The table and the inside of the official title
Zhang Cheng, China Reading Daily (05/12/2021)
[Tang] Yan Liben's "Map of the Emperors of Past Dynasties" part
The official system is the container of political history, and the official title is the most distinctive representation of the official system.
The complicated ancient official titles are the "roadblock" for today's interpretation of history. If we cannot accurately grasp the connotation of official titles, we will not be able to understand the political gains and losses of the protagonists, the cold and warm of the world, and we will not be able to penetrate their joys and sorrows, and their words and deeds will advance and retreat, thus hindering the analysis of the historical process.
Official titles are first and foremost human political identities, derived from natural blood relations. In the pre-Qin Dynasty, the titles indicating blood respect and kinship were shifted to "knighthoods" that symbolized political rank. The Knight is a bronze wine vessel. At the time of the township drinking ceremony, the seat and the order of the knighthood reflect the dignity and inferiority, and the knighthood is transformed into a political hierarchy. Dukes, uncles, sons, etc., are derived from the patriarchal title of kinship.
At that time, the land was divided, and there was a title and a territory and a population. The Western Zhou Dynasty is 500 li, Hou 400 li, Bo 300 li, Zi 200 Li, male 100 Li. The owner of the land is the ruler. Tianzi was the owner and ruler of the world, and the princes of various places were subject to Zhou Tianzi and were monarchs in their fiefdoms. In addition to the fifth rank, the secretaries, doctors, and scholars responsible for administration are also hereditary fiefs, and there are also fiefs and populations, which are second-level monarchs. For example, the Zhao, Han, and Wei clans were originally the masters of the Jin Dynasty, who were granted the land-splitting seal of the Duke of Jin, and after several generations of development, staged the drama of three branches of the Jin Dynasty.
The most distinctive feature of the unity of officials and lords in the pre-Qin period is the high degree of overlap between the official system and the patriarchal system. Zhou Tianzi gave orders, almost within the family. When babies are still in their infancy, the political height of life has a fixed number. Hereditary aristocrats monopolized official positions, pre-Qin politics was aristocratic politics, and pre-Qin could be called the era of nobility.
The political relations of that era were not allegiances based on personal attachment, but on the checks and balances of rights and duties. Noble officials obtained land and population from the monarch, and had the obligation to guard the territory, pay tribute taxes, report on the pilgrimage, and accompany the army to the army. The monarch must also abide by morality, abide by the contract, guarantee peace, maintain order, and love the people, otherwise the subordinates and the people have the natural right to resist. Zhou Dynasty doctors and former Bo Huang were expelled by the Yi people for violating the rights and interests of the Yi people; Wei Xiangong was rude to the secretary Sun Wenzi, who divided the territory of Cai Yi qi to fight against Wei Jun, and drove the duke to the state of Qi.
With the decline of the supreme authority Zhou Tianzi, the world fell apart and the princes quarreled. The victors of the chaotic world are not the countries with the largest population and the most extensive territories, but the countries that can concentrate their resources to the maximum extent for hegemony. And the most effective way to succeed is totalitarianism. The most thorough implementation of totalitarian autocracy was the Qin state. The State of Qin vigorously strengthened the power of the monarchy, eliminated the feudal monarchs, clans and other forces, integrated the people into the households and the people, and threw every youth and grain into the front line of the war to the greatest extent. Aristocratic politics is clearly an obstacle to totalitarian despotism. Hereditary aristocrats became the object of repression by monarchs of various countries. Objectively, the rate of reproduction of the nobility could not keep up with the rapid expansion of government affairs, and their ability could not cope with the increasingly complex chaos. Under the combined action of subjective and objective factors, employed officials without fiefs and not nobles came into being.
The Zhou Dynasty originally had a group of government histories and officials, "at the end of the month, the rank is uniform, and at the end of the year, it is all narrated, so that when the time comes, its clothes are awarded, and its reward is applauded." Driven by the king, they were subjected to top-down, unilateral rewards and punishments, exchanging loyalty and labor for food and clothing for a living. They had no shiqing shilu, no land and no population, and they could only rely on the king for their honor and disgrace. Their value is reflected in the handling of business affairs. The earliest germ of China's bureaucracy broke ground.
