Yongzheng was in his forties when he ascended the throne, not young, but he was still confident in his ability to control the entire bureaucratic machine.
The appointment and dismissal of officials has always been one of the key issues in governing the country, and Yongzheng broke some personnel rules and regulations of the Qing Dynasty, saying: "The original use of people is only about talents and skills, and is never limited to precedents." He believes that the appointment of officials depends on the ability to do things, and does not have to be senior.
During his 13-year reign, Yongzheng summoned local officials in an orderly and frequent manner, personally participated in the selection and decision on the promotion and demotion of grass-roots officials. According to statistics, he has introduced more than 5,800 civilian officials and about 1,400 military attaches. This figure may seem inconspicuous today, but considering the traffic and conditions at that time, it was quite large, let alone the many rotations of receptions.
Although later generations believe that Yongzheng has a stable and cold personality, but all people are a contradictory community, he is no exception, and he often shows a sentimental side in some things. For example, he is a typical "Yan control", in the process of "interviewing" officials, those officials with excellent looks often get good evaluations, and some people are promoted out of the ordinary. For example, when he saw Li Genyun, the governor of Qingzhou, Shandong, he felt that his appearance was upright and still exuded a trace of aura, "a wise man, because he is smart, secretly remembers his name to supplement Qingzhou"; and for Shi Jie, the candidate zhixian County, his comment is "People really go ... Appearance has a blessing"; ZhiXian of Nan'an County, Fujian Province, was greatly praised by him, "People are so smart, good looking, really understand, go to ..."
When introducing officials, Yongzheng never hesitated to make comments, and even mobilized countless words to label them. After seeing a certain official in Sichuan, he said: "People look ordinary, but they look at the wolf. This was originally a sentence describing Sima Yi, so it is not difficult to imagine the future of this official; his impression of Zhixian County in Jiangxi is "an ordinary honest man, two loyal servant eyes"; after receiving Zhao Zhou Zhizhou, he said: "It seems that there are crooked talents, insincere respect, fat men, big like evil people, only this can be stopped... People seem to be slippery, understandable, and unstable. ”
Those officials who look ordinary or are thin and dry often do not receive high scores from Yongzheng, such as "honest and ordinary people, bitter appearance", "but the appearance is slightly cold, the amount of fear of blessing is not enough", "the appearance is thin, the person seems to be available, the gas bureau is less, and the humble is cold".
However, appearance is only external after all, and if this is only used as the only criterion for evaluating people, it is naturally biased.
For example, after Yongzheng met with a Hubei official, he said: "Good looks, like Fan Shitai." Later, during his term of office, this person embezzled more than 1,400 taels of mercury and accepted bribes of 28,000 taels from local merchants. There was also a prefect of Shaanxi, Yongzheng commented that he was "a man who really understands, is peaceful, and has great potential", but this person was later dismissed from his post for sin and could not die well.
Although Yongzheng was authoritarian and "face control", it was not without other factors that affected his judgment and choice of officials. For example, he often fully considered the evaluation of officials during the Kangxi period, so that the personnel arrangement reflected a certain continuity. He also insisted on not using officials that Kangxi denied.
In general, Yongzheng's way of interviewing officials is not scientific, nothing more than his subjective impression plus some small uncertainties. However, frequent meetings with local officials gave him a windfall, helping him to fully open up the horizon of understanding the corners of the empire, further accumulating experience in understanding people, and even helping him to sort out the thinking of managing remote provinces. In that era of information blockade, he used this to better understand the operation and governance of the empire in order to make informed decisions.