to release the exam scope and sample questions first, along with various study guides and past-paper compilations, so that candidates would begin thinking in the new mode.
Examination preparation was highly effective at training one's thought processes. And the Chinese were the world's most pragmatic people: once the rules were set, hordes of them would study and adapt. The new intellectual frameworks and knowledge systems would infiltrate their minds through this very process.
Such a transition period would require at least six months.
But Lin Baiguang, Mu Min, and Liu San had all reported that too many civil issues demanded attention, and that the personnel shortage had reached a critical point; something had to be done at once—at least in part.
After discussion, they decided to begin by recruiting police. Their most pressing need was for grassroots enforcement capacity. Police with coercive powers could fill the gap effectively. Beat cops didn't need deep learning; literacy was a plus but not essential. They could draw on the large pool of urban poor. Even if some recruits proved unsuitable, they would be easy to replace. And—crucially—there was no "class problem" of the sort Liu Xiang feared.
With a police force in place, they would have the manpower foundation for the many tasks ahead.
Mu Min's proposal was to recruit one thousand for the first cohort, all assigned to patrol duty.
Patrol officers represented the most basic rank in the police. Personnel requirements were low; no extensive professional training was needed. As long as they could walk set routes on schedule and respond promptly to incidents on the streets, minimal instruction would suffice. All that was required was "following the rules."
Mu Min planned for these local recruits to be led by assimilated police officers from Hainan, supplemented where necessary by a small number of retained former "Quick Class" runners familiar with the neighborhoods. This "three-in-one" approach would allow them to learn on the job. After a month, recruits would be reassessed and sorted for further training based on performance. Those found unsuitable could be let go without regret—after all, little training investment had been made.
This compromise won approval. With a thousand patrol officers in place, they could relieve the National Army of its burden of routine security patrols and checkpoint duties, freeing it for major operations to come.
But a new problem immediately arose.
Adding personnel meant adding expenses. Setting aside everything else, uniforms alone for one thousand policemen represented a substantial outlay. Once these officers went on duty, wages would have to be paid monthly.
The Ming government had traditionally either declined to pay its low-ranking civil servants at all, or paid only a token sum. Since the Senatorial Council demanded unprecedented standards of work and discipline from its grassroots officials, it couldn't be that stingy. At a minimum, compensation had to match Hainan levels: a basic-level official's income should support a family of four at a comfortable subsistence level.
When they tallied it up, the larger the cadre headcount became, the greater the unseen fiscal burden.
At present, the Guangzhou Special Municipality had virtually no revenue—"economizing" was impossible; the only option was to "broaden sources."
Lin Baiguang wasn't in charge of finance, but he knew that the municipality's current income came from only two sources: the "start-up fund" appropriated by the Finance Department, and the fiscal returns from war booty seized from prefectural and county treasuries plus confiscated assets of officials and clerks.
Though the latter was nominally vast, most of it was not cash but physical goods of every description. Liquidating these into usable currency was itself a headache. Lin Baiguang knew that Liu Xiang had been on the telegraph for days, wrangling with the Enterprise Institute and Finance Department, trying to "sell" the various war trophies to the Enterprise Institute.
His clever scheme naturally came to nothing. The Enterprise Institute declared that it never "bought or sold" any materials—only transferred them. The Finance Department, for its part, held that war booty was handled through Enterprise Institute "transfer" procedures and had nothing to do with Finance. Regardless of where the goods ended up, the Finance Department had no obligation to "purchase" them.
Looking at the expenditure columns Mu Min had listed in the report, Lin Baiguang found himself stroking his chin. He was reminded of his early post-graduation days at the county propaganda office, wielding a pen for the leadership—before the era of land-finance, when the county's "Five Small Industries" had all collapsed. Aside from scraping a little agricultural tax from the "straw-hatted masses," the county had virtually no revenue base, and scrounging together civil-service salaries became the Party Secretary and County Magistrate's monthly migraine.
