Chapter 671 Zhu Biao is in high spirits
Of course, Zhu Biao was actually too embarrassed to tell his father about these things.
He couldn't tell his father that because he did something wrong before, now he has to clean up his mess for him, which might waste his whole life.
Then how can I do great things? If I say that I don’t have time at all, it would seem really unfilial.
But now the matter is before me, how should I complete such a difficult task?
This matter has always been a huge hurdle in Zhu Biao's heart. He didn't know how to tell his father, let alone how to solve it. Fortunately, the appearance of Chen Han gave him a glimmer of hope.
What Chen Han is doing now is actually a timely relief for Zhu Biao, because Chen Han has been committed to alleviating the psychological trauma of poverty alleviation officials.
Even though Chen Han has now split the Jinyiwei into the Tax Inspection Department and the Baochao Administration Department, they can still supervise the property situation of officials at the local level.
Officials would also be frightened, but using this relatively mild method is always much better than the decision my father has always followed, which is to kill anyone who commits corruption.
It is precisely because of this that my father now has some prejudice against Chen Han, that he is too gentle.
But Zhu Biao himself actually agreed with what Chen Han did, because Chen Han's method would be very useful when he really became emperor in the future.
At least to a large extent, it avoided the possibility that officials would oppose him after he became emperor in the future.
Zhu Biao did not think that all officials in the world were good. He did not think that it was good for those officials to be servile to him one by one. However, he had to use this method to shift the contradictions and had to use this gentle means so that the policies he would implement in the future would not encounter so many obstacles.
This is also the topic that Chen Han and Zhu Biao mentioned most frequently when they were discussing.
They both believed that corrupt officials must be wiped out, but they could not kill all of them when their salaries were so low.
In addition, the salaries of the princes and their sons were much higher than those of the officials, so the officials naturally felt unbalanced.
So under this circumstance, even if many corrupt officials are killed, the officials will not be convinced.
In this case, Chen Han must formulate some policies that can let these officials know that it is right to be killed for corruption and bribery.
That is to increase their salaries first, while reducing the salaries of the princes' younger brothers.
Of course they were very happy about this, but for Zhu Yuanzhang, it was as painful as cutting flesh.
Because Chen Han has always understood that Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang is a peasant emperor and his thoughts are the thoughts of a peasant. He has always been thinking about how to make his descendants enjoy wealth and glory.
While his descendants were enjoying wealth and glory, he also hoped that all officials in the world could receive very low salaries while still being dedicated to their duties and serving the people of the world.
To be honest, Zhu Yuanzhang seemed to want to have it all.
Of course, Chen Han did not tell Zhu Yuanzhang this explicitly, but Zhu Yuanzhang should understand his contempt for such an idea between the lines.
Therefore, the only thing that can reassure Zhu Biao now is that under Chen Han’s reforms, the Ming Dynasty has at least brought benefits to officials all over the world.
Even Chen Han’s reforms were not only a change in policy, but also set up rules for assessment.
The formulation of these rules not only allows officials across the world to see a transparent promotion channel, but also this promotion channel not only provides promotions but also rewards salaries.
Under this double stimulus, officials can now feel relatively secure.
Officials in some places who have no vested interests are now willing to promote Chen Han's reforms.
Because they found that the more successful Chen Han's reforms were, the better their political achievements would be, and the higher they could climb.
Although many officials are somewhat resistant to promotion and wealth, they feel that they become officials to govern the country and bring peace to the world.
However, with the stimulation and security of money, when they no longer needed to worry about their own logistical support, they realized that money, as long as it was used properly, was actually the basis for guaranteeing their desire to govern the country and bring peace to the world.
On this basis, they no longer have so much resistance to Chen Han's reforms. This is the brilliance of Chen Han.
He would not go and let officials know directly that money was wrong, but instead change their quality of life so that they would have no worries.
Why was it that even though Zhu Yuanzhang killed so many corrupt officials during the Hongwu period, the overall corruption rate was still around 40 percent?
This is not only Zhu Yuanzhang's confusion, but also the confusion of many people who read history books.
History enthusiasts like Chen Han sometimes come into contact with a lot of things in history books, and they find out why those officials, even though their basic living needs are guaranteed, still ask the common people for money.
Later, after Chen Han came to the Ming Dynasty, he solved his confusion.
Because those officials not only have to ensure their own food, drink, defecation and urination, but also have to ensure the food, drink, defecation and urination of the minor officials who work with them.
Because some of the economic policies formulated by the Ming Dynasty court, namely Zhu Yuanzhang, were very strange.
Only Zhu Yuanzhang would not pay the salaries of the clerks working for the government office.
How did these petty officials get their salaries? They had to take out a portion of the salaries of the county magistrate and some important officials in the government office to pay them.
Originally, there were relatively few county magistrates and officials who received salaries from the imperial court. Not only did they have to support their own families, but they also had to support the families of so many petty officials. This salary was too little.
The salary was low, and the assessment from above was extremely strict. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was absolutely intolerant not only of corrupt officials, but also of those officials who he felt were just sitting there doing nothing.
He could not tolerate this, and except for a few who were exiled to save their lives, most of these officials would have their heads chopped off. Because of this, the degree of fear among officials can be imagined. In order to meet the performance pressure from above, officials can only dig holes in the mountains to make money to support more petty officials who work for them.
Zhu Biao once asked his father whether he should consider this situation, but his father was very determined that the salary he set was enough for a family of ten to live well.
