Chapter 100: Financial Difficulties

Broadly speaking, the Guangzhou Municipal Government planned to launch a “New Life Movement” in the city.

“Although the name is a bit unlucky, I think it’s very fitting,” Lin Baiguang said with a smile. “We want to bring a new concept of life to the citizens of Guangzhou, change their customs, and let them know what a ‘civilized’ way of life is like.”

Specifically, it involved mobilizing government workers, the army, and the public for a city-wide cleanup, clearing the canals and urban garbage.

“But I think there are still many tasks to be implemented,” Liu San said. “For example, the long-term management of street sanitation and the implementation of food safety laws.”

“This is just the first phase of the work,” Lin Baiguang said. “It’s far from enough to transform the city. So we also have a second phase—we are currently short-staffed and don’t know the city’s details well enough, so we can only pick the low-hanging fruit first. It’s easy to announce a few laws, but the key is to enforce them properly. In the old time and space, they were very diligent in formulating various laws and regulations, but they were all principled things, with no implementation details or specific methods of implementation, and enforcement was a mere formality. Over time, the government lost its credibility. No matter how many laws and regulations you announce, the masses will just treat it as nonsense. So, we either don’t say anything, or if we do, we must ensure it can be enforced.”

“Alright, I have no objection to that. I’ll follow your lead,” Liu San agreed.

After Liu San left, Lin Baiguang carefully reviewed the “Guangzhou Special Municipal Police Department First Phase Police Recruitment and Training Plan” sent by Mu Min.

In fact, at today’s meeting, the civil service recruitment examination had sparked some debate. Liu Xiang’s opinion was that it was too early to start the examination, as it could easily lead to the large-scale entry of old forces into their ranks. His opinion was to hold off on this for three or four months, or even half a year. After all, the Senate’s civil service recruitment examination could not use the eight-legged essay, nor could it use the Four Books and Five Classics as the examination scope. They needed to provide an examination scope and sample questions, and publish various supplementary materials and past papers. This would allow the candidates to think according to a new mode of thought.

Examinations are a great way to train one’s thinking, and the Chinese are the most pragmatic people in the world. As long as you set the rules, there will be plenty of people who will study them. The new mode of thought and knowledge concepts would thus be infiltrated.

Such a transition would take at least half a year.

However, Lin Baiguang, Mu Min, and Liu San all responded that there were too many civil problems to be solved, and the shortage of personnel had reached a critical point and must be resolved immediately, or at least partially.

After discussion, it was decided to recruit police officers first, as they were most lacking in grassroots control capabilities. Police officers with the power of violent law enforcement could effectively supplement this. Grassroots police officers didn’t need profound knowledge. Literacy was best, but illiteracy was not a major problem. They could be recruited from the large number of urban poor. Even if some of them turned out to be unsuitable, they could be easily replaced. Most importantly, there was no “class issue” that Liu Xiang was worried about.

With a police force, many of the things they needed to do next would have a human resource foundation.

Mu Min’s plan was to first recruit one thousand people for the first phase, all to be used as patrol officers.

Patrol officers were the most basic type of police. The requirements for personnel were not high, and they didn’t need much professional training. As long as they patrolled at fixed times and points and responded promptly to emergencies on the street, they didn’t need much training. They just needed to “act according to the regulations.”

Mu Min planned to have this batch of local police led by Naturalized Citizen police officers transferred from Hainan, and to assign a small number of former constables familiar with the street situation as needed. This “three-in-one” approach would allow for on-the-job training. After a month, they would be streamed for further training based on their learning and work performance. If they were unsuitable, dismissing them wouldn’t be too painful—after all, not much had been spent on their training.

This compromise was approved by them. With these one thousand patrol officers, the National Army could be freed from the large number of daily public security patrol duties and prepare for the next few large-scale operations.

However, a new problem arose.

Adding people meant increasing expenses. Not to mention, the uniforms for these one thousand police officers would be a major expense. Once they were on duty, they would also have to be paid a monthly salary.

The Ming government had never paid, or had only symbolically paid, a salary to its grassroots civil servants. Since the Senate had placed unprecedented work and discipline requirements on its grassroots civil servants, it could not be so stingy. At the very least, the standard had to be the same as in Hainan: the basic income of a grassroots cadre should be able to support a family of four at a subsistence level.

A rough calculation showed that as the number of cadres increased, their financial pressure also increased invisibly.

Currently, the Guangzhou Special Municipal Government’s financial revenue was practically non-existent. There was no room for “throttling.” They could only “open up new sources.”

Although Lin Baiguang was not in charge of finance and economics, he knew that the current financial revenue of the Guangzhou Special Municipality only came from two sources: the “start-up fund” allocated by the Finance and Economics Department, and the financial return from the spoils of war from the prefecture and county warehouses and the confiscated property of officials and yamen runners.

