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Chapter 6 4. Liu Jin Undercurrent

law of blood reward 吴思 18428Words 2018-03-03
I read a piece of news published on April 9, 2001 on the "China Youth Online" website. The title is "Six of China's 50 Richest People in the Millennium List". The full text is as follows: This kind of big field of view seems very pleasant, up and down thousands of years, and thousands of miles across, but I happened to pay attention to Liu Jin's property, and also copied some figures related to the Ming Dynasty treasury. too big.As for the silver stock of the treasury at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was even more wrong. Zhang Juzheng reformed for ten years, and the treasury was abundant. There are 7.25 million kilograms, and if you dare to say that there were 2 million kilograms when the dynasty was ruined, the error may be ten times or a hundred times.If Chongzhen really had this silver reserve equivalent to 20 years of cash income from the central government, why would he hang himself?If Li Zicheng could seize this large sum of money, why would he search the capital and even the whole country to destroy the great situation of stability and unity?I vaguely remember seeing a figure somewhere. Li Zicheng conquered Beijing and found that there were only more than 200,000 taels of silver left in Taicang. ——I can't find the source of this story, so I put it here for reference only.

I believed that I felt good, and suspected that the translation was wrong, so I searched the original text online, and found the source on the website of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).The translation is indeed a little wrong.The following is the profile of Liu Jin that I selected for translation: court eunuch malfeasance gold and silver In fact, I don't want to compete in numbers and details. What matters is the fact that Liu Jin is on the world's richest list in the millennium itself.I think the listing of Liu Jin and He Shen reveals something big hidden under the glorious surface of Chinese civilization.It's this kind of stuff that I want to dig into.It doesn't matter how much Wall Street makes mistakes, as long as Liu Jin is right about the key point of "wealth can rival a country", my in-depth research will not be substantially affected.However, I still couldn't help but want to chase a few more steps, to do the math, convert it into RMB, and figure out how much money Liu Jin's family has.I guess many people are as curious about this as I am.

This pursuit really caught my own fault. It turns out that the figures of Liu Jin's family property provided by Wall Street are well-founded. I found three sets of numbers in total. The first set is the number based on Wall Street, and it is also the largest number, namely 12.0578 million taels of gold and 259 million taels of silver.Wall Street mistook one tael (36.9 grams) in the Ming Dynasty for one ounce (31.103 grams), and thus underestimated Liu Jin's family property by 75,000 kilograms of gold and 1.5 million kilograms of silver.I understand that the number is too big to make people dizzy, and the feeling of two more zeros and two less zeros has long since disappeared.Let's put it this way, the error of Wall Street, in terms of silver alone, is more than six times the silver reserves of the treasury in the heyday of the Ming Dynasty.This was not a small mistake. Such a drastic reduction of Liu Jin's family property was committed by himself, and a hundred lives were lost.

The first set of numbers can be found in volume 13 of Lang Ying's "Seven Revised Class Drafts" and volume 3 of Chen Hongmo's "Ji Shi Wen". "Ming Tong Jian" said that Wang Shizhen also quoted this figure.These authors are all from the Ming Dynasty, and they are not idle people.Among them, Chen Hongmo was in the prime of life when Liu Jin died. He was 36 years old and had been a Jinshi for more than ten years.Such a person writes about Liu Jinlai, just like someone who has worked in the Ministry of Finance and the Supreme Court today, and writes about Chen Xitong or Cheng Kejie after retiring as a senior cadre. How dare the juniors five hundred years later not listen?

The second set of numbers can be found in Volume 35 of "Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories". (Qing) Zhao Yi said that Liu Jin had 2.5 million taels of gold and more than 50 million taels of silver.This number is only about one-fifth of the number in the first group, but Zhao Yi is also a famous historian, and this book is known for picking on the faults of previous generations of historians, and my juniors dare not ignore it. The third group of numbers are slippery numbers. Volume 42 of "Ming Tong Jian" listed the first set of figures, and compared Dong Xian's 4.2 billion yuan family property in the Han Dynasty, and Liang Ji's 3 billion yuan family property, both of which were an order of magnitude worse than Liu Jin. The author Xia Xie therefore doubted Liu Jin's family property is overestimated.So "Ming Tong Jian" declared that it was consistent with the official history, and gave a statement that "gold and silver have accumulated millions of dollars". "Accumulated millions", is it one million or nine million?Is it gold or silver?Is the unit catty or two?Every difference here can be different by ten times, and the author has blurred it out. Such numbers are really useless.Of course, we can also take the most conservative attitude and choose the small heads all, saying that Liu Jin has at least a few million taels of silver.How many millions?Just choose the minimum two million.In the first year of Zhengde (1506), Liu Jin gained power, and the central fiscal revenue in that year was less than two million taels of silver.From 1522 to 1532, Taicang's average annual silver income was exactly two million taels.

According to the principle of prudence in accounting work, I adopt the second set of figures here.If you don't like such conservative people, you might as well multiply my estimate by any number in one, two, three, four, five. As long as it doesn't exceed five, it's not nonsense.For those who are worried that future generations will use Liu Jin as a scapegoat to demonize Liu Jin and use Liu Jin as a scapegoat, and would rather be extremely conservative, just remember that Liu Jin's family property is equivalent to the annual silver income of the national treasury—the purchasing power of this silver is roughly equivalent to the current 800 million RMB.

According to the second set of figures, Liu Jin has 2.5 million taels of gold and more than 50 million taels of silver.He is worthless.We don't count as "his treasures", and if gold is discounted 30% to silver according to the practice at the time, Liu Jin's family property is worth 67.5 million taels of silver—more than the Taicang that Zhang Juzheng has worked hard to enrich for more than ten years ten times.How much is this equivalent to RMB?In ordinary times at that time, one tael of silver could buy two stones of rice. Converted according to the price of rice, Liu Jin's family property was equivalent to 25.488 billion yuan.I just checked on the Internet. In 2000, there was only one person from mainland China who was qualified to be on the list of "Forbes" magazine's global rich people. One-third of the eunuch.

