Part 12 (1/2)
The imperial system of China was thus a monarchy in the proper sense of the word, with none of the parvenu features suggested by the etymology of the word _imperial_. As the preeminent leader in an organic society, the emperor held a position comparable with that of other family heads.
His authority could rival that of a father but not excel it; among all the families of the Chinese Empire the imperial stood forth as a family.
Second, the emperor was the chief dignitary in the social life of the Chinese world. He was not unlike the British monarchs, providing a model of formal propriety and elegance in setting the fas.h.i.+ons of the decade.
The physical isolation of most of the emperors prevented them from playing this role with widespread effectiveness, but it was a part of their function. Third, the emperor bore the relation to the Empire which the outstanding villager bore to the village. It was he of whom men talked; his behavior commanded greatest interest; his future conduct was a constant source of speculation. Apart from his role as a formal dignitary, he occupied the more immediate position of most conspicuous person, of the first member of society. He had the human accountability of a leader and was to be praised or blamed for his actions in the histories and by his subjects. In the normal routine, the emperor himself was not to govern; but he selected and supervised his ministers, who did and who consequently bore the odium for evil deeds.
Fourth, the emperor himself was the ultimate examiner of scholars. He thus had contact with the most successful of the civil service candidates and completed their examination. These examinations served the emperor as a means of selecting advisers who upon further testing became ministers. The Forest of Pencils (_Han Lin_, the Imperial Academy) was within his jurisdiction, and the emperor was supposed to be enough of a scholar to check the most important of the doc.u.ments of state. The myth of intellectual supremacy is suggested by the fact that the chief implement of the imperial office was a red pencil. The imperial symbolism did not stop here. Fifth, the quasi-religious hierarchy of the Chinese, competing with Buddhism and the superst.i.tions of popular Taoism for the support of the people, centered on the performance of certain rites in the propitiation of fortune and the honoring of the dead. To this were added the cult rituals of Confucianism. The Confucian temples, with tablets bearing the names of worthies, served as the visible demonstration of the ideological power wielded by the scholars over the populace, and of the emperor over the scholars.
Sixth, the emperor had the more definitely religious status referred to in his t.i.tle _Son of Heaven_. He was the intermediate figure between the will of Heaven and mankind. In him were summarized and epitomized the virtues or the evils of the generation; he had to represent mankind in its best light to all supernatural forces or agencies. Upon his conduct of wors.h.i.+p depended the good or ill will of the deities and hence weather, crops, life and death. Conversely, he was responsible to mankind for the misbehavior of nature, and an earthquake, a two-headed calf, or any other monstrous occurrence was blamed on his disturbance of the routine of things. The order which enveloped the Confucian society was conceived not merely as a set of traditional and moral man-made customs but as a type of behavior which fitted in with the life of the natural world. In the eyes of the Chinese, perturbations in the world of men soon produced consequent natural calamities. Lastly, the Chinese emperor was the autocrat of the administration. His action, however, was limited by various customary devices; for example, while the countersignature of a minister was not needed on an edict, the emperor was supposed not to take the initiative but to secure the wisest suggestions and adopt them. Practical considerations rendered a stable bureaucracy impervious to constant intermeddling of the emperor, although the effect of imperial action was not negligible.
The administrative outline of Chinese government from the establishment of the Empire by the Ch'in s.h.i.+h Huang Ti in 221 B. C. to its overthrow by Sun Yat-sen and his followers in 1911 varied from dynasty to dynasty and ruler to ruler. Nevertheless, certain general characteristics were common to the whole period. The government operated as the chief implementation of the emperor's power over the people. The people maintained its social organizations, but none of these developed office hierarchies comparable to that of the government. The government alone served as the connecting link between the ideologically unified Chinese world as a whole and its many separate parts. The T'ang dynasty (A. D.
620-906) provided an exceptionally clear articulation of the Empire, which not only compelled the admiration and imitation of later ages but even served as a model for state governments on the periphery of the Chinese world. In the great Taikwa Reforms of 645, the j.a.panese made a heroic attempt to adapt the T'ang form of government to dissimilar conditions; the scheme worked on paper but failed to recast the fundamental mold of j.a.panese society, which remained feudal.
The three most striking features of the Chinese bureaucracy were: (1) the central administrative organization; (2) the operation of civil service examinations and the use of administrative supervision; (3) the integration of government operation on the imperial, regional, and local levels. The metropolitan administrative organization under the T'ang dynasty was headed by the emperor. But the intricate regularity of the hierarchy beneath him was such as to preclude imperial autocratic caprice. The outline of the hierarchical organization was as follows:[6]
THE THRONE
THE GRAND COUNCIL
The Departments:
_a._ Department of Ministerial Coordination 1. Ministry of Administrators 2. Ministry of Finance 3. Ministry of Rites 4. Ministry of War 5. Ministry of Justice 6. Ministry of Public Works _b._ The Imperial Chancery _c._ The Grand Secretariat
The Tribunal of Censors
Imperial Commissioners
Provinces (10) and _Governments-General_ (at the frontiers) Prefectures Subprefectures Towns.h.i.+ps Villages
The general structure of Chinese administration differed little from that of preceding ages, and has not changed markedly during the following centuries. Later developments strengthened the provinces, at the expense of both the central government and the local areas; earlier conditions had tolerated a much greater extent of feudal establishments.
Nevertheless, the six ministries may have been established as early as about 1000 B. C., and remained a feature of Chinese government until 1906.
The Grand Council met daily. It was composed of grand ministers, who--in the phrase of Baron des Rotours--”under the T'ang held in their hands the government of the Empire.”[7] The emperor's chief power lay in appointing the council members, to whom fell the greater share of governing in fact. Directly under the Grand Council there were the three departments. The Department of Ministerial Coordination served as an administrative center and clearinghouse for the work of the separate ministries under it. The names of the ministries are self-explanatory.