Although the latter was large in quantity, most of it was not in cash but in various physical forms, which had to be liquidated before it could be used. This was another headache for Liu Xiang. Lin Baiguang knew that he had been haggling with the Planning and Development Council and the Finance and Economics Department over the telegraph for the past few days, trying to “sell” the various returned spoils of war to the Planning and Development Council.

His wishful thinking naturally did not succeed. The Planning and Development Council stated that they never “bought or sold” any materials, only allocated them. The Finance and Economics Department believed that the return of confiscated materials was handled through the Planning and Development Council’s “allocation” procedures and had nothing to do with the Finance and Economics Department. Regardless of who the final owner of the materials was, the Finance and Economics Department had no obligation to “purchase” them.

Looking at the various expenditures listed in Mu Min’s report, he couldn’t help but touch his chin. He couldn’t help but think of the time when he had just graduated from university and was a writer in the county’s writing team. At that time, there was no land finance, and the county’s five small industries had all collapsed. Apart from scraping a little agricultural tax from the “broken straw hats” (a derogatory term for peasants), the county had almost no decent source of tax revenue. As a result, paying the cadres’ salaries became a headache for the secretary and the county magistrate every month.

Liu Xiang’s mood at this moment was probably no different from theirs. Lin Baiguang smiled and picked up the next document.

At this moment, Liu Xiang was pacing in his office, racking his brains over financial problems.

A government is like a family: there are seven necessities of life, and everything costs money. Liu Xiang had already experienced the difficulty of being in charge when he was the director of the Qiongshan County Office.

However, at that time, the finances were all-inclusive. Although he felt very constrained, the basic administrative expenses of the county were covered by the central government. His efforts to “open up new sources” for construction were just icing on the cake. If he did well, he would get political achievements; if he failed, it wasn’t a problem. Now, he had to find a way to achieve a balanced budget himself. Not only that, the Senate had not conquered this territory for him to brush up his political achievements. Guangzhou had to quickly contribute new financial resources to the Senate’s great cause.

The start-up fund allocated to him by the Senate was 1.2 million yuan: 200,000 yuan in minted coins and 1 million yuan in paper currency. Most of it was paper currency, and whether it could be successfully circulated depended on the specific implementation—after all, abolishing the tael and adopting the yuan was a major campaign that could not be achieved overnight. The rest that could be used was the so-called “financial return.” And what gave him the biggest headache was this “financial return.”

“The Central Committee’s decision to issue silver coins and establish a silver standard zone has solved a major difficulty for me!” Liu Xiang paced his office with his hands behind his back, speaking in a grand manner. “Now the Ministry of Finance has approved the return of some of the spoils of war from the Guangzhou area as a financial return—I can use it first and sign for it later, just a matter of bookkeeping. I am extremely grateful. But what do I have on my hands here? Let’s not even talk about the discrepancy between the accounts and the inventory. Just look at the stuff inside: treasury silver is considered good! Miscellaneous silver is also considered good! Grain, no matter how old, is also good! But in the warehouse, there’s also silk and cloth from before the Single-Whip Tax reform, used as currency substitutes. It looks like a layer of lime powder, but when you pick it up, the fabric itself crumbles into dust—who knows how many years it’s been stored, it’s all rotten!” Liu Xiang began his rant.

“And the copper coins! The strings for the copper coins have rotted away. You don’t have to wait for a prosperous era; the Guangzhou prefecture and county warehouses are full of them! And the copper coins are a motley collection! Not to mention all kinds of strange official and private mints, we’ve found quite a few ‘ten-wen’ and ‘five-wen’ large coins from the Northern Song Dynasty, and even a few hundred Han Dynasty Wuzhu coins!” Liu Xiang looked as if he had suffered a great injustice. “Tell me, should I use them as government assets, or should I hand them over to the state as antiques?”

Meng Xian, the president of the Delong Bank and the governor of the Guangdong branch of the Central Reserve Bank, smiled in cooperation. He had lost the Westernized air of his days as an overseas student; his demeanor was no different from that of a mature and prudent Ming merchant.

In Guangzhou, he was not only the president of the bank but also effectively the finance minister for both the Guangdong and Guangzhou governments. Ensuring the issuance of the new currency, stabilizing the financial order, and expanding tax revenue were all his responsibilities.

Generally speaking, the Ming Dynasty was not a dynasty that paid much attention to minting coins. Most emperors did not mint many coins during their reign. Coins from previous dynasties were all in circulation, and private coins were rampant. This caused great trouble for Liu Xiang’s financial work because he couldn’t even estimate how much money was in the prefecture and county warehouses. And the wide variety of in-kind inventory could not be used directly—the Yongle Emperor had tried paying officials with spices and treasures, which had created a lot of resentment.

“And there are various in-kind tax revenues in the warehouse. Bamboo poles five or six meters long have become government inventory! The purpose is even clearly stated: for digging wells and clearing drains. What do we need this for? And feathers, fish glue, dyes, spices… as long as it’s on the market, there’s nothing the official warehouse doesn’t have. And they’ve been stored for thirty or fifty years. What you take out can only be considered garbage!”