In terms of the suppression of corrupt officials, the most stringent in Chinese history was the Ming Dynasty. Because no emperor treated flies and tigers like Zhu Yuanzhang, according to the Daming Law, embezzling a certain amount of cloth could be sentenced to death; for serious cases, it would be punishable by Ling Chi and skin picking.
And this is not the end, Zhu Yuanzhang will peel off the skin filled with straw and place it outside the palace door for the ministers passing by to "see". In addition to the measures of the iron fist, Zhu Yuanzhang also spent a lot of thought on currency, and once added one more word to the coinage to solve the world's problems.
01 Zhu Yuanzhang's attitude toward corrupt officials
In the history of China, no emperor was as "grassroots" as Zhu Yuanzhang, and even Liu Bang, the first humble founding emperor, could not be compared with him.
At the time of his birth, Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestors were peasants for generations and had no culture, so the family did not bother to take his name, his father's name was Zhu Wusi (later changed to Zhu Shizhen), he was named Zhu Baba, when he joined the army, he changed to Zhu Zhongba, and after becoming a powerful warlord, he changed to Zhu Yuanzhang.
In the third year of Zhengzheng (1343), the 13-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang experienced a catastrophe that other emperors could not experience. In that year, a drought occurred in Haozhou, the Zhu family's grain was cut off, and in the spring of the second year, a locust plague and plague broke out, and in less than half a month, the father, eldest brother and mother died one after another, and finally only Zhu Yuanzhang and the second brother were left.
By this time they were so poor that they had nothing, not only no coffin boards, but no place to bury their bodies. After much request, the brothers buried their parents in the wasteland of the Liu family. In order to survive, the two brothers separated to make a living.
This special experience made Zhu Yuanzhang unforgettable, and even formed a psychology that was later considered a pervert. When the disaster broke out, he saw the harm caused by corrupt officials and corrupt officials to the local area, and it was because of them that he hated the Yuan Dynasty.
02 Strengthen the rectification of the administration of officials
In Zhu Yuanzhang's political career after becoming emperor, there were three things that attracted attention. The first is to suppress corrupt officials in an extremely severe way; the second is to establish a secret service agency to observe the movements of officials and the world in real time; and the third is to establish a strict legal system to maintain the order that they have just established.
It may be that the means are too rigid and bloody, so his reputation is not very good, and in the eyes of many people, he is a "tyrant" who has escaped alive, and even some "perverts".
Nevertheless, unifying the world, rectifying the rule of officials, establishing a dynasty program, strengthening imperial power, and establishing a professional military system had a far-reaching impact on future generations, laying the foundation for the ming dynasty's rule for nearly 300 years.
During his 31-year reign, he launched countless major cases against flies and tigers, the most famous of which is the Guo Huan case, one of the "Four Major Cases of the Early Ming Dynasty", which is a very typical representative.
In the eighteenth year of Hongwu (1385), Zhu Yuanzhang suspected that Li Yu, Zhao Quande, and Guo Huan had colluded with each other and committed corruption and fraud, so he ordered a thorough investigation.
In March of the same year, YuShi Yumin and Ding Tingju reported Guo Huan to the list of crimes he had committed along with Wang Daoheng, Zhao Quande, Li Yu, and Hu Yi.
The first crime committed was embezzlement of taxes from the Taiping and Zhenjiang provinces, which reduced the tax revenue of the imperial court. The second was to embezzle the 4.5 million stones of Zhejiang Western Autumn Grain that should be handed over, and Guo Huan only handed over a part of it. The third is to set up a clever name in the process of collecting taxes, and to enrich one's own pockets, such as stutter money, treasury money, and god and Buddha money have all become tax reasons.
In total, Guo Huan and others embezzled more than 44 million stones of grain, which had a profound impact on the imperial court and the whole country. Hearing the results of these investigations, Zhu Yuanzhang was particularly indignant and determined to carry out a large-scale campaign to punish corruption throughout the country.
At the end of the investigation, Zhu Yuanzhang executed Guo Huan, the Gongbu attendant Mai Zhide, the Punishment Department Shangshu Wang Huidi, and the Rebbe Shangshu Zhao Mao and other high-ranking officials in one fell swoop.