The Ministry of Administrators was in charge of the examination system and the arrangement of the offices in the bureaucracy. The Ministry of Rites, by an extension of its protocol features, was in charge of the reception of foreign (”barbarian”) princes and amba.s.sadors, and emissaries. The other two departments provided one of the most ingenious systems of checks and balances to be found in any const.i.tutional scheme.
The Imperial Chancery received all communications from the various parts of the Empire. Since most of the governing was carried out by means of written orders, instructions, and requests for reports, the Chancery occupied an important place. But the function of drafting replies to such communications, preparing manifestoes, or issuing ordinances was in the hands of the Grand Secretariat. Thus the Chancery was prevented from exerting an outside influence, while it was impossible for the Secretariat to receive any communication directly. As a final check, all outgoing doc.u.ments of state had to pa.s.s through the Chancery to receive the official seal, without which they were invalid. Thus any item of government business was routed first through the Chancery for registration and cla.s.sification, then to the Secretariat for reply, and back to the Chancery for what amounted to countersignature (by seal).[8]
Yet the Secretariat was no mere drafting agency for the Chancery.
The Tribunal of Censors occupied a position not unlike that of the great independent establishments of the United States government. It was directed by a president and two vice-presidents, and concerned itself with ferreting out and exposing irregularities and abuses in the administration. The morale of the censorate varied from time to time, but at its optimum efficiency it was a formidable and significant inst.i.tution. Han Confucianism provided the general background from which the organization rose to effectiveness.
This sophisticated and rationally designed central bureaucracy was supplemented by regional administrations. Under the T'ang the regional establishments were a source of trouble to the government. The Empire was divided into provinces, but the provincial administrations were superseded by Imperial Commissioners whenever an emergency arose. Later dynasties placed the provincial system on a more stable basis, which resulted in genuine and geographically sound regionalism. The provincial governments were replicas in miniature of the central; their heads might be regarded as appointive and removable satraps whose authority was a smaller reproduction of the power of the emperor. It was not until the Ming dynasty (A. D. 1368-1643) that the provinces took on their modern form. The provincial governments were a source of great strength to China in that they made possible a quasi-federal government. In the Ch'ing period no officer was eligible to a post in his native province;[9] this custom had considerable centripetal effect and offset the danger that populace and officials, united by common sympathies, might revolt or secede.[10]
Another feature to be noted about the Chinese government under the Empire was the examination and civil service system. The T'ang dynasty provided for three major types of examination: (1) The _chu_ corresponded most closely to a modern academic degree, and allowed the candidate to qualify in any one of a number of subjects, including the cla.s.sics, law, and mathematics. (2) The _hsuan_ was the special examination necessary for appointment to a post in the bureaucracy; it was both written and oral and included the personal history of the candidate. (3) The _k'ao_, an in-service examination, consisted of annual reports on the performance of all officers in the Empire. They were transmitted to the Bureau for Examination of Merits in the Ministry of Administrators on a schedule varying with the distance of the office from the capital. There were five points on which to report: virtue and justice; integrity and circ.u.mspection; equity and impartiality; diligence and activity; and one of twenty-seven special talents suitable to the particular office in question. The grades received on these reports determined the advancement or demotion of the officer, in accordance with an elaborate and exact schedule.[11] All three examinations provided the administrative form for the close relation between the government and the scholastic elite. The _chu_, with its emphasis on the cla.s.sics, framed the content of all curriculums. The _hsuan_, with its oral examination and personal record, made the prospective candidate careful in observing the customs. The _k'ao_ kept up the morale and efficiency of the bureaucracy, while the ominous Tribunal of Censors was present to guard against abuse of the system.
Every detail was precise, well ordered, explicit, to a degree that would delight present-day industrial personnel managers. Formulation was refined and impressive. In fact the T'ang laws, although their part in Chinese life was less than a Westerner might expect, were a code of such force and appeal that the j.a.panese and the Annamese used them as a model for their juridical systems.[12]
The decline of particular dynasties in China--caused by poor economic policy, demoralization of the court, corruption of the bureaucracy, laxity in the examinations, oppression of the farmers--did not effect great alterations in the structure of government. With the centuries the Chinese government settled into more and more definitive form.
Unfortunately, the Manchu government (1644-1911)[13] had sunk into administrative demoralization when the full force of the Western impact was felt. In the early nineteenth century a British observer wrote of an imperial official:
The late _tungling_ [gendarmerie commander] w.a.n.king, degraded last year for connecting himself with a magician whose confessions went to implicate a large number of n.o.bles and public servants, was a Reader at the Cla.s.sical Feasts, Manchu President of the Board of Civil Office, Revisor-General of the Veritable Records of the Reign, a Superior of the Academy, Supervisor of the Household, t'utung of a Banner [military division], superintendent of the Gymnasium in the Ning-shan Palace, and of the Treasuries of the Board of Revenue, and Visitor of the 17 Granaries in the City, and at Tungchau.[14]
When such conditions of indifference toward sharply defined hierarchic ethics began to be common among the bureaucracy, the end of the dynasty was near. The Chinese Empire had remained intact even when it had fallen into the hands of Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus. It had returned to the bases of its former greatness, and the administrative machinery created since the day of the s.h.i.+h Huang Ti continued for twenty centuries. With the decrepitude of the Manchu dynasty, and the simultaneous collision with the Western world, the old political system broke and had to be reshaped into new forms. Nevertheless, even in the Republican era techniques of the T'ang have reappeared in the administration of government services.