I was the Founding Father of the United States

Chapter 117 Why Did China Fail? 2

Chapter 117 Why Did China Fail? Part Two

Chen Wenbin's original approach to this problem was to focus on the system!

It was the feudal system of imperial autocracy that led to all kinds of power in the empire being concentrated in the hands of the court and the emperor.

The civil service examination system that followed the Song Dynasty destroyed the powerful clans and manor economy, and the ruling class changed from the powerful aristocrats who produced generals and ministers in the Han and Tang Dynasties to the civil officials and gentry who were selected through examinations.

Civil officials and gentry were actually the ruling class, but they were just employees who were always at risk of being dismissed. Therefore, they would try their best to suppress the army and the emperor whenever they had the chance, and try to control the army to maintain their own status.

However, very few civil officials and gentry could gain the trust of the army. The army respected tough men who had fought their way up with swords and spears. Scholars who were weak and powerless were naturally lacking in courage. Therefore, belittling the military, suppressing the martial spirit of the people, and lowering the social status of soldiers and generals became the common pursuit of the civil officials and gentry. This also coincided with the needs of the imperial power to maintain its rule.

As a result, under the control of the civil officials, the standing armies in the provinces fell into disuse, the imperial guards were rapidly converted into civilians in the capital, and only the border troops had a certain combat capability, but because of their low status and the lack of stable agents in the court, they were in a state of semi-starvation for a long time.

This means that if the border troops rebel or collapse, the emperor and the court will be beheaded by the enemy, and the vast empire will directly enter a state of brain death.

That's how the Northern Song Dynasty fell.

The Yuan Dynasty, established by the Mongols after the Song Dynasty, lacked experience in ruling a large and civilized country and was preoccupied with internal strife. Therefore, it adopted a large-scale tax farming system, delegating power to civil officials and gentry, allowing them to enjoy a life of luxury for several decades.

They discovered that being ruled by a foreign tribe was actually quite good! In many ways, it was even more lenient than the Song Dynasty; it was practically the perfect model.

However, with Emperor Hongwu's northern expedition, the good days of tax-farming local tyrants and civil officials came to an end.

Zhu Yuanzhang's court was determined to be thorough, abolishing the tax farmer system, strengthening imperial control, and refusing to share power with the scholar-officials, which resulted in a great many executions.

After Zhu Yuanzhang's death, civil officials supported Zhu Yunwen, who sided with the interests of the gentry and civil officials, but Zhu Di led the nobles of Huaixi to kill him.

After the Tumu Crisis, civil officials regained control of the court, and even a genius emperor like Zhu Houcong could only remotely direct operations from outside the palace.

By the late Ming Dynasty, civil officials had completely seized control of the court and local areas. Due to the long period of peace and the court's suppression of military virtue, the entire Ming society showed a tendency towards civilization. Elites no longer joined the army, and the weak scholar became the social standard of aesthetics.

Even in the Jiangnan region, this trend of becoming more refined and gentle has further shifted towards a more feminine approach.

According to the records of Jesuit missionaries, in the late Ming Dynasty, local gentry in Jiangnan actually adopted a feminine style of dress, and the aesthetics of the whole society further declined to a decadent level—far more decadent than that of the French aristocracy today!

In France today, only the ruling aristocracy and clergy are corrupt. The French army, intellectuals, and the general public are not lacking in martial virtue, whereas in the late Ming Dynasty, the entire society and all social classes were corrupt!

According to the accounts of Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, and Long Juemin, the society at the end of the Ming Dynasty presented a kind of abnormal prosperity.

The luxurious lifestyle of the upper class, the bandwagon effect of the middle-class gentry, and the complete atomization and selfishness of the lower-class commoners—such a society, apart from being less technologically advanced than modern society, is essentially no different from the early capitalist society that had broken free from the shackles of feudal morality.

However, European capitalism, accompanied by the Age of Exploration, colonial expansion, and the Industrial Revolution, was not lacking in either the progress of productivity or the martial spirit to protect itself and expand outwards.

After reviewing the materials left by the Jesuit missionaries, Chen Wenbin gained a more intuitive understanding of the so-called "early Ming Dynasty capitalist sprouts" that he had read about in history books.

Simply put, in the society of the late Ming Dynasty, social rules encouraged everyone to be a profit-driven person, without any moral constraints or reverence, and to prioritize money and profit above all else!

In the late Ming Dynasty, the lower one's moral standards, the easier it was to get rich; and the more treacherous and sycophantic one was, the easier it was to get promoted.

In the imperial court, civil officials formed cliques and factions. They would resolutely oppose any proposal from someone who was not on their side, no matter how correct it was, and would do everything they could to bring them down!

Officials and gentry generally lost their most basic compassion for the common people, as well as their sense of responsibility and ideals. Countless local officials even surrendered to the Manchus in order to keep their positions. To be honest, the Ming Dynasty did not die unjustly!

A country that rapidly urbanizes and develops industry and commerce has failed to establish a set of social norms and consensus that are in line with the development of the times, allowing moral decay, the dissipation of cohesion, and the de-responsibility of elites to take hold—even without Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, someone else would have smashed it all.

Fate, however, arranged the cruelest script for the Ming Dynasty and for China: the Manchu Eight Banners entering the pass was not just a simple change of dynasty!

