Chapter 179: Clearing Debts

Ji Xin said, “They are allowed to plunder the common people by force, but we are not allowed to do the same?” He smiled. “I don’t even need to use the commercial and civil codes we’ve drafted ourselves—the laws promulgated by the Ming government are enough to deal with them.”

The two grand codes that Ji Xin mentioned were actually far from complete. They were still being compiled—or rather, adapted.

“Really?”

“Of course. At least in law, the Ming Dynasty does not allow usury. This is not only in the Ming law, but even locally, the government has repeatedly issued prohibitions. There are materials in the archives, but no large household has ever taken it seriously. This is one thing. Second, these large households have been in arrears of grain for many years. Is this not a violation of the Ming law? The cumulative amount is a large number. On this point, what’s there to talk about ‘taxes come from grain, and grain comes from rent’?” Ji Xin said with confidence. “If necessary, I’ll settle this account with them first.”

After the discussion, Liu Xiang instructed people to post the list of “prospective migrant workers” who had already registered in front of the Taoist temple for one day. Anyone who had any objection to someone’s debt problem must immediately bring evidence to the temporary court to raise an objection. Late submissions would not be accepted.

As for those who could not prove that the tenant farmers had debts, they could not stop the tenant farmers from leaving. The tenancy system in the Ming Dynasty was generally no longer of a personal dependency nature. Although at the legal level, the tenant farmers were still lower than the landlords, the tenant farmers had personal freedom and could come and go as they pleased, and the landlords had no right to detain them.

By the evening, about thirty percent of the recruited refugees were proven to have debt problems. A table was piled high with various debt materials. Ji Xin was confident. He instructed the financial personnel sent by Delong, the retained clerks from the county yamen’s household department, and the court staff to work together to sort out the materials, collect the various evidences of the plaintiffs into files, and then number them one by one. Then, people would be called in by number to clear the debts.

Ji Xin had the materials obtained from the county office: this was the list of tax arrears and the amounts that were cleaned up and counted during the land measurement and the takeover of the county yamen. Some large households had been in arrears of grain and taxes for many years, and some had never paid at all. The cumulative number had reached a very large amount. If they were to be serious, it would be no problem to start a major lawsuit. It was just that the transmigrators were not yet firmly established and did not intend to show their ugly side for the time being. When the time was ripe, they would naturally deal with them harshly.

Both the plaintiffs and the defendants were gathered in the temporary court—a side hall in a Taoist temple—to clear the debts. The temporary court was crowded and noisy, but no one dared to speak. The infantry’s bayonets gleamed, and the yamen runners borrowed from the county yamen were all holding water and fire sticks and whips. The entire temporary court was imposing.

The creditors and debtors who were called in first confirmed the authenticity and amount of the debt in front of Ji Xin. During the clearing process, a large number of forged and altered contracts and I.O.U.s were found. Some had altered numbers, some were simply misattributed, and some had no handprint or signature at all, just a piece of paper that they had scribbled on as evidence.

Any evidence that was proven to be forged was confiscated and canceled. The plaintiff was immediately dragged down and given forty strokes of the plank. One fake contract got forty strokes, two got sixty, three got ninety… and so on. The yamen runners who had been seconded had long wanted to show their faces in front of the Australian chiefs. They were all in high spirits and did not hold back at all. Rainwater and blood flowed freely under the hall, and feces and urine flowed freely on the hall. One person was even beaten to death. The plaintiffs were scared out of their wits and one after another requested to withdraw their lawsuits, no longer wanting to claim any debts.

“How can this be? Paying debts is a matter of course. I am beating the wicked, you are all good people, what is there to fear?” Ji Xin also felt that it was about time. “Anyone who has forged a contract, as long as they know their mistake and repent, immediately come forward and confess, and the past will be forgiven.”

So a group of people immediately came forward to confess—the taste of forty strokes of the plank was not pleasant. Ji Xin immediately showed the forged documents of these people, canceled them, and kept them as evidence. Then he ordered them to write a confession and fined them ten shi of grain for each forged document.

As for the valid contracts, they were settled according to the numbers and interest on them. The court did not recognize the kind of “debt” that played with compound interest to trap people for three generations. At most, it was settled according to Delong’s regulations: the maximum annual interest rate did not exceed 25%. The principal and interest were converted into grain circulation coupons and paid by Delong.

To ensure that the creditors were willing to accept the circulation coupons, Ji Xin announced the policy on the spot: the circulation coupons could be used to offset the grain tax and other miscellaneous taxes in the summer and autumn. In this way, even if the large households thought that the circulation coupons had no circulation value, ensuring that they could be used to pay public grain was equivalent to a guarantee by the state credit.

Delong was not paying off the debts for free. In fact, it was equivalent to buying the debts: these debtors borrowed from Delong with their labor—that is, their future wages—as collateral.

During the clearing process, some tenant farmers who owed debts to the large households, upon hearing that they had to borrow money from the “government” to go to Lingao to work, immediately changed their minds in fear. In this situation, Yang Yun worked hard to persuade them, but few were won over. After all, in this era, borrowing money from the government was a deep-rooted terror. Liu Xiang didn’t care about this; the more who stayed, the more beneficial it was for him.

