My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 785: Taking advantage of the destruction of Cao to change the selection

"I hope you are well, Ziyu! Yunchang has worked hard too."

On the day before New Year's Eve of the 17th year of Jian'an, outside Suiyang City, the seat of Liang County.

Liu Bei, the Grand Marshal of the Han Dynasty, General of Chariots and Cavalry, and Marquis of Wuchang, personally went out of the city to welcome Zhuge Jin, Guan Yu and others who came from the north.

Before he even came to the front, Liu Bei stretched out his hand in a high-spirited manner to invite him. Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu naturally dismounted from their horses, handed the reins to the attendants beside them, and then walked away in small steps. However, before they could even finish their salute, Liu Bei grabbed their sleeves on the left and right, and pulled them side by side.

Counting the days, Liu Bei and Zhuge Jin haven't seen each other for more than a year.

This Northern Expedition began in the autumn of the 16th year of Jian'an, and now it is the end of December of the 17th year of Jian'an. In addition, Zhuge Jin had already gone to Youzhou to make preparations a few months before the official war, so it has been a full year and a half since he left Liu Bei and headed north.

After Liu Bei briefly exchanged greetings with Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu, it was Zhuge Liang and Zhang Fei's turn to greet Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu respectively.

"Meet the elder brother/second brother."

There is no need to elaborate on the red tape. Soon, the group returned to Suiyang City and held a welcoming banquet in the original residence of Prince Liang.

In the next few days, Liu Bei and his entourage will stay here temporarily to discuss government affairs.

Many people may find it strange that there is an abandoned royal palace in Sui Yang City?

In fact, Liang County was a county/state in the Eastern Han Dynasty. As early as the time of Emperor Zhang of Han, his brothers were made kings. His seventh brother Liu Chang was made the King of Liang, and his palace was in Suiyang. Later, it was passed down to today through four generations of Liu Jian, Liu Cheng, Liu Yuan, and Liu Mi. In Liu Chang's time, there was a prime minister in the area, but later he was fined and deprived of his power, so he was replaced by a prefect.

Today, Liu Mi, the King of Liang, theoretically inherited the title during the Guanghe reign of Emperor Lingdi, four years before the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Historically, he held the title of King of Liang for forty years until Cao Pi usurped the Han Dynasty and demoted him to the title of Chongde Marquis.

But in reality, Liang was a place where wars were frequent, and Liu Mi had left the area for decades. The former royal palace had long been in disrepair and had been used for other purposes. No one cared about such trivial matters during the war.

It was definitely not Liu Bei who was the first to embezzle funds, and it was not even Cao Cao who was the first to embezzle funds. It was a mess that could no longer be sorted out.

Suiyang had just been captured a few days ago, and most places had not been repaired yet. When entering the city, you could still see smoking embers in the distance.

The mansion where Liu Bei and his men were stationed had been slightly renovated, at least it was cleaned up. But the food for the welcoming banquet was not very rich, there was not much fresh game and fish, and they could only eat some meat brought in by the army.

Fortunately, Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu don't care about these things.

After three rounds of drinking and talking about their last visit, Liu Bei asked about business:

"Zi Yu, a few days ago, Kong Ming advised me to take advantage of this opportunity to pacify Yanzhou and Jizhou to promote some reforms in the administration of officials and the selection of officials that I had considered in previous years but the time was not ripe at that time.

I also think this proposal makes sense. If the world is pacified and there is no more war, it will be more difficult to eliminate resistance if we want to make drastic reforms. Now, with 500,000 or 600,000 troops at hand, anyone who dares to oppose will inevitably collude with Cao Cao, so we can just wipe them out with thunderbolts! What do you think?"

The reason why Liu Bei dared to say this was naturally because at this moment, the people in this room were all his absolute confidants.

Apart from Liu, Guan, Zhang and the Zhuge brothers, there were only Pang Tong, Lu Su and Zhou Yu, a total of eight people present.

Even Wei Yan, who was responsible for the capture of Suiyang, did not attend the banquet - of course Liu Bei did not say that Wei Yan was not qualified, but he was hit by a crossbow arrow when attacking Suiyang and now he needed to recuperate, so he just used this excuse to get rid of him.

The so-called small meeting for big events, when there are only eight people, some relatively straightforward words can be said openly, there is no need to hide them.

After hearing this, Zhuge Jin subconsciously glanced at his second brother. Zhuge Liang also signaled to him with his eyes and nodded slightly.

Zhuge Jin frowned and asked, "When I first entered Shu a few years ago, I did discuss this with my lord and my brother. At that time, I had a wild idea and thought of a way to eliminate the malpractice of selecting officials since the Han Dynasty.

