Hey, friends, let's talk about the "cat and mouse game" inside and outside the palace walls in those years - corrupt officials and clean officials, as soon as these two words come out, do you instantly feel that the showdown between justice and evil is about to be staged?
Wait, don't rush to stand in line, it's not that simple, and there are a lot of jaw-dropping secrets hidden in it!
First of all, let's talk about the white moonlight in our hearts - Qingguan. The old man Kangxi once complained: "Qing officials have many moments", doesn't this sound abnormal?
It turns out that although the Qing official is good, if he is too "clean", he may become a "brake pad" for social development. It is true that they stick to their principles, but they are too strict, and sometimes they can jam the gears of social progress, making it difficult for the boat of reform to rock and move forward.
When it comes to corrupt officials, everyone hates them so much, but guess what? At that time in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, there was a wise man named Su Sui, who proposed the strange trick of "using corrupt officials to fight against corrupt officials."
This trick seems to be contradictory, but in fact it has a hidden mystery: in order to keep their "small treasury", corrupt officials will serve their masters more loyally.
Moreover, don't forget, in order to make profits, some corrupt officials will also promote some projects that are beneficial to people's livelihood by the way, which can be regarded as "crooked"!
At this point, you may be wondering, can corrupt officials and clean officials coexist peacefully? Yes, the key is balance.
The government is like a band, it needs various instruments to play in harmony. A clean official brings a high voice of morality, and a corrupt official (of course, under certain supervision) may inspire a low voice of development.
The most important thing is that there is a good score, a sound system, to conduct the performance, so that everyone can play within the rules, neither indulging in corruption, nor letting the strictness of clean officials become a shackle.
Officials, let's be reasonable, everything in this world is often gray rather than pure black and white. Corrupt officials and clean officials are the two poles of human nature, and they are also the embodiment of social complexity.
What we need to do is not to simply distinguish between good and bad, but to find the golden ratio point that allows society to not only punish evil and promote good, but also operate efficiently.
After all, the ultimate goal is to build a country that is both just and efficient, where everyone can live and work in peace.
Therefore, next time we talk about corrupt officials and clean officials, we might as well think more and label less, after all, the knowledge behind this is a hundred times more exciting than the palace fighting drama!