Chapter 1801 - The Tax Bureau Chief
The financial machinery for Guangzhou's currency reform was already grinding into motion. Delong Bank had seeded the urban landscape with branch offices and opened exchange counters at every Credit Cooperative, prepared to convert the chaotic flood of silver taels and copper cash into standardized currency. Deep within the stone vaults of Delong's Guangzhou headquarters, wooden barrels and wicker baskets waited like hungry mouths to swallow the miscellaneous coinage that would soon pour through their doors. Most crucially, the printing presses had already churned out vast quantities of banknotes. Once the new system gained traction, the Ministry of Finance planned to mandate inter-bank corporate account settlements, strangling cash transactions at the source.
Meanwhile, Liu Xiang had tasked both the Police Bureau and Zheng Shangjie with a covert economic census. Working through the Federation of Industry and Commerce, they were quietly surveying inventory levels, sales volumes, and pricing across more than a dozen essential commodity categories—textiles, meat, fish, salt, tea, and everything in between. To monitor the market's pulse during the volatile transition period, plans were underway to establish a regional data processing center within the Great World complex. This nerve center would digest daily market intelligence and feed analysis to the Guangzhou Finance and Economics Group, enabling real-time policy adjustments.
Finally, there remained the matter of staffing the Guangzhou Municipal Tax Bureau. After months of Liu Xiang's increasingly desperate appeals, Wudaokou had at last deemed his pleas worthy of a response: they were sending him a Tax Bureau Chief.
In a Senator's suite within the privileged "Inner World" section of the Great World complex, Senator Ai Zhixin examined his reflection with the critical eye of a man who understood that authority began with appearance. Short hair trimmed with military precision. Titanium-framed glasses—thin, modern, meticulously maintained. A Swiss timepiece gracing his wrist. A crisp white shirt cut from top-grade Dutch linen, paired with light khaki trousers. The ensemble projected exactly what he intended: the unmistakable sophistication of a financial elite, that peculiar "yuppie" aesthetic that announced competence before a word was spoken.
The only flaw in the composition was his footwear. These specially supplied cloth shoes were excellent by seventeenth-century standards, but they lent an unavoidable bohemian note that clashed with the carefully cultivated image. Genuine leather dress shoes would have completed the picture perfectly.
Satisfied that everything else was in order, he turned from the mirror. His life secretary, Ai Yixin, had been waiting with the silent patience of the professionally trained, and now stepped forward to hand him a high-quality imitation BOSS briefcase.
"Thank you," Ai Zhixin said, accepting it with genuine appreciation. The bag—salvaged from Landu's fishing boat haul—might be only an A-grade knockoff, but the craftsmanship was exquisite. The materials were choice, the construction nearly indistinguishable from an authentic article. It had become one of his most cherished possessions. Back in his previous life, during his career at the National Tax Bureau, Senator Ai had cultivated a reputation as something of a style maven, a man with refined tastes.
Ai Yixin gestured a silent inquiry: was he leaving?
The young woman possessed the kind of looks and figure that would have made her an obvious A-grade candidate upon graduation—had she not been mute. Fortunately, her condition was acquired rather than congenital, which spared Senator Ai the considerable inconvenience of learning sign language.
Of course, that same disability had relegated her to D-grade classification, despite her other obvious qualifications. This arrangement had earned Senator Ai a nickname among the more caustic members of the Senate: "The Scavenger"—a man who picked through what others discarded.
Let them sneer. Ai Zhixin had never been bothered by such provincial thinking. Yes, Ai Yixin couldn't speak. Yes, she'd arrived in Lingao completely illiterate. But her aptitude for learning had quickly proven exceptional. Her academic performance upon graduation had ranked among the very best. After several years under his personal tutelage—a combination of structured guidance and rigorous self-study—she had become one of the most professionally capable naturalized cadres in the entire Wudaokou system. Were she not bound to him as his personal maid, he would have gladly appointed her to a significant leadership position. As it stood, he'd made her his private secretary, and not merely a "secretary for life" in the euphemistic sense.
