Since the beginning of the Chenghua era, the Ming Dynasty regime has no more lethal threats, and the problem of food and clothing for the people has been basically solved. The economy of the whole country is booming, and businessmen have gradually come to the forefront. The "Hongwu system" established by the Ming Dynasty faced a collapsed system. In the eyes of some historians, the "Hongwu system" is a retrogression relative to the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty. Because, since the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, many scholars, including Wang Fuzhi and Huang Zongxi, believe that "the world has perished".
The Hongwu system is just the beginning of another cycle, and it is not backward
This view ignores the point that the Southern Song Dynasty regime, including the previous Northern Song dynasty regime, is a kind of centralization of power and the idea of decentralization, just as Huang Zongxi said that Qin Quan and Yuan Quan are all about the separation of powers in the warring states before Qin, and the idea of decentralization of power in the Southern Song Dynasty before the Yuan. This kind of confrontation existed in any era, but in the Southern Song Dynasty, the idea of decentralization was relatively strong.
From this, there were some ideas that seemed more democratic today. For example, "The world of China, the world of ancestors, the world of the courtiers, the ten thousand surnames, the world of the three armies, the world of non-Majesty." ”。 In fact, this is similar to the idea that Mencius said in the Warring States period that "the people are precious, the society is secondary, and the king is light".
It is very unfortunate that whenever the above views arise, it is in the midst of a chaotic world in China. Soon after this idea emerges, the country or dynasty in which it was proposed will be replaced by another unified dynasty. What is even more tragic is that the practice of this idea of decentralization in China's history has almost always failed.
Almost none of the key to Solving China's problems is the three rural issues. The Southern Song Dynasty was so economically developed and culturally active, but it never solved this problem. This is an insurmountable ideological and practical gap in Chinese history.
The "Hongwu system" is just another cycle of struggle between the ideology of centralization and decentralization, and there is no talk of what some historians call regression or not. If it is progress, why has it not really been realized in Chinese history? The same is true of the late Ming Dynasty, which also fell on this problem.
Ming Wuzong's inaction did lead to a kind of decentralization, and local officials had a greater degree of political freedom, but in the end, there was a centralized change such as Zhang Juzheng's reform. Subsequently, the continued decentralization of power led to the extreme prosperity of the late Ming Dynasty, followed by frequent natural and man-made disasters. Li Zicheng came to Beijing to overthrow the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing army entered the Central Plains. Another cycle begins.
Since the beginning of Zhengde's father, Emperor Hongzhi, one of the important contents of the "Hongwu system": the system of desert government has begun to have problems, and the grain storage system used for disaster relief has become decadent.
The Hongwu system is in danger of gradually collapsing. The problem is that the maturity of a mature system takes a certain amount of time, and after Zhu Yuanzhang's father and son spent 50 years to build and stabilize the formation system, after running for a hundred years, it began to gradually deteriorate, and the speed of deterioration also took a hundred years. Therefore, the system and top-level design are not built overnight, but after completion, its existence will also be long-term.
The four major grain storage systems, together with disaster reporting, disaster investigation, disaster relief measures, and medical care systems, constitute a major body of the Hongwu system- the Hongwu desert government system.
The Ming Dynasty was a dynasty with frequent natural disasters, according to the statistics of the "General History of Chinese Disasters , Ming Dynasty Volume", water, drought, insects, earthquakes, epidemics, sand and dust, wind, hail, lightning strikes, frost, snow, frost damage and other twelve types of natural disasters, the Ming Dynasty occurred a total of 3952 times.
Among them, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and plagues are the most serious. Zhu Yuanzhang's attention to disasters can be said to be unparalleled among the hundreds of emperors in the entire feudal society for more than two thousand years. Because the situation in Which Zhu Yuanzhang lived in his youth made him have a profound understanding of the sufferings of the people, he knew what the common people valued most.
