An Introduction to the Civil Service of Sung China: With Emphasis on Its Personnel Administration 9780824888084

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An Introduction to the Civil Service of Sung China

An Introduction to the Civil Service of Sung China With Emphasis on Its Personnel Administration Winston W. Lo

University of Hawaii Press • Honolulu

© 1987 University of Hawaii Press All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lo, Winston Wan. An introduction to the civil service of Sung China. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Civil service—China—History. 2. China— Politics and government—960-1279. 3. Sung dynasty, 960-1279. I. Title. JQ1512.Z1L6 1987 354.51006'09 87-19038 ISBN 0-8248-1108-9

To my wife Ann whose encouragement, good humor,; and patience made the writing of this book possible

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction The Context of Public Administration Evolution of the Sung Civil Service Function and Recruitment of the Civil Service Job Assignments and the Functional Rank System The Personal Rank System Performance Evaluation and Personnel Supervision Regional Variations in Personnel Administration Conclusion Appendix I: Civil Service Examination Degree Output Appendix II: Bibliographic Note on the Li-pu T'iao-fa Appendix III: Selected List of Members of the Sung Civil Service Recruited from the Personnel of the Annexed Kingdoms Appendix IV: Provincial Schools as an Avenue to T'ang Civil Service Status Appendix V: Career Patterns Appendix VI: Standard Form for Merit Evaluation for Circuit Intendants

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ix xi 1 35 51 79 115 141 172 200 217 227 231

235 237 239 243

Notes

245

Glossary Bibliography Index

277 283 293

vii

List of Tables

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Comparative Data on Sung and Ming Government Revenue Statistics on Sung Officialdom Administrative Subdivisions of the Circuit of Chengtu-fu Composition of the Original Servitors of the Three Echelons The Servitors Hierarchy Before 1100 Sung Classification Titles: Civil Officials Sung Classification Titles: Military Officials T'ang Dynasty Channels to Civil Service Status Composition of the Sung Civil Service (Roster of 1213) in Terms of Entry Method Composition of Civil Service Personnel of Military Rank, Servitors Minor (Roster of 1234) Composition of the Sung Civil Service (A.D. 1213) Geographical Distribution of Civil Service Examination Graduates of the Class of Wang Tso (A.D. 1148) Geographical Distribution of Civil Service Examination Graduates of the Class of Wen T'ien-hsiang (A.D. 1256) The Twelve Classes of Positions (Ssu-ma Kuang's Plan) Classification of Positions for Executory Officials Functional Rank Computation Table Placement Locations for First-Term Civil Service Members Qualifications of Candidates for Appointment to Sample Civil Service Positions Schedule for Postponement of Mo-k'an Balance Sheet of Merits and Demerits Salary Schedule for Civil Officials Four Excellences and Four Ultimates Sponsorship Endorsement Rights of Szechwan Officials Vital Statistics on Szechwan Circuits Formulas for Computing Sponsorship Endorsement Rights of Prefectural Administrators Circuit-by-Circuit Comparison of Sponsorship Endorsement Rights at the Disposal of Prefectural Administrators

9 28 41 62 68 72 74 81 85 86 93 98 99 122 126 127 127 129 156 157 160 178 195 205 206 207

ix

List of Figures

1. 2. 3. 4.

Pattern of the Formal Bureaucracy 44 Pattern of the Functional Bureaucracy 45 Average Annual Recruitment via Examinations 94 Distribution by Classification Titles (Roster of Administrative Officials): A.D. 1085 164 5. Distribution by P'in Grade (Roster of Administrative Officials): A.D. 1085 166 6. Rank of Officials via Kai-kuan Promotion 171

x

Acknowledgments

My interest in the personnel administration of the Sung civil service dates back some ten years when I undertook a study of the Sung circuit intendants. Pursuing the ramifications of the latter research, I came to the realization that despite the pioneering work done by the late Professor Edward Kracke, Jr., the whole realm of personnel administration of the Sung civil service still remained for the most part terra incognita. Since then the main thrust of my research effort has been the exploration of this uncharted land. Thanks to a research fellowship from the Chinese Cultural Center, Inc., New York (1977-1978), and a sabbatical leave (1979-1980) from my own university, I have had the opportunity to study in depth the highly technical texts bearing on the subject and to cull through the pertinent historical and bellestristic literature of the time. The road traveled by the research scholar is often a lonely one. Along the way, however, I am fortunate to have received encouragement from many eminent scholars. In particular, I must mention my indebtedness to Professor James T. C. Liu of Princeton University, Professor Chun-shu Chang of Michigan University and Professor Sung Shee of the Chinese Cultural University. Professor Shu-fan Yang, of National Cheng-chi University, himself a well-known expert on Chinese political institutions, kindly placed at my disposal a copy of the unpublished doctoral dissertation of his former student, Hsing-jen Ts'ao, on the Sung Civil Service. This dissertation has been of immense importance to me in tracking down pertinent information. Acknowledgment is also due my alma mater, the University of Hong Kong, for appointing me to two terms as research fellow of the Centre of Asian Studies (1978-1980), thus giving me access to the Fung Ping Shan Library, one of the finest sinological libraries of the world and other research facilities of the university. A substantial part of the present manuscript was in fact written in my office at the center. I must also thank my own department at Florida State University for its generosity in releasing me from my teaching duties so that the present project could be brought to fruition.

xi

xii

Acknowledgments

To Professor Hoyt Tillman of Arizona State University and Professors Brian McKnight and D. W. Y. Kwok, both of the University of Hawaii, and others who have read and critiqued my manuscript at various stages of preparation, I express my sincere thanks. A debt of gratitude is due my editor, Damaris A. Kirchhofer, whose practical suggestions for improving the manuscript are deeply appreciated. Any imperfections that remain are, of course, mine.

Introduction

It is doubtful that the Chinese can claim the credit of having invented bureaucracy as a form of organization, but they do have an incomparable legacy of bureaucratic government. 1 Almost a thousand years before the establishment of the unified empire, the royal government of the Western Chou was already bureaucratized to a great extent, according to the eminent sinologist Herrlee Creel. 2 By the time the empire came into existence (Ch'in and Han dynasties), the bureaucracy that governed China had attained a high degree of sophistication. In the subsequent two thousand years of the imperial era, the bureaucratic tradition kept on developing, bureaucratizing Chinese society, making such an impact on the consciousness of the people that in the popular mind the realm of the gods and the realm of the dead were each governed by a bureaucracy, after the fashion of the mundane world. 3 One reason why the bureaucracy loomed so large in Chinese society is undoubtedly the absence of alternative sources of authority such as the church, the nobility, and the burghers organized in autonomous cities which in certain societies, such as Absolutist Europe, served as a countervailing force to the authority of the king. During the feudal age before the establishment of the empire, China indeed had an authentic nobility based on birth and landholding. This nobility, however, perished in the wars and social upheaval accompanying the close of the feudal age and was never reconstituted even during the period (fourth through sixth centuries A.D.) when the rule of the imperial government was least effective." The clergy never developed into an autonomous power in China. The native religions (Taoism, popular cults) readily came to terms with the caesaro-papist claims of the monarchy. 5 Buddhism, the only foreign religion to have made substantial inroads into Chinese society, accepted this basic fact of Chinese political culture and submitted to bureaucratic regulations concerning the recruitment and governance of the clergy.6 The Chinese cities, unlike cities in Medieval Europe, were centers of bureaucratic administration under the firm control of the emperor, not autonomous centers of power for the burghers. 7

1

2

Introduction

Under a system where no aspect of life was beyond bureaucratic control and no development in trade, industry, or intellectual inquiry was permitted if it was perceived to threaten the supremacy of the state, the most attractive career to men of talent and ambition was working for the government, especially in the civil service because positions in the civil administration usually carried more power and prestige than corresponding positions in the army. The civil service was composed primarily of the literati—men with a classical education who carried on the values of the Great Tradition. The literati were a status, not a hereditary, group and drew their membership from people of all walks of life. Although their interests did not entirely coincide with those of the state, it is difficult to visualize them apart from the context of their service to the state. Government service was their raison d'etre, and only by holding responsible positions in the civil service could their highest ideals find fulfillment. They were instrumental in developing the political culture as a result of their deep involvement in government service. Their values shaped the norms governing the operation of the bureaucracy. Ever since Emperor Wen-ti of the Han dynasty set up endowed professorships for Confucian classics in the Imperial University, Confucianism had been the official orthodoxy and the Weltanschauung of the literati. It is therefore not surprising that many scholars in modern times consider Confucianism the key to understanding the salient features of Chinese history.8 One of the most convincing arguments in this regard is that advanced by the eminent sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt. The Eisenstadt

Model

In his monumental study on comparative government, The Political System of Empires, Eisenstadt works out a typology of the value orientation of historical bureaucratic empires. There are two major types of orientations, namely, those oriented to political-collective goals and those oriented to the maintenance of cultural patterns. Polities in which the political-collective orientation predominated, such as the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires, considered territorial expansion, brought about by force of arms, as the greatest good and the merits of rulers were judged primarily in terms of their performance in this regard. On the other hand, in polities oriented toward the maintenance of cultural patterns, the urge for territorial expansion was relatively weak; rulers were primarily expected to direct their efforts toward the maintenance of the values, norms, and traditions of their culture and diffuse them throughout the area under their control. China is a prime example of the latter orientation. 9 The emperor of China was legitimated by the Mandate of Heaven, one

Introduction

3

of the basic tenets of Confucianism. 1 0 Heaven in this context signified the highest deity. The emperors of China may therefore be compared to the monarchs of Absolutist Europe who ruled by divine right. Unlike the divine right of kings, however, the Mandate of Heaven by which the Chinese emperor ruled was a conditional mandate, not an absolute one. The emperor and his dynasty were legitimate as long as certain conditions were met. When these conditions were not fulfilled, the mandate was declared forfeit and transferred to another line of rulers more capable of fulfilling these conditions imposed by the mandate. What were these conditions? Primarily they entailed protecting the realm f r o m its domestic and foreign enemies and maintaining the social hierarchy and the traditional lifestyle to which the different social strata were accustomed. The values that the emperor was expected to maintain were thus essentially Confucian values. Under such a value orientation, the emperor really did not need a great deal of resources to perform his obligations. He could make do with a low level of taxation and was under no compulsion to solicit open support from the bulk of the people for his goals, unlike rulers in polities committed to collective-expansionist goals. The salient features of Chinese history can all be traced to this underlying cause." With low taxation, there was little danger of depleting the resource base—free-floating resources, in Eisenstadt's terminology—necessary for sustaining the superstructure of the historical bureaucratic empire. Without need of greatly enhanced revenue, the state refrained from policies designed to promote economic growth; rather, bureaucratic action was limited to policies of the regulative or prescriptive variety. As a consequence, no economic activity and no social group was permitted to develop beyond the limits imposed by the traditional scheme of things. Hence there was no revolution. The periodic peasant revolts, the uprisings by chiliastic cults, and the barbarian invasions that punctuated Chinese history posed no real threat to the basic framework of the Chinese state and society because they provided no real alternative to the status quo. Their leaders, if successful, were usually co-opted into the establishment. As a consequence, the centralized bureaucratic empire which took shape in the closing years of the third century persisted essentially unchanged until the close of the nineteenth century. Eisenstadt's conceptual scheme, insofar as it can be validated or refuted by empirical studies, constitutes a model in the Weberian sense. There is no question that this model has relevance for the study of Chinese history. For instance, Chinese historians traditionally regarded a high level of taxation as a major cause of dynastic ruin. This traditional view, popularized and refined in an influential article, " T h e Rise of Land Tax and the Fall of Dynasties" by Wang Yu-ch'uan, 12 has been adopted by modern scholars as a key concept in explaining the dynastic cycle. A dynasty

4

Introduction

was headed for disaster, in this exposition of the cycle, when under the necessity for supporting an ever-proliferating court and bureaucracy and as a result of tax evasion by powerful families, the tax burden of the peasants, the mainstay of public finance, reached an unbearable level so that many cultivators were forced to abandon their land and join the ranks of the dispossessed. The latter, driven to desperation by natural calamity and human oppression, finally rose in rebellion, sweeping away the decadent dynasty with their elemental fury.13 It is perhaps no coincidence that since the publication of Eisenstadt's book, scholars have been trying to present the public finances of Chinese dynasties in a different light. Both Ray Huang, working on the Ming period,' 4 and Yeh-chien Wang, working on the Ch'ing period,15 have argued that the plight of the dynasty was due not to excessively high levels of taxation but to excessively low levels of taxation. Huang in particular closely mirrors the views of Eisenstadt in describing the nature of the Ming system of government. The Anomaly of Sung China The basic assumptions of the Eisenstadt model, however, do not seem to square with the facts of a notable period of Chinese history, namely that of the Sung dynasty (a.d. 960-1279). A case can be made that instead of being expected to maintain the status quo, Sung emperors were under considerable pressure to extend the frontiers of the empire. Unlike the governments of other dynasties which learned to make do with low levels of taxation, the Sung government could not get by without a relatively high level of taxation in order to support a large army and pay for expensive public works projects. Whereas the bureaucracies of other dynasties were immobilized by tradition, the Sung bureaucracy was always looking for new ways and improvising new institutions to improve its performance. Not satisfied with merely regulating or prescribing the economic life of the people, the Sung dynasty actively participated in and promoted the economy of the empire. Undoubtedly a crucial period in Chinese history, China under the Sung reached new heights of excellence in many aspects of human endeavor. Sung literati set their sights high. Thus they were all the more aware of the one regard in which their dynasty fell short of the standard set by the Han and the T'ang, generally reputed to be the greatest of Chinese dynasties—namely, the modest size of their empire. Unlike the Han and the T'ang, which were truly universal empires encompassing the entire t'ien-hsia (literally all under heaven, that is, the area inhabited by people of Chinese language and culture), as well as vast areas of the Inner Asian Frontier (Mongolia, Sinkiang, Manchuria, and other lands),16 the Sung empire fell short of the t'ien-hsia. A considerable tract of land in the

Introduction

5

northeast, known as the Sixteen Prefectures of Yen-Yiin, lay outside its borders. The territory in question was not significant in itself: The Sung dynasty probably did not miss the revenue and other resources it could be made to yield. Failure to incorporate the territory in the Sung empire, however, was indicative of a serious weakness. For the Sung empire in its heyday, unlike the Han and the T'ang in their prime, was not a colossus bestriding its world; it was part of the Far Eastern state system in which there was a rough balance of power between two major states, the Sung and the Liao." These two states dealt with one another on an equal footing. This equality was underlined in diplomatic usage. Both the Sung and the Liao referred to the ruler of one another as huang-ti (emperor), a title no rulers of other states were permitted to sport. Recognition of the Liao empire as equals, however, did not mean that the Sung literati had abandoned the traditional model of international relations in favor of one more in tune with the objective requirement of the times. In China, as in other parts of the world, developments in political theory generally lagged behind development in political realities. The traditional model of international relations could not be abandoned because it was part and parcel of the Mandate of Heaven theory that legitimated the dynasty in power. According to the traditional interpretation of the mandate theory, at any time only one man could hold the mandate. This man was the legitimate emperor—the son of heaven with dominion over the entire civilized world. This emphasis on the universality of imperial rule was a strong unifying force in Chinese history. It means that at times of political disunity when regional dynasties ruled in different parts of the Chinese world, they could not simply decide to coexist but had to contend until one of them vanquished the others and reunified the Chinese world. If the conditions of disunity persisted for a substantial length of time, as for instance during the so-called North and South dynasties (Nan-pei chao, fourth through sixth centuries a.d.), it was the function of the historian to decide which among the coexisting dynasties was the legitimate one by tracing the line of legitimate succession (cheng-t 'ung).18 The Sung literati had no doubt that their dynasty would be considered legitimate by future historians. Their empire encompassed more than nine-tenths of the Chinese world including the Wei River valley and the North China Plain, the cradles of Chinese civilization. In contrast, the competing Liao empire was primarily made up of the Khitan people with their barbarian values and nomadic lifestyle. 19 Nevertheless, Sung emperors probably felt that their title as the son of heaven was less than perfect as long as there were Chinese territories and people not subject to their rule. This uneasiness was undoubtedly the source of an irredentism that was always in the background of the Sung-Liao relationship. The second emperor of the Sung dynasty, T'ai-tsung, made an abortive

6

Introduction

attempt to wrest control of the Yen-Yun prefectures from Khitan hands and sustained a crushing defeat. After much desultory fighting, a peace treaty was concluded in 1006.20 This peace treaty confirmed the existing border between the two powers and regulated diplomatic and trade relations. The peace treaty nevertheless did not remove the real bone of contention between the two powers, namely Sung irredentism with respect to the Yen-Yun prefectures. Tension between the two neighbors therefore remained high, although full-scale fighting did not break out again until more than a hundred years later. By the early twelfth century, the Khitan-Liao empire was in danger of being overthrown by the revolt of a hitherto subject people, the Jurchen. Seizing the opportunity, the Sung made contact with the rebels and formulated plans for a coordinated attack on the tottering Liao empire. 21 The Liao empire eventually collapsed and the Sung accomplished what it had not been able to accomplish for the preceding one hundred and fifty years, namely reuniting the Yen-Yiin prefectures with the rest of China. In light of the subsequent turn of events, the wisdom of entering into an anti-Liao alliance with the Jurchen people was debatable. For in so doing, the Sung exchanged an old neighbor which it had learned to live with for a new one whose power to inflict harm was as yet unknown. Taking advantage of temporary disarray in the Sung defense system, the Jurchen launched a surprise attack and quickly overran the Sung northern provinces. They invested the Sung capital of K'ai-feng and, after a siege, made off with the Sung emperor Chin-tsung, the abdicated emperor Hui-tsung, and a large part of the imperial clan and numerous booty. Sung authority over much of North China collapsed. The dynasty, however, survived this crisis. A younger brother of the captured emperor set himself up as the next emperor, rallied loyalist forces, and managed to reestablish a much shrunken version of the Sung empire. 22 This was the Southern Sung (1127-1279), so called because its capital was located in the south (Hangchow); in retrospect, the preceding period when the capital was located in the north (K'ai-feng) was called the Northern Sung (960-1126). The irredentist ideology was stronger during the Southern Sung period. 23 China Irredenta, the lost territory, was the land in which the founding fathers of the dynasty came to power, the land where the capital, the ancestral temples and tombs, were located. The imperial family therefore could never be reconciled to the loss of this territory. The emotional ties to this land explained why the city of Hangchow was called Hsing-tsai (Marco Polo's Qinsai), the temporary capital, even though the Southern Sung court stayed more than a hundred years in it. The strength of the irredentist ideology also explained why a permanent state of war existed between the Sung and the Chin, the empire the Jurchen established in China, punctuated by periodic truces. The Sung forces took to the offensive in the 1130s, 1163, and in 1208.24 These

Introduction

7

offensives accomplished nothing because the military strength of the Jurchen enemy was still in the ascendant. History then repeated itself. By the second decade of the thirteenth century, the Jurchen-Chin empire, under the frontal assault of a yet more virile people, the Mongols, was crumbling. As they had more than a hundred years previously, the Sung authorities entered into a pact with the enemy of their enemy. The once mighty Jurchen-Chin empire came to an end in 1233.25 Once again, the Sung exchanged one set of adversaries for another even more formidable. The all-conquering Mongols put an end to the Sung dynasty in 1279 and ruled all China. 26 This irredentist ideology must be taken into consideration in appraising the military posture of the Sung dynasty and its governmental expenditure. In both regards the Sung dynasty was unique in Chinese history. Over most of the imperial era China relied to a great extent on citizen soldiers for national defense, recruited on the basis of conscription. Army pay was low because military service, like paying taxes, was considered a duty for the people. During certain periods, for instance seventh-century T'ang and the first hundred years of the Ming period, the army partook of the character of a militia with land assigned to troops who were expected to support themselves via farming. 27 An army of this type was cheap to maintain. The Sung dynasty, on the other hand, depended primarily on mercenary troops. To induce men of the right caliber to enter into military service, financial incentives had to be employed such as attractive pay, lavish gifts on festive occasions, and liberal bonuses for performance in battle.28 Mercenary armies were therefore expensive. Nevertheless, despite the high unit cost of the Sung army, the dynasty maintained a large military establishment. Available statistics indicate that during most of the Northern Sung period, the army generally exceeded one million men of which two-thirds were troops of the line (chin-chün). Statistics for the Southern Sung are less complete, but despite the loss of the best recruiting grounds to the enemy there are indications that the overall numerical strength of the army also reached the one million mark, counting all the different categories of troops. 29 A standing army of one million men was not only unprecedented in Chinese history but also rare among the great militaristic empires notable for their expansionist goals. The Roman empire at the time of Hadrian with a population comparable to that of Northern Sung China consisted of sixty-nine legions, or 350,000 men, assuming that all the legions maintained their stipulated numerical strength.30 The Mughal army at the time of Shah Jahan is estimated at 440,000 men of which the bulk was supplied by commanders supported by land grants (mansabdars). 31 The standing army of the Ottoman empire, the janissaries, reached its greatest strength during the reign of Selim III when it comprised 110,000 men.32 To support a standing army of this size together with the ancillary cost

8

Introduction

of military installation and armament manufacture consumed a large part of the Sung government revenue. Well-informed sources quoted a figure of 70 percent. 33 It is remarkable that despite this high level of revenue regularly committed to the maintenance of the military establishment, the Sung emperors and the bureaucracy still had access to ample funds for discretionary spending on military or civilian projects. Such financial leeway was made possible by the existence of a sizable reserve fund which was not counted as part of the normal budget. Following tradition, a distinction was maintained in Sung times between the public finances of the empire and the private finances of the imperial family. The traditional sources of revenue pertaining to the imperial family were gathered into a separate treasury, the Inner Treasury (nei-tsang ku). By the time of Emperor Shen-tsung this Inner Treasury was estimated to hold the equivalent of what the imperial government regularly received and spent in one year (public finance). As this treasury was considered the private purse of the emperor, he could make disbursements without consulting the finance officials. The latter were not even supposed to know the amount of money it contained, although they were permitted to borrow from it to cover the current deficit in public finance. The substantial resources in the Inner Treasury thus provided the emperor considerable leverage vis-à-vis the bureaucracy, enabling him to pursue policies which did not have the full support of officialdom. At the same time it provided the state with a useful reserve fund which could be drawn upon to meet financial needs of a one-time, emergency nature. For instance, the enormous increase in military outlays during the campaigns against the Tangghuts in the 1040s was met without raising taxes primarily by drawing from the Inner Treasury. Similarly the Green Sprout measures of Wang An-shih were financed from the same source.34 The ability to sustain the military establishment and finance other public projects supposed the following conditions: a bureaucracy with a high degree of proficiency in mobilizing resources from the private sector through taxation, state monopolies, or other measures; a vibrant economy capable of generating a substantial surplus, after meeting the basic needs of the people, which could be appropriated by the state; and, as the bureaucracy exercised total control in Chinese society, a modus operandi for the bureaucracy compatible with, or at least not unduly restrictive of, economic growth. The veracity of the first statement may be substantiated by devising a simple empirical test: a comparison of the Sung dynasty's government revenue with that of the Ming. To simplify matters, instead of comparing average annual incomes, we can use figures pertaining to two single years. Income for these two years are nevertheless fairly representative of the overall trend of the two dynasties. The Sung figures pertain to the year 1064. This year is indicative of the normal level of public revenue

Introduction

9

before the reform measures of Wang An-shih and before serious inflation distorted the picture. The year 1578 is chosen for the Ming as it represents close to a best case—the Ming dynasty then was at peace with its neighbors and was near the height of material prosperity. The total revenue in both cases has been divided into two categories, agricultural and nonagricultural. The former comprises a direct levy on land, payable in kind which could be converted into a cash payment for the convenience of the government. The latter comprises all other sources of revenue. The results of this inquiry are presented in Table 1. Note that in aggregate terms the agricultural revenue of the Ming is almost exactly the same as that of the Sung. As the Ming empire covered a considerably larger area and its population was also correspondingly larger, however, Ming China was in fact deriving a considerably smaller revenue from the agricultural sector than the Sung. The real discrepancy, though, is to be found in nonagricultural revenue. Lumping together receipts in cash and silk (as the Sung finance officials were wont to do) and assuming that the Sung unit (strings of cash and bolts of silk which exchange with one another at par) represents the same purchasing power as the Ming unit (taels of silver), 35 we note that the aggregate nonagricultural revenue of the Sung government was nine times larger than that of the Ming and the per capita revenue still larger. The second assumption is less susceptible of quantitative proof. A convincing case nevertheless can be made that overall the Sung period was a time of sustained growth and expansion for the Chinese economy. In China as in other countries with self-sufficient economies, growth presumes a flourishing agriculture. The phenomenal increase in agricultural productivity in Sung times can be attributed, among other things, to what may be called the new country effect.' 6 The Yangtze valley with its Table 1. Comparative Data on Sung and Ming Government Revenue Sung Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

Agricultural Sector (Piculs)

Nonagricultural Sector in Units of Strings (for Cash) and Bolts (for Silk)

Agricultural Sector (Piculs)

Nonagricultural Sector (Taels of Silver)

26,943,573

36,822,541 (cash)

26,638,642

1,292,224 (salt monopoly) 3,780,000 (misc. income) 5,072,224 (total)

8,745,535 (silk) 45,568,076 (total)

Sources: For Sung, Hon-chiu Wong, "Government Expenditures in Northern Sung China,"

p. 60; for Ming, Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth

Ming China, p. 164.

Century

10

Introduction

rich soil and subtropical climate, long a frontier land, was finally integrated into the Chinese economy. The exploitation of this land permitted the utilization of advanced technology in hydraulic engineering and agronomy. Swampy lands on river banks and lake bottoms were drained and polders constructed as a means of flood prevention and irrigation. Early-ripening and drought-resistant strains of rice were introduced to permit double-cropping as well as the extension of rice cultivation into hitherto unsuitable terrain. The result was a vastly increased food output beyond the needs of the producers. This development led to a higher standard of living for the peasants; trade articles which were formerly considered luxury goods (such as tea) now became the staples of mass consumption. The marketing of rice and other products of cottage industry such as silk was expedited by excellent water transport facilities which obtained naturally in many parts of the south. The commercialization of agriculture and improved transport facilities imparted a powerful impetus to the development of trade and industries. A whole hierarchy of central places came into existence to link the isolated hamlet to yet wider markets. 3 7 Cities and towns grew tremendously and changed their character. They were no longer exclusively administrative centers or military strongholds but had taken on other functions; they became manufacturing centers as well as trade emporia. This phenomenon is best exemplified by the Northern Sung capital of K'ai-feng. According to the noted economic historian Robert Hartwell, "During the Northern Sung K'ai-feng became a multi-functional urban center quite possibly unsurpassed by any metropolis anywhere in the world before the 19th century." 38 The status of the city as the most important administrative, military, manufacturing, and commercial city in China is attested by the enormous volume of trade goods and commodities annually brought into and shipped out of the city. T h e total volume of trade for eleventh-century K'ai-feng is estimated to have been worth the equivalent of £12,400,000 as compared to the less than £8,450,000 for the trade of the city of London for the year 1711.39 Rising prosperity, emergence of extensive markets, and political stability over long periods of time led to dynamic growth in selected industries, such as iron mining and manufacturing. During the Northern Sung period, enormous quantities of iron were required not only to satisfy the demand for consumer goods (agricultural implements, cookware and needles, and the like) but also for use in construction (for bridges), for armament manufacturing, for fashioning into iron coins, and for industrial use. Iron was used, for instance, in extracting copper from copper ores. The increasing demands for iron sparked technological and structural changes in the industry. The substitution of coke (from coal) for charcoal (from timber) in the smelting process was accomplished. The advantage of scale was realized through the elimination of small, ineffi-

Introduction

11

cient operations and through the vast expansion of large, productive works. The ironworks of Ch'i-ts'un chen (township), according to the estimates of Hartwell, consisted of 35 to 112 furnaces producing over 14,000 tons of pig iron a year. Counting all the laborers required for mining the coal as well as the iron ores and for tending the furnaces, this single establishment was responsible for the employment of close to three thousand laborers. As a result of such technological and structural changes, iron production during the Northern Sung period increased several fold and reached the level of 125,000 tons annually. For comparison it may be observed that pig iron production in mid-seventeenth-century England ranged between 20,000 and 43,000 tons annually. In seeking to tap the wealth of this affluent society, the dynasty was fortunate to have the service of an efficient bureaucracy. The Sung bureaucracy, unlike the bureaucracies of other dynasties, was not handicapped by an institutional straitjacket imposed by the dynasty's founder. Although the founder, Emperor T'ai-tsu, was not entirely free of what might be called the First Emperor Syndrome, namely an obsession to lay down the law in every aspect of life to be binding eternally on his descendants, he chose to emphasize the institutional continuity of his dynasty with the preceding regimes. Thus the political and economic systems of the past continued to operate and when the inherited institutions proved inadequate for the changing times, new institutions were improvised to take their place. Sung institutions thus grew in a haphazard pattern and as these institutions did not bear the imprimatur of the founder, critics did not have to contend with the authority of the founding father in finding fault with them. The reforming minister Wang An-shih may not have made the statement, "The founding fathers [tsu-tsung, literally ancestors] are not worth imitating," as his critics charged. 4 0 Nevertheless he saw no need to apologize for departing f r o m the established practice of the dynasty. This is because, apart from a few personnel policies of general application, most institutions of the dynasty were not personally linked to the founding fathers. Wang's reforms have often been presented as a radical break with the status quo. 4 1 When viewed from the proper perspective, however, they can be interpreted as the enhancement of tendencies already operative within the Sung bureaucracy which continued to operate long after he left the scene. Among these tendencies, the most notable were a pragmatic approach to institutional reform and a marked bureaucratic activism in the social and economic life of the empire. A pragmatic approach to institutional reform implies an independent stance on reform not overawed by authority—whether that authority be in the form of dynastic tradition, holy writ (Confucian canon), or abstract reason. Reform is to be piecemeal, limited in scope, and justified on only one ground: the practical requirement of the state to

12

Introduction

produce additional revenue or to improve the performance of the bureaucracy. The reforms of Wang An-shih were basically in conformity to this tendency, although to his detractors they seemed perverse, unwarranted, or farfetched. Bureaucratic activism means that the state did not restrict itself to regulating or prescribing the economic life of the people but played an active role participating in the economy and promoting economic development. This activism was most apparent in the agricultural sector. The state was instrumental in the construction of most of the large hydraulic works for flood control and irrigation and also played an important part in the dissemination of improved seeds and agricultural technology (such as the plough which could be operated by foot to offset the shortage of plough oxen). 42 One of the most controversial of Wang's reforms, the Green Sprout measure, was inspired by the same desire to promote agriculture by strengthening the backbone of the producers, the peasant cultivators. By making credit available to them at reasonable cost, the reform was intended to save them from being victimized by loan sharks. Beyond the agricultural sector, bureaucratic activism was expressed in the state monopolies of salt, tea, wine, alum, and aromatics as well as indirect participation in long-distance trade. 43 In the management of these monopolies, the bureaucracy showed considerable ingenuity. To maximize revenue from the wine monopoly, for instance, the state actually operated taverns featuring singing girls (who were registered as official courtesans). Whether or not bureaucratic activism, on balance, was conducive to long-term economic development, the performance of the Sung state in one regard should have won the approval of modern economists. This was in the area of maintaining an adequate currency system. The standard medium of exchange in Sung China was the copper coin (cash) although gold, silver, and silk were important means of payment, especially during the earlier period. Due to the standardized weight and excellent workmanship, the Sung copper coin circulated not only inside China but also in neighboring countries, gaining acceptance as an international currency. Due to the high value of the copper in the coin, which was often worth more than the coin's face value, a lot of coins were smelted down illegally and refashioned into copper utensils. To make up for the losses to foreign trade and illegal smelting, Sung government mints worked overtime to turn out enormous quantities of coins every year. According to Ray Huang, during the eleventh century the Sung mints produced more copper coins in two years than the Ming government produced during its entire 276 years. 44 Even so, there was a money shortage in Sung China. To address this problem, remedial steps were taken. First, the prohibition against the export or illegal smelting of coins was backed up with stronger sanctions.

Introduction

13

Second, to minimize the illegal export of coins through trade to the northern and northwestern neighbors (Liao and Hsi-hsia), Sung provinces in the north and northwest were made a special currency zone f r o m which copper coins were excluded and in which iron coins circulated instead. 45 Third, to offset some of the disadvantages of iron coins, which weighed twice as much as copper coins of equivalent value, the people in the special currency zone were permitted to make limited use of paper currency. By Southern Sung times, as the most productive copper mines were in enemy hands, the output of copper coins diminished. To make up the slack, greater reliance was placed on paper currency. The use of paper currency made it possible to finance government operations by monetizing the deficit. The management of deficit financing, however, requires a high measure of fiscal sophistication and discipline; otherwise rampant inflation would destroy the value of the currency in no time. It is remarkable that although there was considerable inflation, credibility in the paper currency was not seriously impaired. The profile of Sung China outlined in the preceding pages—with the importance it attached to military-collective goals, its expensive military establishment, the high level of taxation, its bureaucratic activism, and the dynamic economy—does not seem to fit the picture of China that Eisenstadt uses as a prime example of polities oriented toward the maintenance of cultural patterns. Instead it seems to have considerable affinity with polities oriented toward political-collective goals. There are, for example, close parallels between Sung China and the Byzantine empire. As in the case of Sung China, the Byzantine emperor, who considered himself the successor to the Roman caesars, was by definition a universal monarch with dominion over the entire known world. The sober reality, however, was that the Byzantine empire was only a regional power limited to the Eastern Mediterranean basin and, after the Arab conquests of the seventh century, to Anatolia and the Balkans. The discrepancy between theory and reality produced a tension which could only be relieved through successful military action. The great Byzantine emperors were therefore all conquerors such as Justinian and Basil II. Like Sung China, the Byzantine empire labored under the burden of a large military establishment which for centuries it bore without much difficulty because it had a strong economy. Until the eleventh century, it was economically more developed than its neighbors. Its capital, Constantinople, like K'ai-feng under the Northern Sung, was a bustling industrial center and the greatest commercial city of the Mediterranean world. The Byzantine gold piece, like the Sung copper coin, was an international currency. 46 Also like Sung China, Byzantium was a despotism with the emperor as the fountainhead of all powers, prestige, and honor who ruled by means of an elaborate bureaucracy. And just as the emergence of the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol powers progressively spelled doom

14

Introduction

for the Sung empire, so Byzantium was victimized by successive waves of barbarian invasion. The Arabs deprived it of its Egyptian and Syrian provinces; the Seljuk Turks snatched away most of Anatolia in the twelfth century; and the Ottoman Turks dealt it the coup de grace in the mid-fifteenth century. The downfall of the Byzantine empire has often been attributed to the proliferation of latifundia (large landed estates) which evaded taxation and thus depleted the resource base of the state. A similar phenomenon transpired in Sung China as civil and military officials vied with one another in building up their own landed estates. 47 The parallels, however, break down in the aftermath of foreign conquests. For whereas the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud the Conqueror, wrote the final chapter in the agonizingly slow death of the Byzantine empire, the fall of Sung China to the Mongols constituted but a brief episode in the unfolding of the Chinese empire which was to persist for another six or seven hundred years until finally overwhelmed by the onslaught of the modern West in the nineteenth century. This different outcome of foreign domination can be attributed, in the first instance, to the different character of the conquerors. The Ottomans who conquered Byzantium had earlier embraced Islam; they were therefore carriers of a cultural tradition almost as ancient and certainly more dynamic than that Byzantium was heir to. On the other hand, the Mongol conquerors of China had not previously come under the sway of another competing civilization. Their barbarism was thus vulnerable to the seduction of Chinese civilization. In fact, in order to win over Chinese collaborators to facilitate the process of conquest, the Mongols had to make m a j o r concessions to Chinese cultural norms. The regime they set up in China, the Yuan dynasty, appropriated traditional Chinese sources of legitimacy, differing not much from a Chinese dynasty in outward respects. 48 As such it was not immune to the process of decline implicit in the concept of dynastic cycle. Less than a hundred years after the Mongols came to power in China, the Mandate of Heaven changed hands; the Mongol Yuan was replaced by the native Ming dynasty. Nevertheless, China did not emerge unscathed f r o m the episode of foreign domination. Ming China was a far cry from Sung China. Gone was the creativity and the dynamism that found expression in technological innovation, in the upsurge of entrepreneurialism behind a flourishing agriculture, trade, and industry, in bureaucratic activism, and in intellectual inquiry that broke new ground in many directions. Ming China settled down to the rut of tradition and lent substance to Eisenstadt's model. There is no question that the intervening Mongol interlude played a crucial role in the transition f r o m the Sung posture to the Ming. Nevertheless, a case can be made that the transition took place earlier, perhaps right during the Sung period. Modern scholars, for instance, have already noticed a marked difference in the ethos of the Southern Sung as

