Chapter 2058 - The New Unified Purchase

Ai Zhixin had burned his fingers on naming issues before, so the actual title of this collection method was Resolution on the Tax Bureau Commissioning the Dechang State Agricultural Products Company to Collect and Remit Rural Taxes on Its Behalf—aside from the words "On" and "Resolution," it had nothing to do with the old timeline's "unified purchase and sale."

In fact, even though some Elders at Wudaokou jokingly called it "unified purchase," the Executive Committee version was vastly different from the old timeline. The old timeline policy's full name was Resolution on Implementing Planned Grain Purchase and Planned Grain Supply (1953). The "planned purchase" was colloquially called "unified purchase" while "planned supply" was called "unified sale." Later, the scope expanded to include cotton, yarn, cloth, and cooking oil.

Naturally, given the Executive Committee's governance capacity, implementing administrative unified purchase and sale was neither possible nor necessary. Thus, in the joint resolution issued by the Tax Bureau together with Agriculture and Commerce, setting aside that the Executive Committee had directly eliminated "unified sale," even the new "unified purchase" differed from the old timeline's reliance on state power to force farmers to sell grain to the government and prohibit free grain trade.

The Executive Committee's "unified purchase" policy was more of an "advocacy." Instead of relying on administrative measures, it primarily used market economic tools. Leveraging lower transportation and storage costs plus the organizational management advantages of the state agricultural products company, the Dechang State Agricultural Products Company in stable governance areas handled the purchasing.

Dechang was a first-tier state policy company formed after Delong was reorganized as a commercial bank and its grain processing operations were spun off. It was controlled by the Planning Commission's State Assets Management Office. Through cross-shareholding and acquisitions, it also controlled Dachang Rice Shop—essentially the core operation and its front company.

The new agricultural products company could use higher purchase prices as economic incentives to attract farmers to sell grain, achieving the "unified purchase" goal. Simultaneously, when purchasing grain, it would directly collect and remit farmers' land taxes on their behalf—convenient for farmers and greatly reducing collection costs and manpower.

Regarding potential fraud, Wang Qiyi took a relaxed view. First, management and cost control were inherently hard to achieve simultaneously—expecting seventeenth-century people to do what even twenty-first-century people couldn't was a joke. With few personnel and low quality, focus on the main contradiction and get the taxes collected. The rest could be addressed through more inspections and gradual improvements. Second, Dechang's total grain purchase volume, local cultivation area, and tax revenue could form a three-way cross-checking relationship. Large-scale, high-volume fraud would actually be harder to pull off.

As for concerns about farmers selling grain to native merchants and thereby evading taxes, the three didn't think it was a major problem. Setting aside that with Dechang's purchase prices, few native merchants could compete—even at identical prices, native merchants buying directly from farmers would face untaxed standards during transport and sale, requiring them to pay business tax plus back-payment of land tax (at higher rates) on the grain sold. Grain wasn't like small items; it was bulk cargo. In Consolidated Areas, there would basically be no unmonitored situations. As for native merchants claiming the grain they sold was already taxed, the Tax Bureau had left a backup measure: after paying taxes, merchants could take their tax completion certificates to the local Tax Bureau of the grain's origin for a refund—fair and reasonable. But considering the new timeline's lending interest rates and logistics time, this would significantly increase native merchants' financial costs, making competing with Dechang for grain purchases clearly unprofitable. Besides, those who could supply large quantities of grain to merchants were invariably large landowners. With big families and properties to protect, they probably wouldn't dare take such risks without Executive Committee approval, let alone play games with taxes.

The survival space left for native grain merchants was the remote areas where Dechang couldn't penetrate. The overall approach was: Dechang eats the meat, native merchants drink the soup and gnaw the bones.

All these differences ultimately traced back to the different sources of industrialization funding. The Executive Committee could rely on the excess foreign trade profits from its technology and industry, plus scissors-differential trade with Southeast Asia and European countries, to provide resources for industrialization—unlike the old timeline's China, which could only rely on administrative force to extract industrialization funds semi-gratuitously from farmers. So in the Executive Committee's positioning, the countryside was mainly meant to provide stable grain sources and industrial raw materials for the non-agricultural population, and more importantly, to serve as a human resources reservoir. On both fronts, the Executive Committee preferred solving problems through economic means rather than exhausting its limited, not-very-skilled naturalized cadres.

Advancing Areas referred to regions between Newly Occupied and Consolidated Areas—places where Executive Committee governance had spread but couldn't yet guarantee grassroots control throughout all jurisdictions. For these areas, the Tax Bureau planned a rolling advancement approach: select capable, politically reliable naturalized cadres to form working groups dispatched to areas meeting grassroots control standards, assist local governments in establishing complete fiscal and tax systems, then transfer authority to local Tax Bureaus. "Combining civil and military approaches," they would handle tax publicity while coordinating with local National Army and government forces over a two-year period to conduct multiple rounds of mandatory surplus grain inspections (grain had been designated a national priority resource by the Executive Committee). The main targets would be landowners with substantial holdings, "persuading" them to sell surplus grain to the local Dechang company. The goal was to consolidate wherever they advanced.

