Ming Dynasty: Ask Zhu Yuanzhang to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 548 The Changing Trends of Corruption Under the New Circumstances! This is Intentional on My Part!
After questioning Li Jichuan, Zhu Yunwen did not stop there.

He then turned his attention back to Wu Dezhang's own crimes, repeatedly questioning him about the many details of how he curried favor with others, formed cliques, and engaged in corrupt practices.

In particular, Wu Dezhang's network of connections and vested interests in officialdom.

For example, Zhu Yunwen inquired in great detail about which higher-ranking officials he had pledged allegiance to and what bribes he had given, leaving no detail unexamined.

After the interrogation came to an end, the guards brought out pen, ink, paper and inkstone. Under the emperor's cold gaze, Wu Dezhang, his face ashen, trembled as he signed his name on the confession and pressed his bright red fingerprint on it.

Then, Zhu Yunwen turned his gaze to the other officials who were silent in the tent.

Thus began a long and arduous interrogation.

Zhu Yunwen, with a stern voice, ordered every official present to confess their background in detail, from how they entered officialdom and rose through the ranks, to how they embezzled and abused their power, to which colleagues they colluded with and were close to, to the intricate special relationships behind them, to whom they bribed and to whom they received favors... All these things, no matter how small, had to be confessed in detail, without any concealment or omission.

The brightly lit tent illuminated the faces of the officials, revealing expressions of regret, numbness, or despair with remarkable clarity.

And so the interrogation continued all night long.

The interrogation of these corrupt officials only came to an end when the eastern sky began to lighten and dawn broke.

What was finally presented to Zhu Yunwen was a thick stack of confessions soaked in guilt and ink stains.

Each page felt incredibly heavy, recording not only personal sins but also a shocking panorama of the bureaucracy.

Based on the confessions of these officials, an invisible web was uncovered.

Almost all officials in Henan's bureaucracy, from top to bottom and from the lowest to the highest ranks, were implicated.

Its impact is far-reaching and its relationships are complex, far exceeding imagination.

Even more alarming is that the threads of this corrupt network have already spread to the capital.

Many high-ranking officials in various departments of the imperial court were also among those listed.

Their names are inextricably linked to the bribes these local officials received.

Inside the tent, there were only about twenty officials bound by ropes.

However, the relationships behind these people are complex and intertwined, and the list of corrupt officials they have colluded with is as high as several hundred.

"This is more than just pulling out a radish and bringing out the mud... this is clearly pulling one hair and affecting the whole body, tearing out a whole rotten root system!"

Zhu Yunwen slowly flipped through the final list of officials involved in the case. Each name and official title, whether familiar or unfamiliar, was like a poisonous needle, making his gaze turn cold.

Zhu Yunwen muttered to himself, his tone carrying an indescribable weariness and chill.

The confessions of these officials went far beyond the scope of personal corruption.

It reveals the ugly norm of collusion between officials and businessmen and the exchange of power for money; it exposes the unspoken rules of officialdom, such as selling official positions and the bad driving out the good; and it reveals the systemic and collapse-like collective degeneration of the entire bureaucratic group.

In the eyes of these officials, serving as an official is no longer about benefiting the people, but has become a shortcut to wealth and personal gain.

What a cruel reality this tip of the iceberg reveals.

This means that the entire officialdom of the Ming Dynasty had been unknowingly and deeply eroded by the poison of corruption!

Zhu Yunwen never expected that, in just a few short years since the Hongwu reign when the old Zhu wielded an iron fist to eradicate corruption, the Ming Dynasty's officialdom had deteriorated to such an appalling degree!
The stench of decay that seeped into his very bones seemed to waft through the stacks of confessions, sending chills down his spine.

“Brother Tong, you don’t need to be so hard on yourself. How can the crimes of these scoundrels be blamed on you?”

Looking at Zhu Yunwen's bloodshot eyes, which were filled with the marks of a sleepless night, and the lingering weariness between his brows, Xu Miaojin's initial anger, fueled by hatred for corrupt officials, had long since vanished.

Instead, a flood of tenderness and concern poured in.

"Corruption in officialdom is like a malignant tumor that clings to the bone; it did not begin today."

“I still remember that this practice was already common during the reign of the Supreme Emperor.”

Xu Miaojin sighed softly, her voice gentle yet tinged with a heavy tone: "When I was a child, my father also lamented that the soldiers' embezzlement of money and grain and their looting after the war were like weeds on the plains, impossible to eradicate."