15

Introduction

compared to that of the Northern Sung period.49 It is thus possible that the tendencies that emerged triumphant during the Ming period were already in existence, albeit in incipient form, during the Sung, and that it was the policies and institutions of the Sung dynasty that generated these tendencies. The key to understanding the Sung period in its totality is undoubtedly its bureaucracy. Due to the entrenched bureaucratic tradition inherited by Sung China, it is not possible to pursue any line of investigation pertaining to Sung society without sooner or later running into the powerful and ubiquitous presence of the bureaucracy. To ascertain the bearing of the bureaucracy on every facet of Sung society, as on Sung society in general, a good grasp of the structure and modus operandi of the bureaucracy is essential. Yet despite the pivotal importance of the subject and despite an upsurge of modern scholarship on Sung China in recent years, our knowledge of the Sung bureaucracy is still woefully inadequate.50 It is not for lack of primary source materials that the Sung bureaucracy has not been an object of more scholarly investigation. Due to the popularization of woodblock and movable type printing, more relevant material as well as general literature survives from the Sung period than from all the preceding periods of Chinese history combined." The reason why the modern study of the Sung bureaucracy has lagged behind the study of other aspects of Sung China is probably the scarcity of traditional scholarship on the subject. Just as the character of the Sung age differs from that of the Ming and the Ch'ing dynasties, so in structure and operational norms the Sung bureaucracy differs from that of later times. The Mongol conquest constitutes not only a political-military divide but a linguistic one as well. These alien conquerors of China brought in their allies from Central Asia to help staff the top echelons of their government. Within China itself, they tended to be suspicious of the traditional elite and placed their trust in the nonliterati clerical staff. The vastly altered political realities ushered in a new set of administrative terminology. When the Mongol Yuan dynasty was overthrown, the succeeding Ming dynasty eventually revived much of the Sung legacy. Nevertheless, the effect of the Mongol conquest could not be undone and a great many administrative terms in use in later times were of Yuan origin. The consequence was that later scholars who were familiar with the Ming-Ch'ing usages were often baffled by Sung administrative terminology and therefore deterred from systematic study of the Sung bureaucracy.52 The present book is written to fill this specific need. Toward a Functional Definition

of the Sung Civil Service

The Sung bureaucracy was not a monolithic structure; it was made up of an aggregate of personnel systems and a bewildering cluster of bureaus,

16

Introduction

departments, and agencies whose purpose, scope, and relationship to one another often remain obscure. As such it cannot be regarded as a given historical datum ready to be analyzed by the historian. Instead, the first step in our study of the Sung bureaucracy must be a more precise identification of the problem. We need to define the bureaucracy by deciding which groupings of functionaries belonged to it and which did not. In so doing, we will be drawing the outer boundaries of the bureaucracy. In general, which groups of functionaries are to be recognized as part of the bureaucracy depends on our concept of the proper role and function of the bureaucracy. 53 Again I take the observations of Eisenstadt as the starting point of my analysis. Eisenstadt views the bureaucracy, by which he means the personnel of the civil administration, primarily as an instrument created and used by the ruler for achieving his goals, which include, but are not limited to, the maintenance of the basic framework of the historical bureaucratic empire. For this purpose, the bureaucracy must be made to provide services to the various strata of the population. Eisenstadt contends that for the bureaucracy to perform its appointed task, it must also be accorded a certain measure of autonomy and be allowed to develop a professional self-image. Crucial to such a self-image is a commitment to service—not merely to the man currently on the throne but more especially to the wider interests of the dynasty and the state. Eisenstadt's concept of bureaucracy therefore excludes functionaries serving only the personal, private interests of the ruler such as palace women, eunuchs, and other confidants, constituting what is often referred to as the "inner court." I follow his definition of the bureaucracy in this book. To develop Eisenstadt's ideas further, autonomy for the bureaucracy means that matters of vital concern to members of the bureaucracy such as recruitment, job assignment, promotion, and remuneration should not be subject to the capricious will of the ruler but be governed by clearly established norms and that the bureaucrats should be given a voice in deciding upon these norms. Obviously such bureaucratic autonomy reduces the leverage of the ruler and militates against his general effectiveness. For this reason a strong-willed ruler always tries to reduce the scope of this autonomy. The real founder of the Mughal empire, Akbar, for instance, was known to have followed no established rules in recruiting his army commanders (and civil administrators) or in promoting and reassigning them. 5 4 Similarly, Sir Robert Hart, the long-time late Ch'ing inspector general of the Imperial Maritime Customs, followed no apparent system in shuffling his staff from posting to posting. 55 Despite this reluctance to concede autonomy to the bureaucrats, the organizations presided over by these men were shining examples of success and efficiency. Akbar and Hart, however, were favored by special circumstances. Akbar was a rare genius, one of those world historical per-

Introduction

17

sonages such as Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte who ushered in a new age with new dreams and new possibilities. A superb judge of human character, he unerringly found the right man for the right job, unencumbered by tradition or popular expectation. Morale was high because at a time when the foundation of the vast Mughal empire was yet to be laid, there were plenty of challenges and hence selffulfillment and reward for everybody whether on the battlefield or in the administrative field. Although Hart does not belong in the same league as Akbar, his talents were similar and he faced a situation within his area of competence essentially comparable to that confronting Akbar. The examples of Akbar and Hart may therefore be regarded as exceptions that prove the rule. Ordinarily the ruler of a historical bureaucratic empire lacked the talent of Akbar or Hart and, unlike the latter, who could offer limitless opportunities to their followers, often faced a situation with shrinking opportunities. There were usually more candidates for office than there were jobs to accommodate them. If there were no clearly established rules governing recruitment and promotion, those who were bypassed for appointment or promotion would inevitably become aggrieved. Morale would sag and the efficiency of the bureaucracy deteriorate. In fact, the very concept of bureaucracy as a body of professionals committed to public service presumes the operation of fixed personnel rules as the bulwark of their autonomy, the hallmark of all self-respecting professional groups such as doctors and lawyers. Since personnel rules are designed to minimize disputes in personnel actions as well as to safeguard the autonomy of the bureaucrats, they are generally weighted heavily in favor of the seniority principle at the expense of the performance principle. This is because seniority is something over which the bureaucrats can exercise full control and therefore contributes to their sense of autonomy. Moreover, as a factor in personnel action, seniority lends itself to precise measurement unlike the factor of performance, which is difficult to evaluate with complete objectivity. There is thus a natural affinity between bureaucracies and the rule of seniority. The services which bureaucracies are called upon to provide include the following: collection of taxes, maintenance of law and order, operation of a judicial system, and provisioning the cities and towns with food and other necessities. The range and magnitude of these services determine the size and composition of the bureaucracy. For instance, in the Ottoman empire where a great deal of the power of self-government devolved upon the religious confessional groups (the millet), the bureaucracy was quite small. In China, on the other hand, which did not recognize an intermediary authority between the state and the people, the bureaucracy was much larger. Nevertheless, the personnel of all bureaucracies, large or small, simple or complex, can be visualized in terms of

18

Introduction

three hierarchically structured groups of functionaries. Firstly, to purvey services directly to the people a clerical-scribal staff is required. These functionaries constitute the first line of contact between the bureaucracy and the people. They gather the vital statistics and compile written records that are crucial to the operation of all bureaucracies. They process the request of service f r o m groups and individuals, as for instance in the initiation of a lawsuit, and handle all phases of paperwork. Above these functionaries, an executive staff is necessary to supervise the clerical-scribal staff, to prevent deviation f r o m administrative procedure, and to ensure that each unit of the bureaucracy indeed performs the task it is supposed to. Above this level is a staff of top administrators who monitor the performance of the entire bureaucracy and formulate new policies and administrative procedure. Often the personnel of each segment of the bureaucracy are drawn from a distinct social stratum via specific recruitment channels. 56 This threefold classification of bureaucratic personnel is conceptually sound, although some of the distinctions might be blurred in the real world. For instance, the supervisory-executive segment might be grafted directly on top of the clerical-scribal segment so that the two become fused into a single personnel system. Such a fusion was effectuated in the Byzantine bureaucracy. According to the analysis of T. F. Carney, the personnel of the Byzantine bureaucracy can be divided into three categories (a threefold classification different f r o m mine). 57 At the bottom were the illiterates comprising the criers, messengers, lictors, and others who ran errands for the officials. Next were the literates made up primarily of clerks, secretaries, lawyers, and accountants. At the apex were the dignitates who constituted the top administrators. The category of literates undoubtedly encompasses both our clerical-scribal staff and our executive-supervisory staff. As the Byzantine bureaucracy was the prototype of the traditional bureaucracy in the Western world out of which the modern bureaucracy emerged and as it may be used to pinpoint some of the problems in our study of the Sung bureaucracy, a more detailed account of Carney's analysis is warranted. Dismissing the illiterates who obviously played a minor role in the bureaucracy, Carney points out the difference in social background, career patterns, and aspirations between the literates and the dignitates. The dignitates obviously came from a top social stratum with hereditary ties to court and bureaucracy. More courtiers than bureaucrats, they depended on their political skills to win and retain the emperor's favor and to survive the factional struggles. They entered the bureaucracy near the top, rotating from ministry to ministry in the course of their career, and could look forward to a comfortable retirement on a tax-free estate. The literates were recruited from less distinguished though still respectable families. They started at the bottom of

Introduction

19

the hierarchy by purchasing the right to hold an entry-level position. Then they gradually rose through the ranks, staying within the same ministry and also departments within the ministry. As promotion followed a prescribed pattern and depended more on the workings of seniority than on anything else, there was really not much room for maneuver for the ambitious. In the best-case scenario, a man who entered into the literati corps in his late teens might expect to finish his career after thirty or forty years in grand style by holding a succession of positions near the top of the ministry and retire with a senatorial rank which conferred tax-exempt status. This dichotomy between the dignitates and the literates is strangely reminiscent of the cleavage in modern civil services between the career civil servants who begin their career at the bottom and the political appointees who always enter the civil service near the top. Viewed as a service organization, the design of the Byzantine bureaucracy was such that it was likely to give a good account of itself. The performance of a bureaucracy depends to a great extent on the morale of the personnel. The greatest enemy to morale is the belief of being stuck in a dead-end job with few prospects of advancement. It is unlikely that any member of the Byzantine literati corps would succumb to the dead-end j o b syndrome. In the course of time everybody would be moving up the hierarchy on the basis of seniority alone and the fortunate few favored by luck, personal ability, and connections could aspire to the lucrative positions at the top of the ministries as the crowning achievement of their career. The rule of seniority, insofar as it shields one vital area of professional advancement from the capricious meddling of the ruler, may be considered a strong bulwark of bureaucratic autonomy. This autonomy was further buttressed in the Byzantine bureaucracy by the practice of praescriptio fori, which meant that if a bureaucrat was charged with wrongdoing he had the privilege to be tried by a tribunal composed of his ministerial peers who knew him well and were therefore likely to be sympathetic to his plight. 58 Bureaucratic autonomy is conducive to the growth of esprit de corps, a mutual commitment between men who share a common code of honor and who can count on one another when the chips are down. Next to high morale, another requirement for efficiency is the professional competence which comes with long practice of a craft or long immersion in a subject. John the Lydian (born a.d. 490) and his colleagues in the judicial branch of the Praetorian Prefecture (one of the most important divisions or ministries of the Byzantine bureaucracy), for instance, were inducted into that branch of the ministry after spending nine years as clerks in the prefecture. Subsequently, for the remainder of their careers, although they were rotated from post to post in climbing the bureaucratic ladder, they nevertheless stayed within that branch and

20

Introduction

became thoroughly familiar with every aspect of its workings. 5 9 The same arrangement obtained for men in the finance branch or general administration. Such long immersion in a subject made the literati officials true professionals. Critics of the Byzantine bureaucracy might raise the point that rigid adherence to the rule of seniority is detrimental to efficiency as potential high achievers, unable to overcome the disadvantage due to their lack of seniority, simply bide their time and have no incentive to put out their best effort. The plausibility of this argument, however, is based on the premises of the highly individualistic and competitive modern society. In societies with a slightly different approach to interpersonal relationships, the assumed deleterious effect of seniority may not be manifest. There is no question, for instance, that the bureaucracy of contemporary Japan and those of many giant Japanese corporations are among the most efficient organizations in the world. In all of them the rule of seniority is the cornerstone of their personnel systems. As nobody is required to step aside in favor of pushy upstarts, this emphasis on the rule of seniority reinforces the esprit de corps, increases the sense of security, and in no way discourages people f r o m performing at the peak of their capability as the researches of Ezra Vogel clearly demonstrate. 6 0 The Byzantine bureaucracy, however, was not designed to provide one service which in the long run was more important in guaranteeing the survival of the historical bureaucratic state than the specific services the bureaucracy performed so well—namely, in building up the political cohesion of the empire. In this regard a historical bureaucratic empire has the same requirement as that of a modern democratic state. Cohesion for a modern democratic state, especially a large one with a heterogeneous population, comes primarily from a system of representative government. In a historical bureaucratic empire without elected legislatures, cohesion derives f r o m opportunities for people in all localities and f r o m different walks of life to be elevated into the ruling elite and participate in the governing process. The injection of new blood is essential to the health of any elite, whether cultural, commercial, or ruling. If recruitment is based on universalistic criteria so that the elite approaches the character of a true meritocracy, it is likely to be strong and vigorous. On the other hand, if the flow of new blood is stopped and the elite becomes a self-perpetuating oligarchy, it is likely to become decadent. Due to its centrality in a historical bureaucratic empire, the bureaucracy is in a good position to ensure good circulation for the ruling elite. If recruitment is not restricted to a narrow segment of the population but open to the middle and lower strata and if service in the bureaucracy is a passport to status, power, and wealth, more people will avail themselves of the opportunities that service in the bureaucracy provides. They will

Introduction

21

thus tend to identify with the traditions and symbols of the political order. Support for the state grows. The Byzantine bureaucracy was not designed to play this role. Its personnel were drawn from a narrow segment of the population with traditions of scholarship and government service. Thus the vast majority of the people were excluded from it for lack of social standing, connections, or the wherewithal for purchasing entry positions. The Byzantine bureaucracy was therefore essentially a self-perpetuating closed system with few organic links to society at large. As such it could do little by way of disseminating the values and symbols of the Great Tradition or promoting support for the empire. The consequence was an unbridgeable gap between the people and the state. This gap explains why, for instance, a thousand years into the Hellenistic era, the people of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt still had little regard for Byzantium or for the Greco-Roman heritage that Byzantium stood for. This apathy facilitated the Arab conquest in the seventh century and led to the permanent loss of these provinces. The Sung bureaucracy, on the other hand, performed reasonably well precisely where the Byzantine bureaucracy was deficient—namely, in promoting commitment and identification with the imperial order. This success was apparently related to the circumstances in which the dynasty came to power. For almost a hundred years prior to the accession of the Sung dynasty, the Chinese empire was in the grip of a prolonged crisis characterized by civil wars, peasant rebellions, and barbarian invasions. This period of crisis culminated in the Five Dynasties (wu-tai) period when within fifty years (907-959), the ruling dynasty in North China changed five times while several independent or semi-independent kingdoms held sway in the Yangtze valley and in the extreme south. Simultaneous with these developments, the character of China's political elite was also changing. For several hundred years prior to this time, China's social landscape was dominated by aristocratic lineages, known as men-fa, which monopolized culture, scholarship, and the opportunities for government service. Although emperors might rage against the snobbery and arrogance of these aristocrats, by and large the claims of men-fa excellence and the status hierarchy based on informal, customary rankings of prominent lineages in conformity to men-fa perception gained general acceptance. (See Chapter 5.) The personnel policy of governmental bureaucracies was therefore designed to facilitate the recruitment of high-status individuals into appropriate positions. The men-fa phenomenon, however, did not survive the Five Dynasties period. In a process as yet imperfectly studied, the turmoil due to wars and the breakdown of bureaucratic administrations dealt the death blows to this once dominant social strata which could not adapt to radically changing circumstances. The demise of the men-fa aristocratic lineages meant that a

22

Introduction

hereditary elite which generation after generation supplied high-level manpower needs of the bureaucracy was no more and the social landscape of China was fundamentally altered. The demise of the men-fa elite presented the founders of the Sung dynasty with a serious challenge which had to be met if their dynasty was to be long and stable. Not only was it necessary to find an alternative source of talent to fill the top-level manpower needs of the bureaucracy, it was also imperative to figure out a way to have someone perform the functions hitherto performed by the men-fa elite—namely, as a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the nation, bearers and transmitters of the Great Tradition whose participation in the government lent legitimacy, prestige, and stability to the dynasty in power. The Sung founders in fact had to create a new elite to take the place of the defunct men-fa elite. Given the entrenched bureaucratic tradition in China, the new elite could only be created through the instrumentality of the bureaucracy. The Sung bureaucracy thus had two long-term goals of overriding importance: efficiency in performing the services expected of it in the dynamic economy with the ever-increasing involvement of the government and, moreover, creation of a body of officials with the characteristics of the men-fa elite capable of providing the dynasty with prestige, legitimacy, and stability. In pursuit of these two goals, the Sung dynasty and those that followed it found it expedient to stick to a bureaucratic structure that was truly unique. As in the hypothetical country of Pullovia, the hierarchy of the Sung bureaucracy could be divided into two unequal segments separated by what the authors of the Peter Principle call the "class barrier." 61 In the Pullovian model, the bureaucratic positions below the class barrier are reserved for members of the subservient class; the positions above that are for the dominant class. The authors of the Peter Principle consider the existence of the class barrier as essential to the efficient operation of a hierarchic organization. This is because in the bottom segment of the hierarchy, as nobody can rise above the class barrier, however meritorious they are, many key positions are likely to be filled by competent people who cannot be promoted to their levels of incompetence. Above the class barrier, as bureaucratic positions carry high prestige with prospects of rapid advancement to the very top of the hierarchy, they are likely to attract top-quality people who otherwise would not consider going into the bureaucracy if they had to start their career at the bottom. The application of this Pullovian model to the study of the Chinese bureaucracy sheds light on a salient fact in the structuring of the Chinese bureaucratic personnel which seems to run counter to the general trend of Chinese history. Unlike the Byzantine and many modern bureaucracies where the class barrier is drawn close to the top of the hierarchy, it was drawn closer to

Introduction

23

the bottom in the Chinese bureaucracy. Consequently there was an unbridgeable gap separating clerical and scribal staff (clerks) from the executive and administrative staff (officials). The distinction between the clerks and the officials was of long standing. Nevertheless, in preceding dynasties this distinction was not rigorously observed and men of clerical origin not infrequently rose to become top officials. Clerks and officials thus represented consecutive ranges of status on a continuum encompassing the entire bureaucratic personnel. 62 The situation changed drastically in Sung times. To start with there was a tremendous increase of personnel in the clerical ranks. Before the Sung period, much of the bureaucratic work, particularly at the county and prefectural levels, was performed by unpaid personnel, drawn from the common people on a rotational basis as part of their labor obligation to the state. For better efficiency, unpaid amateurs were phased out and replaced by full-time professionals in the early years of the dynasty. The clerical and scribal staff was vastly expanded in the course of the dynasty necessitated by the increasing volume and complexity of government business. These functionaries were truly professional bureaucrats if professionalism is defined as technical competence acquired either through formal or on-the-job training and developed through long practice of the craft. The Sung clerical staff were mostly local people recruited through family connections. Entering the profession at a tender age, they subsequently followed a career pattern similar to that of the Byzantine literates. Like the latter, they held a succession of positions, usually within the same bureaucratic unit in which they began their service, becoming in the course of time thoroughly conversant with every facet of work in that bureaucratic unit. Unlike the Byzantine literates, however, they could not look forward to high prestige and social recognition as the reward for a lifetime of devoted service. Like bureaucracies in general, the Sung bureaucracy tended toward routinization in its operation. The rules that prescribed bureaucratic action derived from a variety of sources. Some rules which were promulgated and valid for all times and places within the empire may be considered as laws or statutes. Others were exceptions or variances to the statutes specifically sanctioned by the emperor, the source of all legislative, judiciary, and executive powers. Still others were precedents long rooted in customary usage. To keep these ever-proliferating bureaucratic rules under some kind of control, the dynasty had a law revision bureau (hsiu-chih chii) which systematically went through the process of pruning and updating the laws. From time to time these updated versions of the law were published in a compendium known simply as the New Book (hsin-shu). Like the compendia of laws in modern countries, hsin-shu was a useful reference tool by virtue of the scope and definitive nature of the compilation. The size and method of presentation, however, made

24

Introduction

them difficult to use. To remedy this defect, sometime during the Southern Sung period a kind of legal digest (t'iao-fa shih-lei) was published, covering legal provisions of major import to the career and work of officials.63 By the very nature of the legal digests, however, their utility was limited. For most officials in supervisory or executive positions, there was simply no alternative to a personal knowledge of the law—the ability to apply the law to fit the circumstance and to cite chapter and verse which could come only from an attentive mind engaged over a period of time in the same subject matter. In this regard the officials operated under an immense handicap. Unlike the clerks, who were usually natives, officials were prohibited by their personnel code from serving in their native place and were also generally required to rotate from bureaucratic unit to bureaucratic unit in the course of their career. Opportunities to learn on the job were severely limited. Ignorance of the bureaucratic regulations thus reduced many officials to complete dependency on their clerical staff for getting the work of the office done. It is in light of the necessity to redress the balance in the bargaining position between the officials and the clerks and to implement the plan for creating a new political elite that we may better understand the Sung bureaucratic methods for controlling the clerks. As James T. C. Liu has aptly pointed out, crucial to the Sung method of control was the idea of maintaining an appropriate social distance between the officials and the clerks. To this end, the social status of clerks had to be downgraded and that of officials elevated. The clerks not only could not have the same privileges and immunities as the officials, they were also denied some of the basic opportunities available to commoners. Clerking became what was known as a "mean profession" on a par with prostitutes, barbers, actors, and musicians. The practitioners and the descendants of the mean professions were not permitted to participate in the civil service examination, the gateway to elite status. Defined as mean people, clerks were entitled to little respect from their superiors and could be beaten, or otherwise humiliated, upon the slightest provocation. 64 In contrast to the clerks whose importance to the polity consisted exclusively in their utilitarian value, the officials had a dual role to play —namely, to perform the supervisory, executive, and administrative functions in the bureaucracy and to constitute the political elite for the empire. In the latter role, they were not merely employees of the state; they were the state, partners with the emperor in a joint dominion of the empire. Chang Fang-p'ing, a leading scholar-official of the Northern Sung, articulated this sentiment for his fellow scholar-officials when he made the following statement to Emperor Jen-tsung: "The empire is not one that Your Majesty can govern alone; the empire is one which can only be governed by Your Majesty in collaboration with the scholar-officials."65 It is remarkable that in a system which was technically a despo-

Introduction

25

tism in which the emperor held all powers, the scholar-officials could assert such an exalted self-image and independence of spirit. That this was so was due not only to their Confucian heritage which prescribed such a self-image but also to dynastic policy which fostered their selfesteem and endowed them with social prestige. High prestige accrued to the scholar-officials primarily through their education and the method of their recruitment into the bureaucracy via the civil service examination. The written, competitive examination as a recruitment tool is one of the most original and widely acclaimed of China's contributions to the modern w o r l d . " Today, it constitutes the standard recruitment procedure in the civil service of many countries and in other public organizations such as the U.S. Postal Service. Competitive written examination commends itself in modern societies primarily on merit grounds: It ensures that those accepted into the system from among the available candidates are the most qualified as measured by objective standards. In traditional China, the identification of talent was the immediate, not the ultimate, goal of the civil service examination. Ultimately, the examination system was vital to the bureaucracy because it was the mechanism that generated the requisite prestige for the officials to perform their assigned role in the polity. Prestige is a function of exclusivity; other things being equal, the more exclusive the group, the higher the prestige of its members. By favoring examination graduates systematically in job assignment and promotions in the bureaucracy, the civil service examination was transformed into an escalator for bureaucratic success; and as there were no other careers that offered comparable opportunities for self-fulfillment, the dynasty was able to channel the talent of the entire nation into the examination process. While many were called, few were chosen. Triennially tens of thousands of candidates sat for the examination, but after successive rounds of elimination only a few hundred were allowed to savor the fruit of success. (See Chapter 3.) These successful examination graduates were awarded the degree of chin-shih (doctor of letters) and were subsequently treated with a respect and admiration comparable to the way modern societies idolize their star athletes and top entertainers. Their celebrity status was well earned. They had measured themselves against the best of the empire and come out on top in the only talent contest that mattered. It must be borne in mind that their high prestige was also due to the fact that they had the inside track to bureaucratic success, the only norm for success in traditional China. In the process of generating prestige for the officials, the civil service examination also created and mobilized political support for the regime in power. Due to the pains taken by the government to safeguard the integrity of the examination process, despite the numerical odds stacked against the individual, significant segments of the population throughout

26

Introduction

the empire were convinced of the viability of the examination system as a channel of mobility. Ambitious men were willing to commit themselves to a course of rigorous study to give themselves a realistic chance of passing the examination. For some, faith in the examination system was justified; they passed the examination and became part of the ruling elite. The ruling elite in turn were enriched by the vigor and enthusiasm they brought into it. Without the examination system to channel such talent into the bureaucracy and ruling elite, these talents would certainly have been lost and instead of furnishing support f o r the imperial order would have subverted it by abetting dissident movements. The self-esteem and social status of the officials also required that once inducted into the bureaucracy they should be provided with conditions of work consistent with their high status. They should be treated with respect especially by the emperor, the source of all power and prestige. F r o m the perspective of the emperor, respect generally meant two things: the extension of courtesy to people in accordance with their status and an element of trust expressed in a willingness to delegate responsibility and the authority that goes with it. T h e Sung emperors cannot be faulted in the way they treated their officials. They endeavored scrupulously to live u p to the tradition which went back to the feudal period of Chinese history whereby high-status individuals were exempted f r o m corporal punishment—they were expected to police themselves. During the Sung period scholar-officials were almost never executed; they were punished with forfeiture of rank, position, or salary or with monetary fines for their wrongdoing or exile and banishment for the gravest offenses. They received handsome salaries and were provided with the wherewithal to maintain a lifestyle in keeping with the highest C o n f u c i a n ideals. To the extent that the interests of the emperor diverged f r o m those of the bureaucracy, precautions had to be taken to safeguard the supremacy of the emperor against possible usurpation by individual bureaucrats. Many of these safeguards were indeed built into the structure of the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, among the power elites that traditionally competed for the attention of the emperor and shared in his power, such as the military, the imperial clansmen, imperial in-laws, and the inner court, the bureaucracy in Sung times fared exceptionally well. The bureaucracy as a whole enjoyed the confidence of the emperor to a degree rare in Chinese history. Top bureaucrats were given b r o a d powers in general administration, finance, personnel appointment, and the direction of foreign and military affairs. Not infrequently they were even given c o m m a n d of the army. The vestment of such broad powers in them bred a sense of collective responsibility not dissimilar to that exhibited by cabinet members in modern ministerial systems of government. Bureaucrats with these broad powers were often referred to in popular parlance

Introduction

27

as being in charge of the government fche-cheng).i'1 They were lauded or reproached depending on the performance of the bureaucracy during their tenure of office. The vast scope for action was undoubtedly a factor in the exalted self-image of the bureaucracy. In a complete, definitive study of the Sung bureaucracy, there is no question that appropriate attention has to be paid to both the officials and the clerks. In undertaking the present study, however, I have a humbler goal. My purpose is simply to shed light on those aspects of the personnel administration which hitherto have been a major stumbling block in attempts to understand the Sung bureaucracy. I have therefore decided to exclude the clerks from the present study. My decision to ignore them is based on two considerations. Firstly, unlike the officials who belonged to an empire-wide service and were governed by uniform personnel codes, the clerks belonged to hundreds of different jurisdictions each with its own personnel code. Secondly, whereas personnel regulations for the officials have been preserved in substantial documents, comparable information on the clerks exists only in fragmentary and widely scattered f o r m . An enormous amount of spadework therefore has to be done before the study of clerks can begin in earnest. 68 To refer to the segment of the Sung bureaucracy on which the present study is focused, I will use the familiar term "civil service." The Sung civil service thus encompassed the personnel of all middle and top management positions in the bureaucracy (executive, supervisory, and administrative staffs). This definition of the Sung civil service, however, comes up against a minor technical problem. This is because a substantial number of positions in the bureaucracy, especially those in the executive and supervisory categories, were held by men sporting military ranks. Are these people to be considered part of the civil service? Modern scholars on Sung government have generally accepted their military ranks at face value and concluded that they were part of the military establishment. 69 In view of their numbers and the important role they played in staffing the bureaucracy, however, they deserve more than a cursory scrutiny. There are only two possible explanations for their presence in the bureaucracy—either they were military personnel on secondment to the bureaucracy or they were not military personnel at all but constituted an integral part of the civil service. To determine which explanation applies, we must look at their institutional affiliation. It can be easily determined that most of these so-called military men spent their entire career in the bureaucracy and that apart from their rank system, they had nothing to do with the army. Instead, in personnel matters such as recruitment, job assignment, and promotion they came under a purely civilian agency, the li-pu or Board of Personnel, which also had jurisdiction over regular officials with civilian rank. The first explanation is therefore impossible and the second explanation holds.

28

Introduction

The Sung civil service was therefore made up of two parallel personnel systems, each with its own rank system. 70 In official parlance, the two personnel systems were known as sections, designated by the epithets Left and Right. Statistics on the membership of these two sections are presented in Table 2. The bifurcated structure of the civil service was probably related to the dual roles or missions it p e r f o r m e d in the body politic—namely, to perf o r m the bureaucratic-specific functions and to serve as the politicalcultural elite and generate support for the dynasty. Although both sections contributed to both missions, their respective emphasis varied. There is little d o u b t , for instance, that the Right Section, comprising officials of military rank, was expected to make a greater contribution toward the first mission and the Left Section, comprising officials of Table 2. Statistics on Sung Officialdom Officials of Civil Rank Date 991 1004-1015 1023-1031 1034 1046 1049 1050 1055 1066 1080 1086 1088 1112 1116 1119 1165-1173 1192 1196 1201 1213 1214 a

Administrative Officials

Officials of Military Rank

Executory Officials

Servitors Major

Servitors Minor

Total

330a 9,785h 2,000h 2,700

c

10,000

4,000h 6,000c

c

17,300h

2,800c

10,000c

b

3,000b 4,159b 4,159a 3,133a 2,392a

16,500 7,000b 12,869" 13,670a 15,204a 17,006a

2,500c

6,027 8,112d 6,524s 12,560° 13,000°

7,220"

23,000f 23,700"

5,173" 6,525a 6,854a 3,866a

11,315" 18,705a 12,616a 15,606a 13,900e

24,000h 28,300 34,000 43,000°

33,516 43,059 37,807 38,864

Li Hsin-chuan (1), pp. 361; 1061-1062. Yung-chaisui-pi, pp. 269; 653-654. 'TCCP 158:7a; 167:19a; 310; 310:6b; 386:6ab; 396:19a; 417:7a; 484:5a; addendum 31 :a4b. d Ou-yang Hsiu wen-chi, p. 224. 'Hou-ls'un hsien-shen wen-chi 15:14ab. 'Sung hui-yao chi-kao 56:14 (p. 3647). e Sung-chao shih-shih, pp. 144-145. h Yuhai 119:30ab. b

Introduction

29

civilian rank, toward the second mission. This difference in role and mission explains the difference in recruitment patterns and other personnel rules of the two sections. As the Right Section was not expected to generate much political support for the dynasty, there was little need to build up the prestige of its members. Thus the competitive written examination was little used as a recruitment tool in this section. Exempted from the merit principle that the civil service examination stood for, this personnel system could be made to accommodate those individuals and groups whose political support for the dynasty, though not essential, was still desirable, such as barbarian chieftains or retired soldiers. The vast majority of Right Section personnel were recruited on the basis of family connections. Those so recruited into the bureaucracy benefited from what was known as the yin privilege (literally, shadow or protection) of their fathers, elder brothers, or grandfathers. The practice of yin is similar to the phenomenon of nepotism in the West. However, yin did not have the reprehensible connotation that nepotism carries. The yin privilege was considered perfectly legal, an important part of the total compensation that office holding entailed. The practice of yin was not limited to the Right Section. In the Left Section, recruitment on the basis of the yin privilege, while less prevalent than in the Right Section, nevertheless accounted for over 50 percent of the personnel. The yin privilege may therefore be considered the institutionalization of the self-perpetuating propensity of the ruling elite. The tendency to maximize political support for the dynasty by extending access to the civil service to as many people as possible—via the yin privilege, the civil service examination, and other recruitment channels— inevitably led to overrecruitment. Among the problems that overrecruitment gave rise to was that of funding. Despite the affluence of Sung China and the efficiency of the bureaucracy in raising revenue, the amount of resources that could be committed for the support of the civil service (the salary fund) was by definition limited. If this limited salary f u n d was spread equitably among all those individuals inducted into the civil service, everybody would have a modest income so that nobody could a f f o r d a lifestyle commensurate with his high status. The challenge for the dynasty was therefore to devise a remuneration policy that would enable a portion (the deserving few) of the civil service to have more ample means without creating a sense of inequity that would undermine the morale of the whole bureaucracy. Overrecruitment also led to a second problem—that of identifying the outstanding individuals and speeding their promotion to positions where their talents could be better utilized. In tackling this problem, two obstacles had to be overcome. First, in a personnel system numbering tens of thousands, individual differences in talent or performance were hard to detect and harder to mea-

30

Introduction

sure. Second, even if the high achievers could be identified early in their career, it would still be difficult to circumvent the rules of seniority which every bureaucracy makes a fetish of as a bulwark of its autonomy. The Sung civil service showed considerable ingenuity in tackling these problems. The solution of the first problem, that of insufficient funding, was by means of work rationing made possible by an elaborate system of ranks and assignments. Appointment in the Sung civil service was, in the first instance, appointment to a specific rank in either one of the two parallel personnel systems. Rank in this context played a role similar to the system of ranks in a modern army—namely, as the basis for computing seniority, base pay, fringe benefits (including the yin), and status. Paralleling this system of appointment to rank was a system of appointment to substantive positions or offices. Work rationing came into play because the number of substantive positions was pegged at a level far below the actual number of people in the personnel systems. Every substantive appointment was for a definite term of office, generally three to five years, at the end of which one had to spend some time in furlough before being eligible for appointment to a second office. Work rationing accomplished considerable savings as appointments to substantive positions were made the real basis for remuneration—the base pay that one's rank carried eventually became little more than a kind of token pay. Work rationing also brought about other benefits. The automatic termination of office at the end of the term of appointment, for instance, inhibited the tendency to regard the office as a piece of private property to be sold or bequeathed to one's heirs. The disparity between personnel and substantive positions could be turned to good account. As there were far more candidates for office than there were positions to accommodate them, the Sung civil service operated primarily in an employer's market and thus could insist on higher standards of efficiency and performance from those appointed to office. Whether this was indeed the case depended on the efficiency of mechanisms for monitoring the performance of officials. Like modern bureaucracies the Sung civil service indeed paid much attention to instruments of evaluation and sought to develop a format which allowed j o b performance to be measured, if not quantitatively, at least in factually verifiable terms. The pressure that the tens of thousands of candidates put on the Board of Personnel to place them in appropriate positions in the bureaucracy spurred development in the techniques of personnel administration. Unlike conventional bureaucracies where the rate of personnel turnover, except at the entry level, is usually moderate, the Sung civil service had a turnover rate of 100 percent every three or four years, due to the system of work rationing. The incumbents of all positions in the bureaucracy had to be changed or reshuffled during this interval. The pressure was further intensified by the fact that all appoint-

Introduction

31

merits in the civil service were handled at the central level by the Board of Personnel. Centralized personnel administration, however, did entail a great benefit, namely staffing flexibility. Unlike conventional bureaucracies where most bureaucrats can get stuck with the same organizational unit for their entire career, in the Sung system officials were o f t e n shuffled f r o m the central bureaucracy to the field administration and f r o m one province to another. Such lateral mobility inhibited the growth of parochialism, which is based on close identification with a specific bureaucratic unit or region, and gave rise to an outlook that enabled them to look at matters f r o m the viewpoint of the civil service as a whole. Such an outlook encouraged the solidarity of the civil service. For the solution to the second problem, that of recognizing talent and speeding their promotion, the Sung civil service depended on a principle which in a variant f o r m is also widely practiced in the modern world. The principle involves the erection of a promotion hurdle which halts the professional advance of the majority of people in the personnel system while allowing a select few to surmount it and continue their climb u p the hierarchy. The promotion hurdle commends itself on the following g r o u n d . The hierarchy of a normal bureaucracy is pyramid-shaped in that there are progressively fewer positions on successively higher echelons of the hierarchy. This means that at a certain point up the hierarchy, the need for manpower is drastically reduced. The question then arises: H o w best to find the persons to fill the positions at these critical levels? There are two possible approaches to this problem. Firstly, a preselected group of personnel can be moved up the ranks rapidly and after they have accumulated the requisite seniority or experience appointed in due course to these leadership positions. Another approach is to dispense with the idea of a preselection and fill vacancies on each echelon with qualified persons on the echelon below. While the latter a p p r o a c h appeals to us on the grounds of fair competition and open opportunities for all, a lot can also be said for the first approach. To be qualified f o r a position, especially those near the top of the hierarchy, takes more than raw talent; it involves the development of that talent through education and appropriate j o b experience. Normally the ability of the system to provide for education and especially j o b experience is limited. It is therefore not feasible to take care of everybody. The o p t i m u m utilization of the scarce resources often requires that they be concentrated on the especially deserving few. This is indeed the strategy followed by most m o d e r n organizations. They go out of their way to groom future leaders. These preselected individuals are given all the opportunity for professional growth such as time off for further study and challenging assignments to show their mettle and build u p their prestige. For some the parting of the way between the elite on the one hand and the rest of the personnel condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers

32

Introduction

of water on the other begins quite early. In modern-day Britain, for example, the "Eleven-plus" examination channels a small minority of the country's schoolchildren into the academic track of grammar schools from which the future elite of the country in government, business, and the professions are to come.71 Those who cannot find a place in grammar schools have to be satisfied with a vocation-oriented education. In Japan, the universities play a major role in grooming the future leaders of the country. The graduates of Todai and other elite universities are guaranteed an inside track in the bureaucracy and the giant business corporations. In America, the parting of the way generally begins later, after the individual has finished formal schooling and entered into the work force. The operation of the promotion hurdle nevertheless can be seen everywhere. It is most clearly institutionalized in the academic world with the seven-year up-or-out rule and in the military with a similar arrangement. The presence of the promotion hurdle does not dispense with the necessity of identifying talent; on the contrary, it forces the organization to confront the issue squarely. The evaluation of the candidates for promotion at this critical juncture cannot be conducted in a cavalier fashion because so much is riding on it—for those who surmount the hurdle, smooth sailing ahead; for those who fail to make the grade, professional stagnation (professional death for academic people who fail to make tenure). Thus there is a strong incentive to ascertain the real worth of each candidate for promotion. A promotion hurdle was built into the personnel structure of both sections of the Sung civil service, although it loomed more prominently in the Left Section than in the Right. This hurdle divided personnel of the Left Section into two divisions: those who had cleared it (the administrative grade officials) and those who had not (the executory grade).72 The effectiveness of the promotion hurdle is clearly demonstrated by the available statistics on Sung civil service membership. At no time was the number of administrative grade officials more than a small fraction of the total personnel of the Left Section (ranging from a high of 30 percent to a low of 12 percent). Those executory officials who managed to clear the hurdle usually took ten or more years doing it, after they had served two or more terms of office and demonstrated their administrative competence and other qualities deemed essential for success in the upper echelons of the civil service. Understandably, most executory officials were concerned with their promotion prospects from the very beginning of their civil service career. Although competition was intense and therefore the outcome uncertain, they knew precisely what promotion involved. The sine qua non of promotion was not an impeccable service record as evidenced by favorable job evaluations but the number of former and present supervisors who

Introduction

33

were committed to sponsoring them for promotion. Unlike formal performance evaluations which were based on factually verifiable criteria, supervisors had a completely free hand in deciding which of their subordinates to sponsor for promotion with a minimum of red tape. In letting officials decide whom to sponsor entirely at their discretion, the Sung civil service demonstrated a wisdom which many of its modern-day counterparts have yet to learn—namely, that merit, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder and therefore cannot be reduced to precise, written definitions. There are no magic formulas. Ultimately it is the discernment, or lack of it, of the people in positions of authority that determines the quality of personnel in the organization. Under the Sung system the state did not tell the supervisors whom to sponsor for promotion and whom not to sponsor, but restrictions were indeed imposed to prevent abuse of the sponsorship privilege. The number of subordinates a qualified official could sponsor for promotion each year was fixed by quota, and he was held responsible for the subsequent performance of the men he sponsored. Such bureaucratic regulations were undoubtedly designed to ensure the integrity of the sponsorship system as a means for selecting talent as well as a means for increasing the leverage of supervisors over their subordinates. Like modern Japanese organizations (and the Byzantine bureaucracy) the Sung civil service presented an interesting case of the creative use of the principle of seniority. Unlike the situation in Japan where the principle of seniority holds absolute sway, in Sung China capable individuals were often promoted over the head of mediocrities who had greater seniority. Indeed, due to the separation of job assignment from the rank system, it was possible for a relatively junior man to hold a strategic position with authority over people much greater in seniority. What the principle of seniority did in the Sung civil service was to introduce an element of predictability into personnel practices. Seniority of candidates constituted an important component of the qualifications for filling civil service positions; similarly it was the sole basis for promotion in rank for most people in the civil service. Nevertheless, the operation of this principle was never allowed to develop into a leveling force holding back the advance of the capable to the same pace as that of the mediocre. Thus the principle of seniority played virtually no part in the most important promotion—that from the executory to the administrative grade. It may be observed also that the mechanism for computing seniority in rank promotion was adapted to become a versatile tool for achieving other administrative goals. For instance, as an inducement for people to volunteer for service in hardship posts, those who served in them were given what might be called extra seniority credit which had the effect of speeding their promotion. My approach throughout this book is both historical and analytical.

