A long-standing topic
Who in this country is clean!
Once, a friend who was in the jade business told me that a few years ago, he often drove jade to Fuzhou, Beijing. In their circle, who sent jade to whom was often a topic of conversation over tea.
So, who is clean? Even a village chief from a remote and backward place, where no birds poop, could embezzle millions. You ask, who is clean? If you don't pay at each level, who will promote you? Anyone can do it; why should it be you? Is it because your face is white? Or because you have good morals, emerging from the mud and remaining untainted, out of place in the crowd?
Corruption is destined. Not being corrupt is an exception; otherwise, why, with five thousand years of history, have only Bao Zheng and Hai Rui been the two clean officials? Bao Zheng is dramatized; the real situation makes it hard to say if he was truly a clean official. Hai Rui was also ultimately hung up like a plaque by the emperor and died in obscurity.
Clean officials have a flaw: they are self-appreciating and consider themselves solitary ministers. Such people find it hard to have execution power in the officialdom because they fear dirtying their feathers and cherish them too much.
Corrupt officials, from top to bottom, are unified, like one gear after another. As long as there is money, they will rotate swiftly. Look at the Ming Dynasty in 1566; after Yan Song fell, the reformers almost destroyed the Ming Dynasty. If the entire court were like Hai Rui, the dynasty would undoubtedly perish. They cherish their feathers, only thinking about their own cleanliness, which is undoubtedly harmful to the people. Without greed, there is naturally no motivation or willingness to push the national machine forward; what if they dirty themselves?
As for these military heads, corruption does indeed make people uneasy. What if the artillery shells or missiles are fake? What if they explode? Think about the shells in the flower wreath on the mountain; the shells don’t fire and can’t fit into the barrel.
A machine that has been around for five thousand years is hard to repair!
Changing it is not allowed because it is unique.
What to do? Worry, sleepless nights!
In such a situation, do you still want to pursue unity?