Let's say it again.How much money does Li Ka-shing, the world's richest Chinese man known as Superman, have? "Forbes" magazine said that his family property was 11.3 billion US dollars, ranking 31st in the world in 2000.Li Ka-shing ranked tenth in the world in 1999. In the past two years, those IT upstarts have been squeezed out a lot.If Liu Jin is alive, his ranking may drop even further.As long as we choose the first set of figures like Wall Street, that is, multiply Liu Jin’s silver taels by five, and convert according to the price of rice, Liu Jin’s family property is 127.4 billion yuan, about 15.3 billion US dollars, which is 4 billion US dollars more than Li Ka-shing.

Is such a large number credible?I can't believe the first set of numbers that compares Li Ka-shing, but the second set of numbers that is enough to compare the three Rong Zhijians is hard to believe.Liu Jin's first-class tycoon, that is, the tycoon made of corruption, accepting bribes and dereliction of duty, has both ancients and newcomers in Chinese history, and it is by no means an isolated phenomenon.I mentioned earlier that Dong Xian and Liang Ji of the Han Dynasty accumulated money to three or four billion.Before the Ming Dynasty, there was Wang Zhen, and later there were Yan Song and Wei Zhongxian. The list of their family properties is also a long list of large numbers, so I will not bother readers with these numbers.

He Shen in the Qing Dynasty wished he could be richer than Liu Jin. "China Youth Online" quoted the Asian Wall Street Journal as saying that he had 220 million taels of silver.I've also seen larger numbers.According to the list of his family property, Heshen has 5.8 million taels of red gold, 9.4 million taels of silver ingots, 75 pawn shops, 42 silver houses, and more than 8,000 hectares of real estate.There are also many warehouses for jade, silk and satin, foreign goods, and leather sheets.The total amount of confiscated property is estimated to be about 800 million taels of silver, at least four Liu Jins.In the last years of Qianlong, the actual annual revenue of the national finance was 43.59 million taels of silver, and Heshen's property was equivalent to the fiscal revenue of the 18 years of the prosperous Qing Dynasty.At that time, there was a saying: "Heshen fell, and Jiaqing was full." It can be seen that the feelings of the contemporaries also supported the figures of wealth and rivalry.

The treasury's money is collected in hundreds of rivers, with clear origins, and river channels, large and small, can be overlooked and photographed.Suddenly, a reservoir ten times larger appeared on the side of the treasury, but the ground runoff was only a solitary canal, that is, the salary of 288 shimi per year for the fourth-rank officials, equivalent to 144 taels of silver.According to this flow rate, it would take 470,000 years to fill Liu Jin's reservoir without drinking a sip of water.In fact, although Liu Jin, the eunuch and eunuch, was also a fourth-rank official, the legislators of the Ming Dynasty believed that eunuchs did not need to take care of their families and could not spend so much money. Therefore, the statutory income of fourth-rank eunuchs was only daily rations and clothing, which were converted into silver. It is less than one-tenth of the fourth-rank civil servants.That is to say, it takes more than 5 million years for surface runoff to fill the reservoir of Liu Jin's house, but Liu Jin's accumulation only took five years.There is such a huge gap between theory and reality, is it possible not to investigate and explain? As long as the explanation is thought of, anyone can be sure that there must be an undercurrent, a sewer, and an underground river under the surface of the earth. "Mountains are not high, and immortals are famous." We borrowed the reputation of the world celebrity Liu Jin and called this underground network "Liu Jin's Undercurrent". In ancient times, there was a history of food and goods, but now there is a history of finance.I became a monk halfway, and I was ignorant. The histories and chronicles I read seem to focus on surface runoff: List the money, grain and corvee in various states and counties, the country’s salt and iron tea horses, wine and tax negotiations, and focus on describing and explaining various obvious expenditures Income and its changes.However, we have discovered that underground undercurrents account for a considerable proportion of the total flow of resources. Financial history that does not describe "Liu Jin's undercurrents" can only be called "fiscal positive history". . "Financial Shady History" is very difficult to write. Those dark accounts and dark accounts may have been rotted in the gutter long ago, and they can't be found.I don't say this metaphorically.Wang Huizu, a famous teacher during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, wrote a book "Xuezhi Shuozhu", in which he talked about the ledger issue in a down-to-earth manner. He required the establishment of four accounts: positive entry book, positive exit book, miscellaneous entry book, and miscellaneous exit book .It is being entered into the book to "record the amount of silver grain that should be collected, as well as tax deeds, miscellaneous taxes, consumption entitlements, etc."; it is being out of the book to "record the amount of silver grain that should be solved, paid for, released, and advanced, and the curtain of honesty repair and other items”; these two items are clear accounts.Miscellaneous into the book "Record the balance of silver, the noodles of the valley, and the bad rules of a certain age. Those who should enter themselves can ask ghosts and gods. Everyone knows it and there is no need to hide it. If you are extra greedy, it is a stolen item. Those who are private, cannot be entered into the book." Miscellaneous out of the book "records donations, donations that cannot be saved, and daily expenses." These last two items are obviously the accounts of the small treasury. Wang Huizu asked officials to settle accounts frequently.If there is a loss in the regular account, you can first make up for it with the money in the miscellaneous account.It can be seen from this that the small treasury in the Qing Dynasty was very important and "inevitable". The officials also had a good set of accounts for managing the small treasury, and the source and destination were very clear.The main source, of course, is the illegal income, or the filial piety of the subordinates, or the practice of plundering from the hands of the common people.The main destination is the gifts that must be given, that is, the filial piety to the superior.It also includes some daily expenses that are not included in the "just out" program. If we have a lot of such ledgers, the "Financial History" will be easier to write, but there is still a lack of "extra greedy claims, for personal gain, who cannot be entered into the books"-for this huge gap, I am afraid that we can only take The search list has been filled up one or two. What I have to do next is to collect some historical fragments around Liu Jin, and try my best to piece together the historical cross-section of "Liu Jin Qianliu" in the early years of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty.If you can't make it up, just replace it with fragments from other eras, which is better than nothing. In the early years of Zhengde, when Liu Jin was in power, Zhou Yao was ordered to go to Huai'an for investigation during the military affairs, and committed suicide on the boat returning to Beijing.That knife strike was very heavy, and Mr. Zhou couldn't speak when the people around him rescued him.The servant brought a pen and paper, and Zhou Key wrote down the words "Prefect Zhao mistook me" and died. According