34

Introduction

Conceptually the heart o f the b o o k is made up o f three parts. T h e first part (Chapters 1 and 2), primarily historical, focuses on the distinguishing features o f the Sung personnel system. I endeavor to trace them back to their antecedents in the T ' a n g period and recount their evolution to their mature form under the Sung. T h e second part (Chapters 3 through 6), primarily analytical, consists o f a number o f topical studies on techniques and processes o f personnel administration. Chapter 3 deals with the functions that the civil service played in the body politic and how the different channels o f recruitment related to these functions. Chapter 4 concerns position classification and the allocation o f personnel to fill civil service positions. Chapter 5 is on the rank system and its ramifications. Chapter 6 discusses merit rating and personnel supervision. T h e third part o f the book (Chapter 7) consists o f a case study on Szechwan in Sung times. T h e purpose o f this short chapter is to illustrate the adaptations which the highly centralized Sung personnel system had to make in order to operate in Szechwan, one o f the most remote provinces o f the Sung empire. In concluding this introductory chapter, a disclaimer is in order. Unlike the Byzantine bureaucracy and many modern civil services, the top administrators in the Sung civil service were not sharply differentiated from the middle-level bureaucrats (no class barrier), but the distinction between the two categories o f personnel nevertheless existed. This distinction is reflected in the fact that the top administrators in the Sung civil service, like the political appointees in modern civil services, were exempted from many o f the personnel rules discussed in this b o o k . They were not under the jurisdiction o f the Board o f Personnel and played by rules which by their very nature were subtle, imprecise, changing with the realities o f politics, and therefore seldom committed to writing. T h e analysis o f their world lies outside the scope o f this b o o k . 1 hope that the present b o o k will prove itself o f value not only to China specialists but also to scholars in other fields and even beyond the people in academia, to the leaders in government, in the armed services, in business, and in labor unions. Successful personnel management is a matter o f crucial importance to any organization beyond the complexity o f the mom-and-pop operation. While some aspects o f the Sung system are clearly irrelevant today (for example, recruitment on the basis o f the merit o f one's parents), the relevance o f other features cannot be determined a priori. In any event, reconstruction o f the Sung system provides a mine of comparative material which should enable well-motivated researchers to see their problems in a slightly different light.

1 The Context of Public Administration

Attention has been drawn to the point that the bureaucratic tradition was among the most powerful forces molding the course of Chinese history. If the bureaucracy and the civil service that staffed it made such an impact on the evolution of Chinese society, it must not be assumed that the reverse is not true. Just as the main features of Chinese society cannot be satisfactorily explained without referring to the all-pervading influence of the bureaucracy, so peculiar features of the civil service can only be clarified by reference to the society in which it operated. In this chapter I therefore highlight a few institutional factors which had an immediate bearing on the operation of the Sung civil service. These relevant factors take the f o r m of self-contained systems such as the national space, the provincial and the national governments, and the communications system.

The Socioeconomic

Setting

In its heyday the empire under the Sung dynasty encompassed most of the area formerly known as China Proper. There were, however, noticeable portions of the Chinese world which were not included in it. In the northeast, the northern part of Hopei and Shansi was ruled by the Khitan-Liao empire. In the northwest, Ninghsia and the Ordos region were lost to the Tanggut Hsi-hsia kingdom. In the southwest, Sung territory stopped abruptly at the eastern bank of the Tatu River so that present-day Kueichow and Yunnan lay mostly outside its borders. The Sung empire was therefore considerably smaller than the empire of the H a n and the T ' a n g that preceded it and those of the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing that followed it. 1 After the Jurchen invasion in the early twelfth century, Sung territory shrank further as the northern third of the empire had to be ceded to the Jurchens. Nevertheless, the Sung empire was still gigantic in absolute terms even with its northern provinces amputated. From the westernmost province, Szechwan, to the plains of the lower Yangtze it measured more than

35

36

Chapter 1

twelve hundred miles and from the southern coast to the northern frontier more than six hundred—covering a total area o f over seven hundred thousand square miles, almost four times the size of present-day France. 2 Square mileage alone does not give a complete picture o f the size o f an empire. To get its true measure, we have to express it in human terms. In this regard, the Sung empire was really larger than the empires o f the Han and the T ' a n g that preceded it. This is because vast tracts o f the Han and T'ang empires were comprised o f desert, steppes, or thinly populated aboriginal country. The core—the functionally effective territory—of these empires was actually quite small. It has been computed on the basis o f fairly accurate census data that as late as A.D. 742, midway through the T'ang period, three-quarters o f China's population was concentrated in the area north of the River Huai and the Tsing-ling range, traditionally the dividing line between North and South China. 3 Thus well into the eighth century the regions that traditionally made up South C h i n a — Szechwan, the middle and lower Yangtze valleys, the southeastern littoral, and Lingnan—may be considered as frontier land with their scanty population concentrated along river valleys that represented the main routes o f migration from the north. Although these regions were o f vast extent, geopolitically they counted little in the contest o f power in China. The throne was to be won not in these peripheral areas but, as the expression "chasing the deer in Chung-yuan" attested, in the Central Plain (North China). Whoever controlled the latter, on account o f its central location and preponderance o f resources, should not have much difficulty bringing the rest o f China under his sway. T h e situation had changed since then. As migration into the Yangtze valley and beyond gathered momentum during the T ' a n g period, these potentially rich lands eventually reached a stage o f development that enabled their potential to be realized. During the ensuing Five Dynasties period (907-959), the fact that South China was able to support simultaneously eight states replete with the trappings o f royalty (army, court, harem, and so on) is a testimony to its increasing economic maturity." By the early Sung, the south had probably caught up with the north in population and economic development and began to surpass the latter in these respects as time went on. By the last quarter o f the twelfth century the superiority of the south became lopsided. The Southern Sung political commentator Yeh Shih (1150-1223) asserted, for instance, that although the north comprised half o f the Chinese world, it contained no more than one-fourth o f its resources. 5 In consequence o f the phenomenal development o f the south, the functionally effective areas o f the Sung empire in its heyday undoubtedly surpassed the corresponding areas under the Han and the T ' a n g . I define functionally effective areas as those that supplied the state with valuable resources through taxation in money and labor (input) and received from

The Context of Public Administration

37

the state in return valuable services such as protection from foreign and domestic enemies, maintenance of law and order, and relief in times of natural calamity (output). 6 There is no question that the expansion of functionally effective areas placed additional burdens on the civil service. In peripheral or functionally ineffective areas, revenue production per unit area was so low that an extensive territory was required to yield the minimum revenue for support of an administrative center. Administrative centers were therefore few and widely spaced. In many instances, the state did not even bother to establish direct rule over these areas, which contained only aboriginal populations. Local chieftains were confirmed in their position as headmen; sometimes they were given bureaucratic appointments as prefects or magistrates in a modified system of local government known as chi-mi chou.1 In the latter case, although the terminology of appointment was similar to the regular administrative bureaucracy of the prefectures and the counties, the aboriginal chieftains nevertheless enjoyed complete autonomy. Vast expanses of territories under the Han and the T'ang in Central Asia, in the Kansu Corridor as well as in Szechwan, Hunan, and Lingnan, undoubtedly fell into this category. As such they made little demand on the empire-wide civil service. As the population of these territories grew and their economy matured, however, indirect rule or the widely spaced administrative centers were no longer adequate for their needs. To be more efficient in collecting taxes and providing services to the increasing population, more administrative centers had to be set up. The same territories thus imposed greater demands on the empire-wide civil service. Expansion of the functionally effective areas was not the only development adding to the workload of the civil service. Paralleling the southward shift of China's demographic center of gravity in T'ang and Sung times was a major change in the structure of the Chinese economy.8 Despite the pitfalls of generalization over a large span of history, it might be safely said that the mainstay of the Chinese economy prior to the eighth century was subsistence agriculture. In this economy, bilateral exchanges of goods and services sanctioned by tradition often took the place of the market mechanism. Nevertheless, even in turbulent times a certain amount of normal trading went on. These commercial activities were handled by periodic markets which met for a few hours at regular intervals.' There was no need for permanent market towns where business could be transacted on a continuous basis. Like most premodern societies, the walled cities of China originated primarily as administrative or religious centers with little commercial significance. With the shift of the economic center of gravity to the Yangtze valley, commercialization of agriculture made steady progress.10 In contrast to the north where wheat, millet, or kaoliang were the staple crops, the sta-

Chapter 1

38

pie c r o p of the south was rice. Successful rice cultivation in the marshy terrain of the Yangtze valley required high levels of capitalization. T h e marshes had to be drained a n d irrigation or f l o o d control w o r k s had to be built. A f t e r the initial outlays had been m a d e , however, rice cultivation b e c a m e highly p r o f i t a b l e . With irrigation and i m p r o v e d seeds, d o u b l e - c r o p p i n g was feasible in m a n y of the rice growing areas of the Yangtze valley. A large surplus was t h e r e f o r e potentially available for sale a f t e r the peasant family h a d satisfied its i m m e d i a t e needs. T h e marketing of rice a n d the p r o d u c t s of other domestic industries such as silk was expedited by excellent water t r a n s p o r t facilities which existed naturally in m a n y p a r t s of the s o u t h . In the Yangtze delta, for instance, in the triangle between Shanghai, C h i n k i a n g , and H a n g c h o w , there were ten t h o u s a n d miles of natural or canalized waterways so that every location within it was easily accessible by b o a t . " T h e commercialization of agriculture, together with i m p r o v e d t r a n s p o r t facilities, stimulated so m u c h commercial activity that it could no longer be handled by periodic markets. P e r m a n e n t m a r k e t t o w n s sprang u p , and m a n y of the walled administrative centers t o o k o n new significance as thriving commercial metropolises. 1 2 W i t h the intensification of the administrative n e t w o r k , some of these m a r k e t towns were u n d o u b t e d l y converted to full-fledged administrative centers. Increased productivity a n d a higher level of commercialization in turn led t o a higher s t a n d a r d of living. W h a t used to be luxury g o o d s f o r the privileged few soon b e c a m e daily necessities f o r the masses. A good example was tea, which had b e c o m e the n a t i o n a l drink of C h i n a by this time. Taxation o n these staples of c o n s u m p t i o n provided the g o v e r n m e n t with a rich source of revenue. The m a n u f a c t u r e a n d sale of salt, tea, wine, a n d a l u m were g o v e r n m e n t m o n o p o l i e s , and the income they generated, together with t h e sales and transit tax on general c o m m e r c e , accounted f o r the bulk of the cash income of the Sung g o v e r n m e n t . In fact the cash income of the Sung g o v e r n m e n t surpassed not only that of the T ' a n g but p r o b a b l y t h a t of the Ming dynasty as well, with its m u c h larger p o p u l a t i o n base. 1 3 T h e m a n a g e m e n t of these state m o n o p o l i e s as well as the regulation of general c o m m e r c e constituted an i m p o r t a n t aspect of the w o r k of the Sung civil service.

The Structure of Provincial

Government

T h e key element in the field a d m i n i s t r a t i o n of the Sung empire was the prefecture, generally m a d e u p of several counties. This was the level in the administrative structure of the provinces to which the central government h a d delegated a wide range of discretionary powers so t h a t these units could keep f u n c t i o n i n g even if they were cut off f o r long periods of time f r o m the imperial capital. T h e Sung p r e f e c t u r e had a long history of

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institutional development dating back to Han times. The H a n prefecture (ichun, popularly translated as "commandery") managed its own financial, judicial, personnel, and military affairs with little more than a general overview f r o m the court. 1 4 It was therefore a microcosm of the state. By T'ang times, the autonomy of the prefecture was considerably reduced. It had to submit its finances to an annual audit by the central Board of Revenue and no longer exercised the ultimate decision-making power in criminal matters, as all individuals charged with capital offenses were to have their cases reviewed by the competent central authorities. 1 5 Prefectural autonomy was further circumscribed by Sung times. Its military function was almost completely stripped and its personnel function severely curtailed. Previously, the head of the prefecture had the prerogative of making appointments to a significant proportion of staff positions in the prefecture. Now all Sung civil service positions were to be filled by the central personnel agencies, at least in theory. (See Chapters 2 and 4 for details.) Nevertheless, despite this steady paring down process, the Sung prefectures, which numbered about three hundred, still possessed sufficient discretionary powers so that their characterization as the crucial level of field administration remained valid." In particular, the prefecture played a vital role in fiscal and economic matters. To facilitate the central budgeting process, each prefecture was usually assigned a revenue quota which it had to produce annually under different categories of tax authorization. If the prefecture exercised these tax authorizations in full, the total yield of revenue should be considerably more than the revenue quota assigned it. The surplus could be stored in the prefectural treasury, used to provide tax relief in hardship cases, or applied to cushion the effect of shortfall in lean years. Prefectural administrators were also permitted to take strong measures to forestall natural or social disasters. At the approach of a drought, for instance, they could impose a ban on the export of all grain to prevent an exorbitant rise in grain prices. Thus in fiscal and economic matters the prefecture functioned as a self-contained unit. It was also self-contained in personnel administration. All civil service positions within the prefecture came under the supervision of the prefectural authorities. It is with reference to the prefecture that the status of its constituent units, the counties, 17 may be defined. Although each county referred to a specific territory and was concrete in this sense, conceptually it had no existence apart f r o m the prefecture since it was in most cases little more than an outpost or field office. As such it was designed to minister to the most common needs of the people but could not provide the full range of services that the prefecture was capable of providing. The county authorities, for instance, could adjudicate most cases of litigation but had no real jurisdiction over criminal cases. 18 Nor was the county a per-

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sonnel unit. Although it was headed by a magistrate, he had no authority over other civil service personnel of the county such as the registrar or the supervisors of the tax-collection stations who exercised their powers independently of the magistrate and only came under the jurisdiction of the prefectural authority. 19 The common designation of prefectures was chou. Those among them that were extraordinarily large or were the residence of emperors before their accession were referred to as fu. Administrative units below the norm for prefectures but elevated to prefectural status due to their strategic importance were known as chiin (military prefectures) or chien (directorates). 20 Prefectures therefore varied considerably in population and material resources. For personnel administration and other purposes, they were classified in accordance with a number of schemes. For instance, a system of comparative descriptors was in use. Prefectures were designated as superior (shang), medium (chung), or inferior (hsia). Above the rating of superior, the ratings of strategic (chin) and renowned (wang) were sometimes used. This system of classification was in theory based on the criteria of population and material resources. In reality, whether a prefecture was assigned a superior or medium or inferior rating was often determined by historical factors. For instance, the prefectures of Li-chou and Mo-chou of the Chengtu circuit were classified as superior even though they had less than one-tenth of the registered population of most other superior prefectures of the same circuit. By the same token, other prefectures in the circuit with many times the population of these two prefectures were classified as inferior (for example, Chienchou). (See Table 3.) The anomaly could be traced to the early years of the dynasty when it was decided that all prefectures which were the headquarters of the T'ang governor-general (tu-tu) were to be assigned superior ratings. Li-chou and Mo-chou happened to be presided over by governors-general in T'ang times. 21 By the same token, counties too were classified as superior, medium, and inferior. Above the rating of superior, however, there were three other ratings: metropolitan (chi), strategic (chin), and eminent (wang). Between medium and inferior, there was an intermediate rating, mediuminferior (chung-hsia), making a total of seven categories for the counties. As with the comparative classification of prefectures, the assumed basis of county classification was population and wealth. But discrepancies were so numerous that these ratings were no more than rough guides to the nature of the counties. When a more exact correlation between the assigned rating and the resource base was required for classification purposes, as in fixing the salary level of officials, an informal system could be used. Counties could be classified on the basis of population as counties of ten thousand households, five thousand households, five hundred households, and so on. 22 Prefectures could be similarly classified.

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Table 3. Administrative Subdivisions of the Circuit of Chengtu-fu

Prefecture Chengtu-fu Mei-chou Shu-chou P'eng-chou Mien-chou Han-chou Chia-chou Ch'iung-chou Li-chou Ya-chou Mo-chou Chien-chou Wei-chou Ling-chin Chien

Classification Second-grade metropolitan Superior Strategic Strategic Superior Superior Superior Superior Superior Superior Superior Inferior Inferior Inferior

Number of Constituent Counties

Population (in Households)

9 4 5 4 8 4 5 6 1 4 2 2 2 2

169,089 76,129 78,919 72,409 123,149 78,537 70,546 80,130 2,713 22,987 549 8,206 1,669 47,328

Source: Yuan-feng chiu-yu chi, chaps. 7-8.

Prefectures were grouped together to form circuits under circuit intendants. 23 Circuit intendants were appointed to mobilize resources from the provinces more effectively and to keep the prefectures under central surveillance. Throughout most of the Sung period there were three regular types of intendants: fiscal, judicial, and ever-normal granaries. Although each intendant had his area of primary responsibility, they shared in a common surveillance over the prefectures and counties of the circuit and together were responsible for the well-being of the whole circuit. The circuits may therefore be visualized as an intermediate level of government between the prefectures and the central government. As such, they were comparable to the Ming-Ch'ing sheng (provinces). In fact the Sung circuits and Ming-Ch'ing provinces in many instances shared the same boundaries. In terms of their mode of operation, however, there were two outstanding differences. First, although circuits were an intermediate echelon in the field administration, under certain circumstances this echelon could be bypassed and prefectures could come directly in touch with the central bureaucracy. In Ming-Ch'ing times there was no possibility of bypassing the intermediate echelon; all communications between prefectures and the court had to be routed through the provincial government. Second, whereas in the Ming-Ch'ing system each province was headed by a governor (hsun-fu), or governor-general (tsung-tu), who directed or coordinated the province-wide administrations (revenue collection, judiciary, personnel, and so forth), there was no machinery for coordination in the Sung circuits. Circuit government consisted in the main of three or more

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parallel administrations each under an intendant, none of whom had statutory authority over the others. To accomplish anything outside their respective areas of primary responsibility, they had to act by consensus through mutual consultation. During the first century of Sung rule the number of circuits increased steadily; most of the increases were accounted for by the subdivision of existing circuits. This intensification of the circuit system was in many cases prompted by the need to strengthen the surveillance function. For instance, in view of the chronic instability plaguing the Szechwan area during the first fifty years of the dynasty, the original two-circuit arrangement in this area was expanded into four. By the same token, Huai-nan, Chiang-nan, Hopei, and Liang-che were split into two circuits each. Consideration for surveillance sometimes clashed with the other compelling reason in determining the optimum size of circuits, namely, the mobilization of resources. For the latter purpose, circuits should ideally be coterminous with large natural regions for mobilizing resources for the specific tasks that each was required to perform. A solution to the conflicting demands of surveillance and resource mobilization was found in a system of dual circuits, one for the fiscal intendant and another for the judicial intendant. This arrangement was best exemplified by Liangche during the Southern Sung period (1127-1279). To facilitate surveillance in this most densely populated part of the empire, Liang-che was split into two circuits (Che-tung and Che-hsi) for the judicial intendants. Nevertheless, it remained a single circuit as far as the fiscal intendant was concerned, so that the latter could have unity of command in mobilizing resources for provisioning the Sung court. To maximize the surveillance function, the headquarters of the several intendants of each circuit should be located in different cities so that prefectural officials and commoners could have ready access to a responsible member of the circuit government. The statutes of the dynasty indeed prescribed this pattern of dispersal. But this pattern was not always feasible, as other considerations also influenced the siting of intendant headquarters. During most of the Sung period, for instance, practically all intendants of Kwangsi had their headquarters located at Ching-chiang (modern Kweilin) because it was the only prefectural city in the entire circuit with a wholesome, nonmalarial climate. When there was a concentration of intendant headquarters in a city, this site in fact functioned as the administrative capital of the circuit although it was not officially so designated.

The Structure of Central

Government

In the structure and terminology of the central government, the Sung dynasty showed marked continuity with that of the T ' a n g . The T ' a n g

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central bureaucracy was headed by a triumvirate of departments (sheng).24 The Department of the Secretariat (chung-shu) was charged with the formulation of policy on important matters; these policy formulations were reviewed by the Department of the Chancellery (men-hsia), which could veto those it disapproved. Having cleared this hurdle and having received the approval of the emperor, these policy formulations were handed over to the Department of State Affairs (shang-shu) for implementation, through one of the six divisions or boards (pu) into which it was divided. Each of these six boards had jurisdiction over one of the vital functions of the state: revenue (hu), personnel (ti), rites (li), army (ping), punishment (hsing), and public works (kung). These six boards may be considered the mainstay of the executive branch of the central bureaucracy and remained unchanged in basic form till the end of the imperial era. Paralleling them but at a slightly lower echelon were a host of other agencies known either as courts (ssu) or directorates (chien), each of which was charged with a specific function. There was some deliberate jurisdictional overlapping between them and the six boards. For instance, the Court of Judicature (ta-li ssu) reviewed decisions on criminal justice passed by the Board of Punishment and together with the latter functioned as the final court of appeal. The Court of Sacrifices (t'ai-ch'angssu) was involved in the same concerns as the Board of Rites, namely imperial ancestral worship and sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. (See Figure 1.) In T'ang times the three departments at the apex of the central bureaucracy were supposed to function independently of one another. The elaborate checks and balances built into the system, however, were not conducive to efficient operation—especially with regard to urgent business when speed was essential. A modus operandi therefore evolved in due course whereby the heads of these three departments were brought together in joint consultation before any major decisions had to be taken. Such consultations constituted what was known as the Council of State. Further cooperation between the departments was brought about by a system of interlocking personnel with the heads of one department holding concurrent appointments in other departments. Officials with these appointments were known as chief ministers. They were helped by a number of assistant chief ministers. By Sung times the departments of the Secretariat and the Chancellery had for practical purposes coalesced into a single entity, designated by the compound title Secretariat-Chancellery (chung-shu men-hsia).25 Overshadowing the Department of State Affairs, it became the supreme organ of the central administration. The heads of this unit were recognized as the chief ministers of the emperor (cheng-hsiang). There were usually two of them, one of the right and one of the left. In addition there were a number of assistant chief ministers (tsan-chih cheng-shih). Chief and assistant chief ministers constituted the Council of State,

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Figure 1. Pattern of the Formal Bureaucracy (Central Government)

which met daily to deliberate on matters brought before it. Decisions were reached on the basis of consensus, each and every member of the council assuming responsibility for the entire ministry. In T'ang times the chief ministers were in theory the second in command or deputies of the emperor with statutory authority over all branches of the imperial government: civil, financial, and military. By the time of the Five Dynasties, military affairs were removed from the jurisdiction of the chief ministers and placed under the Bureau of Military Affairs (shu-mi yuan). The Sung dynasty retained this bifurcation between the civil and military jurisdiction with the former under the

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Secretariat-Chancellery and the latter under the Bureau of Military Affairs. Until the administrative reorganization of the Yuan-feng era (1078-1085), the authority of the Secretariat-Chancellery was restricted to matters of general administration. Revenue collection, disbursement, and budget control were in the charge of yet another independent authority, the Finance Commission (san-ssu). With the Yuan-feng reorganization, the Finance Commission was abolished, its powers being absorbed by the Secretariat-Chancellery. The independent powers of the Bureau of Military Affairs, however, continued as previously, at least in theory. 26 In addition to the m a j o r structures enumerated above, we must consider a few subsidiary structures to complete the picture of the Sung central government. There was, for instance, the Censorate (yu-shih t'ai), which operated as a watchdog for the emperor to ensure that everything in the bureaucracy was in order. Individual censors could investigate alleged wrongdoing on their own initiative and impeach officials without fear of reprisal. Another subsidiary structure was comprised of the hanlin academicians who served as advisors or private secretaries of the emperor. (See Figure 2.) Figure 2. Pattern of the Functional Bureaucracy

(a) Central Government (960-1080) Source: Reprinted by permission from E. A. Kracke, Jr., Civil Service in Early Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. 31.

(b) Provincial Government (960-1279)

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46

No account of public administration in traditional China could leave out the emperor. Without going into the nature of the Chinese monarchy, it might be said that all the powers in the traditional Chinese political system were legally vested in the emperor so that even the highest ministers had no independent powers of their own but acted strictly as deputies exercising whatever powers he delegated to them. 2 7 As the ultimate power-holder, the emperor was responsible not only for choosing his ministers but also for determining the tone of the entire administration. In the highly centralized system of government, he was the one energizing principle or dynamo that alone kept the ponderous machinery of government moving. If for some reason the emperor was unable or unwilling to play his role as power-holder, the system required that someone else play the role on his behalf. This de facto power-holder might be officially designated as such—for instance, the regent when the emperor was a minor. More frequently some ambitious individual simply usurped the role. The usurper could be a powerful minister or a maternal relative of the emperor or a eunuch. These unauthorized de facto power-holders, nevertheless, all suffered f r o m a serious disability. Seldom was a usurper so secure in his dominance that he did not have to be constantly on the lookout for potential enemies. Power usurpation in fact had a tendency to polarize officialdom into supporters and enemies. Thus it imparted an impetus to the factional strife that was the bane of Chinese politics. On the other hand, an efficient de jure power-holder—that is, the emperor himself who was really on top of things—could normally d a m p e n the virulence of factionalism and keep it within bounds. In this regard the Sung dynasty was indeed fortunate. Unlike many emperors of the H a n and the T ' a n g dynasties who were often feebleminded, or were distracted by absorbing hobbies (such as alchemy), most Sung emperors put in long hours performing their onerous duties. Some of them even displayed a marked puritanical streak. 2 8 With the exception of Emperors Jen-tsung and Che-tsung of the Northern Sung and the last emperor of the Southern Sung, Kung-ti, when the dynasty had practically come to an end, all the emperors came to the throne as mature men. Even in cases where a regency was necessary due to the minority of the new emperor, the influence of consort families and eunuchs did not make much headway as the empress dowager, who normally acted as regent, saw to it that they did not step out of bounds. In the final analysis, the absence of calamities caused by consort family or eunuch may be attributed to the care or good fortune of the dynasty in selecting women of discipline and prudence as consorts for the emperors.

The Communication

Infrastructure

I conclude this chapter with a brief account of the transport and communication facilities of the Sung empire. An adequate communication net-

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work was required not only for funneling resources f r o m the outlying areas to the capital or for moving troops but also for maintaining the staffing pattern of the Sung civil service. 29 This staffing pattern entailed a lot of traveling. Every time the incumbent of an office served out his term, two trips had to be made—one by the outgoing official leaving office to return to the capital and the other by the incoming official coming from the capital to assume office. This process was repeated for all civil service positions which the central Board of Personnel was authorized to fill. With the exception of positions traditionally filled by military rank officials, the turnover of incumbents took place at least once every three years but could come much sooner. Officials could die in office, could be cashiered, or incapacitated by illness, or compelled to resign in order to observe three years' mourning for their parents. Officials generally had large families as kinsmen, in-laws, and even unrelated individuals (men-k'e) gravitated to them for support so that when they took to the road each official could be accompanied by up to a hundred "family members." 30 To cater to officials on the move was therefore no simple matter. To ensure that civil service positions in the provinces were staffed in the proper manner, it was essential that officials receiving their appointments at the capital had a reasonable chance to reach their destinations within a tolerable time limit. This requirement presumed an adequate communication infrastructure. Apart from the conveyance of people, an even greater consideration in designing the communication infrastructure was how to speed the transmission of documents between the capital and the provinces. In the highly centralized Sung polity, ultimate decisions for nonroutine matters relating to finance and the army were as a rule made by the competent authorities in the central government. In the judicial and personnel administration, even routine matters were regularly handled by the central authorities. The system therefore could not function unless the center was kept informed through the regular channels of communication of all essential events transpiring in the provinces. Whether for the conveyance of people or the transmission of documents, maintenance of the arteries of communication was a matter of the utmost importance. 3 1 These arteries were primarily inland waterways, including the Yangtze and its tributaries, together with the Hsi-chiang in the south and the Grand Canal linking the capital K'ai-feng with the grain-producing areas of the Lower Yangtze valley. An average of six million piculs of rice was shipped annually via the Grand Canal for the support of the civilian and military population of the metropolitan area. 32 To keep this lifeline of the Sung empire in good repair, a vast crew of workmen was employed to dredge the channel. Elsewhere the main thrust of hydraulic engineering was directed toward flood control; but to the extent the efforts were successful in taming the Yangtze, the Hwangho, and other rivers, they also helped navigation.

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Although water transport was the preferred means for moving people and bulk commodities, there were limits to its application. On the Grand Canal and other heavily traveled waterways ordinary traffic could be held up for long periods of time to permit the passage of the grain boats and other essential traffic. Long delays could also be experienced for upstream-bound traffic due to adverse wind conditions. There were also many places inaccessible to water transport. For these reasons, roads and land transport in general could not be neglected. On the whole, however, land transport was complementary to, not in competition with, water transport. The complementariness of these modes of traveling may be seen, for instance, in the itinerary of the celebrated scholar-official Fan Ch'eng-ta (1126-1193) when he journeyed from Soochow to Kweilin in the late twelfth century. He first went south, sailed up the Che River, crossed the mountains into eastern Kiangsi on foot, sailed down the Hsin River to Nanchang, then up the Ch'ing-chiang River, crossed the watershed between the Poyang and Tung-t'ing drainages on foot, embarked on the Hsiang River as far as Henyang, and then continued on foot into Kwangsi. 33 In the construction and maintenance of roads the Sung government spared no effort. The plankway into Szechwan from the north was overhauled in early Sung times when more than ninety thousand spans of the roadway were replaced. Provisions were made for piecemeal renovation on a year-round basis. Many major trunk roads in the south were paved with bricks so that even in rainy weather traffic would not be impeded. Responsibility for construction and maintenance of the roads rested with many levels of government, circuit, prefectural, and county. Counting all these categories of roads together, the total length amounted to ninety thousand li. This network compared with fifty thousand li of the T'ang road system. 34 For the conveyance of officials, boats were provided where water transport was feasible and horses were furnished for overland journeys. In either case, officials were also furnished a small contingent of bodyguards, as well as porters to carry their personal belongings. For journeys on water, boats served not only as a means of conveyance but also as the living quarters of officials so that special accommodation for their lodging and meals was not required. This was not the case with overland journeys. Facilities for meals and lodging had to be made available to the wayfarers at regular intervals. The state had set up a system of hostels, known as i, at varying intervals on the major trunk roads. At these hostels officials and their parties were permitted to put up for the night on production of valid entitlement coupons (i-ch'uan). Some of these hostels were sumptuously furnished and were prepared to provide a wide range of services for wayfarers. On roads where hostels were not available, or when all the spaces in the hostels were taken, officials undoubted-

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ly had recourse to commercial inns or to temples and monasteries which also customarily took care of wayfarers. For transmission of documents the state set up a postal system based on a network of relay stations spaced out over all the major roads and waterways of the empire. For overland journeys there were in theory three kinds of relay stations, each catering to a different kind of service that the postal system was designed to provide. Ordinary documents with no special urgency were transmitted from station to station by foot couriers. Stations handling this service were known as ti-p'u. Documents of some urgency were transmitted by mounted couriers from station to station known as chi-ti-p'u. Documents of the utmost urgency were transmitted by mounted couriers going full speed from station to station known as ma-ti-p'u. The speed of transmission by each type of service was prescribed as follows: mounted couriers, four hundred // per day; mounted couriers going full speed, five hundred li per day.35 Each document to be transmitted by the postal system was contained in a sealed envelope and carried an authorization ticket with a timetable on which was inscribed the times that the document passed through successively named stations. Upon arrival at the imperial capital, these documents were processed by the Document Transmission Office (chin-tsouyuan). The envelopes were opened and, after being duly entered into a comprehensive register of incoming documents and abstracted or copied in full, were forwarded to the appropriate authorities. Outward-bound mail was processed by the same office. In previous dynasties, the postal relay stations were manned by conscripted laborers and the service often caused great hardship to those conscripted. The Sung replaced conscripted labor with hired labor. The wages were low and the work onerous, however, with the consequence that the stations were often undermanned. At key points of the relay network, therefore, backlogs of documents to be transmitted were likely to build up and delays of up to three months in the delivery of mail were sometimes experienced. Moreover, despite efforts to keep track of each piece of mail entrusted to the postal system, important mail was sometimes lost and could not be accounted for. 36 In view of the hazards of delay and misplacement, prefectural and circuit authorities often preferred to entrust their most important mail to their own messengers going all the way to the capital, rather than take their chances with the official postal system. The existence of the postal relay system, however, did permit the rapid diffusion of court news and other pertinent information to the four corners of the empire. It seems that most officials, whether they were in the capital or serving at provincial posts or traveling on the road, had easy access to the official gazette (ti-pao). According to Chu Chuan-yu, author of a history of journalism in Sung China, the ti-pao was pub-

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lished daily but distributed to the provinces at ten-day intervals. 37 It was edited and published by the chin-tsou yuan, which had charge of processing all incoming documents from the provinces. In addition to reporting on imperial edicts, rescripts, proclamations, and important memorials submitted by officials, the ti-pao was an important source of information on people on the move. It listed all officials coming f r o m the provinces to pay their respects to the emperor, officials taking their leave of the emperor before proceeding to assume their posts in the provinces, all new appointments, promotions, demotions, and so forth. Due to the speed with which it was transmitted, many officials first learned about personnel action involving themselves in the ti-pao.

2 Evolution of the Sung Civil Service

Due to the high degree of institutional continuity that existed between the Sung dynasty and preceding regimes, it is not possible to trace the historic evolution of the Sung civil service without taking note of its antecedents. 1 We will therefore start with the personnel administration of the T'ang civil service.

