Chapter 441 Ridiculous Means
Officials wanted to re-establish the standards for official evaluation and promotion, which soon spread throughout Bianjing and became a hot topic in Bianjing.
Many scholars heard this and were opposed to this matter.
Many people even visited some officials in the DPRK and China, stated their interests and concerns, and persuaded these officials to persuade the officials.
However, these officials are aware of their own suffering. Although the standards for official evaluation have not yet been fully confirmed, Zhao Xing's purpose in doing so is definitely to make official evaluation more difficult.
It seems that it has little influence on them, the Beijing officials, but many of their brothers, nephews, and nephews are serving in local offices, so it still has an influence.
However, Zhao Xing's move was still very effective.
They were afraid of opposition and arouse Zhao Xing's rebellious mentality, so they wanted to clean up and merge some departments.
As a result, many officials will be laid off.
After such a comparison, changing the evaluation standards is more acceptable.
Zhao Xing also heard about things outside the palace, but he didn't pay much attention.
After handling government affairs every day, the ministers are summoned to formulate the criteria for official promotion in detail.
Those officials also made some suggestions, and Zhao Xing knew the purpose.
However, Zhao Xing also knew not to push too hard. After all, he wanted to boil a frog in warm water, so he couldn't be too energetic right away.
Zhao Xing only insisted on three points. First, the number of local people's own farmland and local farmland is directly linked to the official evaluation, and it is a key evaluation.
Official evaluation is the same as evaluating worker performance.
Good performance leads to high salary. For officials, only if they are evaluated well can they be promoted.
It is very difficult to prevent land annexation, but by linking the number of land owned by the people with the number of registered acres and the evaluation, these officials will naturally find ways to suppress the annexation and concealment of land for the sake of their own future.
There is no use in trying to reason with these officials. The most effective thing is to induce them with benefits.
This move was inspired by Zhao Xing's recent reading of Tang History when he was idle and bored.
It is recorded in Tang history that after Li Shimin ascended the throne, in order to promote population growth, he encouraged widowed women to remarry.
To this end, population growth was also included in official evaluation.
In this way, the enthusiasm of officials is greatly increased.
Before the popularity of Zhu's theory, although there were no restrictions on remarriage among the people, no one with a certain status would agree to allow women to remarry.
Even if it comes to the government, the government will not care about this kind of thing.
Firstly, this is the person's family background, and secondly, the officials are all men, and they believe that it is appropriate for women to observe the customs after losing their husbands.
However, after the imperial court included population growth in the assessment, those officials not only severely punished those who did not allow widowed women to remarry, they even sent people to inquire about widowed people who did not want to remarry, and tried every means to force them to remarry.
Although some of them are indeed unwilling to remarry, from the perspective of the court alone, it is beneficial to the court.
The second is to increase the supervision and review of local officials and put an end to laziness, indolence and inaction.
The last point is that if an official fails the evaluation three times in a row, or fails to make corrections after being warned about laziness or maladministration, he will be dismissed. At the same time, three generations of immediate family members will not be allowed to participate in the imperial examination.
These three points proposed by Zhao Xing were opposed by almost all officials.
Including the amount of people's own cultivated land and local cultivated land in the evaluation is tantamount to forcing officials to stand on the opposite side of the powerful landlords.
After all, if we want to achieve these two points, we must restrict landlords from annexing land by force, and this alone is not enough.
After all, the annexation of some lands was not a natural disaster or forced by anyone, but a man-made disaster.
If we want to put an end to this, we must find ways to solve problems when people encounter difficulties so that they will not sell their land because of this.
This not only requires them to prevent plundering mergers, but also requires them to find ways to prevent normal mergers. The second is the amount of local farmland. Some fields were abandoned due to flooding or barrenness. These are completely unavoidable.
If officials want to prevent local farmland from decreasing, they must not only prevent local landlords from hiding, but also organize people to clear up wasteland and increase the area of farmland.
When officials govern one side, public security and tax collection must rely on the support of powerful local landowners. These are one of the assessment criteria.
If this offends the powerful landlords and they cannot even collect enough taxes, how can they pay their dues?
What's more, sometimes the local landowners are required to donate generously to build roads and bridges.
The most important thing is the third point. Zhao Xing actually wants to set up penalties for failing to meet the assessment standards.
In the past, there were no reports of officials failing to meet standards in assessment.
There is a saying that there is hard work without merit. As long as you make no mistakes, even if an official has no achievements, he will still get a good score in the evaluation. After a few years, he will be promoted no matter what. It is impossible to stay still.
But what Zhao Xing means now is that if he fails to meet the standards, he will be dismissed from office. Direct descendants of the family will not be able to participate in the imperial examination for three generations.
The officials couldn't accept this at all. After all, they had relatives who were local officials. Wouldn't they also be implicated then?
And whether these official relatives can rely on Yin Feng to become officials, but they have no intention of giving up the imperial examination.
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After all, it is difficult for Yin Feng to become a high-ranking official. If there are children in the family who can rely on the imperial examination to become officials when they are in office, with their help and promotion, they can completely guarantee the prosperity of the family for decades to come.
As soon as Zhao Xing made this statement, he was opposed by 90% of the officials in the court.
Many officials even submitted letters to resign, which was more forceful than ever before.
But Zhao Xing did not tolerate them this time, and all those who submitted letters to resign were approved.
The imperial examination has been around for hundreds of years, and it is simply ridiculous to threaten someone with resignation.
Before the Song Dynasty, even the Tang Dynasty was obviously afraid of the aristocratic family, so they had to win over and appease them.
It is said that the emperor's daughter has no worries about marrying, but for an emperor like Li Shimin who wanted to marry the princess to the Cui family of Qinghe, he was rejected.
Even so, Li Shimin did not dare to do anything to the Cui family.
In the final analysis, the scholarly families at that time still accounted for the majority.
Although the aristocratic families are not of the same mind, they are still united in fighting against the imperial power.
Once they break up with the aristocratic family, all officials from the aristocratic family will go on strike, and there will not be that many officials to take over.
However, there were so many officials in the Song Dynasty that they became one of the three major disadvantages of the Song Dynasty. How ridiculous was it to threaten him with resignation?
Those officials made a fuss for a while and realized that they had made a bad move.
In fact, they had used this trick a lot before.
There were many dismissals of prime ministers in the Song Dynasty. In many cases, it was not because they offended the officials, but because too many people were impeached. In order to calm the public anger, the emperor had no choice but to remove them.
However, after Zhao Xing ascended the throne, he never compromised, so using this trick against Zhao Xing was naturally useless.
So these officials could only seek help from the Supreme Emperor.
Although the Supreme Emperor ignores government affairs, he still knows something about recent events.
When he learned that Baiguan asked for an audience, he refused directly because he felt unwell.
The New Deal that year failed because he failed to withstand the pressure.
How could he hold Zhao Xing back at this time?
Seeing that this move didn't work, the officials could only put their hope in Han Zhang.
(End of chapter)