Chapter 7 Reasons for being a corrupt official

"History of Ming Dynasty" records a story of you attack and I defend between the emperor and the supervisory officials. In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), Zhu Youjian had just become emperor.At that time, he was a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old, and he wanted to govern the country well.Zhu Youjian often summoned officials to discuss state affairs, and issued a call for "civilian officials do not love money". "Civil officials don't love money, but military officials don't hesitate to die." This is a famous saying passed down from the Song Dynasty, and it was also mentioned before the collapse of the Kuomintang.It is said that this will ensure peace in the world.

Han Yiliang, who was in charge of Huke, didn't take this kind of call seriously, so he wrote a letter to the emperor and asked: "Where is the place where money is not used now?"Which official is not a person who loves money?The official position was originally obtained by money, how could it be repaid without spending money?It is often said that the county magistrate is the leader of bribery, and the king of bribery in the matter.Now people are accusing the county magistrates of being dishonest, but how can these local officials be clean?The few salaries need to be taken care of by the boss, the guests who come and go must be entertained, and the fees for the promotion assessment and the pilgrimage to Beijing will always cost thousands of taels of silver.This silver will not fall from the sky, nor will it emerge from the ground. If you want the county guards and magistrates to be clean, can you do it?In the past two months, I have resigned the five hundred taels of silver that was given to me as a book handkerchief. I have few contacts, and the rest can be inferred.I beg Your Majesty to punish severely and arrest and punish those who have done too much.

The household department is a very small official, probably equivalent to the current stock level or deputy department level.But the position is very prominent, similar to the secretary in the president's office who is looking at the Ministry of Finance to find faults, and there are some fawning people below.The "book handkerchief" Han Yiliang mentioned is probably similar to the current people from the central government who go back to Beijing on business trips and write something like a survey trip to publish at their own expense, and the people below flatter them to pay for printing.The 500 taels of silver, according to the conventional price of precious metals in the international market today, is roughly equivalent to more than 43,000 yuan.If estimated according to the purchasing power of silver on grain at that time, it would be about 200,000 RMB now.At that time, the monthly salary of county-level cadres was roughly equivalent to more than 1,000 yuan in today's RMB, and 40,000 or 200,000 would be considered an astonishingly large sum.

Chongzhen read Han Yiliang's Shangshu and was overjoyed. He immediately summoned his officials and asked Han Yiliang to read this article written by him in public.After reading it, Chongzhen showed Han Yiliang's Shangshu to the cabinet ministers, saying: "Yiliang is loyal and upright, and can be the censor of the capital."The imperial envoy of Qiandu is roughly equivalent to the assistant minister of the Ministry of Supervision, which is lower than the deputy ministerial level and higher than the director general level.Han Yiliang is expected to reach the sky in one step. At this time, Wang Yongguang, Minister of the Ministry of Officials (similar to the head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China), asked the emperor to ask Han Yiliang to name specific people who had done too much and who would give him money.Han Yiliang hummed Qingqing, showing a look of unwillingness to report on others.So Chongzhen asked him to play in secret.After waiting for five days, Han Yiliang did not report anyone, but only cited two old incidents as examples, and stabbed Wang Yongguang a few words inside and outside the words.

Chongzhen summoned Han Yiliang, Wang Yongguang and some courtiers again.The young emperor read Han Yiliang's Shangshu back and forth with his voice loud and clear.When I read the two sentences "this gold didn't fall from the sky, it didn't come out of the earth", I couldn't help but sigh.Chongzhen asked Han Yiliang again: Who gave you the five hundred taels of silver?Han Yiliang sticks to the line of defense, but refuses to call names.Chongzhen insisted on him answering, so he just talked about old things.Chongzhen asked Han Yiliang to name the names, and originally wanted to punish him severely as he had asked, but Han Yiliang finally said that it was rumored that someone was going to send him off, which made the emperor's boss unhappy. Can the black hat of the Minister of Supervision be granted lightly?Chongzhen reprimanded Han Yiliang for being inconsistent and dismissed him. (See "History of the Ming Dynasty" Volume 258, Han Yiliang attached to the biography of Mao Yujian)

Han Yiliang would rather ask the emperor to remove his official position, ruin his future as a minister, and even face the risk of the emperor getting angry and punishing him, but insists on refusing to report on those who gave him gifts and bribes. He must have a strong supporting force behind him.What kind of power is this?Is it just for fear of offending people?It is just like the current prosecutor, prosecuting and offending people is his job, and it is also the source of his reputation.For fear of offending people, this explanation is not strong enough. If we read Han Yiliang's Shangshu carefully, we will find a contradiction.Throughout Han Yiliang's article, he justifies loving money, proving that it is impossible for officials not to love money, and they have to love money.Han Yiliang was right, the official salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were indeed not enough.However, when he prescribes medicine, he severely punishes those who seek income other than salary.This is probably not so prescriptive.