Fushi and Xu officials replaced hereditary aristocratic officials as professional and professional "ministry officials". During the Warring States period, countries appointed sages to deal with practical problems. Ordinary people finally saw a glimmer of light in the iron house where blood monopolized power. Famous people such as Baili Xi, Candle Zhiwu, Lin Xiangru, Su Qin, Zhang Yi and others were fortunate to take the olive branch of history and join the ranks of officials. Various countries have taken out aristocratic official positions such as secretaries and doctors to recruit scholars, and do not hesitate to be knighted, such as Qin Youche Marquis, Guannei Marquis, Chu Youtong Marquis, in addition to the feudal lord. This is an attempt to subsume new things into the old system of the unity of officials and lords, but the deceased can no longer be traced, and the marquises and fiefs of the feudal lords obtained by merit are either counted in counties or households, and can only eat their taxes, do not come to the people, do not inherit, and have no independent military, political and judicial power. There is an essential difference between the Shangqing who were knighted by Baili Xi and Lin Xiangru and others from the Gonghou Qing a hundred years ago.
The separation of officials from knights is irreversible. After the Shang martingale changed the law, the Qin state bid farewell to the patriarchal knighthood, and merit replaced blood as the standard for knighthood. The State of Qin had a total of twenty ranks of military meritorious knights, ranging from the highest Marquis of Chu and the Marquis of Guannei to the lowest duke. Chehou had a food estate, generally a county, but he himself was not a county governor, and the imperial court sent a county order and a county magistrate to govern. The Marquis of Guannei paid taxes on food in Guannei, and even the nominal food was lost. Those who hold other titles may be officials, while those who are not officials enjoy privileges such as exemption from forced labor and commutation of sentences for crimes.
The State of Qin eventually won and established a unified, centralized autocracy. The era of nobility is gone, and the titles are continuously deprived and suppressed by the Qin system. First of all, officials and knights were completely separated, and the emperor held the power to appoint and dismiss officials, and directly administered local prefectures and counties. Second, no longer split the land and approach the people. Except for a few dynasties that returned to the old road of dividing the land in the early days of their establishment, the vast majority of dynasties did not attach territorial titles to the territorial population. Third, the reason for the gift, blood and merit coexist. The standard for knighthood in the aristocratic era is blood, and under the Qin system, the object of blood knighthood is compressed into the children of the royal family and a small number of imperial relatives. Meritorious knighthood became the mainstream, but the emperor became more and more "cutting the door". For example, the marquis of the two Han Dynasties is different from the number of households, the large one is not more than 10,000 households, the small one is 500 or 600 households, and the houguo system is equivalent to a county. The marquis at that time was still hereditary. After the Tang and Song dynasties, the knighthood of merit was gradually abolished. The material benefits attached to the knighthood are also greatly reduced, which is equivalent to the payment of additional salaries. In the end, the title was hollowed out into a false title, degenerated into a paradise of glory and wealth, and no longer constituted a restriction on the monarchy, let alone a threat.
The retreat of the knighthood corresponds to the expansion of the ministry. Under the Qin system, the imperial court ordered officials to control power at all levels, and the hundred officials were ranked according to the number of Feng Lu, called "rank". The official ranks of the officials of the two Han Dynasties are based on "stone", including 18,000 stones, 2,000 stones, 2,000 stones, and 800 stones. This is the amount of grain they can get after a year of loyalty to the king, and indeed "food". Officials have work to eat, and they eat much more and eat less poorly. The king did not need him, and the officials were unemployed and hungry, "in a state of panic." The king had no qualms about the official's fame or academic resume. To put it bluntly, the clergy after the Qin and Han Dynasties were procedurally indistinguishable from the instruments in the eyes of the king. This is a matter-based, "depersonalized" logic. In the eyes of the pre-Qin nobles, the king broke the balance of rights and obligations, and officials had the right to resist.
To paraphrase modern personnel theory, ancient official titles can be divided into "position officials" who undertake specific administrative functions and "taste officials" who represent the level of status.
Knighthoods are typical of grade officers. The taste officer is "people-centered", grading the identity and seniority of the personnel, and fully considering the interests of the officials, with the purpose of ensuring the stability of the official team. The taste officer followed the people, pandering to the "aristocratic" tendencies of the officials. Under the Qin system, although the hereditary nobility declined, officials inevitably regarded themselves as superior and pursued the legacy of the aristocratic era. Therefore, the tendency to aristocratize is an important reason for the continuous continuation of taste officials. A cleric is a typical official. Position officers are "matter-centered", clarify their powers and responsibilities, pay according to work, reward and punish according to assessment, and pursue administrative efficiency. The official has more obligations and fewer rights. Officials are conducive to the selection of talents and abilities, to improving government efficiency and official loyalty, and are naturally favored by totalitarian despotism. The various official titles that were born later can be classified into the rank officer and the position official.
