Ming Dynasty: Ask Zhu Yuanzhang to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 540 The Truth Behind the Yellow River Dike Collapse?
The young man examined the Embroidered Uniform Guard's waist tag again, then turned his gaze to Zhu Yunwen, and then glanced at Xu Miaojin beside him. His expression was constantly changing and extremely complicated.

After a long pause, he solemnly cupped his hands in a salute: "The noble status of someone who has the Embroidered Uniform Guard by his side is self-evident."

"Even the governor and imperial inspector of Henan would not receive such treatment."

He paused for a moment, then continued, "As the saying goes, 'A new emperor brings a new court.'"

"The current emperor is young and promising, and the important ministers he appoints are mostly young and talented individuals."

"But to be as young as you, sir, is indeed beyond my expectations."

He took a deep breath and spoke with increasing respect: "This humble subject, Chen Guanlan, pays his respects to Your Excellency!"

As he spoke, he knelt down on one knee and bowed respectfully.

Zhu Yunwen reached out and helped him up, a gentle smile on his face, and said, "We're out and about, not in a courtroom. Brother Chen, if you have something to say, please speak frankly. There's no need for such formalities."

Chen Guanlan quickly expressed his gratitude, and then said, "You have already seen the actual situation of the disaster relief, so I will not go into details."

"Although on the surface, this year's disaster relief work is not bad, at least it has ensured that the disaster victims have something to eat and do not starve to death."

"But since His Majesty implemented the new policies, the Ming Dynasty is no longer what it used to be. The country is prosperous and the money and grain are plentiful."

"The Daming Daily directly published the various disaster relief measures. If what it said is true, the money and grain allocated by the imperial court for this disaster relief is probably more than ten times more than before!"

"But in the end, all that reaches the disaster victims is still a bowl of thin porridge that is barely enough to fill their stomachs and a steamed bun. It is easy to imagine how much embezzlement is involved!"

Zhu Yunwen nodded slightly after hearing this, his expression solemn.

This is indeed an indisputable fact.

The disaster relief scenes we see today would have been the best they could have been ten years ago, when Zhu Rongji was still in power.

After all, at that time, the Ming Dynasty was still a very backward agricultural country with low productivity and limited disaster relief capabilities.

Giving each disaster victim a bowl of porridge and a steamed bun is already a remarkable achievement.

But now, the industrialization process of the Ming Dynasty has achieved initial success, and the country's financial and material resources are far greater than before.

In response to the Yellow River's breach, the imperial court allocated a large amount of silver, supplies, and grain.

If the funds and grain allocated by the imperial court had been fully utilized, the people in the disaster area would not be in such a miserable state now.

In retrospect, it seems that less than 20% of the money and grain allocated by the imperial court for disaster relief actually reached the common people.

The corruption and embezzlement by officials have escalated to an appalling degree.

Chen Guanlan went on to say, “In fact, as far as I know, since His Majesty the Emperor personally inspected Henan, especially in the last few days, the Henan Governor and the Provincial Inspectorate have put tremendous pressure on the local government offices at all levels. They have not only required officials at all levels to devote themselves to disaster relief, but have also allocated additional disaster relief funds.”

He then changed the subject, saying, "As the saying goes, 'It takes more than one cold day for ice to freeze three feet deep.'"

"These local officials have long been accustomed to corruption, and their bad habits are hard to break. How could they suddenly stop embezzling money just because of temporary pressure from above?"

Chen Guanlan continued his analysis: "Even if the high-ranking officials realized something was wrong and started to feel scared, the long-term indulgence and leniency had made the lower-level bureaucrats indifferent to it."

"Moreover, in their view, giving the disaster victims two meals of porridge a day, plus a white steamed bun, is already more than enough and a great act of kindness. They would never give them anything more."

"Therefore, no matter how much money the imperial court allocates for disaster relief, what they ultimately distribute to the disaster victims is only this much, and not a single penny more."

After hearing this, Zhu Yunwen nodded slightly again, his expression growing increasingly solemn.

This is indeed a very important reason.

To put it bluntly, once a person's ideas and beliefs are formed, they become deeply ingrained and extremely difficult to shake.

