Sky Curtain: The opening scene explains the four major cases of the Ming Dynasty plus the early Ming

"Family members, let's take a look at the Jiajing New Policies."

Zhu Dijun picked up a red marker and drew a rough dividing line on the whiteboard. On the left, he wrote "The Great Rites Controversy," and on the right, he wrote "The Jiajing New Policies."

"After spending so many episodes, thoroughly exposing the Great Rites Controversy, from the flogging at Zuoshun Gate to the wrongful conviction of Li Fuda, from inviting wolves into the house to the Ganzhou Incident, the eighteen-year-old Zhu Houcong spent three whole years finally crushing the backbone of these civil officials."

He tore off the paper to the left of the dividing line, leaving only the three words on the right.

"Now, this Taoist Emperor can finally free up his hands and get some serious business done."

On the large screen, an extremely detailed list of policies from the Jiajing reign appeared one by one.

"The first blow of Jiajing's New Policies was aimed at the most bloated lump of fat in the Ming Dynasty—redundant officials and bureaucrats!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers tapped on the keyboard, and a set of data appeared.

"Fellow family members, do you know how many useless idlers the Ming court supported at the end of the Zhengde reign? There were hundreds of thousands of bannermen and laborers in the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Imperial Eunuch Bureau who were fraudulently receiving salaries! These people didn't fight, didn't farm, and didn't pay taxes. Their daily work was simply to eat the court's food and defecate in the court's mess!"

"After Jiajing came to power, he issued a decree directly—to cut! Hundreds of thousands of redundant officials were dismissed without hesitation! Every year, this alone saved the national treasury a sum of money that would make the Minister of Revenue laugh in his dreams!"

"However, we cannot deny that these hundreds of thousands of redundant officials were the most effective foundation for Zhu Houzhao to implement his Zhengde New Policies. Some of them died during the initial investigation and confiscation of evidence of corruption, while others died later in the so-called peasant uprising led by Liu Liu and Liu Qi, which was actually a purge of the emperor's party at the grassroots level."

A few comments scrolled across the live stream screen.

"Hundreds of thousands of people? Isn't this just an ancient version of state-owned enterprise downsizing and efficiency improvement?"

"The Taoist priest's strike was quite brutal, but won't these people cause trouble after being laid off?"

["Why doesn't the Taoist priest recruit these people? Since they are Zhu Houzhao's men, they could also become the Taoist priest's men."]

Zhu Dijun snorted coldly.

"As for causing trouble? Jiajing just had seventeen high-ranking officials killed at Zuoshun Gate, even a third-rank vice minister was smashed to death on the spot against a gold brick. You're just a lowly bannerman on a monthly salary, who are you trying to impress?"

"And why not incorporate them into the army? It's simple: there's no money. During the reign of Emperor Jiajing, funds were allocated to rescue people and fight wars because of border troubles and natural disasters. How could we support them if we didn't have the money?"

He turned around and wrote the second line on the whiteboard.

"The second strike! To suppress the eunuchs!"

"Family members, what was the greatest political legacy of the Zhengde reign? It wasn't the Leopard Chamber, nor the Battle of Yingzhou, but the Eight Tigers' usurpation of power orchestrated by that eunuch Liu Jin! For five whole years, the entire Ming Dynasty's civil and military officials were being ridden and humiliated by eunuchs!"

Zhu Dijun held up one finger.

"Jiajing learned this lesson. How strict was his control over the eunuchs? Those who broke the law were whipped to death! It wasn't just a couple of lashes for show; they were really whipped to death!"

"But an even more ruthless move was to withdraw the garrison eunuch!"

On the large screen, a dozen or so red markers were distributed across the map of the Ming Dynasty, representing the garrison posts of the eunuchs stationed in various provinces. As Zhu Dijun explained, these red dots went out one by one.

"Starting from the Hongxi and Xuande reigns, the Ming Dynasty dispatched eunuchs to govern the provinces. These eunuchs levied exorbitant taxes and oppressed the people, acting like bandits in python robes. The Jiajing Emperor directly ordered their withdrawal! He also tightly controlled the power of the Directorate of Ceremonial, consolidating all imperial approval authority into the emperor's own hands!"