Aristocratic politics has become a thing of the past, political families still exist, and in the late Han And Jin Dynasty, wei and Jin developed into a gate valve clan, implicitly a new aristocratic class. The sons of the clan held high-ranking officials and important positions, and were reluctant to hold trivial and complicated positions that undertook pressure. This led to the independence of a new graded official title from the clerical officers, the scattered official (rank official).
Scattered officials can be described as the honorary title of non-director. As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, the doctor, Lang Guan and other close attendants were qing important official positions that the scholars were proud of, and they had no specific ministry, but they participated in political affairs, were close to the imperial power, and were bright and beautiful. The scattered officials that the Wei and Jin gate valves competed for were precisely these doctors and lang officials, as well as the additional officials and titles that had emerged since the Han and Wei dynasties, such as kaifu yi tongsan division, special jin, scattered riding changshi, guanglu doctors, and so on. Scattered officials do not pay attention to the actual government, but they are related to salaries, punishments, court shifts, cars, clothes, tributes, funerals and other treatment. For example, the special entrants can enter under the three dukes during the pilgrimage; the Kaifu Yi and the three divisions indicate two prominent treatments, one is to open a prefectural office and summon a subordinate (Kaifu), and the other is to use the honor guard of the three dukes (Yi Tongsan Division). In the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, where the dark clouds of the door valve were obscured, the scattered officials quickly surpassed the titles and clergy officials, and rose to become the target pursued by the Shangshi clan door valves down to the Hanmen grass people.
The northern Zhou and Sui and Tang dynasties that rebuilt the great unification took root in the Guanlong political clique. With military aristocracy at its core, the group, unlike the clans of the Kanto and Jiangnan provinces, pursued another type of graded official title, Xunguan (戎秩), in order to boast of military merit and show off their identity. Northern Zhou established a prefectural military system, and during the conquests, meritorious soldiers were constantly promoted, and the number of soldiers with military ranks soon exceeded the quota of officers. The honorary officials had the names of Shangzhu Guo, Pillar State General, Great General, And Governor, and expanded into a nationwide official system with the rapid progress of the Northern Zhou and Sui and Tang Dynasties.
From the name point of view, the former is the official name, and the latter is the military rank. The Sanguan is the proud forbidden of the Kwantung and Jiangnan Gate Valve clans, and the Xunguan is the pride of the Guanlong political clique, and both sides regard it as "this product" and "this rank". In the early Tang Dynasty, there was a dispute between scattered officials and xun officials, "what is the basis", behind which was the dispute between the Guanlong group and the traditional door valve clan. Four or five hundred years of door valve politics have formed a cultural identity, which cannot be changed by the military clique of Zhaoxing for decades. In the end, the official system of the Tang Dynasty was based on scattered officials, and the grades and treatment of officials were subject to scattered officials. However, the Guanlong Group re-determined the height of the door and adopted the tradition of the door valve clan to defeat the traditional door valve clan. Soon after the birth of the meritocracy system, it faded from the core of the power stage.
Titles and honorary officers are honorary titles for meritorious ministers, but to varying degrees. The title is "rewarded for merit", and it is not knighted unless there is a great merit. In contrast, the honorable officers were "rewarded" for their servants who were loyal to the king. Naturally, the gold content of the knighthood is higher than that of the knighthood.
