While Lin Youde was enjoying himself, the meeting continued to be deadlocked.
The main focus of the debate is how much tax revenue each gets from the central and local governments. The reason for the debate on this issue is that neither Yuan Shikai nor Lin Youde took a stand. Although the revolutionary army of the central government is not as powerful as the troops in the hands of Lin Youde and Yuan Shikai, it is still a new type of army with combat effectiveness.
The provinces that can only be deterred by the old army, and the localities have money, and in such a situation of mutual checks and balances, the heads of the Navy and the Army, who have strong troops, naturally play an important role.
Lin Youde took care of the tax system in the occupied area and had no say in it, so Yuan Shikai basically had the final say on this matter. But Yuan Shikai pretended to be a spectator.
In fact, Lin Youde understood Yuan Shikai's difficulties. At that time, his main force was in North Korea, and he did not want to bear the charges he had committed, so he used the hands of the revolutionary army to kill the Tatar court. As a result, he is now caught between the local government and the central government, relying on neither side.
If the central government collects more taxes, Yuan Shikai's position will be in danger in a few years; if the local governments collect more taxes, Jin, Shu, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are both rich places, but they are far away from Yuan Shikai's sphere of influence.
You must know that these provinces can organize and train nationally renowned garrison divisions. The garrison divisions are equipped with well-equipped troops and are not afraid of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army. Then Yuan Shikai's position is still dangerous.
These were not the only things that troubled Yuan Shikai at this time. At this time, he hated Lin Youde to death. He never expected that Lin Youde would be so generous. Three rich provinces such as Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian were handed over at the first sign of exchange. By the way, he relied on this generousness in exchange for
Now he is afraid that Lin Youde will make a fuss about the tax revenue of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. After Lin Ji's development over the years, these three provinces are really important in the national economic structure. Because of this, Lin Youde did not express his position, and Yuan Shikai also
Dare not express my opinion.
To put it bluntly, Yuan Shikai still maintained the traditional thinking that had been passed down from the feudal bureaucracy for thousands of years, equating land with income. Naturally, he could not understand the thinking of a capitalist like Lin Youde.
Yuan Shikai was waiting for Lin Youde to express his stance, and Lin Youde did not intend to disappoint him.
On November 19, Lin Youde suddenly proposed that we first discuss the issue of canceling the toll tax on business travelers in various places. Everyone saw that this tax would not be finished in a while, so they agreed to discuss other things to ease the atmosphere.
.
This time, the two different parties became the old landlord class and the emerging capitalist class. From the perspective of the feudal landlords, the tolls were a large amount of income, while the capitalists felt that they could earn more without this income, so conflicts arose.
, provinces with relatively developed commerce basically agree with the nationwide abolition of customs clearance and taxation, while provinces with less developed commerce are unanimously opposed to it.
However, the provinces with developed commerce have money, industry, and strong strength. In addition, Lin Youde and the revolutionary army are both from capitalist backgrounds. Although Yuan Shikai came from a rich and old bureaucratic background, he also vaguely realized that the old methods were not working anymore. As a result,
Several provinces with large remnants of the feudal economy have become the target of public criticism.
In the end, Lin Youde proposed a full vote, and the result, including the votes from the Navy Department, War Department and the Central Committee, was 16 votes in favor, 5 votes against, and 4 abstentions. The representative from Guizhou flung his sleeves to leave, but Yuan Shikai said, "You walked out of this door.
"The province of Guizhou no longer exists" was blocked and blocked.
In this way, the nationwide trade tax-free policy was established.
Lin Youde then proposed to establish a national currency. After two days of repeated bargaining, he finally came up with a plan acceptable to everyone: the issuance rights of Nanyang Bank still belong to Nanyang Bank, but domestic merchants can subscribe to Nanyang Bank's shares and domestic gentry hold shares.
The amount of some stocks cannot exceed 49% of the total share capital, and Lin Youde's Lin Ji accounts for 51%.
Lin Youde is still the owner of Nanyang Bank, and the face value of Nanyang banknotes will remain in the current format. New coins will be issued after everything in the country stabilizes...
This plan was approved again by vote.
After these were settled, Lin Youde said that he had no objections, so the meeting focused again on the tax sharing between the central and local governments.
This time, with the precedent of two votes initiated by Lin Youde, others obviously learned something. After several days of bickering, Zhang Jian, the representative of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, took the lead in proposing a full vote. This proposal was approved by everyone.
So the next meeting spent a day voting on several tax-sharing plans. In the end, the 30-70 plan received majority support, with the central government accounting for 30% of local taxes and local governments accounting for 70%. By the way, the reason why local taxes are divided
They agreed to the central government taking 30% instead of the 20% they insisted on before because Lin Youde clearly showed his intention to agree with the central government's plan to take 20%. This was interpreted by others as "the navy does not want the central government to be too strong." So he should have received
The 28-point plan with the most local votes received only three votes and was rejected.
After the results came out, the revolutionary army was very dissatisfied. Chen Qimei came to the stage to make an impassioned speech, but was choked back by Lin Youde, "Do you still have tariffs?"
At this time, the local representatives woke up from a dream and realized that they had been tricked: they did not want the central power based on Sun Wen's revolutionary military government to become stronger, so they insisted on taking the bulk of the tax revenue. Thirty-seven points
In this way, the financial resources of the central government are definitely stronger than those of each province alone, but provinces with strong economic strength still have the confidence to challenge the central government. Now that tariffs are added, it is obviously impossible for a single province to fight against the central government.
Lin Youde did not want to weaken the power of the central government at all. What he wanted was checks and balances between the central and local governments so that he could reap profits overseas.
The provinces obviously realized this too late.
Equally uncomfortable were the envoys from various countries who were watching. Although they had expected that the new country would take back some foreign privileges in China, they did not expect that Lin Youde would raise this issue in such a straightforward form.
If it were 1902 in the previous time and space, talking about withdrawing tariffs would be nothing more than wishful thinking. But in this time and space, China has just won two foreign wars - counting the wars between overseas Chinese in Nanyang and Spain, there are actually three. Plus
In the previous Sino-French War and the earlier Second Opium War, China's performance was much better than in the previous time and space. At this time, New China had the capital to negotiate for the recovery of tariffs.
In fact, when Congress was meeting to discuss the details of the founding of the country, relevant diplomatic activities were taking place.
Therefore, not long after Lin Youde raised this issue in Congress, governments of various countries issued statements one after another, agreeing that the Chinese federal government would set its own tariffs in the future, but requiring the federal government to grant each country "most favored nation treatment."
Even if the Qing government had the lowest tariff in the world before, the customs tax revenue was a huge revenue. Now that the tariff is self-determined, even if the major empires are given most-favored-nation status, the tax revenue will be 100% higher than that of the Qing Dynasty.
After receiving such a huge sum of money, Chen Qimei, Chen Shaobai and others could only shut up.
At this point, after a month-long quarrel, the two obstacles standing in the way of the new country have been temporarily overcome.
So Congress began to discuss the details of the constitution.