Zeng Guofan was one of nineteenth-century China’s truly impressive statesmen. Born into a farm family in the province of Hunan, Zeng received a Confucian education and passed the highest civil service examination at age twenty-eight. As a government official, his greatest achievement was the organization and leadership of a potent military force, the Xiang Army, which was instrumental in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion, a massive peasant revolt that raged through China between 1850 and 1864. Knowing well the problems of the regime, especially the cause of unrest among the peasantry, Zeng drew up a memorandum that I would like you to read (you can read it by clicking here) on February 7, 1852, for Emperor Xianfeng. It provides a clear and balanced assessment of China’s problems at midcentury.After reading the memorandum, I would like you to consider and discuss the following: According to Zeng, what is the key to keeping China peaceful and secure? Which aspects of the government’s tax policies does Zeng deplore? How, according to Zeng, does the behavior of local officials, soldiers, and magistrates affect the lives of the Chinese people? Zeng states at the end of his memorandum that he will draft a plan to address the shortcomings of the tax system. What do you guess he will propose? How does Zeng propose to remedy the problem of corruption? Does his solution have a reasonable chance of success? Why or why not? Your thoughts…
14 comments:
The officers who enforce the taxes have to beat the peasants when they can't or won't pay taxes because the officers get punished if they can't get the peasants to pay taxes. And since the government is corrupt, the public works projects aren't funded and this is why the dikes are breaking, and this is why peasants can't pay taxes, which leads to a neverending cycle. And when the peasants appeal that it isn't their fault they can't pay taxes or because they were convicted wrongly, the magistrates just turn them down and the peasants have no more money to appeal more.
Also, Prill, are we going to have to read every single document on the blog in order to be prepared for the reading quiz on Friday?
wow! the gov. was pretty corrupt!
the writer says three main things that are effecting the chinese:
- raised price of silver and unfair taxes.
- bandits and no promotion of finding them, but just officials cheating around so they dont have to find the bandits.
- justice system
in the beginning he talks about hte dikes breaking, but is he trying to say that the people still were loyal to their emperor? weren't there rebellions?
the quiz will address a few documents, not all, but i wouldn't gamble as to which ones... i'd read them all.
Zeng believes taht the problem with chinese society is that there is very little communication going on btwn government officails and their subjects. Of course, he is very careful not to directly blame the emporer for this. As far as taxes go he says that the price of silver is too high for anyone to pay their taxes, and since the peasants can't pay their taxes the tax collecters have to pay this money sometimes out of their own pockets. Personally, I think all of these problems; taxes, bandits, and faulty courts, all go back to the price of silver. Perhaps Zeng has also come to taht conclusion and his draft to remedy corruption will focus on this. I mean, it was the first problem he mentioned. In order to get corruption out of the court system Zeng wants to put certain officials up as judges, ones that cannot be corrupted. I actually think taht could work. The Romans managed to find uncorruptable officials to take the census didn't they? It's not that impossible.
The man writing this document talks about the three ills of the nation being, the raising price of silver which leads to the peseants not being able to pay their taxes. Bandits on the rise which are becoming more bold and against the govt. and thirdly the justice system. He outlines the problems that the country is faced up against kind of saying hey! we need to fix this neverending cycle.
Wow. the taxes just add up like crazy. the peasants dont have enough rice to pay so they start using silver and coins. The harassment is also unnecessary. The government also seems very corrupt. then the fact that the government is corrupt is most likely connected to the bandits problem as well as the bad court/justice system. it all ties together.
his is one really screwed up system... I mean you told us how corrupt this government was but i didn't realize that they were this corrupt... The peasants couldn't even really make enough of a profit to live off of after you took tribute nad tax out of their meager profit. I mean could we try reform??? I think its common sense that if you try and cooperate with people you will get better results than if you harass them. All you get when you harass people is a bunch of pissed off people, and in a country like China that has a failing government- this could be disasterous...
and it was...
Yes it was! I mean golly! That's tons of stress on the peasants. With the taxes shooting up and the peasants struggling to pay before they were raised, that alone was bound to cause some kind of collapse soon or call for reform. And if there is a bandit running around, how could they officials be ok with faking a capture. These bandits are robbing the tax payers. The peasants can hardly pay without crime and people burning down their houses.
This is frustrating haha.
Sapp.
i said so before in my other post---the peasants are always the ones who get screwed over. this system is so corrupt and messed up. they're not really paying the peasants anything, and what little they do pay them they're taking right back in the form of taxes. the peasants are really still slave, only now they're slaves up to their knees in debt. nice job on the government. seriously. couldn't have thought of a better way to keep slavery myself. this is just slightly sick. it stinks of rebellion.
i feel like i'm saying the same things everyone else did. sorry. i'm trying not to, but there's really only so much you can say...
The taxes are what is really causing the problem and if they got rid of the high taxes and all the bad retributions that come with that, like the beating the people that they didn't pay their taxes and lowering the crime rate by getting a tighter grip on the criminals, and allowing wrongs to be redressed and not condemn innocent people, China would be more peacefull.
According to Zeng, the actions of lords, the government, and such destroys the lives of families in China because they're constantly in debt. The people of China are having to pay ridiculous amounts of taxes. The more influential people are also being quite reckless. An example of this would include the burning of homes to show their power over minor things leaving a number of people homeless.
China the whole time, since season one, has really just got on my nerves... China is SO hard headed, i mean easier said than done yes, but why cant they just lower the taxes and be reasonable..
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