to the level, it is nothing more than "from the seventh rank" in the matter, and it is not as good as the official university of the seventh rank magistrate.According to the actual status and power, the Sixth Division is in charge of supervising the six central ministries and the various divisions in the world by the emperor's side.Even if you encounter wrong instructions from the emperor himself, as long as they do not conform to the teachings of saints and the laws of the ancestors, you have the right to "refute" the matter in name, and push it back and not allow it to be issued.Officials of science and Taoism are eagles in officialdom, the highest-level carnivores, animals that feed on the wealth and lives of officials at all levels.Serving in Kedao, becoming a member of the six divisions or one of the thirteen censors is the official dream of scholars in the Ming Dynasty. Why should a person who has a dream come true commit suicide? Volume 188 of "History of the Ming Dynasty" said that Liu Jin was in power at that time and was very arrogant. When the envoys returned from business trips, Liu Jin would demand a lot of bribes.Zhou Yao went to Huai'an to do business and had a good relationship with the prefect Zhao Jun. The prefect Zhao promised to lend Zhou Yao a "daughter" to deal with Liu Jin, but changed his mind before leaving.Zhou Yao "had nothing to plan", and committed suicide when the boat reached Taoyuan. After reading this introduction, I still don't understand why Zhou Yao committed suicide.The purchasing power of one thousand taels of silver is roughly equivalent to today's 400,000 RMB, which is indeed a large sum.But even if this bribe is as hard as a debt, so what if it really cannot be repaid?Is it worth committing suicide?I guess, he probably cares too much about the status in the matter.After finally ascending to the peak of honor and becoming the pride of relatives, friends and fellow villagers, suddenly it is possible to lose the official position, the glory will be turned into shame, and half a lifetime of hard work and future prospects will also go to waste. All these things add up, isn’t it worth committing suicide? ? ——It’s still hard for me. Finally, a record by Chen Hongmo, who was at the time, helped me understand Zhou Yao's choice.According to the second volume of "Ji Shi Wen", An Kui and Yu Shi Zhang Yu went out of Beijing to check the money and food. After returning to Beijing, Liu Jin asked for bribes. A shackle weighing one hundred and fifty catties put the two of them at the Gongsheng Gate.It was summer at that time, and the heavy rain continued day and night, and the two of them were drenched in the rain.If it wasn't for the heavy rain, I'm afraid the two of you would have died of heatstroke long ago. It turned out to be the famous one hundred and fifty catties flail.According to "History of the Ming Dynasty" volume 95, Liu Jin controlled the two spy organizations of the East Factory and the West Factory through his cronies, allowing the two factories to compete and mobilizing the enthusiasm of the spies, and made many inventions and creations. The neck is one of their inventions.Wearing this kind of shackle, "you will die within a few days", "History of the Ming Dynasty" volume 192 also said, "There are countless people who died in the shackle", which shows how terrible the prospect before Zhou Yao is.Since it is very likely to be shackled to death, Zhou Yao's suicide has the meaning of choosing euthanasia, which is easier to understand. After reading this story, I wonder if you have discovered something.When I first read it, I felt a little weird, but I didn't realize what was weird, and I didn't find anything.Later, I read six or seven records, all of which were stories about how Liu Jin asked for bribes, and changed his ways to deal with others if he didn't want to. After reading it, I suddenly understood that Liu Jin had shown us a rule of resource allocation.Corresponding to the metaphor of the undercurrent, I thought of a name for this rule, called "the pump rule", and another metaphor can also be called the "fishing rule".Or, simply call it "horizontal (fourth tone) rules". The stories of favoritism and fraud in the officialdom that I read left me with a general impression: when facing the common people, corrupt officials are usually aggressive and take the initiative to attack; "moderate strategy.Ordinarily, as long as you have bait such as a black yarn cap in your hand, you don't have to worry about the fish not taking the bait.The black hat means the power to legally harm subordinates and the people. With this power, you can extract greater benefits. This is a very cost-effective business.To put it another way, people go to high places and water flows to low places. As long as there are interests attracting them, officials will naturally flow there to complete the transaction of power and money.But Liu Jin is not.He doesn't use bait at all, and he doesn't use profit to lure you to it. He directly replaces the fishing rod with a fishing net, catches all the officials who come to Beijing, and directly inserts a water pump pipe into the officialdom, and pumps it up with full power. Liu Jin's pipes are limited in length and too large in diameter, so they usually cannot reach the lower classes.According to the classification method of the canal system, the highest level of canals is the main canal, the second is the branch canal, the third is the bucket canal, the lower is the agricultural canal, and the lowest is the hair canal.Liu Jin looked down on the Nongqu Maoqu, and mainly inserted pipes into the branch canals of the main canal. Central supervisory officials such as Zhou Yao and An Kui were dealt with by Liu Jin as if they were blocking a cage and catching chickens. In fact, they were hawks in the officialdom when they left Beijing.The local officials under their supervision were willing to accept bribes from Gishizhong and the supervisory censor. In the late Ming Dynasty, it was also said that Gishizhong was the king of bribery.Now these great kings must accept bribes from Liu Jin in unison.The total number of the above-mentioned eagles in the officialdom is 58 in the six divisions and 110 in the thirteen censors.There are also a group of officials in the supervision system, about 20 people. They hold titles such as deputy capital censors (similar to deputy ministers of the supervision department) and other titles to patrol the Quartet. "History of Ming Dynasty Biography of Eunuchs" says that Jiao Fang and Liu Yu (similar to the State Councilors) in the cabinet at that time, Zhang Cai (similar to the head of the Central Organization Department) in the Ministry of Officials, Yang Yu and Shi Wenyi (similar to the Director of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang and the Central Committee) Director of the Security Bureau) are all Liu Jin's confidantes.They changed the original system and ordered governors from all over the country to come to Beijing to accept the emperor's orders, and at the same time bribed Liu Jin.Governor Liu Yu of Yansui didn't come and was arrested and imprisoned.Xuanfu Governor Lu Wan came late and was almost convicted, and he was given a "job trial" only after he was bribed. Volume 186 of "Ming History" also mentioned an upright official named Maozheng, who was the governor of Ningxia with the title of right deputy capital censor.For pretending to be an upright official, Liu Jin couldn't ask for bribes, so he found a way to arrest him and fined him three thousand shi.After Liu Jin's death, Mao Zhengcai resumed his original official position and retired. The channel one level lower than the inspector is the chief executive of each province. Volume 2 of "Ji Shi Wen" states that in the third