"This move effectively removed the biggest political cancer in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty! From the Jiajing reign until Zhang Juzheng took power in the early Wanli period, the Ming Dynasty never produced another eunuch who could be compared to Liu Jin and Wang Zhen!"

"However, there are both advantages and disadvantages to this. The garrison eunuchs were another eye for the emperors to monitor the local areas. Abolishing this eye had various benefits in the short term, but naturally, there would be corresponding drawbacks in the long term."

"At that time, Jiajing knew how he came to the throne. After his cousin Zhengde was murdered by the civil officials, he had several opportunities to leave the Leopard Chamber to ask doctors from the capital to come and treat him, but Yang Yiqing, Zhang Yong, Empress Dowager Zhang and others joined forces to stop him. Then he was sent away by a bowl of poison from the imperial physician."

"The eunuchs around Jiajing when he first ascended the throne were less like royal servants or members of the emperor's faction, and more like dogs of the civil official group. They were also like eyes watching Jiajing. Before he replaced them with his own people, Jiajing would not allow a powerful eunuch group that was not under his control to emerge."

A parallel timeline of the Zhengde era, 3 years in total.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Houzhao, who was in the Leopard Chamber, paused slightly in the hand holding his wine cup.

He turned his head and glanced at Liu Jin, who was kneeling beside him, trembling because of the content displayed on the screen.

"My lord, you see, you were right. Who knew Zhang Yong and his men would betray me? It's normal that my cousin doesn't trust eunuchs. I trust you."

Liu Jin was covered in cold sweat and dared not utter a single word.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel continued to penetrate deeper.

"The third blow! Clearing out the estates of the Xun and Qi families! This is the main event of the Jiajing New Deal!"

He slapped open the map on the big screen, revealing densely packed yellow blocks that occupied nearly a third of the area of ​​Beizhili.

"Family members, look at this yellow expanse! This is all farmland illegally seized by imperial relatives and powerful eunuchs! From the Yongle reign to the Zhengde reign, for over a hundred years, these people have used their ancestors' titles as tokens to frantically acquire land in the capital region!"

"The people's fields have been seized; they are registered as residents but not as landowners, so the imperial court can't collect taxes. This is called 'Land Loss'! It's not just land that's lost, it's the lifeblood of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Dijun drew a heavy arrow on the whiteboard.

"Jiajing ordered a land survey! He sent people to measure every acre of land! After the survey was completed, all land that had been illegally occupied was to be returned to the people! Land that could not be returned was to be used as military farms!"

"How many people have been offended by this single strike? The entire capital's relatives of the emperor, dukes, and earls are all outraged! But Jiajing has just finished attacking Zuoshun Gate, and he holds the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Beijing Garrison in his hands. Who dares to utter a sound?"

A flurry of praise flooded the screen.

"This is real work! All that partisan strife was suffocating; finally, something practical is happening."

"Land surveying—isn't that exactly what Zhang Juzheng later did? It turns out Jiajing had already started this long ago!"

"That's right!"

Zhu Dijun clapped his hands.

"In some areas, the Jiajing New Deal even began to pilot a new tax law that combined taxes and corvée labor, levying them in silver! This thing has a more famous name in later generations—the prototype of the Single Whip Law!"

"The core economic reform ideas of Zhang Juzheng's Wanli Reforms were already being tested during the Jiajing reign!"

"However, Zhang Juzheng's stance was biased; he sided with the civil service group, specifically referring to Zhang Juzheng's reforms during the Wanli era."

Zhu Dijun paused for a moment, picked up his water glass, and took a sip.

"In addition to economic reforms, Jiajing also rectified education. He assessed the officials in charge of education, and those who failed were dismissed immediately. He limited the number of officials appointed through hereditary privilege and cleaned up redundant staff at the Imperial Academy. In modern terms, he closed the back door for those with connections, ensuring that children from poor families had a chance to succeed in the imperial examinations."

He put down his water glass, and the light in his eyes suddenly dimmed slightly.

"Hearing this, don't you think the Jiajing Emperor's New Policies were incredibly impressive? He cut redundant officials, suppressed eunuchs, cleaned up estates, reformed the tax system, and reorganized education. With these five measures, the Ming Dynasty was completely transformed, and the world unanimously praised its good governance!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly moved closer to the camera.

