The evolution of China's local bureaucracy is generally towards a gradual decentralization. For example, during the Qin and Han dynasties, the highest magistrate of a county-level place in China was Taishou. Taishou was powerful, and he was in charge of civil affairs, personnel, law, litigation, supervision, economics, and even the military. Therefore, in general, in addition to accepting the appointment and dismissal of the emperor and not hereditary, Taishou was not much different from the princely states of the Zhou Dynasty.
However, later, the power of Taishou slowly divided the power of Taishou, for example, the Song Dynasty added a "general judgment" and divided the decision-making power and supervision power of Taishou (not called Taishou at this time, called Zhizhou). However, during the Yuan Dynasty, due to the chaos of local governance, the power of local officials was once again strengthened. After Zhu Yuanzhang, who established the Ming Dynasty in 1368, took the throne, he began to solve this situation of "supporting the army and respecting themselves" in this place, and it was in this situation that the envoys came into being.
In 1376, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the local Xingzhongshu Province and set up the Department of Political Envoys. Under the jurisdiction of the left and right envoys. The Ming Dynasty's envoys were very powerful, and they were Zhu Yuanzhang's "spokesmen" in the local area, and they were even compared to the "ancient shepherds" by the people of the time. The so-called "Mubo" is the emissary of Tianzi who managed a large number of princes during the Zhou Dynasty, and is a super local force in the Zhou Dynasty, and the so-called "Spring and Autumn Five Hegemons" behind it, "Hegemony" is an evolution of "Bo".
However, "Bo" was appointed by order of Zhou Tianzi, while "hegemony" was won by the princely states themselves, and the meaning of the two was different. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the position of "cloth political envoy" was also used, so what is the equivalent of the "cloth political envoy" in the Qing Dynasty? You may never believe it? Since the Qing Dynasty was born out of the grassland, most of the systems were vacant, so most of their systems were directly "borrowed" from the Ming Dynasty.
However, in order to facilitate feudal centralization, they further changed the ming system, making these systems more conducive to the emperor's personal dictatorship. In response to this need, the Qing Dynasty carried out further reforms of the local official system. On the one hand, the Qing Dynasty was local
At the provincial level, the governor-general system was followed, making it impossible for the governor to speak at the local level—because they had no idea who the court would send to be the governor. The governor's authority is greater than that of the governor.
On the other hand, the Qing Dynasty carried out a certain disintegration of the authority of the Ming dynasty's envoys. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the envoys were made the highest local officials, so the power of the envoys was very large, involving all aspects of the locality. Later, when the ming uprising broke out, the Ming Dynasty temporarily set up local governors and governors to oversee the suppression of local uprisings, but because the envoys had a long history in the Ming Dynasty, their real power was still very large.
The Qing Dynasty directly turned the temporary system of the Ming Dynasty into a permanent system, which further divided the local power of the Qing Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, the envoys could only be counted as the aide-de-camp of the inspectors, and the inspectors were under the jurisdiction of the nine viceroys, so the authority of the envoys at this time was greatly reduced. So, what were the qing dynasty's envoys mainly doing? This point is also recorded in the literature, as follows:
"Three years of Binxing, promotion of examinations, promotion of meritocracy, and upper ceremonial department." Ten-year membership household version, average taxation, number of people, number of fields, up to the household department. All government affairs will be supervised and discussed. ”
The power of the envoys in the Qing Dynasty was mainly in two aspects: one was to manage the affairs of local examinations, which was a bit like the current provincial education department; the other was to manage local finances and be responsible for various matters of tax payment, which was a bit like the current provincial financial department, in addition, nominally it also had "all government affairs, governors, and deliberations", that is, it could participate in the handling of provincial affairs, but with the inspectors and governors above, its "right to participate" is estimated to be somewhat nominal.
At the same time, the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" also records that the envoys had "officials of the ShuaiFu, prefectures, and counties, who can be honest in their recorded posts, who are up and down for examination, and who report to the governor and the upper and lower officials", that is, they are responsible for assessing the lower-level officials, but the specific decision still needs to be reported to the inspector and the governor to decide, and then reported to the imperial court. So this is also a relatively chicken power, belonging to the kind of errand officer, but there is no dominant matter.
So, in summary, what position is the equivalent of the current position of the envoy? Considering that its management scope is relatively broad, but most of them do not have decision-making power, it is likely to be equivalent to the vice governor who is now in charge of several fields - of course, this premise must be that the inspector is equivalent to the governor. The highest place we have now is the provincial level, but in fact, the highest place in the Qing Dynasty is the level under the jurisdiction of the governor--it is much larger than the province.
Therefore, from this point of view, the position of envoy should be lower than that of the current vice-governor, but higher than that of the chief executive at the municipal level. It can be seen how complicated the local system was designed by people at that time in order to prevent local dictatorship. However, even if the dictatorship is perfectly set up, it cannot completely suppress people's resistance, let alone an era of loss in every war. In the end, the Qing Dynasty collapsed.