People in the Three Kingdoms: Starting from Preaching

Chapter 612: Fish
The originally relaxed atmosphere by the river suddenly became a little serious. Xu Chen snapped his fingers, and Tian Shitou soon understood what he meant. He then distributed some documents to everyone present. Although everyone didn't understand what they meant, they read them carefully.

After taking a closer look, they realized that these were typical cases that have occurred locally in recent years.

The Yellow Turbans have come all the way to this day. Although Xu Chen has always paid great attention to team building, as the governance system continues to grow, corrupt officials continue to emerge in local states and counties. They are as disgusting and extremely stubborn as sewer rats and cannot be completely eliminated.

As they watched, their expressions began to look a little unhappy, and these things seemed very disheartening to them.

They thought that they had followed Xu Chen to join this business in order to create a brighter and better future, but every case in the files in their hands slapped them in the face mercilessly. Facts proved that even Xuan Xia's team would breed termites.

When they see what these corrupt officials do, they feel as if someone is secretly demolishing the high-rise buildings they built with great effort. They are angry that their precious achievements have been ruined by others.

After a while, seeing that everyone had seen enough, Xu Chen continued, "The county level is the foundation of our dynasty. Once the grassroots level collapses, the country will collapse. If the grassroots level is managed in a rough manner and all grassroots affairs are handed over to the county magistrate, they will be allowed to cover up everything in the local area. Such cases will only become more and more serious in the future."

After hearing this, everyone slowly followed Xu Chen's thoughts.

Although Xu Chen can have the final say on such matters, he is still willing to discuss with everyone before making a decision. After all, things have to be done by the people below, and they have to know why they have to do it, otherwise it will be difficult to get things done well.

It just so happens that many of Xu Chen's ideas are very advanced, which requires him to often patiently explain and discuss with his subordinates. Although this is laborious, the result of reaching a consensus after discussion is much smoother than executing it roughly by giving orders.

Having said that, Xu Chen looked at everyone and sighed with emotion.

"Now, when the common people are exploited by taxation, who can they complain to? If there are gangs condoned by the government to oppress the common people, how can they protect themselves? Or if they encounter illegal acts of bullying, where can they seek justice?"

This time, Xu Chen's series of questions made everyone silent.

After hearing this, they understood.

Except for Taishi Ci, who could be considered a poor family, all the others present were once the lower class of the Han Dynasty. The "common people" Xu Chen mentioned were them in the past, and he immediately let them put themselves in the situation.

If you think about it carefully, you will soon discover something terrible.

The county magistrate is a basic official in the operation of the imperial court and the most marginal level in the official system. However, even such a "small official" is actually a powerful figure in the local area. As long as the common people look up, they will see the county magistrate looking down on everything from a high position.

To put it bluntly, in the past there were still conflicts between local powerful families and county magistrates, but now all powerful families in the world have been cleansed out, and the governors of states and counties still control all local powers. Instead, they are no longer subject to any constraints and have essentially become local emperors.

At this time, the quality of local administration depends entirely on how loyal the county governors are to the doctrine.

If the governors are loyal to the doctrine and love their people, the people can live and work in peace. However, if the governors lose their original intention in power and start to oppress others, the local people will face a dark world from which they are completely unable to resist.

Whether local governments start to exploit the people under various pretexts, or collude with merchant gangs to oppress the lower classes, or break the law and discipline for personal gain, there will no longer be any restrictions.

If a system ultimately requires officials to rely entirely on their personal conduct and morality to determine whether their administration is good or bad, then this system is definitely not reasonable.

At this time, Lu Ping finally nodded: "If we follow the leader's idea, and separate the power of money, taxation, public security, and criminal justice from the county magistrates and make them directly responsible to the central government, then the county magistrates will not be able to do whatever they want in the future. They may not be able to completely eliminate corrupt officials, but they will definitely be able to do less and cause less harm."

Everyone had sufficient qualifications and had fully understood Xu Chen's idea at this time.

Once such a system is really implemented, no matter whether it is the governor, the prefect or the county magistrate, they will no longer be able to interfere in criminal matters, taxes, public security and other matters. It will be difficult for them to have absolute control over the local affairs. After all, these are extremely important matters at the local level. Losing these powers means losing the corresponding energy.

Even if it is possible that county and county officials can still collude with corresponding functional yamen in the future, it will be very difficult. The functional yamen are directly responsible to the central government of the court and have no jurisdiction over county governors and county magistrates, so naturally they do not need to please them.

Everyone then understood what the so-called vertical management meant.