"Although he was known for his harsh military discipline and had beheaded many people for it, he also admitted that most of those he executed were either too arrogant or foolish people who did not know when to advance or retreat and were courting death."

"But in reality, how many more than ten million people are secretly involved?"

"The law does not punish everyone, and in the end, it is impossible to punish them all."

She stretched out her delicate hand and gently brushed over the mountain of case files, the charges beneath her fingertips seeming to carry a scorching heat.

Xu Miaojin said softly, "As the saying goes, 'If the water is too clear, there will be no fish; if a person is too discerning, he will have no followers.'"

"Back then, the Supreme Emperor used his iron-fisted approach to governing officials, and the anti-corruption cases he launched were earth-shattering. The Empty Seal Case and the Guo Huan Case, which one of them didn't result in a massacre and rivers of blood?"

"But what's the result?"

Has corruption truly disappeared?

"If it really works that way, there won't be another Guo Huan case after the Empty Seal Case!"

"Besides, are those corrupt officials only involved in those two major cases, and are they all honest and upright gentlemen in ordinary times?"

"That's absolutely impossible."

However, apart from a few major cases, relatively few corrupt officials are investigated and punished in ordinary times.

"It is evident that even though the Supreme Emperor hates corrupt officials to the bone, he can only use major cases to strike with lightning speed. On ordinary days, he relies more on deterrence and cannot completely eradicate them from the root of the problem."

"Let's talk about military generals."

"Those major anti-corruption cases involved mostly civil officials from the central government and local governments, with very few military officers implicated."

"Is it really because all the generals and commanders of my Great Ming Dynasty are as incorruptible as water, untainted by any corruption?"

Xu Miaojin shook her head, her gaze clear and sharp: "Human nature is largely the same. Civil officials love money, and how can military generals be exempt from this?"

"When His Majesty implemented military reforms and abolished military households throughout the land, he must have known that many military fields that should have been passed down through generations of soldiers had already been quietly transferred to their own names by their superiors and generals at all levels through various means."

“If this continues, soldiers without land will inevitably lose their will to fight, or even desert.”

"It is in view of this that Your Majesty has carried out military system reforms."

"Does the Supreme Emperor really not know the drawbacks of this?"

"But even if he hated corruption, for the sake of the stability of the court and the peace of the country, he could not kill military officers indiscriminately, especially those deeply entrenched middle and lower-ranking officers, just as he had done with civil officials." "Therefore, most of the time, he focused on deterrence and found it difficult to take drastic measures."

"Since His Majesty ascended the throne, he has worked diligently to govern the country and has formulated many new policies, making it much more difficult for officials to be corrupt than before."

"If they hadn't formed cliques and colluded with each other, no one could have amassed such a huge fortune on their own, let alone extended their reach to innocent people."

“Looking at these confessions, although they implicate a few officials from the capital, they are all insignificant clerks.”

“The real key figures in the central government, whether ministers of state affairs or ministers of military affairs, have never been directly involved.”

"On the contrary, according to the confessions of these convicted officials, those high-ranking officials were quite protective of their reputations and disdained to associate with them."

"Perhaps it's simply because their official ranks are too low, and they are not qualified to corrupt those high-ranking officials." Zhu Yunwen's voice carried a hint of hoarse coldness. "The governor and the imperial inspector of Henan are both high-ranking officials in charge of the provinces. They are recommended by the ministers of state affairs and can only take office after passing through layers of examinations by the State Affairs Bureau."

"How dare Zheng Hongjian and Zhao Qingzhi be so ruthless and corrupt? Did none of the ministers who recommended and evaluated them really notice anything amiss?"

His voice grew increasingly somber, sounding like a question, or perhaps a soliloquy: "Or is it that someone has already seen through everything, but has chosen to turn a blind eye and let things go?"

"Or... have they already been corrupted by their gold and silver, becoming complicit in their evil ways?"

Zhu Yunwen gave a self-deprecating smile, his eyes filled with weary mockery: "'In books, there are houses of gold; in books, there are beauties like jade.'"

"What did they seek after ten years of hard study?"

"Isn't it all about passing the imperial examinations, achieving great success, and turning the fantastical riches and beautiful women of the books into inexhaustible wealth and beauty in reality?"

"But once one actually enters officialdom, one realizes that the government's salary is meager and that one's power is subject to constraints at every turn."

"The glamour in public and the bitterness in private—this huge gap is enough to shatter any precarious moral bottom line."

