Kangqian Shengshi is the last prosperous era of China's ancient feudal dynasty, but also the peak of the development of the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor as the last emperor of the prosperous period, in the wenzhi martial arts also made achievements, Qianlong is also a very proud person, confident that the Qing Dynasty under his rule is a rare prosperous world, but also prides himself on being a perfect old man, but Qianlong 46 years of a corruption case, but Qianlong, who is already 70 years old, feels that his face is dull, and he is embarrassed to mention the two words of shengshi.
Qianlong was so amazed that qianlong was amazed, and the reason why there was no other reason than that the case involved a very large number of people and a huge amount of corruption was enormous, and the corrupt officials not only deceived Qianlong but also won Qianlong's approval and promotion; if it were not for a heavy rain that led to this corruption case, I am afraid that Qianlong would still be living in the self-righteous Kangqian prosperous world until his death.
In March 1781, the 43rd Anti-Qing Uprising of the Soviet Union occurred in Gansu. The Qianlong Emperor ordered the scholar Ah Gui and his favorite minister and Yan To lead their troops to supervise the rebellion, and as a result, after the army reached the border of Gansu, torrential rains continued, resulting in the obstruction of the march, and both He Yan and Ah Gui mentioned this matter many times in their folds to Qianlong. Qianlong is also very strange, before Gansu reported drought every year, why is there so much rain this year? Although he felt strange, Qianlong did not investigate deeply, after all, rehabilitation is a major event, because of the continuous heavy rain, the army has not been able to capture Hualin Mountain, and in anger, Qianlong dismissed the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, Le Erjin.
After Lerjin was punished, he frightened Wang Tingzan, the envoy of Gansu Province, and immediately folded his son, saying that he was willing to donate the 40,000 taels of silver he had saved over the years to the imperial court as a military salary, in the hope that the army could suppress the rebellion as soon as possible. Wang Tingzan's fold made Qianlong suspicious, how could an envoy have so much wealth? Just in time, the former Gansu envoy Wang Qiwang had taken advantage of the forty-five years of Qianlong's southern tour to expose the corruption situation, and he thought of the incident, Wang Qiwang had offered himself a golden ruyi, although he was rejected by himself, but it was really suspicious, why were the two Gansu envoys so rich? There must be something to be said for it.
Qianlong ordered Chen Huizu, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang and the governor of Zhejiang, to strictly investigate Wang Qiwang, who was at his home in Zhejiang, and ordered Wang Tingzan, who had succeeded Wang Qiwang as an envoy to Gansu, to report on the situation of donating money and receiving private receipts. The whole case should also start with Wang Qiwang, a former gansu envoy. In the Qing Dynasty, there was a "donation prison" in Gansu, to put it simply, let the local rich families in Gansu donate a little grain such as rice beans, and then the imperial court gave an official position, because this policy accumulated too many drawbacks, and was later stopped by the imperial court.
After taking office, Wang Qiwang was approved by the imperial court to reopen the "donation prison" on the grounds that the storage was insufficient and that the "donation supervisor" could be used to help the victims of the disaster. Wang Qiwang is a master of corruption, in the past, "donating money to prison" was to directly collect grain, but this time Wang Qiwang took into account that silver is good for corruption, so he changed the imperial court's order, did not collect grain and collect silver, originally only needed to donate 43 stones of grain to get a quota of prisoners, Wang Qiwang directly changed to 47 taels of silver, in addition to these, but also to collect 8 taels of work costs, office fees and the like, a total of 55 taels of silver, which is really the true color of corrupt officials.
In order to seal the mouths of officials of all sizes in Gansu, Wang Qiwang asked the counties themselves to predetermine the severity of the disaster, and then according to the size of the reported disaster, the envoys issued quotas for "donating to prisons" to each county, and then collected silver according to the quota, while Wang Qiwang stayed at home and waited for the counties to complete the "donation to prison" matters before sending silver to themselves.
Although Qianlong wondered why barren Gansu could donate so much grain, he finally gave Wang Qiwang a credit and promoted him to be the inspector of Zhejiang. In the clear accounts given to the imperial court, these grains were used for disaster relief, but in fact, they were all privately divided by officials of Gansu Province. After Wang Qiwang was transferred away, Wang Tingzan took over as the envoy of Gansu Province, and this Wang Tingzan was originally a clean official, who was honest in his work and was deeply loved by the people, but as a result, after taking office, he still failed to stick to his heart and embarked on the road of corrupt officials, and he also intensified his efforts on the basis of Wang Qiwang's stay and received more benefits.
The entire Gansu officialdom treated Qianlong as a monkey and deceived Qianlong from top to bottom, and when the facts of the case came to light, there were 274,450 people in Gansu who reported donations to prison students, and the cashier 15094750 two, gansu officials directly embezzled 2,915,600 yuan of silver, and the remaining more than 10 million taels were embezzled under the guise of disaster relief, which is not easy to estimate. Qianlong qiji ordered that severe punishment should be imposed, and no matter who was infected with this corruption case, it should be dealt with strictly, and not one of them should be spared, and as a result, the more people were implicated in the case, and even Chen Huizu, who was in charge of investigating the case, who was evaluated by Qianlong as "deeply favored by Qianlong and will not be willing to join the same stream," was also a corrupt official.
Qianlong, who was difficult to ride the tiger, could only turn his eyes to Hezhen for help and ask for his opinion. As the leader of the most corrupt officials in the Qing Dynasty, He Yan gave Qianlong a plan to punish only the chief evil and the most evil, and other officials were punished appropriately, even so, he killed 56 corrupt officials and dispatched 46 people, and the middle and high-level officials in Gansu were empty.
The Gansu Rice Case can be called the biggest corruption case in the Qing Dynasty, and it was also this huge corruption case that broke out in Gansu involving several provinces such as Zhili, Shengjing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Yunnan, which made Qianlong understand that the original Qing Dynasty officialdom was so unbearable, "The wind of officials protecting each other, as for the whole dynasty!" In fact, in the final analysis, if it were not for Qianlong raising a Hezhen and working upwards and downwards, who would dare to act so boldly? If Qianlong could have half of Yongzheng's self-discipline, he would not have decayed the Qing Dynasty so badly!