The clearing process started slowly, but then it progressed quickly. Seeing that there were no more difficult matters below, and it was just some clearing procedures, Ji Xin handed over the work to a few of his naturalized citizen cadres and went out for some fresh air.

Liu Xiang went up to him. “Well done! Your move was to lead with the stick and follow with the carrot.”

Ji Xin didn’t speak, just smiled. A familiar wry smile appeared on his face.

“To be honest, this method is not good. It’s just a stopgap measure.”

“What’s not good about it?” Liu Xiang was puzzled. “These large households openly forge documents and engage in usury. If we don’t deal with them harshly, they’ll probably continue to do whatever they want and bully the villagers.”

Ji Xin nodded. “That’s true, but what I’m doing is treating human life as grass. To put it bluntly, it’s no different from what Han Fuqu, the ‘Blue Sky Han,’ did. From the perspective of building a society ruled by law, it’s extremely inappropriate.” He sighed and added, “Actually, their crimes don’t deserve death.”

Although Liu Xiang felt that what he said was reasonable, he still felt a little disgusted and couldn’t help but criticize in his heart, “The weakness of the petty bourgeoisie is acting up again.”

“Don’t think too much about it. Hasn’t this been the case in China for thousands of years?” he said. “I’m not biased towards the poor. The poor are not necessarily good people. There are shrews and cunning people everywhere. But look at the current situation. When the wealthy and powerful do things, they really have no bottom line. They just write a note themselves, find someone to put a mark on it, and then they come to exploit the tenant farmers. If we don’t severely dampen their arrogance, how can we stand firm? Even if some people’s crimes don’t deserve death, which temple doesn’t have a ghost who died unjustly?” He became excited as he spoke and pointed at the refugees in the Taoist temple. “Look at these refugees. They’ve suffered a disaster, they have no food to eat, and aren’t they all their tenant farmers? If we hadn’t forced them to donate, they wouldn’t have given a single grain of rice for relief, just waiting for them to fend for themselves. When we want to take the people away, they remember—it’s not okay to have no one to farm the land. If they had known this earlier, what were they doing before!”

“So I said it can only be a temporary measure. But in the long run, this approach is not desirable,” Ji Xin did not argue. He suddenly said, “Liu Xiang, you are a county magistrate now. In the future, you might become a provincial governor or a high-ranking local official. Don’t have the impulse to be a ‘blue sky’ (a term for an upright official). China’s problems cannot be solved by a few ‘blue skies’.”

Liu Xiang didn’t speak. He understood that what Ji Xin was ultimately advocating was the theory of “ruling the country by law.” He didn’t oppose this, but it seemed a bit too early to talk about it now. He suddenly realized that his own remarks just now seemed to be consistent with Governor Ma’s thinking—it seemed that deep down, he was indeed a revolutionary.

As he was thinking, he suddenly saw Yang Yun leading people to distribute food to the refugees. The food had been changed to seafood porridge—the traditional nutritious meal of the quarantine camp.

“Yo, the food is not bad!” Liu Xiang looked at the food of these disaster victims and greeted Yang Yun.

“Hehe, if we don’t feed them well, how can we send them away? Both sea and land routes are very physically demanding,” Yang Yun pointed at the crowd. “And there are some children who are so thin, oh my! If we don’t give them some nutrition, they’ll die before they reach Lingao.”

“After so much effort, we only got a few thousand people. Don’t you think it’s a bit of a loss…” Liu Xiang asked Yang Yun tentatively.

“This is called ‘drawing the firewood from under the cauldron.’ The people are one aspect, and revolutionizing the landlords is the second aspect,” Yang Yun did not hide it. “You should have read the document, right?”

“Of course, of course,” Liu Xiang said. “But I have my concerns—isn’t this a bit too radical?”

Liu Xiang chatted with Yang Yun in this desultory way while inspecting, and at the same time, he was trying to find out what was going on in Lingao, especially on the BBS. Being far from the core area, many things could only be guessed from the words of the official documents that came and went. This information asymmetry made Liu Xiang feel very uncomfortable.

“Hehe, I didn’t expect you, who used to call yourself a revolutionary leftist, to become a right-wing element now?” Yang Yun laughed. “Things are not absolute. What Governor Ma wants is nothing more than enough food, manpower, and strong grassroots control.”

This was as good as saying nothing, Liu Xiang thought. This was just the basic policy of the Senate. He had to say, “Actually, the population of Qiongshan is not excessive. It can be completely absorbed locally…” He decided to talk to Yang Yun about his ideas first.

“I didn’t expect you to be eyeing these laborers too,” Yang Yun said after hearing Liu Xiang’s idea of applying to transfer some industries to Qiongshan. “But this time, what Governor Ma is after is not just these tenant farmers, but also the surplus grain of the landlords.”

“I’m afraid it’s also the landlords with surplus grain,” Liu Xiang said with a seemingly casual joke.