The official wages of officials in the Ming Dynasty were the lowest in history.The top leaders at the provincial level have a nominal salary of 576 shi rice per year, converted into current RMB, and the monthly salary is about 11,780 yuan.The annual nominal salary of the director general level is 192 shi rice, and the monthly salary is roughly equivalent to 3930 yuan.In Qipin County, the annual nominal salary is 90 shi of rice, or 1,840 yuan per month.Han Yiliang, a stock-level or sub-section-level cadre, has a nominal salary of 66 shi rice per year, which is equivalent to a monthly salary of 1,350 yuan. (See "History of the Ming Dynasty" Volume 72: Official Records)

I repeatedly emphasize the word "nominal salary" because the actual salary that officials receive from the court is not so much.At that time, wages in kind were paid, and the officials took home rice, cloth, pepper and sumac, as well as silver and banknotes.No matter what you get, everything must be folded into rice.So this conversion rate has become a big problem. The fifteenth volume of "Allusion Jiwen" once described in detail how the Ministry of Households (Ministry of Finance) folded cloth into rice in the 16th year of Chenghua (1481).The imperial court forcibly folded a piece of coarse cloth, which was priced at three or four qian, into 30 shi of rice.And how much is 30 shi of rice worth in the market?At least 20 taels of silver!If according to this conversion rate, the salary is entirely based on cloth, the county magistrate can only receive three bolts of coarse cloth every year, which can only be exchanged for one tael of silver in the market, and cannot buy two shi (nearly 200 kilograms) of rice.That is to say, the imperial court deducted the salaries of officials dozens or even hundreds of times.Not to mention the banknotes that depreciated hundreds of times in the Ming Dynasty and forced officials to accept them.

In short, the actual value of the monthly salary that the county magistrates of the Ming Dynasty actually received was only 1,130 yuan. Please put yourself in the shoes of the county magistrates.There was no family planning at that time, and each family had at least five or six people, or a dozen or so more.At that time, there was no women’s liberation movement, and there was no double-employment. On average, six or seven members of a family depended on the county magistrate’s monthly salary of 1,130 yuan, and the per capita living expenses of more than 170 yuan. The county magistrate’s life is no worse than today How well-off are the laid-off workers.To be more precise, this county grandpa lives on the same level as the poorest peasant class today.In 1997, the year before I wrote this article, the per capita annual income of Chinese farmers was more than 2,090 yuan.

Another terrible thing is that there is no social welfare.Needless to say, public medical care, before the fifteenth year of Chenghua (1480), even pensions were not given.In the 15th year of Chenghua, Yang Ding, Minister of the Household Department, retired, and the emperor gave him special grace, and still gave Mi Ershi every month.These two stones of rice are worth only 500 yuan, which is a precedent for a minister to retire rice.The Minister of the Household Department is equivalent to the current Minister of Finance, and the pension is only 500 yuan. Others can imagine. (See Volume 15 of "Allusion Jiwen")

