In the next period of time, Liu Bei was very busy and spent almost all his time on work.
After the war, a series of post-war aftermath work was complicated, including the comprehensive land conservancy and subsequent land granting. It required a large number of officials to devote themselves to it, and even he, the emperor, would not have much time to rest.
During this wave of chaos, many officials either rebelled and were killed, or were unable to cope with the difficulties. They were unable to advance or retreat, causing too much local losses and were dismissed from their posts. Lin Lin finally came to his senses. This wave of Dutian chaos also brought about Tens of thousands of officials were replaced.
This is definitely a good thing for the country in the long run, because those who are incompetent or dissatisfied will be exposed and will be punished well, and there will be no more things worth worrying about.
But for the short term, the problem is still quite big.
Busy, just busy, the aftermath of the war, the selection and replacement of officials, one after another, all busy things, the entire first year of Zhenguan passed by like this.
But such busyness can also bring great benefits, such as the great progress in agricultural collectivization.
In the past, because there was no compulsory enforcement method and a voluntary principle was mainly followed, all the land expropriated by the imperial court and the emancipated slaves were of course arranged into collective farms, which served as local prototypes for free farmers to choose from.
Some people saw the benefits of agricultural collectivization and chose to join, while others insisted on family production and did not want to join. They always felt that these officials in the court had no good intentions.
Of course Liu Bei is tolerant. If you are willing, I will accept you if you are not willing. I will not force you. If you want to leave, I will let you go.
Maintaining this loose policy rule, the degree of agricultural collectivization in the entire Jiangbei region is higher in the west and lower in the east.
The degree of agricultural collectivization in Kansai is very high, especially in a place like Liangzhou, where the degree of agricultural collectivization is almost 100%.
The degree of agricultural collectivization in the Guanzhong area and northern Yizhou is also very high, generally exceeding 80% or even 90%. Bingzhou and Youzhou, due to long-term wars, have naturally promoted collectivized agricultural production after they were pacified. , local people are generally willing to accept it due to their need for safety.
When it comes to Jizhou, the degree of agricultural collectivization in northern Jizhou is relatively high, reaching more than 70%, while in the south it is relatively low, even less than 30% in some areas. This is also the reason why southern Jizhou was affected by the Dutian Rebellion. One of the reasons why the situation is particularly serious.
In the Central Plains, the degree of agricultural collectivization varies. Overall, it can be more than 50 percent. In some areas, it can be as high as 60 or 70 percent. In some areas, it can be as low as 3 percent. forty.
Let’s not talk about the south of the Yangtze River. It doesn’t make much difference whether it exists or not.
After the Dutian Rebellion, because the outstanding performance of the collective farms during the war was very eye-catching, the free farmers saw the superiority of the collective farms and their strong ability to withstand disasters, so they voted collectively with their feet. Large batches were required to join the collective farms.
Because there were so many people asking to join the collective farms that the government did not have enough manpower, so they had to wait in line, one village at a time.
However, the more this happens, the more people want to join, and the more difficult it is, the more people want to get it.
When the government worked hard to publicize it, few people were interested. It can only be said that this is an exposure of human nature.
The affairs of the collective farm took a lot of time to manage and deal with. Because the other party was short of manpower, Liu Bei announced that the local government could ask for the help of the county soldiers. The soldiers were all educated, had drunk ink, and could handle these matters. To bring them over would be like adding thousands more clerks out of thin air.
Isn’t this person enough?
It is impossible for me to recruit more officials. It is not that easy. There are only tens of millions of people, but there are 160,000 to 70,000 officials and 200,000 county and national soldiers. If you add one yuan, it means more than 300,000 people are helping to govern.
And with the spread of collective farms in the future, the number of government representatives will also increase. Soon the number of officials will exceed 170,000. In addition, there will be 300,000 troops to be responsible for the war. The number of people who feed the finance is equal to six One hundred and seventy thousand.
There are also palace chamberlains and maids in the palace, and there are many semi-official government animal husbandry employees on the northern border. There are all kinds of people. Soon there will be 700,000 people eating from the finance.
There is a high probability that the current population of the Han Empire has not exceeded 70 million, and at most it is close to 70 million. This means that on average, 100 people have to support one financial breadwinner. Judging from the current productivity, it is almost enough. It must be Leave some space for the future, and you cannot use up all the expansion quota now.
