Author/Su Lufeng,"From Courtier to Factory Guard"
Editor/Liu Jing
Li Zongwu, a modern scholar who proposed "thick black science", pointed out in the book "Psychology and Mechanics" that psychology changes according to the laws of mechanics, that is, similar forces are directly proportional to distance, and feelings are also proportional to distance. In other words, with oneself as the center, the person closest to you is the most trusted; the distance is getting farther and farther away, and the degree of trust is also decreasing. Li Zongwu uses the laws of physics to explain human psychological phenomena. In my opinion, this is also a vivid and vivid interpretation of ancient authoritarian politics.
The prime minister, under one man and above ten thousand, often posed a threat to imperial power. The emperor always liked to use the secretarial team around him to set up the prime minister, and the temporary team evolved into a formal prime minister after a long time. The emperor distrusted again and began to form a new group of his own cronies to replace him. What if the emperor felt that the courtiers and foreign officials were not trustworthy?
In order to monopolize power, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang simply abolished the system of prime ministers. The imperial court originally had a formal system of supervision, with the central government having the Metropolitan Inspection Bureau and the Six Branches giving affairs, and the local government having inspectors. However, Zhu Yuanzhang felt that he could not be trusted, so he set up a secret service agency on the basis of the private guard, the Jinyi Guard, which was responsible for reconnoitring the words and deeds of officials at all levels, and the "factory guard" system began. "Factory guard" is a collective name for the secret service agencies of the Ming Dynasty, including the later East Factory, West Factory and Inner Factory.
Under the Jinyi Guard, there is the Fusi of the South and North Towns, the Fusi of the South Town is in charge of the criminal name of the Guard, and the Fusi of the North Town is in charge of the prison, and can directly act according to the edicts, without having to go through the formalities of the Foreign Court Law Department, and even the chief of the Honwei is not allowed to interfere. After Zhu Yuanzhang killed the heroes almost and secured his rule, he relieved Jin Yiwei of his right to be imprisoned, and the large and small cases were managed by the law department. Although Ming Chengzu Zhu Di came to power by overthrowing his father's successor, Emperor Jianwen, he still used the tools of rule invented by his father, so JinyiWei regained his power and continued to be the eyes and ears of the emperor, undertaking the dual tasks of hounds and butchers.
Although Jin Yiwei was close, in terms of organization, he was a foreign official, and Zhu Di was still not at ease. Over time, the power of the Jinyi guards grew day by day, which was another threat in the eyes of the emperor, and it was necessary to replace it with a new group of spies. When Zhu Di first started the incident, he used the eunuchs around Emperor Jianwen to inquire into the news, and after taking the throne, he thought that these eunuchs were loyal and reliable, and set up an east factory, headed by his confidant eunuchs, whose authority was to "arrest and plot against the evil and the great rebellion", reconnoiter, frame, massacre, and create unjust prisons, and do everything. Except for the emperor, anyone was under its surveillance, including Jinyiwei.
The West Factory was set up by Emperor Mingxianzong Zhu Mishen, and the cause was "Demon Fox Night Out". A Taoist priest colluded with a eunuch to enter the inner palace and was killed in the incident. Zhu Jian was deeply disgusted by this matter and was anxious to know the situation outside, although he still felt that it was not enough to have the East Factory. So he asked the eunuch Wang Zhi to take people out in disguise to scout. After nearly a year of reconnaissance, outsiders did not even know it. Zhu Jianshen was very happy, so he simply set up a large-scale operation and set up a west factory, which was run by Wang Zhi. The scope of reconnaissance by the West Factory is not limited to the Beijing Division. There are agents of xichang in various provinces and towns, as well as in important places in the north and south rivers, and even in the provinces, prefectures and counties. The number of agents led by the West Factory is twice as large as that of the East Factory, and the power exceeds that of the East Factory.
The inner factory, also known as the neihang factory, was set up by Zhu Houzhao of the Ming Dynasty. When authoritarian politics developed to its peak, the rulers not only did not trust their subjects, but also did not fully trust their own agents, and often used another group of agents to monitor this group of agents. The Inner Factory is the organ of this kind of secret agent, and the East Factory, the West Factory, and the Jinyi Guard are all under its supervision, and their behavior is more brutal than that of the East and West Factories. The inner factory was abolished when its leader, Liu Jin, was deposed. Later, the secret service agency established in the early years of the Wanli Calendar and headed by the eunuch Feng Bao was also called the Inner Factory.
The four major secret service agencies of the Ming Dynasty, except for the Jinyi Guards, were all run by eunuchs. It existed for varying lengths, but its establishment generally followed the law that when the emperor felt that the original secret service was unreliable, he set up a new secret service by more close people. From the outer court to the inner court, from the guards to the eunuchs, the supreme power of investigation was always controlled by the emperor's cronies, so it formed a chain of ruling tools from the outside to the inside: the courtiers → the Jinyi guards → the East Factory→ the West Factory→ the Inner Factory. Layer after layer of interrogation, layer after layer of evil, everyone is self-doubting, everyone is endangering themselves, causing political terror.
(This article is from Huasheng Observation magazine)
About the author: Su Lufeng is a veteran media personality and columnist. He is a periodical review expert of the Propaganda Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and the president of the Changsha and Cultural Research Association. Some of his works have been published in the editorial at the beginning of the volume of "Reform Internal Reference", and have been selected for many times in the "Annual Selection of Chinese Essays" and "Selected Chinese Essays", and the articles have been reprinted more than 60 times by newspapers and periodicals such as "Leaders' Digest", "Miscellaneous Articles Monthly", "Miscellaneous Articles Selection", "Monthly Reading", "Special Digest", "Government Legal System", "Everyone's Digest", "Guangzhou Digest" and other newspapers and periodicals. He has won the first prize of hunan journalism award for many times. He won the third prize of the China Newspaper Calligraphy Exhibition.
Editors/Liu Jing, Lü Lu