This salary standard is simply not enough for official expenses, and local officials also need corresponding office expenses. The imperial court also constantly asked officials to "donate their salaries" and "reduce their salaries" in order to meet the national expenses brought about by military operations, which made officials unable to make ends meet and made their lives difficult. Officials at all levels welcome their superiors in order to maintain normal working life or squander consumption. In addition to corruption and bribery, there is also a measure of making money, which is envy. The so-called "consumption envy" also refers to the part that is levied in addition to the positive amount on the grounds of making up for losses when collecting silver grain.
After Yong Zhengdi ascended the throne, facing the severe social and economic situation, he tried to cheer up in the aspects of bureaucracy and finance. On the basis of courtier's imperial edict, he quickly kicked off the prelude of "Admiring to the public and rewarding officials at all levels for keeping clean lines" customized in the five years of Yongzheng. Yongzheng personally explained the meaning of drawing a clear line: "Because officials are insatiable and have heard about it from time to time, they took this name. As the name implies, they are willing to be honest officials. " After the implementation of the clean bank system, the normal personal income of local officials at all levels increased by 10 times and 100 times respectively. The implementation of this system partially solved the problem of low salary of officials, clarified bureaucracy to a certain extent, made Yongzheng period one of the best periods of bureaucracy in Qing Dynasty, and also made the original excessive tax collection have institutional constraints.
The system of honest and upright officials in the Qing Dynasty made officials' income public, turned the government's default "hidden rules" into clear rules, and made officials' corruption lose their high-sounding excuses, so the relationship between the whole official system was much simpler. Keeping a clean bank makes local politics run more smoothly than before, which is beneficial to the rule of Qing Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, the Yongzheng rule of the Qing Dynasty was well known.
It is through the cooperation of strict legal system and clean banking system that officials are prohibited from corrupting and bending the law to a certain extent, which not only improves the administrative ability of the government, but also protects the people from extortion by officials, which has an important impact on the political stability and economic development of the whole society.
Since Qianlong, the restrictions on officials have been relaxed, all kinds of bad rules have resurfaced and intensified, and the system of clean and honest administration has declined. During the reign of Qianlong and Jiaqing, the court began to apportion the "donation" in the base bank. After Daoguang, Yang Lianyin began to work at a discount.
After the donation was withheld, officials of all sizes plundered it in the name of insufficient funds, and the official management was out of control. Since it is the government's living allowance for officials at all levels, it should be paid from the state's official projects like the original salary, rather than through illegal rewards. This is the biggest weakness of the silver-guarding system in Qing Dynasty.
However, it did not really clean up the officialdom. Officials gradually regarded it as their normal income, ignoring the significance of the establishment of this income. Collecting gray income became the hidden rule of officialdom, which led to the highest local corruption in Qing Dynasty.