So his father would never make any concessions on this matter, which made Zhu Biao feel helpless sometimes.
Because he always wanted to tell his father that you never considered that those petty officials also have families to support.
To support these people, you must rely on salaries, but the salaries are already low, and you have to support so many people. Even if your salary is set to be enough for a family of ten to live well, there are more than just one family of ten in a yamen.
So Zhu Biao once talked to his father about whether he should increase the number of people who could receive salaries from minor officials in the yamen.
Chen Han also knew that the Ming Dynasty court would pay salaries to those low-ranking clerks in the yamen. It was not that they would never pay, but the amount was very limited.
A county government office may only have around ten vacancies, but the county magistrate has to take care of all kinds of trivial matters even if the area under his jurisdiction only has 30,000 to 40,000 people.
If we only rely on these ten clerks, we will never be able to complete so many government affairs.
So now, in order to complete the performance target, he could only reluctantly recruit more minor officials to do his work, and he had to pay the salaries of the extra officials.
So you can imagine how much pressure they are under.
Zhu Biao's intention was to increase the number of vacancies so that the common people could see that they could get a salary by working in the imperial court.
At the same time, it will also reduce the pressure on those officials, so that they don't have to use more of their own salaries to subsidize, avoid fire in their own backyards, and avoid making their lives difficult, thus forcing them to embezzle and accept bribes.
But the old man seemed to be very resistant to this matter. He told Zhu Biao based on his own experience that ten minor officials were enough to complete the work of a county.
In fact, this cannot be blamed on Zhu Yuanzhang’s lack of experience, but rather it is because Zhu Yuanzhang himself has sufficient experience that he made such a decision.
Many people say that the development of a person's character and habits is related to the environment. Zhu Yuanzhang was very harsh on his officials, which was also related to his own living habits.
First of all, it cannot be ruled out that because of the rampant corruption at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's parents, brothers and sisters all starved to death one after another, causing him great trauma.
So after he became emperor, he still hated corrupt officials very much, and this hatred also spread to ordinary officials.
Perhaps in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes, there is no good official in the world, and every official is thinking about corruption and bribery.
That is why he formulated such an unreasonable salary system. He did not want those officials to have the opportunity to live a life of debauchery and too good a life. He hoped that all officials could work for the people peacefully.
Of course, many historians in later generations felt that this was Zhu Yuanzhang’s wishful thinking and that his idealism was at work.
However, Chen Han felt that Zhu Yuanzhang actually knew that his system had huge loopholes and that officials would definitely engage in corruption and bribery. He took advantage of the loopholes in the system to shape himself as a good emperor and turned officials into opponents, thus forming a sandwich between him, the emperor, and the people.
Because in this way, he can form the greatest supervision over officials at the lowest cost.
After all, he gave the common people the opportunity to sue officials, which had never happened in history. Of course, the common people thought that Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was a very good emperor because this emperor allowed the common people to sue officials.
So all the pressure was put on the officials.
The poor officials not only have to endure the pressure of low salaries, but also have to fear being caught for corruption and bribery. At the same time, they are jealous of the high salaries of the princes and grandsons of the emperor.
Which official trained under such circumstances would have a normal mentality?
This is why the party struggles in the Ming Dynasty were so fierce, and it can almost be said that they lasted throughout the entire Ming Dynasty.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the Zhejiang East Faction represented by Liu Bowen and Li Shanchang and the Huaixi Military Faction fought like black-eyed chickens.
It was even more so during the reign of Emperor Jianwen. The conflicts between civil officials and military generals had almost reached an irreconcilable point, so much so that when Emperor Jianwen wanted to suppress the rebellion of his uncle, Prince of Yan Zhu Di, he could not find military generals he could trust to do the work for him.
By the Yongle period, the contradiction had become even more irreconcilable, because Prince of Yan Zhu Di was originally a military general who had seized the world by rebellion, so the officials distrusted him even more. This was also a form of party struggle, and even exacerbated the situation to the point where officials were against the emperor.
As a result, after Prince of Yan Zhu Di became emperor, he had no officials he could trust to do things for him, so he could only turn his attention to the eunuchs, because those eunuchs were rootless people and their only support was the imperial power.
So under this contradiction, conflicts accumulated again, and the conflict between officials and eunuchs continued until the end of the Ming Dynasty.
In other words, everything actually began to take shape at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.
So when facing such a deep trauma, Zhu Biao sometimes really didn't make very good plans. Even though Chen Han's arrival relieved him of a lot of pressure, he sometimes couldn't really feel at ease.
Because he knew that a lot of work had to be done to truly heal these traumas, and because of this, he was always worried that he would waste his precious time because he couldn't spare time to do other things.
If it was before, he wouldn't have thought so much, but since Chen Han came and told him, in fact, you have never been an emperor in history, because you will die earlier than your father.
But since Chen Han came and changed his fate and saved his life, he had a strong desire to do something.
Because he really wanted his descendants to see what he could achieve after becoming emperor. He also wanted his descendants to see how much he, the non-existent emperor, could change after becoming emperor.
No one may understand this kind of thinking, because no one can meet Chen Han like him, change his destiny, and have the opportunity to become emperor.
Before he met Chen Han, he thought that he would be a king who maintained the status quo in the future, and he only thought about how to heal his father's trauma.
But now it's different. He knows that he has never been an emperor in history, and now that he has the chance, how can he suppress his emotions...
(End of this chapter)
