Chapter 672 Zhu Yuanzhang is definitely a genius!! To be honest, Zhu Biao was indeed embarrassed to say these words, but if he did not have any complaints in his heart, even Zhu Yuanzhang himself would not believe it. After all, he knew his son better, especially the changes in his son since Chen Han came to the Ming Dynasty. But he could find a lot. At this point he had to admit that Chen Han had a huge influence on his son. Especially after Chen Han directly explained many historical events to the father and son, many of their concepts were greatly changed. This cannot be changed. After all, Chen Han is a man from the future. He knows some situations that will happen more than 600 years later. These situations will have a huge impact on the current situation of the Ming Dynasty. It is precisely because of this that the father and son have been thinking about how to allocate all officials in the most perfect way. But later I found out that this assumption does not exist, because it is impossible for all officials to do things according to your so-called ideas. In fact, Zhu Biao has always been thinking about making officials in the world have more perfect qualities. This is the more naive side of Zhu Biao compared to Zhu Yuanzhang. He always felt that these officials could actually change their minds one by one, and this possibility would be possible as long as various strategies were changed.

Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang felt that the formation of this concept might be related to his own influence, because Zhu Biao had always taken his father as an example, so he had always been doing many things according to his own ideas. Zhu Biao may have felt that as a father or an emperor, he hoped that all officials in the world could be extremely honest and maintain the same morals as saints. So that's what he hoped for when he was the crown prince. He also wanted all these officials to follow this method, to become such officials, to be able to easily resolve temptations when faced with them, and then help the Ming Dynasty go further. Of course, the views of the old man, Zhu Yuanzhang, in many history books actually have some errors. They believe that Zhu Yuanzhang felt that all officials in the world were extremely hateful because of the trauma he suffered in his early years. Therefore, he hoped that all officials in the world could implement policies with a very high standard. Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang was considered a bit idealistic. It is precisely because they felt that Zhu Yuanzhang was a bit idealistic that they believed that his strategies, that is, the idea of ​​eliminating corruption among all officials in the world, were the reason for the collapse of his idealism. But these people don’t actually think about it at all. According to the ideological concepts of Zhu Yuanzhang, could he be an idealist? You can't think that Zhu Yuanzhang was an idealist just because there is historical record that he set such low salaries and then saw so many officials engaging in corruption that he became furious and therefore adopted such extreme measures to fight corruption. Judging from Zhu Yuanzhang's entire experience, it is absolutely impossible for him to be an idealist, but rather a realist. Because his experience has told him why officials all over the world engage in corruption and bribery. Is it simply because these people have bad character? no. It’s because of rent-seeking. The phenomenon of officials exchanging power for benefits is impossible to change after having power for thousands of years. To put it bluntly, to say that Zhu Yuanzhang is a bit idealistic is really too pedantic. When studying a person, they always impose their life experiences and personal lives on the head of a monarch. Of course, Chen Han himself is not a scholar in real life, nor is he an accomplished researcher, but he uses the thinking of a normal person to infer that this so-called idealism is too naive. He doesn't know why some people think that idealistic arguments can stand up. In fact, one thing that is easy to measure is if Zhu Yuanzhang was really an idealist. He could have increased the salaries of officials when formulating policies, set the salaries higher at the beginning, and then when corruption appears among you, I would have been forced to take action. This is in line with the thinking of an idealist. Because it is not like there has never been such a phenomenon. Officials in the Song Dynasty had very high salaries. Weren't those officials greedy? Weren't there enough corrupt officials in the Song Dynasty? Is it useful? No, that’s why he didn’t set the salary so high. As for low salaries and the hope that officials can behave themselves, for a person who has experienced so many ups and downs in life since childhood, would he believe that these officials are saints?