year of Zhengde (1508), various divisions from all over the world went to Beijing for a pilgrimage.Liu Jin ordered each chief secretary (similar to the provincial government) to send 20,000 taels of silver, and only after paying the money was he released.The silver is shared by Liu Jin and others.Officials from all over the country had no choice but to borrow money from the wealthy families in the capital. After returning to office, they doubled down on the people's wealth in order to repay the loan.If this process is reflected in the accounts, it is probably that the "regular books" of various places have been included in the "miscellaneous books" of the eunuchs, and the governors of each province will search for the "miscellaneous entries" after returning to fill in the "miscellaneous outputs" in the official books.And Liu Jin and others took their own share from the eunuch's miscellaneous book. This is the second time that this large-scale extortion of bribes has been recorded in "Jijiwen".According to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty, officials from all over the country went to Beijing for a pilgrimage every three years.Three years ago, in the first year of Zhengde, Liu Jin had just gained power, so he demanded bribes from the officials of the three departments in the world, one thousand taels of silver per person, and five thousand taels more.If you don't give, you will be demoted, if you give too much, you will be promoted.The so-called "Three Divisions of the World" refers to the commanders, chiefs, and inspectors of the thirteen provinces at that time, who were in charge of the soldiers, money, food, and criminal names of each province.Among them, the largest official is the commander of the capital, the second rank, and the annual official salary is 732 shimi, which is only 366 taels of silver according to the market price.The salary of the chief envoy (similar to the governor, from the second rank) is 576 shimi per year, which is only 288 taels in silver. It is not enough to pay tribute to Liu Jin without eating or drinking for three years.The total number of this group of people is about 70 or 80 people, based on the fact that each position has at least two positions, one or two.One search will earn one hundred thousand snowflake silver. Liu Jin's pumping pipes are also inserted into the fields of water transportation, salt administration, farming and imperial examinations.It is not easy to explain the formal systems in these fields, such as the Yanyin system, and it takes more pen and ink to explain the tricks.Here I just choose a simple story about the imperial examination as an illustration. Volume 174 of "History of the Ming Dynasty" talks about a man named Anguo who took over his father's class and became an officer.In the third year of Zhengde, Anguo won the champion of martial arts, and was assigned to the three sides of Shaanxi as the acting division commander (commander of the administration).At this time Liu Jin came to ask for bribes.Anguo and the 60 members of the Chinese Martial Arts Association at the same time couldn't afford any money, so Liu Jin assigned them to the lower company as soldiers (formed as an army), waiting for dispatch at any time, and it was forbidden to go home without authorization.These sixty people were all in trouble, living with the garrison soldiers, and it was almost difficult to survive.But the defenders on the frontier were afraid of Liu Jin, and no one dared to accept them.It wasn't until Liu Jin's death that An Guo returned to the starting point before the exam - taking over his father's class as an officer. Liu Jin has also engaged in many activities of selling officials and nobles or bending the law for personal gain. This is a power-for-money transaction, not a pump operation.Except for the extremely large amount, the special identity of the transaction partner, and the unscrupulous behavior when selling public interests, these behaviors have no special significance for creating new rules, which are omitted here for the time being. In short, Liu Jin has outstanding offensiveness.We can find one thing in common in the above stories: the bribes paid by those officials are not investments for promotion and wealth, but expenses for avoiding disasters and eliminating disasters, just like protection money owed to the mafia.It seems that the Chinese language has not yet made a distinction between these two types of undercurrents of money called bribery.Considering that Liu Jin mainly relied on the violence that caused the other party to bleed to death, this wealth should be called "blood reward". The supervisory censor Jiang Qin reported to the emperor: ...Yesterday, Liu Jin asked for bribes from the officials of the three departments in the world, each with one thousand taels of silver, and some even asked for five thousand taels.If you don't give it, you will be reprimanded, and if you give it, you will be promoted.The whole country felt chilling, but His Majesty put him by his side and used him.This is not knowing that there are thieves on the left and right, and treating the thieves as confidantes... Please kill Liu Jin immediately to thank the world, and then kill the ministers to thank Liu Jin... This is the first record I have read about the operation of the Liu Jin brand water pump.The "yesterday" that Jiang Qin wrote was the eighth day of the first lunar month in the second year of Zhengde (February 19, 1507 A.D.).It can be seen that it is not easy for Liu Jin to pump water, and some people really jumped out desperately to sabotage and make trouble. In order to understand the courage of both parties involved, Liu Jin's courage to pump water and Jiang Qin's courage to jump out and smash the water pump, we have to go back to a desperate struggle that took place a few months ago. Liu Jin is very good at coaxing children.Emperor Zhengde was only fifteen years old when he came to the throne, and he liked to play wars. Liu Jin was a rough man, and he could quite understand the fun of urchins, so he and seven other eunuchs "fighted" with the emperor. ", and traveled with the emperor's micro-clothes.The little emperor had a "great joy", and gradually trusted Liu Jin. The civil officials heard that the eight eunuchs headed by Liu Jin had lured the emperor into a "banquet". Minister), Gishizhong and Yushi echoed, forming a trend of attacks by civil servants from the outer court on the eunuchs from the inner court.The little emperor was tired of those civil servants talking about big things, but he was scared by the five sense supervisors (ninth grade, similar to the chief of the calendar department of the Astronomical Bureau) Yang Yuan who used astrological changes to talk about things.Seeing that the little emperor was a little scared, Liu Jian and others launched a more fierce offensive, demanding that the emperor kill Liu Jin.Feeling guilty, the little emperor wanted to make concessions, so he summoned Wang Yue, the eunuch with the highest status among the eunuchs, and asked his cabinet ministers to discuss and send Liu Jin and others to Nanjing to live idle. On October 12th of the first year of Zhengde (October 27, 1506 AD), Wang Yue and others went back and forth three times on behalf of the little emperor, bargaining with the ministers.Some of the ministers persuaded Liu Jian to make a concession, so as to avoid radical changes, but Liu Jian refused to budge. It is said that the eunuch Wang Yue is more upright and a little jealous of Liu Jin.Liu Jin was the emperor's confidant, but he, the higher-ranking eunuch, was often sidelined.In the process of passing on the message, Wang Yue added his own comments, telling the little emperor that the opinions of the cabinet ministers were correct.So Liu Jian became