This weekend, I had tea with a PhD from the Department of History at CUHK. We happened to talk about the recent strict tax inspection by the government. From a historical perspective, it was quite interesting. Let me explain it in detail! He said that after reading history and researching history, you will find something very strange. History is like a pendulum, constantly changing its appearance, but its core has never changed. Before the collapse of the building, no one would ever beat drums and gongs to notify you. But if you are calm enough, you will find that history always habitually sends you three signals in advance, neither too early nor too late, appearing precisely on the eve of every turning point. The first signal: Property rights are becoming unstable. You think it's your own thing, no longer sure if tomorrow is still yours. The second signal: Tax policies are starting to have an emotional impact. It is no longer a budget logic confined by rules, but rather stressful, punitive, and even liquidating. The third signal: The liquidity of funds is tightly held down. Money would rather rot in the ground, hide in the mezzanine, and disappear across borders than circulate in the market. If only a single signal appears, gritting one's teeth can still withstand it. But once this "three in one" combination is gathered, the historical accounts will enter the final settlement process, and special attention should be paid at this time. Then, following the above train of thought, we discussed history together, using history as a mirror, to see if this logic was appropriate. The first account: The fall of an empire during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty Many people blame Li Zicheng for the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, but if we were to break it open, Li Zicheng was just the last straw that broke the camel's back. That camel had long been boned piece by piece by Chongzhen Chao. The collapse of property rights began with the "three payments". In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), in order to deal with the Later Jin Dynasty in Northeast China and the refugee army in the country, the court levied the "Liao Salary", which was later combined with "Suppression Salary" and "Training Salary". In total, about 20 million taels of silver are collected annually from the private sector. What is this concept in an agricultural empire where the national tax revenue in a normal year is only four to five million taels? It's like the empire drawing blood from the people to the death. What's even more deadly is not the tax amount, but the collection method. The court set targets for local officials, and if they were to succeed, they would remove their black hats or even chop off their heads. The local official, wielding this knife, had no choice but to shift the pressure onto the gentry and landlords: your family has a lot of land, you can come and make up for it. So during the entire Chongzhen period, the gentry class suddenly discovered a terrible logical reversal: the richer their family was, the more dangerous it was for the court to target them. Once this logic is established, the last bit of loyalty of the elite class to the empire begins to evaporate rapidly. Taxation with emotions began with the shift from "on-demand extortion" to "targeted clearing". Normal fiscal taxation has its inherent logic: it can be anticipated and planned based on the land area, commercial flow, and fixed proportion. But during the reign of Chongzhen, the tax had completely lost its "contractual" attribute and became a stress reflex, taking advantage of crises wherever they arose. What's even more amazing is that you obediently paid the taxes, but it didn't bring you a sense of security. After receiving the money, the court will backtrack: if you can pay so much, it means that your family's wealth is still strong. In two months, you will continue to demand it. This has created an extremely vicious' honesty tax ', where the more obedient, the more exposed, and the more dangerous it is. In 1644, Li Zicheng attacked Beijing and directly launched a "recovery and payment" campaign against the officials and gentry in the capital. He tortured and forced confessions, and carried out a net clearing. It is said that as much as 70 million taels of silver were looted. This is no longer a tax, it is a large-scale property plunder carried out by the refugee army with the endorsement of public power. Liquidity deadlock, wealthy businessmen begin to bury money and hide assets. During the reign of Chongzhen, a highly distinctive phenomenon of the times emerged among the people: large-scale silver coin cellars. The gentry and merchants would rather bury real gold and silver underground, seal it off, and let it 'disappear' than let it exist in any visible form. The underlying logic of this behavior is obvious. Once silver is in circulation, it will leave traces on the accounts. Leaving traces means that you are wealthy, and being wealthy is equivalent to becoming the next target. So the currency stopped flowing, commercial activities shrank, and the livelihoods of craftsmen and merchants were cut off. Millions of unemployed lower class people flowed into the ranks of the refugee army. The consequence of a liquidity deadlock is not just an economic issue, it will eventually become a military problem. All three cards were played, and in the year of Jia Shen in 1644, Beijing was destroyed. A dynasty that had been running for 276 years completed its final procedures in three months. If you have read 'Those Things in the Ming Dynasty', perhaps you will be even more saddened! Second account: In the late Qing Dynasty, local residents