hundred mou. The low rate of assessment in fact created a large num-
ber of marginal landowners, whose tax delinquency was often pointed
to as an example to encourage delay of payment by other taxpayers,
which alarmed the officials. Moreover, affluent landowners could de-
tach tax liability from their real estate by buying and selling land. They
might pay premium prices for large tracts of land with less tax liability,
or conversely, offer small parcels of land for sale at giveaway prices to
unload a disproportionally large tax liability. As a rule, the untaxed
benefit was not reinvested for production; it became an inducement for
several interested parties to live off the same piece of property. The
huge population increases from the fifteenth century on, which coin-
cided with a diminishing standard of living, could not have been unre-
lated to this sequence.

Hongwu's obsession with localized economy was also reflected in
the requisitioned services instituted during his reign. Although regular
tax payment was low, peasants were obligated, collectively, to answer
service calls from the government. Numerous office attendants from
the chief clerk down to the doorman were drafted from the general
population and remained unpaid. Office stationery, transportation, fur-
niture, utensils, and even building maintenance were provided by the
village communities according to elaborate procedures. The most cum-
bersome features of such levies were later eliminated by substituting
them with surcharges overriding the land tax, which provided the basis
of the Single Whip Reform. But that came later in the sixteenth cen-
tury, almost two hundred years after the founding of the Ming. Nor
was the reform as broad and sweeping as some scholars wish us to
believe.
⁷ Consequently, the "Hongwu Model" of governmental finance
remained in being during the rest of the dynasty and beyond.

What constituted the Hongwu Model of governmental finance? A
lack of vision and imagination. Compulsory thriftiness from the view-
point of a village economist to the point of putting the crude method of
production ahead of circulation, distribution, and qualitative growth.
And egalitarianism for the short term at the expense of investment for
a better future. When the historian applies the present-day perspective
to review the records of the sixteenth century, he can hardly agree with
the majority opinion of his contemporaries who lament the passing
away of the golden age of the Hongwu era (which under the circum-
stances reflected the state-sponsored orthodoxy anyway), but feels
compelled to endorse the view of a handful of independent observers,

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