I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 580: Disrespect for Confucianism
Zhu Houxuan was not close to Confucianism. He really could have chosen not to employ Confucianists. He really could have found a substitute.
Zhu Houxuan has invested a lot in education every year for more than 20 years, and these years of investment in education have begun to bear fruit. The talents he needs are continuously cultivated and play a role in various places of the Royal Group.
These people were one of Zhu Houxuan's core base, and Confucianism only accounted for a small part in their education.

As Zhu Houxuan's rule deepened, he became dissatisfied with just controlling the royal group. He wanted to control politics in various places. Thus, the Beijing Special District was born. Many people who were trained replaced the old clerks in the central government and the special districts and became the most basic "civil servants" in the Ming Dynasty.

However, Zhu Houxuan soon became dissatisfied with this. He was not satisfied that these people were only clerks and not officials, because he did not think that those juren or jinshi whose heads were full of Confucian ideas could develop the industry and commerce of the Ming Dynasty well. The reality was just as he believed. Those officials whose heads were full of Confucian ideas used traditional concepts and methods to govern the local areas, which instead hindered the development of industry and commerce in various places.

So he began to use various methods to pry open the Ming Dynasty's official selection system. First, the officials in Zhu Houzhao's newly developed areas. The conditions in these places were too difficult, and the Ministry of Personnel could not gather the required officials. Only a few juren and jinshi took the initiative to sign up to go to the border areas, and more juren and jinshi preferred to stay in the interior.

All the vacancies of these officials were filled by people from the Royal Group.
Later, when clearing the fields, Zhu Houxuan even introduced a policy that clerks could be promoted to county magistrates, which opened up a wider loophole.
At first, the gentry didn't take it seriously, and even had a mentality of watching the joke, because the country had been ruled by Confucianism for 1,500 years, and they had extremely high confidence and proficiency in how to rule the country. They didn't think they could be replaced, and the country couldn't turn around without them.
But they were soon slapped in the face because these people really showed stronger governance capabilities
First of all, the person who can be pushed by the Royal Group to the position of official in various places must be at least a middle-level manager who has a lot of management experience. In this regard, the Royal Group is very strict in selecting candidates. These people are all people who have been exposed to practical work and are more pragmatic.

This alone makes those scholars who studied hard for decades, mastered eight-legged essays, had no contact with practical affairs, and relied on their teachers to govern the prefectures and counties to be inferior.
Although such officials could not get the support of local gentry, they had the royal group behind them and could call on resources from the royal group. Their subordinates were all clerks from the royal group. They were only practical and not idealistic, so the places they governed soon underwent immediate changes, which was "great governance" according to the standards of civil servants.

The reason why Zhu Houxuan could so confidently say that he controlled the one capital and five provinces in the north of the Ming Dynasty was that he had these people at the grassroots level, allowing him to firmly control the north of the Ming Dynasty.
This had a huge impact on the gentry and also gave them a huge sense of crisis.
This was the first time they had this feeling; the military officers before them had not achieved this, and neither had the eunuch groups after them.
They felt that they were likely to be replaced by officials from the royal group and lose their status as the ruling class.
Because Zhu Houxun is constantly compressing the space for them to rule the country. Zhu Houxun is really playing. Zhu Houxun can really rule the country without these Confucian disciples. The country can still run without them! And it seems to run better and more efficiently.
This caused great fear among all the gentry.
In fact, Zhu Houxuan had no intention of replacing the dominant position of Confucianism in governing the country so quickly. He also wanted to select and win over the gentry to serve him. For this reason, he tried to focus on business and industry in the last two palace examinations (Zhu Houzhao was not in the capital, so Zhu Houxuan had to do this for him).
But in the end, this seemed to have the opposite effect. The gentry thought that Zhu Houxuan was trying to pressure them, and they became even more wary of him.
So the gentry all said that Zhu Houxuan disrespected Confucianism. In fact, this "disrespect for Confucianism" just meant that he did not give so many official positions to Confucian disciples.
If Zhu Houxuan's policy of equalizing the land tax and requiring officials and gentry to serve as officials and pay taxes was only to make the gentry pay more taxes and make them dissatisfied, then Zhu Houxuan's attitude of "disrespecting Confucianism" would have hit the gentry in the lungs.
Paying more taxes is not a big problem, and it won't kill anyone, but not being an official could cost you your life.
There is an idiom that goes "When a man dies, his policies cease to exist." Zhu Houxuan is implementing these policies now. As long as there are so many gentry officials in the central and local governments, there will be no big problem, because they can change these policies back after Zhu Houxuan's death. This is the specialty of the civil servants, and they have the patience to wait.
But now it is different. Their most fundamental interests have been touched. If they do not resist now, they will have no chance to resist in the future, because power is the foundation of their survival.
In fact, Zhu Houxun squeezed the space for gentry to hold official positions out of similar considerations. He wanted to protect the industrial achievements of the Ming Dynasty. How could he protect them?

That must be to introduce the business class into the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty. If the business class does not enter the ruling center and local areas of the Ming Dynasty, they will be unable to protect their own achievements and will become the food on the plates of the ruling gentry.
In a sense, Zhu Houxuan's decision was not made by himself, but by the industrial and commercial groups behind him.
The new industrial and commercial class and the feudal landlord class both wanted to rule the country and control its future, so a fierce conflict arose between the two.
This is the fundamental reason why the South rebelled.
It is precisely because of this that the feudal forces in the south were able to unite so quickly, because this was related to their most fundamental interests.
If they win, they can regain their dominance and eat the corpses of the business class.
"What do you think the treacherous king is thinking about recently? He let the coup in the capital go lightly, as if he wanted to make peace with us, but he still has more than 300 officials who participated in the coup detained in the Sky Prison, and it seems that he doesn't want to make peace." Hong Wendi suddenly said.

"It's quite strange. Now that His Majesty has awakened, if that treacherous king had taken advantage of His Majesty's still-life to attack our southern part and force us to start a rebellion, we would have no reason to go to the Jingnan Campaign. I didn't expect him to just sit there and do nothing."

(End of this chapter)