The rank of the official title was also changed from "stone" to "product". The "stone" of the two Han Dynasties only covered some official positions, and there were no official ranks for military attachés, eunuchs, and imperial attendants, and there were no official ranks at the highest levels such as the Three Dukes. The Southern and Northern Dynasties used "quality" to measure the level of all official positions. The origin of the product, one theory is derived from the nine-pin zhongzheng system, which was originally a judgment of the "character" of officials, and gradually transformed into the "capital product" of the qualifications of the official, and then determined as the "official product" that measures the rank of the official. Another view is that the product comes from the chao position (chaoban position). At the end of the Cao Wei Dynasty, nine pins were used to measure the rank of the court, and then to measure the rank of the officials in the court. The Sui Dynasty formally established a grade system, with officials divided into nine grades, and each product was divided into positive and subordinate, a total of nine grades and eighteen grades. In the Tang Dynasty, each level below the Zhengsi pin was divided into upper and lower levels, and the officials had a total of nine pins and thirty grades. Scattered officials, clerical officers, honorary officers, and knighthoods are all included in the category of nine products. The official qualities of the Song Dynasty were not distinguished from top to bottom, and the nine pins and eighteen grades were restored, which lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Jiupin can be called the most durable and stable official system, which can help future generations clear a path in the official system like a dense forest. Perhaps because Jiupin is concise and clear, there are few changes, Chinese have the most enthusiasm and imagination for betting on it.
The Tang and Song dynasties were a period of ancient official formulation and maturity, and it was also a time when official titles climbed to the peak of complexity. The Tang Dynasty formally fixed four major types of official titles - post, scatter, xun, and knight.
The scattered steps shone most brilliantly in the Tang and Song dynasties. Tang Sanguan was divided into twenty-nine ranks under the names of "Doctor", "Lang" or "General", "Lieutenant", etc. The highest rank of Wensan official is Kaifu Yi Tongsansi (from Yipin) and the lowest rank is Shoshilang (from Jiupin). Emperor Huizong of Song set the thirty-seventh rank of the Song Dynasty's WenShanguan, from Kaifu Yi Tongsan Si, Tejin, and Jin ZiGuanglu to Di Gonglang. "Doctor" is a middle and high-ranking civilian official, and "Lang" is a low-level civilian official. The initial dismissal of scattered officials is mainly determined by the door, and there are also those who are awarded ranks according to the birth of the imperial examination. In the Tang Dynasty, the son of the king of the county was ranked as the Middle Doctor under the four pins, and the eldest son of the zheng si pin official was dingzheng under the eight pins. The new official of Jinshike High School is Wen Lin Lang from the Nine Pins; Xiu Cai is only the Shi Lang on the Eight Pins. When an official enters the army, he first obtains a rank of dispersion, and then considers the rank of a strategist and awards it to the corresponding clerk. The rank of the cleric and the rank of the scattered official is not consistent, and the treatment depends on the rank of the scattered official. This is the "essence" of the scattered officials.
The Tang people's admiration for the scattered officials was based on the surviving door valve forces. The Imperial Guard attacked the foundation of the Gate Valve, and the war and chaos of the Late Tang Dynasty dealt a devastating blow to the clan, and by the Northern Song Dynasty, society had become civilian. Scattered officials are not as honorable and strong as their predecessors, and begin to decline, first of all, they lose the status of officials as their own products, and can only determine the minority treatment of officials; secondly, scattered officials and service officials are promoted and promoted simultaneously, and the promotion of scattered officials is promoted, and vice versa. If Song Dynasty officials were reused, the emperor would greatly increase their ranks to avoid a huge disparity. This avoids the embarrassment that some of the Tang Dynasty's prime ministers were only five or six pins of scattered officials.
The perfection of the song dynasty's system of grade officials ensured that civilian officials could be steadily promoted without major mistakes, and they were moved every three years, sitting on the ranks of the secretary of state and the beggar. However, the design of the system based on officials and the pursuit of the stability of the bureaucratic team was difficult to blame for the excessive cost of officials and administrative inefficiency of the Song Dynasty. At the same time, we must be vigilant against the imperial power in the name of efficiency, prosperity, and reform, which suppresses the officials, weakens the bureaucratic group's ability to check and balance the autocratic imperial power, and leads to absolute dictatorship. How to balance the relationship between the taste official and the position official is an eternal problem of the official system.
The system of honorary officials was also perfected in the Tang and Song dynasties. The Tang Dynasty designated twelve turning officers such as the Pillar State, the Pillar State, the Great General, and the Military Cavalry Lieutenant, with the unit of "turning", and the more outstanding the battle, the more the number of revolutions. Hua Mulan, who has made great contributions, "has made twelve turns and rewarded one hundred and thousand strong", and has received the highest transfer of the honorary officer, but may not have an actual official position in the army. If Mulan wants to serve, Shangzhu Guo can serve as a minister on the Zhengliupin, which is equivalent to the Langzhong and Yuanwailang of the Six Departments. In addition, officers with more than five pins can take turns to be on duty for four years, and officers below six pins can be simply selected as scattered officials for five years. In the early Tang Dynasty, the awards were mainly based on military merit, and the medals were basically Guanlong military aristocrats; over the long period of time, the number of civil officials awarded medals was increasing. Song Dynasty officials could all be awarded the rank of honor, and the rank of medal was no longer called "transfer", but was renamed "level". The rank of honor is awarded to the official, and the three-year-old is moved, and the promotion is more in line with the nature of remuneration.
