Beiyang Xiaoxiong

Chapter 443 Financial Rectifying

In China's thousands of years of history, it can be said that the land reform of that dynasty, including the land reform after 1949, has failed to completely solve the land problem, and it always breaks out every once in a while. In fact, there is only one core to truly solve the land problem, that is, industrialization. Other things such as raiding and land, rent restrictions are bullshit, treating the symptoms rather than the root causes.

Only large-scale industrialization enables people to get enough income from industry and commerce, or even more than farming, can truly solve the land problem.

And this method has nothing to do with land ownership and land policy.

Of course, it is too early for China to talk about large-scale industrialization, so Zhao Dongyun has to do something to treat the symptoms and not the root causes to alleviate the domestic land problem.

This rent restriction order is his first step. In the future, he is also going to implement a series of policies. He does not require the grand thing of letting every farmer own land. All the farmers under his rule only need to harvest enough food to support themselves when they rent land to cultivate.

The purpose of doing these is to ease contradictions, not to solve them.

What Zhao Dongyun needs now is not a large-scale land movement. What he needs is the word 'stability'. Only with a stable rear environment can he concentrate all his energy on playing this domestic hegemony. If something goes wrong every day in the future, then he doesn't have to fight.

Zhao Dongyun seems cautious on the land issue, but he has always been very radical in the rectification of the financial system.

Since he was in charge of Fengtian in 1905, his fiscal policy has been very radical. He has collected the financial power of local governments and unified the power to collect taxes by the Central Ministry of Finance. After collecting taxes, some of them have been handed over to the national treasury, that is, the so-called national tax, and some of them are left at the local government, that is, local taxes. At the same time, the large-scale integration of taxes integrates many harsh and miscellaneous taxes into several simple taxes. For example, the taxes borne by farmers have been simplified from several or even a dozen in the past to agricultural taxes, and commercially, they also replace the previous sums and various apportionments with two main taxes, business tax and value-added tax.

Although the positive tax borne by ordinary people has been greatly increased, there are no various assessments and miscellaneous taxes. For ordinary people, the burden is actually reduced.

The right to collect taxes is returned to the central government and integrate taxes, which are the two core policies of Soviet finance. The purpose of the former is quite simple, and it is extremely important for Soviet finance. One important reasons why the former Qing Dynasty was so tragic in modern times can be said to be that under the central financial power, the local governor had independent financial power, which is unacceptable to any normal country. In the pre-Qing era What the central government wants to do, they still ask the governor below.

Zhao Dongyun did not want this kind of problem to occur in the country he ruled, so when he was in charge of the three eastern provinces, he began to collect finance and return to the Central Ministry of Finance. This is even more obvious after moving to Beijing. He has successively rectified the financial systems of Zhili, Henan, Shandong and other provinces. The core is to take financial power. In particular, the power of taxation has been taken back to the Ministry of Finance to avoid allowing local governments to interfere in the fiscal power.

Now the prefectures and counties under the Su system have no power to levy taxes. Take Luanzhou City, Yongping Prefecture under the Tangshan Administrative Office as an example. This rapidly rising heavy industrialized city in recent years has relied on Tangshan Industrial Company as the leader to build the Tangshan Industrial Development Zone. The fiscal revenue of this county-level city has exceeded 10 million last year, claiming to be the first rich city in China.

However, in the process of collecting tens of millions of taxes in Luanzhou City, in fact, it has nothing to do with the Luanzhou local government. It is directly collected by the Luanzhou Finance Bureau under the Ministry of Finance, and the Luanzhou Finance Bureau is not under the management of the Luanzhou Municipal Government, but directly under the management of the Ministry of Finance.

After the Ministry of Finance collects Luanzhou's taxes, most of them will be directly handed over to the state treasury, and part of them will be allocated to Luanzhou local governments for municipal construction and administrative expenses. The distribution of national tax and local tax is not based on a fixed tax amount, but according to proportion.

That is to say, the better the local economic development of the local government, the more taxes the Ministry of Finance collects, the more local taxes the local government receives from the Ministry of Finance, which has led many local governments to strive to develop the local economy.

After the Feng army went south to the south of the Yangtze River, the financial rectification work of the Soviet system naturally followed up to the south of the Yangtze River, and Shanghai was naturally the top priority.

Shanghai is the largest city in contemporary China and the largest city in the Far East. Although most of its essential areas are in the concession, Shanghai still has unsighted development potential.

Shanghai is an important economic area, which is an established fact, and what the Soviet system needs to do now is to rectify Shanghai's financial system, integrate Shanghai's huge financial resources into the Soviet finance, and contribute to the financial construction of the Soviet system and the expansion of the Feng army.

In addition to finance, the leading officials of the Shanghai government sent by the Soviet system also began to plan to imitate Huludao, Yingkou, Tangshan and other places to prepare for large-scale industry.