Senator Ai had overseen fiscal and taxation policy in Wudaokou for years, work that had begun as an afterthought and evolved into something approaching an actual discipline. In the early days, taxation had commanded little institutional attention—a practical necessity given the circumstances. Neither Lingao County nor Qiongzhou Prefecture possessed anything resembling wealth. Agriculture was backward, industrial output negligible, commerce barely existent. For years, the Senate's treasury had fattened primarily on war spoils and trade surpluses. What modest taxation they did collect came mainly from agricultural land and fisheries. Customs had established formal categories for import duties, export tariffs, and anchorage fees, but most were routinely waived to encourage commerce. The system existed largely on paper.
Everything changed when Lingao's economy finally caught fire. Suddenly, the naturalized cadres in the tax department experienced what they privately called their "Long Live the Senate's Tax" awakening—the conceptual shock of discovering a taxation framework so sophisticated it made the Great Ming's methods look positively medieval, even by seventeenth-century international standards.
Now Senator Ai was descending on Guangzhou with the tax team he'd personally trained in Hainan, sharpened to a fine edge through years of work in Lingao.
"Don't prepare dinner tonight," he instructed Ai Yixin. "I'll eat at the bureau. Pack our things and be ready to move to the bureau dormitory first thing tomorrow morning. The Municipal Government's General Affairs Office will send a sedan chair and porters—follow their arrangements. And don't wander outside the compound alone. The situation inside Guangzhou's walls isn't entirely stable yet."
Ai Yixin nodded her understanding.
His destination was the Guangzhou Branch of the State Administration of Taxation. Though ostensibly just a regional office, it effectively commanded tax collection for all of Guangdong Province. Wherever the Fubo Army's authority extended, taxation would follow, though naturally with differentiated policies across the Core Zone, the Pacification Zone, and the Public Security Zone.
The scope of Ai Zhixin's mandate was breathtaking. With the sole exception of customs duties, every form of taxation throughout Guangzhou—indeed, throughout Guangdong—fell under his authority. Industrial taxes, commercial taxes, agricultural levies, fishery assessments, all of it. The state monopoly system as well. Regarding specific tax categories, rate structures, and collection methodologies, he possessed discretionary authority to "adapt measures to local conditions, provided the general policy direction remained inviolate."
Such sweeping power naturally came paired with crushing responsibility. He would need to establish functional tax operations in an extraordinarily complex environment, with acute shortages of both qualified personnel and institutional infrastructure, all while simultaneously supporting Chen Ce's Finance and Economics Working Group in implementing the new currency. Tax collection and auditing would serve not merely as revenue-generating mechanisms but as critical instruments for currency stabilization—taxation could effectively compel merchant acceptance of the new money whether they liked it or not.
The sedan chair deposited him before the Salt Tax Bureau compound under the weight of these considerations. Two new signs flanked the entrance: "Guangzhou Branch of the State Administration of Taxation" and "Guangzhou Branch of the Ministry of Finance Monopoly Bureau." Within Wudaokou's fiscal architecture, the salt and tobacco monopolies represented substantial revenue streams. Since no Senator had yet been formally assigned to head the Monopoly Bureau, tax administration had absorbed it by default. After all, monopoly revenue was simply taxation by another name.
Stepping down from the sedan chair, Ai Zhixin appreciated the relative coolness of the compound after days spent acclimatizing to the miasmic stench of stagnant water and raw sewage baking under Guangzhou's merciless June sun. The Salt Tax Bureau was ancient—nearly as old as the Ming Dynasty itself. Its last major renovation had occurred during the Jiajing reign, over a century past. The architecture spoke to that age: walls that rose high and forbidding, rooms that stretched deep into shadowed corridors, courtyards broad enough to parade troops. Century-old trees towered overhead, their canopies thick with verdant growth that filtered the brutal sunlight into something almost pleasant.
Given how recently Guangzhou had been pacified, National Army soldiers stood guard at every major entrance. Ai Zhixin noted their presence, along with the Japanese samurai guards who had escorted his sedan chair through the city streets, and understood immediately just how complicated his operational environment would be.