However, his understanding is limited to the stage of subsistence and subsistence. It is very remarkable that an emperor in a feudal society can ensure the stability of the country for two hundred years with his own thoughts and studies. The system construction after the stage of subsistence and subsistence in later generations should be solved by future generations. Unfortunately, no such emperors appeared in the Ming Dynasty. There was one in the Qing Dynasty, and his name was Ai Xin Jue Luo Yin Chan.
Xu Guangqi said in the "Complete Book of Agricultural Administration" Volume 45 "Preparing for the Examination of Famine": "At the beginning of Hongwu Chu, the counties of the world were ordered to prepare four warehouses, and the officials were responsible for the management of the local people who were high and honest in order to take advantage of the grain to prepare for relief. If the disaster is covered, the cost is small; the extreme disaster is charity, and the cost is large.
If there is no harvest in the world, the people will eat less, and if the people eat less, they will become degenerate, and if they change, the world will steal, although Wang Gang is not agreed, resulting in the bullying of the strong and the weak, the multitude of widows, and Haojie's birth. Since then, the king may have moved, and the people have been born more. The united people are worried about three hours, worried about the water of nine years, and the drought of seven years, and the people have no life. So between reading and listening, I don't feel the hair standing up in horror, and I am afraid of it, for this reason also. ”
The four warehouses are different in the way of relief, the reserve warehouse (equivalent to today's state-owned grain depot, the main body of grain storage) is used for relief (when the grain price rises, the grain is sold to the victims at a par or lower than the market price), relief (the goods are sent to the victims free of charge), and the relief loan (the grain is loaned to the victims and set interest, and the principal and interest are repaid in the next year);
Changping Cang (founded by Li Slang during the Warring States period, used grain storage to stabilize the price of grain in the event of disasters, and the grain depot of the local government) was only used for relief;
Yicang (created by Emperor Wen of Sui, usually at the prefecture and county level, was the government's first-line grain depot for the people) was used for charity;
Shecang (a grain depot of clan or folk self-help organizations, founded by Zhu Xi in the Southern Song Dynasty) was used for loan relief.
The construction of the four warehouse system directly purchased a four-layer protection system from the central government to the private sector. It can be said that it is an extremely safe and secure way to ensure food security. However, since the beginning of Koji, the four large warehouse system has been problematic.
When the Zhengde Emperor came to Yangzhou, the relief of Jiangnan cities such as Suzhou and Yangzhou had begun to rely on fundraising. By the end of the Wanli Calendar, the government had even withdrawn from the ranks of disaster relief subjects. Many of the people on the front lines of disaster relief in the Gangnam area were instead squires or merchants.
At the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang also established a relatively complete medical system. From the Tai Hospital serving the royal family, to the good medical institutions serving the princes and magnates everywhere, and the Huimin Pharmacy established in the third year of Hongwu (1370), a complete medical system was formed. It also stipulates that "each envoy, each province, the chief officer, and the chief officer shall be one member of the main medical department; each state shall be a member of the medical code department; and each county shall be a member of the medical training department."
Usually, their duty is to treat the "poor and sick" socially vulnerable groups. Zhu Yuanzhang specifically ordered that patients should not be refused because they did not have money, and the Huimin Pharmacy even often gave free medicines. In the event of a disaster, the Huimin Pharmacy is responsible for treating the victims, administering medicines and delivering medicines, and burying corpses.
Huimin Pharmacy began in the Hongwu period and continued to operate normally until the Wanli period. In the fifteenth year of the Wanli Dynasty (1587), the Huimin Pharmacy played a great role in dealing with the plague that occurred in the Beijing area. Wanli Emperor Ordered Tai Hospital to send people to work with the Huimin Pharmacy to treat a total of 109,590 patients, and the medicine was converted into 14,618.5 kilograms. It is precisely because of the establishment of the two major disaster relief systems that the Ming Dynasty still stood for 277 years despite many disasters and difficulties.