The media has exposed the extravagant waste in high-speed rail procurement, such as an automatic face washer of 72,000 yuan, a color stone wash table of 26,000 yuan, a bathroom tissue box of 1,125 yuan, a single seat of 22,000 yuan... In fact, such a thing is not new, the Qing Dynasty for the corruption of government-run project procurement, there are special terms to describe, called "floating".
The zhihe River was the largest and most expensive project of the Qing Dynasty, so it also became a "floating" area. The degree of embezzlement of river workers' funds by the Qing Dynasty's river ministers can be seen from the experience of Guo Dachang, a famous minister who controlled water. In the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong (1774), the mouth of the old dam collapsed, and the nearby Places such as Gaoyou and Baoying were flooded. The terrified governor of Nanhe, Wu Sijue, asked Guo Dachang to block it with "half a million yuan of money and grain", but Guo Dachang only accepted 100,000 taels. In the early years of Jiaqing's Fenggong Project, Hechen's budget was 1.2 million taels, and the river governor was reduced to 600,000 taels, and The business was to Guo Dachang, and Guo Dachang asked to be reduced by half. Guo Dachang explained: "With 150,000 workers, 150,000 workers, do you still think it is less? From Guo Dachang's story, it can be inferred that during the Jiaqing period, only about 20% of the funds in Hechen's budget were really used for defense repairs. The rest, of course, was divided up by corrupt officials at all levels.
As long as it is a slightly large-scale government-run project, from the start to the write-off, there is a set of complex procedures, almost every link needs silver customs clearance, this road purchase money is collectively referred to as "ministry fee". For example, the Gongbu Yamen, who is in charge of the world's fabrications, is a big household that plucks hair layer by layer. According to the estimation of Feng Guifen, a Qing dynasty, there are no less than a thousand people in a ministry, and the annual "ministry fee" is a total of millions. Those chiefs above the ranks of Shang, Waiter, and Langzhong have the most fat, so "the chariots, horses, palaces, clothes, wives and concubines are given to the princes." Under them, those principals, bureau envoys, treasury envoys, pen-and-post styles, and economic undertakings also share the benefits according to the size of their respective contributions. Feng Guifen therefore lamented: "The book of all households and workers is also the book of fraud of Xu officials. ”
In this kind of system in which corrupt officials and corrupt officials collectively divide their fats, if they adhere to principles and refuse to "float", they will become an outlier in the official arena and will not be able to accommodate themselves. In the twenty-fourth year of the Ming Dynasty (1596), a fire burned the Qianqing and Kunning palaces to ashes, and the post-disaster reconstruction work was taken care of by the Ministry of Works. When the project was completed, it was accounted for, and 720,000 taels of silver were shared, saving nearly 900,000 taels of silver compared with the budget. Of course, saving is a good thing, but surprisingly, in the following year's evaluation, He Shengrui not only did not promote, but was degraded. It turned out that these 900,000 taels of silver were "the bread of the cut in the middle, and the nirvana of the colleagues" - not only cutting off the eunuchs' financial paths, but also comparing the corruption of their colleagues, how can people spare you?
He Shengrui felt very wronged, and kept writing letters to disclose the detailed accounts of the various expenses of the project to prove his innocence, but none of these materials could be sent to the emperor. Until his death, he did not wait for the unjust case to be revealed.
The same story recurred during the Tongzhi period. At that time, the Yellow River was flooded, and a section of the levee near Zhengzhou was washed away, and Su Tingkui, who was the governor of the river at the time, and the inspector of Henan played together to ask for 1 million taels of silver to repair it. After the completion of the project, there were still 300,000 taels of project money left, and the inspector advocated dividing it up, but Su Tingkui refused and advocated "returning the household department". Who knew that the household department was greatly dissatisfied with Su Tingkui's approach. Originally, according to the custom, the money saved was usually divided between the household department and the local officials, and Su Tingkui reimbursed the actual sales, and the household department could not get any benefits. Therefore, the household department picked out "a few articles that did not conform to the case" from Su Tingkui's report, and participated in the impeachment of Su Tingkui together with the inspector of Henan. Under the internal and external attacks of high-ranking local officials and central departments, Su Tingkui was eventually dismissed from his post and retained.
In fact, the emperor or the master is not unaware of the "floating risks" in the official projects or procurement, and many times it is because the person who commits the adultery department is his own confidant and is reluctant to pursue it. When Empress Longyu was hanging the curtain to listen to the government, there were several Buddhist halls in the palace, and after a long period of abandonment, the eunuch Xiao Dezhang instigated Empress Longyu to repair it, and finally "reimbursed to more than two million.". About this amount of "floating" was too amazing, and public opinion was fierce, but Empress Longyu ignored the performance of the courtiers, because Xiao Dezhang was her confidant.
Nowadays, the "floating" in government-run projects is still emerging in an endless stream, and high-speed rail is just a typical example. I wonder if these "floating" funds can be recovered smoothly? Can these "floating" officials get the punishment they deserve?
Interesting, informative, with depth
The author | Liang Fa Fu
Source| Hundred Tribunes magazine