Ming Taizu
After the "Hu Weiyong Case" in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the system of prime ministers and established a cabinet, the emperor's private office secretariat, which in principle was not in the state's bureaucratic system. The six ministries of officials, households, ceremonies, soldiers, criminals, and workers became the highest administrative organs directly under the emperor. "University scholars" set up in the cabinet can participate in the "vote to approve the reply", that is, after the cabinet receives the chapter, it writes the content of the proposed reply on a piece of paper, and then submits it to the emperor, who finally decides whether to reply to the minister's chapter in this way. Cabinet university fellows are also called "auxiliary ministers", and chief university scholars are called "first assistants" or "yuan auxiliaries". In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, cabinet chiefs such as Yan Song and Zhang Juzheng held real power and actually had the right to be prime minister.
Yongzheng Emperor
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, imitating the system of the Illuminated Dynasty, on the basis of the original eight flags system, three inner courts were established: the Secretariat Academy, the Hongwen Academy, and the National History Academy. This is the prototype of the central organ of government in the early Qing Dynasty, equivalent to the cabinet. In the fifteenth year of Shunzhi, the three internal chambers were abolished, and a cabinet of university scholars was set up to draft edicts and approve the answers in place of the emperor, and to participate in the major affairs of the military state. The Kangxi Dynasty set up a "Council of Ministers" above the cabinet, composed of Manchurian nobles, and Han Chinese were not allowed to participate. Later, the "South Study Room" was set up to control the vote of the cabinet, and the authority was quite similar to that of a university scholar. In the ninth year of Yongzheng, the "military machine room" was set up, and during the Qianlong period, it was changed to the "Military Aircraft Department", which became a permanent institution for handling military affairs, and the military aircraft ministers were selected by the emperor from among the princes, university scholars, Shangshu, waiters and other bureaucrats--this was still a secretariat dedicated to serving the emperor himself, independent of the government bureaucracy. During this period, the Military Aircraft Department not only had the right to revise the cabinet's draft, but also had the right to issue the "edict" drafted by the Military Aircraft Department to the six ministries without the cabinet issuing, and the cabinet's power was gradually marginalized and gradually became an idle institution. We should pay attention to the fact that the "cabinet" was originally the secretariat of the emperor himself, and the "military aircraft department" was also this function, and the abolition of the "cabinet" in the middle and late Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the "military aircraft department" showed that some of the inherent "political traditions" of the "cabinet" still did not meet the needs of the Qing rulers for "centralizing power", and only then did they set up a "military aircraft department" that was more in line with the needs of their centralized rule.
Royal Cabinet
In the third year of the Qing Dynasty (1911 AD), in order to "establish a constitution", the Qing Dynasty abolished the military aircraft department and set up the last cabinet, the Imperial Cabinet, with one prime minister and one Manchu and Han assistant ministers. Of the thirteen cabinet members, the Manchurian nobility accounted for nine, of which the royal family accounted for seven. At this point, the establishment of this "imperial cabinet" has drawn a historical end to the "cabinet system" of the Ming and Qing dynasties.