This was also the path taken by the Southern Song Dynasty. Although the Southern Song Dynasty was isolated in a corner, its relations with Japan grew greatly during the Southern Song Dynasty, and trade exchanges were very frequent. In addition, with Guangzhou, Central Asia, and the ancient tea-horse road in the southwest, it made a lot of money relying on just three trade routes, with commercial taxes accounting for more than 80%.
Now the Song Dynasty not only has two more trade routes than the Southern Song Dynasty, but also because of the discovery of large silver mines in Japan, the trade volume is bound to grow explosively. Once the five trade routes are fully utilized, it may be possible to completely abolish agricultural taxes.
Although the abolition of agricultural tax will greatly benefit the landlord class with serious land annexation, the prosperity of the commodity economy will inevitably attract a large number of young and strong laborers to engage in handicraft manufacturing. In the absence of young and strong laborers, landlords may need to reduce rents to win back tenants, which will greatly ease the increasingly acute land conflicts in the country.
"This is the strategy we plan to implement this year. If there are no problems, we will officially launch it in a few days."
Fan Zhongyan took out the reform plan that he had discussed with Zhao Jun for a long time and gave each of them a copy.
In fact, Zhao Jun and Fan Zhongyan had a much more in-depth discussion. At least the affairs of the Farmers' Association were not revealed to these old men at all, otherwise there would definitely be a big uproar.
What has been put forward so far are things that everyone can accept for the time being. Although it is good to complete reforms in one go, if it is too radical, the outcome will probably be no different from that of Wang Mang, so we must proceed step by step and continue to trial and error.
my country's reform and opening up in later generations also progressed step by step, rather than being fully open from the beginning. Therefore, Zhao Jun was ready to fight a protracted war.
He is young anyway.
He carried out some reforms in his twenties, and again in his thirties, and so on and so forth in his forties and fifties, year after year. One day, the Song Dynasty would reach the level he had expected.
Everyone took the plan and looked at it carefully.
In fact, the content is not that much. The first thing is to continue to clarify the functions of officials at all levels and determine the work content of the main officials at the county, state, and road levels.
The officials in the imperial court had already cooperated with the Ministry of Justice to formulate rules and regulations in their own departments after the Jingyou reform.
In this way, the duties of all officials have been clearly arranged in the general direction.
Then the next step will be for the provincial government to inspect the county government, the prefecture government to inspect the provincial government, the imperial court to inspect the prefecture government, and officials at all levels of many departments.
Check whether these people have completed their duties on time every month, and whether they have engaged in any acts of laziness, criminal activity, corruption, or abuse of power.
At the same time, in addition to the work inspections by officials from various localities and departments, there are also inspections by the Imperial Censorate and the local Censorate.
Moreover, the internal inspection departments of each department are not responsible to the vice minister or chancellor of the department, but directly to the Constitutional Council.
In this way, the Constitutional System Council supervised the twenty-one major departments under the Constitutional System Council through the inspection departments of various departments, as well as more than twenty secondary departments such as the Imperial College, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Works, the Military Equipment Bureau, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Liunei Quan, the Three-Class Court, the Ministry of Examination, the Ministry of Product, the Firearms Bureau, the Creation Bureau, the Imperial Decree Bureau, the Daily Life Bureau, and the Etiquette Bureau.
Through supervision from local governments at all levels, and the dual supervision of the central and local governments by the Censorate, a perfect supervision chain was formed among the central government, local governments, and the Censorate, greatly increasing the supervision of the court and the rectification of officialdom.
After everyone reviewed the entire plan, Lü Yijian exclaimed in admiration, "This is the performance evaluation system, right? It's truly ingenious. Zhang Juzheng of the Ming Dynasty was also a remarkable figure."
Zhao Jun showed the performance evaluation method to Fan Zhongyan, but not to them.
Wang Zeng also praised it: "It is indeed very good. This method is closely linked and eliminates the cover-up between the upper and lower levels."
"Well, this system is based on the performance evaluation system and has been improved to suit the system of our Song Dynasty."
Zhao Jun laughed and said, "Remember what I said back then, before my eyesight healed? The Song Dynasty should establish a KPI assessment system to crush these bureaucrats. There's a serious shortage of officials anyway. The Song Dynasty lacks everything else, but not officials."
"I haven't abolished the system of officialdom through family connections, but it's the duty of officials to do their jobs well. I hope you won't stop me this time."
Fan Zhongyan looked at Lu Yijian and the others warily.
Historically, the failure of his Qingli New Deal was due to the elimination of a large number of officials who had entered the government through family connections. This naturally offended interest groups, and he was dismissed.
But now he did not do so. Instead, he required officials to complete their duties. If they failed to meet the requirements or were found to have problems, it would mean that they were incompetent or corrupt officials, and it was natural for them to be dismissed by the court.
To a certain extent, the New Deal of the Qingli Period was a barbaric and forced change of the system, while the Performance Evaluation System was based on reason and law. Although the purpose was the same, the means were completely different. The latter was much milder in any case.
Lü Yijian, Wang Zeng, and the others looked at each other for a long moment. They all nodded slightly and said, "This is a very good idea!"
As long as they don't eliminate the need for officials to enter the government through family connections and don't block the path for their descendants to rise, then it doesn't matter. As for whether their descendants will be eliminated due to poor political achievements, they will definitely give them guidance and help them improve their political achievements.
Therefore, the new policy on official administration was naturally smooth and unimpeded.
Seeing that it had been approved by the Political System Council, Zhao Zhen breathed a sigh of relief and said happily, "That's great! In that case, I declare that from today on, Minister Fan will officially begin presiding over the Qingli New Deal. All personnel in the Political System Council must obey the orders of Grandson and Minister Fan and implement the new policies!"
"yes!"
Lu Yijian and others no longer had any objections and stood up and bowed.
The first chapter of the Qingli New Deal, the administration of civil servants, officially began.
The last few chapters are really just foreshadowing and transitions, which might feel a bit watered down, but there's no other way. Otherwise, a lot of things wouldn't be easy to explain. For example, if I don't explain the content and trade situation, no one would know what the reforms are all about, so I still have to explain what's necessary.
As for the female lead, those who have watched "My Conquest" and "Silver Fox" know that I am not good at writing love stories. Basically, I will lay a small foreshadowing in the early stage, have a female lead and then that's it. She won't have any role in the future, so don't worry.
(End of this chapter)
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