Ming Dynasty: Domination of the World from the Imperial Examination

Chapter 20 You shouldn’t love the people!

"Enough!" Zhu Yuanzhang slammed the table in anger, his eyes looking crazy and murderous.

He stared at Xia Zhibai intently, his chest rising and falling, and pointed at Xia Zhibai's nose and said, "What qualifications do you have to blame me?"

"When did we treat the people as slaves? When did we treat the officials as hired servants?"

"That's complete nonsense."

"Go around the world and ask, who doesn't applaud our Zhu Yuanzhang, who doesn't praise us for loving the people like our own children? The many practical things we have done for the people are simply beyond the imagination of a nerd like you."

"You Confucian scholars and intellectuals resent and hate me, but I don't care at all."

"I don't care about what you said at all."

"I didn't expect you to understand, and I didn't expect you to speak for me."

"I only know that the way of the world lies in the hearts of the people. It is enough for me to know that the people still remember my kindness. I have done so many things for the people of the world, and there is no need to tell you."

"But you think you are right."

"Then we'll tell you."

"Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, we have done so much for the people of the world."

"In the fifth year of Hongwu, we issued an imperial decree to free slaves. Commoners who kept slaves would be punished with 100 strokes of the cane and then released to become good people. Those who committed the offense seriously would be castrated and their official positions would be taken away and they would become slaves."

"Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, we have issued an order that all wasteland and farmers will own it after it is cultivated, and exempt from taxes and labor service for three years. To date, we have accumulated more than 1.85 million hectares of cultivated land, accounting for nearly half of the official and civilian land in the world today."

“How many people are supported by this?”

"We have built water conservancy projects all over the country, repaired the Lingqu Canal, irrigated thousands of hectares of farmland, dredged the Hongqu Canal, irrigated more than 200 miles of farmland in Jingyang, Sanyuan and other places."

“There are countless examples like this.”

"But I never brag about these things, because these are what I, as an emperor, should do. But among all the emperors in history, is there anyone who hates corrupt officials as much as I do?"

"Why do I hate corrupt officials so much? Because when I was young, I suffered a lot from them. So I told the officials under me again and again not to be corrupt. If I catch them, I will skin them alive and feed them with straw."

"We have only been in power for 18 years, and we have reduced taxes for the country so many times. We even set the total amount of rent for the country. The court now only collects three or four dou of rent per mu of land."

"We also set up guards to reduce the burden on the people and to support our own troops. There are countless other things like this."

“We don’t love the people.”

"I am the emperor who loves the people the most among all the emperors in ancient and modern times!"

Zhu Yuanzhang sneered.

If he really didn't regard the people of the world as his own people, why would he do so much? He could have imposed heavy taxes and extorted a lot.

But he didn't.

And it will benefit the people a hundred times or a thousand times more.

In fact, he didn't want to explain at all, nor did he bother to explain. Xia Zhibai, a scholar, would naturally regard him as a tyrant, because he didn't consider these people at all, let alone care what these people would think or see.

In his eyes.

Scholars and Confucian scholars are even lower than dogs!

It's just that Xia Zhibai provoked him one sentence after another, which made him completely annoyed. So he decided to refute a few things to tell Xia Zhibai that his views were shallow and he knew nothing.

Ridiculous and ridiculous.

Xia Zhibai shook his head coldly.

He stared at Zhu Yuanzhang without making any move to retreat.

"Emperor Hongwu, have you ever heard this sentence?"

"What?" Zhu Yuanzhang asked.

"The more a person emphasizes something, the more he cares about it in his heart, and the more he lacks it." Xia Zhibai said lightly with a faint smile on his lips.

Zhu Yuanzhang's expression changed slightly.

Xia Zhibai sighed, looked towards the majestic palace, and said calmly: "Since the Qin Dynasty, dynasties have been changing constantly, and many wise and foolish rulers have emerged."

"But among all the emperors of the past dynasties, is there any one who would be like Your Majesty, who always talks about loving the people and even asks his subjects whether he loves the people and whether the people praise him?"

"Your Majesty, don't you think it's too much?"

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were cold, and his mood, which had just calmed down, became irritable again. Xia Zhibai retracted his gaze and looked up along the steps of the palace. He saw the dragon throne, which was indeed lifelike. Just one glance made people feel submissive and fearful.

He continued: "The more a person shows off, it's not what he has really done, but what he lacks."

"Your Majesty did this for only one purpose."

"Comfort yourself, deceive yourself, and seek the approval of the officials, so that you can believe, and the officials can believe, that you really love the people."

“Tell yourself this.”

"you are right!"

"This is also why I say that Your Majesty is pretending to love the people but is actually abusing them. Your Majesty sometimes likes to deceive himself too much."

"Since ancient times, whether the emperor loves the people or not is actually not important at all. What is important is the development of the country. If one can take the people into consideration while developing the country, then he can be called a wise ruler."

"Your Majesty has put the cart before the horse."

"Still self-righteous and complacent."

"But in your Majesty's eyes, there is nothing wrong with my emphasis on loving the people, because the emperors of past dynasties all ruled their own country."

"Your Majesty is different."

"Your Majesty wants to be a big landowner."

"And this is what you have been striving for since you founded the Ming Dynasty."

"That's why you can insult and kill officials so casually, and you can shamelessly say that you love the people, because in your eyes, officials are just farmhands for landlords. If you can't manage them, there's no need for these people to exist."

"You are also deliberately on guard against them."

"You were worried that these imperial servants would steal your family's power and seize your family's property, so you activated the Jinyiwei and other special forces to guard against them, fearing that your family's property would be stolen by them."

"Don't you feel that the things you do in the court are the same as what your parents, the tenant farmers, were watched when they were tenants in the landlord's house?"

"Those landlords used to oppress your family. Now that you have turned the tables and are in charge, they will oppress you back with even more cruel means, even worse than before."

"It's just that the landlord only has a hundred acres of land, while you own the whole world."

"You are lucky because you were born into a commoner family, but you are also unlucky because of this family background, because people from the lower classes are the most likely to fight people from the lower classes."

"You have worked your way up from the bottom, you have seen all the darkness at the bottom, and you know the limits of survival for those at the bottom."

"So you actually understand the people's weaknesses better than the emperors of all dynasties, and you also know how to exploit the lower classes to the extreme."

"You have calculated everything, including the entire world, and you can even say that you are calculating every penny, just to squeeze the world to the extreme."

"The ideal country in your mind is a static society without vitality and with high intensity control."

"The people monitored and reported on each other. Without a pass issued by the government, they could not leave the village where their registered residence was located."

"And the travel permit fee is set very high, which actually discourages people from applying for travel permits. People are told not to move if they can."

"Ensure that there are no 'homeless people' in society."

"Everyone must make a living in an industry approved by the court. They cannot change their identities at will, and the emergence of wealthy people or groups with organized capabilities is not allowed."

"What you want is for the people to live and die according to your ideas under the system you set, without any variables."

"I will completely kill all the people in the world on your Zhu family's fields, and make them slaves and long-term workers for your Zhu family for eternity to support your entire Zhu family."

“Did you do something wrong?”

"No."

"You conquered this world, and you have absolute power to deal with it, but you are also wrong. Your mistake is that you keep talking about loving the people."

"You clearly have no love for the people, yet you repeatedly give hope to the lower-class people, only to have it shattered time and again. You are too cruel to the people."

"Zhu Yuanzhang, you shouldn't love the people."

"At least you shouldn't lie to the people who have always believed in you, trusted you, and even been grateful to you."

"What did they do wrong?"

"Do I have to be humiliated and tortured by you like this?!"

(End of this chapter)