more courageous, and agreed with all the ministers to "face-to-face fight against Fu Que" the next morning to kill Liu Jin, with Wang Yue as the internal response. That night, Jiao Fang, Minister of the Ministry of Officials, sent someone to call the police to Liu Jin.Liu Jin was terrified, and kowtowed and cried all night with his eunuch buddies around the little emperor.Crying until the little emperor was moved, Liu Jin said that Wang Yue wanted to kill slaves and so on.He colluded with cabinet ministers for the purpose of controlling the emperor's entry and exit actions. If we don't let him control the emperor, he will remove our obstacles.Besides, playing with eagles and dogs is no big deal, and a little loss is only a few ten thousandths.If the eunuchs and eunuchs are using the right people, how dare those civil servants make such a fuss? The little emperor suddenly figured it out, these people colluded internally and externally to control him and not let him play, he was furious, and ordered Liu Jin to be in charge of the ritual supervisor, and the other two eunuchs who were crying on the ground were to be in charge of the East Factory and the West Factory These two secret service organizations arrested Wang Yue and other three eunuchs who helped civil officials, and sent them to Nanjing overnight. In the early morning of the next day, all the ministers were about to fight against each other, and found that the situation had changed drastically.In fact, when bargaining with the emperor, apart from saying a few words, "Your Majesty, this is not good for Your Majesty, but that is better for Your Majesty", the ministers have no trump cards in their hands. The Emperor made up his mind, and they would only stare blankly and resign all the way.Liu Jian and other three cabinet ministers immediately resigned and begged to go.According to the usual practice, it would be considered polite for the emperor to approve the resignation report three times in a row, but the reports of Liu Jian and others were approved as soon as they were sent up, and no one except Li Dongyang was retained.In official language, this is tantamount to telling Liu Jian and others to leave.At the same time, Jiao Fang was appointed as a bachelor in the cabinet.Liu Jin won the first battle. Liu Jin immediately began to suppress the opposition, killing people to gain power, and expanding the results of the war.First, send people to hunt down and kill Wang Yue and others who were exiled into the army; secondly, the "stick blame" Shangshu asked Liu Jian to leave six of them for Shizhong and the thirteen censors; He beat him up, dismissed him from his post and relegated him, and then killed Yang Yuan, the junior section chief of the Bureau of Astronomy who almost killed Liu Jin by talking about astrology.The fight was so silent that the entire court was silent, and Liu Jin won a complete victory. "History of the Ming Dynasty" said that after Liu Jinyong, whenever he asked the emperor for instructions and reports, he must first do some reconnaissance, especially when the little emperor was addicted to playing.The emperor bothered him, waved him away hurriedly, and said: What do I use you for?Come and trouble me one by one!Since then, Liu Jin has been ordered to make arbitrary decisions without reporting to the emperor. It is under this situation that Liu Jin brand water pumps leave the factory.Since the factory license is issued by the top leader, many concealment and camouflage are no longer needed, and the unspoken rules have largely been transformed into horizontal rules. Thinking back to the time when Liu Jin held a lot of power in his hands, he had the constitution of heaven in his mouth, and he fought consecutive victories, his spirit was inevitably strong.In fact, people with a discerning eye have already seen this change in their eyes, and the gathering movement to actively move closer to power has begun like a hundred rivers returning to the sea. Around the end of the first year of Zhengde, Liu Yu, the censor of the right capital (similar to the executive vice minister of the Ministry of Supervision), met Liu Jin through the introduction of Jiao Fang, a scholar. Liu Yu's meeting gift was tens of thousands of taels of silver (about 4 million yuan).According to the records of "History of Ming Dynasty: Eunuch Biography", this is the first bribe of tens of thousands of taels of silver that Liu Jin received. "History of the Ming Dynasty" said that at that time, Liu Jin "began bribery", and his expectation of bribery was only a few hundred taels of silver. When he saw ten thousand taels of silver, he couldn't help being overjoyed and said, "Mr. Liu, why are you so kind to me?" Liu Yu's investment quickly paid off. In the first month of the second year, Liu Yu was promoted to Zuodu Yushi (similar to the Minister of Supervision). Liu Yu repayed his kindness and became one of the core members of the "eunuch party".He found that Liu Jin especially hated the censors for making irresponsible remarks based on his position as an admonisher, so he invited an imperial decree and issued a new policy for controlling the censors, and would spank them if they made minor mistakes.Liu Jin saw that Liu Yu was able to seal the mouths of his subordinates, and he had real skills, so he gave the chief censor a new reward, making him Minister of the Ministry of War (similar to the Minister of Defense), and the crown prince Taifu—second only to the prince Grand Master's supreme title.Liu Yu "bribed indiscriminately" in the position of Minister of the Ministry of War, and gained huge profits, so that when he was promoted again and became the highest-ranking Minister of the Ministry of Officials among the six central ministries, he found that the bribes of civilian officials were not as generous as those of military officials. Yi sighed and said: "The Ministry of War is self-sufficient, so why bother with the Ministry of Officials?" Liu Jin's power has grown, and the room for policy choices has increased, so he changed the "water waiting policy" to the "water pumping policy". "Pumping water" does not exclude "waiting for water". Those who take the initiative to flow over are still accepted, but when encountering cadres who lack self-consciousness, Liu Jin can go directly to pump, which is much more proactive.Obviously this is a policy that is more beneficial to Liu Jin.After the policy was promulgated and put into practice, the general response was good. Only a few people like Jiang Qin came out to oppose it. Jiang Qin had jumped out once with many censors and asked the emperor to keep Liu Jian. As a result, all of them were beaten, each with thirty court sticks, and one of them was beaten to death.Being beaten by the court staff is life-threatening.According to the rules passed down by the ancestors of the Ming Dynasty, cotton-wrapped felt can be worn when the court staff is used. Liu Jin changed the rules, and the court staff had to take off the trousers to beat.It is said that Liu Jin has a good way of training thugs, making a leather man with bricks stuffed inside.If you practice ruthlessly, you have to beat it in a normal way. After the beating, the leather is still intact, but the bricks inside are about to shatter.To practice lightness, wrap a layer of paper on the outside of the leather man, and beat it down so hard that even the paper is not allowed to break after beating.During the execution, as long as the feet of the prison eunuch stand in a horoscope, they will be beaten lightly.If you stand in the horoscope, you will be beaten to death-of course, these are legends that are difficult to be confirmed, but put yourself in the shoes of Jiang Qin and others, who has the guts to test the truth? After Jiang Qin jumped out for the