At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 432: Does the Huns’ sinicization movement and original intention still exist?

Young people prefer grand narratives. If you ask them to inherit their family’s workshop or ranch, they will look disdainful.

But if you ask them to promote the benefits of the world, eliminate the harm of the world and build a world of great harmony, they will be extremely excited. The reason why so many young people are willing to join the Mohist school is because they have always stood at the height of their ideals. Joining the Mohist school is a fashionable thing in the cultural circle of the Han Dynasty.

But when they want to implement the grand narrative and implement it down to earth, not many people can endure the hardship.

Every year, the Mohists would bring a large number of trainee Mohists to the construction site, where they would work with the craftsmen during the day and teach them literacy at night. They would work and learn with the craftsmen, but there were very few scholars who could really do this. They even wanted to rebel against the Mohist system, believing that they had knowledge and should do more valuable things. Those who work with their minds rule others, and those who work with their hands are ruled by others.

But Mohist said calmly: "If you can't even integrate into the lives of the craftsmen, how can you understand their lives? Understand their sufferings. If you can't do these, how can you talk about making profits for them?"

Therefore, even now, there are only a few thousand true Mohists. However, precisely because of this strict admission and lenient exit policy, the Mohist School can not only find people who truly share the same ideals and maintain a strong cohesive force, but also, with the help of these young people, expand the Mohist School's influence on the entire world.

On October 18th, the 14th year of the Han calendar, in Chang'an City, Zhangtai Palace.

Because Qin Bo publicized the decree of equal distribution of wealth in Mozi Monthly a few days ago, everyone understood that this year's Sages' Meeting would be full of drama.

Therefore, there were many spectators at this Sages' Conference. Not only did the princes of the Han Dynasty come to visit, but even many gossipers from Chang'an City came.

The Meeting of Sages was an open conference, and even the Han court encouraged people all over the world to participate and supervise, so people were not prohibited from watching. It was just that there were too many people coming and the huge Jianzhang Palace could not accommodate them all, so some screening was done.

The sages of the world sit here, the three nobles and nine ministers of the Han Dynasty sit on the other side, and the county guards report to all the sages with their achievements this year.

The first is the annual report of the Han court made by the Prime Minister of the Han Dynasty.

Xiao He told all the wise men how much land the Han Dynasty had reclaimed, how many cities, roads, tracks, canals and other constructions had been built that year, and he gave a report in great detail.

The sages also had a book of data from government reports, which they compared as they listened.

Then the heads of each department of the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers reported their achievements, followed by the prefects of each county.

The audience was a little drowsy, even the various princes of the Han Dynasty were almost the same. In the first two years, they could still feel excited when listening to the data and had a very strong sense of participation, but now they have become numb.

The reason they came to the Sages' Conference this time was not to listen to the data they already knew, but to see the conflict scenes between the Mohist school headed by Qin Bo and other sages.

On the contrary, Junchen and Zhang Yuan, who were hearing about the Sages' Meeting for the first time, were a little excited. They knew that the Han Dynasty had a model like the Sages' Meeting, but experiencing it for the first time in person was a bit shocking to them, especially Junchen. Since he was a prince of the Xiongnu, Ji Zhou often let him participate in the political affairs of the Xiongnu Kingdom.

However, the data reported at this meeting of sages made him astonished to find that it was okay for the Xiongnu Empire to be inferior to the Han Dynasty, but he never expected that it could not be compared with a single county of the Han Dynasty.

Junchen sighed, "The Han Dynasty is so powerful, no wonder my grandfather was no match for the Han Emperor."

Zhang Yuan said: "The Han Dynasty is so powerful, we Xiongnu should learn from it. The Chanyu's sinicization campaign should be strengthened, and we should study the outline policies in depth. Only in this way can we Xiongnu gain a firm foothold in the Western Regions."

Any nation with ambition will try to save itself in times of crisis. In order to save themselves in the Western Regions, the Xiongnu learned all aspects of the Han military system.

When the Huns overcame the survival crisis and conquered 5000 miles of territory in the Western Regions, whether or not to continue to assimilate became a disagreement among the Hun nobles.

Strictly speaking, it is not a disagreement. The weak learn from the strong, which is a universal truth. These Hun nobles who escaped death naturally would not have the idea that the ancestral laws cannot be changed.

At this time, the sinicization within the Xiongnu was divided into radical and conservative factions. The conservative faction believed that the military system could be learned from the Han Dynasty, but in other aspects the Han Dynasty's system might not be suitable for the Western Regions, especially at a time when there were more people in the Western Regions and fewer Xiongnu people. Too radical policies might lead to rebellion by the people of the Western Regions in their country.

