The core elements of Qi Xuanhao's agricultural tax reform plan are three points: the first point is to abolish any form of forced labor, the second point is to abolish any miscellaneous taxes other than regular taxes, and the third point is that all relevant taxes for farmers are collected by the Ministry of Finance.

The first two points are to reduce the burden on the peasants and avoid all kinds of messy and harsh taxes, but any ruling institution is not a charitable institution, so naturally don't expect the government to really reduce taxes for the peasants, because although the levy and miscellaneous taxes have been abolished, the agricultural tax has been increased to a certain extent, so compared with the pre-Qin era, the burden of regular taxes on the peasants is heavier.

The third point is that, on the one hand, it is to rein in the financial power of the central government and deprive local governments of their direct taxing power, and at the same time, it can also prevent local governments from making any messy and exorbitant taxes.

The core objectives of the above three points are to reduce the peasants' burdens and to consolidate the financial power of the central government.

After reading it, Lin Zhe did not decide on it at the first time, but sent it to the cabinet for discussion, so that the government could make a decision after full discussion.

As a core element of the reform of the Chinese Empire's tax system, the agricultural tax naturally cannot be arbitrarily decided, and although it is said that the agricultural tax is no longer the largest tax in the Chinese Empire, its impact is greater than that of the commercial tax, and we must be cautious.

Relatively speaking, the reform of commercial tax is much easier, the commercial tax reform of the Chinese Empire is transformed from the former Qing Dynasty, and the former Qing Dynasty's gold system has just been implemented, the gold system is very different from each other, and there is no relatively unified normative system, so the Ministry of Finance did not encounter much obstacle when integrating the gold into a unified business tax, on the contrary, it also won the support of the merchants.

The main thing is to collect 'business tax'. In addition to the production enterprises, this business tax is also levied on transportation and retail enterprises. Therefore, in the three links of production, transportation and retail, goods will be taxed, which leads to a relatively heavy tax in the entire commercial system.

Industrial and commercial taxes and agricultural taxes provided the current empire with the cost of maintaining the administration and the army, and with the support of a steady stream of taxes, the Chinese army was able to expand continuously.

The divisions continued to be replenished, and the 7th and 10th Infantry Divisions were expanded from mixed brigades to infantry divisions. The construction of new guards divisions requires a lot of military spending.

The cost of other additions and expansions is better, but the cost of a completely new Guards Division is staggering.

According to the current standards of the Royal Army, a new Guards Division would require about 8,000 men. Seven thousand five hundred mini rifles, three hundred officer-type pistols, eighteen twelve-pounder field guns, six six-pounder cavalry guns were needed. Twelve twenty-two-pounder or thirty-two-pounder mortars.

On the cavalry side. By other unit standards, it has one cavalry company. The cavalry company and the officers added up to 500 war horses.

About 1,200 service horses are needed!

The cost of the above-mentioned weapons, horses, carriages, and other equipment is nearly 300,000 taels of silver, in addition to the cost of settling-in allowance and military pay for the soldiers, of which 8,000 people will have to pay 80,000 taels of silver for the settling-in allowance alone, and the salary of the personnel will be about 50,000 taels per month, and the salary for the first three months will be 150,000 taels of silver.

To build a guard division, the amount of money required for the first three months is about 530,000 taels of silver. And that's not even counting the cost of training, as well as the cost of supplementing the soldiers' food. If these are counted, at least 600,000 taels of silver must be taken out in the early stage.

Don't look at the taxes of the Chinese Empire today, there are tens of millions of dollars, and there are tens of millions of dollars used for military expenses, but most of these military expenses are war expenses, that is to say, these money are used to maintain the war, as for the additional expansion of the army is another matter.

Since the Chinese army is constantly waging wars, the war costs are huge, and naturally there is not much money that can be squeezed out to expand the army.

This year, when the battle is full, there is only one Guards Division in the newly formed troops, and the other Seventh and Tenth Divisions have been expanded on the basis of mixed brigades, and they have not yet been able to reach full strength.

However, the Guards Division has not yet been completed, and the other two divisions are not fully formed, and the General Staff has already proposed to Lin Zhe a plan to build a number of new Royal Army infantry divisions.

"In the previous series of operations, the progress of the Anhe Anqing campaign was slow, and there were more and more Qing troops in northern Jiangsu, and the disadvantage of our insufficient troops was becoming more and more obvious!" Shi Langyi said to Lin Zhe:

"Although it is said that there is an auxiliary operation of the Auxiliary Defense Force, the past battles have shown that the combat effectiveness of the Auxiliary Defense Force is weak and cannot meet our requirements for front-line troops!"

The reason why Shi Langyi said this is because although there are more and more auxiliary divisions in the Chinese army, the increase in numbers has not fundamentally increased the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, and the war has to rely on the royal army, which has a small number.

Lin Zhe was also deeply embarrassed, due to the multi-front battle, the army was insufficient, especially the royal army, he knew that the strength was insufficient, but if he wanted to expand the number of troops on a large scale, he just talked about it.

There is not much of a problem in terms of money, if you tighten your belt, you can still squeeze out a million taels of silver, but now the factor affecting the expansion of the Royal Army is not military spending, but ordnance!