The time when the system of honorary officials matures is also the day of indiscriminate conferral. The number of officials was open to all officials and people, and many people were awarded honorary officials for their merits during the founding of the Tang Dynasty, and the number reached more than 100,000 during the Zhenguan years and at least 1.5 million in the tang Xuanzong era. In the Tang Dynasty, the large-scale awarding of honorary officials was of course to mobilize manpower and also reduce the gold content of official positions. The honorable officials are between the officials and the people, and are superior to the Qi people, and the government grants them xuntian; they can reduce their crimes with the rank of order; they have the qualifications to serve as Xu officials; and they have the privilege of being exempted from conscription.
The Tang and Song dynasties were far inferior to the pre-Qin. Knights have no fiefdom, let alone the people, but only food. The power attributes of knighthoods cease to exist and the economic benefits are enjoyed. Even the economic benefits are greatly reduced, and the food is only an imaginary number, and only the "real seal" can get it. The Song Dynasty sealed a household, gave 25 yuan per month, and paid to officials with the monthly salary. The titles, titles, and titles of Song Dynasty officials, such as shiyi, and shifeng, could not be hereditary. At the same time, knighthoods were increasingly granted. In the Song Dynasty, there was a tendency to "attach officials to knighthoods", and officials of a certain rank automatically obtained knighthoods, and after promotion, their titles were also increased accordingly. The commoner-born Wang Anshi was made the Duke of Jingguo, Yue Fei was posthumously honored as the King of E, Lu You was made the founding uncle, and the eunuch Tong Guanye was made the King of Guangyang County, which is an example.
Does the weakening of grade ranks mean the strengthening of the ministry? not.
The official system is a double-edged sword, which not only facilitates the imperial power to point fingers at officials, but also restricts the imperial power from doing as it pleases. For example, the posts of civil servants restricted the emperor from expanding or contracting at will; the selection of rewards and punishments for officials may not be "personnel appropriate", and the emperor could not freely expel and install the officials he liked. At this time, the king often temporarily sent his cronies to deal with specific affairs, such as the Han Dynasty's "Lu Shang Shu Shi" and "Envoy Holding Festival" and so on. The Emperor of the Tang Dynasty began to fix and perpetuate this temporary dispatch, and developed a second type of official title, "Envoy" ("Dispatch", "Errand", etc.). Outside the normal system, the emperor appointed officials with close personal ties and outstanding professional ability on a large scale, granting extralegal powers, specializing in difficult problems such as households, camp fields, transshipment, salt and iron, and pacification. The position of envoy is a formal position without official qualities, and in the early days it is often given the word "envoy" in the official title.
The biggest feature is "temporary", which can be called an official title outside the establishment of the system. Compared with the ministry, the office is less resistant and more dependent. Because of this, the office was favored by the monarchy, and the ministry was increasingly deprived of its real power. However, it "temporarily" survived the fall of the Qing Dynasty and failed to be regularized and juxtaposed with the "Lord of the Scattered Ranks".
The world's most important government favored the envoys, so that the officials were above the officials, and the Tang Dynasty officials began to be proud of their appointments. The normal system of ministers has left the cooperation of the officials and it is difficult to work properly. In the center, it is the truth that the ministers such as Shangshu Servant and Zhongshu Shilang have the posts of "Tong zhongshu menxia sanpin" and "tongzhongshu menxia pingzhangshi"; in the localities, the envoys of jiedushi and the envoys of observation control real power, while their ministers are Shangshu servants, yushi zhongcheng or bingbu shilang. This undermines the normal official system, on the one hand, the separation of the post from the clerical officer, who does not care about his own work, on the other hand, because the post has no official character, the clergy officer is increasingly "scattered" and "ranked official". The subsequent division of the feudal towns exacerbated the chaos. Xiong Clan often applied for official titles for clan commanders and subordinates, resulting in Shang ShuLang and YuShi spread all over the place, and dozens of high-ranking officials were slaughtered. Du Fu served Yan Wu in Chengdu, who asked Du Fu to play a staff member. Du Fu did not work for a day in the Ministry of Works in Chang'an.
