Interesting stuff, it sounds to me like in the external letters he's merely willing to scapegoat the Yuan in an attempt to smooth over any diplomatic issues they caused in the past.

Internally he doesn't want the Yuan scapegoated though because he lived and understood the very real problems the Yuan court caused and to let his officials scapegoat the Yuan and their origins as barbarians as the "true cause" of all the problems would be to fail to learn from the real problems.

His view is pretty consistent with my understanding of the Mandate of Heaven, interestingly he refers to natural disasters but seems to suggest that those weren't so much directly a sign of the loss as the Yuan's failed reaction to them were. Further I feel like he is characterizing the rebels and banditry as a natural disaster in a way, a natural reaction to a court that isn't governing properly, something awful and violent and dangerous, definitely not to be encouraged or glorified as righteous, but to be expected if the government fails in their duty to the people.

This emperor was literally born a peasant and rose to the top, which I expect gives him a proper perspective on the wasteful luxury, arbitrary justice, local corruption and clueless isolationism that can characterize Chinese dynasties that lost the mandate, but also he literally wasn't the first peasant emperor. I find it hard to imagine that he didn't understand his situation, the Yuan didn't lose China because they were foreign barbarians, and that if his government didn't govern properly than the pattern would just repeat again and another peasant would replace him

If the government actually wanted people to follow the law maybe the should be giving out real punishments, $500,000 could easily be less than they made by advertise this way

They should be fined much more likely a percentage of corporation's total worth, say 25% and the people directly responsible should face jail time, but you know that would be if we actually wanted to deter people from committing crimes

So yes for sure, those examples you give are accurate, much of history for a very long time was what we would now call Great Man History. Education was a luxury of the rich and powerful and they mostly saw history as a study concerning the great leaders of the past as a way to learn to emulate them.

Now what exactly these people were learning from is unclear to me, I suppose reading texts directly or listening to a lecture by someone who did read a text but the sourcing of this material or how exactly it was being taught or studied is unclear to me