Were those ignorant and apathetic people at the end of the Qing Dynasty truly the real people of China and the Han Chinese?

Obviously not!

The fact that the Chinese nation and the Han people quickly returned to the top of the world after gaining freedom and education in just a few decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China is the best proof of this!

The Chinese people have never been a backward or barbaric nation!

The Han people have never been conservative, ignorant, or apathetic!

The truly backward and barbaric dynasty was the Manchu Qing!

Taking advantage of China's weakness at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu Qing Dynasty colluded with some civil officials and gentry who hoped to return to the era of tax farmers and reaped the fruits of victory in the peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Knowing they had entered the Central Plains by chance, they used the most brutal methods to suppress and transform China.

First, there was education, because education would make people understand right from wrong and know how to resist. Therefore, the Qing government stipulated that Han people were not allowed to run private schools or academies, and those who disobeyed would be beheaded. At the same time, the Qing government made Chinese characters more complex and increased the difficulty of learning them.

Secondly, the Manchu rulers also took strict precautions against the gentry class who helped them rule.

In the imperial examinations, those whose ancestors had not served as traitors to help the Manchus suppress resistance were tacitly forbidden from participating. As soon as the elite Han scholars and officials showed their talents, they were promoted to the Eight Banners and made into bondservants. Those who did not comply were simply suppressed to prevent any Han officials from siding with the Han people and undermining their rule.

Economically, the policy of isolationism was implemented, prohibiting Han Chinese from contacting Western culture and technology, and also forbidding private merchants from engaging in foreign trade. As a result, a massive amount of foreign trade revenue flowed into the Aisin Gioro family and the Eight Banners Group.

While the Manchu emperors were learning Western mathematics, physics, and geography, and using Western clocks, Han Chinese scholars were learning the "Standards for Being a Good Student and Child," a book that turned people into fools and obedient beings.

The broken backbone of China was only barely repaired after the war in the mid-20th century.

In fact, Chen Wenbin was not worried about the Qing Dynasty under the rule of Emperor Qianlong in this era.

Even if the Eight Banners soldiers and Green Standard Army soldiers were all skilled in archery and horsemanship, could wear three layers of armor, and had great cannons, they were still just classical armies at the level of the late 17th century.

Given his physical condition, he can live for at least another sixty years, and his current assets are enough to own a territory of his own in North America.

As long as he doesn't fail in the subsequent American Revolutionary War, he can immigrate in the name of America and then spend twenty to thirty years training at least five thousand Han Chinese technical personnel and officers.

With so many people, they could go back and launch a "recapture of lost territory" campaign using steam-powered ironclad ships, machine guns, breech-loading guns, and cannons.

What he was really worried about was that if he didn't change the things in Chinese culture that made people disorganized and incompatible with industrial civilization, wouldn't he have worked in vain if a situation like the end of the Ming Dynasty occurred again?

He thought of the various phenomena in modern Western society that reeked of the decay and decay of civilization, and how in the postmodern world, humanity gradually abandoned interstellar exploration and instead wasted precious resources on meaningless division of spoils and internal strife—this was a timeline he didn't want to choose!

The Jews that Franklin had just mentioned also gave him an idea.

Since civil officials, gentry, and merchants would sell out their own civilization and nation without any bottom line for profit, and also enjoy indulging in pleasure.

That means they have no sense of awe or any faith, or rather, they believe in the selfishness of "every man for himself"!

Such scoundrels exist in every nation; they cannot be eradicated. The best solution is to replace them with another ruling group.

The solution he had just come up with was to establish a secret elite group of his own, drawing on the moral self-discipline of the Puritans and the Jewish sense of divine mission and unity.

He knows history, so he can foresee the future.

He understands science and geography, so it's not difficult for him to create miracles.

He understands human psychology, so he has enough confidence to control the organization. More importantly, he has money, and the most important things for an organization are money and ideology.

He certainly won't lack money, so all that's left is his ideology.

Other secret societies, such as the Illuminati and Freemasonry, are essentially united by selfish ideologies of rule and certain shared vulnerabilities. Their ultimate goal is nothing more than to establish a world where only a few exercise ultimate rule.

But Chen Wenbin was, after all, a young man born under the red flag, and naturally still retained some idealism.

The ultimate goal he wanted to give to this organization was naturally to eliminate all dark forces, liberate all of humanity, and then propel human civilization toward the stars!

This organization will truly lie dormant in history, controlling the world's economy, trade, and public opinion during peacetime, as well as the political direction of major powers. It can also establish branches and subordinate organizations to select and develop true elites, thereby controlling the general trend of history and ensuring that humanity marches towards the stars.

He wasn't sure how much of this idea could be realized, or whether it would go astray, but he had decades to live, and his wisdom and experience would continue to grow.

Perhaps in the future he will have a better way, or arrange it more perfectly, but even if he makes a mistake, it is still better than doing nothing and regretting it later.

Paris will be where he places his first move.

A revolution is brewing here, a revolution that will happen 25 years later, and a major turning point in the fate of mankind.

Now, with just a small amount of resources and a little disturbance, one can obtain immeasurable value and results.

The Rothschilds prospered because of this, and Sir Chen also wanted to profit from this rare opportunity!

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