The popularization of the envoy position and the dispersion of the clerical officials made the official titles of the early Song Dynasty reach the peak of complexity. Half is inertia, half is the imperial power deliberately creates complexity to prevent the emergence of power subjects, and the Northern Song Dynasty deliberately creates the complexity of the official system. Officials almost always make their posts a real post and carry a ministry officer. An official at the end of the world, the official may have been a Lang official of Bieliang, but like Du Fu, he never stepped into the gates of Shangshu Province. The ministry officer was given the rank and rank of "Zhilu Official". Jiluguan was a specialty of the official system of the Song Dynasty, and was a kind of "hierarchical official official". At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the ministry officials had no ministry, and Shangshu, Langzhong, Zhongshu Sheren, and Inspector Yushi had the title of governor and did not serve, unless there was a special edict not to be admitted to the director of the department, and the other post was sent to "judge" and "know" to govern. The name of the ministerial official was not worthy of the name, resulting in redundant officials and redundant posts, and administrative pressure increased year by year, and finally triggered the "Yuanfeng reform system" during the Song Shenzong period. The reforms effectively merged the two by borrowing the titles of former officials, and the restoration of the original appearance of the clergy changed the situation of separation of powers. After the yuanfeng reform, the song dynasty officials were given the titles of Jilu guan (formerly scattered officials), ministers, dispatches, xun, and knights. Taking the great scholar Su Shi as an example, before the restructuring, it was the Ministry of Works Tuntian Yuanwailang and Zhihu Prefecture, and later the Chaofeng Lang Zhihui Prefecture. Su Shi's Huzhou Zhizhou and Huizhou Zhizhou were dispatched and belonged to their own work, while Yuanwailang and Chaofenglang were the officials before and after the restructuring. Yuanwailang was originally a clerical official, and Chao Bonglang was a typical official name.
The taste of official titles is strong, and the imperial power is often weakened or limited; the rise of the positional official title is accompanied by the strengthening of the imperial power. Officials rely on the empowerment of the king, and the taste of officials restricts the imperial power, and the imperial power naturally tends to strengthen the former and dilute the latter. All kinds of official titles in the Song Dynasty were held at the same time, and the society of the Song Dynasty was relatively relaxed and free, and the self-awareness of imperial power was more sober and restricted. Entering the Ming Dynasty, the train of totalitarian despotism roared and accelerated, and the official system became a tool for the emperor to control hundreds of officials.
The biggest change in the official titles of the Ming and Qing dynasties was the change to a change to a ministry official as the mainstay and closer to the actual position. Position officials, whether they were clerical officers or envoys, became increasingly strict and all-encompassing to the ming and qing dynasties. The office did not replace the existing clerk, but was partially digested by the clerk. The governor, inspector, general soldier and other envoys were converted to formal service officials, and the remaining envoys, such as the Military Aircraft Department, the study of government, etc., were taken for granted by the officials and the people, and were regarded as "semi-clergy officers". Powerful clergy became the core of the official rank system.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, "only the official is determined, and if it is an official, then the honor, rank, and knighthood follow, and there is no intention of repeating the work and the merits." Scattered officials, knights, and titles, bowing to the ministers. The Tang and Song dynasties were officials according to rank, and the grades of the two were different, and even the difference was huge. At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the civilian officials and the civil officials must in principle be of the same rank. The Ming and Qing dynasties were based on official ranks, and civilian officials had real posts before they had scattered officials, and adjusted accordingly according to changes in their positions, and they were synchronized with advances and retreats. Scattered and orderly officials were quickly demoted. After the Tang Dynasty's scattered officials reached more than five pins, "they were not added by the grace system, let alone the order to advance", so there were not many civilian officials with more than five pins. Ming and Qing officials, with the promotion of their positions, automatically obtained more than five scattered officials, and one or two products were no longer difficult to touch. Originally the pride of the door valves and nobles, the weapons for them to show their identity and oppose the imperial power, they are now "reduced" to additional official titles, and even supplements to the evaluation system of the clergy. The two did not have a feng lu, let alone affect the promotion and demotion of the clergy, and became the "appendage" of the official title system in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The official system of the Qing Dynasty was completely tilted towards the clergy. The Eight Banners nobles who originated from the White Mountains and Black Water did not have the concept of honorary officials, and after entering the Central Plains, the Qing Emperor simply did not accept the system of honorary officials. At the same time, the Qing Dynasty continued to dilute the system of scattered officials. The scattered officials completely lost their substantive role and appeared almost exclusively in important documents and epitaphs. Officials regard the scattered official as an ancient cultural relic, and more for the ancestors and fathers to win the scattered officials to shine the lintel. Therefore, the Qing Dynasty scattered officials are almost equivalent to the title.