But the radicals believed that since they had to learn from the strong, they must learn comprehensively, and none of the Han Dynasty's political system, military system, and cultural system could be left behind.

They advocated learning from the Han Dynasty's system of coexistence of counties and vassal states in politics. Tribal leaders who made great contributions could become princes, and the Xiongnu's own territory would be transformed into counties and directly governed by the Chanyu.

Culturally, they wrote Chinese characters, learned Chinese characters, used the Chinese legal system, and educated the people of the Western Regions to become Han people. Even many Xiongnu nobles believed that this was the key to sinicization. The biggest flaw of the Xiongnu Kingdom in the Western Regions was that its core population was too small. If they could not assimilate their people into Han people, then ethnic conflicts would sooner or later cause their Xiongnu Empire to collapse.

Zhang Yuan was originally a conservative within the Xiongnu. It wasn't that he thought the Xiongnu shouldn't be sinicized, but he thought the radicals' policies were too radical. The Xiongnu nation was not yet stable, and a too radical sinicization policy could easily cause rebellion throughout the country. The Xiongnu nation could no longer afford another heavy blow.

But what he saw and heard in Chang'an during this period shocked him greatly. The Han Dynasty was unprecedentedly powerful. Even the three dynasties in his imagination were far less powerful than the Han Dynasty.

The strength of the Han Dynasty directly shattered his three views, and he quickly turned into a radical, believing that the Huns should fully learn the political, economic, and cultural policies of the Han Dynasty so that they would have a future.

Junchen said, "Some people think that the blast furnace is what we Xiongnu should learn the most."

Then he said worriedly: "I just don't know if the Han emperor is willing to give me such a military and national weapon as the blast furnace."

Zhang Yuandu frowned and shook his head helplessly, obviously not optimistic about this matter.

Although the Han emperor always said that Han and Huns were one family, this was just to deceive the lower-class Huns. Zhang Yuan did not believe that the Han emperor really thought so. His statement was only to paralyze the lower-class Huns' will to resist and allow the Han to maintain stability in the desert.

Asking the Han emperor to send some books or even Confucian scholars to help the Xiongnu to assimilate to the Han language was only basically possible. But Zhang Yuan thought that the Han emperor would not agree to help them build blast furnaces and enhance the military strength of the Xiongnu.

But Junchen wanted to take a chance, even if there was only a one in ten thousand chance, he wanted to try. Then the whole morning of the meeting was spent reporting the data of the nine ministers of the Han Dynasty to the counties.

After lunch it was time for the county governors and sages to propose proposals, which they were most concerned about.

The scene did not disappoint them. Qin Bo was the first to stand up. The Mozi around him handed over the data collected by the Mozi in the past year to the emperor, the three dukes and nine ministers of the Han Dynasty, and various sages. The remaining data was distributed to the princes of the Han Dynasty and the people of Chang'an City who were watching.

The three dukes and nine ministers of the Han Dynasty and the prefects of each county frowned when they saw Qin Bo submitting the data.

They did not doubt the authenticity of these data. The biggest difference between the Han Dynasty and the Qin Dynasty was that both attached great importance to various data.

Two years ago, all the government offices of the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers of the Han Dynasty were reducing the number of Han officials. The Accounting Office and the Taxation Office were the only two departments that had not been reduced.

There were thousands of Han officials who were proficient in mathematics in the Shangji Yamen, but even with so many people, it was still not enough to deal with the huge amount of data of the Han Dynasty.

Because the Han Dynasty had to count more and more data, in the first two years it only had to count the fields and the registered population, and later it had to count the number of births and deaths each year, the population of each age group, and then the number of workshops, the number of textile machines, the number of steam engines. The Han Dynasty's accountants quickly counted all walks of life in the Han Dynasty.

Zhang Cang even wrote two books, "Introduction to Statistics" and "Application of Abacus", for the training of accountants.

The Shangji Yamen often had to temporarily recruit students from various universities to help with the compilation of various data. Every year, three to four thousand such temporary workers were needed to help compile the Han Dynasty's increasingly large database.

These complete databases are extremely beneficial to the Han Dynasty's governance of the world. As long as Prime Minister Xiao He wants to know the situation of any industry, he can extract the current status of the industry from these databases.

At the same time, these data are also semi-public information. Except for some confidential data, various libraries in the Han Dynasty will update these data every year to facilitate the Han people who want to know these data.