If we look at the life and family property of famous upright officials at that time, we may have a more pessimistic estimate of the actual income of Ming Dynasty officials. Hai Rui is an upright official who definitely does not take bribes, nor accepts any "grey income".When this upright official was a county magistrate in Chun'an, Zhejiang, he was so poor that he had to grow vegetables for himself, and of course he was even more reluctant to eat meat.Once, for Hai Rui's mother's birthday, Hai Rui bought two catties of meat, and the news actually reached Governor Hu Zonghui.The next day, the governor issued a news release saying: "Yesterday, I heard that the county magistrate of Hai bought two catties of meat for my mother's birthday!" Hai Rui finally became the Minister of the Ministry of Officials, which is equivalent to the current Deputy Minister of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.After the deputy minister died, he couldn't even make up the funeral expenses.Wang Yongji, Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Supervision, went to see the shabby clothes, and the Ge curtains (cloth woven from kudzu leather, worse than linen) were still torn. He was so moved that he burst into tears, so he pooled money to bury him.At that time, a man named Zhu Liang went to see Hai Rui's home, and when he came back, he wrote a poem, in which four lines can be used as circumstantial evidence of Hai Rui's poverty: "There is nothing left in the coffin of a depressed man, and there are roots in front of a desolate spirit. Tell others Believe it or not, the mountain people burst into tears when they saw it." Is this what a clean and honest official who has worked hard and frugal all his life deserves? Hai Rui was an upright official in the Jiajing and Wanli years of the late Ming Dynasty.One hundred years earlier than him, during the Chenghua period in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there lived an upright official named Hong.Hong is resolute and brave to eliminate harm, never worrying about himself.No matter whether the scholar-officials know him or not, they all call him a great man.It is precisely because he is honest, sticks to principles, and does not take anything extra, so his wife and children are often not full of vegetables, soup, wheat and rice, and the family follows him to be hungry. In the thirteenth year of Chenghua, Hong inspected Shanxi and found that there was something wrong with the general of the town, Qi Jian, and reported it to the emperor.Qijian's father, King Qingcheng, defends his son Shangzuo and frame Hong at the same time.Of course, the emperor paid more attention to the opinion of the prince, so he arrested Hong and sent him to prison for review.As a result, no charges were brought to trial.The eunuch Shang Heng was ordered to ransack the house, but only a few rags were found.The eunuch reported to the emperor, and the emperor sighed: How could he be so poor?So he ordered his release. (See "Ming History" Biography Sixty-six) The family circumstances of these two honest officials are probably enough to prove that the official salary is not enough. Please note that compared with ordinary officials, honest officials also have one less big expense: they don't give bribes and gifts, they don't curry favor with their superiors, and they don't use the back door to make connections.Most of the thousands of taels of silver that Han Yiliang said—managing bosses, entertaining guests, promotion assessment, and pilgrimage to Beijing, etc., even if it is 2,000 taels, that is, 200,000 to 800,000 yuan, can mostly be avoided.For example, Hai Rui went to Beijing for a pilgrimage, but spent 48 taels of silver.Because they are really poor, they really have no excuses, and they really dare to turn their faces and denounce others, and because they have a big reputation, they can be exempted if they are exempted, and most people don't take the risk of blackmailing them.However, petty officials with less strong waists will not only be blackmailed, but also blackmailed-really tied up with a rope.In order to prove that this type of expenditure is rigid and by no means optional, let me tell another story. When Hai Rui was the county magistrate in Chun'an, the son of Governor Hu Zonghui passed by Chun'an, and it was not enough for the postman to entertain him.The post official is equivalent to the current director of the county guest house and the director of the post and telecommunications bureau, and the governor is a large cadre at the provincial and ministerial level.I guess, it can't be blamed that the post officials don't know how to flatter them, it must be forced by Hai Rui.When Hai Rui arrived in Chun'an, he was determined to reform, rectify the work style of cadres, prohibit arbitrary fees, and tidy up the small officials below him. He may not be able to provide decent things for entertaining.Mr. Hu got angry when he was neglected, and asked someone to tie up the postman and hang him upside down-this is the end of saving money. Hai Rui received the report, saying: In the past, Governor Hu had instructed that his people should not go out and entertain extravagantly.Today, Mr. Hu has so much luggage, it must be fake.So Mr. Hu was detained, thousands of taels of silver were found from his luggage, and none of them were put into the treasury.These thousands of taels of silver should also be counted as 2,000 taels as before. According to different calculations of precious metal prices and purchasing power parity, its value is between 200,000 and 800,000 yuan.The young master travels for a trip, with such a large income, he must have a big appetite, and his expectations have been cultivated very strong. When he arrives in the poor and poor Chun'an, everything goes wrong, so he naturally loses his temper.Unfortunately, he ran into Hai Qingtian, who is rare in Chinese history.Hai Rui detained Mr. Hu, confiscated his money, and then sent someone to report to Governor Hu, saying that someone pretended to be his son, and asked for instructions on how to pay him.It made Hu Zonghui dumb to eat Coptis chinensis, unable to tell the pain.However, this matter can be used for joking, but not for imitation.Just imagine, how many Hai Ruis there are in the world, if Hai Rui hadn't risked his life behind him, what would have happened to that postman?After learning from the pain, how should he sum up the experience and lessons? Post officials belonged to the subordinate staff class, which