Chapter 2143: Taizong Chronicles 11: The Great University of Politics and Law

In the first year of Jianlong (1018), on the sixteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the imperial carriage personally arrived at the empire's first comprehensive university of politics and law, where the Emperor delivered a speech to the entire faculty and student body by way of encouragement. The university's full name: the Great Han University of Politics and Law.

Loujiang Academy, located at Kunshan in Suzhou, could be called the foundation and talent treasury of the early "Prince of Linzi faction." Over more than a decade since its founding, it had provided a large number of administrative clerks for Jiangnan and for Liu Wenji. After so many years of development and practice, the earliest cohort had already been promoted to court-appointed officials, with the highest-ranked among them having attained the key post of county magistrate.

It was not merely ordinary clerical personnel—top-tier talents like Fan Zhongyan were a complete windfall, with his elder brother Fan Zhongwen thrown in as a bonus. And after so many years of practice, it had been preliminarily proven that the path of specialized clerical training could work; indeed, a solid first step had already been taken.

Of course, sufficient preconditions were still required: first, the support of sufficiently powerful figures in authority; second, open-minded educational philosophies; third, a sufficiently large pool of high-quality students.

And in the Great Han Empire of the first year of Jianlong, these conditions were all barely met. Over the past several decades, thanks to the empire's strength—continuous military victories, rapid economic development, and steadily advancing productive forces—the empire had naturally undergone intellectual evolution. Various schools of thought had emerged: the statecraft faction, the Xikun faction, the reformist faction, the conservative faction, and various regional factions—truly an endless succession. Social mores were changing, and educational concepts were continuously evolving.

During the Shizu era, there had been considerable suppression of literati and civil officials, but after the Taizong reign began, restrictions on culture, thought, and education gradually loosened. It was also from the Yongxi era that the land of China once again welcomed a brilliant and flourishing cultural golden age.

Including during the Kangzong period, the Emperor's indolence and the decline of official governance from clean to corrupt had triggered widespread intellectual resonance throughout society. The past twenty-plus years had also given various academics and educators opportunities to rise to prominence.

Of course, in an age of autocratic monarchy, the Emperor's attitude played a decisive role in everything. Take the current Son of Heaven, Liu Wenji, for example—his emphasis on ideological education and his support for administrative training schools.

When he was still the Prince of Linzi, Liu Wenji's establishment of Loujiang Academy had been merely an experiment, a trial run. But after ascending the throne and securing his position, he set about formally applying and promoting the results obtained from more than a decade of exploration, practice, and validation.

As early as the third year of Duangong, Liu Wenji had issued an edict elevating Loujiang Academy to a circuit-level administrative training school, placed directly under the Jiangnan Administrative Commission, managed by education officials, completing its evolution from a semi-official school to an official institution.

For local magnates and bureaucrats, no matter how much noise the court made about streamlining personnel and eliminating redundant posts and officials, they always had ways to cope—they had means, they had time, to maneuver against the central government.

But looking solely at the matter of "administrative clerks," the Emperor's creation of this administrative training school system seemed to strike at something vital. The reason local magnates were magnates lay in the privileges and treatment granted to them by the imperial system. Since the root problem could not be solved by directly digging it out, reforming the supply of clerks combined with administrative oversight became the solution Liu Wenji had devised.

If previously the graduates of Loujiang Academy had mostly supplied the three prefectures of Su, Xiu, and Shang, then from the third year of Yongxi onward, it would supply administrative talent for the entire Jiangnan Circuit—a leapfrog, even subversive, change.

From the Shizu Kaibao era through the entire Yongxi period, even Kangzong had shouted slogans about eliminating mediocre officials and redundant clerks, but in reality, by the time Liu Wenji ascended the throne as Emperor, the problem of redundant officials and clerks remained no less severe.

But as always, where there are policies from above, there are countermeasures from below. As the people had hidden households and the land had hidden acreage, so officials had hidden officials, and clerks naturally had hidden clerks. If constrained within the establishment, there were always temporary workers outside it.

In an era of limited information, constrained transportation, and finite supervisory capacity, many problems could only be alleviated, never fundamentally cured—doomed to a cycle of contradiction erupting, reform, suppression, and eruption again.

Though it was merely a school for training low-level specialized clerks, the magnates of Jiangnan Circuit had truly caught a whiff of that unusual atmosphere—it was almost a prelude to great transformation.

Over the past twenty or thirty years, some results had been achieved, but all had treated symptoms rather than root causes. Even as early as the Kaibao era, Shizu had issued an edict making comprehensive regulations and restrictions on the number of officials and clerks and their corresponding salaries at every level of government—circuits, prefectures, armies, counties, towns, townships, and villages—throughout the empire.

To be honest, this was still a form of reform, and some of its concepts necessarily came from Emperor Shizu himself. But if this matter succeeded, it would have enormously positive significance for strengthening the central authority of the empire, controlling redundant personnel and local oversight, and improving the quality and capability of imperial officials.

In Liu Wenji's conception, he had even further plans for the purification of clerks—namely, completely and explicitly prohibiting government offices at all levels from privately appointing clerks. Even if this power could not be reclaimed by the central government, it would at least be de-institutionalized and systematized. The ultimate form would be that, on some future day, all clerks of the Great Han at every level would be selected from among students trained and educated at administrative schools, rather than based purely on the personal preferences and biases of individual bureaucrats.

And accomplishing this was clearly not easy—it required more accumulation, more practice, more complete institutions, broader awareness, more supporters, and greater authority.

Moreover, even if things were truly pushed forward according to Liu Wenji's vision and ultimately implemented, new problems would inevitably arise in the process, and no one knew what the final outcome would look like. But while the purpose of doing things is certainly to succeed, in the pursuit of success, achieving some progress is already profoundly meaningful. And given Liu Wenji's character—soft on the outside, hard within—he would never consider turning back before hitting a wall. At the same time, given his consistently cautious style, it would be very difficult for anything to make him bloody his head.