"but--"

The large screen went dark instantly.

Four extremely glaring red characters were thrown against a black background: "[A promising start but a disappointing finish]".

The "Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming," the official history compiled during the Jiajing reign, offered a classic four-character evaluation of the Jiajing reforms: "Several lines, several stops!"

"What does 'always proceeding and stopping' mean? It means doing a couple of things and then stopping, taking three steps forward and two steps back! Many measures in the new policies were halted halfway through implementation! The land survey wasn't completed, the tax reform wasn't promoted, and by the mid-to-late Jiajing period, this Taoist emperor had become obsessed with alchemy and Taoist cultivation, engaging in large-scale construction of Taoist temples, with the national treasury's silver being thrown into the furnace like water!"

Judy Jun's voice was filled with strong sarcasm.

"How do traditional historians interpret this? It's all Jiajing's fault! The emperor was negligent in his duties! The emperor was incompetent! The emperor was obsessed with superstition!"

He slammed his hand on the whiteboard.

"Bullshit!"

The comments section paused for a second.

"Family members, let me ask you a question. Whose interests were threatened by the Jiajing Emperor's New Policies? When he cut redundant officials, whose connections were affected? When he cleared out estates, whose land was seized? When he reformed the tax system, whose source of income was cut off?"

The answer speaks for itself.

"It all points to the same group of people—nobles, eunuchs, local tyrants, and the huge, deeply entrenched civil service interest group standing behind them!"

"When Jiajing's sword was halfway down, didn't these people resist? Of course they resisted! And their method of resistance was a thousand times more insidious than openly defying the imperial decree—they used subtle resistance at the execution level!"

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped his fingers on the table.

"The emperor orders a land survey? Yes, Your Majesty. Then the officials sent out go to the local areas, have a couple of drinks with the local gentry, and come back to report that the survey is complete and the data is exactly the same as before. The emperor orders a tax reform? Yes, Your Majesty. The documents are written beautifully, but when they reach the grassroots level, they all become new tools for further exploiting the people."

"Government orders cannot leave the Forbidden City!"

Zhu Dijun straightened up.

"Jiajing was a smart man. He spent more than twenty years cultivating immortality in the Western Garden. Do you think he really didn't know what was going on underneath? He knew! He knew all too well! But he had already exhausted all his political credibility in the Great Rites Controversy. He had neither a grassroots implementation team capable of carrying out reforms, nor a super prime minister like Zhang Juzheng who could act as his front man."

"All he could use were the swords of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the incense in the Western Garden Abode. Swords can kill, but they can't destroy the entire bureaucratic system. Incense can prolong life, but it can't revive an empire that's rotten to the core."

Zhu Dijun slowly sat back down in his chair.

"So, you can judge for yourselves what the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Jiajing' says about 'starting strong but finishing weak' and 'being obsessed with Taoism.' Who wrote the record? It was the group of civil officials who succeeded Jiajing during the Longqing reign. Of course, they wanted to shift all the blame onto the dead emperor. The reforms failed because the emperor was playful, not because we, the implementers, were sabotaging them from below."

"The failure of the Jiajing Emperor's reforms was never due to his negligence. Rather, it was because—"

He wrote the last line on the whiteboard.

"In the highly developed bureaucratic empire of the Ming Dynasty, any top-down reform that touched the fundamental interests of the entire vested interest group would eventually be digested, distorted, and spit out a clump of unrecognizable dregs by this massive bureaucratic machine."

Zhu Dijun picked up the remote control but didn't turn off the screen.

"Family members, does the scenario of the Jiajing Emperor's New Policies seem strangely familiar?"

Two dangerous flames suddenly ignited in his eyes.

"A promising start followed by a disappointing finish? A series of actions followed by a halt? The policy ends with the death of the leader? Isn't this the standard way all reforms in Chinese history have failed?!"

"To truly understand why the Jiajing Reforms were destined to fail, we need to turn back the clock—to the Zhengde reign. If the Jiajing Reforms were a fever reducer, then the Zhengde Reforms were an attempted coup d'état!"