was lower than the official "cadres" who entered the ranks, and was equivalent to employees in "cadres and workers".These people are even poorer, and their average salary is only about one-tenth of that of the cadres, about one stone of rice per month, worth only 250 yuan.But in terms of numbers, workers are naturally much more than cadres. The rank is lower than the subordinate staff, and there are more people, it is the government servants under the leadership of the subordinate staff.These are some office workers who cannot be "regularized".For example, the bell drummer, for example, the third class of yamen servants.The local governments of the Ming Dynasty used miscellaneous personnel, and at first they all relied on enlisting local people to serve for free.Since they serve without pay, government servants are not counted as government employees, and the government does not pay wages, but only a small food subsidy, which is called workers' food bank.The money, in the words of Weilin, a person from the Qing Dynasty, "is no more than three or two cents a day, and it is only used for one meal for the couple."He asked: If you don't eat two meals a day, you will be hungry and panic. Are these hundreds of thousands of people willing to stand on the side of the court with empty stomachs and serve the country? (See "Huangqing Jingshiwenbian" Volume 24) No matter which dynasty or generation, a person must do an equal equation in his life; the total income of a lifetime is equal to the total expenditure of a lifetime.The surplus is inheritance, and the loss is debt.Officials should work hard to equalize this equation, and it is best to make savings to benefit future generations.The wages stipulated by the Ming Dynasty are doomed to be difficult for them to make a living.Han Yiliang said that the salary is just that little.Let’s forget it, the county uncle’s monthly salary is 1,130 yuan, which is less than 14,000 yuan a year, and 140,000 yuan can’t be saved for ten years without food or drink.For the three items of filial piety to the boss, sending them to welcome them, building relationships, and completing the Hajj exam, it will cost 200,000 to 800,000 yuan.Han Yiliang did not say that this huge sum of money was spent for several years.Honoring your superiors and sending them to us are continuous every year. Officials from other places go to Beijing for a pilgrimage once every three years, and it takes nine years to pass the exam.Even if it is estimated according to the standard most favorable to the spender, it will cost 200,000 yuan in nine years, and this big hole needs to be filled by the county magistrate's family for 14 or 15 years without eating, drinking, or wearing clothes.I haven't calculated the necessary savings for retirement and disease prevention. With such a huge disparity in the inequality of life, how can it be balanced?Reluctantly doing it, of course, can't guarantee a relatively decent life, can't let the wife and children not count, can't leave a decent inheritance, or there is a danger of being hung upside down by the leader.In addition, there is a comparison problem in terms of expenditure.People always pay attention to their relative status, and they all have the ambition to "be no worse than others".And the county magistrate's annual income is not much higher than that of the owner farmers.Can the social elites who hold a lot of power willingly stand shoulder to shoulder with the owner farmers? Considering the above balance of payments issue, it seemed unreasonable for Chongzhen to ask Han Yiliang about the origin of the 500 taels of silver.The emperor who grew up in the deep palace was young after all.Logically, the first thing he should do is not to punish officials who give money, but to calculate the accounts of the entire life cycle, to settle the obviously unfair budget, and then call on civil officials not to love money.Of course, with the financial crisis at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of officials was so large that they could not afford to support them. It is pure nonsense to demand a substantial increase in wages.But that's another question.It cannot be said that it is a reasonable policy to create a huge gap in the income and expenditure of officials.This kind of policy is like a shepherd raising dogs, only giving two bowls of gruel to the huge herding dogs every day.Using this method of not giving enough food to raise dogs will sooner or later turn the shepherd dog into a wild dog, a wolf in dog's clothing. Now it seems understandable to support Han Yiliang's forces against the emperor.This is the power of reality and reason.The entire bureaucratic group has included income other than salaries in its annual daily living budget, and included it in the budget for ten, eight, or even the entire life cycle. Life and promotion without income other than salaries is unimaginable.Han Yiliang has no strength to fight against the rules of reality, nor does he plan to fight, and he is unwilling to be such an upright official.As the highest supervisory official, Han Yiliang publicly explained to the emperor that the official court rules could not be followed.He also took gray income for granted and regarded it as an essential part of life. This is a clear signal: In the eyes of the emperor's confidantes, income outside the salary has in fact obtained a legal status.Receiving property in different names and in different amounts has become an unspoken rule that is not necessarily stated but really works.This means that upright officials have completely disappeared from top to bottom.At the same time, the formal salary system has become a system that exists in name only.This formal system really does not deserve a better fate. It is just as good at driving officials into robbers as it is good at driving ordinary people to Liangshan. In short, from an economic point of view, it is very difficult to be an upright official.The formal system at that time punished and eliminated honest officials.A person who insists on being an upright official must be a loser economically.Of course, the calculations here are all economic accounts, with no emphasis on moral integrity.Ethics is a big banner waved by the bureaucracy from beginning to end, and it rolls so brightly that you simply cannot take it lightly.I fully admit that moral force is effective, as evidenced by Hai Rui's uprightness.But the power of morality is limited, as evidenced by Hai Rui's rarity and reputation.