In the summer of the third year of Duangong, with the Jiangnan Circuit Administrative Commission's "absorption" of Loujiang Academy completed, the Emperor issued another edict, ordering Loujiang Academy's headmaster Wang Xuexin to select elite professors to come to the capital and formally begin establishing an administrative training school directly under the central government.

And at the capital level, things naturally could not remain the small-scale operations of Loujiang Academy—the prestige and rank had to be elevated. Moreover, it was no longer simply about training "clerks" but a true comprehensive school for cultivating officials, dedicated to elite education.

To this end, Liu Wenji even issued an edict integrating the Directorate of Education into the university—a testament to its extraordinary standing. Regardless of whether successive emperors valued it, the Directorate of Education was the highest institution of learning in the Great Han Empire, the object of infinite aspiration for civil officials, bureaucrats, and scholars across the realm. Its status was sacred.

Therefore, when the Emperor proposed the "universitization" reform of the Directorate of Education, it sparked enormous controversy throughout the court and the country—truly a storm of protest. All manner of conservatives jumped out, ranging from staunch opposition to conservative debate, with opinions of every stripe. For a time, criticism filled the capital.

The Emperor was clearly not someone to trifle with, so some turned their attention to Wang Xuexin and the other officials and professors involved in establishing the university. Attacks and accusations rained down on Old Master Wang like hail—calling him a heretic, a sycophant currying favor with the throne. The old master, who had entered the capital with head held high, found his reputation ruined. Had it not been for the Emperor's backing and the occasional envoy sent to check on him, he would likely have thrown in the towel amid the enormous vortex of public opinion.

Though the opposition was loud, to be fair, its influence on the central government's decision-making was ultimately limited. Above, the Emperor pushed forcefully; below, the meritorious nobility sat back and watched. And the Jianlong chancellors selected by Liu Wenji, even if they harbored objections, did not challenge the Emperor on this matter.

Beyond the empire's highest decision-making circles, there was also a group of people who chose to support the university's establishment, each with formidable fighting capability. The purpose of verbal battles was not victory or defeat, but merely to prevent public opinion from swinging one-sidedly, to muddy the waters—their greatest value lay in helping those in power achieve their ultimate goals.

And Liu Wenji's goal was, in the end, achieved. The University of Politics and Law was ultimately established in a state of ceaseless controversy but orderly progress. In the later period, many people, seeing that the matter could not be opposed, could only hold their noses and join—after all, they could not allow the empire's highest institution of learning to truly fall into the hands of a "heretic" like Wang Xuexin. To uphold orthodoxy, temporarily cooperating with the "evil spirits" was a necessary humiliation borne under duress.

By this point, Wang Xuexin alone was no longer sufficient to control the university. Even though Liu Wenji had bestowed upon him the concurrent title of Vice Minister of Rites, he could only become one of several vice presidents.

As for the university's first president, the rank was set very high—it was Chancellor Zhang Shixun. And the university's erudites, professors, and other faculty members were no ordinary men either: academicians of the Three Institutes, great Confucians of the capital, and regional scholarly luminaries all flocked there. More importantly, the senior officials and ministers of the various ministries and departments who were well-versed in state affairs and accomplished in governance were also required to teach at the university on a regular basis. Regional governors of frontier provinces with outstanding achievements and notable accomplishments were treated the same.

As for those "Loujiang faction" faculty members who had entered the capital with Wang Xuexin, they could only keep their heads down in the capital. However, as the one who had conducted the early experiments, participated in the preliminary planning, and later been involved in the university's day-to-day administration, Wang Xuexin's name was directly etched into the university's history, and indeed into the educational history of the entire Great Han Empire. Such renown was, for Old Master Wang, ample recompense.

With faculty of such caliber, the student body naturally consisted of no ordinary people either. Simply put, without status or connections, unless one was a heaven-blessed genius who knew things from birth, or extraordinarily lucky, one could absolutely not enter the university.

Even so, the establishment of the University of Politics and Law represented a great advance and a great transformation in the empire's talent cultivation mechanism—even if in essence, it was merely a place for cultivating the elite of the empire's ruling class, essentially completely cut off from the common masses.

There is no doubt that the Great Han University of Politics and Law, from the very day of its birth, was destined for its nature and status as the cradle of the empire's bureaucracy.

PS: While the Jiangnan Circuit was incorporating Loujiang Academy into the Administrative Commission by imperial decree, a similar operation was carried out in the northern Yan Mountains South Circuit—except the institution being absorbed was the "Zhao Family School" established by the Marquis of Guangyang's household. Over the past few years, the Zhao Family School had trained more than two hundred students who, upon graduation, had been placed through the Zhao family's influence into clerical positions in various government offices in southern Yan and Hebei.

As Emperor, Liu Wenji naturally could not permit such a situation to continue once he became aware of it. However, even after the absorption, the Zhao family's influence in the Youzhou Administrative Training Academy—and indeed throughout the entire Yan-Zhao regional officialdom—remained largely preserved, even deepened. As Zhao Kuangyi had said in his lifetime: what prospers a family is the family school—a foundation for a hundred years.

And after the situation regarding the "Zhao Family School" spread among the upper circles of the capital, many people finally realized what had happened. Zhao Dechong, who presided over the "Zhao School," was not highly regarded; what evoked sighs of admiration was Zhao Kuangyi's long-term scheming—though some called it cunning and crafty.

But that was the end of it. Even those who wanted to imitate had no opportunity—the court no longer permitted it, especially for those of meritorious nobility background, who were all too easily attacked for harboring ulterior motives.