The Retrograde Empire: Zhu Yuanzhang's Success and Failure

In 1368 AD, the forty-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself emperor in Yingtian Mansion after defeating various peasant uprising armies, and established the last huge empire ruled by the Han people. He also became the only true "peasant emperor" in Chinese history. As Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty said: "Gai Mingzu is a man who is a sage, a hero, and a thief." He is good at winning people's hearts, treats intellectuals favorably, has an excellent view of the overall situation, and has decisiveness. Zhu Yuanzhang's "sage" qualities that are different from those of the powerful in the late Yuan Dynasty helped him ascend to the high position. When Zhu Yuanzhang defeated all the heroes and ascended to the throne, he showed his green face and fangs, overthrew the eight hundred years of traditional political system with cruel and terrifying means of massacre, took autocratic politics to the extreme, deposed the prime minister, slaughtered meritorious officials arbitrarily, established a royal guard, despised civil servants, implemented a strict Lijia system to force people to migrate, interfered with people's freedom of employment, strictly restricted foreign trade, etc. What's more important is that Zhu Yuanzhang injected poison refined from the think tanks of past dynasties into the people's brains, paralyzing the nerves of the entire China into a vegetative state, fundamentally killing everyone's individuality, initiative, and creativity, and domesticating them into obedient people who specialize in providing food. Zhu Yuanzhang's success and failure are both inseparable from the cultural soil of "China". This book puts Zhu Yuanzhang into the context of Chinese culture and makes a detailed analysis, trying to present a multi-dimensional Zhu Yuanzhang to readers.