My life skills in Daming Liver

After Zhang Juzheng resigned, it was not until September that the capital began to enter autumn, and the Prime Minister Zhongshu was finally decided.

The main reason is that I really can’t put it off any longer.

Autumn tax collection will begin in September, and now 39,000 new troops are stationed on the Yajiang River. The leader of North Korea is in Pyongyang. One day, he wrote a letter to the Ming Dynasty, asking the Ming Dynasty to send troops to help him put down the domestic rebellion.

In addition, the grain collected from various places needs to be stored in the treasury and escorted to the capital, and the workshops of the capital need to produce and transport weapons to the new armies in various places.

These all require a strong coordination from the Zhongshu Provincial Committee, and all the intricate work needs someone to organize it.

In this case, it is a matter of competition to see who can become impatient and give in first.

The first one to succumb was naturally Li Chunfang.

He also knew that his prestige was insufficient and he could not have as much power as Zhang Juzheng.

They are all prime ministers, but people are still different.

After Li Chunfang realized this fact, she decisively recognized her position.

He surrendered to the royal family. Although he did not agree to hand over the right to refute the memorials, he agreed to hold a major court meeting every 15 days. At that time, the queen mothers of the two palaces would hang up the curtain to discuss major court affairs.

This was tantamount to giving up part of the power to the royal family. Empress Dowager Li quickly agreed to this plan and began to support Li Chunfang as Prime Minister Zhongshu.

Li Chunfang gave in to the civil service group again. He agreed to abolish the "Taiwan Examination Law" implemented by Zhang Juzheng, and also increased the rights of the Qing gossip officials who had contributed a lot to Zhang Juzheng's efforts at this time. He declared that each official and censor had independent rights. The right to speak out and does not need to be held accountable for the content of their impeachment.

This measure was similar to the "rumours" during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties. As expected, as soon as this suggestion came out, it received the support of Qing gossip officials, and Li Chunfang's reputation rose to a higher level.

Finally, there are the governors of various places.

Li Chunfang agreed to the request of the governors from various places and gave them the title of Shangshu, allowing them, like Li Chengliang, to have the power to appoint and remove officials below the ninth rank.

They can also recommend higher-level officials to the court, and they can be appointed or removed as long as the Ministry of Personnel agrees.

As soon as these three concession measures came out, Li Chunfang's reputation immediately surpassed Zhang Juzheng's and became the most popular candidate for prime minister in the entire Ming Dynasty.

These messages were naturally sent to Nanjing by the Capital Intelligence Station and sent to the desk of the Metropolitan Governor's Office.

Su Ze saw Li Chunfang's reform plan and couldn't help laughing.

Shen Shixing was visiting the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion with his wife. After reading the information about the capital that Su Ze handed him, Shen Shixing couldn't help but say:

"I didn't expect that Zhang Juzheng couldn't be restrained. Rulin, do we want to attack now?"

Su Ze shook his head and said: "Attack now will unite the Ming court. Li Chunfang's position will not be long."

After losing Zhang Juzheng, the emperor was young, and the queen mother was an ordinary woman who did not understand politics. The authority of the Ming court center would soon disappear.

Once the central authority is lost, the next step is for the provincial warlords to become independent.

Shen Shixing looked at the information and said: "The contradiction between the central and local governments has existed since ancient times. Li Chunfang transferred the power of serving officials to the local governments. This is a recipe for disaster."

Su Ze also nodded and said: "This central-district issue is the most difficult one to deal with, and we are now seeing signs of it in the southeast."

Although Shin Shih-hsing is the Minister of Education and not the Minister of Finance, education is the most prominent issue of regional disparities and national conflicts. On the contrary, he is the first to see the signs of conflicts between the central and local governments.

Shen Shixing said: "Nowadays, the education in Nanzhili and Fujian is better, and there are more government-run academies. Among the Jinshi admitted in the last spring, these two provinces also had the largest number. Nowadays, there are many dissent among the scholars. Our etiquette department is unfair."

"The Jinshi exam is okay, but the biggest conflict now is the civil service exam."

Su Ze asked: "The civil service exam?"

Shen Shixing nodded and said: "Yes, because the situation in different places is different and the need for civil servants is also different, so now the recruitment examinations for civil servants in each prefecture are held at the prefecture and county level, and the final list is submitted to the Ministry of Civil Affairs for filing. ”

"The civil service examinations are basically organized by the academic and administrative departments at the government level."

Su Ze nodded. Township offices are being built in the southeast, and government offices at all levels are short of staff.

If we conduct a nationwide examination like the imperial examination, on the one hand, it will be too expensive to organize, and on the other hand, it will not be flexible, making it inconvenient to replenish officials in a timely manner.

Therefore, the current civil service examinations in the southeast are all directly recruited from the lower levels of government at each government level.

"Is there fraud?"