To prevent the local governors from colluding with the powerful families, the selected officials would not only be incompetent, but also easily lead to the local authorities being unable to get rid of their power. But my younger brother also opposed this suggestion at the time, thinking it was too hasty. Moreover, in wartime, it is easy to see whether an official is mediocre or not, so there is no need to rely on assessments...

Later I figured it out. The method of assessment should only be used in times of peace, when the performance of officials and clerks is not easy to discern and promotion and screening becomes difficult, and then there will be an urgent need to find other ways to assess them.

However, when peace comes, if you want to change these "laws of our ancestors", you will definitely be opposed by many corrupt scholars. It is indeed not as easy as changing the law now.

Therefore, I think it is not that this matter cannot be advanced, but we need to find a reasonable excuse so that people in the world will not feel awkward and will not see that the lord is just trying to take advantage of the fact that Cao Cao has not been eliminated to kill rabbits by robbing grass. "

While listening, Liu Bei slowly took a few sips of wine. After listening, he looked at Zhuge Liang thoughtfully.

Zhuge Liang also quickly expressed his agreement, admitting that if this matter was to be pushed forward at the moment and if the resistance was to be eased, the key was to come up with a smoother excuse for the transition.

Otherwise, the act of "using military power to reform the system" would seem a bit ugly.

Liu Bei then asked with a smile: "Has Kong Ming come up with a good plan?"

Zhuge Liang was not a god, and he quickly said, "This is exactly what we need to discuss in this collective effort. I don't have a perfect solution."

Liu Bei was not surprised. If Zhuge Liang had come up with a foolproof plan immediately, there would be no need to hold this meeting today.

But it doesn't matter. Now that the Zhuge brothers meet again, there are plenty of opportunities for them to exchange ideas. What's more, there are Lu Su, Pang Tong and Zhou Yu to help them find solutions.

Liu Bei was sure that brainstorming would always produce something useful. After Zhuge Jin understood the current situation, he knew that he would have to take the lead in today's meeting, first think of a direction to think about, and then let everyone work hard in that direction.

He had gotten used to this rhythm over the past decade. His greatest strength was his foresight and his ability to see things from a high perspective, but he was definitely not as good as his second brother in terms of perfecting details and solving specific problems.

Of course, this does not mean that Zhuge Jin has not made any progress in this area in the seventeen years since he traveled through time. On the contrary, he has made a lot of progress, especially as he often exchanges ideas with his second brother. His brain is getting better and better as he uses it.

However, no matter how much progress he makes, he is only second to none in the world in handling details and deducing. In this respect, his second younger brother is indeed better than him. It can only be said that everyone has his own strengths.

Zhuge Jin quickly went through the many game theory and logic models he had learned in later generations in his mind, applying them one by one, and soon came up with a vague direction for his efforts.

He thought to himself: "If you want to convince people to change the law, there must be an exchange of interests first. If you just use force, it will be easy to be ugly, and it will also damage the reputation of benevolence that the lord has accumulated over the years, which will easily provoke resistance.

If we are going to do it, we must do it beautifully. If we are worried about giving up too much profit, the worst that can happen is that we can set a smaller sweetener, but we must never give nothing at all.

After giving a little sweetness, if we want the other party to give up a big benefit, we probably have to use the old method that has been tried and tested. First, we threaten to tear down the roof. When the other party strongly opposes, we say we can compromise and just open a window. At this time, in order to avoid tearing down the roof, the opposition will probably have to accept the window plan with a pinch of their nose..."

After some sorting, Zhuge Jin quickly identified two basic points:
First, you can’t just ask for benefits, you have to give and take, and give some small sweets. Second, if the sweets are not big enough, you can rely on the bargaining mode of asking for a sky-high price to scare the other party first.

Regardless of the final details, these two directions of effort are correct.

Then, Zhuge Jin vaguely told everyone about this direction of thinking, which was regarded as the guiding ideology of this meeting.

Liu Bei immediately approved of this guiding ideology.

Zhuge Liang also understood immediately, because he was used to his elder brother's way of thinking, so he was not surprised at all. Instead, he felt that he could immediately think of the details along the way. The two brothers had a very good understanding.

Among the rest of the people, Lu Su is the one who can best match Zhuge Jin's thinking, while Pang Tong and Zhou Yu are slightly lower in rank - of course, this does not mean that these two are inferior to Lu Su in intelligence and experience, but that Lu Su has a better overall view and a higher vision than them.

Everyone followed this line of thought and talked for a while, inspiring each other. They had some vague directions to work towards, but it still seemed like castles in the air and difficult to realize.

Zhuge Liang thought for a moment and suggested, "Brother, why don't you tell me what effect you want to achieve after the reform of the official selection method in your mind, and then we can discuss how much benefits to give up and how to compromise."

Zhuge Jin thought about it and it made sense. Since they wanted to negotiate the terms, they must first make the ideal opening price clear.