Some of the officials below the level of the six or so attendants who were beheaded, as well as the landlords from all over the country who were involved, raided their homes and went bankrupt, and some were directly beheaded, and the number of people killed was no less than in the Hu Weiyong case.
After a large number of bloody cases broke out, the landlords were particularly dissatisfied with Zhu Yuanzhang, and some places began to riot secretly. In order to appease them, Zhu Yuanzhang could only let the trial officer Wu Yong and others be the back cookers, and be executed to appease the people's grievances. Therefore, it is not only the embezzlers who have died because of the embezzlement case, but also some innocent people who have carried the pot.
After this battle, Zhu Yuanzhang began to work on the legal system and bookkeeping figures.
03 Add a word to solve the world's problems
According to the "Great Ming Law", any official of the imperial court who embezzled more than 60 taels of silver was sentenced to death. The same law applied to princes and commoners, and since officials did not have their own fields during the Ming Dynasty, all income depended on government subsidies.
However, the government does not have much to pay, so that some employees' wages are owed for years or even decades. Because of this, corrupt officials and corrupt officials continue to appear, but Zhu Yuanzhang did not see the root of the problem, and he could only use the system to strengthen the suppression of corruption.
The reason why the Guo Huan case broke out is not unrelated to this fundamental reason. Zhu Yuanzhang found one thing in the case that as long as the officials casually changed the numbers in the ledger, they could exploit loopholes to embezzle and cheat.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the record numbers of the ledger were generally simple "one, two, three, four..." which was particularly easy to change, and "one" and "two", "two" and "three" were the difference.
After pondering for a long time, Zhu Yuanzhang came up with an idea to make it an important means of preventing corruption and fraud, which is still used in many ledgers.
In this way, when registering numbers on the ledger, all "one, two, three, four..." are eliminated and replaced by the very complex and more stroked "one, two, three, wanton..."
After recording in this way, it is very difficult to change the numbers that are written down, unless the ledger is replaced or the numbers written down are removed.
This was done for two purposes, one was that officials could no longer commit too much fraud on the accounts, and the other was to reduce the pressure on the local population so that they would not be directly extorted. There are accounts to be made, and officials no longer have a deterrent effect on ordinary people.
In addition to the replacement of these figures for the ledger, Zhu Yuanzhang also promoted them to the minting of currency. Since the introduction of traditional chinese characters, fake money has been difficult to recreate, and inflation has been curbed.
In fact, during Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, he has always controlled the use of copper coins, so that it is difficult to find copper plates with the character Hongwu today. This measure promoted the promotion of two other currencies, paper money and the use of silver.
Although silver began to become popular during the Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty upgraded it to a truly circulating currency, which had a profound impact on the Qing Dynasty and even the Republic of China.
The main reason for controlling copper coins is that the minted copper coins are not unified into the hands of the central government, and all places have the right to mint, so that there is a chaotic situation, and many officials take the opportunity to obstruct them, so that the number of copper coins minted is increasing, and the price is more and more depreciating, so that paper money and silver have a lot of room for development.
In addition to increasing the number of copper coins minted, some corrupt officials are still working on copper coins, such as mixing iron, etc., and reporting to the superiors is the "10" budget, in fact, the cost of spending does not reach this number, and many benefits can be obtained from the central government.
Copper coins are passed in many places, and the number is huge, so it is very difficult to investigate the real and fake copper coins, and it is not known whose hands they came from. Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang thought of another way to add an extra word to the copper coin and cut off the financial road of officials with crooked thoughts.
This means adding local abbreviations to one side of the copper coin, such as "Yue", "E", "Xiang" and so on. In this way, not only the amount of copper coins has been controlled, but also more and more counterfeit money.
summary
Harsh repression is another side when discussing the corrupt officials of the Ming Dynasty, but no matter how hard Zhu Yuanzhang and his descendants worked, the Ming Dynasty remained one of the most corrupt dynasties in Chinese history. Why is that?
The root cause is that under the full development of society, after officials are deprived of the land on which they depend, there is certainly corruption. If the officials could not solve the problem of food and clothing, the peasants without land could only do chaos or be oppressed, as was the actual situation in the Ming Dynasty.