Chapter 1814: The Transformation of Mizhou Beneath the Waves

The Henan Circuit had long since prepared a welcome banquet for Prince Yong and his party, held at the largest tavern in the harbor, the East Sea Pavilion. Jiaozhou Harbor had already taken on the rudimentary shape of a port city—though its administrative rank still fell under Jiaoxi County and it lacked a comprehensive administrative management system, its other infrastructure was quite complete, especially in terms of commerce and the people's livelihood.

Since twenty years ago, a peculiar phenomenon had appeared in Mizhou: the Prefectural Administrator was not at the prefectural seat, and the County Magistrate was not at the county seat—both preferred to go out and inspect the people's conditions. And as for where they inspected, nine times out of ten it was Jiaozhou Harbor. The reason was obvious: they were enamored with the harbor's wealth and bustle.

Eventually, Jiaoxi County simply moved its administrative seat to the harbor without permission, selecting a prime feng shui location as its office. The reasoning was also simple: along the Jiaozhou Bay shoreline, the population had surged and public security had deteriorated, so relocating the seat would facilitate nearby governance.

However, the result was that public security in Jiaozhou Harbor did not improve in the slightest—it instead grew increasingly worse. Where there is sunlight, there is shadow; behind prosperity, crime often brews.

With the rise of overseas trade and reliance on the maritime benefits of Jiaozhou Harbor, after decades of development, Mizhou's population and economic structure had undergone tremendous changes. Though agriculture and fishing remained the main industries, both the government and the common folk placed greater importance on maritime affairs.

Therefore, land conflicts within Mizhou's jurisdiction were not acute—indeed, because large numbers of people flooded into the harbor to earn a living, some farmland was even abandoned. Mizhou's biggest problems lay in corruption and public security.

A place that develops often comes with negative elements, and Mizhou was exactly such a case. Relying on Jiaozhou Harbor's excellent port and foreign trade conditions, all manner of forces swarmed in—a motley assortment, dragons and snakes mixed together. Especially among the common folk, a large number of gang factions were born, and during the harbor's rapid development, they grew as wildly as weeds.

Profit stirs men's hearts. Setting aside the bullying of the good and the oppression of the common people, they fought and killed each other over territory and financial resources. Every year, injury cases numbered in the hundreds. Jiaozhou Harbor's crime rate remained persistently high—even with the East Sea Fleet stationed nearby, it had little deterrent effect, since the navy had no authority to come ashore and interfere in local affairs.

Public security deteriorated and social order and morality faced severe challenges, yet the Mizhou and Jiaoxi County governments had done little in the past. On the one hand, this was due to the inherent compromise-seeking nature of bureaucrats: as long as no major chaos erupted, as long as surface stability was maintained, as long as taxes were paid on time, and as long as their reputations and careers were unaffected, everything else was negotiable—there was ample room for compromise.

And the Mizhou government, which possessed Jiaozhou Bay, actually did not need to do much of anything. The annual two-tax quota apportioned to them was no burden at all—they even had considerable surplus profit. Even in difficult years, enthusiastic local magnates and gentry would help out, ensuring the court's tax quotas were fulfilled. And such difficult years were, in any case, rare.

To make the officials' tenure comfortable, those beneath them—the petty schemers and sycophants—behaved all the more considerately. They never caused any major disturbances, and if any did arise, they were suppressed long ago. Even when lives were lost, everything was cleaned up in advance, never causing trouble for their superiors. Some unwritten rules even emerged: whoever violated them would be attacked by all, a constraint more powerful than the court's laws that carried the death penalty.

A thriving market? A stable livelihood? Small matters—wasn't it easy to put up a facade? At least when superiors came to inspect, Mizhou was forever a place of political harmony and flourishing industries.

Over the past twenty years, Mizhou had been a most surreal place, where the most absurd, most cruel, and most truthful aspects of the world were perfectly on display.

The collusion of power and money was an objective law, as if it were truth itself—no one could defy it or control it. Many Mizhou officials, having accepted bribes, were in cahoots with those gray and black forces. Indeed, the Mizhou government even needed their help to maintain public order.