Pre-Sung

Antecedents

A salient feature of the T'ang civil service is the disproportion between the number of individuals with civil service status and the number of civil service positions. 2 A person gained civil service status through a two-step procedure: first, gaining civil service candidate status through a number of approved channels and, second, passing a placement examination. According to the estimate of Liu Hsiang-tao, who was in charge of recruitment for the T'ang Board of Personnel in A.D. 658, the rate of recruitment in the heyday of the dynasty was almost three times the real manpower requirement of the civil service system. 3 The rationale of this overrecruitment is explored in the next chapter. Here I note the consequences of this phenomenon. To find employment for the vast number of individuals recruited into the civil service, a system of work rationing was implemented. After serving a term of office of three to four years, most people with civil service status were required to spend the next several years in extended furlough before they were eligible again for appointment to another term of office. This requirement may be called the "lapse factor." Depending on the applicability of this rule, the entire civil service may be divided into two groups: those of the administrative class and those of the executory class. The line of demarcation was the eligibility to hold positions of the f i f t h p ' i n grade. 4 Those who met this requirement belonged to the administrative class and those who did not were of the executory class. The administrative class comprised officials who belonged to what may be called the civil service establishment. As such they enjoyed secu-

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rity of tenure as well as the most cherished of the fringe benefits of office holding, that of the yin privilege. In contrast, the executory class comprised what might be called civil servants on probation and were not guaranteed permanent employment. At the conclusion of each term of office, they were not eligible for reemployment until the lapse rule was satisfied. Even then, reemployment was not automatic: They had to reestablish their eligibility for civil service positions by passing the same placement examination again. The necessity of reexamination exposed them to all the hazards faced by the examination candidates and introduced an element of uncertainty in their civil service careers. Moreover, no sooner had their terms of office expired than their status as members of the civil service terminated and they reverted to the status of civil service candidates. Such in fact was their designation: hsuan-jen (literally, men waiting to be selected). As such they were lumped with those who had never previously passed the placement examination or held civil service positions. To distinguish the veteran from the fresh hsuan-jen, the latter were sometimes called yellow-garbed hsuan-jen There was no question that the personnel rule requiring the reexamination of veteran hsuan-jen was unpopular with those to whom the rule applied. It was probably also unpopular with the Board of Personnel which had to enforce it. It may be mentioned here that the Board of Personnel was not merely responsible for setting civil service work rules and for certifying credentials but was also the centralized appointment agency responsible for placing all executory class officials in civil service positions. Like most imperial government agencies, it was probably understaffed and was already straining to keep up with the workload due to the tens of thousands who had never previously passed the placement examinations. As the veteran hsuan-jen had previously passed the placement examination and was therefore deemed fit to hold office, the requirement of reexamination did not seem to serve any useful purpose commensurate with the effort involved in enforcing it. As a consequence, this requirement was gradually dropped for the veteran hsuan-jen seeking to reestablish their eligibility for civil service employment. 6 After they had satisfied the lapse rule they were to receive appointments to civil service positions on the basis of seniority. This waiving of the reexamination rule had a far-reaching impact on the status of the hsuan-jen. No longer were they mere candidates for office to be accepted or rejected as the authorities saw fit; rather they had become expectant officials with an irrefutable claim to employment. While waiving the reexamination rule diminished the workload of the overworked bureaucrats of the Board of Personnel, it gave rise to problems of a different kind. Having once passed the placement examination, these hsuan-jen could not be disqualified again except for serious malfeasance. Consequently the number of individuals eligible for immediate

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appointment was likely to rise and the ratio between personnel and positions worsen unless steps were taken to tighten the requirement of passing the placement examinations in the first instance. Given the inertia of bureaucratic bodies and the resentment such a move would stir up among those affected, it was unlikely that the move would be taken. The vicissitudes of dynastic history also contributed to the deteriorating personnel/position ratio in the T ' a n g civil service. Following the An Lu-shan Rebellion ( a . d . 756), which shook the T ' a n g dynasty to its very foundations, the regions of Ho-pei, Lung-yu, and other outlying areas no longer came under effective central control. In consequence, the Board of Personnel could no longer make appointments to civil service positions in these areas. While the total number of positions subject to the appointment powers of the board diminished significantly, there was no corresponding d r o p in the number added annually to the civil service roster. 7 It is possible that people f r o m these virtually a u t o n o m o u s areas continued to take the civil service examinations or otherwise attained civil service candidate status through the approved channels and continued to gain eligibility for civil service positions by passing the placement examinations. With the final collapse of the T ' a n g dynasty and the onset of the Five Dynasties period, the socioeconomic landscape of China underwent a f u n d a m e n t a l change. Aristocratic lineages vanished f r o m the scene and the whole complex of channels to civil service status disintegrated. China went through a period of extreme fragmentation. In addition to the successive regimes in the North China Plain which laid claim to the mantle of the T ' a n g dynasty, there were six or seven independent kingdoms in the Yangtze valley, along the southeastern coast, the extreme south, and the extreme north. The reins of power everywhere seemed to have slipped into the hands of military men. One thing, however, remained unchanged: The utter disproportion between the number of people seeking employment through the Board of Personnel and the number of civil service positions under the appointment powers of the board continued into the Five Dynasties period. There were indeed fewer men waiting to be placed by the Board of Personnel, but the number of positions subject to its appointment powers had shrunk even more drastically. As a consequence, eligible men had to wait ten to fifteen years for their chance to serve. 8 Although the elite families that dominated the T ' a n g civil service in its heyday did not have an exclusively literati background (many indeed sported a martial tradition), they were not, with a few exceptions, professional soldiers. As the dynasty declined after the An Lu-shan Rebellion, and as central control over the provinces diminished, professional soldiers began to assert their ascendancy. This trend was discernible first on the provincial level. For improved security against both foreign invasion

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and internal rebellion, the T'ang empire was divided after the An Lushan Rebellion into a number of regional commands, each of which was placed under a military governor (chieh-tu shih). Although originally responsible for military affairs only, these military governors gradually brought financial, judicial, and civil affairs under their control. In many instances, they superseded the civil administration with a makeshift organization of their own. 9 This was done primarily to maximize revenue by circumventing the bureaucratic red tape of the prefectures and counties. The key men in these makeshift organizations were the garrison commandants (chen-chiang), selected from their trusted lieutenants. Basing themselves on the chen—the strategic locations at which the army was garrisoned—these armed bureaucrats collected taxes and dispensed justice over the vast countryside, leaving only the walled cities for the prefects and the magistrates to administer. The ascendancy of military men on the national level was at first masked behind civilian supremacy: Few chief ministers of the T'ang dynasty were of nonliterati background. The real focus of power, however, had shifted from the chief ministers (the Council of State) to the Bureau of Military Affairs (shu-mi yuan), staffed primarily by eunuchs. 10 Many eunuchs were kingmakers because they commanded the emperor's armies stationed in the vicinity of the capital. By the end of the dynasty, and throughout the Five Dynasties period, the mask of civilian supremacy was dropped and military men took complete liberty in ordering affairs to their own liking. Civilians were still retained in the central administration to lend respectability to the regime, but they were treated as outsiders, analogous to the efficiency experts or consultants in modern corporations, with no access to the real levers of power. This massive intrusion of military men into the domain of civil administration threatened to wreak havoc with the orderly processes of personnel administration. If there was not to be complete chaos and if a semblance of order was to be maintained, the profusion of military personnel would have to be fitted into a comprehensive rank system so that the status of each vis-à-vis others could be ascertained. In normal times one's rank in the civil service was determined by one's current or former civil service position. This system of position classification rank, however, could not be applied to the armed bureaucrats. As mentioned earlier, many held ad hoc positions created specifically for them. As these ad hoc positions had not been fully institutionalized, they did not fit neatly into a hierarchy of positions. For this reason, ranking for these individuals had to be based on a different set of principles. In the heyday of the T'ang dynasty, rank for military personnel was indicated by any one of four systems of rank carriers: chih, the positions one held in the imperial armies; chiieh, titles of nobility; hsiin, military merit; and san-kuan, prestige titles." By definition, the first two were of

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limited applicability. The number of individuals that could be appointed to the imperial armies was limited by the number of authorized positions in the armies. Titles of nobility customarily represented the highest form of recognition that was within the power of the emperor to bestow on individuals who had made significant contributions to the T ' a n g cause, particularly in war. Moreover, as the recipient of a noble title usually also received an appanage, the revenue of which was earmarked for his support, the grant of noble titles involved the commitment of considerable resources on the part of the dynasty. Strong fiscal restraints thus held down the number of titled nobility. The grant of military merit or prestige titles was not without cost to the imperial treasury. Although the recipients were entitled to neither substantive office nor stipends, they were no longer classified as commoners and therefore no longer subject to taxation. Nevertheless, the loss of revenue f r o m a few taxpaying individuals was hardly missed by the imperial treasury. These systems of rank carriers were therefore widely diffused among military personnel. Theoretically either the military merit or the prestige title systems could be adapted for structuring the armed bureaucrats of the late T ' a n g and the Five Dynasties period. But both systems had by then been damaged beyond repair by the excessive liberality of the T ' a n g rulers. To extricate themselves f r o m the desperate straits in which the T ' a n g emperors after the An Lu-shan Rebellion increasingly found themselves, they resorted frequently to the lavish grant of these titles to rally their troops and civilian personnel. Unrestrained proliferation of these titles destroyed their value. In some instances a prestige title, which was originally intended to convey the sense of accomplishment and high status, became the laughingstock of people because it was widely appropriated by men of menial status, such as clerks. 12 Out of inertia or in deference to the sanctity of institutions established by the founding fathers of the T'ang dynasty, no sustained efforts were made either to overhaul or otherwise to update the military merit or the prestige title systems when their utility had vanished. Thus there were no effective empire-wide rank systems for military men in the civil administration. Instead, various expedients were used to designate rank. Armed bureaucrats such as garrison commandants serving under military governors probably also held concurrent appointments in the regional armies, and the latter were sufficient indication of their rank. At a higher level senior military personnel could be given honorary appointments in the central armies. The most frequent indicator of rank for the senior military men in essentially nonmilitary roles came f r o m a different source, however—namely, offices of the inner court, as the organization that catered to the private needs of the emperor was known. While the inner court was generally staffed by palace women and eunuchs, important staff and managerial positions were often held by men of literati or mili-

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tary background. 13 Toward the end of the T'ang and throughout the Five Dynasties period, military men sporting titles such as the chiefs or vicechiefs of the various bureaus of the inner court (chu-ssu shih-fu) began to play increasingly important roles in the central administration; they also commanded expeditionary armies.14 In view of their wide-ranging duties which took them far afield, they could not be expected to perform their duties in the inner court. There is no question that for the most part their titles indicated not their real jobs but a kind of rank in a hierarchy of ranks for prestige and remuneration. The period of the Five Dynasties is usually pictured as a time of extreme fragmentation and instability. Within the span of fifty years the ruling dynasty in North China changed six times. In other parts of China, independent kingdoms rose and fell, expanded or contracted, in accordance with their relative strength determined by the fortunes of war. This image of fragmentation, however, was exaggerated. It is misleading to equate the change of regimes in North China during this period of time with the regular change of dynasties. With the exception of the supersession of the Latter Liang by the Latter T'ang, the change of regimes involved no more than the replacement of the ruling family and its immediate clique by another. The sino-barbarian military aristocracy which constituted the ruling elite of this period remained unaffected. Nor was the civil service seriously disrupted by these so-called dynastic changes.15 Essentially depoliticized, it went on with the routine chores of administration regardless who was the reigning emperor. In addition to institutional stability in the regimes of North China, some of the larger independent kingdoms of the south were also able to maintain fairly stable governmental institutions. Both literary and epigraphical records from the Five Dynasties period are scarce. Nevertheless, so far as can be determined on the basis of fragmentary information, there was considerable similarity in personnel administration between successive regimes of North China and between the latter and the independent kingdoms. At least three of the southern kingdoms (Southern T'ang, Latter Shu, and Southern Han) operated their own civil service examinations. They also used the terminology of the inner court bureaus in designating the rank of their high-echelon military personnel.16 In A.D. 960, the last ruler of the Latter Chou abdicated and Chao K'uang-yin, founder of the long-lasting Sung dynasty, came to the throne, thus putting an end to the Five Dynasties period. In rapid succession, Latter Shu, Hunan, and Southern Han were conquered. After a pause, the pace of conquest resumed. Southern T'ang was annexed in 976; Fukien and Wu-yiieh submitted voluntarily, but Northern Han held out until the reign of the next emperor, T'ai-tsung.' 7 Political unification presumed a certain level of administrative integra-

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tion. In the context of imperial China, this meant a uniform code of law administered by an empire-wide civil service. In seeking to effectuate administrative integration, the founding fathers of the Sung dynasty capitalized on two favorable circumstances: the large reservoir of qualified civil service personnel, which was a legacy of the T'ang and the Five Dynasties period, and the similarity of the personnel systems of the annexed kingdoms, which provided a valuable source of manpower for the expanding Sung civil service. As I have pointed out, the number of men qualified to hold office in the T'ang civil service was several times the number of authorized positions. Both the number of personnel and the number of positions under the appointment power of the Board of Personnel during the Five Dynasties period were scaled down from the T'ang level, but the personnel/ position ratio remained about the same. The Sung Board of Personnel thus commenced operation with far more personnel than was required to man its complement of civil service positions. This excess capacity provided the means for the Sung administrative takeover of the areas which its army and its diplomacy had won. The form and rapidity of this administrative takeover were determined largely by the manner in which the annexed areas became part of the Sung empire. The Latter Shu regime in Szechwan, for instance, was conquered after much fighting. Even after the submission of its ruler, the area continued to be in turmoil due to rebellions and troop mutinies. To make the task of pacification easier, all incumbent officials of the area who owed their appointment to the previous regime were ordered to hand over their duties to court-appointed replacements and to gather at places of rendezvous for shipment to K'ai-feng, the imperial capital. 18 This move was undoubtedly taken to deprive Szechwan malcontents of all possible rallying points. The administrative takeover of Szechwan was thus speedily accomplished. On the other hand, with regard to the annexation of Southern T'ang, as soon as the king submitted, no further turmoil was reported from the region. The incumbent officials were therefore permitted to remain at their posts pending plans for a piecemeal administrative takeover." Although Wu-yiieh submitted voluntarily, the administrative takeover followed the Szechwan pattern. All officials of that regime, both civil and military, together with all relatives of the king, were shipped to K'ai-feng in one thousand and four hundred boats. 20 It may be surmised that the Sung authorities took this abrupt form of administrative takeover to drive home to the local populace that their separate identity had been terminated and a new political order had begun. Government personnel from the annexed kingdoms were not taken into the Sung civil service without first subjecting them to rigorous screening. The former officials of Southern Han, for instance, were

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required to take a special examination similar to the T ' a n g placement examination. Those who demonstrated literary proficiency as well as cogency of reasoning were permitted to hold Executory I positions. 2 1 Although former officials f r o m other regimes were not required to take a similar examination, they were often admitted into the Sung civil service at a lower rank. This was the case, for example, of Southern T ' a n g military men who were bureau chiefs of its inner court. U p o n submission to the Sung, they were assigned the lowest officer rank of the Sung military rank system. 22 N o r were the credentials of those who passed the civil service examination under the formerly independent kingdoms recognized by the Sung civil service. In some cases, people of this description took the civil service examinations again under the Sung to avail themselves of the advantages that examination graduates enjoyed. 2 3

Basic Structure of the Sung Civil Service Although Chinese society in the Five Dynasties was dominated by military men, the literati nevertheless survived. They were grudgingly conceded a place in the administrative machinery of the state due to their indispensability in drafting edicts, rescripts, and imperial proclamations. Moreover, their knowledge of history, of ritual, and of protocol lent an air of respectability to the short-lived regimes founded by military men. Valued primarily for their utilitarian skills, they were not allowed to hold the reins of power. For this reason, ambitious young men with a good literary education who at other times would certainly have opted for the scholar-official career went instead into the army for a more rewarding future. 2 4 With the accession of the Sung dynasty, the respective advantages of a literati versus a military career were reversed. For reasons of self-preservation, the founders of the dynasty sought consistently to reduce the leverage of veteran generals in the civil administration. 2 5 For manning the civil administration, they preferred officials of literati background whom they believed were more amenable to control. A process of literatization was set in motion. Nevertheless, this process was not intended to go all the way. Although military men had fallen out of favor it was not the intention of the Sung rulers to phase them out of the civil administration completely. In designing a personnel policy for the civil service the founding fathers of the dynasty followed a pragmatic approach. They borrowed structures and principles of organization f r o m whatever source that seemed to serve their immediate needs. A salient feature of the Sung civil service was its rank system. Unlike most conventional civil service systems which operate on the basis of either rank classification or position classification, the Sung civil service operated on the basis of both systems of classification. I refer to this fea-

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ture as a dual rank system—namely, both personal rank and position classification rank. Personal rank, known as kuan (titular office), governed pay as well as the fringe benefits of office holding; position classification rank, known as tzu-hsii (qualification), governed the actual jobs or commissions that officials performed. These two rank systems interacted, but remained independent, with one another. This dual rank system may be regarded as the culmination of a trend that went back to the late T ' a n g period. The ascendancy of military men in the late T ' a n g polity was reflected in the creation of ad hoc organizations from which they dominated the civil administration. On the provincial level this phenomenon was represented by the garrison commandants edging out the regular bureaucracy of the prefects and magistrates. On the central level it was represented by the Bureau of Military Affairs usurping most of the powers of the Council of State. With the T'ang central government relying increasingly on indirect taxation for revenue, the cluster of agencies charged with exploitation of the state monopolies of salt, tea, wine, and the like gradually overshadowed the Board of Revenue and became the major finance organ of the state. By the Five Dynasties period these agencies were brought together to form the Finance Commission (san-ssu), which also absorbed the remaining functions of the Board of Revenue of the regular bureaucracy. 26 The Sung dynasty thus inherited an administrative system that was both confusing and wasteful. On the one hand, there was the elaborate bureaucratic machinery dating back to the heyday of the T'ang dynasty and covering the entire civil administration. Though outwardly impressive, vital segments of this formal bureaucracy were nevertheless manned by skeletal staff as they performed no real functions. On the other hand, there was a jumble of bureaucratic offices of less venerable vintage which shouldered the real burdens of government in defense, in finance, and in the civil administration of the rural areas. (See Figures 1 and 2.) The Sung dynasty reacted to this situation in a pragmatic way. As the arrogation of authority by the military governor/garrison commandant combination was part of the nexus of military insubordination, effective steps were taken to terminate it. Hence, military governorships became little more than honorary appointments and the authority of the garrison commandants was restricted to the garrison towns. Full power was restored to the regular bureaucracy of the prefectures and counties. 27 In contrast, the operation of the Bureau of Military Affairs and the Finance Commission may be interpreted as trends that bolstered monarchical power vis-à-vis the provinces. These agencies were therefore fully compatible with the centralizing policies of the Sung founders. Consequently they were retained. Moreover, their pattern of operation was applied to the rest of the central administration. This pattern may be explained as follows. Since the Five Dynasties, officials of the Finance Commission

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and the Bureau of Military Affairs, which were ad hoc organizations, also held regular appointments in the formal bureaucracy. Their appointments in the ad hoc organizations (functional offices) indicated their commissions or real job assignments whereas their appointments in the formal bureaucracy (titular offices) provided them with rank and emoluments. During the early years of the Sung dynasty this system of dual appointments was applied across the board to the rest of the central bureaucracy. This move may be viewed as a political expediency contrived by the founders of the dynasty to gather the reins of power into their hands without giving the appearance of a radical break with the past in institution and personnel. Respectable holdovers from the preceding regime were retained in their former positions but were not allowed to exercise the functions of their positions unless they had won the confidence of their new rulers and each of them had received a commission directing them to perform those functions. Thus all officials of functional agencies needed two types of appointment to be truly functional—namely, titular offices to convey rank and emoluments and functional offices (commissions) to signify their actual responsibilities. Although the Board of Public Works was a fully functional unit under the Secretariat-Chancellery, for instance, the president of the board was not normally expected to perform the duties that his title indicated unless he had received a commission directing him to perform such duties. Without the corresponding commission, the presidency of the board was simply a titular office, signifying little more than rank and emolument. 28 We come now to the main groupings of officials in the Sung civil service as well as the principles behind these groupings. As discussed in the introduction, the Sung civil service included numerous officials of military rank. A major cleavage in the civil service thus existed between officials of civil rank and those of military rank. Among officials of civil rank there was also an important cleavage between those officials known as "court and capital officials" (ching-chao kuan) and those known as "selected personnel" (hsuan-jen). It may easily be observed that this cleavage went back to T'ang times. Like its T'ang counterpart, the Sung court and capital officials constituted the civil service establishment, enjoyed security of tenure, and monopolized the choice positions of the civil administration. The cutoff point for this elite segment, however, was not eligibility to hold positions of the fifth or higher p'in grade. This is because the traditional p 'in grade classification was applicable only to the ceremonial aspect of the Sung civil service and had no bearing on the really sensitive issues of job placement, remuneration, and allocation of the yin privilege. The elite segment was instead differentiated from the main body of the civil service by the titular offices of its members which constituted their personal rank.

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E. R. Kracke, Jr., used the term "administrative class" in referring to the elite segment and the term "executory class" in referring to the hsuan-jen. The adoption of these terms was obviously influenced by usages in the British civil service. Kracke was undoubtedly of the opinion that the difference in qualifications and terms of service between these two segments of the Sung civil service was analogous to that between the administrative and the executive divisions of the British civil service to warrant the use of these terms. For the early years of the Sung dynasty in which Kracke was primarily interested, his assumption was largely borne out by the facts. 29 We will therefore stick to his terminology. In 964 the scholar-official Tao Ku, who had previously been commissioned to study problems facing the executory officials, submitted his report for civil service reform. 30 This report was promptly adopted by the court and the relevant reforms were implemented. Tao Ku believed that it was possible for executory officials to have a rewarding career without having to graduate from executory ranks. He envisioned a career ladder for them spanning some thirty years with adequate salary and steady promotion in rank and prestige. Nevertheless, despite these reforms, executory officials remained confined to subordinate positions in the provincial administration. They could be appointed as county magistrates (ling) of medium or inferior counties or as top aides to prefectural administrators. But the really influential positions such as those of the prefectural administrators or vice-administrators were still beyond their reach. Nor were they eligible for civil service appointments in the capital until after the time of Wang An-shih. Thus they constituted the workhorses of provincial administration, and the somewhat pejorative term "chou-hsien kuan" (prefectural and county officials) became a synonym for them. The career ladder envisioned by Tao Ku was feasible during the reigns of Emperor T'ai-tsu and Emperor T'ai-tsung in the context of an expanding bureaucracy when qualified personnel were in great demand. In those years many executory officials undoubtedly accumulated the requisite seniority and rose to the top of the career ladder." By the time of the third emperor, Chen-tsung, however, these favorable terms of employment came to an end. The glut in the personnel pool which characterized the T'ang and the Five Dynasties periods returned and the lapse factor was reinstituted. Thus the notion rapidly gained currency that the executory division was a dead-end street and that one had no prospects unless he could be promoted rapidly to the administrative division. Hence instead of being considered a self-contained personnel system with its own career patterns the executory division was increasingly viewed as a stepping stone to (or recruiting ground for) the upper division, that of the administrative class.32 The two major groupings among officials of military rank were, first, the chiefs and vice-chiefs of the various bureaus of the inner palace and,

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second, the servitors. As described earlier in this chapter, by the time of the Five Dynasties the titles of chiefs and vice-chiefs no longer bore any relationship to the actual work performed by the title-bearers but instead indicated their relative ranking. This phenomenon was systematized in the Sung period, and a hierarchy of ranks for the upper echelons of military rank officials thus came into existence. The servitors had their origin in "Servitors of the Three Echelons" (san-pan shih-ch'en). As their collective name indicates, they were so named because they comprised three echelons of palace functionaries. Sources differ on the exact identity and designation of these three groups, but it is plain that all of them could be regarded as the personal aides of the emperor and were not charged with narrowly defined responsibilities. (See Table 4.) In fact a significant number of them were recruited f r o m the private retinue of emperors before their accession. 33 Starting as the personal aides of emperors, the status of servitors, however, gradually changed. This institutional evolution proceeded along two parallel lines during the early years of the dynasty. On the one hand they became regular members of the civil service and, on the other, junior members of the officer corps of the army. These two identities of the servitors—civil servants and army officers—were not mutually exclusive. Many individuals were both civil servants and army officers or vice versa at successive points of their career. 34 In fact, depending on their current j o b assignment, servitors could switch back and forth f r o m one identity to another with perfect ease. To understand the mechanism of this instantaneous conversion, it is necessary to take a closer look at the structure of the Sung army as well as to examine the rationale of continued employment of military men in the civil service. In most modern armies, the rank of an officer, such as a colonel, signifies his rank in a hierarchy of ranks separate and different f r o m the assignment that the officer currently occupies—for instance, that of battalion commander, which signifies his rank in a hierarchy of c o m m a n d positions. In the West this separation of rank f r o m c o m m a n d positions is a fairly recent p h e n o m e n o n . The authors of the Encyclopedia of Military Table 4. Composition of the Original Servitors of the Three Echelons (San-pan Shih-ch 'en) 1. Kung-feng kuan (chamberlains)" 2. Tso-pan tien-chih (palace attendants of the left) 3 3. Yu-pan tien-chih (palace attendants of the right)3 or 1. Kung-feng kuan (chamberlains)6 2. Tien-chih (palace attendants)13 3. Tien-ch 'ien ch 'eng-chih (imperial couriers before palace)b 'TCCP 310:6b. b TCCP 22:2b.

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History, for instance, trace the origin of the system in Europe to the reign of Louis XIV of France (reigned 1644-1715): Since Louis XIV usually had several armies in the field at once, this resulted in the establishment of a permanent list of officers, each with sufficient experience and distinction to warrant him to serve as major general, lieutenant general or marshal of an army. In time the relative position of officers on this list established precedence for command. Thus for the first time since the fall of Rome, one of the most significant aspects of modern military professionalism appeared: the permanent classification of an officer by rank and not by the temporary command he happened to be exercising. 35

In China, a full-fledged, genuinely functional personal rank system for the military did not seem to have existed prior to the Sung period. The Sung system was inspired by the need to find a flexible army structure in response to the basic dynastic quest for security. Chao K'uang-yin owed the success of the coup d'état that brought him to power in 960 to the fact that he was at that time the sole commander of the Imperial Guards, the most potent force in the empire. To prevent a repetition of history, he proceeded to build up a rival army unit, the Palace Corps, as a counterweight to the Imperial Guards and pensioned off the veteran army commanders. The ultimate end of this dynastic quest for security was an army in which there were no permanently binding ties between the officers and the men. 3 6 Army officers were selected f r o m an officer pool to lead campaigns or to command frontier garrisons. At the conclusion of a campaign or after a specified period of garrison duty, the troops returned to the barracks while the officers returned to the officer pool. The officer pool necessitated a rank system independent of troop command. Outstanding performances and advances in seniority could be rewarded with promotion in rank, increases in pay, and fringe benefits without implying an increase in the number of troops that the officer was to command for his next assignment. This system of personal rank applied initially only to the higher and middle echelons of the officer corps. It was also applied later to the lower echelons in an incomplete way. The time lag in applying the rank system to the lower echelons of the officer corps was due to two factors. First, unlike the higher echelons where a hierarchy of personal ranks already existed (the chiefs and vice-chiefs of the inner palace bureaus), the hierarchy of ranks for the lower echelons had yet to be devised. Second, the need for a personal rank system for the lower echelons was less urgent. The reason for this was rooted in the organizational pattern of the Sung army. Although there were units in the Sung army comparable to the brigade and division levels of modern Western armies, these were merely administrative units, not fighting formations. The only permanent unit

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that was both an administrative unit and a fighting formation was the battalion (ying or chih-hui) of about five hundred officers and men. Battalions were the building blocks of the Sung army in terms of which task forces for campaigns or the planning of garrison schedules were organized. Cohesion of the battalion required that it be provided with its complement of permanent officers. We may thus hypothesize with regard to the lower-echelon army officers that as their positions in the command structure of the battalion served the purpose of ranks for them, a separate system of independent ranks became less imperative. Depending on their terms of service, army officers were divided into two categories: attached and unattached. Attached officers were those in daily contact with their troops in their capacities as commanders and staff officers. Most of them were attached to their respective battalions and came under the jurisdiction of the san-ya, a triumvirate of agencies that formally served as the apex of the army structure—namely, the Bureau of the Imperial Guards (shih-wei chin-chun) and those of the infantry and cavalry of the Palace Corps (tien-chien ssu). Collectively, san-ya was responsible for maintaining troop strength, recruitment, training, and all other personnel actions. Once every three years, a grand review of the attached officers subject to the san-ya was held in the presence of the emperor during which promotion or demotion of personnel was regularized. This was known as chuan-yuan (shuffling of personnel). 37 Unattached officers were not permanently attached to army units and were not subject to the jurisdiction of the san-ya. Instead they came directly under the management of the Bureau of Military Affairs. To distinguish them from the attached officers, they were often referred to as officers of the Anterior Division (chien-pan) or of the Division Ranks (pan-hsing) as opposed to attached officers who were known as those of the Army Ranks (chun-pan).™ Unlike the attached officers who were required to operate within the confines of the units to which they were attached, unattached officers were members of an empire-wide service which offered unlimited opportunities to the ambitious. Depending on luck and personal effort, they could position themselves for a series of successful assignments for winning military merit and rapid promotion. In addition to more exciting prospects in the army, they could also move readily from a military to a civilian role as their terms of service allowed them to straddle both worlds. On the other hand, attached officers had to retire when their fitness for combat was impaired or when they reached the mandatory retirement age of fifty-five sui (fifty-four years, in Western reckoning). 3 ' There were excellent opportunities for the unattached officers to pursue careers in the civil service during the early years of the Sung dynasty. Despite the preference of the founding fathers of the dynasty for officials

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of literati background and despite a crash program of recruitment, there were simply not enough qualified personnel of this requisite background to staff the expanding bureaucracy. Military men with administrative skills were therefore in demand. Moreover, there were obviously some civil service positions for which a military background was a distinct advantage. These included county sheriffs, patrol constables, and administratorships for border prefectures which involved troop command and dealing with the affairs of barbarians. 4 0 The greatest employment opportunity for military men, however, was not in the regular line administration but in what may be called a special services bureaucracy. Following the fiscal trends of previous regimes since the mid-T'ang period, the Sung dynasty depended greatly on indirect taxation for revenue. 41 In consequence, an elaborate bureaucracy sprang up to administer the vast network of state monopolies and to manage vital services such as the haulage of tribute grain up the Grand Canal. Success at this bureaucratic service presumed a certain worldly cunning as well as dedication to efficiency—behavioral traits not frequently found among the scholarofficials with their classical learning and Confucian orientation. It was therefore desirable to keep them away from these positions and to recruit in their stead men who by tradition and temperament were more suited for them. These functionaries could come f r o m the ranks of the military or could be recruited directly from the commoners. For the convenience of personnel administration, the commoners recruited into this service were given military ranks. Thus two groups of public service functionaries with two parallel hierarchies of personal rank emerged in the Sung civil service. Once the principle of nonliterati officials in the civil service was established, it was capable of extensive application. In traditional China where there were no genuine representative institutions, the civil service in fact assumed considerable representative functions, allowing various social groups who supplied recruits to the civil service access to power and a fair hearing of their grievances. It was to the advantage of the regime to extend access to the civil service to the widest possible range of people and thus to assure their support. This personnel system for officials of nonliterati background could be made to accommodate the diverse groups whose support the regime sought to cultivate. These included the chieftains of border tribes, defectors from the barbariandominated Liao, Chin, Yuan, and Hsi-hsia states, and outstanding members of the clerical and subbureaucratic services as well as some scholars who failed to make the grade in the regular civil service examinations. 4 2 They could all be given bureaucratic ranks, and even entrusted with substantive appointments, without reflecting unfavorably on officials of literati origin since entry into their ranks was still jealously guarded. Most of the individuals of nonliterati background recruited into the

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civil service for political reasons or for staffing the special services bureaucracy undoubtedly congregated at the lower reaches of the military rank system. For practical reasons this meant that they had to fit into the servitor ranks. Under the necessity of accommodating these diverse groups of personnel and structuring the lower echelons of the officer corps, the servitor system of ranks therefore expanded in scope and took on new significance. Conceptually several stages may be discerned in the transformation of the servitors from mere personal aides of the emperor to full-fledged members of the civil service. In the beginning, their status was similar to that of the eunuchs. In fact, like the eunuchs they were under the jurisdiction of the hsuan-hui yuan (the Court for Proclaiming Imperial Majesty), which was responsible for maintaining discipline over eunuchs and other palace personnel. The first step in this transformation consisted in their being transferred out of the jurisdiction of the hsuan-hui yuan to a personnel agency of their own, namely, the Bureau of the Three Echelons (san-pan yuan). Second, new grades of rank were created for the servitors which together with the existing ones formed a hierarchy of ten grades. Third, these grades were applied indiscriminately to members of the officer corps and to civilians employed in various capacities in the civil service. Finally, the term servitors when used by itself without other epithets referred exclusively to officials in the civil service. Army officers still used the same servitor ranks but they were no longer subject to the same personnel agency and were known as servitors who enlisted in the army. The first three stages were accomplished by the early years of the eleventh century; but it was only with the onset of the Southern Sung that the fourth stage came into existence. Pragmatism, rather than any preconceived plan, seemed to be the guiding principle in this development. Under the regime of the hsuan-hui yuan, for instance, there were serious inequities in the handling of appointments. Morale was poor; some servitors were known to have remained at the same rank for forty years. 43 To address these problems, the Bureau of the Three Echelons was set up in 987. For over twenty years no special quarters were provided it, however, so that it had to operate out of the office of the hospitality commandant of the inner palace (nei k'o-sheng-shih). It was not until 1001 that it was moved into premises specially designed for it. 44 The completion of administrative changes paved the way for rapid numerical expansion of the servitors. In 991 they numbered less than three hundred but by 1017 they had surpassed the four thousand mark. (See Table 2.) Thence they assumed a more gradual climb until the early years of the twelfth century when in less than twenty years their number doubled. Even though the Northern Sung debacle entailed a drastic reduction of the bureaucracy, the servitor corps recovered rapidly and for the remainder of the dynasty remained at

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a level slightly higher than the median for the Northern Sung period. Statistics on the Sung civil service are incomplete, but there is reason to believe that for the last two centuries of the dynasty, the servitors constituted the largest bloc in the civil service. There were ten servitor grades. With the vast expansion in the n u m b e r of servitors, an important cleavage developed between those holding the top two grades and those of the lower eight. T h u s they came to be known as servitors m a j o r (ta-shih-ch'en) and servitors minor (hsiao shih-ch'en). There was also one subservitor grade, the holders of which were often treated as servitors minor. 45 (See Table 5.) In Northern Sung times there was a tendency for the servitors m a j o r to be predominantly army veterans with considerable combat experience in contrast to the servitors minor who were mostly civil service careerists. This situation may have been a consequence of the reward system. As military merit was the passport to rapid p r o m o t i o n , army officers who distinguished themselves on the battlefield naturally rose to the top of the hierarchy whereas civilians who had to depend on seniority for p r o m o tion congregated at the b o t t o m . Like the civil rank officials, there was no direct correlation between the work assignments of the servitors and the grades of their rank. Their appointment to the servitor corps and their specific grades of rank determined their base pay, fringe benefits, and overall status, but their actual work assignments were based on a different system of appointments, namely commissions (ch'ai-chien). In addition to these two types of appointment, a few particularly favored servitors received a third type of appointment known as ko-chih which p a r t o o k of the nature of both of the first two types. 4 6 In theory, ko-chih were appointments to the Postern G a t e Administration (ko-men), which had charge of court protocol and served as a link between the inner and the outer courts. Appointments to the Postern Gate Administration thus involved ready access to the emperor with all the advantages that such access implied. Servitors and vice-chiefs who received the most common of these appointments as warders of the palace gate (ko-men chih-ho) may be considered the personal aides of the emperor. As indicated previously, this status was originally shared by all servitors, but with the numerical expansion of the servitor corps it was n o longer so unless the servitors also received these ko-chih appointments. Appointment to the Postern Gate Administration could, of course, be honorary but was nevertheless eagerly sought since it usually entailed preferential treatment in f u t u r e j o b assignments as well as in rank promotion. In general, servitors primed for diplomatic missions or for appointments to administratorships of large prefectures usually received the concurrent appointments of warders of the postern gate to bolster their prestige. 47 The most convincing testimony to the composite nature of the servitor

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Table 5. The Servitors Hierarchy Before 1100 Servitors major 1. Nei-tien ch 'eng-chih (imperial courier of the inner hall) 2. Nei-tien ch'ung-pan (imperial warder of the inner hall) Servitors minor 3. Tung-t'ou kung-feng kuan (chamberlain of the east) 4. Hsi-t'ou kung-feng kuan (chamberlain of the west) 5. Tso shih-chin (imperial attendant of the left) 6. Yu shih-chin (imperial attendant of the right) 7. Tso-pan tien-chih (palace guard of the left) 8. Yu-pan tien-chih (palace guard of the right) 9. San-pan feng-chih (three-echelon functionary) 10. San-pan chieh-chih (three-echelon probationer) Subservitor grade 11. San-pan ch 'ai-shih (three-echelon serviceman)

corps and the varied capacities in which servitors were employed comes f r o m the texts of edicts calling upon senior military men to sponsor junior military men for promotion or for appointment to critical positions. One such edict specified the following categories under which senior military personnel could make sponsorship endorsements for junior men: 1. Cautious yet resolute, capable of overall planning 2. Appropriately strict and appropriately lenient, capable of controlling the multitudes 3. Valiant in battle, capable of boosting morale 4. Notable for a fierce sense of responsibility, capable of undertaking defense of border prefectures 5. Ingenious and dexterous, capable of directing the development of weapons and war materiel 6. Well versed in statutes and precedents, capable of taking charge of court protocol 7. Well practiced in civilian affairs, capable of assuming the administratorship of prefectures 8. Well acquainted with financial affairs, capable of keeping tax matters under control 9. Irreproachable in conduct, capable of disciplining the corrupt 10. Quick-witted and resourceful in speech, capable of undertaking diplomatic missions 48 It is obvious that the first five categories had reference to bona fide soldiers trained for combat. Category 6 had reference to service in the Postern Gate Administration. Categories 7, 8, and 9 had reference to military rank officials in the civil service while category 10 referred to those employed in diplomatic missions.