From top to bottom, all officials, yamen runners, and even the disaster-stricken people themselves generally believed that as disaster victims, it was already a great blessing and very good that the imperial court could provide them with food.

This is why, despite the fact that the relief received by these disaster victims was far from the original regulations, almost no one complained or caused trouble.

In their view, although the relief they received was far from what was claimed in the Da Ming Daily, it had truly saved their lives and kept them from starvation.

For these people who have suffered so much, they are already quite content and dare not ask for more.

Only Emperor Zhu Yunwen truly knew how much of this money had been embezzled!
The technological level of the Ming Dynasty is still far from the highly developed level of later generations, but it cannot be overshadowed by the abundance of resources of the Ming Dynasty!
In particular, the per capita availability of resources.

In addition, with a continuous influx of massive supplies and resources from overseas, the Ming Dynasty was not short of money or food at all. In fact, it could be said that the Ming Dynasty at that time had more surplus food than in later generations.

After all, the population of later generations was too large, and land resources were far from sufficient.

At least for now, in the Ming Dynasty, the disaster victims can eat their fill of basic rations such as porridge, steamed buns, and pickled vegetables.

In fact, Zhu Yunwen allocated disaster relief funds according to such high standards.

However, in practice...

Of course, what truly worried Zhu Yunwen was another, even more serious problem.

Although porridge and steamed buns cannot satisfy the disaster victims' hunger and thirst, they can at least keep them alive and prevent them from starving to death.

However, the disaster victims are now living in the open air, without any tents for shelter or clean drinking water. If this continues, it will probably not be long before the epidemic spreads uncontrollably.

The disaster relief efforts in Henan can only be described as a complete mess.

It was a far cry from the deployment requirements set by Zhu Yunwen!
However, what Chen Guanlan was about to say was certainly not these obvious issues.

After all, Zhu Yunwen had already witnessed the situation firsthand, so there was no need for him to say anything more.

"Does Your Excellency know that the Yellow River's breach this time was half due to natural disaster, and the other half was purely man-made!" Chen Guanlan's words were like a thunderclap from a clear sky, startling Zhu Yunwen.

His previously calm face was instantly filled with shock.

"What makes you say that?!" Zhu Yunwen asked hastily.

Chen Guanlan explained with a solemn expression, "Since His Majesty implemented the new policies, the imperial treasury has suddenly become abundant with money and grain."

"His Majesty is well aware of the dangers posed by the Yellow River. Therefore, he has long ago allocated a huge sum of money to the Yellow River management department and the government offices in Henan and Shandong provinces, specifically for reinforcing the Yellow River dikes."

"In particular, His Majesty personally invented cement, which can be used to reinforce dikes and make them less susceptible to being washed away by water."

"The original Yellow River embankments were all made of sand and soil piled up along the banks. Once they were soaked by floods for a long time, the soil would become extremely soft and prone to collapse."

"This was an age-old problem that was difficult to solve for the Yellow River dike, and there was almost no way to solve it."

“In the past, we could only build solid stones in important sections of the river, but the cost was too high and the country simply could not afford it.”

"It wasn't until His Majesty invented cement that the world truly had a good solution to the Yellow River's chronic problems."

His tone shifted, and his eyes flashed with indignation: "As far as I know, according to the court's meticulous plan, a concrete and steel retaining wall about five feet deep should have been built on the inner side of the Yellow River section within Guide Prefecture. Its strength should have been just as indestructible as the section near Kaifeng City."

He paused abruptly, his voice filled with barely suppressed rage: "These greedy and insatiable officials, after receiving huge sums of money from the imperial court, only cared about recklessly stuffing it into their own pockets, completely forgetting their duty to build dikes!"

Chen Guanlan clenched his fist, his tone becoming increasingly impassioned: "In order to pass the imperial court's inspection, they shamelessly took advantage of His Majesty's new policy of encouraging private contracting, and subcontracted the entire project under various pretexts!"

"They first subcontracted the entire project to a large businessman who specializes in river engineering."

He explained in detail: "On the surface, the contract signed was for a huge project worth more than ten million taels of silver. However, in reality, after receiving the funds from the imperial court, the big merchant secretly returned seven or eight tenths of it to the officials of the Henan government as kickbacks!"