Shanghai's original industrial base is relatively good, especially the silk industry is very developed. This year, China's silk industry is mainly around Shanghai. Farmers in the south of the Yangtze River grow mulberry and raise silkworms. After those businessmen bought silkworm cocoon from farmers, most of these silkworm cocoon went to Shanghai. After the large silk mill and the silk mill produced a large amount of raw silk, those foreign companies acquired them and then exported them to Europe and the United States.

Shanghai's industrial foundation and transportation environment are very conducive to the development of industry. It is not surprising that the senior Shanghai officials just appointed by the Soviet system want to show their skills in Shanghai to obtain political capital.

The rectification of the south of the Yangtze River by the Soviet system is not only limited to Shanghai, but also in southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui and northern Zhejiang. The rapid rectification hopes that these newly occupied areas can provide sufficient taxes for the Soviet system in the shortest time.

While Zhao Dongyun was dealing with a large number of administrative affairs in China, the pace of the Feng army went south without stopping. The fourth army led by Meng Enyuan quickly went south and soon conquered a series of important cities in northern Jiangxi such as Jingdezhen.

At the same time, Lu Yongxiang's first army also launched a large-scale offensive against the Jiujiang River. The geographical location of the Jiujiang River is relatively special. It is located at the junction of the Yangtze River and Panyang Lake. To the north of the Jiujiang River is the Yangtze River, and the east of the Jiujiang River is Panyang Lake. In addition, to the west of the Jiujiang River is Bali Lake and many other water network lakes, which cannot pass through the army at all. The south side of the Jiujiang River is the land, but the south side of the Jiujiang River is Lushan.

Without saying rudely, Jiujiang is a city surrounded by mountains and rivers. It is difficult to take the city by relying on the army alone. Among other things, it is very difficult to cross the Yangtze River or Panyang Lake.

In order to take Jiujiang, a strategic city in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the Soviet Feng army is a strong cooperation between the sea and land forces, which is also the second strategic cooperation between the two armies after the Battle of Wusong in Shanghai.

The navy has sent most of the shallow water gunboats that can handle. As for the cruisers, due to the deep water, the channel down to Nanjing is shallow and narrow. The senior management of the navy are afraid that the only few cruisers will have an accident, so it is very tactful, but they are very resolute to propose to Zhao Dongyun not to let those seas. The army went to Jiujiang as a treasure cruiser and stayed in Shanghai, Jiangyin and other areas of the Yangtze River to protect the mouth of the Yangtze River. Of course, in order to support the army's Jiujiang Campaign, the navy will send all the shallow water gunboats that can take action.

Zhao Dongyun considered that there were not many shore guns on the side of the Madang Fort on the other side of Jiujiang, which could not be compared with the Wusong Fort in Shanghai. Even the Jiangyin Fort was stronger than it. More importantly, Zhao Dongyun did not intend to let the navy fight for the fort, and the task of conquering the Madang Fort would be independently by the army.

Once the army takes down the Madang battery, the navy's warships can quickly advance along Jiangxi and then enter Panyang Lake to provide artillery support for the subsequent army to cross the river and land on the Jiujiang River.

So Zhao Dongyun agreed to the request of the navy not to send cruisers!

Although there were no cruisers to go, the navy has transferred all the gunboats that can be mobilized to the Jiujiang side. There are also many transport ships accompanied by the navy. Some of these ships are transport ships of the Ministry of Munitions, and there are also several of the navy's own transport ships. Of course, more are collected. The small wooden boats built at that time were all prepared for the Feng army to land on Jiujiang, and the total number of ships has exceeded 200.

While the navy raised ships, the army was not idle. Lu Yongxiang's 1st Army Division launched an attack on Peng Zemadang Fortress on the south bank of the Yangtze River in time. In order to defend the Madang Fort, the Anhui army sent the 6th Division of the Liangjiang Army retreating to Jiujiang to defend there.

The first division of the Feng army and the sixth division of Liangjiang are also old rivals. The two troops were against each other for many months when they were in Anqing. In the end, the first division took advantage of the victory in the south of the Yangtze River to win over Anqing, but The Ninth Division of Liangjiang did not suffer much damage due to its relatively timely withdrawal.

Now the two sides have once again fought fiercely for the ownership of the Madang Fortress and the ownership of Jiujiang. This battle is somewhat similar and different from the previous battles between the two forces.

First of all, whether it is the First Division of the Feng Army or the Sixth Division of Liangjiang, they are the main force of the second echelon in their respective systems. They cannot compare with the Third Division and the Fourth Division, but they are much stronger than the general provincial military forces.

It's not too much to say that they are comparable.

However, this time in the Battle of Anqing, Lu Yongxiang was assigned to the First Heavy Artillery Battalion. After the Jiangnan Campaign, the first heavy artillery battalion in the only two 100mm cannon heavy artillery battalions of the Feng army was assigned to the First Army, and the Second Heavy Artillery Battalion was assigned to the Fourth Army.

Now, Lu Yongxiang launched an attack on the Madang Fort with the 1st Heavy Artillery Battalion and the 1st Division.