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I have already described the origin and evolution of the upper segment of the hierarchy of military ranks comprising the chiefs and vice-chiefs of the inner bureaus. Now let us look at its structure. In this segment there were altogether fifty-five grades of rank grouped around four basic structures. These were (1) a structure of twenty grades comprising the vice-chiefs of the inner bureaus and (2) a structure of twenty grades comprising the chiefs of the same bureaus; (3) paralleling the second structure was another of twelve grades, known as heng-hsing (horizontal file) occupied by men who were particularly close to the emperor and finally (4) a structure of six grades serving as the apex of the entire edifice of military ranks. 4 ' Coherent accounts of the Sung officer corps are not available in the standard sources; many aspects of their personnel system therefore remain obscure. There were, however, tantalizing remarks by Sung authors which shed light on some mysteries. For instance, the large number of grades in the vice-chiefs' and chiefs' groupings was attributed to the insight of the founding fathers, who wanted to set a limit to promotion by seniority, making success on the battlefield the key to rapid rise in rank and power. Promotions of up to ten grades were awarded to generals on the conclusion of successful campaigns. The recognition of military merit did not end with a single large j u m p in rank but was to extend to their subsequent career. There was a rule stipulating that those who had once earned military merit (kung) were to advance in rank at twice the rate of those without it. 50 The crowning achievement of a military career or of civilians with military rank was to attain the apex of the hierarchy. In outward f o r m , the six grades in this grouping followed the same pattern as that of the chiefs and vice-chiefs of the inner bureaus; in reality, they were derived f r o m a different tradition. They were the titles borne by the proud military governors of a bygone era who in their heyday (the late T ' a n g and Five Dynasties periods) controlled both military and civil power, holding sway over their jurisdiction in viceregal fashion. By Sung times the substance of power was removed f r o m them but the p o m p and ceremony survived. They became sinecure positions carrying stipends rivaling that of the chief ministers of state. 51 Even with the accelerated promotions due to military merit, the attainment of these apex grades still seemed a prospect which most military men could not realistically look forward to. The exclusiveness of this apex grouping was such that during the Yuan-feng era (1078-1085) no more than thirty individuals in all the Sung empire belonged to it. To mollify those who were excluded, a system of honorific apex grades (yaochtin or yao-ling) was instituted. These grades could be conferred on any person as a mark of imperial grace, and the recipients of these honorific grades were entitled to the same stipend as holders of the genuine apex grades. 52

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Personnel actions relating to vice-chiefs and chiefs came under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Military A f f a i r s . Successful officers were often detailed for civilian service as administrators of prefectures of strategic importance or as envoys on diplomatic missions. Although the senior rank structures were designed primarily for army officers, they also served the needs of nonmilitary men. In this category may be mentioned imperial clansmen and relatives, many of whom rose to the apex of the hierarchy with distinguished careers in the civil service."

The Yuan-feng

Reorganization

As an integral part of governmental institutions, the personnel system of the civil service underwent considerable transformation during the Yuanfeng era (1078-1085) when a m a j o r administrative reorganization took place. The overhauling of the machinery of government was prompted by the discrepancy between name and function. As mentioned earlier, most offices in the formal bureaucracy of the central government did not p e r f o r m the work which their titles indicated. The preservation of such nonfunctional offices meant bureaucratic proliferation since functional offices had to be created to take their place. With the expansion of the role of government as time went on, a multitude of makeshift agencies came into existence to take care of the increased administrative load, leading to further confusion of the overall organizational structure. There were, however, no compelling reasons why a thorough reorganization should be undertaken at this time. Although hitherto the system of government was not logically sound, it had passed the supreme test of time. It had sufficed for the dynasty for over a hundred years. Even the reformer Wang An-shih (1021-1086), who balked at nothing in his desire to improve the efficiency of the government, did not find it necessary to tinker with its administrative structure. 5 4 The Yuan-feng reorganization was undertaken after Wang had permanently retired f r o m politics. Nevertheless, this reorganization must be considered part of the rationalizing process that found its greatest expression in the reforms of Wang An-shih. As in the case of Wang's reforms, the Yuan-feng reorganization was designed to eliminate wastage and improve performance. Pursuant to this objective, the dual system of titular and functional offices was abolished. In most cases titular offices were resuscitated and made truly functional. The Board of Revenue, for instance, which before the reorganization was an empty shell, absorbed the functions of the Finance Commission as a consequence of the reorganization, thus becoming the most important agency concerned with revenue collection and disbursement. In view of the fact that the formal bureaucracy of the central government had become truly functional, it could no longer serve as the basis of a system of personal ranks without

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radically altering the concept of the rank system. Consequently, a new system of ranks was devised to take its place. ss This new system of ranks, which applied initially only to administrative class officials, drew f r o m the tradition of the "prestige titles." Old prestige titles from the Northern Sung or earlier dynasties were refurbished and new titles were created. These were arranged into a hierarchy and brought to a one-to-one relationship with titular offices of the p r e Yuan-feng era. As the old system converted readily into the new, disruption was kept to a minimum and most of the personnel rules of p r e Yuan-feng provenance could be applied to the Yuan-feng system without necessitating much adjustment. (See Chapter 5 for more details.) The new system of personal ranks possessed two distinct advantages over the old. First, as the terminology of the new rank system was based on the old prestige titles, it could be standardized with the lower grades ending in lang (gentlemen) and the higher grades ending in ta-fu (grandees). These titles that designated rank will subsequently be referred to as "classification titles." Second, as classification titles were never previously linked to functional offices, hardly anybody could mistake them for the actual functions or commissions of officials. (See Table 6.) The Yuan-feng reorganization also entailed a reshuffling of the personnel agencies. Previously, the executory class officials were administered by the Bureau of Executory Personnel (liu-nei chuan), which was subject to the Board of Personnel, while the administrative class officials were administered by the Bureau of Evaluations (shen-kuan yuan) subject to the Secretariat-Chancellery. The servitors, under the Bureau of the Three Echelons (san-pan yuan), were subject to the hsuan-huiyuan while the senior officers were under the Bureau of Military Affairs (shu-mi yuan). During the Hsi-ning era (1068-1077) jurisdiction over the senior officers was removed from the Bureau of Military Affairs and transferred to a second Bureau of Evaluations. The first bureau was renamed the East Bureau of Evaluations and the second bureau became the West Bureau of Evaluations. As a consequence of the Yuan-feng reorganization, all these disparate personnel agencies were brought together under the Board of Personnel. There is reason to believe that for a short while after the reorganization, these formerly separate agencies were able to preserve their autonomy. Eventually, however, they succumbed to the logic of the situation and became little more than subordinate units of a single governmental agency subject to uniform rules. The East Bureau of Evaluations was renamed the Left Personnel Office of the President (shang-shu tso-hsuan); the West Bureau of Evaluations was renamed the Right Personnel Office of the President (shang-shu yu-hsuan); the Bureau of Executory Personnel was renamed the Left Personnel Office of the Vice-president (shih-lang tso-hsuan); the Bureau of the Three Ech-

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Table 6. Sung Classification Titles: Civil Officials Administrative class 1. K'ai-fu-i-t'ung-san-ssu 2. T'e-chin 3. Chin-tzu kuang-lu ta-fu 4. Yin-ch 'ing kuang-lu ta-fu 5. Kuang-lu ta-fu 6. Hsuan-feng ta-fu 7. Cheng-feng ta-fu 8. Cheng-i ta-fu 9. Tung-feng ta-fu 10. T'ung-i ta-fu 11. T'ai-chung ta-fu 12. Chung ta-fu 13. Chung-feng ta-fu 14. Chung-san ta-fu 15. Chao-i ta-fu 16. Feng-chih ta-fu 17. Chao-ch'ing ta-fu 18. Chao-santa-fu 19. Chao-feng ta-fu 20. Chao-ch'ing lang 21. Chao-san lang 22. Chao-f eng lang 23. Chao-i lang 24. Feng-i lang 25. T'ung-chih lang 26. Hsuan-chiao lang 27. Hsuan-i lang 28. Ch'eng-shih lang 29. Ch'eng-feng lang 30. Ch''eng-wu lang

Executory class 31. Ch 'eng-chih lang 32. Ju-lin lang 33. Wen-1in lang 34. Ts'ung-shih lang 35. Ts'ung-cheng lang 36. Hsiu-chih lang 37. Ti-kung lang Preexecutory ranks not eligible for appointment 38. T'ung-shih lang 39. Teng-shih lang 40. Chiang-shih lang

Source: Sung Shih (chih-kuan 9).

elons was renamed the Right Personnel Office of the Vice-president (shih-lang

yu-hsuan).56

The Yuan-feng reorganization involved primarily the structure of the central government and had little effect on provincial administration. Thus the rank system of executory officials who served primarily in the provinces was not affected. It was not until the time of Emperor Huitsung that a similar rank system was adopted for them. There were two reasons why their rank system also underwent a similar change. First, although hitherto there was no real differentiation between titular offices and commissions for executory officials who generally served in the offices which their titles indicated, there were also frequent exceptions— for instance, someone whose official title might be the registrar of a county in Chekiang could be doing the work of office aide to the fiscal

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intendant of Shensi.57 Second, there was the compelling tendency of the bureaucracy to standardize administrative procedure and terminology. On the pattern of the administrative class officials, the commissions of executory officials were henceforth differentiated from their titular offices or personal ranks, which were denoted by a series of classification titles similar in format to those for administrative class officials. There were seven titles in this series corresponding to the seven grades that traditionally existed among the executory officials. Eventually three additional classification titles were created to accommodate individuals with pre-civil service status, namely, those who were not yet eligible for appointment to office. They included holders of facilitated degrees and recipients of the yin privilege. Holders of these pre-civil service grades had to be promoted to the executory grades before they became eligible for such appointments. 58 (See Table 6.) The same bureaucratic tendency for standardization also explains the recasting of the military rank system in line with that of the civilians. A uniform system of classification titles was adopted for them. Like civilian officials, those with military ranks now bore titles of "grandees" for the higher ranks and "gentlemen" for the lower ranks. The twenty grades in the vice-chiefs' grouping were consolidated into eight; so too were those in the chiefs' grouping. The horizontal file grouping of twelve grades remained twelve. The apex structure remained unchanged both in form and terminology. There were still ten servitors grades, with a oneto-one conversion between the old and the new system. Not counting the apex grouping, the entire military hierarchy became a monolithic structure of thirty-eight grades comparable to the thirty-two grades in the civilian hierarchy.59 (See Table 7.) The impact of the Yuan-feng reorganization on the status of officials of military rank in the civil service may be briefly summarized as follows. Prior to the reorganization, they were set apart from officials of civil rank by their own rank system with its unique terminology and by the fact that they belonged to a different personnel system. The Yuan-feng reorganization imposed a uniform terminology on the rank systems of both the civil and military officials and brought them under the same personnel agency. The barriers that used to separate them were therefore reduced and the psychological distance between them was shortened. On the other hand the Yuan-feng reorganization also had the effect of weakening the ties between the many military rank officials and the military establishment. This is particularly true of the vast multitude of servitors who were primarily civilians even though they bore military rank and had no contact whatsoever with the military establishment. In recognition of this fact, in official parlance military rank officials were often referred to as officials of the Right Section (yu-hsuan) as they came under the jurisdiction of the Right Section of the Board of Personnel.

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Table 7. Sung Classification Titles: Military Officials Horizontal file chiefs 1. T'ung-shih ta-fu 2. Cheng-shih ta-fu 3. Hsuan-cheng ta-fu 4. Li-cheng ta-fu 5. Hsieh-chung ta-fu 6. Chung-shih ta-fu 7. Chung-liang ta-fu 8. Chung-wei ta-fu 9. I-wei ta-fu 10. Chin-wei ta-fu 11. Kung-wei ta-fu 12. Tso-wu ta-fu 13. Yu-wu ta-fu Bureau chiefs 14. Wu -kung ta-fu 15. Wu -te ta-fu 16. Wu -hsien ta-fu 17. Wu -chieh ta-fu 18. Wu -liieh ta-fu 19. Wu -ching ta-fu 20. Wu •i ta-fu 21. Wu -i ta-fu Horizontal file vice-chiefs 22. Cheng-shih lang 23. Hsuan-cheng lang 24. Li-cheng lang 25. Hsieh-chung lang 26. Chung-shih tang 27. Chung-liang lang 28. Chung-wei lang 29. I-wei lang 30. Chin-wei lang 31. Kung-wei lang 32. Tso-wu lang 33. Yu-wu lang

Bureau vice-chiefs 34. Wu -kung lang 35. Wu -te lang 36. Wu -hsien lang 37. Wu -chieh lang 38. Wu -liieh lang 39. Wu -ching lang 40. Wu -i lang 41. Wu -i lang Servitors major 42. Hsun-wu lang 43. Hsiu-wu lang Servitors minor 44. Tsung-i lang 45. Ping-chieh lang 46. Chung-hsün lang 47. Chung-i lang 48. Cheng-chung lang 49. Pao-i lang 50. Ch'eng-chieh lang 51. Ch 'eng hsin lang Colonels 52. Chin-wu chiao-wei 53. Chin-i chiao-wei

Note: As systematized by the Shao-hsing era ( 1131 -1162). Source: Sung Shift (chih-kuan 9).

The use of the term Right Section obviates the necessity of calling them military officials, which is a definite misnomer. By the same token, officials of civil rank were referred to as those of the Left Section (tsohsuan). With the right-left dichotomy, the parallel nature of the two personnel systems in the civil service was given institutional expression. The standardizing, rationalizing spirit of the bureaucracy went on to engulf the para-civil service personnel as well. Extending downward

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from the servitor ranks, a new series of classification titles was created for these personnel. These were the chiao-wei (colonel) grades and the fuwei (lieutenant) grades. The chiao-wei grades were easily equated with the two subservitor grades of long standing. Holders of these grades were treated for all practical purposes as members of the servitors corps. 60 The highest of the fu-wei grades was especially created to accommodate the ta-chiang (marshals) employed by the Finance Commission and later by the Board of Revenue for managing convoys of goods. 61 The rest of the fu-wei grades were designed for individuals currently serving in a clerical capacity. The only substantial grouping of service personnel under the jurisdiction of the central government who were not brought into the standardized rank system were the hsia-pan chih ying (attendants of the lower division), formerly known as tien-shih (palace attendants), who served as a sort of personal aide to high officials. 62 The vast majority of subbureaucratic personnel in the employment of local and provincial government lay beyond the empire-wide standardized rank system, yet in a sense they too came under its influence. For instance, the dichotomy between officials of civil rank and officials of military rank in the civil service was reproduced in the subbureaucracy. The subbureaucratic counterpart to officials of civil rank was the li-jen (clerks) in contrast to the kung-jen (public servants), who were the subbureaucratic counterpart to officials of military rank. 6 3 Li-jen were primarily concerned with clerical work whereas kung-jen were composed mainly of law enforcement personnel, jailers, gendarmes, convict escorts, and prison and treasury guards. Unlike the civil service proper where the dichotomy between the civil and military was often pro forma (for example, the vast number of civilians with military rank), the dichotomy in the subbureaucratic ranks was based on the nature of work performed. The li-jen were involved solely in paperwork whereas the use of force, actual or potential, was implied in the work of the kung-jen. Considerable effort appeared to have been made to maintain this distinction. It was prohibited, for instance, to employ clerks in the army as combatants. 6 4 The Sung dynasty divides conveniently into two halves of approximately equal length: Northern Sung (960-1126) and Southern Sung (1127-1279). The Northern Sung period, so called because the capital of the empire was in the north at K'ai-feng, came to an end amidst a series of military calamities resulting in an almost total debacle of dynastic power. By the early years of the twelfth century, the hitherto obscure Jurchen people whose ancestral home was in the foothills of the Chang-pai Mountains in Eastern Manchuria had become a mighty power. Having toppled the semibarbarian Khitan empire of the Liao, they singled out the Sung as their next target of aggression. In rapid succession they swept past the feeble Sung defense along the frontier, overran the North China

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Plain, stormed the Sung capital of K'ai-feng, and took prisoner the Sung emperor and the entire imperial clan. Nevertheless a younger brother of the captured emperor escaped to the south, rallied loyalist forces, and managed to reestablish a smaller version of the Sung empire. This was the Southern Sung, so-called because its capital was located in the south at Hangchow. 6 5 As the Southern Sung was not a new dynasty but a continuation of the Northern Sung, one would expect a high degree of institutional continuity. This was true to a certain extent. The personnel system of the Southern Sung civil service was essentially the same as that of the Northern Sung after the Yuan-feng reorganization. There were, however, a number of notable differences. For instance, a refinement of the rank system for officials of civil rank was in effect during the reigns of the first two emperors of the restored dynasty. Among the criticisms of the Yuan-feng reorganization was the charge that the new rank system obliterated the distinction between those who were examination graduates and those who were not. In response to this criticism, a prefix system was adopted with the prefix tso (left) before the classification titles of those who were examination graduates and the prefix yu (right) for those who were not graduates. 6 6 A similar system was in force for a few years during the Yuan-yu era (1086-1093) of Emperor Che-tsung. 67 The use of the prefixes was finally discontinued on the ground that they hurt the pride of the nongraduates and discouraged them f r o m setting the highest standards of excellence for themselves. 68 In Northern Sung times servitors under the jurisdiction of the Board of Personnel included both soldiers on active duty and regular civil servants with some individuals routinely switching back and forth f r o m one identity to another. By Southern Sung times, soldiers on active duty were no longer included in the category of personnel subject to the jurisdiction of the board. To comprehend this development, we have to keep in mind the changing nature of the Sung army. Structurally, the Sung army underwent a major change in the transition from the Northern Sung to the Southern Sung. Although many aspects of Sung military history remain shrouded in obscurity, the Sung army in Northern Sung times may be described as a standing army with a centralized administration. In line with the tradition started during the Five Dynasties, a preponderance of the best troops, namely those of the Palace Corps and the Imperial Guards, were stationed in the vicinity of the capital whence they were dispatched for garrison duty on the frontier or organized into task forces to meet emergencies. It is this deployment pattern that made the personnel policy for the unattached officers feasible. Officers were not permanently attached to army units because there were no permanent formations above battalion level. As a consequence,

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they had to look to the central personnel agency for the furtherance of their careers. The military posture of the dynasty began to change with the reforms of Wang An-shih. Hitherto the regular army of the dynasty of more than one million men was made up entirely of mercenaries for whom soldiering was a full-time profession. The cost of supporting this army was a crushing burden on dynastic finances. To alleviate this financial burden, Wang An-shih pushed for his pao-chia militia scheme. Militiamen were to take over the task of maintaining law and order as well as local security with the hope that they could eventually take over the brunt of national defense and thus greatly reduce the need for the standing army. 6 ' While the success of the militia scheme cannot be easily ascertained, the vigor with which the government pushed for it undoubtedly had a deleterious effect on the regular army—its morale and combat readiness suffered through neglect. Simultaneously another development took place which signaled a departure from the centralized deployment pattern for the standing army. It was often alleged that under the centralized deployment pattern there were no binding ties between the officers and men. This absence of binding ties was not conducive to mutual trust, which in a critical situation could mean the difference between victory or defeat. Furthermore it was alleged that the constant rotation between garrison duty on the frontier and return to home base necessitated a lot of traveling so that troops did not have sufficient time to learn the complicated maneuvers essential to infantry or cavalry warfare. To meet these criticisms, the dynasty gradually moved away from the rotating deployment pattern in favor of a stationary one in permanent garrisons. These garrisons of about three thousand troops each, known as chiang, were permanent formations for both training and combat. There were altogether a hundred and thirty of them, distributed primarily along the northern frontier but with some also found in the interior. 70 There is no question that these innovations in the structure and deployment pattern of the army did not work as well as they were expected to. Inadequate provisions for monitoring the performance of the new system, together with the general malaise of the dynasty during the reign of Emperor Hui-tsung, contributed to the military debacle. The once imposing military establishment of the Sung dynasty crumbled under the onslaught of the Jurchen invading forces. When the dust cleared, it was the emergence of a new type of army organized on different principles that saved the dynasty f r o m total collapse. These new armies were the personal creations of a few charismatic leaders who exercised complete control over their command, their administration, and their deploym e n t . " When the war situation stabilized along the Huai frontier and the crisis subsided, these generals were removed as potential threats to the

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security of the dynasty. The armies they created, however, survived and retained their autonomy. There were four major ones, known as Grand Armies Stationed in Front of the Emperor (yu-chien chu ta-chiin), stationed in Szechwan, Hupei, Huai-si, and Huai-tung, respectively, each constituting a separate army administration. 7 2 As the threat of Jurchen invasion was not entirely removed, these armies were maintained on a war footing, each organized into a hierarchy of commands for combat purpose. Officers were therefore permanently attached to their units. The organization pattern and the very terminology of army ranks were indeed very different from those of Northern Sung times. The Palace Corps and the Imperial Guards which in Northern Sung times encompassed most of the frontline troops of the empire had by now reverted to the status that their name implied— namely, the personal guards of the emperor. The san-ya was resuscitated but had jurisdiction over a much smaller force—namely, the troops of the Palace Corps and the Imperial Guards. It was only within this force that the old tradition and old terminology for attached officers survived. 73 In discussing changes in the status of the military men in the civil service, cognizance must be taken of these structural changes in the Sung army. Central control of personnel assignment which had characterized the Northern Sung army gave way to autonomy for individual armies. With regard to the four regional armies which constituted the bulk of the elite troops of the Southern Sung dynasty, for instance, command positions were as a rule filled by internal promotions. 7 4 Career-minded officers therefore looked for advancement not to a central personnel agency but to the units to which they were attached. For practical purposes we may regard most of the officers on active duty as attached officers in the sense previously used. With genuine soldiers removed from the roster of Right Section officials, what remained on it were really civilians with no connection with the army. By Southern Sung times, the term servitor meant precisely an official of the Right Section with no army connection. It may be observed in concluding this chapter that the same servitor grades were still used in the army where they functioned like the hsiin (military merit) of the T'ang dynasty. These grades had little bearing on their command positions but were used to some extent to determine the level of remuneration. To distinguish the servitors in the civil service f r o m those in the army, the latter were designated as servitors who enlisted in the army (tsung-chiin shih-ch 'en).75

3 Function and Recruitment of the Civil Service

The traditional Chinese civil service differed from the typical modern civil service in a major respect: in addition to manning offices of the civil administration, members of the Chinese civil service as a group also performed certain roles in state and society. These roles had a direct bearing on the volume and method of recruitment for the civil service. In contrast, the typical modern civil service has no valid social roles. This point bears closer examination. Multiple Nature of the Traditional Chinese Civil

Service

In modern societies, membership in the civil service is not a passport to wealth and personal fulfillment. Young people who set their sights high generally pass up careers in the civil service in favor of sports, business, or the performing arts. This is because the modern civil service is primarily a service organization designed to do a specific job, namely, to man the offices of the civil administration. Civil servants are bureaucrats who perform routine jobs, mere cogs in a vast bureaucratic machine with little scope for personal initiative. As they are regarded as integral parts of the bureaucratic machine, the level of recruitment is determined by the manpower requirements of the civil service. Consequently the number of individuals recruited into the civil service cannot exceed the number of authorized civil service positions which are based on the size of the workload. 1 As full-time employees of the state, civil servants are expected to do a full day's work for a full day's pay. If for some reason the workload diminishes significantly, the excess manpower is laid off or shuffled to agencies of increasing importance. 2 Like its modern counterpart, the traditional Chinese civil service operated on the basis of a fixed number of authorized civil service positions determined by the magnitude of the workload and the ability of the state to pay for them. There was, however, no observable relationship between the number of civil service positions and the size of the civil service personnel pool—namely, the number of people recruited into the civil ser-

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vice for filling these positions. For most of the T'ang, Sung, and Ch'ing periods, the personnel pool of the civil service usually outnumbered civil service positions by better than a two-to-one ratio. 3 Obviously, the manpower needs of the Chinese civil service were not the crucial factor in determining the level of recruitment. The reason for this high recruitment pattern must be sought in the larger roles that the civil service played in the body politic of imperial China. The most important of these roles was to sustain the political elite who corresponded to that portion of the total population involved in the political processes of the state. 4 As bearers and custodians of the traditions, values, and norms of the state, the political elite provided legitimation for the regime in power. As bearers of administrative or martial skill, the elite constituted the manpower pool f r o m which the regime drew its trusted generals and administrators. The existence of the regime in power thus depended on continuous input from this elite. This fact explained the leverage of the elite vis-à-vis the regime because, as providers of legitimation and manpower, the elite could also withdraw that legitimation and manpower. No regime therefore could endure for long unless it had the support of the elite and did not do anything to alienate that support. There are two possible scenarios in the relationship between the political elite and the civil service. In the first case, the political elite was alive and well. The function of the civil service was therefore to preserve and perpetuate it. In the second case, the political elite, for some reason, had been irreparably damaged or it was so constituted that its composition and value system were not acceptable to the regime in power. The function of the civil service was to create and sustain a new political elite in keeping with the interest of the ruling dynasty. These two scenarios are illustrated by the T ' a n g and the Sung dynasties respectively. Chinese society in T'ang times was dominated by a hereditary elite of venerable vintage (men-fa) which was acceptable generally to the dynasty. 5 The function of the civil service was accordingly to facilitate the entry of members of this elite into government positions. In the main, recruitment into the T'ang civil service was based on a two-step procedure. The first step involved the attainment of civil service candidate status through one of the authorized channels; the second step involved passing a placement examination which conferred eligibility to hold civil service positions. 6 Civil service candidate status was obviously a transitional status and may be defined as the eligibility to take the placement examination. The most complete enumeration of the authorized channels that led to candidate status is to be found in the treatise of examination (hsuan-chu) of the New T'ang History (Hsin T'ang Shu). The same source also lists the maximum number of people permitted to acquire candidate status

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through each of the authorized channels. The widest channel was the schools, accounting for 46 percent of the candidate pool. (See Table 8.) Schools were established in the capital and in administrative subdivisions of the empire. Each school was assigned a quota of students it could admit, ranging from fifty for the larger prefectural schools to twenty for the smaller county schools. Students were to be given periodic examinations to gauge their academic progress. After nine years of satisfactory performance, they graduated and were eligible to take the placement examination. (See Appendix IV.) As admission into the local schools was controlled by the prefectural and county authorities, scions from the established families ( m e n - f a elite) were undoubtedly favored as it is precisely at this local level that they could exert most leverage. The ease of qualifying by this method and the large numbers who took advantage of it unquestionably lowered the prestige of this channel. It is recorded, for instance, that young men from elite families shunned the schools in droves. 7 Nevertheless, these schools must be regarded as a safety net undergirding the social position of the elite families as they had unimpeded access to it whenever they wanted. We may speculate that among the elite scoffers of the schools there were many who after repeated failure to gain civil service candidate status by the more prestigious channels (such as the civil service examination) returned to the schools as a last resort. The structure of the placement examinations also seemed to favor scions of established families. The name "placement examinations" may be misleading. These examinations were not designed as a test to ascertain the candidates' level of proficiency so that the right man could be matched with the right job; instead they were screening devices to weed out those who were deemed unfit for government service. It was not unusual for ten thousand or more candidates to congregate annually in the capital to take the examination; those who passed probably numbered no more than one thousand, that is, fewer than one in ten. 8 Under such conditions, the slightest edge that a candidate enjoyed over others might mean the difference between success or failure. The placement examination typically was made up of two parts: writTable 8. T'ang Dynasty Channels to Civil Service Status Category of Channels

Quota

%

Na-k 'o p 'in-tzu chai-lang (yin privilege) Students o f institutes and schools Various technical personnel Military personnel Assorted clerical personnel

10,862 63,070 598 47,184 6,000

7.8 45.8 0.4 41.5 4.4

Source: Hsin T'ang Shu 35.

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ten and oral. The crux of the written part consisted of a series of hypothetical cases of litigation on which the candidate was to render a verdict (p'an) as if he were actually presiding over a court of law. Success in this part of the examination depended on knowledge of the law, powers of deduction, plain common sense, and literary ability. Family background was probably not a factor. The oral part of the examination may be regarded as a kind of j o b interview to weed out those with speech impediments and the physically unfit. The dynasty put a premium on clarity of speech and proper deportment. On these latter aspects, the scions of elite families had a definite edge over those from humble families because desirable speech patterns and proper deportment came naturally to them as a matter of breeding, whereas the same could only be acquired with considerable effort by candidates of nonelite family background. 9 The T'ang scenario with regard to the relation between the civil service and the political elite also explains the high level of recruitment. In order that scions of elite families should be able to validate their status, as many of them as was practicable had to be given a chance to serve in the civil service. The consequence was a serious glut in the personnel pool. This glut led to work rationing and the lapse factor. By the time the Sung dynasty came to power, the men-fa aristocracy which constituted the political elite of the T ' a n g dynasty had long vanished. The political elite of the Five Dynasties were unacceptable to the founders of the Sung because they belonged to an episode of Chinese history which the Sung founders were determined to bring to an end. In the interest of political stability, they proceeded to create a new elite endowed with the characteristics they desired. Convinced that the political instability which beset the late T'ang and the Five Dynasties period was due to a breakdown of traditional morality, they strove to strengthen the bonds that held the fabric of society together. Thus the elite they envisioned was one with a firm commitment to Confucian values, patterned on the old men-fa aristocracy, humanistic and book-learned. Unlike the old men-fa elite, however, which often had a mind of its own and was not always content with a subordinate role, the new elite should be more amenable to monarchical control. There was to be no equivocation on the principle that members of this new elite owed their status wholly to the grace of the emperor and it was he who controlled the process of admission and status apportionment. As a consequence, a lasting symbiotic relationship between the state and the elite could come into existence. It was the state that created the elite by prescribing its education, and the latter in turn provided the state with legitimation and its manpower requirements. The task of giving form and substance to the political elite as envisioned by the founders of the dynasty was assigned to the civil service. Through an appropriate system of preferences in the recruitment, job allocation, remuneration, and promotion for members of the

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civil service, the desired characteristics of the new elite were to be created. 1 0 If the new political elite was to be an effective h u m a n bulwark for the state, it would be advantageous to admit as many people as possible into the civil service, thus giving them a stake in the establishment and converting them into adherents of the regime in power. There were, however, two countervailing forces that set a limit to the numerical expansion of the personnel of the civil service. First, elite status was prized partly because of its exclusiveness. The dynasty therefore could not continue to confer civil service ranks without cheapening their value. Second, the conferment of civil service ranks represented a definite drain on the state treasury in terms of both salary spent and revenue lost. The size of the civil service therefore could not be larger than what the state could afford. The civil service itself indeed controlled the decision-making process, including budget allocation, and there were no other elites to whom it was accountable. Nevertheless, in a Confucian state there were certain indispensable obligations to be met, such as the cost of maintaining the army, subsidy of client states, public works, and relief operations. T h e percentage of state revenue for the support of the civil service therefore could not expand indefinitely. In a society without dramatic breakthroughs in the economy and in the concept of government, a steady state in the size of the civil service was to prevail sooner or later. Apart f r o m size, another factor had an important bearing on the civil service as a h u m a n bulwark of the dynasty: the question of access. If the civil service developed into an exclusive oligarchy with no means for the people at large to gain entrance, ambitious men of nonelite origin would be frustrated. Their estrangement f r o m the dynasty spelled danger. It was therefore essential to keep the access routes open. What was needed was a system whereby men f r o m different regions and different social strata would have an equitable chance of gaining elite status and hence participation in the administration of the regime. In other words some "representative institutions" were needed to give people this access to status and power. With slight modification, the familiar Western concept of representation can be adapted to the study of the Sung civil service. In the modern context, representative institutions are synonymous with democracy and elections. Historically, they were not so. They were not concerned with the representation of the m a n on the street but with recognizable social groups. They operated first and foremost along class lines, as in the separate orders of the nobility, clergy, and the third estate of the French Estates General of 1789. In the French case, the first two orders, though a mere fraction of the total population, together had almost as many deputies as the third estate, which was supposed to represent the rest of the

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nation. While the French example dramatizes the inequity of representation, it is not unique. Until the Reform Acts of the nineteenth century many seats of the British Parliament were elected by the so-called pocket boroughs and vast segments of the population were really not represented." Representation of the premodern and early modern era may best be regarded as a safety valve for preventing the buildup of pressure against the regime in power. It was the representation of organized interests rather than that of the people at large. It strengthened the state by bringing these interests into the decision-making process and thus broadened the base of support for the state. Without stretching the analogy too far, the Sung civil service itself may be regarded as the Sung counterpart to the British Parliament or the French Estates General as a vital seat of power. Representation in the Sung context thus meant participation in the Sung civil service. The major interests that needed to be represented in the Sung system were the children of the civil service elite, members of the military, the clerical subbureaucracy, and the population at large. To hold the allegiance of the elite, individual members of the elite had to be allowed to pass their elite status to their children without too much difficulty. The military and the clerical subbureaucracy may be regarded as a subelite and, to bolster their morale, special provisions had to be made for them to graduate into elite status. The population at large was the source of new blood for the regime. While the bulk of the people might be ignored with impunity, it was imperative that the talented and the ambitious among them be preempted into the regime to prevent their developing into rallying points for dissidents. In this regard, we may also note the need to offer preferential treatment to defectors from enemy territories to encourage desertion. To cater to these different interests in the Sung empire, the state thus devised different entry methods for the civil service. A Northern Sung source listed over seventy of them, although no more than half a dozen were statistically significant. 12 The extent of representation of any organized interest vis-à-vis other interests usually reflects the power relationship between them in real life. Any substantial change in the power relationship usually necessitates a similar change in the pattern of representation. Beyond doubt the relative clout of the foregoing interests underwent considerable fluctuation during the three hundred years of the Sung dynasty, and the extent of their representation changed accordingly. Due to the paucity of statistics, however, this changing pattern of representation cannot be fully documented. The available information nevertheless is sufficient to indicate some persistent trends. We will start with a sure reference point: a complete set of figures on the composition of the Sung civil service in terms of entry method for the

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year 1213. This is a o n e - o f - a - k i n d set for the entire Sung period. T h e f o u r m a j o r groupings of civil service personnel (administrative class officials, executory class officials, servitors major, a n d servitors m i n o r ) were reported separately, precisely the i n f o r m a t i o n we require in o u r study of the pattern of representation. (See Table 9.) A l t h o u g h the veracity of the Table 9. C o m p o s i t i o n of the Sung Civil Service (Roster of 1213) in Terms of Entry M e t h o d Number of Individuals

%

Administrative class Examination graduates Yin privilege Facilitated degree recipients Special grace beneficiaries (feng-piao) Imperial clansmen Others Total

927 1,257 71 52 24 13 2,344

39 53 4 2 1 1 100

Servitors major and above Yin privilege Examination graduates (military version) Imperial clansmen Transfer from army Enemy defectors Miscellaneous Total

1,680 77 425 1,285 59 345 3,871

44 2 11 32 2 9 100

Executory class Examination graduates Yin privilege Facilitated degree recipients Imperial clansmen Transfer from clerical service Purchase (na-shu) Others Total

4,325 6,366 5,056 560 165 429 96 16,997

25 37 30 4 1 3 0 100

Servitors minor Regular yin privilege Heirs of soldiers killed in combat Husbands of daughters of soldiers killed in combat Imperial clansmen Army transfers Clerical service transfers Examination (military) graduates Beneficiaries of missions Relatives of imperial consorts Others Total

7,718 253 69 3,326 1,606 1,331 415 255 185 448 15,606

49 1 0 22 10 9 3 2 1 3 100

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Table 10. Composition of Civil Service Personnel of Military Rank, Servitors Minor (Roster of 1234) Entry Method A c c e s s i o n by yin privilege (tsou-pu) Imperial clansmen Transfer f r o m clerical service Transfer f r o m army rank (chun-pan) Qualified by military merit (chun-kung) Graduates o f military version o f civil service examinations (wu-chii)

Number of Individuals

Percentage of Total

5,500 3,600 1,000 1,000 1,000

40 26 7 7 7

500

4

Source: Liu K'e-chuang, Ho-ch'uan hsien-sheng ta-ch'uan chi 15:14ab.

figures in this set cannot be established in their entirety, corroborative materials do exist for some segment of the civil service personnel system. For instance, we have a similar set of figures on the composition of servitors minor for the year 1234. (See Table 10.) Thus we are able to construct the collective profiles for servitors minor for the years 1213 and 1234. These profiles are remarkably similar. The number of individuals in the civil service of 1213 with examination degrees has also been compared with the known number of degrees conferred for the preceding forty years. In this regard the 1213 figures are found to be well within the limits of probability. (See Appendix I.) With the civil service profile for 1213 as our reference point, we can now survey some of the major recruitment channels in an effort to establish persistent trends for recruitment and representation. The Civil Service

Examination

The civil service examination was the premier entry method into the civil service by virtue of the prestige of examination graduates and their privileged position in the civil service. As far back as T'ang times when the examination system as a regular civil service recruitment channel was institutionalized, examination graduates, especially those with the doctor of letters degree (chin-shih), were always glamorized in elite society. Competitive examinations for admission into the civil service were held from the beginning to the very end of the Sung dynasty. Except for its last forty years, we have records of the number of individuals who passed each of these examinations. 13 (See Appendix I for civil service examination degree output.) Moreover, we also possess two extant lists of successful examination candidates relating to the years 1148 and 1256.14 These lists purport to be complete enumerations of the candidates who passed the respective examinations and provide considerable information on each graduate such as age, legal residence, and civil service

