On The Making A Living Of Government Officials In Ming Dynasty

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the inaugurator of Ming dynasty, had a misery childhood and lived a frugal life even after he established the national regime. To compound Emperor's personal thrift preference, the national economy was at low ebb. Therefore, the official at all levels earned a salary of ounce, which had no rival case in Chinese ancient history. However, the expenditure of an official's public and private life was far beyond his salary. At the same time, there was not alternative choice for him to living a well-being life except to snatch fortune from society with all available means. It was natural for him to take advantage of functionary convenience to steal, grab and extort pelf from junior and common people. He always put out defalcation hands into all kinds of trade fields and would not stop until his fingers reach the limit. It was the misconduct behavior in public office that led to the polarization between poverty and affluence, the intensification of social contradiction, the corruption of national affairs and the knell song of Ming dynasty.This thesis is composed of three chapters. The first one introduces the evolvement of Chinese traditional philosophy on righteousness and benefit and its influence on official corruption of Ming dynasty. The second chapter points out the slender income could not meet their surprisingly high expenses, and analyses the economical cause for official misbehavior. How comes the official got out of the red? Chapter three hammers at their economic activities of dealing in land estate, commerce, financial investment and other illegal business, in details which include the source, management and income of land estate; the social environment and domain for commerce and finance investment; stealing from the public purse, private use of public property, accepting bribe and racketeering. Finally we can draw a conclusion from above three chapters that the improvement of official quality is the core of vital importance among all tasks in building up government system.