"Only corruption can satisfy their insatiable ambition and allow them to experience the thrill of having the power of life and death and controlling the fate of others."

Xu Miaojin was silent for a moment, gazing into Zhu Yunwen's deep eyes, and said, "Your Majesty, if we trace the root of the problem, the reason these people were able to embezzle such a huge amount of money and grain is precisely because your new policies have been too successful, making the national treasury increasingly full."

"Otherwise, no matter how audacious they were, they could not plunder such astonishing wealth even if they dug three feet into the ground."

"From this perspective, why should Your Majesty blame yourself excessively?"

"This matter, on the contrary, is clear proof of your effective governance."

"You see, even though they embezzled so much, the people in the disaster area can still receive white flour buns, hot porridge, and pickled vegetables to fill their stomachs."

"In the past, even if every local official was honest and incorruptible, not taking a single penny or profiting from it, the imperial court's disaster relief efforts would never have reached this level."

"Furthermore, the reason they were able to commit such heinous acts against the people, carrying out mass killings and framing, was because they took advantage of the chaos during the disaster relief period."

“Under normal circumstances, they themselves admit that there is surveillance everywhere and people can report them, so they would never dare to act so recklessly!”

"Doesn't this prove that the supervisory system you established, Your Majesty, has been remarkably effective?"

Xu Miaojin's thinking became clearer and she continued to analyze: "In fact, apart from special periods such as disaster relief that are difficult to supervise, the real major sources of corruption are nothing more than two things: the selection and appointment of officials and the imperial court's projects."

"The selection and appointment of officials has always been the same since ancient times. The court has long had established methods for preventing such incidents. Your Majesty only needs to make the laws more comprehensive and stringent on this basis."

"As for the various projects," Xu Miaojin's tone became serious, "in the past, when the imperial court carried out projects, whether it was repairing river embankments, building city walls, or paving roads and building bridges, it was mainly through corvée labor."

"The people provide their own food and serve the country, so the government does not need to pay them a single penny."

“Among these transactions, there are very few monetary transactions, and even if officials have greedy intentions, it is difficult to find a way to embezzle.”

"How can they embezzle if they have no money?"

"The main problem is that some low-level officials take the opportunity to act arrogantly, beat and scold migrant workers, extort, oppress and exploit them to the bone."

"Such behavior is certainly hateful, but it is superficial and easy to detect."

“As long as the people have channels to report and expose wrongdoing, they can be severely punished, and gradually they will not dare to do so.”

"Since His Majesty implemented the new policies and abolished corvée labor, all projects are accounted for in silver, and materials are purchased and workers are paid in silver."

"As a result, the amount of money in the hands of officials surged dramatically, like a flood."

"The exact cost and expenses of a project have become the most difficult accounts to monitor accurately."

“The migrant workers who received their wages felt only gratitude and naturally wouldn’t report the corrupt officials; they didn’t care about that either.”

"Just like the people in the disaster area today, who received life-saving porridge and steamed buns, they will not ask whether the officials have distributed all the money and grain of the imperial court."

"As for those officials, they pocketed large sums of public funds, indulging in delicacies every day and revelry every night."

“These are things that ordinary people neither see nor care about.”

"Therefore, the people's supervision became empty talk."

Xu Miaojin sighed softly and concluded, "This is not a new problem, but a chronic one."

“In the past, when the imperial court built palaces and purchased wood and stone, if two or three tenths of the money was actually used for practical purposes, it would be considered the best.”

"That was right under the emperor's nose, in full view of everyone."

"Now that His Majesty has extended this law to the whole country, officials are holding a lot of money. Faced with this inexhaustible 'public funds,' which are not directly extracted from the people, they can neither provoke public resentment nor lose money with their colleagues, thus forming a huge network of interests."

"Human nature is driven by self-interest; how many people can resist such temptation?"

"This is not His Majesty's fault either."

Zhu Yunwen gave Xu Miaojin a deep look, then waved for the guards beside him to step back and ordered them to take away the bound corrupt officials.

When only the two of them remained in the tent, he finally spoke, saying in a slightly weary voice, "You don't need to bother comforting me."

"I truly hate these corrupt officials."

"But in fact, I had already foreseen the corruption of these officials when I was implementing the new policies."

"It could even be said that their embezzlement was an unavoidable part of the operation of the new policy."

“I knew from the beginning that they would exploit the loopholes in the supervision after the implementation of the new policy to embezzle funds.”

……

(End of this chapter)