Anti-Qing: Starting from the Jintian Uprising

Chapter 396 The New Emperor's Three Fires

In the eyes of the British, the Anglo-Saxons are born to be the masters of the world.

In the eyes of the French, the noble French nation is the smartest and most intelligent nation on the European continent.

In the eyes of the Prussians, the Germanic people are the most outstanding nation in the world and should be the masters of the world.

In the eyes of the Tsarist Russians, they, the Slavs, should dominate the whole of Europe.

Even a country in the New World has the famous Monroe Doctrine.

That is, European powers should no longer colonize America or interfere in sovereignty-related affairs between the United States and American countries such as Mexico.

The United States remained neutral in disputes between European countries or wars between countries and their American colonies.

If such war occurs in the Americas, the United States will regard it as a hostile act.

Well, America for short is America for Americans.

They wanted to use this isolation to prevent the countries of the Old World from interfering in the New World and achieve their goal of dominating America.

The same is true for the Tang Dynasty today!
Li Yi also needs to use nationalism to unite people, brainwash the public, and boost military morale.

Because only in this way can he lead China, an ancient and great nation-state, to participate in the game of competing for world discourse power and living space.

Li Yi didn't want to travel through time himself, as his greatest achievement was just overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.

He also wants to lead the Chinese nation back onto the stage of competition and stand on top of the world again!

Well, let’s set a small goal first!

Establish an empire on which the sun never sets and leave a vast territory for future generations.

If he wants to achieve his goal, publicity work is the top priority.

The reason why newspaper readers are arranged on the construction site is because there are a large number of young and strong laborers gathered on the construction site.

These people are potential soldiers and potential destabilizing factors.

Carrying out nationalist propaganda for them is completely in line with their professional needs.

In fact, it is not only on these construction sites that gather a large number of young and strong laborers. The Tang Dynasty court has also arranged special staff for newspaper readers in provincial capitals.

Specially responsible for reading newspapers and doing publicity work in crowded places.

"The Tang Daily, first day of the first month of the first year of Kaitai."

"On the first day of the first lunar month in the first year of Kaitai, His Majesty the Emperor ascended the throne at the Temple of Heaven..."

The newspaper reader began to read.

The first thing to talk about is the coronation ceremony.

There was also the reorganization of the General Staff and the Ministry of the Interior, rewards for meritorious officials, and a general amnesty.

Apart from all this, there is also the matter of reform.

After Li Yi ascended the throne and became emperor, he also started three major reforms, preparing to reform the government of the Tang Dynasty.

The first thing Li Yi did was to pay attention to taxes.

He issued an imperial decree to the world, preparing to reform the tax issues of the Tang Dynasty.

First, the first step is to formalize taxation.

Li Yi ordered the abolition of all exorbitant taxes and levies. From now on, the Tang court would only collect regular taxes.

Taking agricultural taxes as an example, Li Yi planned to abolish various miscellaneous taxes such as the adult tax, fire consumption tax, seedling tax, irrigation tax, and weeding tax, and unify them into the regular taxes.

From now on, the Tang Dynasty will only collect one agricultural tax: the regular tax.

Although this move may not necessarily increase the treasury revenue, it can reduce the excuses for corrupt officials to exploit the people.

This will reduce the burden on the people and ease social conflicts.

Although the Qing Dynasty implemented the system of allocating land tax and returning the fire consumption tax to the public, the burden on the people was not reduced much.

It is easier to distribute the capitation tax according to the amount of land, by adding the capitation tax to the land tax. The tax that should have been borne by the poor people will be borne by the landlords who occupy the land, which will reduce the burden on the people to a certain extent.

It's still good governance.

But it is nonsense to say that the fire consumption should be public.

The so-called "fire consumption is returned to the public" actually means that the exorbitant taxes that were originally collected by the subordinates at will were turned into official taxes that the people had to pay.

The only ones who benefited from this move were the imperial court and officials, but it actually increased the burden on the common people.

Because, if the excessive taxes and levies are just made up by the subordinates at random, then you may still be able to evade taxes.

Even if you have connections, there is room for negotiation as to whether to pay or not.

But no one can escape the official taxes levied by the imperial court.

If you can’t pay the taxes, your family will be ruined.

What Li Yi has to do is to completely abolish those exorbitant taxes and levies, classify them as regular taxes, and completely remove the huge mountain of exorbitant taxes and levies that is weighing on the people's heads.

From now on, no one can find any excuse to increase taxes.

Because the taxes set by the imperial court were only one regular tax and nothing else.

This greatly reduces the room for corrupt officials to operate.

Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that corrupt officials will continue to fabricate taxes and exploit people.

However, this is a problem of official administration.

In addition, Li Yi also ordered the unification of various taxes such as commercial taxes, customs duties, salt taxes, tea taxes, stamp taxes, vehicle and vessel taxes, and the formulation of appropriate tax rates.

The second fire that Li Yi set was the judiciary.

Li Yi ordered the establishment of the Tang Legislative Committee, preparing to draw on Western laws and recompile the "Tang Code".