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rank held by self and by forebears, if any. On the basis of these statistics, coupled with verbal statements in the standard sources, it is possible to reconstruct the role of the examinations in the recruitment picture of the civil service. I begin with the structure of the examination system and end with an assessment of its significance from the point of view of the representation function of the civil service. Examinations with a recruitment function for the civil service may be first divided into two types: scheduled and unscheduled. 1 5 Unscheduled examinations were held only when there were candidates meeting the specified requirements. These included the decree examinations (chih-chii) and the examination for unusually bright children (t'ung-tzu k'o). Statistically they were insignificant. With regard to scheduled examinations, there were two m a j o r types, namely, the military version and the civilian version of the civil service examination. The military version, wu-chii, was instituted much later than the civilian version and was discontinued for long periods of time in the course of the dynasty. For the years during which the military examinations were held, the total degree output averaged only one-tenth of that of the civilian version. Wu-chti candidates were required to be tested on both their mastery of martial skills (horsemanship and archery) and on their knowledge of the classics of military science. On passing the examination, they could look forward to a career in the civil service by holding rank in the hierarchy of military ranks. They did not have to serve in the army unless they volunteered (tsung-chiin). In fact they were regarded as scholars even if they joined the military establishment. As in the case of the civilian version of the civil service examination, candidates who failed the wu-chii a number of times were eligible for the so-called facilitated degrees (t'e-tsou-ming). The civilian version was undoubtedly the mainstream of the civil service examination system. For the first hundred years of the dynasty the system was characterized by a multiplicity of examination fields and degrees. The most prestigious was the doctorate of letters (chin-shih), followed by the doctorate of the nine classics (chiu-ching), and finally a cluster of fields known collectively as the "various fields" (chu-k'o), which included the six classics, the three histories, the three commentaries, and the law. The chin-shih degree was the most esteemed because it was the warrant of wide learning and literary accomplishment, whereas the chu-k'o degrees called only for rote memory. Although the latter had a consistently higher degree output, they were gradually phased out by the reign of Emperor Shen-tsung. Subsequently the only degrees granted in the scheduled examinations were of the chin-shih variety. The study of the classics, however, was not ignored, since the scope of the chin-shih examination was expanded to include a specialization in the classics. 16 Simultaneous with the reduction of the varieties of degrees was an adjustment in the frequency of the examination. Previously, examina-

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tions were held annually during the reign of T'ai-tsu, biannually and quadrennially during the reign of Jen-tsung, and at irregular intervals for the remainder of the time. Starting in 1070, examinations were held triennially. The three-year cycle was primarily for the convenience of the state. Occurring only once in three years, the examination could be treated as a special event and the elaborate machinery for setting examination questions, proctoring, and grading could be geared up in time. The longer interval was also acceptable to the candidates. They took the qualifying examination (chieh-shih) in their home prefecture during the autumn of the first year and, if successful, went to the imperial capital to take the metropolitan examination in the spring of the second year. For those who failed to pass, usually more than 90 percent of all the candidates, there was ample time to return to the home prefecture to prepare for the next round of the examination cycle. The three-year rule became almost sacrosanct. In the two hundred years since the rule came into effect to the end of the dynasty, with the exception of the ten years (111 0— 1120) when the civil service examination system was suspended in favor of the san-she system as a means of recruitment for the civil service,17 the examinations departed from the schedule only three times and then under particularly trying circumstances. From the beginning the civil service examination operated within a two-tiered framework: the qualifying examination and the metropolitan examination. The qualifying examination was administered primarily by the prefectural authorities.18 To maintain the desired standards, prefectural examiners were held responsible for the subsequent performance of the candidates they passed. They were punished if a certain percentage of the candidates failed to attain the minimum standards in the metropolitan examination. The candidates who failed badly were themselves penalized by being denied the right to take the examination again for a number of years. To overcome the hesitancy of prefectural examiners to pass candidates for qualifying examinations for fear of incurring punishments, a quota system was inaugurated in 1005. At first it was more a guideline than a strict quota. Prefectural examiners were permitted to pass more candidates if their performance warranted. The quota concept, however, soon took hold and it became difficult to switch from the quota for one category of degree candidates to another to accommodate the changing demand for them—for example, from the various fields to the doctorate of letters. To avoid presenting prefectural examiners with a conflict of interest, it was enacted that their retainers or clients (men-k'e), and their relatives within a certain specified degree of kinship, were not permitted to take the regular qualifying examination. Instead they, together with the children of officials serving more than two thousand li from their legal residence, were to take the qualifying examination under the auspices of the

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office of the fiscal intendant of each circuit. Moreover, the Imperial University (t'ai-hsueh) also operated a kind of qualifying examination for its students. Quotas were also assigned t h e m . " In general, the qualification acquired as a result of passing the qualifying examination was supposed to have expired with each examination cycle. If a metropolitan examination candidate failed to pass, he had to reestablish his eligibility by passing the qualifying examination again. Under certain circumstances the requirement of passing the qualifying examination could be waived (mien-chieh). This usually happened as a mark of imperial grace. This mien-chieh privilege, for instance, could be granted to scholars from localities which the emperor had visited in the current or previous year. It could also be purchased. The metropolitan examination was also known as the departmental examination (sheng-shih), as it was administered by a unit of the Department of State Affairs (shang-shu sheng), namely, the li-pu (Board of Rites). Although the Board of Rites was charged with the administrative aspect of the examination, special supervisors were appointed each time the examination was held. In response to charges of fraud and other irregularities, T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the dynasty, took a personal interest in reviewing the outcome of the examination. This review eventually developed into a final session for the successful candidates known as the palace examination (tien-shih) held in the presence of the emperor. Until the time of Jen-tsung, this final session was also the final screening; candidates with unsatisfactory performance could be flunked. This screening function finally came to an end in 1057 on the ground that scholars whose struggle had brought them into the presence of the emperor should not be turned away empty-handed. 2 0 Subsequently the palace examination was used exclusively for ranking. On the basis of their performance at this examination, candidates were divided into five divisions (chia). The first ten of the first division received the degree chin-shih chi-ti. The others down to the end of the fourth division received the degree chin-shih ch'u-shen. The fifth division received the degree tung chin-shih ch'u-shen.21 For the most part, differences in the wording of the degree did not seem to have any bearing on the substantive issues of job placement or speed of promotion. The top three of the first division, however, always remained a category apart. In the early Northern Sung period, they often received the coveted appointment of prefectural vice-administrator (t'ung-p'an). Throughout the Sung period they were placed at a higher level in the hierarchy of executory ranks than other examination graduates and enjoyed the enormous advantage of promotion into the administrative class without the need of sponsor endorsements. Those graduating in the fifth division used to be treated like others higher up in the list. Some time in the Southern Sung period, however, in an attempt to slow the entry of qualified personnel into the

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job placement process, they were singled out for discriminatory treatment. They had to wait three years before they became eligible for placement. 22 It may be appropriate to say a few words on the general principles that the Sung civil service relied upon to ensure the integrity of the examination system.23 Safeguards were particularly elaborate for examinations at the metropolitan level. In order that the judgment of examiners would not be unduly influenced by their preconceived notions of the candidates, the principle of anonymity was implemented. The name of each candidate, his native place, and other particulars which might betray his identity were not allowed on his examination paper; instead each candidate was identified by a code number. This practice was known as mifeng (sealing up). Moreover, to guard against the possibility that the examiners might recognize the identity of the candidates through familiarity with their handwriting or through some prearranged orthographic peculiarity, they were not to read the original scripts of the candidates; the original scripts were copied out in toto by a corps of copyists, and it was the fair copies so produced that the examiners read. This process was known as teng-lu (preparing the fair copy). It may also be observed that in order to minimize subjective judgment, each script was read by three examiners. The first two examiners were to read the script independently of each other and assign a tentative grade. If the two examiners agreed with each other in their ratings of the script, the matter ended there. If there was considerable discrepancy between them, it was the function of the third examiner to reconcile their differences. He could endorse the rating of either of the first two examiners. Under certain circumstances, he was authorized to make a third and definitive rating if he disagreed with the ratings assigned by the first two examiners. Those who failed the metropolitan examination a number of times were eligible to take a special examination leading to the so-called facilitated degree (t'e-tsou-ming). This was not designed as a rescue operation to salvage talent which the regular examination system might have missed; rather, it was primarily inspired by humanitarian motives. Emperor T'ai-tsung took compassion on those scholars who spent practically their entire lives preparing and taking examinations all to no avail. Depending on their performance at the examination for the facilitated degrees, they were all ranked into different divisions and received different civil service ranks accordingly. Initially the special examination was probably pro forma. All candidates who had taken the metropolitan examination a minimum of five times, or four times if over fifty-five years of age, were granted the degree. To hold the line on civil service expansion, however, an acceptance ratio was eventually adopted for the examination. This ratio was originally fixed at one out of two but was later diminished to one out of three. The majority of candidates who

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passed the facilitated degree examination received the civil service rank of wen-hsiieh (literati), one of the few designations for individuals considered to be part of the civil service personnel system but currently not eligible for job placement. This disability ended with a general amnesty, and candidates were then eligible for appointment to many positions for first termers.24 General amnesties were granted on occasions such as a new emperor's ascension, a change of reign title, the birth of a prince, or the triennial chiao sacrifice. From the beginning of the dynasty until the Chien-tao era (1165-1173) a total of a hundred and twenty-three general amnesties were recorded, averaging 1.35 years between each.25 For most of the years for which we have statistics on the number of regular degrees and facilitated degrees, the latter averaged slightly more than the former, indicating that a significant proportion of civil service personnel of the lower ranks entered the civil service by this route. They constituted the second largest group of executory officials for the civil service roster of 1213 (30 percent) as opposed to 25 percent for those who qualified by passing the regular examination. Due to their advanced age and less than reputable entry method, their representation in the administrative class was much smaller, only 3 percent. Until the Southern Sung period, public opinion did not seem to have much regard for holders of these facilitated degrees. The celebrated poet Su Shih, for instance, drew attention to the mediocre performance record of the thousands of these degree holders and blamed them for clogging up the job placement process.26 Public attitudes changed during the Southern Sung period, however, and attainment of the facilitated degrees became a proud achievement to be worth recording in prefectural and county gazetteers.27 The privilege of accelerated personal rank promotion, which regular examination graduates enjoyed, was not permitted graduates of the facilitated degree examinations. In fact, the latter were not referred to as formally qualified (yu ch'u-shen).1* Nevertheless, in our exploration of the role the examination system played in the civil service recruitment picture, holders of the facilitated degrees undoubtedly should be lumped together with the regular degree holders. They shared the same background: Both groups of examination graduates were drawn from the same pool of candidates who regarded the examination system as the passport to fame and success. Their claim to recognition and emolument was not based on past service rendered to the dynasty either directly or vicariously through the efforts of their forebears. In fact they had no claim whatsoever other than the grace (en) of the emperor. It is true that an official career was the norm for the capable—as is attested in the saying, "He who excels in scholarship goes into government service." This is a factual statement, however, not a prescriptive one. Chinese culture had indeed nurtured in the literati an expectation of such service and of mem-

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bership in the ruling elite, but it did not confer on them an automatic right to it. A way out of this predicament is suggested by Chinese folklore, which presumed the existence of men of exceptional talent (i-jen) living among the rustics. For lack of opportunities, the talent of these men could find no scope and therefore existed only as a potential. It was the discovery of these men by the true prince that activated the potential and made the talent real. These men thus owed an unending debt of gratitude to the prince for enabling them to fulfill their destiny. The reciprocal relation between them created one of the strongest bonds in Chinese society—that between the prince and his ministers. Whereas in former times the prince depended on his own insight and on public opinion in selecting his ministers, this process was now institutionalized. The discovery of talented men was no longer left to chance but was based on standardized procedures, that is, the civil service examinations. In other words, the mechanism of selection had changed but the overall situation remained the same. Graduates of the examination system were still "discovered" by the emperor and thus owed him an unending debt of gratitude. These sentiments sustained a bond between them which was comparable to the prince-minister bond of antiquity. The examination was thus fitted to play a unique role during the early phase of the dynasty when there was an urgent need to expand the ruling elite. The Sung dynasty, like most major Chinese dynasties, was initially created on the basis of chicanery and brute force. Chao K'uang-yin usurped the throne of the Later Chou, one of the succession of shortlived dynasties that ruled in North China during the early tenth century. He then proceeded to make himself master of the rest of China by systematically subjugating the hitherto independent kingdoms of the Yangtze valley and farther south. This process of political reunification of China was already well under way by the time of Chao K'uang-yin's death. His younger brother and successor, T'ai-tsung, was an outstanding administrator, and it fell to his lot to consolidate the empire which the sword of his brother had won. Consolidation required that all vestiges of the separate existence of the previously independent kingdoms be eradicated and the whole of the empire be brought under a single, uniform administration. Ultimately, consolidation meant not mere acceptance of the new dynasty but active support and identification with it as well. It is here that the examination system was uniquely tailored to the needs of consolidation. By enforcing the competitive nature of the examination, the ruler ensured the quality of the graduates. By controlling the subject matter of the examination he prescribed the curriculum and, indirectly, the thought processes of the prospective graduates. As long as those admitted into the civil service were examination graduates it did not matter where they hailed from or what their family background was. What mattered most was that they were all graduates of the examination sys-

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tem and therefore deemed trustworthy. The examination was the baptism of fire that purified and cleansed so that the past of the candidates became irrelevant. It consummated the archetypal relationship between the prince and the ministers whom the prince had personally selected. This bond between them took precedence over all others. The examination also provided a means of reconciliation between the conquerors and the conquered. The former was comprised of the people of North China who were the first to rally to the Sung cause and supplied most of the Sung army of conquest. The latter was made u p of the people of the south in the formerly independent kingdoms of the Yangtze valley and farther south. With their past rebellious record forgiven and forgotten, the southerners were recruited into the ruling elite through the civil service examination and, together with their brethren f r o m the north, participated in the great endeavor to make the present a better place to live in. 29 It is thus understandable that the pace of recruitment through the civil service examination quickened immensely during the reign of T'ai-tsung. In fact the reign of T'ai-tsung represented the maximum use of the examination system for recruitment purposes. (See Figure 3.) The size of the graduate class fluctuated in subsequent years, but never did it approach the peak level of T'ai-tsung's time. This was because the recruitment role of the examination system had changed. During T'aitsung's time it was the principal device to build up a ruling elite; subsequently, with the ruling elite already fully established, recruitment into the civil service was for replacement, and among the many recruitment channels the examination system was not even the most important one in terms of the volume of recruits processed. According to the composition of the civil service roster of 1213, for instance, the examination graduates account for 42 percent of the administrative class officials, 55 percent of the executory class officials (counting both the regular and the facilitated degree recipients), 2 percent of the servitors major, and 3 percent of the servitors minor. For the civil service as a whole, examination graduates account for 28 percent of the total compared to 45 percent who entered the civil service on the basis of t h e y i n privilege. (See Table 11.) Nevertheless the examination system had a significance far transcendTable 11. Composition of the Sung Civil Service a . d . 1213

Qualifying Method

Administrative Class Officials

Yin privilege Examination graduates Regular degree Facilitated degree Others

Executory Class Officials

Servitors Major

Servitors Minor

Total

Percentage of Civil Service

1,257

6,366

1,680

8,040

17,343

45

927 71 89

4,325 5,056 1,250

77 0 2,114

415 0 7,151

10 871

28

10,604

27

Source: Li Hsin-chuan (1), pp. 1061-1062.

ssjepipueo [njssssans jo jaquinj^

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ing the numbers game. It was the only recruitment method that was not tied to any sectarian or regional interest but catered to the country at large. Men who qualified by the examination route could come from any walk of life. A significant proportion of them probably hailed from families with a tradition of government service. Many were already officials or possessed civil service ranks; they took the examination to benefit from the higher prestige and advantage of accelerated personal rank promotion that the examination graduates enjoyed. The majority, however, were men with no immediate links to the ruling elite, according to the study by Kracke. 30 Whereas other recruitment methods (such as the yin privilege) were not incompatible with the principle of regional representation, the examination system was the one method that could be linked to it directly. There was considerable debate during the Northern Sung period whether it would be desirable to scrap the current system in which candidates competed empire-wide in favor of one whereby a numerical quota was assigned to each circuit so that candidates competed only against those from the same circuit. Under the empire-wide competition, the lion's share of the graduates came from the metropolitan area of K'ai-feng (the imperial capital) and a few culturally advanced circuits, while some circuits were persistently underrepresented. According to the statistics cited by advocates of reform, K'ai-feng and the kuo-tzu chien (school of advanced studies for children of officials) together accounted for 53 percent of the chin-shih graduates of the class of 1062. In the same examination the circuits of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Li-chou did not produce a single graduate." The quota system was not adopted in its entirety because its implementation would have involved separate recruitment standards for each of the circuits and caused difficulty in a civil service geared to rules and regulations of empire-wide application. Instead, a partial quota system was adopted for the five border circuits of Hopei East, Hopei West, Ho-tung, Shensi-Ch'in-feng, and Shensi-Yung-hsing. Candidates from these five circuits were shielded from the empire-wide competition and guaranteed a fixed quota of examination graduates on the ground that, by tradition and temperament, scholars from these areas were not used to eloquent self-expression and therefore were handicapped in comparison with scholars from the rest of China. This was undoubtedly the ostensible explanation. In actuality, they were accorded such preferential treatment because they came from the strategically vital circuits of the north and northwest fronting the Khitan-Liao and the Tanggut empires. If their aspiration to become part of the Sung ruling elite was blocked due to their inability to pass the civil service examination, they might be tempted to seek their fortune across the border, as some of their ancestors had done. The Liao and Tanggut empires were built up with the col-

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Iaboration of Chinese defectors, many of whom were frustrated scholars in their own land. To deny trained manpower to the enemy by preempting it for the Sung cause was the real rationale for the special civil service quota system. This rationale was vividly illustrated in the special civil service examination for Hopei in 1005. This examination took place one year after the Peace of Shan-yuan (1004) was signed to conclude the desultory war with Khitan-Liao. With military action at an end, competition between the rival powers could take a new form—namely, for prestige and for the allegiance of the border population. The Liao empire scheduled the first expanded version of its civil service examination for 1006.32 The Liao civil service examination was designed primarily for the Chinese population of the empire. Obviously construing the Liao civil service examination as a threat, the Sung government took the unprecedented move of holding the special civil service examination for Hopei and graduating over seven hundred with facilitated degrees. No special quotas were assigned to other circuits. In the case of the two southernmost circuits of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, there was an institution peculiar to these circuits which, by providing an additional access route to the civil service for their scholars, served the same purpose as a guaranteed quota. The institution in question was the "special examination" (she-shih) for recruitment into a local civil service personnel system known as she-kuan (acting officials). After serving a number of terms satisfactorily in this capacity, members of the she-kuan corps were eligible for transfer to the regular civil service personnel system.33 During the Southern Sung period the most significant development was the regularization of the so-called prodepartmental examination (leisheng-shih) for the circuits of Szechwan. In the early years of Kaotsung's reign and before the dynasty regained control of things, it was necessary to decentralize the functions of the central government. For the examination year of 1128, therefore, it was decided that instead of requiring all scholars eligible for the departmental examination to assemble at the capital (which was under enemy occupation and a permanent substitute capital had not been chosen), they were to remain in their respective circuits and take an examination organized by the office of the judicial intendant equivalent to the departmental examination. This was the origin of the prodepartmental examination. 34 With the consolidation of dynastic power and the return of normalcy, most of these prodepartmental examinations were phased out. They were obviously a makeshift institution, and the persistent charges of fraud spelled their doom. The prodepartmental examination for the Szechwan circuits, owing to a different set of circumstances, was spared. Cut off from the rest of China by the towering mountain ranges that rim this vast inland basin, Szechwan was already considered one of the

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most remote and inaccessible parts of the empire in Northern Sung. By Southern Sung times, with the move of its capital to Hangchow, the difficulty of access was aggravated by the long and perilous voyage down the Yangtze valley. To hold this vast and potentially abundant land in the face of the Jurchen invasion, Kao-tsung sent his right-hand man, Chang Tsun, to preside over what amounted to the viceroyalty of Szechwan (hsuan-fu ssu). He was given plenipotentiary powers to manage the civil, military, and financial affairs of the entire region. When the crisis abated, the prerogatives of the Szechwan viceroyalty were reduced and the institutional structure somewhat modified. Instead of a single man controlling financial, civil, and military affairs, these were separated under three parallel administrations. Being himself of scholarly background, Chang Tsun personally took charge of the prodepartmental examination of Szechwan. His successors were equally concerned. Unlike the rest of China where the prodepartmental examinations were conducted by the circuit judicial intendants, the same examination in Szechwan was always held under the auspices of the regional government, which possessed far greater resources than the circuit judicial intendants. It was therefore easier to ensure the integrity of the examination. Ultimately, it was the viability of this arrangement that saved it f r o m the fate which befell other prodepartmental examinations. 35 Defenders of the Szechwan examination claimed that their scholars were mostly poor and that it was unethical to put them to the risk and the expense of the long and perilous voyage to Hangchow. This does not appear to be a convincing argument. The real reason Szechwan was allowed to retain this examination was the fact that it had proved its usefulness in providing the scholars of this region adequate access t o the civil service. In the changed geopolitical situation of the Southern Sung period, Szechwan had acquired a significance similar to that of the five north and northwestern circuits in the Northern Sung as the first line of defense of the Southern Sung empire. It was therefore necessary to make special concessions to their scholars in order to bind them to the regime and forestall possible disaffection of the people. The number of people permitted to pass the Szechwan prodepartmental examination was governed by a fixed formula prescribed by law. 36 Although the majority of Szechwan scholars pinned their hopes of joining the ruling elite on the prodepartmental examination, there was always a small minority who, having passed the qualifying examinations in Szechwan prefectures, preferred to try their luck at the regular departmental examinations held at the imperial capital at Hangchow. Those who chose the latter approach were in fact permitted to travel at government expense. 37 Theoretically the odds of passing were similar, but those who went to Hangchow had the advantage of having something t o fall

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back upon in case they failed the main event. They could compete in the entrance examination for the Imperial University (t'ai-hsueh) which, in addition to offering academic training, also provided an alternative access to civil service status. 38 With the guaranteed access to the civil service that the prodepartmental examination entailed, it may be interesting to inquire how Szechwan fared in comparison to other regions of the Southern Sung empire in terms of civil service representation. Initially it appears that the two extant lists of examination graduates could go a long way in answering this question. For either of the two examination years, I have tabulated the graduate output of individual circuits. The graduate output was then correlated with the available population figures to arrive at a coefficient of representation. The results are presented in Tables 12 and 13. Before trying to interpret these tabulations, it is necessary to begin with a word of caution so that no unwarranted significance be read into the figures. First, the two extant lists, though they provide an almost Table 12. Geographical Distribution of Civil Service Examination Graduates of the Class of Wang Tso (A.D. 1148)

Circuit Liang-che Fukien Chiang-tung Chiang-hsi Hunan Huai-tung Huai-hsi Kwangtung Kwangsi Ching-hsi Chengtu Tung-ch'uan Li-chou K'uei-chou Shensi Clansmen Others Empire total Empire total exclusive of clansmen a

Coefficient of Graduate Production

Population in Terms

Number of

of Household

Graduates

2,243,348 1,390,565 966,428 1,891,392 968,930 110,897 218,250 a 517,711 488,655 6,252 1,131,489" 805,364 371,097 386,978 253,806 n.a. n.a. 11,751,162

89 66 31 23 1 4 0 5 0 0 35 29 2 4 8 16 17 331

3.97 4.75 3.21 1.22 0.10 3.60 0 0.97 0 0 3.09 3.60 0.54 1.03 3.15 n.a. n.a. 2.62

315

2.68

(per 100,000 Pc

Figure for the year 1223. Figure for the year 1128. Source: Ti-ming lu. Note: Population figures refer to the Shao-hsing period (1131-1161) of the Southern Sung. b

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Table 13. Geographical Distribution of Civil Service Examination Graduates of the Class of Wen T'ien-hsiang (A.D. 1256)

Circuit Liang-che Fukien Chiang-tung Chiang-hsi Hunan Hupei Huai-tung Huai-hsi Kwangtung Kwangsi Chengtu Tung-ch'uan Li-chou K'uei-chou Shensi Clansmen Others Empire total Empire total exclusive o f clansmen

Population in Terms of Household

Number of Graduates

Coefficient of Graduate Production (per 100,000 Population)

2,229,321 1,599,214 1,046,272 2,267,983 1,251,202 369,820 127,369 218,250 445,906 528,220 1,139,790 841,129 401,174 207,999 n.a. n.a. n.a. 12,670,801

108 104 26 60 9 11 6 8 17 20 33 55 13 5 6 75 18 577

4.64 6.5 2.59 2.65 0.72 2.97 4.70 3.67 3.81 2.90 2.90 6.64 3.24 2.40 n.a. n.a. n.a. 4.55

502

3.96

4.10

Source: T'eng-k'o lu. Note: Population figures refer to the year 1223 (Wen-hsien t'ung-k'ao 11, hu-kou 2).

exhaustive enumeration of the regular degree recipients, had no bearing on the recipients of facilitated degrees. Inasmuch as the latter generally amounted to about 50 percent or more of civil service personnel recruited through the civil service examination, the extant lists thus covered no more than half the recruitment function of the examination. Individuals on the extant lists comprised the more important half, as they were generally younger and more likely to reach higher positions in the civil service than the other half not covered by the lists. Second, the population figures on which the coefficients of representation are computed are taken f r o m various sources with different degrees of reliability. Regarding Che-tung and Che-hsi as a single circuit, the graduate output of circuits seemed to bear a general relationship to their distance f r o m the effective capital, Hangchow. The class of 1148 adhered to this pattern with unswerving regularity. Chiang-tung, farther away f r o m the capital than Liang-che, had a smaller graduate output; Chiang-hsi, to the west of Chiang-tung and therefore still farther away, had a yet smaller graduate output. Two other circuits, Ching-hu-nan and Ching-hu-pei, still farther to the west, were almost unrepresented in the graduate class.

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The same pattern of diminishing representation with increasing distance held almost equally true for circuits southeast and southwest of the capital. While Fukien boasted a graduate output almost as large as Liangche, the two more southerly circuits of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were almost unrepresented. Owing to the operation of the assured quota, the four circuits of Szechwan, though farthest from the capital, together produced a graduate class as large as Liang-che's. The graduate class of 1256 was about 20 percent larger, but the general pattern of distribution by circuit did not seem to deviate significantly from that of the previous class. With a few notable exceptions, the circuits with outstanding performance records in the previous examination also did well in the later examination. The graduate output of the four Szechwan circuits again equaled that of Liang-che. On a per capita basis, Szechwan's representation was therefore among the highest in the empire. This high level of representation was undoubtedly sustained by the quota system. In its absence there is no question that the extent of representation would have fallen significantly. The poor showing of the remote circuits in the nonquota part of the empire was due not so much to the stupidity of their scholars as primarily to their lack of access to educational facilities. In contrast, circuits close by were advantaged; among other things, their scholars could easily journey to the capital and thereby become attuned to the sophistication of the academic elite. The class of 1256 also witnessed a significant leveling in the graduate distribution pattern. Both Kwangsi and Ching-hu-pei, neither of which had produced a single graduate a hundred years earlier, now boasted a respectable class. Within each circuit, more prefectures were represented in the production of graduates, unlike the situation in 1148 when most graduates came conspicuously from only a few prefectures. Hitherto we have been discussing the representative function of the Sung civil service from the point of view of the end product of the system: the graduates themselves. It is desirable to broaden our perspective. Representation can be visualized not only in static terms as a fixed relationship between the representatives and the constituents, but also in dynamic terms as an ongoing process culminating in the selection of the representatives. This dynamic approach is to be recommended because it draws attention to the functional aspect of representation. In these days of big government, for instance, the legislators who sit on Capitol Hill or in Westminster often seem remote and inaccessible to the man on the street. The average citizen may be wondering whether anybody really represents his interests. This skepticism is well warranted if legislators owe a debt to special interest groups and cannot a f f o r d to vote their conscience. Come election time, however, faith in the representative institutions revives. At the ballot box voters reaffirm their sovereignty by voting out a bunch of rascals and voting in another batch of legislators who

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vow to uphold the public interest. The myth of representative government is thus kept alive. Representation is therefore most effective in the process of selecting the representatives. By the same token it may be argued that as long as the Sung people participated in the selection process for examination graduates, they were given representation in the ruling elite through the examination system, regardless of whether they were able ultimately to produce an examination graduate in the course of a single examination cycle. If the dry spell persisted for a long time, of course, disillusionment would ultimately set in. No one was eligible to take the departmental examination unless he had passed a qualifying examination or had this requirement waived by the emperor. Passing the qualifying examination was no easy task, as it was the stepping stone to elite status. In some of the large prefectures of the southeast such as Foochow or Shao-hsing, for instance, these examinations customarily attracted tens of thousands of candidates, and a candidate had to beat more than a hundred of his fellow candidates to survive. 39 Obviously the qualification conferred by this examination meant a great deal to career-minded scholars and was thus regulated stringently by the state. The number of scholars permitted to pass the examination was governed by quota for each prefecture. This quota was not arbitrarily fixed but bore a definite relationship to the size of the scholar population of each prefecture. As the scholar population in many prefectures grew (or declined) considerably over a period of time, periodic adjustments in these quotas were made to equalize the chances of success for scholars in various parts of the empire. Additional quota places were assigned prefectures with a growing scholar population so that the odds of passing the qualifying examination would not get progressively worse than in other prefectures. Qualifying examination quotas may therefore be visualized as the closest Chinese analog to the principle of equal representation in the Western tradition. Territorial divisions (prefectures) were awarded representation in direct proportion to the number of scholars participating in the qualifying examination (the voting population). What did this kind of representation mean? It meant access to elite status proportional to the extent of representation. In the most cultured prefectures such as Foochow or Shao-hsing, probably one out of every two or three graduates of qualifying examinations went on to pass the departmental examination. Even the prefectures of average or slightly below average attainment, such as Chien-chou in Szechwan with a quota of seven, stood a realistic chance of placing one of its native sons in the ranks of the ruling elite. If successful candidates for departmental examinations were selected by random chance rather than on the basis of merit, Chien-chou with seven entries would stand perhaps a one-in-three chance of placing a graduate triennially. 40 Given the difference in scho-

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lastic attainment, even if no one from Chien-chou passed the departmental examination in a period of thirty or forty years, the chances were that in the same interval not a few Chien-chou men would have qualified for the much less competitive test of the facilitated degree examinations and gone on to serve in the civil service. The qualifying examination thus played a vital role in keeping the examination myth alive. It served as an immediate goal for scholars from all parts of the empire and demonstrated for those who attained it that the ultimate goal of joining the ranks of the ruling elite was not an impossible dream but a feasible goal. The Yin Privilege Although the examination system went a long way in meeting the Sung founders' objective of creating the political elite, there were reasons why it did not become the principal recruitment channel for the Sung civil service. Although all outstanding ministers of the dynasty since the time of the third emperor were examination graduates, the examination system never ceased to have its critics and detractors. For instance, it was commonly alleged that the examination system placed a premium on a kind of learning, such as literary composition, which bore no relationship to the subsequent career of the successful candidate.41 The examination system was also attacked for taking no account of the moral character of the candidates, which should be the most important criterion in deciding whether a person was fit to be an official. From time to time attempts were made to meet these criticisms. One of the more lasting reforms of Wang An-shih, for instance, consisted in substituting exposition of the Confucian classics for literary composition as the core of the examination system.42 Nevertheless, classical scholarship was not really more relevant to the work of the bureaucrat than a cultivated prose or poetic style. Attempts to make moral character a factor in the civil service recruitment process resulted in the temporary abolition of the examination system during the Chung-ning era (1102-1106); its recruitment function was taken over by the san-she schools.43 These schools, consisting of three grades each, hence the name san-she (literally, three houses), were set up in the capital and all the prefectures. However, favoritism, corruption, and other irregularities in the administration of the schools produced a groundswell of discontent so that the experiment was called off and the regular civil service examination was restored. Traditionally those who denigrated the civil service examination on the ground of its impracticality or moral ambivalence were also champions of hereditary privilege. This connection is clearly brought out in the T'ang aristocrat Li Te-yii's classic statement on the relative merits of the yin privilege vis-à-vis the examination as civil service recruitment channels.44 Sung critics of the examination system, living in a nonaristocratic

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milieu, could not make such an unabashed plea for hereditary privilege. Nevertheless, much of the Sung criticism of the examination system could be traced to an unconscious attempt on the part of members of the political elite to protect their position against the full onslaught of the merit principle that the examination stood for. Once the Sung political elite was assembled, the instinct for selfpreservation came into play. The morale of individual elite members was likely to sag unless they had a reasonable chance of passing their elite status to their offspring. The latter were required to establish their eligibility for government service if they wanted to validate their elite status. The examination system alone could not meet their needs. Due to the overwhelming odds against the individual built into the examination system, and the element of chance, there was no guarantee that even the most accomplished scholar could pass. The chance for the ordinary children of high officials to pass the examinations was dubious at best. If they were not to be denied a civil service career, a safety net was necessary. The function of the safety net was performed by the yin privilege by which high officials conferred civil service status on their designated heirs without having to pass the civil service examination. The prospect of being able to confer the yin privilege on one's heirs was one of the most powerful incentives that the Chinese civil service had devised. From the Han period on, it had become a standard part of the personnel practice of successive dynasties. If we may characterize the relationship between the emperor and his ministers as a contractual relationship, the yin privilege must be considered an important part of this contract. It was an integral part of the remuneration for which ambitious men were prepared to make the utmost sacrifice to enter the emperor's service and gain his good graces. In fact, this was the part of the contractual relationship that had most impact on the masses. Even to the unlettered, attainment of the yin privilege exemplified the crowning achievement that anybody could hope for. No reward apparently was more gratifying than that of feng-chi yin-tzu (conferring a noble title on the wife and civil service status on the son). While the principle of the yin privilege was recognized by most dynasties, they differed in the role and scope they permitted it in the recruitment process. Wittfogel contended that the yin privilege played a substantial recruitment role for the Sung civil service.45 My researches incline me to the same view. Quantitatively the yin privilege was the most important recruitment channel for the civil service. According to the 1213 civil service roster, men of yin background accounted for 37 percent of the executory class and 53 percent of the administrative class and almost 50 percent of those of military rank. 46 Although comparable breakdowns are not available for other periods, we have reason to believe that the numerical prepon-

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derance of the yin men that characterized the 1213 civil service was not unique but represented the norm for most of the Sung period. 47 The most convincing argument for this view is the general trend of institutional development. Almost all new regulations on the yin system dating from or after the reign of Chen-tsung, the third emperor of the dynasty, were enacted with a view to closing loopholes and restricting access to the civil service by this yin privilege method. The basic law governing the award of the yin privilege was enacted during the reign of T'aitsu, founder of the dynasty. 48 Under his successor, T'ai-tsung, the provisions for exercising this privilege were liberalized. Thus recruitment into the civil service by this method soared. By the time of the third emperor, Chen-tsung, the acute shortage of dependable civil service personnel that prompted the expanded civil service examination and yin recruitment programs of T'ai-tsung became a thing of the past. With the saturation point in the civil service personnel system approaching, retrenchment in the yin privilege system was called for. This retrenchment proceeded on two fronts: on both the dispensers and the recipients of the privilege. The dispensers were those who under the yin system were eligible to dispense the privilege to their designated heirs, the recipients. Under T'ai-tsung and for a long time afterward, they were permitted to dispense this privilege on the occasion of the chiao sacrifice (triennially), on the occasion of the emperor's birthday (annually), on promotion in personal rank or on assignment to hardship positions (irregularly), and on retirement from official service. 49 Gradually the frequency for dispensing the privilege was reduced. The first to be eliminated were those in connection with the annual celebration of the emperor's birthday and on the occasion of personal rank promotion. 5 0 On the remaining occasions, the dispensation of the privilege was also considerably curtailed. Instead of being permitted to dispense the privilege every time the chiao sacrifice came along, for instance, many officials were permitted to do so only on alternate suburban chiao—that is, once every six years—and officials on assignment to hardship positions were not eligible for extra yin privilege dispensing rights until they had served at least two years of their appointment. The next step in paring down the number of dispensers was the stipulation that officials were required not only to reach a certain personal rank but also to possess a minimum service seniority (functional rank). It was also enacted that officials over seventy years of age still in active service were to be disqualified as dispensers. Ultimately, the maximum number of individuals to whom one could dispense the yin privilege was fixed by law. This number, of course, varied in accordance with one's rank. 5 ' Initially beneficiaries of the yin privilege (recipients) were placed in sinecure or honorary positions in largely ceremonial offices—for example, as custodians of ancestral temples (t'ai-chu). Thence they were appointed to substantive positions in the

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capital in an acting capacity (she). Soon their status would be regularized and they could rise rapidly in the administrative class hierarchy. They thus fared much better than examination graduates who had to struggle past the hurdle facing all executory officials—that is, the kai-kuan requirement—if they were to have a successful civil service career. By 996, however, most recipients of the yin privilege were made to begin their civil service career in the executory ranks and were subject to all the regulations governing members of this class. 52 The rationalization of the rank system under the Yuan-feng Reform was of crucial importance in the systematization of the yin access route to civil service status. Upon being designated as a beneficiary by a dispenser of the yin privilege, a man would normally receive one of the three preservice personal ranks for civilians. (See Table 6.) He was not eligible for appointment to substantive positions or to receive stipends unless promoted to the executory ranks. Promotions depended on passing a placement examination (ch 'uan-shih) and on attaining the age of twentyfive years. Placement examinations originally were required of all executory officials before appointment to each new term of office. However, this requirement degenerated into a mere formality for ordinary members of the executory class sometime toward the end of the Northern Sung period. Thenceforth placement examinations in their undiluted form were used primarily as a fitness test for prospective officials of yin background. This examination also became a device to slow their entry into the job placement process. A ratio quota was enforced. Initially one out of every two candidates was passed, but later this ratio diminished to one out of three. For the perennial failures who were already forty years of age, a facilitated placement examination was available. This examination required that they demonstrate a reading knowledge of the law as well as the ability to write in their own hand a standardized version of their family history (hsieh chia-chuang)." There was also a military version of the placement examination, known as cheng-shih, for prospective officials of military rank. To make it easier for beneficiaries of the yin privilege to take these examinations, both civilian and military, they were held at regular intervals not only at the capital but also in Szechwan by the regional government and, for the cheng-shih, by the fiscal intendants of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. 54 Despite persistent efforts to tighten up access to the civil service by the yin route, there are indications that the volume of recruitment actually increased with time. This result was not entirely unexpected due to a built-in bias in official reporting on changes in the yin privilege system. While enactments restricting the yin access route were usually reported with much fanfare in the official sources, developments in the contrary direction were often overlooked. This is because enlargement in the scope of the yin provisions seldom depended on explicit enactments but