Before the Manchus entered the guanguan, there were also hereditary official positions, which were awarded to nobles and meritorious servants, equivalent to the Han system of knighthood. After entering the customs and merging the Central Plains official system, the Qing Dynasty unified the knighthood, honorary official, and hereditary office into a "secular position". There are two main categories of hereditary titles: clan lords and meritorious knights. The former was only granted to the clan, and there were princes, county kings, baylors, beyzi, and generals of Bong'en. The clan was not automatically knighted, but was knighted for merit. Moreover, except for the hereditary succession of the twelve "Iron Hat Kings", the other clan titles were all demoted to hereditary, and each generation was demoted to one level, and the generals of the auxiliary countries were no longer demoted. Even if he was fortunate enough to inherit a knighthood, the emperor could be deposed and another one in his clan could be chosen. A chasm was opened between the Qing Dynasty's knighthood system and the nature of the rank official. It protects the general rights and interests of large families, and cannot be said to be "people-centered". The emperor firmly held the initiative to attack the knights. The estranged children who love Xinjue Luo are also in the cold window of ten years, missing the night to catch the examination room, which is no different from the poor children.
All the gains and losses of cold and warmth are gathered on the staff officer, who instead has a tendency to "taste". The income of the clergy is also based on the standard of grade, and the Qing Dynasty often rewards officials with "adding a certain title" and "adding a certain product to serve", which is equivalent to "flavoring" the official product itself. Officials fought hard for each grade and worked hard. There are many names for clerical officials, and simple and easy-to-understand grades have become the core criterion for people to measure their status and even their birth and failure. The grade system is to blame for the rise of the "official-based" trend of thought.
Official titles evolve with the vicissitudes of the times. Society is becoming more and more developed, and official titles are becoming more and more complex; political struggles are endless, and official titles are also rising and falling. The pre-Qin official title system was unified, and the official title system had not yet been differentiated; the Official Titles of the Qin and Han Dynasties were created, simple and rough, concise, bright, and full of vigor; the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties were a peak of tasteful arrangements and tasteful official positions, and the Tang and Song rank officials inherited the rest; the Tang and Song official systems were mature and the official titles were meticulous, but they were cumbersome, and the dynasty had already thought hard about the distribution of bureaucratic privileges; and the Ming and Qing official title systems showed a tendency to return to the rank of posts. In China, the official title system has generally followed a process of moving from simplicity to complexity to simplicity, and officials from scratch and then from strong.
China's official title system is the world's earliest personnel classification system, and perhaps the most contented and successful system in practice. This is a set of composite systems, which are superior to simple job classification or grade classification, taking into account administrative efficiency and the stability of the official team, leaving sufficient space for the emperor to strengthen centralized despotism, and leaving the possibility of checks and balances for the power structure.
The short and long official titles are the social identity of the Chinese competition, an important political resource in ancient times, and the thousand-year externalization of political ideas.
In China's political history, the normalization of the great unification is interrupted from time to time by great divisions. But the end of each split is the starting point for a new wave of totalitarian despotism. Imperial power will be contained and even insulted in the chaotic world, and it will be retaliatoryly centralized in the subsequent unification. The official title system closely follows the imperial power and follows the trend, which is both a sharp weapon for the strengthening of imperial power and a new achievement of centralized despotism. If various official titles are likened to marionettes, the emperor is the operator. Noble and independent nobles were transformed into "shun subjects" who were dependent on the emperor, and the young talents who pointed out the country and mountains incarnated as the gonggongs who were sitting on their backs. The dashing ride of the wind and waves eventually gave way to step-by-step calculations. There is nothing more tragic about bureaucracy than this.