second time, he was beaten with another 30 court sticks, and after the beatings were over, he was thrown into prison.On the second day, Jiang Qin wrote Shangshu in prison again, the general idea is as follows: Yesterday, because of receiving the stick in Shangshu, the minister was lying on the pillow in the prison, dripping with blood and flesh, and finally it was difficult to remain silent. ... Your Majesty, please compare the minister with Liu Jin. Is it the minister's loyalty, or Liu Jin's loyalty?Loyalty is not loyal, everyone in the world can see it clearly, and His Majesty also knows it very well, why do you hate the minister so much and trust the traitor?The minister's flesh and blood were all smashed, and his seventy-two-year-old father couldn't care less about supporting him.But it is not a pity that I am dead. Your Majesty may suffer the disaster of national subjugation and family loss at any time, and that is the greatest pity!I hope that Your Majesty will kill Liu Jin and hang his head at the Meridian Gate, so that the world will know that my minister Jiang Qin speaks out and speaks out, and that His Majesty is wise to punish thieves.If Your Majesty does not kill the thief, please kill the minister first, so that the minister can swim underground with Long Feng and Bigan.I don't want to live in this world with this thief at the same time! According to the joint records of "History of Ming Dynasty" and "Ming Tongjian", when Jiang Qin was drafting the Shangshu in prison, he heard the sound of ghosts under the lamp.Jiang Qin guessed that this was the spirit of the ancestors warning him, fearing that he would encounter a disaster after going to the university, so he adjusted his clothes and said: If it is my ancestor, why don't you tell me loudly.Sure enough, a more mournful voice came from the wall.Jiang Qin sighed: I have already devoted myself to the country, and according to the requirements of loyalty and righteousness, I can no longer care for my own interests.If you keep silent from now on and feel sorry for the country, that is a humiliation to the ancestors and even greater unfilial piety!After finishing speaking, he continued to write and wrote, saying, if you die, you will die, this manuscript cannot be changed!So the ghost sound stopped. Shangshu handed it in, and exchanged for thirty court sticks.Jiang Qin died in prison three days later at the age of forty-nine. Practice tests have proved that the water pumping policy is feasible and cannot be reversed.Therefore, this low-cost and high-efficiency horizontal rule was born among various backup rules, and became Liu Jin's iconic feature. In fact, we can't blame Liu Jin too much.Whether the water pump rules work or not is not up to the eunuch Liu Jin to decide. Liu Jin is just pursuing the maximization of his own interests in an environment where the imperial power is not restricted.He even had to go for greater power because someone wanted his life.And once the power is in hand, those huge and attractive material benefits appear to be at your fingertips. How can mortals in the world hold back their desire to reach out? In other words, as long as the power structure of the empire does not change, water pumps will inevitably appear.As long as there are ordinary people whose thoughts have not been reformed, as long as they have a few useful official seals in their hands and have the ability to do harm, Liu Jin's disciples and grandchildren will inevitably multiply.This kind of reproduction has nothing to do with sexual ability, but with weapons and equipment.With a sharp weapon in his body, he was ready to kill himself. It didn't matter if he wanted a few lives, but it didn't matter how much money he wanted. After Zhou Key's suicide, the magistrate Zhao who was reluctant to borrow money was arrested and questioned, but Liu Jin, who was forced to death like a debt collector, did nothing.This matter has been widely circulated, and the impact is naturally very bad.So, Zhang Cai, the backbone of the eunuch party, had a talk with Liu Jin.Zhang Cai said that the wealth given to you by the world today is not all private property. You often borrow money from the capital first, and use the money in the official treasury to repay it after you go back.Liu Gong, why do you need to collect resentment and leave troubles behind? Liu Jin deeply agreed.He has no shortage of money for a long time, but safety is becoming more and more precious, and the continuous running of the pump is no longer worth the loss.At this time, Yu Shi Ouyang Yun and more than a dozen people just happened to accept bribes in accordance with the old rules. Liu Jin exposed their bribery behavior, punished them all, and gained himself the reputation of refusing bribes once.Afterwards, Liu Jin sent 14 people to Shizhong and Yushi to strictly check the official treasuries in various places.The money in the official treasury has long been emptied by Liu Jin and others, how can it withstand the strict inspection of those hawks and dogs?As a result, governments around the world scrambled to collect money from the people to make up for the shortfall, and many small water pumps rang together. Now we have entered the next few levels of the subsurface flow network, the Douqu Nongqu Maoqu system.We should examine how those who sent money to Liu Jin withdraw the money, and where did the money they withdraw come from, so that we can trace the source layer by layer, describe all the sources, nodes, and flows of the underlying network, and then describe the benefits and disadvantages The relationship and evolution history are explained clearly.Still, the job is intimidating. In fact, every official, official, and service position, including temporary positions, is a node in the undercurrent network.The number of undercurrents connected to different nodes is different, and the flow rate is also different, so there is a difference between fatness and hardship.This is a huge picture that is frighteningly complicated. Even if we lived in the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty and were given the freedom to investigate and interview, these secret knowledge can only be cut into pieces first, separated and broken into pieces. Pedestrians asked for advice, and then gradually pieced together a nearly complete picture.What I know is neither complete nor in-depth, but it will still be a huge space to write down.Here, for the time being, we will piece together the fragments in the hands and sketch a rough outline by combining the overview and examples. Let's first talk about the officials in "officials, officials, and servants".There are hundreds of thousands of "missing" civil and military officials across the country, and each position is nourished by more or less bad rules and routines.This kind of assertion involves more than 100,000 jobs, and it is difficult to prove it, but we can try to falsify it: see if the poorest and least loved faculties can not be nourished by bad rules and routines.It is said that the poorest officials in the Ming Dynasty were Confucian instructors at the prefecture and county levels.Volume 26 opens with the words: "All the officials in the world follow you. The most humble ones, such as Cang Ambassadors and inspectors, also have some foreign money. Only this instructor is in charge of those sour people. Those who are decent, I even came here to give you a few ceremonies; those who are not decent, don’t come to see you all year round, have any contacts? So this official is very hard.” Having said that, the author went on to tell a student who became a censor, The teacher went to visit, and everyone flattered the teacher of the censor one after another in order to ingratiate himself with the censor. The poor instructor actually got