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"The most talked about thing in Ming Dynasty is Jin Yiwei."

"This legendary organization and name have been repeatedly studied by historians and the film and television industry."

"And what was Jinyiwei used for in the early days of its establishment?"

"In fact, when Zhu Yuanzhang set up Jinyiwei, his original idea was to punish corruption."

"Zhu Yuanzhang hated corruption deeply. He believed that the judicial system could not reflect his will, so in order to further strengthen his own ruling power, he set up a factory guard who completely obeyed the emperor's orders."

"An important purpose of setting up factory guards in the early Ming Dynasty was to inspect the behavior of officials. Although it has a deterrent effect on some corruption, it itself is parasitic on the imperial power and has no effective supervision. In the later period, Jinyiwei did not have the mechanism of the judicial system. It has become a monster that will bring disaster to the country."

Anyone with a little accounting knowledge knows that in the financial system, numbers can be expressed in Arabic numerals, and they need to be expressed in Chinese at the same time.

The first person in history to stipulate that "one, two, three..." must be written as "one, two, three..." in the financial system was Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

Why did Zhu Yuanzhang make this decision?
This is one of the measures to prevent corruption, especially to prevent falsification of accounting statements.

From Zhu Yuanzhang to today, for more than 600 years, Zhu Yuanzhang's regulations are still strictly used in the financial system.

The slight difference is that Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that Bai and Qian should be written as Mo and Qian; now, people write Bai and Qian.

From this detail, it can be found that Zhu Yuanzhang used many methods to prevent corruption.

Zhu Yuanzhang's strength and means of cracking down on corrupt officials are unprecedented, and the financial system is only a small part of it.

How many corrupt officials did Zhu Yuanzhang kill?The specific figures are difficult to be accurate. Some people think that Zhu Yuanzhang killed 6 corrupt officials, while others believe that between 10 and 15 officials were killed due to corruption in Zhu Yuanzhang's hands, some of whom were unjustly killed.

The ratio of officials to civilians in the Ming Dynasty was lower than today. Even if only 6 corrupt officials were killed, the ratio is high enough.

Moreover, Zhu Yuanzhang's method of killing corrupt officials was extremely harsh.

The "Law of the Ming Dynasty" officially stipulates that only five punishments can be used, whipping, sticking, imprisonment, exile, and execution.

Zhu Yuanzhang found that these methods were not enough to deter corrupt officials, and formulated a lot of tortures especially for corrupt officials, such as Ling Chi, Xiaoshou, Zhu Zu, in addition to scalding with boiling water, "washing" with an iron brush, pumping intestines, tattooing on the face, and cutting off the nose , castration, picking knees, etc., as well as peeling real grass.

The so-called "peeling the real grass" means peeling off the skin of corrupt officials and filling them with grass.

This thing is placed next to the yamen seat of the successor of the corrupt official and must not be moved away. The purpose is to issue a serious warning to the successor at any time.

Many of Zhu Yuanzhang's tortures of corrupt officials were carried out in public, allowing the general public to watch.

Zhu Yuanzhang started from recklessness, and he hated corrupt officials very much. He believed that ordinary people also hated corrupt officials.

Therefore, it is too cheap to execute corrupt officials easily, and he uses various tortures openly.

The purpose is to deter potential corrupt officials on the one hand, and to relieve the common people on the other hand.

Zhu Yuanzhang's torture methods against corrupt officials were also inherited by his descendants.

Before the Ming Dynasty, there were very few people who cut more than 1000 knives for Ling Chi. By the Ming Dynasty, the Ling Chi of corrupt officials was basically more than 1000 knives, and the maximum was more than 3000 knives. It is really a thousand knives.

A Lingchi lasts for several days, and on the first day, the corrupt officials who are subjected to Lingchi will not die.

Some people often cite Ling Chi of the Ming Dynasty as an example when emphasizing the brutality of ancient Chinese emperors.

As a result, most of Ling Chi's targets are ignored, most of them are corrupt officials who have committed heinous crimes.

In order to portray ancient China as consistently brutal, these people highlighted the process of lingchi, so that people would sympathize with the corrupt officials who were lingchied, or forget the heinous crimes of corrupt officials and the hatred of the people.

So, what is the effect of Zhu Yuanzhang's severe punishment of corrupt officials?

The effect is not ideal.

A batch was killed in the morning, and some people were corrupted at night. Everyone has seen the killing of corrupt officials. Why are you not afraid of death, but still corrupt?

Zhu Yuanzhang could only deal with corrupt officials and corruption with more severe torture.

It is not an exaggeration to describe Zhu Yuanzhang's attitude and means of dealing with corrupt officials in an unprecedented way in Chinese history.

It raises two questions to consider.First, why do corrupt officials continue to press forward in the face of all kinds of extremely harsh public punishments?

Second, generally speaking, when a dynasty was first established, most of the officials were relatively clean and the court was relatively healthy. Why was the Ming Dynasty different from other dynasties in Chinese history in that there were so many corrupt officials in the early days of the founding of the country?

Third, this phenomenon was rarely seen at the beginning of the founding of other dynasties.

When people explain the above two problems, they will say that absolute tyranny leads to absolute corruption.

However, this statement is not suitable for Zhu Yuanzhang.

Under Zhu Yuanzhang's rule, he was the only one with absolute power, but Zhu Yuanzhang happened to be a very frugal person.

Moreover, starting from his childhood experience, he is very sympathetic to the sufferings of the people.