Shen Shixing shook his head and said: "The fraud situation is not bad. Yushitai is the most strict in detecting examination fraud, and the civil servant examination is also conducted in accordance with the standards and procedures of the provincial examination. The system is still guaranteed."

"What's the problem then?"

Shen Shixing sighed and said, "It's just a matter of uneven development in various places."

"Public officials in the southeast are well paid, and the culture has changed over the years. Officials are no longer regarded as subordinates, so many scholars are willing to be officials."

Su Ze nodded. When Southeast was established, his administrative power mainly relied on improving officials.

For example, the current team of the Ministry of Household Affairs are the officials recruited by Fang Wanghai when he implemented banknote tariffs in Zhejiang, South Zhili Province, and the officials in the municipal shipping department systems in various places are basically the consultants of the Fuzhou City Shipping Department.

Moreover, the officials in the southeast are all paid, and the six-level official system allows officials to have room for promotion.

Officials who excel in their work can also take the official examination, unlike before, they will not be officials for the rest of their lives.

Moreover, after all, officials do not have to work in noisy workshops, nor do they have to leave their hometowns and risk travel to do business.

This is already a better career for scholars to choose.

In the early days of the southeastern expansion, Su Ze also set up some official schools in Fujian, Zhejiang and Nanzhili to train administrative and economic personnel talents.

Originally, Southern Zhili, Zhejiang, and Fujian were major provinces in the imperial examinations. These three places had the largest number of scholars. After all, only a small number of people could pass the Jinshi examination. There were still a large number of scholars and candidates who could not enter the officialdom.

In this way, becoming a civil servant seems to be a good way to save the country.

If this is the case, it is nothing but a good thing. A state machine requires not only officials, but also a large number of administrative staff.

Shen Shixing said worriedly: "Southern Zhili and Zhejiang and Fujian have the best education and the most civil service schools, but the competition is also the fiercest. Some positions even have fifty people competing for one position. It is more difficult than what we participated in before. The county examination is even bigger.”

"So some scholars chose to go to other prefectures, counties, and even other provinces to take the civil service examination."

"Especially for scholars in the southern Zhili area. Jiangnan was originally relatively wealthy and had many academies. Nowadays, there are even private academies that specialize in the study of questions for civil servant examinations and the printing and publication of special compilations of papers."

"I heard that there are people in Suzhou Prefecture and Songjiang Prefecture who charter carriages and go to Jiangbei and even Jiangxi to send people to take the civil service examination."

"This has led to some scholars in areas with relatively backward culture and education to resent these outsiders coming to take exams for local officials."

Su Ze thought about the enthusiasm for public examinations before time travel. Sure enough, no matter how it changed, it could not change the enthusiasm for entering the system from all over the world.

Shen Shixing said worriedly: "Actually, this is a problem of uneven educational development in various places. Moreover, since our southeastern country is based on maritime trade, this gap will only get bigger and more obvious."

Shen Shixing's worries are also justified.

From a financial point of view, Southern Zhili, Zhejiang, Fujian, and the recently emerged Guangdong account for nearly 90% of the entire southeast's wealth.

This ratio is quite exaggerated even in the Ming Dynasty.

Southern Zhili accounted for a large proportion of the Ming court's tax revenue, but it did not form such a huge gap.

The money collected by Songjiang Prefecture alone is almost the same as that of Jiangxi Province, and Songjiang Prefecture's finances are still growing.

Education is the most direct manifestation of local finance.

Only areas with relatively good economies will invest heavily in education. If you don’t have enough to eat, let alone study.

Su Ze also started thinking.

Unfair education is only one aspect of inequality among many provinces. It is also the aspect that attracts the most public opinion and attracts the most attention from scholars.

Compared with educational inequality, there are many other development inequities among provinces.

Even this is just one of the symptoms of unfair development.

The debt problem that occurred before Su Ze traveled through the world was the biggest source of unfair development in various places.

Su Ze thought for a moment and said, "The Ministry of Rites can invest in building some schools in these inland areas, especially specialized schools that specialize in training officials."

"What about these scholars who go to other provinces to take the civil service examination? Now there are calls from Jiangxi and Guangxi to require that only scholars from this province can take the local civil service examination."

Su Ze shook his head and said: "That's not necessary. Competition is a good thing, and when outsiders serve as officials, it is also a good thing for the administration."

Shen Shixing also nodded. He couldn't help but think of the North-South incident in the early Ming Dynasty. This was the concentrated expression of the North-South conflict caused by regional imbalance during the Zhu Yuanzhang period.

Zhu Yuanzhang suppressed the problem with killings, and solved the conflicts between the north and the south by forcibly dividing the rankings, but this laid hidden dangers for the later division of the north and the south.

If you use administrative means to intervene, some people will be dissatisfied in the end. This is a lesson learned countless times in history.

Su Ze said: "But this imbalance will probably get bigger and bigger. Rumo, what do you think is the key reason for the imbalance of local development?"