two thousand taels of silver.This set of bad practices is also well-known, and it belongs to "Bumping the Tai Sui" under the name of "Fighting the Autumn Wind".That is to say, even if there is no constant undercurrent to moisten the instructor's seat, there may not be no geyser or seasonal river, and the source of the seasonal river is ultimately the people's anointing that corrupt officials plundered.Besides, it's not quite right.The instructor-student relationship can influence the granting of financial aid, which creates a private exchange of benefits.What's more, the "several section instrument" is not considered a routine, but the size is a little smaller.In these private transactions, what the instructors sell is actually the education appropriation from the state finance, as well as the ability to get promoted and make a fortune—eventually, the people still have to pay for it. Let's talk about the officials in "official service".The number of "missing" officials is more than twice that of civil officials in name, but the actual number may be three times, five times or even ten times more.How do these seriously overstaffed officials live?There is no place for them in the central financial arrangement, and the few officials who have a position in the central financial arrangement have pitifully low nominal income.But their lives are very good, not worse than the middle-level cadres of the county party committee and county government today.They are the concrete executors of various tasks, and there are far more opportunities to collect bad rules and routines. In "Sichuan Financial History in Qing Dynasty" (Volume 1), I read a letter of exposure in "Ba Dian Duan Duan". A household clerk in the Qing Dynasty listed out the annual bad practices and routines in this position in detail due to internal strife. As a result, the total amount was frighteningly large: Peng Zejiao, a household official in Ba County, could devour 16,700 taels of silver every year.The most important source is the annual land, house, livestock and other transactions in Baxian County, with a total value of about one million taels.According to the usual practice, a deed tax of three renminbi is charged for every two hundred and twenty, and the tax rate is three thousandths.This is the number of four thousand taels.This money is more than enough to pay for the food expenses of the officials.And the household official charged another one or two silver for each contract.Generally, there are three to four thousand contracts in Ba County every year. For this alone, they can collect another three to four thousand taels of silver a year. Finally, I want to say a few more words about the service of officials.The nominal number of vacancies (full service) is already more than that of officials, and the actual number is several times or even dozens of times more. (Ming) Anonymous "Yu Xie Zhi" mentioned the number of yamen servants in Changshu County, Suzhou Prefecture: "Changshu Zaoli, Kuaishou, Jianbu, Minzhuang, and Ma Kuai, a total of 200. Each of them has four friends, and the name is "Standing body", one or two assistants for each assistant, called "helper". For each assistant, there are six or seven white servants, called "buddy". Together, there are more than ten thousand people. There are more than ten thousand tigers and wolves in Changshu, and they run wild for hundreds of miles. Among them, the weak are always preyed on by the strong. Every village is foolish and kind, and people die because of this." In name, there are only two hundred establishments, but in fact there are ten thousand, a difference of fifty times. It is shocking to read, unbelievable .But I have seen similar evidence in the records of Liu Heng, a man in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty.Liu Heng said that when he was the magistrate of Ba County in Sichuan, there were more than 7,000 government servants in the yamen.There are only 70 active service places in Ba County, and the difference between the name and reality is 100 times. This staggering number of servants received little official income.The nominal income of active duty is also so meager that it is difficult to maintain a living, so they mainly live on bad rules and routines. Now we have entered the lowest level of the officialdom, and also the lowest level of the undercurrent network, the hair canal system that is directly connected with the common people.In fact, the most basic hair canal system is precisely the most stable, just like the basic building materials. No matter how the architectural style or surface decoration changes with the change of power distribution, the basic composition is always Qin bricks, Han tiles, and always government officials. The face of the water pump when we face the common people. Li Rong, a retired senior official in the Qing Dynasty, also told a story of personal experience in the third volume of "The Book of Thirteen Peaks Bookstore". The story says that in Jianzhou, Sichuan, there is a kind of "check card" officer, sometimes four or five people, sometimes seven or eight people, scattered in the countryside, neither when the job started, nor what they were responsible for checking, country people Although they are called "cha card".Wherever the card checking officers went, some businessmen in the towns and villages would arrange food and drinks for them, and some would give them some food.When these servants went to small roadside shops or remote and sporadic houses, they would definitely eat them, and they kept complaining that they were doing hard work.No one has ever dared to confront them.Once they encounter alcoholics, gamblers, and stealers, these people immediately rush into it, get on the line, arrest and tie up people at every turn, and then extort a sum of money according to their degree of wealth. No one was actually arrested and taken to the government. Li Rong said that in recent years, some peddlers who trafficked sulfur from Guangyuan to the fireworks factory in Zhongba passed by their area and were repeatedly extorted by license inspection officers.These peddlers came to my house many times to complain, I could only persuade them to change their jobs, and persuade them to leave after comforting them.Because no one asked the card checking officers for an explanation, these officers became more and more courageous. Li Rong wrote that yesterday, I heard that there was a tavern in the neighbourhood, and the card inspection officer went straight in, took the jug away, and beat the tavern owner with the jug, saying: The county magistrate ordered a ban on alcohol, and there is a shortage of food in the drought, so no food is allowed Boil wine and sugar.Turn around and leave after speaking.Today, all the bosses related to the wine industry here came to my house and asked me what kind of law was violated by cooking wine. They said that it was related to my family's capital.I also heard from them that the checkers had robbed a certain tavern of a lot of money in the country. There are many more words in the back, and the last sentence is: the government of the world is like this, how can they hate Hong Xiuquan! Taking a closer look at the above two stories, the power pattern reflected in the Maoqu system belongs to the pattern of fishing or water pumping with great disparity in the ability to injure, rather than the pattern of interest exchange.This is the same as Liu Jin.I can't give you any sweetness, but I can let you taste the bitterness.I'm not doing enough, but I'm not doing enough.If you don't want to be ruined, you have to pay for it.The rules are so bullish.The guard, like Liu Jin, can kill whoever he wants, and the victim is a fish and meat at the mercy of others, so he can only cry to the squire.According