Chapter 11 Chapter 3 Bureaucracy

In the minds of many people, the history of China actually begins with the Tang and Song Dynasties.Because what people are familiar with is not the Spring and Autumn and Warring States, nor the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin, nor the Wuhu and Sixteen Kingdoms, but the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.These five dynasties constitute a sense of historical unity, so seamless that it can be blurted out without thinking. So where does this sense of unity come from? Three provinces, six ministries and the imperial examination system. The imperial examinations and the six departments of the three provinces are both institutional innovations of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and are also the main content of this chapter.Generally speaking, the three provinces and six ministries are the organizational system of the central government, and the imperial examination is the selection system for imperial officials.Among them, the imperial examination system and the six-part system lasted until the late Qing Dynasty, and their duration accounted for more than 60% of the history of the Chinese empire.The reason why the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties are completed in one go is because these two clues run through the whole.

Obviously, there must be a mystery in it. Mysteries lie in the nature of the state. Since the legendary abdication of Qifei, our nation has bid farewell to prehistory and entered the national era.Taking the Erlitou site as archaeological evidence, this era has been 3,700 years.The 3,700-year history of the country can be divided into three stages: before Qin’s annexation of the world was the state era, after Qin’s annexation of the world and before the Revolution of 1911, it was the age of empire, and after that was the era of the Republic. Times are different, politics and systems are also different.

In the Bangguo era, the country was a feudal system, and politics was an aristocratic system.The son of heaven, who is authorized by heaven in name, entrusts the world to the princes, which is a country (state);The feudal lords enjoy independent governance over the states, and the officials over the fiefs, which is feudalism. The son of heaven is the co-lord of the world, the princes are the lords of the states, and the officials are the lords of the fiefs. The titles and powers are all hereditary within the family, and other children who have no inheritance rights become scholars.Together they constitute a class, the nobility.

The aristocrats who manage fiefs are called Qi Family, those who govern a state are called Governance, and those who maintain international order are called Ping Tianxia.However, no matter how to regulate the family, govern the country, or bring peace to the world, they are doing their duty rather than being hired, because the family and the country are their own.Therefore, they have no salaries and salaries, and they may be corrupt, but they cannot be corrupt. It is aristocratic politics. Bangguo is the age of nobility. The era of nobility also had four stages: the Western Zhou Dynasty was the era of kings, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was the era of princes, the Spring and Autumn Period was the era of officials, and the Warring States period was the era of scholars.What is this indicating?It shows that the aristocratic class is getting worse and worse, and the state system will eventually disintegrate.No system and politics will last forever, and a new national system will inevitably be born.

This is empire. The imperial system is characterized by centralized power, and the property rights and governance rights in the world belong to one person and one family, that is, the emperor and the royal family.Under the emperor, all the scholars, farmers, businessmen and commerce were incorporated into the household registration, which was called "registration of households and Qimin".Although meritorious officials and relatives of the emperor were also conferred kings and marquises, the feudal country is no longer a territory, and they have no ruling power. Therefore, the aristocracy as a class should no longer exist in theory, and is actually disappearing day by day.In other words, in the imperial era, there was a powerful class, but no aristocratic class, and of course aristocratic politics was unsustainable.

Instead, what could be, what should be? It is reasonable to say that it is imperial politics, and Qin Huang, Han and Wu also thought so.However, the territory of the Chinese Empire is so vast and the population is so large that it is actually impossible to completely implement the rule of man in which "the emperor alone rules the world". What is possible? government. In other words, officials rule the country, or officials act as agents. There is a slight difference here.Officials rule the country, that is, the emperor is only the head of state, representing the unity and sovereignty of the country, and all government affairs are handed over to the bureaucratic group.This is the Confucian ideal.Official agency means that the emperor directly exercised the ruling power, and officials acted as agents and executors.This is the legalist claim.

There is no doubt that official governance and official agency are the unity of opposites.Because even if the empire is governed by a bureaucratic group, it can only be carried out under the framework of imperial power politics.Similarly, even if the emperor is a dictator, the central government affairs must be dealt with by officials, and local administration must also be represented by officials. The emperor cannot do everything. Therefore, the politics of the empire can be said to be bureaucratic politics. Of course, it can also be said to be imperial politics. Aristocratic politics can only be dismissed, and contradictions and corruption also arise as the times require.Because the aristocracy governs the country and regulates the family, in fact, they manage themselves, which is equivalent to the "family contract responsibility system".Even if there is a struggle, it is still a struggle for contracting rights.Including the subsequent annexation wars launched by the princes, and the doctor's devouring of state-owned assets, this is essentially the case.

