The land reform was to physically destroy the foundations of the Confucian Sect, uprooting them so that they would no longer be under the control of the Confucian gentry and the imperial power would go to the countryside.
This move was to uproot the roots that Dong Zhongshu had planted deeply in the minds of the Confucian Sect members, destroying the Confucian Sect's greatest reliance spiritually.
This would cause the Confucian gentry's sure-kill technique to resist the imperial power to no longer exist. This was not much simpler than destroying the physical body.
Xiao Ruxun did not plan to destroy the Confucian Sect. Instead, he planned to beat the Confucian Sect back to the academic-based sect of Confucius's era. He wanted to destroy Dong Zhongshu's tyrannical Confucian arts, which were a mixture of Legalism, Daoism, and Yin-Yang. He wanted to prevent Confucianism from once again having the power to dominate the world of thought.
In the future, when new learning was promoted, Confucianism would definitely become a huge obstacle.
However, the power of Confucianism to obstruct the ruling class was not terrifying. After all, there were three to five hundred thousand scholars, and they would not be able to do much after the land reform. What was truly terrifying was the Heaven Connection that was deeply rooted in people's minds and souls, which was also known as superstition.
As a school of learning, Confucius' Confucianism was undoubtedly meaningful. It was a good idea to teach people without discrimination and according to their aptitude, and it should be greatly promoted.
However, after being modified by Dong Zhongshu, especially after mixing in Legalism, Confucianism seemed to have gained a domineering air. It threatened the imperial power, but at the same time, it was also mutually dependent on the imperial power.
After that, in the era when the hundred schools of thought were dethroned and Confucianism was revered, the Confucians rapidly expanded with this idea as their weapon. They occupied the entire world of thought and unified their thoughts, giving rise to groups like the aristocratic clans and gentry.
Monopolizing knowledge and using literature to rule the law was extremely harmful and harmful. It had pushed the Han people to the brink of extinction several times.
This was absolutely not allowed.
The core point was the Heaven Connection. Destroying it and getting rid of this idea was something that had to be done no matter what.
However, this theory could be said to be the foundation of everyone's understanding of imperial power since the development of history. The imperial power was bestowed by God, and the emperor was the Son of Heaven, the eldest son of the heavens. This was a power bestowed by the heavens, so it could not be shaken.
This kind of idea was born with the imperial power. The Imperial Jade Seal was engraved with the words' Receive the Mandate of the Heavens, Live Forever and Prosper '. Getting rid of this kind of idea was, in a sense, destroying the imperial power itself. It could also be said to be changing one's fate.
Dong Zhongshu had used this method to create a mutual benefit between the Confucian Sect and the sovereign's authority. The two complemented each other and seemed inseparable.
However, that was not necessarily the case.
In ancient times, the literacy rate of China had always been very low. The rulers could use all kinds of superstitious methods to fool and weaken the people to maintain their rule. However, the huge interest groups that were born from this were often the gravediggers of the dynasty. If they could not solve this problem, the Daqin would inevitably have a war in the future, and it might even go back to the old path of the dynasty.
Xiao Ruxun knew that he only had a few decades to live, and he couldn't control the future of Daqin. In order to prevent the land of Huaxia from returning to that reincarnation, he had to have the courage to make a revolution.
Ever since he became the Emperor, he had asked himself many times whether he wanted to be a traditional Emperor.
The answer was no. If he wanted to be a traditional emperor, there was no need for land reform, no need for universal education, no need for communication with the world, and he could just continue to close the country.
He didn't want to do this. He didn't want the new atmosphere he had created to disappear after his death. He didn't want the regime to die.
Shang Yang left behind a powerful military interest group to maintain the results of Shang Yang's reform. But what would he leave behind to maintain the results of the great reform?
It wasn't that there was no way to change it. There were many ways to solve the problem, and a multi-pronged approach was needed. One was universal education to open the people's minds.
This was a double-edged sword. Not only could it make the gentry and nobles lose the soil to survive and grow, it would also threaten the existence of the imperial power.
The process of opening the people's minds would inevitably cause problems in their thinking. When the people were literate, educated, and understood the truth, would they still be so easily deceived?
When the new knowledge began to spread, when astronomy and geography began to flourish, when science began to germinate, when people realized that the traditional saying that the sky was round and the earth was square was not correct. When they realized that the earth was round and they lived on a spherical object, they would inevitably doubt many things that they once regarded as the truth.
This included the imperial power given by the heavens.
Did innocence exist? If innocence existed, why didn't the heavens themselves rule the world, but let the Emperor rule it?
The imperial power would be questioned, and this trend of thinking would inevitably spread, affecting millions of people, and shaking the foundation of the Daqin's rule.
In the end, the idea of the imperial power given by the heavens would inevitably be destroyed. Whether it was sooner or later, it would inevitably be destroyed.
The Emperor was temporary, and could not exist forever. Even if he existed forever, he could not hold absolute power forever.
Therefore, the way to get out of this predicament was to change the mandate from the heavens to the mandate from the people.
I am not the son of the heavens, and my power is not given by the heavens. I am the people, and the people trust me, so they gave me the mandate to rule the world.
The people are the creators of history. They created everything with their own hands. They are not monsters or gods, nor are they the heavens. I am not the son of the heavens. I am also a human. I am the spokesperson of the people. I stand with all of you.