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proceeded in a surreptitious manner. Importunate officials seeking special favors obliged the emperor to make an exception to existing regulations, and that exception became a precedent to be cited by similarly placed would-be dispensers in their desire to extend the yin dispensing privilege already granted. There was thus a tendency for the yin access route to expand by gradual accretion. And this tendency was difficult to resist. The tenacity with which the officialdom defended its vested interest in this matter may best be gauged from the following examples. During the Ching-li era (1041-1048) of Emperor Jen-tsung, the celebrated statesman Fan Chung-yen launched a series of reforms aimed at improving the efficiency of the state administrative machinery. The reform stirred up considerable opposition in a sort of preview of the reformers versus conservatives contest that characterized the reforms of Wang An-shih. In the estimation of Yeh Shih, the renowned Southern Sung commentator, Fan's reform administration miscarried because Fan made the fatal mistake of tackling theyin privilege first, thus provoking the opposition and providing it with a rallying point. 55 More than a hundred years later, the best-loved of the Southern Sung emperors, Hsiao-tsung, ascended the throne. If he was to have his way, he would begin his reign with an overhaul of the abuse-ridden yin privilege system. His trusted ministers, however, talked him out of it. They argued that the emperor, being fresh on the throne, had not personally dispensed much imperial grace (en) and it would be impolitic to begin his reign by antagonizing the officialdom unnecessarily.56 This argument was particularly telling Since Emperor Hsiao-tsung was not the natural son of Emperor Kao-tsung but an adopted son whose claim to the Sung throne depended on acceptance by the ruling elite. In view of the near sacrosanct status of the yin privilege, it is doubtful that the many regulations restricting its application were enforced more than faintheartedly. Thus while in the spirit of the law the number of yin recipients one could dispense the yin privilege to was intended as the maximum, in actuality it often became the minimum. Eligible dispensers not only wanted to dispense privileges up to the limit of their quotas but were, in fact, under considerable social pressure to do so. By Confucian ethics they were expected to look after their kinsmen and could hardly resist their requests for help. Most officials, of course, discovered that they had more eligible kinsmen than they could accommodate. Even in the rare cases where the dispenser had fewer eligible kinsmen than places in his quota, the quota would be used up all the same. This is because the dispenser was likely to consider the quota as his due and would pass ineligible kinsmen or totally unrelated individuals as his eligible kinsmen. 57 The yin privilege played an even more important role in the recruitment of civil service personnel of military rank. Fully 50 percent of the

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latter in the civil service roster of 1213 made their way into the civil service by this method. The proportion of men of yin background among civil service personnel of military rank was therefore much greater than their counterparts of civilian rank (39 percent according to the same roster). The greater recruitment role of the yin privilege for civil service personnel of military rank is not unexpected. Mindful of the fact that the total number of such officials approximated that of civilian rank and that the military version of the civil service examination normally produced only one-tenth the number of graduates as the civilian version of the civil service examination, the recruitment function of yin privilege for military rank officials had to be expanded to compensate for the low productivity of the military version of the civil service examination. Military rank officials were eligible to dispense the yin privilege at a slightly lower rank than their civilian counterparts. Thus more of them qualified for dispensing rights. Their dispensing rights themselves were also subject to fewer restrictions, so that the total number of beneficiaries of the privilege and the number inducted into the civil service as officials of military rank attained the level indicated above. Apart from those whose entry method was designated as yin privilege, there were three other categories of individuals who, though not designated as such on the civil service roster of 1213, should ideally come under the general concept of yin privilege. These were the imperial clansmen (tsung-shih), the husbands of imperial clanswomen (tsung-nu fu), and the relatives of imperial consorts (hou-fei en-che). As did the regular beneficiaries of the yin privilege, these people attained civil service status other than on the basis of personal achievement. Instead, they had civil service status ascribed to them on account of the achievements or good fortune of an ancestor or close relative. By adding these three categories to the regular beneficiaries of the yin privilege, the proportion of civil service personnel of yin background was boosted by a large margin. They constituted 73 percent of the servitors minor and 69 percent of all officials of military rank. In all hereditary monarchies, the treatment of the ever-proliferating royal lineage poses a difficult problem. If the individual members of the lineage were enfeoffed as territorial lords, they would generally rise to the challenge of responsibility and lead useful lives. But they could also abuse their power and pose a threat to the supremacy of the king. On the other hand, not giving them positions of responsibility kept them out of harm's way, but then they usually degenerated into useless drones with their talent going to waste. The Sung dynasty first adhered to the latter policy. By the time of Emperor Shen-tsung, the imperial lineage had grown to such an extent that simply to provide for its support constituted no small drain on the

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treasury. It was then decided that individual clansmen should be allowed to compete in the civil service examination and earn their own living. 58 For both the qualifying and the departmental examinations, clansmen enjoyed preferential treatment. They competed only among themselves, and the ratio of success for them was much higher than for the commoners. For the palace examination, they competed on an equal footing with commoners; but, as has been discussed previously, the palace examination was for the sole purpose of ranking the successful candidates and did not eliminate anybody. Due to their preferential treatment at the crucial levels, clansmen made up a significant portion of each graduate class (5 percent of the class of 1148 and 13 percent of the class of 1256). In the civil service roster of 1213 where the composition of the civil service personnel by entry method is given, it is doubtful that the category whose entry method was given as imperial clansmen included those who passed the civil service examination in view of the fact that the latter acquired civil service status on their own merit and not on account of their membership in the imperial lineage. For the vast majority of the imperial lineage who could not pass the regular civil service examination, there were special examinations. On passing these simplified examinations, they became eligible for civil service employment. 5 9 As is to be expected, most of them held membership in the less prestigious section—that is, officials of military rank. As members of the civil service their work assignments and salaries were governed by civil service personnel rules. The most capable of them were able to rise to the very top of the civil service hierarchy. For instance, the clansman Chao Ju-yu (1140-1190) became a chief minister during the early years of Emperor Ning-tsung's reign. The majority of the clansmen probably held a mediocre work record due to the less selective recruitment standard and the nonchalant attitude of most clansmen. Clansmen were therefore not to be appointed one after another to certain positions. 60 The handling of relatives of imperial consorts constituted an equally tough problem. In both the Han and the T ' a n g periods, the dynasty on more than one occasion teetered on the brink of extinction as a result of usurpation of power by consort families. In the Sung period, such blatant usurpation was unknown. Relatives of consorts were seldom given high positions and generally played secondary roles. For the most part, entry into the civil service by the yin privilege was considered an honorable or at least a neutral method. No stigma was attached to the beneficiaries of the yin privilege. This was not so for a special category of yin privilege beneficiaries—namely, those by unconventional accession (fei-fan pu-kuan). These were the nonpaternal relatives of the privilege dispensers (fei pen-tsung ssu-ma chin) such as husbands of female clansmen and sons-in-law of soldiers killed in combat.

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They were not of the lineage of the benefactor, and the yin privilege was therefore extended to them grudgingly. Discrimination against them was not in the area of j o b placement but primarily in the way they themselves were to earn the dispensing rights of the yin privilege."

Minor Recruitment

Channels

Numerically transfer from the army was not an important source of recruitment for the civil service. In view of the possibility of confusing officials of military rank with army officers (army rank), however, the matter bears closer examination. In Northern Sung times, a significant proportion of officials of military rank were indeed bona fide soldiers and often received commissions to lead campaigns or command garrisons. Therefore no appreciable differences in duty existed between officers of the army ranks (attached officers) and officers of the division ranks (unattached officers). Nevertheless, the terms of service were vastly different. Officers of the army ranks held their rank and emolument contingent upon their maintaining a certain standard of martial skills and physical fitness as demonstrated by periodic drills and mock tournaments. If through old age or illness they fell below the required standard, their rank and emolument became forfeit. Officers of the division ranks were not exposed to such hazards. Rank and emolument could only be taken away f r o m them for cause such as willful insubordination, corruption, or failure to accomplish missions. Besides, their prospects of advancement were generally much better. In addition to employment opportunities in the army, the whole field of civil administration was open to them. In fact, they constituted an essential part of the manpower of the civil service. Army rank officers with outstanding service records could be transferred by special acts of imperial grace to division ranks. 6 2 Apart f r o m these exceptional cases, transfer from the army into division ranks also took place on a regular basis. There were two types of these regular transfers—those occurring at the end of the career for army rank officers and those occurring in their prime of life. For administrative purposes the army was composed of twenty administrative units or chun, and each of these units was assigned an annual quota for transfer into division ranks. Most of the quota could be taken up by army officers retiring from active service. They were required to pass a test in martial skills and physical fitness, and those who passed the test would be transferred to appropriate grades in the division ranks. 6 3 The remaining places in the transfer quota were made available to those in the prime of life. Competition was therefore keen. Sometimes the emperor took a special interest in this matter and personally administered the test of martial skills. 64 By Southern Sung times, genuine soldiers were to be found only in the

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army, and as most of them also held servitor grades it is meaningless to talk about the transfer from army ranks to division ranks. What is meaningful is the number or percentage who were relieved of their obligation in the army and permitted to take up jobs in the civil service. Several groups of these officers were allowed to do so. The first group comprised the graduates of the military version of the civil service examination (wuchii) and other officials of military rank who had enlisted in the army. They were permitted to leave the army after ten years of service. The second group comprised army officers selected for separation from the army on account of old age or other infirmities (chien-tai li-chun). They were usually placed in lowly civil service positions in the provinces. 65 Many army men attained civil service status on account of their military merit (chiin-kung) outside the framework of transfer from the army (chun-pan). In fact, military merit was one of the recognized channels of recruitment for the Sung civil service. To be of avail for this purpose, the military merit had to be clearly demonstrable in concrete, measurable terms, such as building a certain length of fortification wall (chu-cheng) or filling a certain quota of army recruits (chao-chiinObviously, the prospect of attaining civil service status under these circumstances was an incentive utilized by the army commanders to motivate their troops. Another minor recruitment channel was contribution (chin-na or nashu), whereby individuals contributed grain or cash in accordance with imperially sanctioned schedules and received civil service ranks in return. 67 In the 1213 civil service roster, for instance, 2 percent of those of civil rank and one-third of 1 percent of those of military rank qualified for civil service status by this method. We have reason to believe that these figures considerably understate the extent of participation of men of this background in the civil service. To start with, the Sung officialdom traditionally frowned upon contribution as a regular channel of recruitment and only countenanced it as an expedient for raising revenue in times of financial stringency. There were no financial crises in the years immediately preceding 1213. Furthermore most people who purchased civil service ranks were probably not enumerated in the roster of 1213. This is because the 1213 roster only had reference to the civil service proper, namely officials of a minimum of servitor minor rank, whereas the most salable of the civil service ranks were of the kind I have previously labeled "parabureaucratic," that is, ranks in the colonel (chiao-wei) or lieutenant (fu-wei) grouping. (See Chapter 2 for details.) The appeal of these latter ranks was due to the fact that they were moderately priced and therefore within the means of the moderately well-to-do, were endowed with considerable prestige (unlike clerical positions), and offered the prospect of participation in the formal government of the locality. It is true that in terms of priority for formal assignment to substantive positions, possessors of these para-

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bureaucratic ranks were the low men on the totem pole. However, buyers of these ranks could generally capitalize on their local connections as well as enterprising spirit to win appointment to some lucrative position in an acting capacity (she). The fiscal vice-intendant of Chiang-tung, Chen Tehsiu, for instance, reported cashiering a supervisor of a tax-collecting station of this description whom the local people dreaded more than tigers. 68 On two occasions during the entire Sung period the government was in dire financial straits and the sale of civil service ranks was vigorously promoted to raise revenue—namely, the years immediately following the Northern Sung debacle when the normal revenue-collecting machinery was in disarray and money was desperately needed to pay for the upkeep of the armies raised to fight off the invaders and the years immediately preceding the collapse of the Southern Sung when the chief minister Chia Ssu-tao made a desperate effort to stave off financial collapse by trying to buy up the estates of the plutocrats. Moreover, the sale of civil service ranks also featured in numerous fund-raising campaigns of lesser scope such as that presided over by the celebrated NeoConfucianist scholar Chu Hsi when as prefectural administrator of Nank'ang Chun he had to raise enough cash for famine relief. 69 To boost the sale of these civil service ranks, the prospective buyer was offered a wide variety of ranks. 7 0 For those who could a f f o r d the purchase price of a rank in the executory or the servitor minor class, fullfledged civil service status was attainable overnight. They were eligible to participate in the job placement process and could claim official household (kuan-hu) status for tax and corvée purposes. On payment of a greatly reduced price, possessors of the parabureaucratic ranks could be elevated to full executory or servitor minor status; the purchase of a parabureaucratic rank could therefore be regarded as a down payment toward full civil service status. Besides, parabureaucratic ranks could be used to offset punishment in criminal offenses. Nevertheless, contribution never developed into a major channel of recruitment for the Sung civil service. This is because, due to numerous impediments, those who made their way into the civil service by this method could never go far, as they were discriminated both in job placement and rank p r o m o t i o n . "

Inactive Status for Members of the Civil Service There is a high probability that available figures on civil service membership refer only to officials on the "active file"—that is, those currently available and eligible for appointment to substantive positions. 72 Officials could be dropped from the active file for a variety of reasons such as punishment for grave misconduct, prolonged leaves of absence, or retirement, mandatory or voluntary. The worst thing that could happen to an official short of corporal pun-

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ishment was banishment to a remote place coupled with the forfeiture of all positions, honors, and ranks. This was the punishment of disenrollment (ch'u-ming) whereby the offender was expunged from the official roster.73 There were, however, few crimes so heinous that their perpetrators were considered beyond the pale of rehabilitation. Even the victim of disenrollment, if he survived the ordeal of exile for a few years, could hope for a comeback. Through the intercession of sympathetic friends and availing himself of the general amnesties, he could work steadily toward his rehabilitation (hsii-fu).li Rehabilitation usually came in stages. In the initial stage the victim of disenrollment received a partial pardon by being appointed to an honorary position in the prefectural administration of his place of exile; simultaneously he might be moved to a more desirable location. The appointment provided him with rank in the official hierarchy and in some cases even a stipend for his support. However, as the honorary position that he received was of a kind reserved only for officials in disgrace and would not qualify its holder for appointment to a substantive position, substantial hurdles still had to be cleared before the road back could be complete. In fact, these honorary positions were placed behind all holders of substantive positions in the prefectural administration in the protocol list.75 Officials could also be dropped from the active file for minor indiscretion without forfeiture or demotion in rank through the arrangement of fen-ssu (literally, branch offices). 76 As described earlier, personal rank in the Sung system of the pre-Yuan-feng era was denoted by one's appointment to a nonfunctional office in the metropolitan bureaucracy. When one was placed on a fen-ssu footing, one theoretically held appointment not from the metropolitan bureaucracy but from an imaginary duplicate bureaucracy in one of the subsidiary capitals of the empire such as Loyang, the western capital." In many instances, fen-ssu officials were required to take up residence in the city that they supposedly had been transferred to. In reality, as they had not received a corresponding commission, the fen-ssu arrangement was a kind of forced furlough. Normally it involved no real hardship. Fen-ssu officials continued to draw salaries and apparently also enjoyed some of the courtesies due their rank. As fen-ssu cities as a rule were selected from major urban centers, the quality of life was good. For many, the fen-ssu experience was therefore not at all unpleasant as it provided them a welcome respite from the hectic pace of normal official life. The great historian Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1086), for instance, spent most of the reign of Emperor Shentsung as a fen-ssu official in Loyang during which time he completed the greater part of his monumental work, the Tzu-chih t'ung-chien (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Government).77 There were no figures on the percentage of officials punished with disenrollment or with other humiliations. We do have some information on the prevalence of the fen-ssu sit-

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uation. For the year 1085, for instance, forty individuals out of a total of almost three thousand administrative class officials were listed as being of this status. 78 Undoubtedly by far the largest number of people dropped from the active file were discharged for personal reasons which necessitated a leave of absence extending over a hundred days, such as attending to one's aged parents or seeking a cure and recuperation from a debilitating illness." Observance of the three years' mourning, which was mandatory for officials of civil rank, also fell into this category. 80 Whereas officials dropped from the active file as punishment for wrongdoing had to depend on general amnesties and the intercession of friends to effect a comeback, those dropped from the active file for personal reasons could have their membership on the active file reinstated with little formality. In the quarterly updating of the active file, individuals reinstated after ending the observance of the three years' mourning (fu-ku'ei) always featured prominently. 81 Formal retirement (chih-shih) was supposed to be mandatory at the age of seventy sui (sixty-nine years old by Western reckoning), although actions were seldom taken against individuals who continued to serve beyond this age. 82 Many officials opted for early retirement. Although the retired official was placed on a footing similar to that of the fen-ssu officials and thus was deprived of vital privileges available only to officials on active service, there were nevertheless good reasons for early retirement for those still physically capable of serving. For instance, as part of the proceedings solemnizing formal retirement of each official, a significant promotion in rank as well as additional dispensing rights for the yin privilege were usually granted in appreciation for a lifetime of loyal service.83 Moreover, many veteran executory officials who normally had no chance of fulfilling the kai-kuan requirement for promotion to the administrative class were allowed to retire as administrative class officials. 84 Those who continued to serve beyond mandatory retirement age probably did so for financial reasons. There were no provisions for supporting retired officials during the reigns of the first and second emperors of the dynasty. Since the reign of Chen-tsung, however, retired officials were generally permitted to receive regular stipends up to onehalf of the salary they received before retirement. 85 They were also eligible to receive gifts of food, clothing, and other valuable items from the government on festive occasions. With the exception of mandatory retirement, the Sung civil service appeared to be quite inflexible with regard to the age limit for active service. There was a minimum age for holding all civil service positions and a maximum age for holding positions involving arduous work such as the supervisorship of tax-collecting stations. 86 Nevertheless, no viable system for verifying the age of officials existed. The age of an official was there-

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fore what he himself affirmed it to be. Depending on entry method and other pertinent circumstances, each official generally reported an age to suit his own convenience. For instance, children of high officials were generally designated yin beneficiaries while they were still infants; to make them eligible for appointment to substantive positions as soon as possible, a higher age was reported for them. On the other hand, civil service examination graduates, who were mature men to start with, usually reported a lower age in the hope that they could have a longer career before mandatory retirement. Once an official reported this arbitrary age, it became his official age (kuan-nien) which he had to live with for the rest of his life, although it was common knowledge that it was not his real or chronological age (shih-nien).*1 The Sung method for reckoning age, both official and chronological, differed in one essential respect from the contemporary Western practice. Instead of taking the full year of three hundred and sixty-five days (from birthday to birthday) as the basis for counting the years of a person's age, the Sung method was based on the calendar year so that whenever the first day of a new year rolled along, everybody was supposed to have grown older by one year (sui) regardless of his actual birthday. This practice was in line with the traditional Chinese approach. This traditional method for reckoning age contrasted sharply with the way the Sung civil service computed the earning of seniority for promotion in personal or functional rank. A year of seniority for personal rank purposes was defined as the interval from any day of a calendar year to the same day of the following year, inclusive. This method of computing the seniority year caused considerable inconvenience to some members of the civil service who were at the threshold of the age limits for certain appointments or some types of fringe benefits. If the seniority year began with the first day of the first month of one year and terminated on the first day of the following year, for instance, some individuals could have just turned seventy sui and therefore find themselves over the age limit for many types of fringe benefits. 8 " On the other hand, if the same seniority year was supposed to terminate at the last day of the last month of the calendar year, the same individuals were still reckoned as sixty-nine sui and consequently still eligible for the same fringe benefits. The seniority year for the computation of functional rank was defined as so many work days within three hundred and sixty consecutive days (from any day of one calendar year to the same day of the following year). If on account of sickness or other legitimate leaves of absence an official was on the job for less than the requisite number of work days, the deficit had to be made up in a subsequent term of appointment if he was to be given seniority credit for the year in question. 8 '

4 Job Assignments and the Functional Rank System

The main objective, indeed the raison d'être, of personnel administration is to keep the offices of the organization staffed with appropriate people. This idea is expressed in the maxim "the right man for the right job." How the Sung civil service sought to attain this objective is the subject of this chapter.

The Commission System Career management of most individuals in the Sung civil service personnel pool was the responsibility of the Sung Board of Personnel, which certified their qualifications and appointed them to appropriate positions. In both these functions, the board apparently operated under strict guidelines. If we may give credence to the view of the Southern Sung political commentator Yeh Shih (1150-1223), the regulations of the board were so comprehensive and enforced in such an inflexible manner that the appointment process was completely routinized. The president and vice-presidents of the board had so little discretionary power in making appointments that they were little more than glorified clerks. 1 Due to the paucity of data it is not possible to trace the historical process whereby the operations of the board became largely routinized. We know, for instance, that its counterpart during the heyday of the T'ang dynasty had considerably more discretionary power. In making appointments the T'ang authorities were not bound by any established sequences of offices but could move officials around from office to office as circumstances warranted. Such flexibility, however, carried with it a high price as disgruntled candidates for office were tempted to charge the authorities with favoritism. To remove some of the political pressures that the head of the Board of Personnel was subjected to, Pei Kuangting, president of the board during the K'ai-yuan era (713-741), instituted the rule of seniority (hsiin tzu-ke), which set up a regular sequence of offices. 2 Despite the protests of a few individuals who saw their chance

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of rapid promotion damaged by the leveling effect of the rule of seniority, most people seemed to find favor with it and it became the established practice during the remainder of the T'ang period. In the chaotic time of the Five Dynasties, we may assume considerable departure from the rule. Nevertheless the tradition of orderly procedures and established sequences of offices must have survived and took on a new lease of life with the return of social tranquility under the Sung. We learn, for instance, that a certain disgruntled candidate for office lodged a protest against the Board of Personnel for not giving him his due. He claimed to be entitled to the magistracy of a medium-grade county but was instead appointed to an inferior-grade county.3 His protest clearly implied the existence of regular sequences as well as classification of offices. The ideal of public administration in Sung China was to minimize the role of subjective judgment in making decisions by applying appropriate rules to appropriate situations. Under the mottos "Trust laws not men" and "Laws are impartial but men partial," regulations proliferated and the process of routinization gathered momentum. It is fortunate that the most important of our sources on the selection and appointment processes of the Sung civil service pertained to the last hundred years of the dynasty when the process of routinization had almost run its course." Unless otherwise specified, it should be understood that discussion of mechanisms and processes in this chapter pertain to the mature system of personnel administration of this time frame. The key to the Sung system of staffing was the institution of commissions (ch'ai-chiert), the significance of which cannot be exaggerated. Wang Yin-lin (1223-1296), the celebrated Southern Sung scholar-official, put it in a nutshell, saying, Those in the know regard ascending the "terraces" and "pavilions" as the zenith of a bureaucratic career; they do not regard the speed of promotion in titular offices as a reflection of glory or shame; they regard a weighty commission as a shortcut to success; they do not regard the possession of titles of nobility, military merit or appanages as a matter of consequence.s To comprehend the rationale of the commission system, we will start by analyzing the Sung civil service as a complex organization. As such, it could be compared with other complex organizations, such as modern civil service systems or business corporations. It is impossible to conceive of an organization without the personnel that keep it functioning. In most modern organizations, however, the two elements, organization and personnel, are not accorded equal status. The priority of organization over personnel is seldom questioned. The organization does not exist

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for the sake of its employees; employees exist for the sake of the organization. This basic truth underlies most of the operational principles of personnel administration. Take the principle of efficiency, which is a veritable cult in large-scale organization in the name of which all innovations are to be justified. Efficiency is synonymous with high productivity and therefore with the division of labor. The consequence is that the labor force tends to become narrowly specialized. People are trained to do only a few things well. The problem is that these few skills could be rendered obsolete by automation. Thus if a process which used to be carried out manually can be automated, that is, done by a machine, efficiency demands that the personnel previously employed to do the work be discharged in favor of automation. The emphasis on efficiency is not limited to the industrial sector. In the modern civil service and other personnel systems with a predominantly white-collar orientation, a rapid turnover of personnel is considered undesirable. This is because rapid turnover of personnel inhibits stability and reduces efficiency. To keep people in the organization, attempts have been made to eliminate dead-end jobs, concepts of job enrichment have been implemented, and care has been taken to ensure that people recruited into the organization do not have a record of frequent job changes. 6 The nexus of relationship between organization and personnel derives from the frame of reference by which each organization operates. The modern civil service and other large-scale organizations such as business corporations exist not to serve themselves but the "public" and are accountable or controlled by higher authorities. For the modern civil service, the "public" comprises the entire citizenry of the country and the "higher authorities" are represented by the legislature, the judiciary, and the elected members of the executive branch of government. The case for the business corporation is less clear-cut. Nevertheless, it might be said that the "public" is made up of the stockholders of the corporation and the "higher authorities" refer to the management. The frame of reference of the Sung civil service is different, which explains the peculiarities of its job assignment system. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, in addition to staffing offices of the civil administration, the civil service also performed a representative function and served as the status hierarchy for Chinese society. As such it was subject to no other power than that of the emperor and amenable to no control except that imposed by him. In terms of power relationship to the rest of society, the Sung civil service is therefore analogous not to the modern civil service but to the "government" of a democratic country. In theory nothing but an instrument of imperial rule, the civil service could be a law unto itself just as modern democratic governments can degenerate

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into tyrannical dictatorships even though they are in theory subject to the sovereignty of the people. To exercise real control, the Chinese emperor had to transform his potential sovereignty into real sovereignty sustained by operational norms. Precautions and safeguards had to be built into the Sung civil service itself just as checks and balances and other security measures have been introduced into the governmental systems of modern democracies to prevent them abusing their power. From this perspective, the rationale of the job assignment system of the Sung civil service becomes clear. The civil service indeed had a vital task to perform— namely, administering the vast and highly centralized Sung empire. Nevertheless, in devising a job system this consideration had to be subordinated to the security requirement of the emperor. The natural tendency of the civil service toward self-aggrandizement had to be curbed. Precautions had to be taken against the possibility that unauthorized power structures within the civil service might arise to challenge the supremacy of the throne. The commission system was developed in response to this need. Under this system, officials were rotated from post to post to preclude the development of local roots or personal cliques based on permanent ties of superordination and subordination. 7 Each job assignment (ch'aichien), or, to use the terminology standardized by Kracke for the Sung civil service, each commission, 8 was to last no more than three or four years, and reassignment to the same post was not permitted unless specifically authorized by the emperor. 9 In theory the succession of commissions for each official was to follow a fixed geographical pattern— namely, a commission at the capital or nearby places to be followed by one at a remote location. In applying for commissions, officials were also required to observe what came to be known as the law of avoidance. They were barred from service at their home prefectures or at prefectures where they held substantial properties or in units of government where relatives within specified degrees of kinship held office. 10 By requiring a reshuffling of personnel regularly, the commission system may be viewed as a kind of administrative musical chairs in which the participants were hampered by strict rules of seating arrangement. As such, it was certainly not conducive to efficiency or performance. It took time to break in a new man to most administrative positions, and when he had developed any competence for his job, the end of his tenure of office was not far off. The advantages of the system for purposes of personnel control, however, were tremendous. It divided the whole career of each official into manageable time units of three to four years and gave the state a dominant voice in deciding how each of these units was to be spent. Every time a commission was awarded to an individual, the state exercised its prerogative in deciding how this particular time unit for that individual

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was to be used. To accomplish this objective, commissions eventually were made the basis for computing the real pay of officials. This point is discussed in some detail in the following chapter. Initially, the commission system was probably applied only to high officials who wielded considerable discretionary powers. Before long, however, the forces of standardization within the bureaucracy came into play so that the system was eventually applied across the board to the entire civil service. Even men in highly technical offices needed commissions for career advancement. The operation of the Bureau for Foreign Envoy Reception (kuo-hsin so), for instance, was for many years severely hampered because most of the interpreters and translators (ch'uan-yu shih-ch'en) assigned to it were serving their commissions elsewhere and could not be recalled in an emergency. Eventually a solution for this problem was found in a system of pseudocommissions. Personnel of the bureau were all given commissions as custodians of the city gates of the imperial capital (in this case Hangchow), which probably required no real work on their part so that they could devote themselves wholeheartedly to bureau work. 11 The typical Sung official did not spend all his time in active service. Under the impact of the commission system, these times of idleness often assumed a form similar to the commissions. In the early years of the dynasty, high officials were sometimes given appointments as custodians of Buddhist and Taoist temples. These were basically honorary or sinecure appointments involving no real work but carrying with them considerable stipends. Wang An-shih expanded the number of these appointments to accommodate the critics of his reform measures whom he had ousted from office. 12 By Southern Sung times, the system expanded again to alleviate the pressure on the job assignment system and was made accessible not only to high officials but also to officials of the executory class and to servitors minor. In this mature form, officials might apply for these sinecure appointments (known as kung-kuan for the higher officials and yu-miao for the lower officials) in the same fashion as they applied for regular commissions. 13 The commission system cannot be fully understood without taking note of the Sung concept of positions. In all conventional personnel systems, positions are the one unchanging element as they constitute the building blocks of organizations. In this connection, the echelons and hierarchies of organizations are simply positions in appropriate formations on the organizational chart. Positions thus give organizational structures, which otherwise are little more than mental constructs, concrete expression. In the Sung civil service, positions were also the irreducible basic structures and it was in terms of positions that commissions were defined. A commission may be defined as the right, conferred by the government, enabling the recipient to hold a designated position in

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the hierarchies of functional offices for a specified period of time, to perform the duties incumbent upon the position, and to receive the salary and perquisites connected with the same. Depending on the stipulated length of each commission, several men could be given commissions to the same position but to take effect successively. In the Sung civil service the word ch 'tieh was used to denote both positions and vacancies—which of course referred to different nuances of the same thing, depending on context. Each position carried a title (hsien) made up of two elements: a locational indicator and a duty descriptor. The locational indicator pinpointed the geographical site and organizational structure in which the position was located. The duty descriptor provided a clue to the duties of the position, which could be a short one if the position was coterminous with an office of well-recognized duties such as the county magistrate. A position, however, could also be an amalgamation of several distinct offices—for instance, those of the county registrar and sheriff. The duty descriptor would then have to include them all.14 By applying the principles of location indicator/duty descriptor consistently, each position in the tens of thousands of the Sung civil service could be identified precisely. This is true even when there were several identical positions under the same organizational unit—for example, two sheriff positions attached to the same county. In the latter case, each position would be distinguished from the other by a further refinement of the location indicator/duty descriptor—for instance, sheriff of the eastern suburb as opposed to the sheriff of the western suburb. Position titles could be revised or expanded to give prominence to duties which had assumed greater importance since the creation of the original position. 15 Sometimes positions were completely redesigned to meet the challenge of changing circumstances. 16 Positions were linked to other positions in the same organizational structure by lines of communication both vertical and lateral. Lateral lines connected positions on the same echelon; vertical lines connected them on successive echelons. As one might expect, the Sung civil service was more concerned with vertical lines of communication. Whenever a new position was created, care was taken to specify the office or position that would be supervisorially responsible for it. The supervising office was not only hierarchically superior but was also armed with specific powers to commend and to impeach incumbents of the supervised positions. The number of positions for each unit of the civil administration, like tables of organization in modern bureaucracies, was fixed by law or tradition; alteration required the approval of the emperor. Positions were sometimes added to the original quota and were known as the extra quota positions (tien-ch 'ai). Some of the latter were not vested with real duties and were identified as such (pu li-wu).

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While the Sung civil service recognized the uniqueness of each individual position, it is plain that separate standards for recruitment, remuneration, and other personnel action could not be applied to each and every one. For personnel action, positions were grouped with like positions to form position categories. A position category may be defined as a group of positions of similar duties and having the same duty descriptor. For instance, positions of county sheriffs would constitute a position category. Position categories were the basic concerns of the Sung system of position classification described in the next section.

How Civil Service Appointments

Were Made

In the mature Sung civil service, there were between twelve and fourteen thousand positions in a personnel system of about forty thousand individuals." With a ratio of almost three to one between personnel and positions, competition for positions was intense. If the award of positions (commissions) was not to go by mere chance, an appropriate system of position classification was mandatory. Nevertheless as the Sung civil service did not materialize overnight but evolved from its T'ang and Five Dynasties antecedents, it might be imagined that precedents and traditions to a great extent had served the purpose of a consciously conceived position classification system. This, however, was not the case. Precedents were often an uncertain guide and were sometimes not available since many of the functional offices (positions) were recently improvised or were supposed to be of an ad hoc nature. In the absence of objectively determined standards based on positive law, the appointing agency was often hard put to prove that a certain request for commission was improper. During the early years of the dynasty pressure for a systematic position classification was therefore building up. The scholar-official Fan Chung-yen had argued strongly for a clearly defined sequence of commissions,' 8 but it was the historian and conservative statesman Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1086) who first worked out the principle of a comprehensive plan and submitted it for consideration to the Sung c o u r t . " Ssu-ma Kuang's proposal envisioned arranging all positions in the civil administration into twelve classes, each represented by one or two key position categories. (See Table 14.) Each of these twelve classes indicated a definite rank or qualification for job placement purposes. When positions were to be filled in a certain class, preference would first be given to candidates currently holding, or who had previously held, other positions of the same class. If candidates of this class were not available, the positions were then to be filled with candidates from the next lower class. In clarity of concept and simplicity of design, Ssu-ma Kuang's plan had a lot to commend it. After much discussion, however, the court

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Table 14. The Twelve Classes of Positions (Ssu-ma Kuang's Plan) Class

Position

First

Ts'ai-hsiang

(chief ministers)

Second

Liang-fu (two offices: assistant chief ministers and officials of Bureau of Military Affairs)

Third

Liang-chih and above (drafting officials of Secretariat-Chancellery [wai-chih] and hanlin academicians [nei-chih])

Fourth

San-ssu fu-shih (vice-commissioner of Finance Commission) and chih-tsa yu-shih (censor of miscellaneous affairs) 3

Fifth

San-ssup'an-kuan (supervisory official of Finance Commission) and chuan-yun shih (fiscal intendant)

Sixth

Ti-tien hsing-yu (judicial intendant)

Seventh

Chih-chou

Eighth

T'ung-p'an

Ninth

Chih-hsien (administrative-class county magistrate)

Tenth

Mu-chih (prefectural staff officials)

Eleventh

Ling-lu (executory-class county magistrates and recording secretaries of prefectures)

Twelfth

P'an-ssupu-wei

(prefectural administrator) (prefectural vice-administrator)

(Executory I officials)

"After the Yuan-feng reorganization known as shih yu-shih. Source: Ssu-ma Wen-kung wen-chi.

rejected it. Court politics probably had something to do with this decision. Ultimately, however, it may be argued that Ssu-ma Kuang's plan was rejected because his premises were too simplistic so that a comprehensive plan of position classification based on his proposal would not be compatible with the more sophisticated approach that the Sung civil service had been developing inobtrusively all along toward the j o b placement process. Guided by a pragmatic spirit, the Sung civil service muddled through, developing specific solutions for specific problems as they arose. In this way precedents were created, some of which eventually were incorporated into the regulations of the Board of Personnel. Periodically these regulations were revised and rationalized. 20 By Southern Sung times, a well-articulated, multidimensional system of position classification as the basis for job placement had come into existence. This system could not be credited to any single author; it was the product of gradual, institutional growth. We may best comprehend the complexity of the Sung system of position classification by contrasting it with the simplicity of the system envisioned by Ssu-ma Kuang. In the latter system, the only factor that determined the qualification required of a candidate to fill a certain position was the hierarchical status of the position itself—namely, its membership in one of the twelve classes of positions. With the mature Sung system of

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position classification, in addition to the hierarchical status of the position in question, other variables such as time (how long the position remained unfilled) and location (site of the position to be filled) also had a bearing on the candidate's qualification. The difference between the two systems can be represented mathematically as follows. Let P Q h t /

= = = = =

the position to be filled the required qualification of the candidate the hierarchical status of the position the time the position remains unfilled the location of the position

Then: Under Ssu-ma Kuang's plan, Q = Ph. Under the Sung civil service plan, Q = Ph". To elucidate the implications of these formulas, we will make a slight digression by looking at the practice of position classification in modern personnel systems, which for the most part follows the approach of Ssuma Kuang. By grouping positions of like nature together into classes and applying a uniform standard of recruitment and performance evaluation, the modern science of position classification reduces administrative cost. By enforcing a uniform pay scale and equal pay for equal work, it simplifies cost accounting. 21 Nevertheless, the very strength of modern position classification is also a source of weakness. In light of the industrial bent of modern societies, the qualifications required of each position category may be visualized as a set of specifications for the purchase of an indispensable factor in production, namely, labor, similar in nature to the specifications for the purchase of machinery or materials which constitute another indispensable factor in production. Whenever and wherever labor exists that meets the specification for a certain class, it could be paid for in the currency of the labor market—namely, employment in positions of that class. To take an example familiar to most readers of this book, the qualifications for beginning clerk-typist are likely to be given as follows: male or female typing at least forty-five words per minute accurately. Typing skill is the only requirement for the position of clerk-typist and any warm body who can type forty-five words per minute meets the specification and can be employed. Looking at positions only as specifications for labor, designers of modern position classification are not interested in the temporal and spatial dimensions that characterize positions as real job opportunities. 22 To the man on the street, however, the question "Where is the job to be worked and when is the job available?" has as much significance as the

