Single-Whip Reform

Locale China

Date 16th century

The Single-Whip Reform was the Ming government’s attempt to correct abuses in the tax system by combining various land and service taxes into a single cash payment, thus creating the beginning of a modern tax system.

Key Figures

• Zhang Juzheng (Chang Chü-cheng; 1525-1582), the chief grant secretary and the chief engineer of the Single-Whip Reform
• Wanli (reign name, also Wan-li; personal name Zhu Yijun, Chu I-chün; posthumous name Zhu Yijun, Chu I-chün; temple name Shenzong, Shen-tsung; 1563-1620), the thirteenth Ming emperor, r. 1573-1620, a supporter of the Single-Whip Reform

Summary of Event

During the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese empire enjoyed population growth, an increase in tax grain (rice used to pay taxes), and growth in both domestic and international trade. However, the Chinese court also confronted a number of fiscal problems: an inadequate monetary system, excessive military spending, a shrinkage of government salaries, and a tax system that was too complex to administer efficiently. In an attempt to solve the problems, the Ming government underwent a series of fiscal reforms known collectively as the Single-Whip Reform.

Among the fiscal problems the Ming government faced was the inadequacy of the monetary system. To supplement a shortage of the copper coins that were the main currency, the government introduced unminted silver for use in tax transactions. When grains and other commodities that peasants used for taxes were converted to silver, however, peasants were often forced to pay surcharges. In addition to this monetary problem, military expenditures had grown, taking an ever larger portion of the land tax that the government collected as revenue. Finally, inadequate salaries for government officials, often converted into commodities at a low exchange rate when government funds were low, affected morale and encouraged corruption.

The biggest problem, however, was the confusion and complexity of the tax system and its effect on land and labor. The land tax during the Ming was assessed according to how the land was classified, and the land was reclassified approximately every ten years. This system was maintained by the heads of local wealthy households, which because of their conflict of interest were therefore motivated to avoid their tax responsibilities by falsifying the land records. The falsification of land records was compounded by the complexity of taxes and labor services. For example, the number of male adults in each jurisdiction, on which the tax assessments were in part based, varied according to local need and by decision of the local authorities. As taxation became more corrupt, demands for labor services increasingly added burdens on the local villages. Eventually, the problem of land and labor taxes hit peasants the hardest.

To solve these fiscal problems, the Ming government underwent a series of reforms to simplify the tax structure and to secure the tax collection from 1522 to 1619. Because these reforms combined and simplified many taxes into single monetary payments, they became known as yi tiao bian, meaning “many items combined into one.” Because yi tiao bian sounds also like “a single whip,” the movement also became known as the Single-Whip Reform. The Single-Whip Reform was carried out gradually by many provincial officials, first in the southeastern coastal provinces and later throughout the rest of the country, in an attempt to maintain a regular and reliable system of taxation and tax collection. The reforms in the provinces varied in particulars but agreed in essentials. Eventually, with the endorsement of the Ming court, the reform was uniformly implemented.

The first major reform was to simplify the land classification from many different rates to only two or three rates. The second measure combined the land taxes from thirty or forty different taxes into two or three types of taxes. Third, both land and labor taxes were computed into one kind of tax to be paid in silver. Finally, the government established standard tax collection dates to reduce the possibility of tax fraud and evasion.

Although the reforms were initiated at the provincial level, Chief Grant Secretary Zhang Juzheng was recognized as the primary engineer of the reforms. Zhang, one of the great ministers of the dynasty, had risen to power during the first decade of the reign of the exceptionally intelligent Wanli emperor, Zhu Yijun, who came to the throne in 1573 at age nine. Zhang was appointed to tutor the boy emperor, as he had tutored his father ten years earlier. As a surrogate father figure, Zhang was extremely influential, setting the boy’s lessons and explaining the classical texts to him. Wanli respected and trusted Zhang in the role of tutor, endured his sermonizing on personal austerity and conscientious governing, and submitted to Zhang’s curbs on boyish pleasures but eventually developed a degree of resentment and hostility toward Zhang.

During the reform era, Zhang’s major contributions were to recognize the utility of the reform, to conceive the change, to secure its implementation by the central government, and to combat the inertia and countervailing interests that had benefited from the old system. When in power, Zhang tried to increase the land-tax revenue by reinstating the tax for lands that had been exempted. He also tried to curtail the excessive perquisites and privileges of the imperial family and government functionaries.

Zhang died in 1582 after an incapacitating illness at the age of fifty-seven. After Zhang’s death, Wanli, approaching twenty and now free of Zhang’s supervision, became completely irresponsible, refusing to conduct court business, avoiding meetings with his ministers and foreign emissaries, and squandering imperial revenues. Zhang was richly rewarded with posthumous honors and gifts, but almost immediately his enemies began to attack him with charges of improperly enriching himself, misusing his authority, and mistreating imperial relatives. Wanli had the charges investigated, and some of them appeared to have merit: Zhang was found to have left vast wealth. Wanli, remembering his tutor’s constant appeals for frugality in the imperial household and for personal austerity, felt he had been defrauded. Consequently, Wanli took posthumous revenge on Zhang by destroying his family and weeding out his influence.

Significance

The Single-Whip Reform was a prototype of modern taxation. Its principles—such as computation of taxes by the government office and payment in cash rather than in commodities—have been incorporated into the tax structures of modern times. The assessment of taxes was based on the budgetary need of the state and therefore assured a reliable tax income to run the government. The tax payment of silver could be used to pay the government officials and hired laborers. The peasants were also freed from the trouble of transporting tax grain to the government granaries; instead, they simply paid tax directly to the government’s local tax-collecting agencies.

The Single-Whip Reform was made possible only through China’s dependence on foreign silver. The reforms marked the widespread transition from copper to silver coinage in Chinese markets. As a result of the tax reforms, China’s silver imports added at least eight times more bullion to its coinage stock than did its domestic mines in the second half of the sixteenth century, and twenty times more in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Bibliography

Huang, Ray. 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. A prizewinning work by a distinguished scholar, detailing the ritualistic and practical sides of Ming court politics.

Hucker, Charles O. The Ming Dynasty: Its Origins and Evolving Institutions. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1978. Initially written in 1970 for inclusion in The Cambridge History of China, this account possesses factual accuracy and clarity on the Ming institutions.

Marks, Robert B. Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Exhaustive coverage of the economic conditions of South China during the imperial age.

Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China, 900-1800. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. A comprehensive and impressive work on imperial China.

Mote, Frederick. W., and Denis Twitchett, eds. The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1. Vol. 7 in The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988. A collection of essays written by eminent scholars on various aspects of Ming history.

Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Provides a detailed description of the Chinese Empire during the Ming Dynasty, including its government, economy, and international relations.