Xu Fan did this to make it easier for the people of the world to supervise the Han Dynasty, but the reality was that few people were willing to look at these boring data. Instead, the workshop owners were willing to find business opportunities from them.

As for the data Qin Bo had obtained, except for a small part of it that was compiled by the Mohists themselves, most of it was compiled by the imperial court's accountants. As long as they wanted to find it, they could quickly find the source of these data in the library.

Ying Bu looked at the data and laughed, "Two years ago, Kuai Che slapped Qin Bo in the face, and this year Qin Bo even dug up Kuai Che's past. I didn't realize that he had such a strong desire for revenge."

There are so many general industry data, only Kuai Che’s property is used as a reference and placed in the forefront, and Kuai Che is called the number one businessman in the Han Dynasty.

The atmosphere in the Han Dynasty generally emphasizes not showing off wealth, but this time, the Mohist statistics even revealed several of Kuai Che's shops. Many people will target Kuai Che in the future, so Ying Bu and others will gloat over his misfortune.

Liu Bang was surprised and said, "I always thought that the salaries of the Han craftsmen were very high, but I didn't expect that they didn't increase much at all, and the income of farmers was even declining. No wonder Qin Bo was so dissatisfied."

However, most of the craftsmen in the Pei State shipyard earned more than a thousand coins, and the whaling team's income was even higher than that. So Liu Bang had the impression that craftsmen had very high incomes. However, he did not expect that there were craftsmen in the Han Dynasty who earned 500 coins a month, which was half less than that of his Pei State. This surprised him. Which place was the most barbaric land?

Lu Chen said: "It is because Liaodong is wild and barren that we have to pay high salaries to attract excellent craftsmen. However, there is no shortage of craftsmen in the Han mainland, and if there is no shortage of people, the income will naturally be low."

At this time, Qin Bo said, "I remember that about 10 years ago, the emperor said in front of all the princes in the world that our Han Dynasty would build a world of great harmony."

"In the following years, our Han Dynasty has been moving in this direction. In less than five years, we have increased the world's grain production capacity by more than 5% and completely solved the famine problem for the people of the world."

"I remember it very clearly. That year, the imperial court announced that the people of the Han Dynasty had completely gotten rid of hunger, and that starvation to death would never happen again in the Han Dynasty."

"This announcement shocked the world at the time. It was the first time in 3000 years that a dynasty dared to say that it had solved the problem of hunger, and it was recognized by the people of the world. The prosperity of our Han Dynasty officially surpassed that of the Three Dynasties."

"I was so excited that my eyes welled up with tears. The imperial court took advantage of the victory and said that in the next 20 years, all people in the world would live a well-off life."

"But I don't know since when, the court has talked less and less about the Great Harmony World. They say they want to lead the people of the world into a well-off life, but I haven't seen any specific measures from the court."

"Look at the data of the court in recent years. They have built 5000 miles of tracks, 2 miles of highways, dozens of docks, and 3000 miles of canals. The wealth of the world is increasing, and the taxes of the court are getting higher and higher. The whole world seems to be flourishing and prosperous."

“But does anyone care about the income of the grassroots farmers and artisans who created all this?”

"The price of grain has dropped three times. In terms of money, the wealth that farmers gain each year is actually lower than when the Han Dynasty was founded. If it weren't for the reclamation in the past two years, the salary of the craftsmen would have remained the same. Does the prosperity of the Han Dynasty have anything to do with them?"

"In contrast, the incomes of the princes, nobles, and workshop owners of the Han Dynasty have increased several to dozens of times."

"Two years ago, the imperial court enacted the Four-Hour Work System, but now workshop owners all over the country have reduced the income of craftsmen by 20%, and asked them to work overtime for one hour. This method of changing one's mind from morning till night has once again extended the working hours of craftsmen in disguise."

"Has anyone in the Han Dynasty ever taken care of this matter? What punishments does the court have for workshop owners who violate the law?
I didn't see it. I only saw the craftsmen swallowing their anger. There were no means of punishment for making laws, and there was no punishment for violating the laws. What's the point of such laws? Are they used to deceive the people of the world?"

"The imperial court has announced to the people of the world that it will lead them to a well-off life. This means that you princes, nobles, and workshop owners will become more and more prosperous, while the people of the world will continue to stagnate or even live more miserably."

“Do we still want a moderately prosperous life? Do we still want the ideal of universal peace?”

Qin Bo held up his data and said, "From these data, I don't see any measures taken by the court. The three dukes and nine ministers of the Han Dynasty, the wise men present here, and the princes, are you still keeping your original intention?"

(End of this chapter)