Otherwise, a population that had already exceeded the management limits of the existing prefectural and county offices could not possibly be managed—after all, Mizhou had not been upgraded in rank, and the government was severely short of subordinate staff. In this regard, the court had imposed explicit restrictions.

Forced by circumstances, the Mizhou and Jiaoxi governments, under the original official staffing system, added some "extra-establishment personnel"—translated as "temporary workers"—to assist in management.

And these off-establishment positions, though insignificant in the eyes of the government—even disposable pawns at any moment—were nonetheless eagerly sought after by Mizhou's local powers. Even a temporary worker wore the skin of an official, and to ordinary roving bravos and criminal forces, this was real power, even a chance to wash themselves clean and come ashore.

Moreover, what did the common folk know? They only recognized official status, and they were often weak, submitting to violence and might. The powerful figures in the government had their own relatives and old friends to look after, and the local gentry, prominent clans, and merchants also needed to place their own people in convenient positions. With all these forces entangled together, one can imagine what Mizhou's local situation had truly been like.

With the government as their backing, those "temporary workers" who held law enforcement power naturally acted with utter recklessness, squeezing ordinary merchants, craftsmen, and farmers however they pleased.

Mizhou's filthy condition even leaked beyond the prefecture to the circuit office. The Henan Circuit Surveillance Office, pressured by public opinion at the time, had once carried out a cleanup of the Mizhou government, taking down some prefectural and county officials. But it treated the symptoms, not the root cause. Once the storm passed and time went on, old habits returned—even if their conduct had somewhat restrained itself, the essence had changed little.

Local forces colluding together were extremely stubborn. They dared not resist the court, and when struck, they offered no strong counterattack—but for the court to eradicate them was equally impossible. And the bureaucrats who represented the court often succumbed to temptation and threats, colluding with them. The scenes Emperor Liu so deeply abhorred were especially prominent in Mizhou.

Therefore, when Emperor Liu's claws reached out to the local circuits and prefectures, Mizhou was a key target in the Henan region, and Wang Jiang, the special envoy of the Wude Office, struck with particular ruthlessness.

As the Great Han's largest port in the north, Jiaozhou Harbor was fairly conspicuous, and the Wude Office could hardly have been unaware of it—it was just that their focus had previously been on national security surveillance, with official discipline being only a tiny part. If they devoted their energy to these petty local machinations, the Wude Office would hardly be able to do anything else.

Moreover, in the past, although Mizhou was riddled with ills and heavy with crime, on the surface it did present a picture of thriving prosperity and vigorous development. The government's authority was strong, and the court's rule was solid—this exceeded the Wude Office's screening criteria.

However, this time, under Emperor Liu's will, the Wude Office naturally shifted its focus as well, devoting itself wholeheartedly to serving Emperor Liu's campaign to purify officialdom, concentrating its efforts on anti-corruption and eliminating evil.

Wang Jiang was also a clan nephew of the former Commissioner of the Wude Office, Wang Yinwu, and had originally been implicated as well. But when Wang Xuanzhen unexpectedly rose to prominence, gained Emperor Liu's trust, and was appointed Commissioner of the Wude Office, Wang Jiang also rose from the ashes, later being appointed as the Wude Office's Henan Circuit Chief Inspector.

As for Mizhou's situation, Wang Jiang was hardly ignorant of it—one could even say he knew it very well. Previously he had not acted because he did not care, but now that the edict had arrived and the political storm had begun, Mizhou was the first place in the Henan Circuit to be cut open.

Wang Jiang coordinated with the special envoys from the capital, and based on collected evidence, cross-referenced the list, and followed the clues step by step, starting from the prefectural office, arresting all those involved one by one. The entire process was not entirely smooth, but with the Wude Office's intelligence and the swift operation, the arrest of the bureaucrats went very smoothly—they dared not resist, lest one man's crime implicate their entire families and relatives.

