Volume 2: Soaring! The Overlord of the Region Chapter 267: Summary and Final Move
No matter how much he has achieved in the past fifteen years, Zhu Youdong has always had a positive attitude: I am just an ordinary person. If the gods hadn't messed with each other, such an opportunity would never have come to me. Therefore, I can't do everything at once like the geniuses, because that is beyond my ability.
The Ming Dynasty has been established for more than 200 years, and there are many problems, not to mention that they are intertwined and involve a wide range of issues. Therefore, to reform the country from top to bottom, we must proceed step by step, step by step, and take it slow and down to earth.
Zhu Youdong thought about it over and over again for four years since he was a baby. He didn't put it into practice until he was enlightened and had his own team. Thanks to the four years of thinking, he took one step at a time. Although there were some mistakes and minor flaws, overall, he took a very steady approach.
At the beginning, of course, he had to make money. After opening a few small gold fingers and making some money, he started to promote cowpox and high-yield crops, giving himself a bulletproof vest.
According to his original plan, he wanted to build a base in Tianjin Port. But at this time, Empress Dowager Li and Emperor Wanli pushed him to go directly to Nanjing to take charge. This push made his pace significantly faster.
On the second day in Nanjing, he went to the Huangce Library. On the surface, it was a feint, but in fact, this move was of great significance: the thoughts of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince's group were effectively unified, and everyone understood the current situation of the country. Therefore, even if the Crown Prince later did something slightly unreasonable, everyone could accept it.
Then, we need to seize the power of public opinion. With the power of public opinion, we can make more money and climb the technology tree. After we have made certain achievements in money and technology, we will form a new navy and army. After that, the power of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will enter the fast lane of spiral growth.
After the Battle of Sarhu, Zhu Youdong gained the support of most of the generals in the country and his reputation was unrivaled. With the death of Zhu Changluo, he was soon pushed to the position of regent - this progress far exceeded his own expectations.
Therefore, after truly reaching the pinnacle of national power, he became more cautious in doing things.
Starting from the 40th year of the Wanli reign (1612), when he became regent, Zhu Youdong actually did not do much in terms of internal reforms for more than three years.
One of course is to continue the population census.
The second is to reform the currency system and open banks.
The third is to reform the salt administration.
The fourth is to increase the salaries of civil servants and clerks across the country.
These four, especially the last two, are of course closely linked and complement each other.
If we don’t know the approximate population of the country, we will not know the whole situation of the country. Therefore, we must do this work in advance.
To reform the currency system, the capital prepared by Zhu Youdong and Cao Sanxi was not enough. Therefore, they had to raise funds by selling part of the state-owned assets. In the short term, nothing could make money faster than selling salt mines.
However, only with relatively reliable population data, Zhu Youdong had the confidence to sell most of the salt mines in the country: in this salt mine auction, Bi Maokang held 13 salt mines that were not on the list. And these 13 remaining salt mines ensured that at least one large salt mine in each province was controlled by the state. Its salt production combined with the census data showed that even if the private salt mines across the country raised their prices uniformly, these 13 state-owned salt mines would have enough power to bring down the salt price - this is one of the significances of the census.
After selling the salt mines and reforming the Ming Dynasty's inefficient salt administration, the imperial court had money. The next step was naturally to increase the salaries of officials.
It’s still the same old saying: high salary doesn’t necessarily lead to honesty, low salary will definitely breed corruption - in modern society, there are indeed many people who don’t care much about salary, as long as the work is easy. But there is a premise: such people themselves are not short of money!
Moreover, the work efficiency of such people will definitely be extremely low. Isn't it said in modern society? Laziness and inaction are also corruption!
No matter how much Zhu Youdong dislikes the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty, he must admit that the Ming Dynasty's centralized and civil servant-governed model is much more advanced than the Western feudal system. This is one of his biggest advantages in competing with other time travelers in the future.
Therefore, he still has to rely on these civil servants.
Then there must be a salary increase.
As for the salary increase? On the one hand, it will definitely be a reorganization of the Censorate and an increase in the efforts to investigate corruption. On the other hand, it will be: ideological transformation!