Imperial power politics and bureaucratic politics have always been unclear about responsibilities and rights.For example, who owns the world and the country?Just ambiguous.On the one hand, everyone says, "Under the whole world, there is no king's land";Such a contradiction, is it not that the property rights are unclear? If the ownership is not clear, the responsibility is unclear and swings from side to side.As a result, if the emperor is strong, it is imperial politics; if the emperor is weak, it is bureaucratic politics. Similarly, because the sky is high and the emperor is far away, the Nine-Five Supreme Being is beyond the reach of many specific affairs, which leaves a wide space for officials to seek power rent.Coupled with the fact that officials have no shares or dividends in the imperial company, they are bound to take advantage of the opportunity to act as an agent of imperial power to seek personal gain, leading to unstoppable corruption.

This is the fetal poison of the empire. The bureaucratic system has changed many times, and this is the direct reason. That is to say, the bureaucratic group with Confucian scholars as its basic team always hopes to get more power.This is not only driven by profit, but also by ideals.In their view, the ideal politics should be that the monarch and his ministers rule the world together, and establish a civil government to practice kingship and benevolence.The rule of Zhenguan is highly respected, and this is the reason. It is a pity that in history, there have been enlightened emperors such as Tang Zong and Song Zu, as well as domineering emperors such as Qin Huang, Han Wu and Zhu Yuanzhang.The kingly way has never been rivaled by hegemony, and the struggle between imperial power and official rule will run through it all the way, leading to political system reforms again and again.

But more importantly, who becomes the ruling class. The ruling class in the state era was the lord, and the ruling class in the empire era was the landlord.This is the most important historical divide.However, which kind of landlord class is most suitable for the centralized imperial system has undergone long experiments and explorations. The first to appear on the stage was the aristocratic and landlord class, during the Qin and Han Dynasties.This is not surprising at all.After all, the Qin and Han Dynasties were the first empire, which had just transitioned from the state era, and the noble landlords just acted as intermediaries.Therefore, in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the royal family and the group of heroes were in charge of the government together, and it became a common practice for a prince of honorable background to serve as prime minister.

Of course, this is not in line with the nature of the empire, so there are Liu Bang and Empress Lu's rabbits and dogs, and Emperor Wu's repeated seizures of power.In fact, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty broke the practice of conferring the title of marquis first and then worshiping the prime minister, and appointed Gongsun Hong, who was born as a commoner, as prime minister, which showed that he had realized that noble landlords could not become the ruling class.It is a pity that they can guard against heroes, but they cannot hide from their relatives, and it is the noble landlords who control the power. However, after all, Emperor Wu of the Han respected Confucianism exclusively, and reading and being an official gradually became the custom and consensus, thus forming a new social group, that is, the gentry or the gentry landlord class.In this way, those who shared the world equally with the royal family changed from a group of heroes and relatives to a famous family, and finally formed a family politics. The elite is a kind of half-bureaucratic and half-aristocratic politics, and a real bureaucrat should be similar to today's professional managers.What's more, the bureaucracy can't compete with the imperial power, so they can't be born noble.Therefore, the poor family, that is, the landlord class of the common people, is suitable, and the clan system is just a link between the past and the future. Behind the system change is the trend of history. Now, both aristocratic landlords and gentry landlords have fulfilled their historical missions. The Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties will be the era of common landlords, and the Sui and Tang Dynasties will be a critical moment of turning point. There are two aspects of institutional innovation.On the one hand, there is the selection system for imperial officials, namely the imperial examination system, which aims to ensure that the gentry landlords can replace the gentry landlords as the ruling class.On the other hand is the organizational system of the central government, that is, the system of three provinces and six ministries, which aims to achieve harmony and balance between imperial power politics and bureaucratic politics. Such innovation is of course no small matter. So, what are the three provinces and six departments? How can this system balance the imperial power and bureaucracy?

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