In addition, don't look at the industry and commerce of the Tang Empire now, it seems to be developing very fast, but no matter what, it is only in the initial stage of the industrial revolution, and the number of various enterprises is also limited, so the number of employees in industry and commerce is also limited, and most of these employees are locals, and few outsiders go to other places to work.

The only exceptions are Guangzhou, Shanghai, Jinling City, and Dangtu, and only in these cities will there be a large number of foreign population, while in other cities, the number of foreign population is actually very limited, and most of the factory workers are mainly locals.

In this environment, in fact, the income of farmers in the vast rural areas is still very simple, mainly relying on farming, and if they want to obtain additional income, they basically need to rely on odd jobs and the like.

Building water conservancy facilities and other infrastructure for the government is a good way to do odd jobs.

The government directly hired workers to build infrastructure, a method that was often practiced by the empire in the past, but it was previously only carried out in residential areas, and its purpose was to provide relief for work.

Now, however, it is being carried out on a nationwide scale, and this is not a cash-for-work system, but a replacement for the previous forced labor system.

As a result, there is a rare case of not even a single conscription of civil servants in the whole country this year.

This has also led to the fact that although the system of forced labor still exists in law, it has completely disappeared in practice, which is naturally a great benefit to the general public.

Due to the use of a large number of hired workers, and it is obviously impossible for the government to directly manage such a large number of hired workers, although it is said that the government pays for the hired workers, in fact, the government itself does not directly intervene, but according to the guidelines of the cabinet, the government directly contracts the relevant projects to major state-owned construction enterprises

This kind of construction enterprises are all local state-owned enterprises controlled by the local finance and managed by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises!

The government signs contracts with such state-owned construction companies for each project, and then the construction companies recruit workers to carry out the construction.

However, Li Xuan knew very well that if the government project was not done well, it would be prone to large-scale corruption, so he imposed a stipulation that all government projects could only be handed over to state-owned enterprises for construction, and any form of subcontracting was prohibited.

At the same time, in order to avoid the establishment of such construction enterprises in various localities, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises is extremely strict in approving the establishment of relevant enterprises, and in principle, only provincial-level local financial applications are allowed, and the management is directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises.

In order to facilitate management, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises simply merged and reorganized this kind of construction enterprises, and set up state-owned construction companies in various provinces and highways with provincial roads as the standard nationwide, and many subordinate branches.

At the same time, the construction companies of the provincial highways are allowed to bid for all kinds of projects in the province, and the business scope is not limited!

However, it did not set up a grain company on top of the provincial provincial grain companies, as was the case with the state-owned grain companies, but let the provincial provincial construction companies develop on their own.

Its model is similar to the Shanghai Wharf Company, which pioneered this kind of construction company, or simply the company that learned, the Shanghai Wharf Company, which is jointly controlled by the finance of Songjiang Prefecture and the finance of Shanghai Special County, and is directly managed by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises.

Not only has it undertaken a large number of key projects in Shanghai, but also in other regions, such as the first long-distance commercial railway in China, part of the Jingzhen Railway, especially the railway bridge project, which has been given a pot by this company.

Today, the construction companies responsible for the construction of the Hongze Lake embankment are also directly managed by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, but not one, but three.

Originally, no matter what the era, local protectionism was very strong, and the Hongze Lake embankment project, according to reason, should belong to the Jiangbei Construction Company, which is controlled by the Jiangbei Provincial Finance.

However, although the company took most of the projects, it was still opened by construction companies from other places, and it was robbed of several key projects with the most lucrative profits.

And this one snatched food from the mouth of a local construction company in Jiangbei is the famous Shanghai Wharf Company.

More precisely, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company: Shanghai Construction Company!

The company has won three key projects in one fell swoop, all of which are the most difficult to construct, but also the most profitable.

This foreign company can get such a large order, naturally it is inseparable from their strong technical ability and rich construction experience, people can even Wusongjiang Bridge, which is a super project for contemporary steel bridge, not to mention a Hongze Lake embankment!

However, in order to avoid corruption, the government was directly responsible for the construction, and it also rejected the bidding of private enterprises and did not allow outsourcing, but only allowed construction companies directly under the management of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises to bid and then directly carry out construction.

But where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and behind the official funds there is corruption!

The construction of the Hongze Lake embankment is no exception!

Large-scale construction only began in September, and a large-scale corruption incident was already exposed in October.

This time, Li Xuan didn't get angry, he just felt very helpless now!

