Fugitive criminals of the Ming Dynasty

Ma Jianhong (Juris Doctor)

In traditional society, due to the general low level of detection technology, the case solving rate of the government is not very high, and criminals often flee with a fluke mentality after committing adultery. They usually fled to inaccessible places and hid their names until they were eventually wiped out by the government. Of course, there are also criminals with strong psychological qualities, who believe that the most dangerous place is also the safest, do not hide after removing the traces of the crime, and live in the city without doing anything, and what he has committed may become a mystery for eternity.

So, in the ancient era of air transport and dangerous shipping conditions, were there any fugitives who avoided overseas after committing crimes? This is not much, but it does. In the canadian historian Bu Zhengmin's book "The Struggling Empire - Yuan and Ming", it tells the story of such a banker who fled overseas, and the silverman was caught and used "extraterritoriality" to defend himself, which is really unexpected.

The story takes place in the late 1570s, the first year of the Wanli Calendar. At that time, Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant of the cabinet, was vigorously promoting his fiscal reforms and implementing the policy of conscription and silver, and in the context of this era, silver became the main circulating currency at that time. This is undoubtedly an absolutely positive news for those who work in the banking industry, and Guan Fangzhou is one of these lucky ones.

At that time, Suzhou was the commercial hub of the entire land and sea trade network centered on the Yangtze River Delta. In Suzhou, gold and silver finesse is originally a very profitable industry, and a silverman with good craftsmanship has a high income, while a slippery silverman will have "hundreds of ways to pick up oil and steal the silver in his hand for himself." Naturally, Guan Fangzhou could not resist the temptation of such huge profits, and his appetite was not generally large, and the official funds he personally encroached upon were as large as a thousand taels. Compared with the income of public officials at that time, this is definitely a huge amount of money.

In Huang Renyu's book "Finance and Taxation in Ming Dynasty China in the Sixteenth Century", he wrote about the statutory income of officials at the same time as the Guan Fangzhou case. In 1578 "an annual prefect's salary was 62.05 taels of silver. An annual Feng Lu of a Zhi County is 27.49 silver two." The operating expenses of local governments are about 3,000 taels per county on average, and after deducting part of the costs used for "yichuan", the expenses handed over to the central and provincial governments, and the salaries of the county governments, the average county can only spare 100 to 200 taels of silver for office expenses. Compared with such a financial situation, Guan Fangzhou, a small banker, has up to a thousand taels of oil at work, which is indeed a huge greed.

After the matter was revealed, Guan Fangzhou was tied to the Zhenfu Si Prison of Suzhou Wei, waiting for the ruling of the Central Organs such as the Punishment Department. According to the law, he will definitely be sentenced to death, but the method of execution of the death penalty will be "beheaded" or "hanged" in different ways of the crime. In ancient times, hanging could leave a prisoner with a whole corpse, be sacrificed after death, and be reincarnated; those who were beheaded lost these "benefits." As for lingchi punishment, in addition to increasing the pain of prisoners, there will also be mental pressure caused by "soul scattering".

Therefore, the proposed crime of Guan Fangzhou needs to wait for the final determination of the higher judicial organ. During his detention, it was Wang Baihu, the relative of Guan Fangzhou, who was in charge of the prison. Wang Baihu's work has always been lax in prevention, coupled with the personal feeling of "relatives and families", Guan Fangzhou soon gained the freedom to come and go at will during the day and only need to be imprisoned at night. Finally, one day, Guan Fangzhou went out and never returned. The favoritism and misfortune of the family Wang Baihu were taken into custody for taking the blame, and the magistrate was also worried about being held accountable, hoping to arrest Guan Fangzhou before the final verdict was issued, and the Wang family paid a lot of money to recruit people to look around for Guan Fangzhou's whereabouts.

However, the search for Guan Fangzhou was fruitless. Some people said that he got on a certain boat and the trappers hunted him down to various ports off the coast of Fujian and Guangzhou, but still found nothing. Just before the decision was made to end the hunt, the Suzhou fishermen happened to hear that a wrecked European sea ship had just drifted into the harbor, and when they went to check on the abandoned ship out of curiosity, they found two dying Chinese in the cargo hold, one of whom was the Guan Fangzhou they were searching for. Although it is not known how Guan Fangzhou got to the European ship, when he realized that he had drifted to Macau, he claimed that Macau had some kind of unenforced extraterritorial jurisdiction and told the capturers that they had no jurisdiction in Macau. Realizing that they were unable to escort Guan Fangzhou out of Macau under the nose of the Portuguese, the capturers fabricated the lie that Guan Fangzhou's case had been granted amnesty by the emperor and persuaded Guan Fangzhou to return with them. When the fugitive Guan Fangzhou returned, the edict of his relative Wang Baihu's questioning had just been issued. Guan Fangzhou thus paid the price of his life for his greed.

The greed of the banker is not unusual, according to the "Great Ming Law" to convict him is also common, but in such a relatively closed era, Guan Fangzhou chose to flee overseas to some extent unexpected, and in Macao, a Portuguese leased place (from 1572, the Portuguese began to formally pay rent to the Zhu Ming regime), Guan Fangzhou actually argued on the grounds that the arresters had no jurisdiction here, and according to our understanding of China's modern history, although extraterritorial jurisdiction has long existed between Western countries and Near Eastern countries, But it was not until the Sino-British Five-Mouth Treaty Charter of 1843 after the Opium War that Britain seized consular jurisdiction from China, so how did Guan Fangzhou, a small banker, learn about extraterritorial jurisdiction and use it as a reason to protect himself from arrest? Usually when exercising power, there is almost no scruples about arresting and serving, but he does not dare to blatantly violate this "international practice", and can only bring the fugitives back to Suzhou through deception? These mysteries to be solved may be exactly where scholars need to focus.

Comics/Chen Bin