In many costume dramas, there have been two official positions of "Prime Minister" and "Prime Minister", and in the play, their status is below one person and above ten thousand people. Many times people will confuse them, and even think that they are just different historical periods, different names, but they do not know that the status and meaning between the two are far apart.
According to the changes of ancient officials, although the names of the prime minister and the prime minister are close, the prime minister is indeed a real official position, and the power is indeed very large, but the prime minister is not so, it is not an official position, or even just a name, so the two can not be compared.
First of all, the official position of Xiangguo can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when the princes established the position of Xiangguo in order to help them better govern the court, and the power held by Xiangguo at that time was really unmatched except for the princes. The official position of Xiang Xiang first existed as the secretary of Xiang Guo, that is, a subordinate of Xiang Guo, and after the Qin State swept away Liuhe and unified it, due to the reasons of Lü Buwei at that time, Qin Shi Huang set up an official position of left and right Xiang Wei to replace the position of Xiang Guo in order to guard against Lü Buwei and strengthen the centralization of power.
At that time, the two people on the left and right were still able to restrain each other, providing Qin Shi Huang with many feasible methods and strategies for governing the country, so Qin Shi Huang also attached great importance to them. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Cao Cao blackmailed Tianzi to make the princes push the position of chancellor to the peak of power. At that time, the princes were not afraid of Tianzi, but they were very jealous of Cao Cao, because he held great power, not only to make decisions on state affairs, but also to directly command the army to conquer other princely states. There are also people who go to investigate whether Cao Cao was called emperor, because it is said that before his death, he never usurped the throne and became emperor, and his title of emperor was posthumously awarded after his son later came to power, but regardless of the facts, at that time, Cao Cao, even if he was only a chancellor, actually grasped the power of surpassing the son of heaven, and it was not important to call himself emperor.
However, the official position of chancellor was not established in every dynasty, for example, the Tang Dynasty did not establish this official position because of the implementation of the three provinces and six ministries system, even if it appeared for a period of time during the Tang Xuanzong period, and later because of the restoration of the three provinces and six ministries system, the official position of the minister was abolished. In the Song Dynasty, although there was an official position of chancellor, it was essentially held by the left and right servants around the emperor, so it was only a change in the name of the official position, not a real position of chancellor.
During the Yuan Dynasty, it would be difficult for ethnic minorities to hold power, not to mention the vast land of China, and the Han nationality was also the largest ethnic group at that time. Most people still adapted to the previous management model, and in order to be able to better manage it, the Yuan Dynasty absorbed the previous bureaucracy and retained the position of chancellor.
In order to strengthen the imperial power and avoid the chaos of the government and politics caused by the dominance of the chancellor alone, Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty abolished the post of chancellor, that is, from this time on, the chancellor completely withdrew from the stage of history. In the later Qing Dynasty, although there were many official positions, there was never an official position of chancellor to divide power.
In fact, in ancient times, the prime minister did not specifically refer to a person or a certain position, or even an official position, it was only an honorific title that had a very high degree of power in the imperial court, and sometimes people who could assist the emperor were also called so. If summed up in terms of the relationship of inclusion, the prime minister can be called the prime minister, but not all the prime ministers are prime ministers.
The origin of the prime minister is longer than that of the prime minister, as early as the zhou wu king period zhou gong honored the help of his own establishment of the state of the dazai as the prime minister, so in fact the word zai is the combination of the words "dazai" and "xiangguo", but in order to show respect for the dazai, posterity will be the prime minister as the title of the sage, has been used.
In summary, it can be seen that the difference between the two words prime minister and the prime minister is still very large, and the person who can assist the emperor, regardless of the size of the official position, or even the number of people, may be called the prime minister, but the prime minister is a person who has a real official position and holds real power.