You have to know that his parents were starved to death, and the culprit was the Yuan Dynasty court and a large group of corrupt officials. So he absolutely did not trust the character and humanity of those officials, and this must be correct. There are two most likely reasons for setting such a low salary. The first is that when the Ming Dynasty was just established, it had experienced such a long period of turmoil, and the Yuan Dynasty's exploitation of the Central Plains had caused the whole country to be in ruins, and there was not enough money to support those officials. Of course, some people may ask, why can we give those princes such high salaries? That's nonsense. How many vassal kings were there at the beginning of the founding of the country? Even if Zhu Yuanzhang could have given birth, with more than 20 princes, even if they were given such high salaries, how much could more than 20 of them eat? We cannot use the fact that the princes of later times raised so many salaries like pigs to infer that it must have been wrong for Zhu Yuanzhang to offer such high salaries to the princes. Many people actually don’t know that the original feudal system was actually a strategy to seize military power from military generals. This is not only because Zhu Yuanzhang had special treatment for his descendants, but also a national strategy. Can you go and see what places the more than 20 princes were granted? Along the line from Shanhaiguan to Jiayuguan, from east to west, the King of Liao was enfeoffed in the northeast, the King of Ning was also in the northeast, the King of Yan Zhu Di was in Beiping, as well as the King of Gu and the King of Shen. They were all in the nine border areas which were very difficult at that time. Even in modern times, apart from Prince of Yan Zhu Di, Prince of Jin who was enfeoffed in Taiyuan, Shanxi, Prince of Chang'an, Shaanxi, and Prince of Zhou in Kaifeng, Henan, which prince was not enfeoffed in some remote corners? To put it simply, from a topographical point of view, they all run from east to west, along the Great Wall defense line to guard the border; A second line of defense was formed along the Central Plains to protect Nanjing; And in the southwest direction, it formed a semi-encirclement to protect the Central Plains. The division is done in this way. Isn’t this the best strategy for division? To put it simply, is it wrong to say that Zhu Yuanzhang believed that only his own descendants with the surname Zhu could protect the country? Let every descendant of the Zhu family have their own sense of responsibility. If it weren't for the Jingnan Campaign of Prince Yan Zhu Di, he himself ascended the throne as a vassal king, fearing that some vassal kings would follow his example and use financial power to replace the military power of the vassal kings. If this system is passed down in this way, it will actually be the most effective. The first was to seize military power from the generals, and the second was to give the Zhu family's children something to do while also defending the Central Plains and the borders. To put it bluntly, what really destroyed the system of vassal kings was the chain reaction after Prince of Yan Zhu Di ascended the throne, not the mistakes in the fiefdoms that Zhu Di appointed at that time. This proves that Zhu Yuanzhang gave his sons such high salaries not for their own good, but largely as military subsidies for the princes. Let's take a simple example. If there were no such high salaries, how would the princes support so many soldiers? Could they just rely on keeping a portion of the local taxes to support so many soldiers? To put it bluntly, isn't this just like today's fiscal transfer policy? For example, if a vassal king of Gansu wanted to train so many soldiers, how much local tax revenue could support so many soldiers being stationed there? But just because of this one reason, many civil servants criticized the feudal system every day, using this matter to compare their own salaries. So much so that in later generations, that is, in modern times, how many people used such a system to criticize Zhu Yuanzhang, saying that his children and grandchildren were raising pigs, but completely ignored the destructiveness of Prince of Yan Zhu Di. From these perspectives, it can be seen that Zhu Yuanzhang was by no means an idealist, and he fully understood the moral character of officials. This proves the theory proposed by Chen Han himself. On the one hand, it was because the Ming Dynasty had just been established and the country was in ruins, so there was not much money and grain to give to officials. The second reason was intentional creation of conflicts. Because the Ming Dynasty was taken over by foreigners, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to integrate the entire ideology of the Ming Dynasty as quickly as possible. In addition to establishing Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism as the national learning, Zhu Yuanzhang unified the people's ideology with the Three Bonds and Five Constant Virtues. In addition to using the system of ruler-ruler, minister-minister, father-father, son-son to restrict the thoughts of the people and scholars, he also had to divert other conflicts among the people. What's the contradiction? The people hope to resume production immediately, live a stable life immediately, and enter a peaceful year immediately. However, the Ming Dynasty had just been established at that time and there were no conditions to create such an environment. Because the newly established Ming Dynasty was in a state of disrepair, the remnants of the Northern Yuan Dynasty who had fled to the northern desert were constantly moving south, trying to restore the Yuan Dynasty's rule. There are still a large number of remnant Yuan Dynasty generals in the southwest, such as the Mongolian princes who rule Yunnan.

At the same time, many of Zhang Shicheng's generals fled overseas and joined forces with overseas pirates, forming a very targeted and destructive force capable of harassing the southeastern coastal areas. So under that circumstance, the Ming Dynasty had no way to create such an environment. And if there is no way to meet the rigid demands of the people, who can guarantee that the people will not follow Zhu Yuanzhang's example and start a popular uprising? After all, Zhu Yuanzhang's identity is there. Especially at that time, Zhu Yuanzhang was active in the Huaihe River Basin and Jiangnan. After hundreds of years of economic migration from north to south, that area has become the richest place. Whether it is talent, economy, resource endowment, business, or the level of people's ideological education, it is better than the northeast, northwest, and southwest. This area was exactly the main place where Zhang Shicheng was active at that time. This posed a huge obstacle to Zhu Yuanzhang's governance of the world. If you want to unify the thoughts of these people immediately, what should you do? Create conflicts, artificially create conflicts. For example, in terms of system design, Zhu Yuanzhang may not have noticed at the beginning that low salaries would inevitably lead to widespread corruption. When the first example of corruption occurred, he immediately launched a bloody crackdown out of his hatred for corrupt officials. This bloody suppression will surely change the customs among the people, and the common people will certainly praise Zhu Yuanzhang as an honest and upright emperor. If Zhu Yuanzhang had realized at that time that low salaries would lead to widespread corruption and wanted to change it, then the change in the customs of the people and the shift in contradictions caused by their resentment towards officials' corruption would inevitably prompt Zhu Yuanzhang to use this contradiction to reduce people's expectations for a better life. Zhu Yuanzhang then took advantage of the situation and instead of repairing the institutional flaw that low salaries led to widespread corruption, he promulgated the "Great Edict", which included illustrations of cases involving corrupt officials and other officials violating laws and disciplines, and circulated them among the people. In other words, Zhu Yuanzhang was an expert at using public opinion to divert conflicts. Because the promulgation of the Great Edict would make the people of the world instinctively think that the reason why we are not living a good life now is not because the emperor is incompetent. In fact, the emperor is trying very hard to make the people live a good life. However, those hateful corrupt officials implemented the principle of "where there is a policy, there is a countermeasure." The Emperor clearly stated repeatedly that corruption was not allowed, but those officials did not listen. The most misleading article in "The Great Edict" is that it encourages ordinary people to report the illegal acts of officials. Because Zhu Yuanzhang was the first to set a precedent for the people of the world to sue officials through legal means, the people felt that Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang was a really good emperor who really cared about us. Therefore, the newly established Ming Dynasty, due to objective reasons, could not immediately let the people live a good life. The contradiction changed from the emperor's incompetence and the court's incompetence to the emperor and the court trying to create a good life for the people, but because of the corrupt officials, they did not live a good life. Therefore, there was a very strange phenomenon in the early Ming Dynasty, that is, the people were very keen to go to the capital in person to file complaints to the emperor. This is especially true in years of famine. But the strange thing is that many of these complaints are accepted, but few officials are actually punished... (End of this chapter)