Zhu Yuanzhang in the cellar

Chapter 103 The problem of the Ming Dynasty is internal strife

In the next few days, Zhu Yunfeng ordered several hydroelectric generators from manufacturers, as well as a number of electric motors and new stamping machines, lathes, and the like.

It was not determined before, not because there was no money, but because there had to be a legitimate reason.

If a factory does not have industrial electricity and then suddenly buys a hydroelectric generator, it is easy to arouse suspicion.

It's different now.

Zhu Yunfeng plans to open several processing plants in the second half of the year, located in the mountain valley between Lansha Town and Jixiang Town.

The deep mountains and old forests, coupled with the aging of the local power station, require frequent maintenance, so it makes sense to buy a hydroelectric generator and use the local mountain water resources to generate electricity.

The most important thing is that there is a river on the south side of Shangfeng Mountain. There used to be a hydropower station there, called Tongshanba Hydropower Station. It was designed and built in the 70s, but it was damaged by a severe mountain flood a few years ago and was eventually demolished.

This means that they have the foundation to build a hydropower station locally, and the factory's electricity consumption is very large. Given the foundation and demand for building a hydropower station, there will naturally be no suspicion.

Within a few days, the new policies issued by Zhu Biao quickly swept across the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. Under the policy of tax reduction and exemption, the people of Jiangsu and Zhejiang were ecstatic for a while, and people began to praise the prince's benevolence.

Just as the new policy was taking shape, some history professors that Zhu Yunfeng had contacted had already submitted their design plans.

June 18th.

Zhu Yunfeng was at home that day. He had just searched the Internet for that kind of radio station.

He didn't know much about this thing before, but recently when he was looking up information about time travel on the Internet, he saw someone say that you can make a radio station by rubbing your hands. Then he remembered that there was such a thing.

I searched a bit and found that this kind of thing can actually be bought online.

You can buy a shortwave radio for more than 20 yuan, which covers a distance of more than kilometers. In addition, there are also short-range car radios with a range of more than kilometers, and the prices range from a few hundred to a few thousand.

If you want to increase the communication range, you can spend a few thousand dollars to buy a transfer station, so that the coverage distance can exceed 100 kilometers.

Zhu Yunfeng didn't know much about this kind of thing, and he didn't know whether this kind of radio station would be useful in ancient times when there were no signal base stations.

But that didn't stop him from placing an order. He would just buy it first since he had the money.

I placed a bunch of orders online, spending more than 100,000 yuan on various radios, walkie-talkies and other items.

It’s just that shortwave radio stations can only communicate through radio.

That is, when two radio stations are at a very long distance, they each send commands and receive them through the radio. The commands are sent by the radio stations in the form in which they are sent, and they cannot communicate directly through the walkie-talkie.

Because shortwave radio walkie-talkies are controlled items, you need a radio station license to purchase them.

But this should be enough.

If a radio station and a relay station were installed in the palace, and some walkie-talkies were placed in the military camps, then if Zhu Biao wanted to assemble the troops, it would only take a word.

If a shortwave radio station was installed in the palace, and Zhu Yuanzhang took one with him when he went to war, both sides would be able to communicate via the radio over thousands of miles.

"If Zhu was fighting and both sides had already formed their battle formations, and I had his shieldmen move ten meters to the left in the palace, that would be interesting."

After placing the order, Zhu Yunfeng thought happily in his heart.

"What are you doing?"

At this moment, Zhu Di walked out of the room, stretching lazily.

It was already afternoon and he had just woken up.

In the next room, Ji He was still snoring so loudly that the whole room seemed to be shaking.

From last night until this morning, they had transported dozens of tons of various supplies over.

Including march rations, flashlights, medicines, bandages, etc.

These things are not easy to get. Flashlights are okay, but the main things are marching rations and medicines. Buying too much will attract attention, so I can only buy them slowly.

Seeing him come out, Zhu Yunfeng opened QQ and casually said, "I just placed an order to buy some radio stations."

As soon as I opened QQ, I received a lot of emails.

"What's that for?"

Zhu Di was puzzled.

Even Zhu Yunfeng didn't know this knowledge, let alone him.

“It’s possible to communicate remotely.”

“Like a cell phone?”

"You're overthinking it. At most, it's just communication. If you want it to be like a mobile phone, you need a communication base station."

“Can you build a base station?”

"It's a beautiful thought."

Zhu Yunfeng rolled his eyes at him, then his eyes lit up and he said, "Old Four, you have work to do."

"What is it?"

Zhu Di came over.

I saw that there were already seven or eight emails in Zhu Yunfeng's mailbox.

Clicking on the first letter, it was a reply letter certified as from Associate Professor Sun from the History Department of Capital Normal University.

When you open it, you will find that it is packed with various system designs and improvements.