In Li Yi's vision, the "Tang Code" will be the constitution followed by the Tang Dynasty.

In addition to the general outline of the Tang Dynasty Law, Li Yi is also preparing to compile various laws such as the Criminal Law, Civil Law, Administrative Law, Economic Law, Social Security Law, and the regulations and rules under it. He will organize the current legal system of the Tang Dynasty and standardize the procedures of various criminal and civil proceedings in order to establish an orderly and reliable modern judicial system.

In Li Yi's opinion, the chaos in Batavia was instigated by the Dutch.

But the bottom line is that the Tang Dynasty's judicial system and law enforcement system were not perfect and had huge loopholes, which allowed others to take advantage of them.

What Li Yi wants to do now is to plug this loophole so that similar things will not happen again in the future.

The third fire that Li Yi started was the imperial examination.

Li Yi issued a decree that from now on, the imperial examination would no longer be held every three years, but would be held once a year.

Moreover, the number of places admitted to the imperial examination each year is no longer fixed.

Instead, it was determined based on the number of official vacancies in various departments of the court, as well as in prefectures, counties and cities across the country.

If there are more vacancies, recruit more; if there are fewer vacancies, recruit fewer.

More importantly, from now on, it will be impossible to achieve success overnight after passing the imperial examination.

According to the new rules of the imperial examination, all the scholars admitted through the examination every year must first start as clerks at the most basic level.

You have to make achievements or perform meritorious services in order to be promoted.

Moreover, the imperial examination was not limited to the Four Books and Five Classics. Li Yi also included different subjects such as mathematics, physics, and astronomy in the examination questions.

To put it bluntly, Li Yi's imperial examination reform was actually paving the way for other reforms.

In past dynasties, the greatest resistance to reform came from the cliques of local officials and local gentry.

The clerks who inherited the position from generation to generation were the link between officials and local gentry.

It is precisely because of the existence of these clerks that officials have to collude with the gentry in order to successfully complete their administration.

Li Yi's move was equivalent to severing the ties of collusion between officials and local governments.

To put it simply, anyone who dares to resist reform will be dismissed completely, no matter whether you are an official or a clerk.

The vacant positions will be filled by new scholars.

The Tang Dynasty now lacks everything except officials.

If you don't do it, there are plenty of people who want to do it!

All the old hands have been fired. If the local authorities want to collude with officials again, they have to spend some time to test and connect.

This period of time was the window period for Li Yi to carry out reforms.

Moreover, those newly-appointed imperial examination candidates would certainly not be willing to be just a clerk for their entire lives.

If they want to get promoted, they must make political achievements.

What are political achievements?

Reform is political achievement!

In other words, if you want to get promoted, you must support the emperor's reforms.

With the help of these officials who were eager to make progress, Li Yi was able to successfully complete the reforms he envisioned.

Otherwise, he is alone.

No matter how evil or intelligent he is, he cannot accomplish the great project of reform.

As for Li Yi's sudden large-scale changes to the imperial examination system, would it lead to any immeasurable consequences?

Actually, there is no need to worry at all.

Because, instead of abolishing the imperial examination, Li Yi lowered the threshold for the examination and increased the number of admissions.

In this way, the number of people who can enter the officialdom through the imperial examination will increase greatly every year.

Historically, the Qing Dynasty perished immediately after abolishing the imperial examination system because it did not come up with a practical plan to recruit officials.

To put it bluntly, the Qing Dynasty's abolition of the imperial examination system was just a punishment without any sweet rewards.

If this goes on, who will perish if not the Qing Dynasty?

But Li Yi's reform of the imperial examination system made the pie bigger.

Although the amount of cake each person can get has decreased (after the imperial examination, one has to start from the grassroots level), the number of people who can get a share of the cake has increased (the number of admissions has increased greatly).

In this case, what kind of trouble could arise?

Besides, Li Yi began to reform the imperial examination system when he held the first imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty.

In the past few years, the imperial examinations have changed almost every year.

People all over the world have long since adapted to the reform of the imperial examination system. Everyone understands that Li Yi will make major changes to the imperial examination system sooner or later, and everyone has been mentally prepared.

Now, it’s just the second shoe that has dropped from above.

There won't be any trouble anyway!
Li Yi still has some confidence in this regard.

……

Time passed, and soon it was the beginning of spring in the first year of Kaitai in the Tang Dynasty.

Just after the beginning of spring, the Tang army's plan for the Northern Expedition began to be implemented.

Zhang Lexing's troops received a military order and set out from the capital towards Zhangjiakou.

Zhang Lexing led his army to Zhangjiakou. After a brief rest, he took supplies and led his army north again, heading towards the direction where the Sunite tribe was.

There were sounds of horse hooves as a large number of cavalrymen galloped out of the pass, roaring and charging towards the grassland.

Gusts of cold wind blew over our faces, making them hurt.

But it could not stop the Tang army from wanting to achieve great things.

(End of this chapter)