The Royal Army is going to use Mini rifles and new foreign cannons, and both of these weapons can only be produced by the Linde Machine Factory, and although the production has climbed to more than 1,600 rifles per month, it still cannot meet the needs of the Royal Army.

If you don't have this gun, how can you expand the army?

So Lin Zhe directly asked a very critical question: "Guns, what is the solution from the Ordnance Department?" ”

Shi Langyi said: "Our plan is to recruit the personnel first, and wait for the ordnance to arrive while training!" ”

Lin Zhe was silent, and only after half a sound did he say: "Since this is the case, then you can do it in accordance with the regulations first, but you don't need to have as many as three divisions, let's practice a sixth division first!" ”

The ordnance is tight, and if there are no guns, it is useless to train even ten divisions first, anyway, there will not be many guns for a while and a half, so first connect a division, and as for the subsequent expansion of the army, we will talk about it after the production of guns and artillery has increased.

Shi Langyi had just left in front of him, and Lin Zhe met with a few other people in the back.

These three men were not military and political officials of the Chinese Empire. They are all foreigners, to be precise, the British Consul in Shanghai, Ali Guo, the French Consul in Shanghai, and the American Consul in Shanghai, Ma Hui.

The three arrived in Nanjing from Shanghai a few days earlier and asked to meet Lin Zhe. Discuss trade matters.

Lin Zhe was not surprised by the arrival of these three foreign consuls, since he led the army to rebel, it can be said that he has attracted the attention of China and foreign countries, not to mention the attention of China, and the foreign side is also close to him, when he was still in Shanghai. These foreign consuls were in frequent contact with themselves to understand some of the political programs of the Chinese Empire and the attitude of the Chinese Empire towards foreigners. Learn about the Chinese Empire's attitude towards treaty ports and import/export trade.

At that time, Lin Zhe also explained them one by one, in order to win the support of various countries.

However, at those times, the attitude of the consuls of various countries was more uniform, that is, neutrality.

This was also the case when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was rising, and all countries declared neutrality. But behind this neutrality is partiality.

For example, in the past, foreigners were biased towards supporting the Qing court. But now, the countries also seem to have a great affection for Lin Zhe, which can be seen from the fact that although they declared neutrality, they did not order the prohibition of citizens from all countries from serving the Chinese army.

You must know that in the two military academies of the Chinese army, there are a large number of foreign employees in the customs agencies, and they all turn a blind eye to the consuls of their countries.

Why?

Because of Lin Zhe's open trade attitude!

Unlike the former Qing Dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Lin Zhe was a latecomer, and he was not afraid to deal with foreigners. Even for the development of industry and commerce, advanced machinery and equipment can be imported. Exporting more shops to obtain funds, he actively dealt with foreigners.

Therefore, before Lin Zhe's rebellion, Lin Zhe, who was then the political envoy of Jiangsu, was the only high-ranking official who could communicate normally with foreigners in China, and the consuls of various countries attached great importance to Lin Zhe's attitude.

And the more contacts he had with them, foreigners from all over the world also found that Lin Zhe liked foreign trade more than other Qing court officials and supported industry and commerce, which was very important to the British who adopted a policy of trade freedom.

Therefore, behind the neutrality, the British were still a little partial to Lin Zhe, for example, they did not strictly prohibit British nationals from serving the Chinese Empire, let alone prohibit the trade between the two sides, and even the arms trade did not stop.

This time, Ali Guo and the others came to Nanjing, mainly to inspect the situation of the Chinese Empire, and they needed to know everything related to them, such as the attitude of the Chinese Empire towards foreigners, the attitude towards trade between the two sides, and even the attitude towards religion.

Of course, more importantly, they needed to know if the Chinese Empire could defeat the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Manchu Qing Dynasty and unify China.

Regarding the intentions of these foreigners, Lin Zhe can guess a thing or two!

In recent years, the mutual understanding between the Chinese and the foreigners was extremely low, and the Chinese regarded the foreigners as barbarians, and the foreigners regarded the Chinese people as barbarians, and these were all caused by the lack of in-depth understanding of each other.

And this time, Lin Zhe was very patient, and reiterated to them in detail the attitude of the empire and himself towards Western countries, that is, foreigners from all over the world are welcome to do business and trade in China!

Don't look at this sentence seems very simple, but in fact it is very important, why do the British come all the way to China, it is not for profit.

And what are the benefits? It's nothing more than silver and gold!

As long as they can do business and make a lot of money, the British don't care who wins and who loses in China's civil war, and how many people died in the war!

But it seems that these foreigners came all the way to Nanking not only for Lin Zhe's welcome, for they soon made another request, that is, to increase the number of trading cities in the Chinese Empire, not only in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Fuzhou. At the same time, he also hoped to be able to trade in Nanjing and Hangzhou, and proposed to allow British merchant ships to travel freely on the Yangtze River.

Hearing these demands, Lin Zhe's face changed suddenly, this second opium war has not officially started, you want to obtain the right to navigate the Yangtze River, and you want to extend your tentacles to Nanjing? (To be continued......)