Guan Zhong said, "When the granaries are full, people know etiquette; when they have enough food and clothing, they know honor and disgrace." In the past, people could not live on wages alone. It was useless to fight corruption when people could not even get enough food and clothing. Now, people's income has increased so much that there is a material basis for fighting corruption and ideological transformation.
In Zhu Youdong's plan, in order to completely reverse the financial situation of the Ming Dynasty and reduce the burden on the people, it is necessary to implement the three axe of Emperor Yongzheng in the historical dimension: returning the fire consumption to the public, allocating the land tax to the land, and requiring officials and gentry to serve and pay taxes together. In order to achieve this goal, the administration of officials must be rectified first.
To rectify the administration of civil servants, we must first increase their salaries.
Then we need to strengthen supervision and ideological transformation.
The Ming officialdom is now dominated by hypocrites. Because all officials in the country have to be greedy, everyone cares more about superficial morality. Over the past few hundred years, except for a few people who stick to their original intentions, almost everyone has become a hypocrite.
To correct this kind of atmosphere, it is impossible to clean up all the officials in the world. In addition to raising their salaries, we also have to knock down the benchmark that leads this hypocritical trend! Speaking of this, what could be more shocking and more effective than knocking down the family of Duke Yansheng?
Speaking of which, Zhang Shize was quite capable of getting things done. After seven or eight months, he had successfully found the three tombs that Zhu Youdong had told him about in advance, and obtained the things that Zhu Youdong mentioned.
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince needs a huge amount of money, but the Ming Dynasty now has plenty of money. As long as the method is right, he can naturally make money. In short, Zhu Youdong is not so miserable that he has to rely on the tomb raider for financial support.
In fact, these three tombs are not famous for the large amount of gold and silver burial objects. They have only one thing in common: burial documents.
There are a large number of bamboo slips in the Yinqueshan Han Tomb, with the contents mainly from Taoism and the School of Military Science, as well as some contents from Mohism, Yin-Yang School, and Legalism.
Among them, the most valuable are "The Art of War" and "The Art of War by Sun Bin". In the historical dimension, before the discovery of this tomb in 1972, the Chinese academic community could not come to a conclusion on whether Sun Bin existed. After the bamboo slips of this tomb were unearthed, this controversy came to an end.
The tomb owner of the Shuihudi Tomb in Yunmeng, Hubei, was a low-ranking official of the Qin Dynasty, and his burial objects were extremely shabby. However, this dedicated official buried all the Qin laws that he had learned and written in his lifetime as burial objects.
The Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips vividly and comprehensively display the Qin Dynasty's dense and reasonable legal system, ranging from national policies and laws, officials' guidance on farming, how to use oxen, to how to deal with various disputes between neighbors, as well as market management and tax collection, national workshop production, currency circulation, warehouse storage, military merit and titles, etc., involving all aspects of national production and life.
The tombs in Barkhor Village, Ding County, contain three versions of the Analects.
"Shize, with these things, we can take action against Duke Yansheng."
"Yes, I obey your command."
"Well...how are you going to do it?"
"Your Highness, over the years, I have firmly believed that you are a person who is born with knowledge. After carefully studying the objects unearthed from these three tombs, I was also greatly shocked. My idea is to release the Qin bamboo slips from Shuihudi first, so that everyone can know the sophistication and rationality of Qin law. Alas, compared with Qin law, the laws of my Ming Dynasty..."
"Yes." Zhu Youdong nodded happily. "I gave those idiots in the Ministry of Justice two full years to revise the Ming Dynasty Law, and even asked the Jesuits to send them the Chinese version of Western Roman law for reference. But what they produced was simply stinking. Let them take a good look. More than a thousand years ago, our Chinese laws were already so detailed. See if these idiots are ashamed or not."
"Yes, that is what I plan to do. Your Highness, I will release the Han bamboo slips from Yinque Mountain."
"Okay, let's do this. For example, it will arouse the continuous attention and discussion of this matter among scholars, Taoist priests, and military commanders across the country."
"That's right. Finally, I will take out the three editions of the Analects from the tomb in Barkhor Village! Now all the philosophers and schools of thought are complete! I don't believe that the Kong family can still sit still at this time!"
"Hahaha, that's right! Just go for it. Even if the sky falls, I'll hold it up for you!"