became second-class citizens If it were an empire that wielded knives around its own people's necks, then the late Qing Dynasty would be even more absurd, evolving into a spectacle where foreign property was safer than domestic property. The dualization of property rights began with the defeat in the First Sino Japanese War. In 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, and the Qing government carried 230 million taels of silver in war reparations, equivalent to the total fiscal revenue of the country for three years at that time. The court had no money and could only borrow from foreign powers, such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, the Russian French Bank Group... to mortgage a batch of tariffs or mining rights; Borrow another amount, mortgage another amount. At the same time, provincial governors were authorized to "raise funds on site", effectively obtaining almost unrestricted local expropriation rights. So what can be requisitioned will be taken away just like any other; Those that cannot be requisitioned will also try their best to be taken away. But the most ironic thing was that foreign-funded enterprises and comprador merchants were easily deterred by the endorsement of unequal treaty consular jurisdiction by the Qing government. On the contrary, it is the local gentry and merchants without any protective umbrella who have become the best wool to be pulled. When the risk of "being a native" is much higher than "hanging under foreign names", the elite class begins to crazily shelter their assets under the names of foreign firms, British companies, and foreign churches. This is not worshipping foreign things, this is rational self-protection. This may be one of the earliest documented cases of systematic "asset outflow" in Chinese history. Taxation has become a debt repayment machine, starting with the massive exploitation of the Boxer Indemnity. In 1901, the Boxer Indemnity was implemented: 450 million taels of silver, calculated based on the population of Western countries, which is "one or two taels of silver per Chinese person", to be paid off in 39 years, with an annual interest rate of 4%, and a total principal and interest of 982 million taels. The Qing court vigorously expanded tax categories, and the "Lijin" system reached its extreme. Goods transported domestically were stripped of one layer at every checkpoint, and sometimes a section of road from Shanghai to Hankou had to be skinned seven or eight times. According to historians' estimates, the friction and loss of goods in the late Qing Dynasty accounted for 30% to 50% of the total cost. These taxes are not used for road construction, education, or military strengthening. They are like a blood sucking machine that extracts the wealth accumulated by the people through layers of bureaucratic systems and ultimately flows into the pockets of the great powers. Taxation has completely lost its rightful "public contract" attribute and has become a blatant transfer payment, transferring from the Chinese people to Western creditor countries. Funds fled through the concessions and Southeast Asia. Faced with the insecurity of domestic assets, the wealthy people in the late Qing Dynasty had a surprisingly consistent choice: to move their money to a safe place. The bank deposits in the Shanghai Concession surged after the Boxer Rebellion. The Chinese deposits at HSBC in Hong Kong increased several times between 1900 and 1910. The overseas Chinese business network in Southeast Asia has formed a huge underground remittance channel, and capital flows quietly outside the sovereign territory. It is estimated that in just a decade around 1900, private capital flowing from China to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia was conservatively estimated to exceed billions of taels of silver. The more far-reaching consequence is that when business elites and local gentry completely lose trust in the court, the financing channels of the revolutionary party are unimpeded in overseas Chinese communities. A large part of Sun Yat sen's revolutionary funds came from secret donations from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The money could have been circulated domestically, but it was the tax and property logic of the Qing court that pushed it to the side of the revolution with their own hands. The three cards shone out once again in unison. In 1911, a gunshot rang out from the city of Wuchang, marking the final settlement of the Qing Dynasty in less than four months. The gears of history never break suddenly. Two collapses, separated by 267 years, but the scripts are astonishingly similar: It didn't just collapse suddenly one day. All of them first blur property rights and make property owners feel uneasy; Then turn taxes into emotional punishments that make compliant individuals feel dangerous; Finally, completely freeze liquidity and slowly shut down the economic engine of the entire society. Three signals accumulate slowly each, and one day, they reach a critical point simultaneously. Before that node, everyone said, 'It's okay, we haven't reached that point yet.'. After that node, everyone said 'I knew it would happen long ago'. People who truly understand history understand that the silence in the middle is the most valuable information. When an era begins to make people dare not hold, dare not circulate, and dare not believe in tomorrow, those smart enough people have quietly begun to prepare themselves. History never informs you. But it keeps giving you signals. Did you see it or not? It's another matter. The above communication is for discussion only! Finally, my friend reminded me to prepare early for overseas identity and assets!