The Tax Bureau's scheme and the establishment of the Dechang State Agricultural Products Company had proceeded smoothly, entirely because the Executive Committee had recognized the importance of establishing its own grain system—especially in this new timeline where grain could be considered an extremely precious strategic resource. The Executive Committee's preliminary plan was to rely on Dechang, using rural land tax as the primary source, to establish a county-province-central three-tier grain collection and storage system. Beyond the usual disaster preparedness, famine relief, and strategic supply functions, this system could also serve as a stabilizer and compass for society-wide grain supply and demand pricing.

Not only that, behind this plan, the Tax Bureau had also proactively prepared a set of detailed regulations for land and property taxes, kept in reserve for the imminent war between local Elders and the central State Council.

These detailed regulations gave local chief executives great autonomy in three areas. First was the determination of land type and normal annual yield—both determined by local county-level (or higher) government, with notification to the central authority. Second, the Tax Bureau headquarters' guidance amount for urban land tax was only the minimum baseline. Local governments could set upward pricing, with a maximum cap of thirty times the guidance amount per tier. Finally, when collecting agricultural land tax, local governments could offer tax reductions of up to 20% of the total tax amount based on agricultural product type and payment method (in kind or currency). This benefited not just local governments, which could conveniently guide farmers to pay taxes in grain or currency depending on current needs. More importantly, when a locality was a single-crop production area requiring more transport capacity for external sales, they could use a combination of canceling in-kind reductions, increasing currency reductions, and lowering Dechang handling fee rebates to raise Dechang's costs, pressure Dechang to lower purchase prices, and thus make things profitable for native merchants—borrowing private sector power to transport and sell local agricultural products.

Every time he thought about this, Wang Qiyi had to sigh internally: I'm clearly a leftist—why do I keep acting like some right-wing petit bourgeois?

"With so much Liang family property, where should we start?" Having finished with land tax, Ai Zhixin felt troubled again. The sheep was so fat it was hard to take a bite.

"Xingtan Township, Shunde's Xingtan Township." Zhang Xiaoqi said without hesitation. "The materials say the Liang family is from the Xingtan Liangs. They only moved to Guangzhou during Liang Cunhou's grandfather's generation. The clan lands, ancestral property, and ancestral graves are all in Xingtan. He likes cutting off his tail to survive? Let's see how he cuts this one off..."

"Don't. Not like this. Too provocative—won't look good." Seeing his wife had gotten her killing momentum going, Wang Qiyi quickly called a stop. "I think it's better to start from the surrounding villages and towns. There must be plenty of surrendered properties around Xingtan. I agree with Director Ai's suggestion—tighten the noose slowly and watch him jump. That's the interesting part. Besides, the Liang family has connections with the Executive Committee. If we're too ruthless, it'll negatively affect many future operations—didn't Director Wen say? Those who helped us back then, we need to show 'every courtesy.'"

"People like this who play the whore and still want to—"

"And there's a practical issue you haven't considered..." Wang Qiyi passed the cup to Zhang Xiaoqi, cutting off her interjection. "Xingtan Township is in Shunde, not Guangzhou. As far as I know, our control there is only moderate at best. So even setting aside risk, just for investigation and evidence gathering, we shouldn't choose there."

"Then what's your recommendation, Old Wang?"

"Foshan. Start with Foshan County." Wang Qiyi stood and walked to the map hanging on the opposite wall. "Look here." He pointed to Foshan County on the map. "One of the Ming's Four Great Townships, a key target for the northern campaign, one of the logistics bases. Not counting other units' armed forces, there's a permanently stationed National Army squadron alone. Convenient transportation." He opened his personal notebook. "Foshan has now been upgraded from township to county. The county chief is Liu Si from Thirteen Villages—reportedly good political awareness and management ability. Rumor has it he once dealt with bandits and facilitated that major bandit-suppression victory for Du Wen and Dong Weiwei, so he's clearly capable. The deputy county chief is Lin Ming, a Ming dynasty Jinyiwei centurion..."

"Holy shit, Jinyiwei?!" Hearing this, Ai Zhixin excitedly swore.

"Yes. People like this are local powerhouses—not only familiar with all parties, but his former position means he definitely has some understanding of the Liang family. That'll definitely help our work greatly. I have a passage here about the Liang family's situation in Foshan that he wrote. It says when Liang Cunhou's grandfather Liang Younian was an official, he got his hometown nephews installed in Foshan as Treasury Managers for the Provincial Administration Commission."

Next update: Volume 7 - Two Guangs Campaign Section 171

(End of Chapter)