China established a developed political system in the Warring States of Qin and Han, which is the greatest feature of Chinese history and can be said to be one of the most important phenomena in the Chinese historical tradition.
Some numbers could be given to continue this point. In the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, the number of imperial households on the household registration was 59.59 million, nearly 60 million, while the number of officials in the main compilation was about 130,000-150,000 - here only the positive compilation, not those who are over-compiled, from the Han Jian to see the phenomenon of over-compilation is also quite serious. What did this mean in the world at the time? This figure is 20 times the number of roman imperial officials of the same period. Later, the Roman Empire saw a tendency to strengthen totalitarian despotism, and the bureaucracy became more and more developed. However, by the fourth and fifth centuries, the number of officials of the Han Empire that was still used after B.C. was still four times that of the Roman Empire five hundred years later.
I did another search, when did the U.S. population reach 60 million? It was the 1880s, and the number of civil servants in the United States at this time, according to my search results, was about 130,000 —both of which were the same as during the Han Dynasty in China. That is to say, the scale reached by the US government in the late 19th century was achieved by China at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. From the Qin and Han dynasties onwards, during the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty, there were about 52.88 million household registrations, and the total number of its officials could reach 368,000, which was a huge team of officials. These 3670,000 people do not work in agriculture, do not work or do business, and manage it above the society.
The size of China's government in all historical periods is among the best in the world, and no country has ever surpassed China. In the late Qing Dynasty, there were about 400 million household registers, and although the number of officials in the regular establishment was only 26,000, the number of Xu officials and servants—who are also counted as public servants in modern times—is as many as one or two million. The Qing government remained the largest government in the world. Therefore, studying the history of the political system is very meaningful and can help to understand many important characteristics of ancient and modern China.
What has just been discussed involves the achievements of the Qin Emperor Han Wu in the construction of the system. In the Tang Dynasty, China's political system took to a whole new level. The quantitative changes in the evolution of the system have accumulated a qualitative change and leap, and three major institutional achievements have emerged: the Tang Law, the Imperial Examination System, and the Three Provinces and Six Ministries System.
Judging from the three-province and six-ministry system, it is a very reasonable bureaucratic system. From "rule" to "rule" to "administration", all levels are well organized. There is still a delicate relationship of cooperation, restraint and balance between the three provinces, with Zhongshu Province drafting edicts, Menxia Provinces reviewing edicts, and then shangshu provinces leading the six ministries to implement them.
The establishment of the examination system was another epoch-making beginning of the system of electing officials. Soon after the birth of the imperial examination system, it began to radiate outward, and Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Ryukyu all adopted the Chinese imperial examination system. In East Asia at that time, China was an exporter of institutions.
The same is true of the rule of law, which is also exported to the periphery. Tang Gaozu formulated the Wude Law, Tang Taizong formulated the Zhenguan Law, Tang Gaozong formulated the Yonghui Law, and Changsun Wuji compiled the Yonghui Law, which was appended to the Law and had the same legal effect as the Zhengyi. The Yonghui Law and the Law of law compiled by Changsun Wuji and others are collectively known as the Tang Law Shuyi, which is the most complete written legal code in China, marking that the Chinese legal system has entered a mature, typical stage and a period of high development. At that time, the legal system was also radiating outward, and the laws of Korea, Japan, Goryeo and Vietnam were deeply influenced by the Tang laws. In the words of Professor Chen Yinke, the Tang Law has become "the norm of East Asian criminal law."
Let's talk about progress in the taste system. The reason I want to talk about the taste system is because I have spent a lot of energy here for more than 20 years. My three books, "Taste and Position", "Introduction to the Ancient Chinese Official Rank System", and "From Knight's Standard to Official Standard", are about a million words and are used to study the grade of taste. In every era, you can see several levels and tastes combined together, which I call "taste structure". For example, in the Zhou Dynasty, the backbone of the taste structure was the combination of the gonghou bozi male and the gongqing dafu shi and the two sets of knights. In the Qin and Han Dynasties, the rank of military hero and several stones formed a new combination. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the fifth-class lords revived, and there were also nine official products, general numbers, and Zhongzheng products, etc., and the taste structure was suddenly complicated, until the Tang and Song dynasties. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the taste structure began to simplify again. Knighthood is no longer awarded to civilian officials, so in the management of civilian officials, it is meaningful that the nine pins of official products plus scientific qualifications are obtained. This is very concise. The historical changes in the taste structure are closely related to the changes in the political system of the past dynasties just mentioned, that is, from aristocratic politics to bureaucratic politics, to the politics of the scholars, and then to the return to bureaucratic politics.
In the Zhou Dynasty, he was the earliest official rank in Chinese history. This is a single column. The Qin and Han dynasties were both military heroes and rank stones, and the Wei and Jin dynasties formed a "univariate multi-sequence duplex system" with the framework of nine products. Therefore, from Zhou Qinhan to Wei Jin, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing, the evolution of grades is not only the change of grade differences, we show the structural changes in between. The "unitary multi-sequence duplex system" was formed in the Tang Dynasty, which was also an important progress.
In my research, I borrowed the concepts of "grade classification" and "position classification" of modern administrative theory, introduced it into history, and constructed a systematic theoretical framework, so that the ups and downs of various and disorganized ranks in the three thousand years since the Zhou Dynasty became orderly, and they could all be explained by the "grade-position" model. To understand this concept, it is first necessary to understand that any organization has two major structures, the personnel structure and the position structure. Only the positions are classified equally, which is "position classification"; if not only the positions are classified, the personnel must also be classified equally, and individuals also have official ranks, this system is "grade classification". My investigation of the changes in the grade structure of the three thousand years since the Zhou Dynasty finally provided the academic circles with such a pattern: the Zhou Dynasty was the peak of grade grading, and the Han Dynasty was the peak of job grading, with great ups and downs; the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties returned to grade grading, and the Tang and Song dynasties declined in volatility, but still belonged to grade grading in nature; the Ming and Qing dynasties swung in the direction of job grading. Under the brilliance of the concept of "taste-position", a curve of up and down, swaying left and right, emerges, a trajectory that the academic community did not know before. If I have achieved some success in studying the system, this curve is one of my main achievements.
This trajectory is consistent with the schematic diagram of the changes in the political system of successive dynasties and the schematic diagram of the changes in the elected official system in successive dynasties. In addition, it is also consistent with the changes in the school system. The Guozi studies of the Zhou Dynasty were aristocratic, and the Taixue of the Han Dynasty was very popular, and there were no identity restrictions on enrollment. During the Wei and Jin dynasties and the Sui and Tang dynasties, the identity of the school was strengthened again, and the Guozi school of the Zhou Dynasty was revived. In the Tang Dynasty, the children of officials above the third grade entered the Guozi School, the children of officials above the fifth grade entered the Taixue, the four disciplines were for the children of the bureaucrats of the Seven Pins, and the children below the eighth pin and the commoners learned law, calligraphy and arithmetic. After the Song Dynasty, the reverse change occurred, returning to the Taixue system, from the perspective of identity, the Ming and Qing Dynasty Guozixue can be said to be a reproduction of the Han Dynasty Taixue, almost without any identity restrictions, opening the door to all aspiring young people with excellent achievements.
Originally broadcast on the General Knowledge Simulcast