Chapter 22 Section 3 Significance and function of administrative division

The classification of administrative districts is to understand the national conditions for effective administrative management.Among all levels of administrative districts, county-level administrative districts are the most necessary for classification, because counties are people-friendly units and government organizations that directly manage household registration and collect taxes.The number of household registrations and the level of taxes are directly related to the central government's fiscal revenue.Therefore, distinguishing the ranks of counties according to certain standards is actually an investigation and statistics of the national strength and conditions by the central government, so as to serve as the basis for governance.

The unified county administrative district is a collection of county-level administrative districts, so the basic classification standard is consistent with the county-level administrative districts.It's just that because the administrative area of ​​the unified county is larger than the county, and its political status is more important, it must be classified according to factors such as politics, military affairs, and geography. As for high-level administrative districts, there is no need to classify them.Not every dynasty had high-level administrative districts. Even if there were, most of them were established out of necessity. For example, Fangzhen in the late Tang Dynasty was in a state of separatism. How could there be a unified national classification?In some dynasties, the power of high-level administrative regions was dispersed among several institutions, such as Song Ruming, and the classification was obviously meaningless.In addition, the number of high-level administrative districts is small, and the central control is tight. The situation is clear at a glance, and there is no need to classify.Therefore, except for the late Southern and Northern Dynasties (when there were many states as high-level administrative regions), the high-level administrative regions were not classified.Even in the Liang and Chen dynasties in the Southern Dynasties, the classification of states was purely for the purpose of arranging the promotion of officials.The principle of grading is to rank states according to their geographical location and other political factors in order to install officials of different levels.After the abolition of this bad rule in the late Sui Dynasty, there was no distinction between high-level administrative regions in the past dynasties.In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the clan system was strict, and the distinction between cold and common people was very clear. Therefore, it corresponds to the nine-rank Zhongzheng system for officials. The Qi and Sui dynasties in the Northern Dynasties also had the practice of dividing the three levels of prefectures, counties and counties into nine ranks, but in the Sui Dynasty, they reunified the inner world. After that, the practice was abandoned.

In 2000, the grading standard of administrative regions was determined based on economic factors combined with political and military factors.Household registration is the basis for tax collection. The collection of land rent in Qin and Han Dynasties and the distribution of feudal princes were all based on households. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, household adjustments were implemented, and households were collected.Therefore, the standard of grading before the Yuan Dynasty was inseparable from the number of households.In an agricultural society, people are the main productive force, so a prosperous household registration and a prosperous economy are two aspects of the same thing.Therefore, taking household registration as the grading standard is the best embodiment of economic factors.However, due to the increasingly serious exploitation of taxes and servitude, more and more household registrations escaped from taxes and servitude, which directly affected the government's fiscal revenue. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the basis for grading was changed to the amount of money and food.Because the output of grain is related to the amount of land (the number of cultivated fields), household registration can be evaded, but land is more difficult to conceal.

In addition to economic factors, political and military factors also play a certain role in the grading criteria, which have been mentioned above and will not be repeated here. The significance of administrative divisions naturally lies in understanding the national conditions, but it also plays an important role in determining the level of the governor of the administrative district, the size of the government organization, the staffing of staff, and the allocation of administrative funds.Ancient China was a country with highly developed bureaucratic politics. There were strict and detailed regulations on the appointment, dismissal, promotion, and salary of officials.The classification of administrative districts can also be used as the basis for the promotion and dismissal of foreign officials.

The "Hundred Officials" of various official histories often retains specific regulations on the scale of administrative organizations and officials' salaries in different administrative regions.For example, "Sui Shu Baiguan Zhi" records the organizational scale of the nine counties in the early Sui Dynasty: "The county has ninety-nine people including magistrates, Cheng, Wei, Zheng, ... and so on." The ninety-nine people refer to The allocation of official positions in Shangshang County, and then reduce the staff level by level: "Shangzhong County, plus Shang County officials belong to four people. Shangxia County, plus Zhong County's five people. Zhongshang County minus Shangxian County's ten people. Zhongshang County Zhongxian, minus five people from Zhongshang County. Zhongxia County, minus five people from Zhongzhong County. Xiashang County, minus twelve people from Zhongxia County. Xiazhong County, minus six people from Shangxian County. Xiaxia County, minus Five people from Zhong County.” From this we know that there were still 47 officials in the lowest county in the early Sui Dynasty.

Another example is the regulations of Dailu: "The governor, the prefect, and the county magistrate will be paid according to the household, and the number of households will be the difference between the nine grades... There are one hundred and forty stones in the big county, and the difference is ten stones for each of the following. As for the lower and lower, it is sixty stones." The grade of the county magistrate is only calculated according to the third class, "the upper county magistrate is the sixth grade, the middle county magistrate is the seventh grade, and the lower county magistrate is the eighth grade." Other dynasties also There are many similarities and minor differences. For example, in the Song Dynasty, only county magistrates were installed in Chixian County or counties with more than 20,000 households, and the post of chief bookkeeper was only available in counties with more than 1,000 households. In counties with 400 households, only lieutenants and chief bookkeepers were appointed.In the Yuan Dynasty, the upper county had one Yin, one Cheng, and one Wei each. The middle county did not have a Cheng, and the lower county had a book and a lieutenant where the people had few affairs.If the counties are not classified, these regulations will lose their foundation.The situation of unified county administrative districts is also similar to that of counties.

Therefore, the practical significance of the division of administrative districts, etc., in a word, still takes economic factors as the main criterion to reflect the needs of administrative management.In the early stage of feudal society, the number of household registrations indicated the abundance of wealth, and at the same time, the number of households also indicated that things were complicated, so the household registration was used as the basic standard.In the later period, the two were decoupled, so the tax and grain were directly used as the basis for classification.But in fact, the complexity of administrative affairs can only be explained by the two items of population and wealth, so the indicator of the size of the area was added during the Republic of China.