Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2207 Luoyang Mansion ([-])

"It's not easy to take this step!" On April 1693, 4, Zhao Ke, who had just assumed the post of Governor of Luoyang, said with emotion in a newly built building in Nancheng District.

Fu Yin is the highest chief executive of Luoyang Prefecture. He was originally called the magistrate, but was vetoed by Shao Yaoguang, the chairman of the executive committee, and directly ordered to change his name to Fu Yin in order to "follow the tradition."After a series of fierce games, Zhao Ke finally had the last laugh and took office as the first Governor of Luoyang Mansion.Before that, he had successively served as the county magistrate of Baode County, the commissioner of the Hejian District Administrative Office, the commissioner of the Southern Chile District Administrative Office, and the director of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

There are rumors in the market that once the construction of Luoyang Mansion is almost completed, the Government Administration Council will grant it the qualification of a deputy provincial legal person.Then Zhao Ke, as the prefect, can basically be promoted to a deputy provincial official.You must know that the step between the bureau level and the provincial level is very difficult to cross on the east coast.The reason is that there are many cadres at the department and bureau level, but very few high-ranking officials. This makes the competition unprecedentedly fierce. Those who can take this step must have good background, political achievements, and luck, all of which are indispensable.

The office buildings of the various functional departments of Luoyang Prefecture were newly built, instead of the city hall left by the Spaniards, where the Nancheng District Government currently operates.The newly built government office is a traditional Chinese-style building with three floors, a gabled roof, slopes, and tiles on it.The whole building uses a lot of stone and wood, and some patterns are carved on the walls to reflect the construction of the country after the founders landed.

There are also some new religious buildings in Nancheng District, the most famous of which is undoubtedly the Yuqing Palace, a Taoist holy place built with state funding.This soon-to-be-completed Taoist building covers an area of ​​thousands of square meters. It is far away from the Shangqing Palace in the Mingjing District of the mountain in the west (this was built with the money of the Taoist Federation). It can be said to be the future ancestral home of Taoism on the east coast. It will surely become one of the spiritual holy places in the hearts of the people of Luoyang Prefecture.

According to Zhao Ke's understanding, the land near Yuqing Palace has basically been allocated, and each has its own use.For example, the well-known chain department store Sun Chunyang Nanhuo Shop, the famous catering company Penglai Restaurant, and the state-owned Dongfang Hotel Group all occupy a piece of land nearby and plan to build their own commercial facilities.Zhao Ke is happy to see the success of this. After all, some high-end buildings can be erected without paying a penny from the Nancheng District Government or Luoyang Mansion, so why not do it?

Compared with Yuqing Palace, Buddhist or Catholic buildings are not so popular.Taking Buddhism as an example, the total number of Buddhist believers in the entire country on the east coast may only be tens of thousands, with limited strength and even more limited influence. He had to go to the believers for alms, which shows that his financial resources are indeed in a difficult situation.

However, this Buddhist building called Shita Temple - simple and clear, built of stone - is not small.Zhao Ke once went there to see the pagoda, which has seven floors and is octagonal as a whole. There are lotus flowers carved on the cornerstone, and scriptures are carved on the walls. I don't know how much it cost.There is also an underground palace in Shita Temple, which is circular and has steps to go down inside. There are a large number of Buddha statues carved inside the walls, winding all the way down to the underground palace.

It has to be said that the Buddhist Association really made a big move this time. It wanted to make a blockbuster in the capital and set up a tall religious place.But their ambitions are doomed to fail. The position of Taoism in the East Coast is hopelessly stable, the funds are sufficient, and there is still a lot of policy support. How can Buddhism compete?There is no need to fight at all!

And if it is difficult for Buddhism to develop on the East Coast, then Catholicism is simply surviving in the cracks.East Coast Catholicism has not yet been recognized by the Holy See. At the same time, there are not many believers, and it has been showing a decreasing trend, so that the churches in some small counties cannot be maintained and are slowly being abandoned.

This time they chose to build a cathedral in the capital, the same as the purpose of Buddhism, it is to make a breakthrough in this country's most benevolent place, and then affect other regions.However, compared with Buddhism, this building named "Luoyang Catholic Church" is much more shabby and smaller in size. Even the building itself is mostly made of bricks and cheap wood, which seems out of place.But there is no way, with this strength, it is impossible to slap a swollen face and pretend to be a fat man like Buddhism.

"Fu Yin, this is the summary table of judicial and police administration from Nancheng District." Just as he was feeling emotional, the secretary came in from the outside and sent a stack of documents to Zhao Ke.