Therefore, autocracy leads to corruption, which cannot be fully explained by Zhu Yuanzhang.

It doesn't make sense to say that Zhu Yuanzhang didn't have relevant laws and systems to deal with corruption.

Zhu Yuanzhang’s laws on corruption are very clear. Moreover, Zhu Yuanzhang will also introduce laws to punish corruption. He has almost implemented universal education. All officials know that those who are literate must recite it, and those who are illiterate have to read it.

The accounting system mentioned above is also one of the system constructions to prevent corruption.

It would be wrong to say that Zhu Yuanzhang has no supervision mechanism.

Zhu Yuanzhang's central government has more than 100 agencies that perform full-time supervision functions. The objects of supervision range from high-ranking officials to princes, and none of them can be spared. Zhu Yuanzhang also gave them the right to impeach at will.

Some people often say that Zhu Yuanzhang's Jinyiwei is a secret service agency, but they ignore that one of the functions of Jinyiwei is to expose corrupt officials who are constantly being exposed.

It would be wrong to say that Zhu Yuanzhang was unfair in the enforcement of the law.There are people in the royal family who are corrupt, and Zhu Yuanzhang can kill them.

It doesn't make sense to say that Zhu Yuanzhang only knew about high-pressure policies.

For honest and upright officials, Zhu Yuanzhang often promoted and rewarded them exceptionally.All these things can't explain why there were so many corrupt officials in the early Ming Dynasty, and why they kept killing them.

For Zhu Yuanzhang's failure to eliminate corrupt officials, the only way some people in modern times have left is to say that Zhu Yuanzhang did not adopt a democratic system.

It is true that Zhu Yuanzhang did not adopt the modern Western democratic system, but on this issue we cannot force others to do so. The modern Western democratic system did not appear until more than 500 years after Zhu Yuanzhang.

Moreover, Zhu Yuanzhang did not adopt modern systems such as multi-party system, which does not mean that Zhu Yuanzhang did not implement democracy.

Zhu Yuanzhang encouraged the common people to expose corrupt officials. If the common people found corrupt officials, they could arrest the corrupt officials and send them to Beijing for punishment.

If someone obstructs along the road, the obstructed person will also be executed, and even the nine clans will be implicated.

Zhu Yuanzhang killed corrupt officials and even killed some yamen to the point where no one was working. Zhu Yuanzhang had to formulate a method of "wearing a crime".

That is to say, corrupt officials who have been convicted of crimes are locked in prisons. Once the yamen is about to work, the guilty officials are dragged out to work in the lobby wearing shackles and shackles.

Therefore, when people say that Zhu Yuanzhang was very cruel and killed countless people, they should also pay attention to the following facts:
In the early Ming Dynasty, there were too many corrupt officials.

Out of hatred for corrupt officials and the need to severely rectify corruption, Zhu Yuanzhang had to adopt severe punishments and laws.

However, few people can explain clearly why there were so many corrupt officials in the early days of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, an important reason is the lack of moral quality.

After the Tang and Song Dynasties, the moral education of Chinese people came from the private school education based on the "Four Books and Five Classics" practiced since childhood. This moral education was combined with the national imperial examination system based on the Confucian classics.

However, the Yuan Dynasty, nearly 100 years before the Ming Dynasty, severely damaged this morally-focused Confucian tradition.

At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, there was no imperial examination system. Although the imperial examination was implemented later, due to the abolition of the imperial examination in the early Yuan Dynasty, the number of people who participated in the imperial examination was very small.

Moreover, because the Yuan Dynasty adopted a policy of discriminating against Han people, the number of Han people admitted to the imperial examination was not large.

This is not a question of test level and ability, but the result of policy discrimination.

These practices of the Yuan Dynasty caused the Chinese society to greatly reduce their interest in reading and learning Confucian classics such as the "Four Books and Five Classics" during the Yuan Dynasty for nearly 100 years. Talented people like Guan Hanqing could only write scripts.

In other words, the nearly 100-year history of the Yuan Dynasty led to the regression of the moral level of the Han society.

As a result, after Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, the Han people regained power. However, Zhu Yuanzhang could not find many officials who were qualified in moral cultivation.

As a result, the most peculiar phenomenon in Chinese history was formed: during the founding period of a dynasty, corruption appeared on a large scale, and it was useless to rely on laws, systems, and democracy.

A group of profit-seeking villains have mastered power at all levels, and all of them are willing to take risks to engage in corrupt business of beheading.

In this sense, Zhu Yuanzhang has his reasons for mass killing, cruel atrocities, and the use of spies.

but.When dealing with corruption, we are not saying that morality can solve all problems.

Morality must also be supplemented by other means such as laws and systems. Morality does not prevent corruption, but it can indeed reduce it.

Zhu Yuanzhang started killing corrupt officials, but he was still helpless in the end, which shows the serious adverse consequences of the absence and weakening of morality;
At the same time, it also shows that it is difficult to eliminate the corrupt desires, impulses and actions that are constantly emerging in the hearts of countless villains by relying on external means such as the system, supervision, and democracy.

The demonstration of morality can at least make many people feel restraint and self-awareness in their hearts.

Confucius said that the law can only punish crimes, but it cannot prevent people from having the idea of ​​committing crimes. This is a very appropriate description for the early Ming Dynasty.

To put it another way, the Yuan Dynasty despised the imperial examinations for nearly 100 years, and Zhu Yuanzhang suffered huge consequences due to the lower moral level caused by the discriminatory policy against the Han people.