Associate Professor Sun believes that the political system designed by Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming Dynasty was actually quite complete.

But perfection does not mean perfection.

It was during his and Zhu Di's period that the failed policy of balance of powers was designed, which led to the Ming Dynasty falling into serious internal strife and internal friction.

Initially, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister and annexed the power of the chancellor, thus making all officials mere decorations.

Not a de facto decoration, but an executor who only obeys orders.

All orders and decisions were made by him alone, and officials were only responsible for raising issues but not solving them.

This is not impossible, but it requires an absolutely wise and energetic monarch.

Just because Zhu Yuanzhang could do it doesn’t mean his successors could do it.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty had serious problems by the second generation. If Zhu Yuanzhang had not established the feudal system in his early years and let his sons command troops on the border, there would probably be only two outcomes for the Ming Dynasty.

One is that Zhu Yunwen's chaos led to internal strife and the demise of the Ming Dynasty in the second generation.

Second, all of Zhu Yunwen's power was divided up by the civil service group, and Zhu Yunwen became a de facto puppet of the civil service group.

During the reign of Zhu Di, Zhu Di did not have the energy like his father, so he could only use the cabinet. The cabinet had the power to participate in politics and became a substitute for the power of the prime minister.

At this time, it was necessary to introduce a group to compete with it, so the eunuch group and the secret service group represented by the Jinyiwei and Dongchang grew rapidly.

To a certain extent, this is also the result of the power struggle between the emperor and the prime minister.

Since then, the intensity of the internal fighting has gradually increased.

The power of the eunuch group and the Jinyiwei came from the emperor. The emperor hid behind the scenes and let the civil service group fight against the eunuchs and the Jinyiwei.

The two sides started a tug of war.

When the imperial power was strong, killing officials was like slaughtering pigs and dogs.

When the power of the prime minister was strong, officials could kill the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the chief eunuch with hammers in the palace.

This all stems from the struggle between imperial power and prime ministerial power that lasted from the beginning of the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Ming Dynasty.

The large-scale killing of civil servants by Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di in the early days further intensified the civil servants' distrust of imperial power, so that they were determined to fight for power even if they were beaten to death.

Therefore, if one wanted to design a system in the early Ming Dynasty, one had to resolve this internal strife problem.

Associate Professor Sun’s idea is very simple, we can learn from the Song Dynasty.

Let the civil service group fight among themselves. The civil service group in the Song Dynasty was far less united than that in the Ming Dynasty.

There are two main reasons.

One is the overlapping of power. There is overlapping power between civil servants, and their respective responsibilities are not clear. Specific affairs are all handled by dispatch rather than by their official positions. As a result, officials can interfere in each other's affairs, forcing both sides to fight for power.

The second is the separation of powers and checks and balances. In the Song Dynasty, finance, politics, and military were respectively assigned to the Three Departments, the Council of State Affairs, and the Privy Council, while the final decision-making power belonged to the emperor, resulting in the civil service group having to rely on the emperor to have administrative power.

Through these two methods, the power of the prime minister can be made dependent on the imperial power. At the same time, the civil service groups will have to fight among themselves for power and profit, so there will be no problem of the civil service groups banding together to fight against the imperial power.

of course.

This will also lead to new disadvantages.

There are serious party struggles, mutual buck-passing, unclear responsibilities between superiors and subordinates, and low administrative efficiency.

There were also factional struggles in the Ming Dynasty.

But in fact, it can still be seen as a struggle between imperial power and prime ministerial power.

For example, the Yan Party and the Qingliu.

Are those the Yan Party and the Qing Stream?

That was Jiajing, who stood behind the Yan Party, fighting against the Qingliu.

The Yan Party was just a black glove pushed forward by Jiajing.

So when the money embezzled by this black glove has far exceeded Jiajing's bottom line, that will be the end of Yan's party.

There are also the Eunuch Party and the Donglin Party.

Behind the eunuch party was Emperor Tianqi, but this was only manifested in the situation where civil officials turned to the eunuchs.

Therefore, the real internal struggle among civil servants occurred in the Song Dynasty.

Associate Professor Sun believes that the second method of separation of powers and checks and balances can be adopted.

At the same time, a responsibility mechanism is introduced.

This will increase the imperial power while reducing the situations caused by the first power transfer, such as mutual buck-passing, unclear responsibilities between superiors and subordinates, and low administrative efficiency.

But party strife is inevitable.

In the article, Associate Professor Sun also listed the overall political system he designed and talked about the drawbacks, clearly stating that there is no perfect system in the world, only a suitable system.

The political system he designed could resolve the internal struggle between imperial power and prime ministerial power, but it could not resolve party struggles. It could only reduce internal friction and increase imperial power.

After reading his thoughts, Zhu Yunfeng couldn't help but sigh, otherwise he must be a professor of history.