He was good at this, because there were so many ready-made conditions for the reform of the imperial examination system in later generations that could be used as reference. He only needed to modify it slightly to make it conform to the political foundation of the Han Dynasty.

Zhuge Jin sorted out the situation and said immediately: "My ideal method of selecting officials is to ensure that the talents selected by local prefectures and counties can be evaluated by the court in the future. Those who are not qualified will be demoted and sent back to the local areas and will not be reused.

In order to carry out the assessment, the number of candidates had to be increased several times during the initial selection process, so that they could be carefully selected. Originally, there was only one filial and honest person for every 200,000 households in each county. In the future, for example, there could be one candidate for every 50,000 households. After arriving at the court, the ratio of four to one or even five to one would be used to eliminate the unqualified candidates.

We can even consider combining the two most commonly used categories of Xiaolian and Maocai, allowing local areas to still select candidates based on their conduct. As long as they have good moral character, they can still be selected. However, when it comes to the court's assessment, if they do not have the talent and knowledge, they will still be dismissed.

At that time, virtue will become a stepping stone, just the initial threshold, and talent and learning will be the key to whether to be appointed as an official. However, we will not completely change the Han Dynasty's advocacy of emphasizing virtue and filial piety since ancient times, so that people in the world can have more buffer time.

We can even give those who are selected as filial and honest and sent to the court to take the examination, but fail to pass the examination, a small amount of rice, for example, 100 dan per year, as a means to appease people's hearts in the transition period. After the next ten years, or even longer, we can gradually reduce it. Finally, we can use the old rules for the old and the new rules for the new. After a certain number of years, if there are those who fail to pass the examination and are dismissed in the re-examination, they will no longer be given the guaranteed rice, or at least the amount will be reduced. "

Zhuge Jin was still very cautious. He never thought of implementing the Song and Ming-style imperial examination system right from the start. That would certainly have been met with fierce opposition and might even have delayed Liu Bei's cause of reunification.

Therefore, it is the most stable to take it step by step and adopt the transitional mode of "half recommendation and half imperial examination" like the Sui and Tang dynasties. There were imperial examinations in the Sui and Tang dynasties, but who could take the examinations was still very much influenced by the recommendation of local officials. The grassroots lacked the grassroots examinations of the later Song and Ming dynasties, such as the academy examination, prefecture examination, and county examination.

In the Han Dynasty, talents recommended by local governments could directly become officials. It was impossible for Zhuge Jin to completely deprive local governments of this personnel power all at once. He could only gradually conceive of a mixed model in which "local governments still have the right to recommend, but the central government will take exams and select the best candidates for admission for those recommended."

Moreover, he cleverly combined the two most mainstream categories of the Han Dynasty, namely, the Talented and Filial and Honest, into one. Local governments could select people with “virtue”, and the central government could select people with “virtue” from among all those who already had “virtue”. This was also the most stable model in the transition period, and the one that was most easily accepted by local governments.

His idea is definitely not mature yet, but it doesn’t matter, his second brother Zhuge Liang will help him improve it slowly.

Some details are too radical and advanced, so we should slow down for now. There are also some places where we can take bigger steps, and everyone can bring them up and discuss them together.

After some discussion, Liu Bei made a preliminary statement: "The method Ziyu mentioned can indeed eliminate the hundreds of years of malpractices in the selection of officials in our Han Dynasty. For more than a hundred years, which county governor has not been controlled by local tyrants and aristocratic families?
If the person recommended is not to the liking of the noble family, the noble family will not exchange interests with the prefect. If the quota of filial and honest officials is not given to the local tyrants, the tyrants will harm the local area, disrupt governance, and make the prefect's political achievements unbearable, and use this as a threat. The noble families and the powerful people use one inducement and the other coercion, which has led to the increasingly corrupt method of the imperial court! It's time to make a ruthless change. Even if the world is peaceful in the future, we can't go back to the old way. "

Liu Bei had spoken, and the direction of the effort was temporarily determined. The bargaining chips to be fought for in the reform also gradually became clear.

The remaining two problems are: how to create a "roof-lifting" plan, first asking for a sky-high price, then waiting for local opposition, and then gradually lowering the price back to "opening the window".

Secondly, it is about how to give some sweet treats as the “carrot” in the carrot and stick approach after the reform.

And you can't just find this "carrot" randomly. You have to combine the current actual situation and give a clever opportunity to lead out this carrot. You can't just imagine it out of thin air.

The best case scenario is that this "radish" was originally taken away by Cao Cao's tyranny, and now that Liu Bei has returned, he wants to "overcorrect" and return what Cao Cao took away. It would be best if he could go a step further, do better and be more tolerant than before the Han Dynasty, and impose fewer restrictions on officials and people than before.

Taking these two points into consideration, this "carrot" is definitely not easy to find, and one needs to take into account the right time, place and people.

(End of this chapter)