Wang Dang hesitated for a moment, then followed suit: "The leader has always been more far-sighted and accurate than us. Since you have made such careful considerations, we have no reason to object. We will do whatever you say."

After Wang Dang and Lu Ping began to express their attitudes, the rest of the people did not think too much and followed suit.

Xu Chen nodded and turned his gaze to the river. During their conversation, they had already decided on a major event that would shake the world. From now on, China's institutional ecology would be completely transformed, and the government's governance of society would become more refined and professional.

Even in later generations, that was only accomplished after entering a new era.

In fact, if the conditions had not been insufficient before, Xu Chen would have wanted to do this a long time ago. Before the world was unified, everything had to give way to military and production. At that time, the old administrative system was still appropriate.

Only by giving local governments sufficient powers can they manage their government and military affairs more efficiently and have considerable autonomy in dealing with any problems.

In terms of administration, the imperial court needs local governments to develop production as quickly as possible. If the local governments have high enough power, they can make policies more flexibly. Some complex projects or major affairs can be decided by just one government office, which can achieve flexible and efficient results.

In terms of military, if local authorities have high power, they can handle considerable military needs on their own without the central government having to spend too much energy.

Therefore, before the victory of the war, compared with these advantages, the harm brought by the high local power was tolerable. However, now the situation has changed, and the focus of the contradiction has also changed. Xu Chen is more concerned about the health of the system.

The Qin Dynasty conquered the world with a system of farming and warfare, but died suddenly because the system could not be changed. Xu Chen had to take this as a lesson.

The administrative system used to govern agricultural civilization will definitely not be able to adapt to the future industrial society. It can be said that this thing is bound to be done, and Xu Chen just did it in advance. The only thing that makes Xu Chen unsure is how much ahead of time he has done it.

While I was thinking about it, I saw the float in front of me began to shake. It turned out that a river fish that could not hold back had taken the bait.

After slowly lifting the rod, he saw a medium-sized fish swaying and twitching under the hook. Xu Chen naturally took the fish down smoothly.

"Wow, this fish is very fat, it must taste delicious!" Wang Dang immediately followed up with a flattering remark.

Xu Chen smiled faintly: "Whether the fish is delicious or not does not depend on how good the fish is, but on how well the fish is cooked."

A leisurely fishing trip by the river determined a major change in the new era of Xuanxia. Compared with the fundamental changes in ideology and court system, the change in the administrative system was more of a specific technical change. However, its significance was no less than the former.

Since then, the Qin and Han dynasties have evolved towards a centralized system of power, and even jumped from the North Pole to the South Pole in one step, shortening the time for later generations to catch up by nearly two thousand years.

With such a long time span, Xu Chen certainly cannot guarantee that everything will be foolproof, but this is more of a judgment based on Xuan Xia's current situation. He believes that Xuan Xia is about to reach the stage where this change needs to be made.

In this era, to lead thousands of poor people to rise up together, it is far from enough to just eliminate the powerful families. Xuanxia needs stronger productivity to achieve comprehensive prosperity. Dividing the pie is important, but making the pie bigger is also something that cannot be ignored.

Fortunately, Xu Chen had planned this matter early on. With the growth of the Natural Dao and the success of Xuan Xia, natural studies has become a new ideological height.

Regardless of people's identities, whether they agree with it in their hearts or not, they must pursue the Way of Nature just as they once pursued Confucianism, and natural studies, as the foundation of the Way of Nature's worldview, will naturally be planted in everyone's heart.

The transformation of social thought is not easy, but it is not that difficult either. Perhaps it only takes one generation.

Those former talents had to succumb to the trend and began to change their consciousness. The new generation of talents were shaping a completely new worldview under such an environment. Under the guidance of the way of nature, the theoretical system of natural studies would eventually be built into an indestructible building thanks to the efforts of countless talents.

Xu Chen has always known that popularizing natural science ideas does not rely on one person's waving the flag and shouting, but on seizing the ideological high ground. Only by winning this war can people all over the world be forced to accept and follow.

On a practical level, Xu Chen has made even greater efforts for the development of natural sciences.

Xuanxia Academy and Gongshiyuan both provided a hall for the development of natural science. Both the basic theories and technological applications of natural science were constantly discovered and invented in the laboratories of these two places.

Technological progress is a great condition for the development of productivity. The two complement each other. Once they reach a certain stage, they will begin to explode at the same time.

Xu Chen felt that this day would not be too far away, but he still underestimated the speed of technological development under the mature natural science environment and sound natural science system. As a result, this day came much faster than he imagined.

(End of this chapter)