Liu Xiang, at this very moment, was probably experiencing the same headache.
Lin Baiguang smiled and picked up the next document.
At that same moment, Liu Xiang was pacing in circles in his office, racking his brain over fiscal matters.
Government was no different from a household: the seven essentials required for daily survival all cost money. Having served as the Qiongshan County Office Director, Liu Xiang already understood the difficulty of managing a budget.
Back then, of course, finances had been centralized: though he felt constrained in many ways, basic administrative expenses had been borne by the central government. His efforts to "broaden sources" and launch development projects were icing on the cake—successes earned him credit; failures wouldn't sink him. Now he had to balance the books himself—and not only that, the Senatorial Council hadn't occupied Guangdong just to let him pad his résumé. Guangzhou had to contribute new revenue streams to the great undertaking as quickly as possible.
The start-up fund allocated to him by the Senatorial Council was 1.2 million yuan: 200,000 yuan in minted coin, one million in banknotes. The vast majority was paper currency; whether it would circulate smoothly remained to be seen once implementation began—after all, the shift from taels-to-yuan was a major campaign that could not succeed overnight. What was left to work with, then, was the so-called "fiscal return." And that was precisely what gave him the worst headache.
"Central's decision to mint silver coins and establish a Silver Zone does solve one of my big problems!" Liu Xiang declaimed, hands clasped behind his back, pacing back and forth in the office. "Now the Finance Ministry has also approved applying a portion of war booty as fiscal return—'cook first, sign later,' running it through the transfer ledger. I'm very grateful for that. But what do I actually have on hand? Never mind the discrepancy between the ledgers and what's actually in the warehouses. Just look at the goods themselves: Treasury silver, that's fine! Miscellaneous silver, that's fine too! Grain, no matter how stale, that's still usable! But the warehouses also hold bolts of silk and hemp accepted as tax-in-kind before the Single-Whip Reform—coated in a layer of limestone dust, and when you pick them up, the fabric crumbles into powder! Who knows how many years it's been sitting there—all rotted!" Liu Xiang switched to full grievance mode.
"And then there's the copper cash! Strings that have rotted right off the coins—no need to wait for a 'prosperous age' to witness that; the prefectural and county treasuries are full of them! And the coins themselves are a jumble! All manner of official mints and private forgeries—never mind those; they've dug out Northern Song 'Ten-Cash' and 'Five-Cash' big-coins by the handful. They've even found a few hundred Han Wuzhu coins! Tell me—am I supposed to count these as government assets and put them to use, or hand them over as antiquities to the state?"
Meng Xian, who served as both president of Delong Bank and director of the Central Reserve Bank's Guangdong Branch, offered a dutiful chuckle. The swagger of his overseas-student days was long gone; in manner he was indistinguishable from a steady, seasoned Ming-era merchant.
In Guangzhou, Meng Xian was not merely a banker; he was in effect the Finance Bureau chief for both the provincial and municipal governments. Ensuring the new currency's release, stabilizing the financial order, and expanding tax revenue—all of that was his responsibility.
The Ming dynasty, broadly speaking, was an era that paid little attention to minting coins. Most emperors coined very little during their reigns. Coins from every historical dynasty circulated together, and private coinage was epidemic. This created enormous headaches for Liu Xiang's fiscal administration, because he simply could not estimate how much "money" was actually in the prefectural and county vaults. Meanwhile, the endless variety of physical goods in storage could not be used directly—paying officials' salaries with spices and precious curiosities was something the Yongle Emperor had done, and it bred tremendous resentment.
"There's also all the in-kind tax receipts in storage: five- or six-meter lengths of untrimmed bamboo now count as government inventory! The ledger even specifies their purpose: for well-digging and well-cleaning. What use is that to us? And then there are feathers, fish glue, dyes, spices... Anything you could find on the market, the treasury's got it in stock. And once it sits there for thirty or fifty years and comes out again, it's garbage!"
(End of Chapter)