He really didn't notice this thing from the internal strife in the early Ming Dynasty to the late Ming Dynasty.

Just notice the problem of institutional rigidity.

really.

When looking at a problem, we must see the essence through the phenomenon.

If you think about it carefully, what they said is true. Throughout the Ming Dynasty, wasn't there always internal strife or on the way to internal strife?
In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the imperial power destroyed the power of the prime minister.

Zhu Di increased the power of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and established the East Factory to check the power of the prime minister with imperial power.

Extending to the Emperor Zhu Qizhen, due to the outrageous operations of Wang Zhen and Ma Shun, the power of the prime minister represented by the civil service group finally overwhelmed the imperial power.

Later, during the reign of Emperor Chenghua, the Western Factory was established to check and balance the civil officials.

so repeatedly.

To the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

The Cabinet, the Imperial Household Department, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the East Factory, the West Factory, the Eunuch Party, the Donglin Party and other messy forces came and went.

If we add to the mix the conflicts among gentry, the problem of land annexation, the conflicts between officials and the people, and the resistance between soldiers in the garrisons and their superiors, we can even say that the entire Ming Dynasty was in a state of fighting.

When Associate Professor Sun was making other political designs, his overall idea was to solve the problem of internal strife within the Ming Dynasty.

He separated the imperial power from the internal strife and split the civil service group through institutional means.

Then, they created a sophisticated taxation system and imposed high taxes on large landowners who owned too much land.

For farmers with small amounts of land, taxes will be reduced, forcing large landowners to reduce the amount of land they own and increasing the number of small and medium-sized landlords.

Then the guards were abolished and the power of the eunuchs and the Imperial Uniform Guards was reduced. This would ease the contradiction between the imperial power and the officials, gentry, and common people, and to a certain extent resolve the internal friction among the classes.

And there are also benefits to splitting the civil service group in this way.

Due to the overall interest issues of the civil service group in the Ming Dynasty, the gentry group behind them was able to profit from it. Under the protection of the civil service group, they did not have to pay taxes and could even pass the taxes on to the people, making the people suffer.

Amid the infighting within the civil service group, they had to make continuous concessions in order to quickly gain the support of the imperial power.

This includes taxation powers.

In the Song Dynasty, officials had very high salaries, but that was based on the Song Dynasty's high-level tax management mechanism. No civil servant dared to fight the emperor in this regard, because that would be against the entire civil service group.

In this way, it is only necessary to design other systems, ease land annexation, and deal with the remaining problems of the garrisons, which can greatly alleviate the internal friction of the Ming Dynasty.

"This is awesome."

After reading it, Zhu Yunfeng praised it: "Although I think it can be improved, it's really awesome."

Zhu Di scratched his head and said, "Do you want to use this system in the Yongle Dynasty?"

"not at all."

"Didn't you say this was amazing?"

"how to say?"

Zhu Yunfeng shook his head: "This idea is actually quite good, and it refers to the design of the Song Dynasty, and tries to eliminate the shortcomings of the Song Dynasty design. However, this is a great test of the emperor's wisdom. In the case of fierce infighting among the civil officials, if the emperor is incompetent, then the Ming Dynasty will be doomed."

After that, he pondered again, "But if you think about it carefully, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were basically not that bad, so if there is nothing particularly outstanding about the other designs, maybe we can try this one out."

The brilliant idea of ​​Associate Professor Sun is to reduce the big internal fights into small ones, and then introduce a responsibility system, which is equivalent to providing a decision-making mechanism.

In this way, when civil servants fight among themselves, whoever makes the decision will bear the responsibility.

To some extent, it is a bit like the situation between the secretary and the county magistrate here. Both sides have to fight to have the power to govern, but the secretary also has the power to make the final decision.

However, it is hard to say whether doing so will cause the Ming Dynasty to face the same problems left over from the Song Dynasty.

After all, the administration of officials in the Song Dynasty is difficult to describe in a few words.

So we still need to discuss this.

Then Zhu Yunfeng looked at the design ideas of other professors.

I watched five in a row very quickly.

It has to be said that anyone who can become a professor in the history department of a university must have certain abilities.

The perspectives and ways of looking at problems are also different.

Some saw the nature of internal strife, some saw the loose structure, and still others saw that as the Ming Dynasty progressed, the bureaucratic organizations took on more and more governance functions and were overwhelmed, but the court did not solve the problem and needed a "correction" mechanism, etc.

Although they have the same system design, they have different views on some issues, and they have all come up with solutions, which is very good.

It wasn’t until he saw the sixth one that Zhu Yunfeng frowned.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let's look at how to design a system for the Ming Dynasty from the perspective of the separation of powers!"

What do you mean?
Is this professor a Western fanatic?

(End of this chapter)