Do you know: I am the crown prince

Chapter 441 Ridiculous Means

The news that the government was going to establish new standards for the evaluation and promotion of officials soon spread throughout Bianliang and became a hot topic in the capital.

Many scholars heard about this and expressed their opposition to it.

Many people even visited some officials in the court, explained the pros and cons, and persuaded these officials to advise the emperor.

However, these officials are aware of their own suffering. Although the standards for official evaluation have not yet been fully confirmed, the purpose of Zhao Xing's doing this is definitely to increase the difficulty of official evaluation.

It seems that it has little impact on these Beijing officials, but many of their brothers and nephews are working in local positions, so it still has an impact.

However, Zhao Xing's tactic was very effective.

They were afraid that opposition would arouse Zhao Xing's rebellious psychology, so they wanted to clean up and merge some departments.

This will require the layoff of many officials.

With this comparison, changing the evaluation criteria is more acceptable.

Zhao Xing also heard about what was happening outside the palace, but he didn't care.

After handling government affairs every day, he would summon his ministers to formulate detailed standards for the promotion of officials.

Those officials also put forward some suggestions, and Zhao Xing was clear about their purpose.

However, Zhao Xing also knew that he couldn't push too hard. After all, he wanted to boil the frog in warm water, so he couldn't be too aggressive right from the start.

Zhao Xing only insisted on three points. The first was that the number of local people's own farmland and local farmland was directly linked to the evaluation of officials, and it was the focus of the evaluation.

The evaluation of officials is the same as the performance evaluation of employees.

Good performance brings high salary, and for officials, only good evaluation can lead to promotion.

It is very difficult to prevent land annexation, but by linking the number of fields owned by the people with the number of acres of land registered after their accession to the throne and the evaluation, these officials will naturally find ways to suppress annexation and concealment of land for their own future.

It is useless to reason with these officials. The most effective way is to bribe them with benefits.

Zhao Xing got this inspiration from reading the history of the Tang Dynasty when he was bored recently.

It is recorded in the history of the Tang Dynasty that after Li Shimin ascended the throne, in order to promote population growth, he encouraged widowed women to remarry.

For this purpose, population growth was included in the evaluation of officials.

This greatly increased the enthusiasm of officials.

Before Zhu Li's theory became popular, although remarriage among the people was not restricted, people of a certain status would not agree to let women remarry.

Even if the matter is brought to the attention of the government, they will not intervene in such matters.

Firstly, this is her family background, and secondly, officials are all men, who believe that it is right for a widow to remain faithful to her husband.

However, after the imperial court took population growth into account in its assessment, officials not only severely punished those who prevented widows from remarrying, they even sent people to inquire about widows who did not want to remarry, and tried every means to force them to remarry.

Although there were indeed some who were unwilling to remarry, from the court's perspective, it was beneficial to the court.

The second is to increase supervision and scrutiny of local officials to put an end to lazy governance, inaction and inaction.

The last point is that if an official fails the evaluation three times in a row, or fails to correct his behavior after being warned of laziness or negligence, he will be dismissed from his post, and his three generations of direct relatives will not be allowed to take the imperial examinations.

The three points raised by Zhao Xing were opposed by almost all officials.

Including the amount of people's own farmland and local farmland in the assessment is equivalent to forcing officials to stand against the landlords and powerful people.

After all, in order to achieve these two points, it is necessary to restrict landlords and powerful people from annexing land, and this alone is not enough.

After all, some lands were annexed not because of natural disasters, nor was anyone forcing them, but because of man-made disasters.

To prevent this, we must find ways to solve the problems when people encounter difficulties so that they do not have to sell their land.

This is not only to prevent them from taking advantage of others, but also to prevent normal annexation. The second is the amount of local arable land. Some fields are abandoned due to floods or barrenness, which is completely unavoidable.

If officials want to control the reduction of local arable land, they must not only prevent local landlords and powerful people from hiding, but also organize the people to reclaim wasteland and increase the area of ​​arable land.

When officials govern a region, public security and tax collection all depend on the support of local landlords and powerful people, which is one of the criteria for assessment.

If they offend the landlords and powerful people, they won't even be able to collect enough taxes. How are they going to get away with it?

What's more, sometimes when building roads and bridges in local areas, the landlords and powerful people had to donate generously.

The most important point is the third one. Zhao Xing actually wants to set up penalties for failing to meet the assessment standards.

In the past, there was no such thing as officials failing to meet assessment standards.

There is a saying that even if there is no merit, there is hard work. As long as there are no mistakes, even if an official has no achievements, he can still get a good evaluation. After enduring for a few years, he will be promoted and it is impossible to stay where he is.

But what Zhao Xing meant now was that if the standards were not met, the official would be dismissed, and direct descendants of the family would not be allowed to take the imperial examinations for three generations.

The officials could not accept this at all. After all, they had relatives serving as officials in the local area. Wouldn’t they be implicated as well?
Moreover, whether the relatives of these officials could enter the officialdom through patronage, they had no intention of giving up the imperial examination.

After all, it is difficult to become a high-ranking official through inheritance. If, when they were in office, there were children in their families who could enter the officialdom through imperial examinations, with their help and promotion, they could fully guarantee the prosperity of the family for decades to come.

As soon as Zhao Xing made this statement, he was opposed by 90% of the officials in the court.

Many officials even submitted letters of resignation, with a stronger force than any previous time.

But this time Zhao Xing did not indulge them. All those who submitted letters of resignation were approved.

The imperial examination system has been around for hundreds of years, and it is ridiculous to still threaten to resign.

Before the Song Dynasty, even in the Tang Dynasty, although the emperor was wary of the aristocratic families, he had to win them over and appease them.

It is said that the emperor's daughter will never have trouble finding a husband, but even an emperor like Li Shimin was rejected when he wanted to marry his princess to the Qinghe Cui family.

Even so, Li Shimin did not dare to do anything to the Cui family.

After all, the majority of people at that time came from families of scholars.

Although the aristocratic families were not of one mind, they were united in resisting the imperial power.

Once the relationship with the aristocratic families falls out, all the officials from the aristocratic families will go on strike, and there will not be enough officials to take over.

But there are so many officials in the Song Dynasty that it has become one of the three major evils of the Song Dynasty. How ridiculous is it to threaten him with resignation?

After making a fuss for a while, those officials realized that they had made a bad move.

In fact, they have used this trick many times before.

There were many incidents of prime ministers being dismissed in the Song Dynasty. Many of them were not because they had offended the government, but because there were too many people impeaching them. In order to appease the public anger, the emperor had no choice but to dismiss them.

However, after Zhao Xing ascended the throne, he never compromised, so using this trick against Zhao Xing was naturally useless.

So these officials could only ask for help from the emperor.

Although the emperor emeritus does not take care of state affairs, he still knows something about recent events.

When he learned that all the officials wanted to see him, he simply refused on the grounds of feeling unwell.

The new policy back then was due to his inability to withstand the pressure and ultimately failed.

How could he hold Zhao Xing back at this time?

Seeing that this tactic didn't work, all the officials could only place their hopes on Han Zhang.

(End of this chapter)