"Only two or three tenths of the funds actually reach the project."

Chen Guanlan sneered, "When the imperial court sends officials to investigate, they will only see that all the contract payments have been made in full and all the money for river repairs has been distributed. They will not be able to find any clues because the accounts are 'watertight'."

He went on to reveal: "Not only that, the big businessmen who contracted the projects also made huge profits from it."

"To avoid trouble, they subcontracted the project again."

"And so it went, layer upon layer, passing through seven or eight times in total!"

"The amount of money actually used for river repairs may be less than one percent of the funds allocated by the imperial court!"

Chen Guanlan's voice was filled with deep regret: "The five-foot-deep cement and steel retaining wall that was supposed to be built was never even started. They just symbolically sprinkled a thin layer of cement ash on the surface to deceive the inspections from above!"

"The officials who came to inspect also accepted bribes and turned a blind eye to the matter, turning a deaf ear and doing not conducting a serious and thorough inspection."

"The Yellow River's breach this time is certainly due to natural factors such as the frequent torrential rains and excessive flooding this year."

"But if we had strictly followed the imperial court's requirements and properly constructed those reinforced concrete retaining walls that should have been built, the dikes might not have softened and collapsed due to prolonged soaking, the Yellow River might not have necessarily breached its banks, and hundreds of thousands of people would not have died in vain!"

Upon hearing this, Xu Miaojin, who had been listening silently the whole time, completely erupted.

Her face flushed red, her beautiful eyes widened, and her indignation was palpable. She angrily rebuked, "These corrupt officials have gone too far!"

"They deserve to die a thousand deaths! They should all be arrested, skinned alive, and their tendons ripped out to uphold the law!"

Zhu Yunwen's feelings were complicated at this moment. He muttered to himself, "How dare they? Where did they get such audacity to do something so outrageous?"

Chen Guanlan sighed: "When the Supreme Emperor was in power, he was extremely harsh in governing officials. He would often kill people, causing blood to flow like rivers, which made all officials tremble with fear and walk on thin ice."

"But the current emperor is kind and benevolent in governing the country and rarely abuses killing. The officials' long-suppressed greed has naturally been reignited, and they have become unscrupulous."

"Furthermore, after the implementation of the new policies, the Ming Dynasty's economy has prospered like never before, and the national treasury revenue has surged dramatically. The amount of money handled by officials at all levels is more than ten times that of the past."

As the saying goes, "wealth can move people's hearts." Faced with such enormous and tempting wealth, how many people can truly control their greed and remain honest and upright?

Upon hearing this, Zhu Yunwen was speechless for a moment.

He never expected that he would have made a "contribution" to this!
As a transmigrator from the future, he always maintained a cautious attitude towards killing and tried to avoid unnecessary bloodshed as much as possible.

Compared to Zhu Yuanzhang's tendency to execute large numbers of officials at will, his style of doing things was indeed quite different.

Perhaps it is because of this that the officials below mistakenly believe that they can act recklessly and without any scruples.

In fact, Zhu Yunwen was not really very relaxed.

Compared to the relatively lenient punishment mechanisms of later generations, his punishment of corrupt officials was still extremely severe.

However, when officials suddenly switch from the extremely oppressive and terrifying rule of Zhu Yuanzhang to the relatively mild rule of Zhu Yunwen, they develop a very relaxed illusion, which makes them bold, reckless, and greedy.

This is human nature!
The sudden increase in the amount of money in the hands of officials is another strong stimuli that further fuels their greed.

Zhu Yunwen frowned and asked again, "What evidence do you have for what you're saying? Is there any solid evidence to prove your claims?"

Chen Guanlan answered without hesitation: "Whether the reinforced concrete retaining wall for flood control was built according to the requirements of the imperial court can be determined simply by waiting until the floodwaters recede completely and then digging it up below the Yellow River dike. It will be clear at a glance whether it is true or false."

He then confessed, "To be honest, I am one of the people who personally participated in the construction of this project."

"At that time, I also contracted to build a small section of the river embankment retaining wall, so I knew all the details."

……

(End of this chapter)