If you want to lose your temper, it happened last year, and the flood fight has just ended, because of the corruption incident, Li Xuan is furious, and then set off a rectification action to control officials, and has arrested thousands of officials!

But even this did not deter the greed of these officials!

This just passed last year, and this year came again, which made Li Xuan feel very helpless!

Killing corrupt officials every year, when is it a head!

After sighing deeply, Li Xuan began to reflect on the measures he had taken over the years, why should he reflect?

Because he feels that there is a problem with the rule of officials today, this kind of problem is not that the anti-corruption in the empire is not strong enough, in fact, the anti-corruption efforts of the Inspectorate are still very large.

In order to be promoted, the imperial historians are all very hard-working to investigate corrupt officials, so a large number of corrupt officials can be found every year!

However, even so, it still can't put an end to the problem of large-scale corruption among officials, which makes Li Xuan feel that there is still a problem with the rule of officials, and it is a big problem.

Officials are corrupt on a large scale, and Li Xuan will not throw the blame on them and then blame them for moral problems.

Human nature is evil, and a person does not do evil, in fact, most of the time it is not because they don't want to, but because they don't have it, or they dare not do it!

But once there is an opportunity, or when there is a fluke mentality, then many people are afraid that they will fight and do evil.

The same is true for officials, they hold power, and this power can bring them a lot of wealth by at least a little use of it, so except for a very small number of people, in fact, most officials will not be able to resist corruption once they have the opportunity and feel that the risk is relatively small, even if they are unwilling to do so at first, they will be pulled into the water by others.

Li Xuan can't control the mentality of officials who want to be corrupt, but let officials know that the risk of corruption is huge, and Li Xuan can do it.

Although the punishment for corrupt officials is large in the existing system, this is not the point.

The point is to let officials know that once they are corrupt, then there is a high probability that they will be found out, and the risk of corruption is very high.

When the risk is great, most officials will dispel the idea of corruption after weighing the gains and losses!

But how do you let officials know that the risk of corruption is too great?

This is a question worthy of Li Xuan's consideration, Li Xuan began to take out some of the anti-corruption measures he knew, and then compared them with the situation of Datang one by one to see which ones were useful.

The first thing that Li Xuan remembered was to prohibit officials from doing business, but this article, although Datang does not explicitly prohibit it by law, is actually an unwritten unspoken rule.

Today, the officials of the Tang Dynasty are not engaged in business, and even most of their children are not in business.

This is not forbidden by law, but because of traditional habits, the four words of Shinong and Industry still have a significant influence in the Tang Dynasty, not to mention officials, even ordinary gentry disdain to do business.

If a scholar who is interested in the imperial examination is directly engaged in business, it will be ridiculed.

Under this tradition, officials and their descendants will not be able to do business.

However, there is a problem here, that is, not directly intervening in business does not mean that they are not involved in commerce, on the contrary, the gentry class, with officials and scholars as the main body, is very deeply involved in commerce.

They do not come forward themselves, but they make a lot of profit by doing business through collateral clansmen and even ordinary slaves.

And even if the law explicitly prohibits officials, their spouses, and children from doing business, it still cannot prohibit their other clansmen from doing business, and in this case, it still cannot prevent officials from meddling in business affairs and thus obtaining huge profits.

As for directly prohibiting their entire family from doing business, then the impact will be too great to be implemented at all.

Therefore, the prohibition of officials from doing business will not have much effect in Li Xuan's opinion.

However, although the effect is not great, Li Xuan still has to prepare to implement it, and prohibiting officials, officials' spouses, and officials' children from doing business can be regarded as completely plugging this loophole.

But that's not enough!

Secondly, Li Xuan thought of the transparency of officials' assets, to be honest, this is also difficult, the Chinese tradition has a tradition of wealth is not exposed, and with the existing financial system, it is actually difficult to thoroughly find out how many assets officials have, in addition, more importantly, the officials themselves do not have much private property, but more family wealth.

But if you want to say that the wealth of a family is the private property of officials, it is difficult to judge!

So although this is good, it is actually difficult to implement, at least for the time being, it will be very difficult to implement, and in the end it may be superficial, and it will cause a backlash from hundreds of officials at that time.

Thinking about it, Li Xuan felt that he had to start from the point of supervision!

Although the existing supervision is strong, it is obvious that it is still not big enough, at least not so big that it scares the majority of officials!

Therefore, Li Xuan feels that it is necessary to carry out in-depth reform of the existing anti-corruption regulatory system!