Representatives from both the Tax Bureau and Monopoly Bureau had assembled at the ceremonial gate to receive him. The crowd naturally sorted itself into two distinct groups. On the left stood the naturalized personnel under Hu Xuefan's leadership—some transferred from Hainan, others reassigned from the Ministry of Urban Construction's Wansheng Storehouse operation in Guangzhou. These formed the core of Ai Zhixin's taxation team, the people he could actually trust. On the right stood the retained Ming-era functionaries, those who'd survived the post-conquest screening process: household office clerks and scribes, grain transport supervisors, functionaries from the River Police Station and Salt Granary, petty officials of every conceivable rank and function, from unranked administrative assistants down to the lowest-status runners.
As the senior-most civil servant in the bureau, Hu Xuefan stepped forward to deliver the formal welcome. An elderly clerk from the old Salt Tax Bureau then assumed the role of guide, leading them toward Ai Zhixin's new office.
The path wound through the compound past buildings that appeared impressive until closer inspection revealed them as thoroughly dilapidated. Walls left unrepaired for years were mottled with moss and black mold. Roofs bristled with wild artemisia; some had sprouted actual trees. The old clerk explained apologetically that entire sections of the compound had been sealed off years ago due to neglect. Several salt granaries had already collapsed entirely.
Cheerful place, Ai Zhixin thought grimly.
The courtyard designated as his combined office and residence had at least been cleaned and furnished with basic necessities. He directed his accompanying clerks to unpack the document crates he'd brought from Hainan and organize them properly on the shelves. Then, making use of what little daylight remained, he settled in to study the comprehensive fiscal and taxation situation reports compiled by the Ministry of Urban Construction.
Guangzhou's fiscal landscape was dizzyingly complex. The chaos stemmed partly from the Ming Dynasty's inherently convoluted tax system, but also from the Senate's own years of collecting what they euphemistically termed "Reasonable Burdens"—along with fishery taxes throughout Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta, not to mention the extensive private salt trade.
Back in Lingao, Ai Zhixin had made a thorough study of Ming fiscal policy in theory. But Qiongzhou Prefecture had been so wretchedly poor and backward that actual tax collection practice there was laughably primitive. Now, examining the documentation from prosperous Guangzhou Prefecture, he found himself genuinely enlightened for the first time about how the system actually functioned.
The Great Ming placed remarkably little emphasis on industrial and commercial taxation. Beyond the land tax and the salt gabelle, every other levy fell under the catchall category of "miscellaneous colors"—a term that conveyed exactly how seriously the dynasty took such revenue. The administration of these miscellaneous taxes was both chaotic and byzantine. Though "ministry regulations" technically existed, every locality operated according to its own peculiar customs, some dating back centuries, their original logic long forgotten.
The most significant of these local levies was the commercial tax, which functioned essentially like the lijin transit duties that would plague the later Qing Dynasty—except with nominally fixed quotas. Every prefecture and county maintained specific commercial tax quotas, some absurdly inflated, others laughably modest. The basis upon which these quotas had originally been calculated had been lost to institutional memory. No one could explain why one county owed ten times what its neighbor did.
Implementation was predictably crude. Local governments dispatched clerks to establish checkpoints at ferry crossings and major roads, extracting payment from anyone who passed. The nominal rates were tiny, but the scope was universal—taxes could theoretically be levied on anything and everything, down to a single chicken or a basket of vegetables. The principle of repeated taxation applied with ruthless efficiency: a peasant farmer hauling produce to market paid the toll at every single checkpoint along his route.
The real genius of the system's dysfunction lay in its incentive structure. The clerks and runners manning these checkpoints received no official salary whatsoever, yet bore personal responsibility for meeting their assigned revenue quotas. Inevitably, the commercial checkpoints had degenerated into de facto tax farming operations, with corruption and extortion becoming not aberrations but essential features. The result was entirely predictable: crushing public resentment, negligible actual revenue reaching the imperial treasury, and the vast bulk of collected funds evaporating layer by layer into private pockets.
(End of Chapter)