Zhao Ke nodded, and after the secretary went out, he looked through it carefully.The sources of these documents are various, but they are basically a summary of judicial or public security situations, and even include some institutional suggestions.The judicial system on the east bank, after several decades of reforms, has stabilized from the first-instance system and the second-instance system to the current two-level court system of high and local courts.The High Court is divided into two parts: review and appeal, and conducts civil and criminal trials in a complete three-instance system.

However, the cases that can go to the third trial are actually very rare, and most of them end in the first and second trials.For example, a few days ago, the Nancheng District Court sentenced a Spaniard who beat someone because of alcoholism to public whipping, which ended directly in the first trial, and the punishment was executed on the same day, which was very efficient.

There is also a procuratorate on the east bank, but at first it was half a block lower than the court, and it was once a vassal of the court.Fortunately, after years of development, the procuratorate system has gradually developed, and now the administrative level has been equal to that of the court, and it is directly responsible to the highest local chief executive.

At the bottom of the file there is also a section on police administration.To be honest, different from later generations, the east coast police in this era have more tasks. Whether it is the county-level public security bureau or the police stations in towns and towns, they have to undertake many affairs including police, criminal, security, security, and hygiene. , very complicated.The police are divided into three categories, one is the most common garrison police and patrol police, responsible for local security, case detection and other work; The security defense of the location, the protection of important people, the transportation of important materials, and the expedition guards are relatively well-equipped and hard-trained; the third type of police is the secret police who make people change their faces. These people belong to the intelligence department , They are often seen in operations such as arresting spies, destroying underground churches, and investigating reactionary organizations.

In fact, those under the management of the local government are generally ordinary garrison police and patrol police. They are all staffed by the Public Security Bureau, and the director of the Public Security Bureau is directly under the leadership of the local chief executive.But on many occasions, the local government also needs to call the police, so this needs to be negotiated with the leaders of the branches of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in various places. Generally speaking, there is no major problem.

The police force in Luoyang Prefecture is not yet fully staffed, and they are still in the midst of intense recruitment work.Zhao Ke flipped through the documents, signed his name in several places where his signature was required, then sorted them out a bit, put them aside, and waited for the secretary to come and pick them up later.And after finishing the stack of documents, he took out a new document from the drawer, which was densely filled with small characters, all of which were notes written by Zhao Ke while reading.

The reason why this document is so important is that the Government Administration Council intends to implement a new administrative system at the grassroots level in the various districts of Luoyang Prefecture, that is, the system of village self-government.The institution of villagers' self-government is the rural cooperative. The members of the cooperative are all adult villagers of one or more villages. Several elected members are responsible for the agricultural production, sanitation and epidemic prevention, purchase and sale, tax statistics, religious affairs and other affairs of the whole cooperative. covers most aspects of life.

The document clearly stipulates that half of the members of the cooperative must be "officially elected", that is, appointed by the government, and half must be "popularly elected", elected by all members of the cooperative.In January of this year, the Government Affairs Council officially issued a document nationwide, giving countless rural cooperatives across the country independent legal personality—in other words, although the cooperatives were engaged in selling grain, buying farm tools, and insurance before, but in the legal sense It does not have the qualifications of a legal person - it is stipulated that the president shall be elected by the government in equal numbers (the term of office is five years), and each cooperative has the right to issue bonds, etc., and has become an autonomous group that surpasses the original natural village.

The two positions of village head and militia director have been merged. From now on, the village head will be responsible for the training of each village soldier.Rural taxes also need to be collected by the village head in cooperation with the township tax offices and tax police offices.In addition, education (primary school), civil engineering (roads, drainage), and sanitation (disease prevention and control) in various places have basically been taken over by autonomous groups, and major reforms have taken place at the grassroots level in rural areas.

The main reason for this is that after the population on the east coast increased and the society developed in an all-round way, the situation in the countryside began to become extremely complicated. The government's original idea of ​​directly managing the villages has become unrealistic. Not as good as before.Coupled with the rise of agricultural cooperatives, the power of village chiefs has been slowly eroded until there is little left. Instead of this, it is better to directly carry out reforms and let them exercise self-government. The government only needs to retain half of the seats in the committee and still be able to monitor them. That's it.Even if this policy proves to be effective—it was tested in Luoyang Prefecture and various frontier areas in 1693—it is not impossible to further reduce the number of government seats in cooperatives, and everything depends on how well it works.

"Reform and reform, if you don't reform, you have to reform! The village chiefs who are born in horse dung in various places don't know how to manage, and they have been ostracized for a long time. This can be regarded as conforming to the situation..." Zhao Ke lit a cigarette, looked at this I have been studying the documents for several days, and sighed a long sigh: "It's just... the foot of the emperor, the first good place, what do the members of the executive committee think? Luoyang Mansion has also been used as a pilot, what's wrong? Like The Hexi area that is being developed in the north should be a pilot project, right? Oh, it’s just messing around!”

(End of this chapter)