Otherwise, the Third Empire of Han Dynasty that he controlled would also be remembered in history as "redundant officials and redundant soldiers."
Therefore, Liu Bei did not agree to some people's request to expand the number of officials. Instead, he incorporated the county and state soldiers into the local governance system and asked them to help when necessary. If he suffered, the people and Emperor Liu would be happy. .
Liu Bei and his cabinet ministers began to work overtime on a nine-nine-sixth day, working overtime to deal with the influx of government affairs requests from the local area, while at the same time he had to be distracted by the selection of officials.
Although it is not the right time to hold the imperial examination at this stage, because the personnel power is completely under his control, no one can question his personnel power. Therefore, in terms of personnel, Liu Bei has begun to use examinations to select new officials.
The personnel power of the empire now belongs to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which has all the power of selection. The main selection targets are students from Luoyang Taixue and various states. With this status, if you think your knowledge is good, then you can participate An internal examination held by the Luoyang Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The people selected by the examination are basically civil servants. This is Liu Bei's determination of some basic rules for the selection examination of the civil servants.
Because the responsibilities of officials and clerks are different, the responsibilities of officials are obviously heavier, and the responsibilities they bear to the people are also very important. It is difficult to be a good official without experience.
One of the major drawbacks of the ancient imperial examinations was that they selected some pure newcomers with no official experience to serve as local officials, which caused a lot of funny things.
Therefore, after Zhu Yuanzhang conferred officials on the new scholars, he also distributed to them the required reading manual for local county officials and provided them with temporary training to prevent these fools from being deceived by local officials and being sold and returned. Count the money for them.
Zhu Yuanzhang's ability to issue such a patch only shows that such things have happened more than once before, and have even become a serious problem that the emperor takes seriously.
It is indeed not easy for a newcomer to be the chief official of a county. Although the local population is not large these days, officials are still responsible for the lives of those places. If they are not careful and cause a human life incident, people will also blame the court.
Therefore, Liu Bei's plan is to limit the personnel selected by the examination to the category of officials, and then open up the selection ladder from clerks to officials, so that the officials can become the reserve army of officials.
If you want to become a formal official, you must first pass the Civil Service Examination and serve as a low-level official, accumulate sufficient experience, and then achieve results, and then pass the further official selection examination to become an imperial official.
Think about it. There are nearly 170,000 civil servants in the empire. There are only more than 7,000 serious officials and dignitaries. The rest are all petty officials. The people with the most experience in politics, except for the officials themselves, are this group of petty officials. Official.
The most important people who deal with the people and implement the government's governance goals are this group of petty officials.
Can they not be important?
Can their quality and behavior be unimportant?
Their performance can basically represent the people's views on the imperial court. The strength of their execution represents the strength of the imperial court's ability to govern. Their various performances basically represent everything about the Han Empire.
For many moments in the past and in the future, officials and officials were unable to communicate with each other.
During the Song and Ming dynasties, clerks could not become officials. However, due to the establishment of the official transfer system, the local foundation of officials was far less deep than that of clerks.
It is true that this is good for the governance of the court, because after all, the status of officials is higher. If they hold too much real power, the court will be worried. Although petty officials have real power, they have no status. The big picture of the whole place.
So it is better to let officials and officials fight with each other.
It’s just that the further back, the greater the negative impact.
If you think about it, you can understand that local county officials serve for two to three or three to four years and then leave. However, some petty officials can even serve more than a dozen county officials from birth to death, so that there are so-called iron-clad officials. The official theory of flowing water.
In the later stages of development, many official positions actually became hereditary positions held by some small and medium-sized local families. By monopolizing these official positions that held certain local powers, some local families in turn became important sources of support for officials in the imperial court. Without them, If we don't cooperate, it will be difficult to govern the place.
They do not have a high status, but they are the uncrowned kings of the local area. Three to five to ninety official families are connected together, which is enough to monopolize the basic real power of a small county. Son.
Of course, they will not openly oppose officials. After all, their status is completely different from that of officials. But as long as they can be coaxed well, they can be deceived. As long as they can be deceived, they can do a lot of things. want to do.