to Li Rong, because the victim did not dare to confront the guards, the guards became more and more courageous.But think about those small traders and small bosses, is it more cost-effective to resist or submit?As long as the shop is not closed, as long as the guard’s extortion strategy is carried out step by step - first sell the rat poison, then sell the box, and then charge a fine, the sum of money is divided into three extortions, and the amount of extortion each time makes the other party unworthy of turning his face and desperately. Then, it is cost-effective for individual small traders to submit.If small traders dare to go all out and "obstruct official duties", the guards will have a better chance of extorting money, and it is even more uneconomical for small traders. However, there may be another calculation method.If Li Rong, the squire, agrees to the requests of the small traders and small bosses, and sets up a self-protection organization like a chamber of commerce, which collects a regular membership fee, the squire himself can directly file a complaint with the county magistrate when necessary. When the county magistrate fails to deal with it, he will join other associations to propose a recall case. Then, the calculation of interests at the grassroots level will undergo earth-shaking changes. When small traders fight alone, everyone is not worthy of conflicting with officials for a small sum of money.If there is a chamber of commerce, it is worth fighting or even petitioning for a little money from everyone.From Li Rong's point of view, the more useful he looks, the more reason he has to charge more membership fees.From a member's point of view, it is much cheaper to support Li Rong alone than to support a bunch of servants, and after paying the membership fee, as long as you talk to Li Rong, Li Rong will go to the county magistrate. How easy and arrogant is it to punish someone?It is said that democracy cannot be eaten, and judging from it, it is not.A system like the chamber of commerce that gathers private strength may protect small traders from working and earning money for food, giving those small bosses engaged in rice and noodle processing the motivation to produce more rice and white noodles, and allowing those who work in taverns to keep their jobs. As for unemployment.In this sense, democratic rights can be converted into rice flour, and they are very valuable. Of course, pulling so far is already fantasy.Li Rong's era was an era in which officials made decisions for the people. The people wanted to make decisions for themselves, and of course the officials had to stick to their positions. If the people wanted to increase pressure to force the officials to back down, how could the officials bow to the pressure.Going back and forth like this will inevitably have the taste of "gathering crowds to make trouble", more precisely, "gathering crowds to resist food", "gathering crowds to strike the market". The "Law of the Qing Dynasty" stipulates: "To resist food and gather people, or to stop the examination, to stop the market to forty or fifty people, the leader will be executed, the followers will be hanged and waited in prison, and those who are threatened will each have a hundred sticks." If you don't stop the market, you don't resist How about just asking the magistrate for an explanation?That is also very dangerous: "Such as coercing the hall to block the office, beating the officials violently, beheading the owl for the head, beheading the accomplice, and hanging the accomplice to the prison." In short, at the source of the undercurrent, the bureaucrats and servants have the legal power to harm the common people under heavy protection, at least the power to harm the common people at low cost and low risk, and the common people hardly have any cost-effective countermeasures. Speaking of which, I still haven't directly answered how the small water pumps in Liu Jin's era supplemented the deficit of government treasuries at all levels, because I haven't found any information about those two years.I have a piece of information on how officials filled the gap during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty. The officialdom during the Hongwu period was the most prudent and honest in the entire Ming Dynasty. Filling this gap with this relatively clean building block can avoid exaggerating the dark side. In the eighteenth year of Hongwu (1385), Zhu Yuanzhang discovered that Guo Huan, the minister of the household department (similar to the vice minister of the Ministry of Finance), had colluded with officials from all over the country to embezzle and cheat.For example, if a certain place should turn over 4 million shi of grain to the central government, as long as Guo Huan is bribed with 500,000 taels of silver, half of the payment can be reduced, and local officials will share the spoils privately.Zhu Yuanzhang followed the vine to find out the root cause and killed thousands of people.According to Zhu Yuanzhang's calculations, the loss caused by the Guo Huan case was worth 24 million shi of refined grain, and the amount that should be recovered was 7 million shi.So Zhu Yuanzhang sent people to various places to recover the stolen goods.At this moment, the situation of officials from all over the country is the same as when Liu Jin sent people to strictly inspect the official treasury. For their own wealth and lives, they must fill the shortfall in the warehouse. Zhu Yuanzhang described the countermeasures of officials from various places at that time.For example, Liu Rulin was sentenced in Kaizhou Prefecture of Daming Prefecture. He clearly knew that Luo Congli, an official of the prefecture, had deposited 17,000 guan in stolen money, but issued a notice to charge rural farmers.The notice he sent said that if the people did not attach importance to the court's work of recovering stolen goods and refused to pay, they would be imprisoned and dealt with severely.Zhu Yuanzhang said that many local officials took this opportunity to collect people within the entire county, which was tantamount to imposing an additional tax.Of the total tax collection, about one percent is enough to compensate for the stolen money, and the rest falls into one's own pocket.The stolen money in the original collection is naturally his own. What Zhu Yuanzhang was talking about was the situation when the name was cleverly set up and the tax was extortionate, and it was the situation when the water pump was running at an accelerated speed.Horizontal is horizontal, and may not represent routine.Borrowing from Zhu Yuanzhang's description, let's take another look at how the most stable main source of the undercurrent flows.This is the state when there is no extra pumping, and it is what it looks like when the emperor's grain is paid every year.Whether Liu Jin is dead or alive, it has little effect on this state. In the two thousand years of imperial history, we can find similar descriptions at any time. Zhu Yuanzhang wrote: In the west of Zhejiang, the officials of the prefecture, prefecture, and county are like "tigers and wolves" to control the common people.For example, when harvesting autumn grain, the magistrates of prefectures and prefectures do not collect the grain, but ask the common people to pay by paying in banknotes, which are worth two coins per shimi (quote’s note: 2,000 cash, while the market price is only 500 cash). , In addition, ask for 100 cash for "water foot money", 300 cash for "vehicle foot money", and 100 cash for "food money".The yamen servant in charge of the warehouse also needs to "discriminate and inspect money" for 100 Wen, "basket basket money" for 100 Wen, "bamboo basket money" for 100 Wen
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