With the process of universal education, when the time was ripe, Xiao Ruxun would spread this matter to the minds of the people who received the new education, planting the seed that they would no longer fear the heavens and re-examine the heavens.
It would change the traditional mandate in their thinking.
In the foreseeable future, the chaos brought about by this great change in thinking might threaten the imperial power, or even eliminate it. But as the representative of the old era, the imperial power would inevitably disappear with the arrival of the new era.
Even so, the interest groups of the old era would continue to be born. If one group was killed, another group would appear. It could not be completely killed, and it could not be driven away. The land reform was the same once, twice, thrice, or even four times. Zhu Yuanzhang was the lesson, and even in the modern era, it was still the same.
Xiao Ruxun asked himself that no matter how many corrupt officials he killed, he could not be more ruthless than Zhu Yuanzhang. Even if he held absolute power, he knew what he could do and what he could not do. He could only do what he thought was right, and try his best to leave a glimmer of hope.
As long as the divine imperial power still existed, it would not be so easy to move from the ancient era to the modern era, and the arrival of the age of enlightenment would not be so easy.
He could bring the army, technology, and productivity to the modern era, but he could not bring the real modern era.
When Xiao Ruxun was alive, he could suppress the nobles, but after he died, would the nobles and gentry make a comeback?
Would the landlords rise from the ashes again?
Would the place once again become the playground of the landlords and gentry?
The peak of the old era and the dawn of the new era were destined to be incompatible.
But the vested interests of the old era could not imagine that the emperor would even dare to change his own life.
If I even dared to change my own life, would you still be able to resist me?
Would you still be able to extinguish the dawn of the new era?
Xiao Ruxun did not know about the matters of the past, and perhaps no one knew.
The idea of the divine interaction was not only the representative root of the old era, but it could also be said to be the root of many superstitious sayings.
For example, what people do, the heavens watch, those who do not believe, look up and see who the heavens forgive, the gods are three feet above the head, those who do evil will be struck by lightning, and so on.
These popular sayings were still widely spread in the modern era, and they were all things that the people had slowly come up with from the theory of the divine interaction.
Objectively, it could indeed have the effect of frightening the hearts of evil people, but in reality?
It was useless, and the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. It was just the last moans of the weak.
Would the heavens save your mother?
It wouldn't.
When it was time to rise up and resist, they did not resist. When it was time to move, they did not move. They did not know how to use their own hands and legs to strive to achieve their goals, but they placed their hopes on the extremely mysterious heavens. Laughable, this was simply a method used by the weak and ignorant people.
Was the Manchurian Qing overthrown by the heavens?
Was the Japanese defeated by the heavens?
Did the Americans rush back to the south of the 38th parallel from the heavens?
Burn the incense, break the wooden fish, donate all the family property, break the family, break up the family, and break up the family. Not even the gods and buddhas would appear to help you even once!
Because they simply did not exist!
However, the persistence of the imperial era could not be given up, or else the landlords of the old era would turn into the capitalists of the new era. They would continue to hide from those above, oppress those below, divide the region, and destroy the unity, doing things that had not changed for thousands of years.
Therefore, Xiao Ruxun was deeply on guard against certain trends in the southeastern provinces. Although he opened the sea to trade, he had never tried to change the basic spirit of emphasizing agriculture and restraining commerce.
Heavy taxes were imposed on merchants, legislative restrictions, and the mausoleum system also included ways to deal with merchants. The commercial law was the strictest law in all of the legal systems of the new dynasty. Even the cabinet did not understand why the emperor would make such a strict law.
The capitalists overthrew the imperial power was never for the sake of social progress, but for the sake of making money without any scruples.
The way they treated the people was more shrewd and more terrifying than the imperial power. When they could hide it, they would use the cloak of democracy to deceive, but once they found that they could not hide it any longer, they would immediately tear off the cloak of democracy and launch a bloody suppression.
They were no different from the imperial power, except that their productivity had improved, and their way of ruling had also improved. They were more deceptive and more suitable for modern times than the imperial power given by the heavens. However, they could deceive for a while, but they could not deceive for a lifetime. Otherwise, no one would have proposed socialism and communism.
The lesson of relying on capitalists to overthrow the imperial power and relying on the local to overthrow the central government was still fresh in people's minds. Productivity had improved, but other things did not seem to have changed.
However, whether there were other methods, no one knew.
Could the economic base really determine the structure of the superstructure? If it really could, then why had productivity improved to such a level, but the superstructure was still the superstructure, and had not changed since ancient times?
These, Xiao Ruxun did not understand.
Xiao Ruxun only knew that what the trillions of citizens in this overly large territory needed was a centralized leader, an imposing aura that could move the hearts of the people, a unified goal, the courage to open up new frontiers, and not a dynasty or capital that belonged to a single family.
Therefore, at present, he would not allow any constitutional monarchy or capital revolution, and he would never change the basic spirit of emphasizing agriculture and restraining commerce.
However, how would the future go? When the people gradually became intelligent, and the imperial power could no longer exist, he did not know how this country and its trillions of people would go.
He felt that according to the current trend, if no changes were made, when he died, the Daqin would become the Soviet Union under the cloak of imperial power. What would happen after that? Where would the future of China go?
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