The so-called empire has a strong pejorative flavor in later China, and it is not a good word in the world. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

This is mainly because of the expansion of imperialism in the 19th century, which gave the word expansion, war, etc. bad connotations in the context of various countries.

But in reality it's just a neutral political term.

The so-called empire must have several characteristics.

One was the large size of the country, the huge population, and the enormous political influence, and one of the reasons why the German nationalists of the era wanted to expand the colonies was that they believed that this would expand the influence of the German Empire.

In addition to the greatness, another characteristic, and a necessary feature, is that there is pluralism, which contains at least two or more peoples within the territory, and this is the greatest characteristic that distinguishes an empire from a nation-state. After the British occupied India, it was the British Empire, and after the loss of India, it was the United Kingdom, and it was not just a matter of a crown.

China was unified under the banner of the Ming Dynasty, and suddenly became a country with many nationalities, vast areas, huge population, and huge influence. Although Westerners do not emotionally agree that China is an important country in the world, in fact, they cannot ignore China at all, but whenever they mention Asia, they must mention China, in a certain sense, China represents Asia, at least East Asia, so the Japanese elite strongly feels that Japan is covered by Chinese mainland.

After the new Chinese government moved its capital to Nanjing, it did not cause much administrative problems, because the previous preparations were extremely thorough, with a three-year preparation period.

In the past three years, Nanjing's various facilities have caught up with Guangzhou's level.

This condition also existed here, and the telegraph was opened long ago, during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and after Zeng Guofan took control of Jiangnan, these facilities were also retained. The new government only needs to answer the telephone, turn on the lights, dredge and build new water and sewerage facilities, and three years is enough time to do all this work.

In addition, the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom made this a city with many gardens of royal palaces, and the kings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom built hundreds of palaces of all sizes here, and later after Zeng Guofan conquered Nanjing, a considerable part of them were abandoned and a considerable part of them were destroyed, but there were still more than 30 large-scale palaces left. It's a pity that Hong Xiuquan's Tianwang Mansion, which is twice the size of the Forbidden City, could not stay, Zeng Guofan did not burn it down as in history, but continued to demolish the building materials here, repair the city's mansions, roads, and even some of them were used to strengthen the dilapidated Nanjing city wall.

When Hong Xiuquan built the Tianwang Mansion, the building materials were insufficient, I heard that a lot of private houses were demolished, and finally even the Ming Palace built by Zhu Yuanzhang was demolished to repair the Wangfu, Zeng Guofan used his way to govern his body, and the Tianwang Mansion was almost demolished.

The dilapidated Tianwang Mansion, because of its vast area, was finally used as a military camp by Zeng Guofan, and the army was stationed in it, but most of the buildings were retained, but the wall was gone.

Earlier, the Tianwang Mansion was the Han Dynasty Palace, to the Qing Dynasty for the Jiangning Weaving and Liangjiang Governor's Office, Zeng Guofan demolished the Tianwang Mansion, rebuilt the Liangjiang Governor's Office, and now it has become China's highest government seat Shangshu Province, Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province Yamen.

Yang Xiuqing's Dongwang Mansion is also huge, and it has changed its location three times, and finally built it in the area of Huangnigang, and also demolished the Ming Palace for construction. Dongwangfu north to Huben Cang, south to Houjiaqiao, Huazangan, Luolang Lane, Pailou Lane; west to the west of Shigu Road, Hanximen Street, Tangzi Street; East to the east end of Hanzhong Road, Huangli Lane, about six or seven miles range.

The huge Dongwang Mansion became the six office yamen.

Zhu Jinglun's palace did not choose any palace, but purchased a private garden. This garden was first the other business of Xu Fu, a descendant of Xu Da, the king of Zhongshan in the Ming Dynasty. Later, it was sold to Huizhou merchant Jia Wang, and then sold to Wu Yongguang. After Qianlong, the garden gradually declined.

Zhu Jinglun found someone to buy it from the owner with a lot of money, carried out new decoration and construction, and became a small scale, but a beautiful garden with mountains and rivers. Historically, it was bought by officials of the late Qing Dynasty to build the Yuyuan, but now it has become the palace of the Ming Dynasty.

This small palace, which is only more than 50 acres, is lower than the imperial palace in Guangzhou, and the cabinet was very opposed at first, on the grounds that the area is too small to do defense work, and this reason is not valid, but Zhu Jinglun believes that the smaller the area, the easier it is to defend. In fact, it is a matter of face, they think that as the emperor of China, they should not live in such a small place. But Zhu Jinglun doesn't like the huge palace very much, the bigger the palace, the more people need to maintain, but it is not a place to live, but more like a yamen.

The Cabinet didn't like the gardens very much, not because the civil servants didn't know how to appreciate them, but they liked it very much, but not the Imperial Palace, which they insisted on bulldozing the flowers and trees here, on the grounds that the dense trees would provide an opportunity for the Assassins to hide.

Obviously, this point was also vetoed by Zhu Jinglun.

The new palace is quite comfortable, more than 200 people can maintain it, not to mention, it seems to be full of people, very lively.

The emperor's personal affairs aside, after the relocation to Nanjing, soon the first major administrative changes of the government began.

Hurd is a strong advocate of a power reform plan, arguing that local bureaus should be given more power on the grounds that it will help the government communicate more closely with civil society and better serve the people.

Obviously, Hurd is promoting China's public bureau as the British parliament, and the public bureau goes straight to the bottom of the people, giving them more power, that is, giving more power to the people.

This is a good response to the new school of people who are more and more advocating constitutionalism and parliament.

Equal rights represented by the parliament is the trend of modern politics and a good form of compromise between the official and the localities, and Zhu Jinglun does not object to this at all, he opposes the kind of rash collapse of the revolution, and always believes that unless it is absolutely necessary, the revolution is better than not, because the cost of the revolution is far greater than any other reform.

During the war against the United States, there were already elites who criticized the government for being too powerful, and only criticized the emperor for poisoning, and since then the call for a constitution has not been cut off, of course, as in the past, this new school learned from the demands of the West, and was spontaneously resisted by the old faction, believing that the Chinese system has a long history and does not need to follow the example of the West.

Zhu Jinglun felt that this was a very good tradition of self-government, which could be promoted and expanded to form a parliamentary system more suitable for China, so he supported Hurd's proposal.

But Fang Shan resolutely objected, he thought: "Your Majesty, Hurd, a foreign devil, has impure intentions!" ”