The problems arose precisely with those with vested interests—whether powerful magnates and gentry or criminal forces, they actually dared to resist. Especially those roving bravos, who even gathered crowds to oppose the officials' arrests.

Those people were audacious beyond measure, having built their lives on ferocity and fearing nothing—but no matter how fierce, they could not out-fierce the Wude Office, which directly designated them as rebels and traitors. So troops were dispatched to suppress the rebellion and exterminate the bandits. Of the various large and small civilian forces entrenched in Jiaozhou Harbor, a good half were wiped out, and many were killed without even a chance for interrogation. After all, if they had rebelled, what was there to interrogate?

The comprehensive rectification campaign in Mizhou lasted nearly two months. After those two months, eighty percent of the officials in Mizhou's prefectural and county governments had been brought down—the lightly punished were dismissed on the spot, the more severely punished were exiled, and even more were escorted to the Western Capital, not to stand trial but to face execution. To avoid delegating too much authority, Emperor Liu had made a regulation: unless under special circumstances, all offending officials and guilty clerks were to be escorted to the capital to serve their sentences.

It must be said that this major rectification was a bone-deep blow to Mizhou. The originally sound economic situation suffered a severe setback, civilian business operations were heavily struck, the government fell into chaos, administrative order was paralyzed for quite some time, and the harbor was briefly desolate. Everything seemed to prove that the court's anti-corruption and evil-elimination campaign was a mistake. It was only because Liu Chenghsun returned late—had he come back half a month earlier, he would have seen a very different scene at Jiaozhou Harbor.

With the circuit office subsequently stepping in, everything gradually improved. Shi Dechong transferred some grassroots clerks from various parts of Henan to fill the vacancies, and even had his deputy temporarily serve as Mizhou's Prefectural Administrator, first cleaning up the mess left in the wake of the Wude Office's sweep, restoring the government offices' functions, and maintaining stability among the people.

As Emperor Liu had said, the Great Han today truly did not lack people to serve as officials—what it lacked was officials for places like Mizhou that had overdeveloped. The court's anti-corruption campaign certainly terrified officials across the realm, but it also gave a large number of struggling mid- and low-ranking officials more opportunities. After all, when some go down, others must come up—mobility is what shows vitality.

Such was the case with Mizhou. Within the Henan Circuit, there was no shortage of people willing to serve as officials in Mizhou. Setting aside its economic conditions, the very fact that it had just been cleaned up meant it should be a relatively safe place—after all, two shells never land in the same crater, and the court could not repeatedly churn a single place. On this point, the bureaucrats saw things clearly.

Thus, Mizhou's vacancies were quickly filled on a temporary basis, and personnel arrangements involving important positions only awaited reporting to the Western Capital for confirmation by the Ministry of Personnel—which, generally speaking, would not reject them. Of course, amid this turbulent and chaotic situation, the Ministry of Personnel was probably the busiest of all the ministries, as it involved too many official promotions, demotions, and position changes.

Taking advantage of the Mizhou purge, Shi Dechong also resolved some administrative problems that had accumulated in the past. First was upgrading Mizhou and Jiaozhou Harbor—especially Jiaozhou Harbor, which was separated from under Jiaoxi County to become a county-level port directly under Mizhou, equipped with a complete bureaucratic structure and personnel. At the same time, he greatly expanded the number of clerks in Jiaoxi and Jiaozhou Harbor to meet management needs.

After all, in the past, even counting runners and township clerks together, Jiaoxi County had fewer than three hundred people managing the entire county and the Jiaozhou Bay coastal region—no matter how one looked at it, this was unreasonable and completely unable to keep pace with the bay's development. Adjustments were needed to adapt to developmental demands.

And after Shi Dechong's various rectification and appeasement measures were implemented, Mizhou gradually stabilized. After all, the foundation was there—once order was restored, everything would come back. Indeed, because the blood-sucking pests had been eliminated, many people discovered that the air around Jiaozhou Bay now seemed fresher than in previous years, and people felt more at ease too.