Therefore, Liu Bei absorbed the experience and lessons in this area and believed that the imperial court should also have basic control over the quality and appointment of local officials. Only more than 7,000 officials and dignitaries could not govern the world, and there were no remaining 160,000 officials. The implementation of the policy is not good at politics.
Just as Liu Bei set up a law school to assess, train and basically control the quality of two hundred thousand county soldiers, because he knew that the existence of county soldiers was crucial to local governance, and now, the officials Presence and quality are equally important for local governance.
That's why Liu Bei asked the Ministry of Civil Affairs to fully control the selection and evaluation of officials in various places. Don't worry about officials first. Officials can be left to higher levels for control. In fact, the appointment of each official can be approved by the emperor. Let's control it, but there are too many officials.
Using examinations to conduct a round of screening and appointment, although it cannot filter out the scum, can filter out the scum who lack the ability, avoid technical problems in local governance, and prevent the local government from making technical adjustments and completely collapsing. That would be fun. .
As for the problem of scum, our own laws can be used as a response.
An exam can solve half of the problems in national governance, which is a huge contribution.
According to Liu Bei's rules, the content of the internal examination of the Ministry of Civil Affairs is similar to that taught in Taixue and academies. Except for a few theoretical contents, most of them are practical in nature.
Because the selection is mainly for civil servants, they are all service positions, so the requirements for practical operation are relatively large, and because most of the job requirements are in local areas, in collective farms and county governments, generally speaking, there is a demand for agricultural knowledge. It will be extremely large and the requirements will be very high.
Knowledge related to agricultural production, including astronomy, geography, hydrological environment, crop types and growth habits, etc., are all top priority.
Of course, for this aspect of work, there are also requirements for tax collectors. This wave of civil service examinations also has a large demand for tax officials.
Because of the new situation brought about by the successful promotion of the Du Tian Decree and the promulgation of the new tax law, at present, the court needs a considerable number of tax collectors to implement the requirements of the new tax law.
Because he did not want to recruit too aggressively, Liu Bei had already initiated the reorganization of some unimportant and idle departments in the court in advance.
Many idle departments with nothing to do, such as librarians, were eliminated on a large scale by Liu Bei. Basically, nine out of ten positions were eliminated. After the elimination, the vacated people were assigned to taxation positions and became tax collectors.
Liu Bei believed that those idle departments had nothing to do. It was a waste to sit all day with a cup of tea and a book, and get the salary from the court for free without doing anything serious.
So after the Tiandu Order was launched, Liu Bei asked the Ministry of Civil Affairs to count the number of officials in the Qingshui Department and the Qingshui Department in the court, as well as the things they were responsible for. After careful inspection, he came to a conclusion.
If there are ten people in these idle departments, the things they need to do and the responsibilities they bear can actually be completed by only one person working overtime. The remaining nine people are equivalent to defrauding the court of money and do not exist at all. necessary.
It is said that some positions did not exist at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, but were gradually added to the breakdown of rights and responsibilities. However, after adding people, not only did the work efficiency not improve, but the imperfect breakdown of rights and responsibilities also led to mutual disputes and buck-passing. Issues of responsibility.
As a result, the number of officials increased, but the efficiency of work decreased.
Idle departments began to turn into lazy departments, becoming more and more bloated and useless. What's worse is that these people are often officials, not officials, and their welfare benefits are generally higher. They are just occupying the manhole and not shitting.
Liu Bei could not tolerate these people no matter what, so Liu Bei decided to promote their transfer, and by the way, cancel these meaningless official positions, streamline official positions, reduce the court's expenditure on official support, and optimize the input-output ratio .
After the success of the land transfer decree, Liu Bei used the power of victory over the world to launch a liquidation of lazy officials in these idle departments, and successfully attacked 90% of the idle departments, that is, 90% of the officials in the idle departments were When forced to change jobs, only 10% can be retained and continue to work in their original jobs.
Despite this, due to the huge reduction in manpower, the remaining 10% of people cannot continue to be idle. They must live a more stressful life. The affairs of the entire department are pressing on their heads. Although it is simple, it requires They worked overtime to get it done.
The idle life of the past is gone forever.
However, they did not dare to have any opinions. They were even grateful that they were kept and did not change jobs.
(End of chapter)