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question "What kind of job?" In modern industrial societies where conditions of employment do not differ very much from locality to locality and where a great deal of job mobility exists, leaving out the temporal and spatial dimensions in position classification does not seem to matter very much. In the very different socioeconomic milieu of Sung China, the same omission became a serious handicap. The multidimensional Sung system of position classification was made up of a series of classificatory schemes, all complementary to one another. We will start by considering a bifurcation that involved most of the positions in the civil service. Positions were divided into ch'in-min (being close to the people) and non-ch'in-min categories. The latter were mostly service-agent positions for administering the vast network of monopolies and other business operations of the state. Although the more important service-agent positions (for example, those with an annual revenue production quota in excess of thirty thousand strings of cash) were handsomely remunerated, as a whole they were often considered as a dead-end street for the career-minded. A service-agent position was in fact a sort of proving ground or probation for most fledgling civil servants. One had no prospects unless one could be transferred to the ch'in-min track. Ch'in-min positions in theory comprised all those of general administration, with governance of the people as their primary responsibility. The line of demarcation, however, was sometimes arbitrarily drawn and necessitated periodic revision.23 Numerically most ch'in-min positions were to be found in the provinces, where the organizational structure served as a basis for their classification. Above the executory class of officials with their own career pattern, there were five echelons of positions roughly corresponding to the echelons of the administrative system: administrative-class district magistrate (chih-hsien), prefectural vice-administrator (t'ung-p'an), prefectural administrator (chih-chou), judicial intendant (ti-t'ien-hsing-yu), and fiscal intendant (chuan-yun-shih). Two terms of office at a lower position represented the usual seniority required for promotion to the next higher rung in the career ladder.24 The entire career ladder therefore consisted of ten steps. Other positions in the ch'in-min sector for administrative class officials may be equated with them. For instance, the firstterm intendant of the Ever-Normal Granaries (ti-chii ch'ang-p'ing) was equated with the second-term prefectural vice-administrator.25 As the central administration was not characterized by a tight hierarchical structure, the provincial career ladder was often turned to for computation of seniority and promotion sequence. Positions in the central administration were equated with corresponding positions in the provincial administration. The section chiefs of the six boards (lang-chung) were equated with prefectural administrators, for instance, and the section assistant chiefs (yuan-wai-lang) with prefectural vice-administrator.26

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A slightly different system of classification was applied to executory class positions. Since they were mostly staff positions distributed along the entire administrative hierarchy, the organizational structure itself could not serve as the basis of classification. Executory I positions, for instance, which constituted the lowest rung of the classificatory scheme, were to be found both on the prefectural staff and on the county staff. While the responsibilities of the respective position categories were no doubt taken into consideration in classifying them, it seems that classification was essentially based on tradition and therefore not without an arbitrary element. Yet it is in this regard that the Sung civil service closely approximated contemporary practice. Here several thousand positions belonging to scores of position categories were consolidated into four grades or classes and arranged into a series. Each grade carried a grade title usually compounded of elements of the titles of its constituents (position categories). For instance, Executory Grade I was known as p'an-ssu-pu-wei from p'an-kuan, ssu-li, chu-pu, and hsien-wei. (See Table 15.) All positions of the same grade were generally assigned the same value for computation of seniority. Promotion in grade was a stepby-step affair and usually required both seniority and merit. Nevertheless these position grades did not constitute a career ladder in the sense of the administrative class career ladder. This is because an executory class official could be promoted to the administrative class from any of the executory grades. (See Figure 6 in Chapter 5.) The preceding scheme of position classification based on the hierarchical status of positions was often complemented by another classificatory system based on the relative importance of each position vis-à-vis positions of the same class. This additional classificatory scheme was necessary because there were enormous differences in population and wealth between administrative units of the same hierarchical status. Prefectures, for example, ranged from those containing a dozen counties with population in excess of a million to those with a single county having a few thousand people. The disparity among counties could be equally as great. To facilitate the process of job placement, the Sung civil service therefore had a workable system in place for classifying the units of the field administration as described in Chapter 1." The first-term prefectural administrator was usually assigned a prefecture of middling or inferior rank. As his seniority accumulated, he would be in line for administratorship of superior prefectures. We have now laid the groundwork for a better understanding of the functional rank of the Sung civil service. Functional rank is denoted by the step in the career ladder that an official currently occupied or was about to occupy. If he had completed a term of office as prefectural administrator, for instance, he would be designated an expectant second-

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Table 15. Classification of Positions for Executory Officials Executory I P'an-ssu made up of chun-hsun p'an-kuan (police supervisor) Ssu-li, ssu-fa, ssu-hu ts'an-chun (police inspector, prosecutor, finance inspector of prefectures) Pu-wei (county registrars and sheriffs) Executory II Ling-lu, i.e., hsien-ling (county magistrates) Ssu-lu ts'an-chun (general executive inspectors of prefectures) Executory III Chu-teng chih-kuan (first-term staff officer) such as fang-t'uan t'ui-kuan (prefectural judge in regional and militia command prefectures) Chun-chienp'an-kuan (staff supervisors in military and industrial prefectures) Liu-shou chieh ch'a t'ui-kuan (prefectural judge in regional command and regional supervisory prefectures) Executory IV Liang-shih chih-kuan (second-term staff officer) Liu-shou chieh-ch 'ap'an-kuan (staff supervisors in prefectures under an imperial deputy capital custodian in regional command prefectures or in regional supervisory prefectures) Chieh-tu chang shu-chi (general secretary of prefecture) Kuan-ch 'a chih-shih (secretary of a prefecture) Fang-yii t'uan lien p'an-kuan (staff supervisor in regional defense and militia command prefectures)

term prefectural administrator. This would be his functional rank (tzuhsu).n As functional rank was pegged to the position that one was qualified to hold, there would be as many grades in rank as there were position grades. Combining the two complementary schemes of position classification discussed above results in Table 16. Any position must have a hierarchical status and must be located in one of the seven types of prefectures or counties. Theoretically there were forty-nine different position categories, not counting the intendant positions which had circuitwide responsibilities. If we further include the terms of service as part of the functional rank concept, we could work out the grades of the rank system in multiples of forty-nine—for instance, a first-term Executory I, Locality I official, a second-term Executory I, Locality I official, and so forth. This compound classification system was of paramount importance in the placement of fresh civil service recruits. Practically everybody began his career at the Executory I level. Nevertheless there is a world of difference in the actual conditions of work between the mostfavored group and the most-discriminated group, placed at Locations VII and I, respectively. The respective placement locations of the different categories of civil service recruits are given in Table 17. As the hierarchical status/location classification provided a minute

Table 16. Functional Rank Computation Table Locality

Position

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Executory I Executory II Executory III Executory IV Administrative-class county magistrate Prefectural vice-administrator Prefectural administrator Locality Locality Locality Locality Locality Locality Locality

I: II: III: IV: V: VI: VII:

inferior counties (hsia) and inferior prefectures (hsia) medium-inferior counties (chung-hsia) and inferior prefectures (hsia) medium counties (chung) and medium prefectures (chung) superior counties (shang) and medium prefectures (chung) strategic counties (chin) and superior prefectures (shang) renowned counties (wang) and strategic prefectures (chi) metropolitan counties (chi) and renowned prefectures (wang)

Table 17. Placement Locations for First-Term Civil Service Members For placement in Location VII: doctors of letters (chin-shih) and doctors of classics (ming-ching) For placement in Location VI: doctors of the nine classics (chiu-ching) For placement in Location V: doctors of law (ming-fa) For placement in Location IV: recipients of the degree of pedants (hsueh-chiu) and graduates of the military version of the civil service examination (wu-chii) For placement in Location III: chamberlains of the ancestral temple (t'ai-miao chai-lang) For placement in Location II: chamberlains of the temple for offering the chiao sacrifice (chiao-miao chai-lang) and holders of the following ranks who had been declared eligible for placement in civil service positions: the associated officials pieh-chia, chang-shih, ssu-ma, wen-hsueh For placement in Location I: acting officials (she-kuan) and transfers from the clerical subbureaucracy (liu-wai) Source: Sung Shih (chih-kuan 9).

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differentiation of functional rank, it is conceivable that the placement of officials could be worked out for subsequent appointments. At each step in each official's career, he would be eligible for appointments only to those positions that corresponded to his functional rank—for instance, an administrative-class county magistrate to the hundreds of counties classified as superior. This system of matching positions exactly with functional rank looks simple on paper, but it involved enormous difficulties in implementation. An obvious problem was that posed by the bottlenecks. The number of Northern Sung administrative-class county magistrates probably exceeded six or seven hundred, more than twice the number of prefectural vice-administrator positions on the next higher rung of the career ladder. If all administrative class magistrates were promoted to prefectural vice-administrator rank, and if they could be appointed only to this position, they had to wait an inordinately long period for appointment. To avoid this difficulty the Sung civil service adopted a flexible approach. Instead of trying to have an exact fit between position and functional rank, the filling of positions was entrusted to the market mechanism of supply and demand. A range of functional ranks was specified for each position, and within the range applicants of higher functional rank bumped those of lower functional rank. Thus for most choice positions, the successful applicants were usually of higher ranks than the position titles indicated. The vice-administratorship of a large prosperous prefecture was very likely to be held by one whose functional rank might be second-term prefectural administrator. (See Table 18.) Allowing positions to find their own levels in the job market could also work the other way around. Although intense competition existed for choice positions, there were nevertheless positions in remote circuits so unattractive that nobody who met the standards for appointment cared to apply for them. 2 ' After a specified period of time with no takers, the standards were then lowered. If there were still no takers, standards were lowered again so that all requirements concerning minimum seniority or sponsors might be waived. There was, therefore, another system of position classification with reference to the time span required for positions to be filled. In general four classes of positions were recognized: extraordinary (fei-tz'u, literally nonroutine), ordinary (ching-shih), grace (p'ok'o), and residual (ts'an ling). For instance, positions to be filled by administrative class officials were classified as follows: Within the first five days of the public announcement of the vacancies, they were extraordinary positions; commencing with the sixth day, they became ordinary positions; after three months, they were reclassified as grace; after another ten days, they became residual.30 The filling of undesirable positions was not left to mere chance. After the foregoing classificatory scheme was established, it was effectively utilized by the appointment agency. For instance, officials whose perfor-

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Table 18. Qualifications of Candidates for Appointment to Sample Civil Service Positions Standard of appointment for the Left Section of the president (shang-shu tso-hsuan k 'o) Prefectural vice-administrator (t'ung-p'an) in the following prefectures: Chiinchou, Sui-chou, Ying-chou, Fang-chou, Huang-chou, Hao-chou, An-ching fu, Tai-chou, Chu-chou, Hui-chou, Ch'ih-chou, Tuan-chou, Yuan-chou, Yiieh-chou, Te-an fu, Hsing-kuo chun, Lin-chiang chun For standard appointment: candidates with prefectural administrator rank; then those with prefectural vice-administrator rank For substandard appointment (po-k'o): candidates of prefectural vice-administrator rank; then those of second-term county magistrate rank County magistrate (chih-hsien) in the following counties: Yen-ch'eng hsien of Huai-an prefecture, Kuei-chi hsien of Hsing-chou prefecture, Fou-liang hsien of Jao-chou prefecture For standard appointment: candidates of prefectural vice-administrator rank; then those of second-term county magistrate rank; then those of first-term county magistrate rank For substandard appointment: candidates of first-term county magistrate rank; then those newly promoted to the administrative class by way of special reward with sponsorship endorsement County deputy-magistrate (hsien-ch 'engj For standard appointment: candidates of ch'in-min status; then those newly promoted to the administrative class; then those of second-term service-agent rank with sponsorship endorsement For substandard appointment (for positions in the circuits of Liangche, Chiang-tung, Chiang-si, Fukien, Hunan): candidates of first-term county magistrate rank; then those of second-term service-agent rank without sponsorship endorsement For substandard appointment (for positions in the circuits of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Hupei, Huai-tung, Huai-si): candidates of first-term county magistrate rank; then those of second-term or first-term service-agent rank without sponsorship endorsement Sources: LPTF14621:25b; LPTF14621:5ab; LPTF14621:12ab.

mance was below par at a previous commission might be restricted to only grace or residual positions. 31 By the same token, individuals might be rewarded for meritorious performance by being given a chance to apply for extraordinary positions. 32 When positions were reclassified from ordinary to grace, there was usually a considerable reduction in the qualification required for appointment. Appointments made in accordance with the higher qualifications at the extraordinary and ordinary stages of the temporal classificatory scheme were known as standard appointments (cheng-k'o) while those made at the grace and residual stages were known as substandard

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appointments (p'o-k'o)." When a position was reclassified, eligible applicants thus fell into two categories—those who met the requirements for the standard appointment and those who only met the requirement for the substandard appointment. If by chance a man meeting the requirement for standard appointment applied for the position, he was to be given preference over those who met the requirement for substandard appointment only. Applicants of the same functional rank applying for the same position were ranked in accordance with their entry methods or any other achievements deemed additional qualifications for the position in question. For instance, the qualifications for appointment to professorship of prefectural schools were set forth as follows: Graduates of the special decree examination known as tz'u-hsueh chien-mou, or who passed a special examination for teaching positions, or who graduated in the first division of the Palace Examination, or who ranked among the first ten at the Departmental Examination, or who belonged to the upper division of the Imperial University, or who ranked among the first three in the list of candidates qualified by the Imperial University or the School for Imperial Clansmen.34

Applicants who belonged to any one of these categories were considered to have met the standard (ying-k'o). They were ranked in accordance with the number of categories in which they met the standard. To illustrate: A scholar might begin his string of academic successes at the Imperial University where he was ranked first among the list of candidates sponsored by this institution for the civil service examination. The same scholar ranked third at the Departmental Examination and second at the Palace Examination. A few years later he passed the Decree Examination. If he applied for a position as a prefectural school professor at this point, he would have met the standard for appointment in four categories and would edge out any other applicant for the same position meeting standards in fewer categories. In most conventional systems, good prospects for promotion are probably more important than a handsome salary or attractive working conditions in maintaining worker morale. Qualification for promotion is usually computed on a combination of seniority and merit. Whether a promotion indeed occurs, however, depends not so much on the qualification of the candidate as on the availability of vacancies. In most conventional organizations with a pyramidal structure there are generally fewer positions on successively higher echelons. Thus not everyone who meets the qualifications for promotion can be promoted. Most organizations have therefore established a promotion quota for each position class based on anticipated vacancies on the next higher echelon. Compe-

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tition for promotion is understandably intense as this is the only promotion that matters. It may be observed that promotion in functional rank for members of the Sung civil service represented only a facet in a multifaceted scramble for bureaucratic success. The most challenging fight for survival for the career-minded, that is, the change of official status from executory to the administrative class, was fought in a different arena—in the personal rank system. (See Chapter 5.) The personal rank system also governed some of the greatest rewards of official service: base pay and thej'/« privilege. Furthermore the attainment of a certain functional rank was not to be equated with receiving a functional office (or position) of the same rank. It only conferred upon individuals the right to be considered for positions of that particular class. Whether he indeed received positions of that class depended on a lot of other things. For these reasons, no promotion quotas were set for each functional rank. This is not to say that promotions in functional rank (kuan-sheng) were not important, for in an intensely competitive world, even though the possession of a certain rank may not guarantee appointment to a chosen position, those without the requisite functional rank stood even less chance. Promotion in functional rank was a step-by-step progress following a prescribed sequence with no provisions for skipping any intermediary steps. As in modern personnel systems, qualifications for promotion were on the basis of both seniority and merit. 55 Minimum seniority was computed in numbers of terms of office, and as the terms of office varied in length the minimum number of years worked in positions of a certain level was specified—for example, two terms totaling four years. Merit usually meant recommendation by sponsors. As I describe in greater detail in the next chapter, the number and types of sponsorship endorsement that those in supervisory positions were permitted to make annually were strictly regulated by law. Given the total number of supervisory positions and the number of sponsorship endorsements for promotion they could make annually, the total number of officials who qualified for promotion could be known. By restricting the right to make sponsorship endorsement to specified supervisory positions, and limiting the number each could make annually, the court had in fact imposed a quota system of promotion for each rank without publicly saying so. 36 The number of sponsor endorsements required for promotion could be as few as one or two ranging to as many as four. The exception was for men who qualified for official service in irregular ways such as those promoted from the clerical ranks or those who qualified by purchasing an office (chin-na). For these men, promotion in functional rank sometimes required the endorsement of six or seven sponsors. 37 While the Board of Personnel was responsible for placing the vast majority of civil service members, appointment to the more important

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positions in the central government, as well as in the provinces, was taken out of its hands. In theory the selection and appointment of personnel to the topmost echelon of the central administration, ranging from the councilor of state to the vice-presidents of the boards collectively known as ministers in attendance (shih-ts'ung), were the exclusive prerogative of the emperor. Below this level and above the level where the Board of Personnel had jurisdiction, the appointment function was divided between the Secretariat-Chancellery and the Bureau of Military Affairs. Appointments originating from the former were known as "Hall Appointments" (t'ang-ch'u, from the hall where members of the Secretariat-Chancellery assembled to deliberate on business). 38 As the number of these appointments was relatively few compared with the thousands that the Board of Personnel was required to handle, it might be imagined that there was a tendency to judge each case on its own merits rather than in terms of the formal qualification of the candidates. This was certainly true, but formal qualifications still prescribed the parameters of personnel action. Individuals could be appointed to positions higher or lower than their functional rank, for example, but seldom more than two grades higher or two grades lower. The level of appointment in relation to the functional rank of the official was indicated by the language of the appointment patent. At one grade higher, the appointment was known as provisional (ch'tian); at two grades higher, it became provisionally appointed (ch'uan fa-chien). For instance, an official whose functional rank was prefectural vice-administrator could be given appointment as provisional prefectural administrator (at one grade higher) or be provisionally appointed judicial intendant (at two grades higher). 39 The primary function of the Board of Personnel was to operate the placement service through which civil service personnel were assigned to man the offices of the civil administration. In Northern Sung times, placement of administrative class officials often followed a rigid geographical sequence, with a term of office at nearby localities alternating with one at remote places. Subject to this geographical requirement, officials were permitted to name three circuits, in order of preference, where they expected to serve in their next commission. Within these circuits the board sought to match the official with a suitable position, but the official had the right to reject the assignment. A second position was offered him, but again he could turn it down. After two rejections, he was constrained to accept whatever position was offered him the third time. 40 The alternating of distant and near commissions involved officials in much hardship, and in 1037 the system was changed. The new system permitted officials much greater latitude in choosing the localities of their job assignments. The consequence, however, was that undesirable positions in remote circuits could not be filled. By 1039 it was necessary to switch back to the old system. Some elements of the newer system,

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however, were retained. 41 Under certain circumstances, applying directly for specific positions by filing a deposition (chuang) was permitted. The applicants for the same position were then ranked in terms of their functional rank and other pertinent criteria. As there might be a dozen or more men aiming at the same position, the chances of landing it were rather remote. This procedure of applying for positions was known as shooting for positions (she-ch'ueh). By Southern Sung times, this procedure was probably expanded in scope and became the main system for placing administrative class officials. Officials were permitted to shoot for positions in their provincial posts without coming to the board in person. To keep the volume of paperwork under control, a ceiling was imposed on the number of positions officials might shoot for: three for those in the capital and five for those who remained in the provinces. 42 Placement of the executory class officials was the responsibility of the Left Section of the vice-president, formerly known as the liu-nei-ch'uan. As mentioned previously, placement of executory officials was subject to the lapse factor. The lapse factor was usually computed in terms of the number of selections (hsuan), which had to take place since the expiration of the last commission before an executory official was eligible for a new commission. Selections were periodic events held in the presence of the eligible officials assembled specifically for the purpose of placement. They were therefore known as placement assemblies (chi-chu). Placement assemblies were usually held quarterly (chi-chi), but monthly assemblies (yiieh-chi) were also quite common. Available positions were read aloud one at a time at these assemblies and candidates were asked, in the order they were due to receive commissions, whether they would accept the position in question. 43 Candidates had the privilege of turning down all the positions offered them for three consecutive placement assemblies. Under certain circumstances, they could have this privilege extended to a fourth placement assembly. After that their options ended and they had to accept whatever positions were offered them. Outside the framework of the placement assemblies, executory officials were permitted to apply for specific positions, similar to shooting for positions as described in connection with administrative class officials. 44 The temporal scheme of position classification was well adapted to the placement process. A great many positions, particularly those in the service-agent category, were first offered to administrative class officials. After they had their pick, those left over were reclassified as grace positions and made available to executory class officials at the placement assemblies. Those positions that remained unfilled after a round of pickings could be reclassified again as residual. 45 There was, of course, no scarcity of men on the low end of the priority spectrum who were restricted to only those positions that nobody else wanted. They ranged

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f r o m officials who were still under the stigma of public (administrative) offense, and therefore otherwise ineligible for placement, to graduates of the facilitated degree examination. With thousands of appointments to make every year, the board had to stick to the letter of the law in order to protect itself f r o m charges of impropriety. Placement of candidates was therefore based solely on their formal qualifications—that is, functional rank and place in the priority list for each class of positions. The candidates were therefore not always suited to the positions. Obvious mismatchings, however, could be corrected by the supervisory officials in the provinces, particularly the fiscal intendants who had the prerogative of shuffling low-rank personnel credited to their circuits. Fiscal intendants were also authorized to make interim appointments if for some reason the regularly commissioned officials did not take up their appointments. 4 6 I have referred to the order in which candidates at the placement assemblies were due to receive commissions. This order was probably the same as that by which officials, having completed a term of service, reported at the Board of Personnel again for their next commissions. As the number of appointments that could be handled at each placement assembly was limited and known in advance, an official reporting at the board already had a definite idea of how long he had to wait in terms of placement assembly intervals before he would be called upon to bid for positions. By the same token, administrative class officials also had to await their turn to bid for positions, even though in theory they were not subject to the lapse factor. This is because there were far more administrative class officials than there were administrative class positions. The situation therefore necessitated a sort of rotation system by which a portion of the personnel were held back so that the placement mechanism would not be overloaded. As in the case of executory officials, the approximate waiting time for administrative class officials to bid for positions was ascertainable well in advance. One's place on the waiting list was known as ming-tz'u. In the mid-eleventh century it was not uncommon for administrative class officials to spend a year or so awaiting their turns to bid. This waiting was known as hou-tz'u.*1 A m o n g the most common rewards for meritorious service was the sheng-ming-tz'u, which meant advancing one's place on the waiting list by amounts equivalent to three months, six months, or a year's waiting time. 48 Once one had received a commission, there was usually another period of waiting before it took effect. The current incumbent might still have another year before his commission or term of office expired. This kind of waiting for the commission to take effect was known as tai-ch 'tieh. The foregoing account of position classification and the process of job assignment is based primarily on regulations of the Board of Personnel. The question may be raised to what extent the regulations were adhered

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to, or ignored, in practice. A definitive answer to the question, of course, can only be given on the basis of a major empirical study. Short of that, however, a few tentative statements can be made. For instance, complaints about overregimentation in personnel administration appear to be a prominent theme in Southern Sung political thought. In a remarkable passage from his Chien-lii ts'e (Suggestions of a Foolish Man After a Thousand Deliberations), Yang Wan-li wrote: This is what the Board of Personnel means by the law of job assignment. When people first report to the board after qualifying for civil service status, they are assigned to positions of registrars and sheriffs. After serving as registrars and sheriffs, they will be assigned to positions of magistrates and deputy magistrates. Having served in the latter positions, they will be assigned to positions on the prefectural administration in accordance with the law. Next, they will be assigned positions of prefectural administrators and vice-administrators in accordance with this law. Those to whom the law is applicable are said to have met the standard for appointment. Those who meet the standard will be appointed to the positions as provided by law despite the fact that they may be avaricious, cowardly, senile or immature, ignorant or utterly incompetent. They are not ashamed to receive their appointments nor does the Board of Personnel make any trouble for them. If they do not meet the standard, they will not receive the appointments as provided by law even though they are truly worthy men with outstanding ability and personal integrity.'"

The same sentiments and phraseology are repeated almost verbatim in the writings of Yeh Shih and more significantly in a civil service examination primer dating from the Southern Sung period. 50 Examination primers were commercial publications designed to provide examination candidates with an adequate stock of ideas and expressions so that they could write essays on current affairs (ts'e), an important part of the examination curriculum. It may be assumed that the writer of an examination primer generally wanted to play it safe and would not commit himself to a strong position on any issue unless he was sure of his facts and his views were not at variance with the consensus of opinion of the ruling elite. The perception, if not the reality, of the process of job assignment was therefore one of extreme inflexibility in adhering to the letter of the law. Toward the second half of the Southern Sung dynasty, war flared up again in earnest between the Sung and its northern neighbors, the Jurchen Chin and the Mongols. The area under civil administration therefore was reduced drastically, resulting in a similar reduction in civil service positions. The number of civil service personnel, however, did not diminish much. The imbalance between positions and personnel which was already manifest earlier became more acute. A single civil service position had to be shared between five or six individuals so that it took

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an average of ten to twelve years to complete a term of service. Whereas most members of the civil service stoically put up with the frustrations and interminable delays in the job placement process, a few enterprising individuals managed to figure out ways to beat the system and the phenomenon of "position brokering" was born. Undoubtedly clerks in the Board of Personnel capitalized on their familiarity with the placement process as well as their access to job information to make handsome profits. 5 ' The expert in the game, however, was a man from Wu-hsing known as "Gentleman Shen who vendors positions" (mai ch'iieh Shen-chia). He meticulously kept tabs on all civil service positions and for a consideration could steer his patrons to those positions where the waiting time for taking office could be cut down immensely. It is true that each position he targeted, like all civil service positions of this late period, had three or four expectant officials already lined up for it. However, it could happen that the father of expectant official Number 1 just died so that he had to pass up his turn to observe the three year's mourning; expectant official Number 2 needed only a few more months of service credit to make up a prior term and had no intention of serving out the entire term; expectant official Number 3 had just been impeached for a serious offense and most likely would be demoted drastically. Armed with this kind of information, the applicant had a tremendous advantage over his competitors who had to shoot for positions in the dark. 52 This account of the job placement process of the Sung civil service would be incomplete without a brief comment on the arrangement known as tsou-pi whereby top provincial officials were permitted to fill staff positions within their jurisdiction with men of their choice. Tsou-pi was prevalent under the Han dynasty, but its scope was considerably reduced in subsequent dynasties.53 Under the Sung, the practice was theoretically disallowed and all civil service positions were supposed to come under the appointment power of the central government. Exceptions, however, were permitted under special circumstances. For instance, there were positions with such responsibilities that if they were not performed properly significant damage to public interest would ensue. The filling of these positions could not be left to random chance, which was what happened with regular appointments made in accordance with Board of Personnel regulations. (It is mere chance that competent people were appointed to a specific position.) In this category, for instance, were civil service positions assigned to offices along the routes which convoys of horses from Szechwan had to traverse on their way to the Lower Yangtze Basin.54 The performance of the men holding these positions in procuring supplies was crucial to the success of these convoys. Second, there were positions which could only be filled by men enjoying the utmost confidence of their superiors, as they were required to handle confiden-

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tial matters.55 Third, there were positions which were hard to fill under normal placement procedures of the Board of Personnel. These could be positions located in war-ravaged territories or along the extreme border so that service involved palpable hazard.56 Even in situations where tsou-pi was authorized, top provincial officials were not given a free hand in making appointments. They could not appoint men without civil service status or members of the civil service who had never previously held regular commissions; nor were they allowed to appoint their relatives within specified degrees of kinship. This last prohibition was waived, however, for appointment to positions in charge of confidential matters. Furthermore, all tsou-pi appointments had to be approved by court to take effect. Undoubtedly these restrictions on tsou-pi were designed to ensure that top provincial officials would not circumvent the spirit of the commission system by building up their own personnel machine. Job Assignments

for Military

Officials

During the early years of the dynasty with individuals of administrative skills in great demand, there were few civil service positions from which servitors and other military rank officials were specifically banned. With the passage of time and the return of a personnel glut, however, servitors were increasingly pushed out of the field administration. By Southern Sung times, in the interior of the empire, positions on the county level for magistrates, sheriffs, registrars, and all prefectural staff positions were no longer open to them.57 Even on the frontier, their share of the positions in the line administration was considerably reduced.58 During most of the Sung period, the best employment opportunity for servitors who were not bona fide soldiers was probably to be found in service-agent positions (chien-t'ang). The latter were generally involved in revenue-producing activities such as the state monopoly in salt, tea, and wine and the collection of commercial and transit taxes. The serviceagent category probably also included positions in charge of supportive activities which contributed to the maintenance of the physical infrastructure indispensable to the economic life of the state, although they themselves were not directly productive of revenue. These ranged from the controller of river traffic (pai-an-ssu) and the supervisors of dockyards to the custodians of depots.59 In this connection, one should also mention the important role which servitors played in the maintenance of the communication network of the empire. Individual servitors were tapped to organize convoys of tribute items (rice and other valuables), supervise the postal relay system (i), undertake the transmission of documents by special courier, or escort high officials in transit to and from provincial posts. The maintenance of law and order also provided con-

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siderable employment opportunities as county sheriffs or inspectors on patrol (hsiin-chien) and as grand supervisors (tu-chien) or grand controllers (tsung-kuan) of regional forces. Most individuals of military rank were therefore employed in positions of the non-ch'in-min category. Thus the functional rank system described in considerable detail in the preceding section was really not applicable to them. Instead military rank officials had their own rank system. Due to the paucity of data, however, no more than a brief outline may be given here. This system was made up of four regular grades of functional rank. Below these four regular grades was a probationary grade for those who qualified for civil service status by the least favored entry method: transfer from the army division. Men of this probationary grade were parceled out among offices in the provinces where they were assigned no permanent duties but were to do all kinds of odd jobs when necessary. Most military rank officials entered the service at grade 1, which qualified them to hold service-agent positions. Above this at grade 2, they became eligible for ch'in-min positions. Promotion to grade 3 was necessary for appointment to garrison commandant positions (chenchiang) and promotion to grade 4 for appointment to grand supervisor of prefectural or circuit troops (chou-chin-hsia, lou-fen tu-chien).60 This hierarchy of functional ranks and the career pattern it entailed dated back to Northern Sung times before the genuine army officers were removed from the roster of servitors. Positions for grades 3 and 4 were basically troop command positions whereas those of lower grades were of a miscellaneous nature but with civil administrative positions predominating. This pattern was in full accord with the reward system. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the personal rank system with its large number of grades was designed primarily for officers on combat duty who could win distinction and move up the ranks rapidly whereas civilians who depended primarily on seniority moved up the hierarchy at a much slower pace. Promotions in functional rank followed rules which were not necessarily the same as those governing promotions in personal rank. Nevertheless the two rank systems did interact. For instance, garrison commandant positions were available only to officials who were servitors major and up." This means that grade 3 on the functional rank scale was linked to a range of personal rank grades above the servitor minor level. This rule effectively shut out noncombat officers who could not expect to amass sufficient seniority to move into servitor major ranks. Garrison commandant positions assumed importance in the army administration following the establishment of permanent garrisons (chiang) not only on the frontier but also in the interior during the reign of Shen-tsung. These commandants were charged with the training as well as general administration of the troops under their command. The

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grand supervisor of regional forces was in charge of general staff work as well as command of the troops of the circuit when mobilized for combat. There is no question that assignments as garrison commandants and grand supervisors provided excellent experience for army officers who could then move on to play important roles in the central army administration. The permanent garrison system and the regional forces under the grand supervisors, like many other aspects of the Northern Sung military system, were swept away by the Jurchen invasion. Nevertheless, although the substance and reality were gone, the name survived. Officials were still appointed to garrison commandant and grand supervisor positions even though these positions were little more than sinecures. For practical purposes, therefore, functional ranks for military rank officials in the Southern Sung consisted of the first two grades only, namely, service-agent and ch 'in-min. Only officials who had formally attained the ch'in-min status were eligible for appointment as county magistrates or prefectural administrators. With this exception, it must be observed that those positions to which grade 2 officials were customarily appointed were not necessarily or usually of the ch'in-min variety. For most officials, ch'in-min was therefore little more than a status or qualification which they had to attain for appointment to some of the better positions available to them. Promotion from service-agent to ch'in-min status—that is, from grade 1 to grade 2 in functional rank—connoted something more significant than mere promotion in functional rank. This is because this promotion was regarded as the military counterpart to the civilian change of official status (kai-kuan), as a sine qua non for further promotion up the bureaucratic ladder. Unlike the civilian kai-kuan which hinged upon sponsorship endorsements, the promotion in functional rank for military rank officials generally required no sponsorship endorsements. Seniority was the main requirement.62 There were, however, other ways to restrict the number of promotions to the desired level. For instance, it was enacted that to qualify for promotion one had to serve a specified term of office in positions selected from a list of approved positions.63 In view of the vast number of positions for military rank officials and their varied nature, the two effective grades of functional rank did not constitute an adequate basis for differentiation among them for placement. Additional status qualifiers were therefore introduced. A good example is use of the label "talented military men" (ts'ai-wu-jen). Since many positions necessitated dealing with men prone to violence (for example, those of county sheriffs or inspectors on patrol), they should be held by men with martial skills. Martial skills could not be presumed of all military rank officials, however, as many of them entered the civil service on the basis of thej'/« privilege or through transfer from the clerical

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service. Those who indeed possessed the requisite skills, certified by passing the placement examination for military rank officials (cheng-shih) or by passing the military version of the civil service examination (wu-chii) or by virtue of war merit, were labeled talented military men. Only these men were eligible for appointment to the positions listed above. 64 In a similar vein, entry methods were also commonly used as status qualifiers for placement purposes. This is especially true for the most and the least favored entry methods. For instance, the few positions in general administration as county magistrates or prefectural administrators available to military rank officials were often restricted to graduates of the military version of the civil service examination. The same is true of many county sheriff positions. 65 On the other hand, those who entered the civil service through contribution were barred from positions where temptation for graft was greatest—for example, the many service-agent positions in charge of revenue collection. 66 The same debility also extended to other officials, regardless of entry method, who had been convicted of corruption (tsang-ssu).

5 The Personal Rank System

In tracing the evolution of the Sung civil service, we have seen that it was customary for officials to receive, in addition to their appointments to substantive positions, also a second type of appointment (titular offices, known as classification titles after the Yuan-feng reorganization). The latter appointments were originally intended to provide them with rank in the official hierarchy and to serve as the basis for computing their pay and fringe benefits. If the Sung civil service developed along the lines of the original design, it might be said to operate primarily on the basis of rank classification, like the civil services of many European countries today and most modern armies. The important thing to keep in mind about rank in systems governed by rank classification is that it has a fairly permanent character, irrespective of the jobs or positions that an individual of that rank is currently assigned to. 1 Such a concept of rank as the basis of remuneration is best suited to personnel systems like modern armies which put a premium on flexibility in the deployment of personnel. Generals, for instance, who have outlived their usefulness can be shunted off to unimportant jobs without subjecting them to the indignity of reduction in rank and salary whereas bright young officers can be assigned to challenging positions with great responsibility v ithout the necessity of promoting them with unseemly haste. 2 I will refer to rank in this classic sense as personal rank to distinguish it from the system of ranking in job placement which I have described as functional rank. If the mature Sung civil service continued to operate on the basis of rank classification, then appointments to titular offices/classification titles (the conferment of personal rank) should be a matter of the greatest importance, as it was the key to all the material rewards of office holding. In view of the well-known dictum of Wang Yin-lin referred to in the preceding chap'er, however, this was not the case. Members of the Sung civil service valued appointments to choice commissions far more than they did promotion in personal rank. Obviously, personal rank meant much less to officials of Wang's time than it once signified. It is also obvious that the domain of personnel administration governed by rank

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classification had sustained a serious erosion. In this chapter I wish to ascertain the extent of this erosion by exploring the exact role and scope that personal rank played in the Sung civil service. First, I will try to place the matter in a historic context by examining the use of personal rank and rank classification in the civil service of other dynasties.

The Personal Rank Concept in Historical

Perspective

During the two thousand years when the Chinese world was organized as an empire, there were two long periods, namely the C h ' i n - H a n (220 B.C. to A.D. 220) and the Ming-Ch'ing (1368-1911), when hereditary privileges played a relatively minor part in determining sociopolitical success. Throughout this time, the Chinese civil service operated primarily on a position classification basis. In the intervening period, that is, from the fall of the H a n dynasty to the end of the T ' a n g (circa 220-906), which may be called the Middle Ages of imperial China, Chinese society was highly stratified and hereditary aristocrats monopolized government service. The civil service of this middle period was distinguished by the fact that it operated to a considerable extent on rank classification. The hereditary aristocracy vanished with the demise of the T'ang dynasty, but the emphasis on personal rank survived into the Sung. A case can therefore be made that the initial prominence of the personal rank system in the civil service was a legacy of a bygone era. To substantiate this thesis we will look at the rank system of the successive dynasties more closely. In H a n times, there was no specific rank system apart from the overall structure of the civil service. In comparing two random posts and their incumbents, the only available guide to their respective status was the salary differential between them. For instance, the status of a county magistrate with a salary (chih) of six hundred bushels of grain was relatively low in comparison to that of a commandery governor with a salary of two thousand bushels. 3 The latter might be considered the equal of the presidents of the Nine Ministries, also with a salary of two thousand bushels. From the time of the Three Kingdoms until the end of the imperial era, the best-known rank system used for structuring the civil service was the chiu-p'in (nine numerical grades), referred to subsequently as t h e p ' i n grade system." Although one's rank in the p'in system was dependent on the position he held in the hierarchy of civil service positions, it was conceptually distinguishable f r o m the latter. Each position in the bureaucracy was assigned a p'in (grade) which prescribed the salary level and fringe benefits of the position. The hierarchy of the p'in grades with its schedule of salaries and fringe benefits thus served as a rudimentary position classification system. In addition to the p'in system there were several other classificatory schemes for structuring members of the civil service such as

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the chiieh (nobility ranks) and hsiin (military merit). Nevertheless, these schemes were of lesser importance since they had little bearing on the substantive issues of pay and fringe benefits. Consequently, they did not play a major role in the popular conception of officialdom. The only sure guide to the status of an official was his p'in grade, which apart from its intrinsic importance was also easily comprehensible to the man on the street. There were only nine numerical grades in the system; the ninth was the lowest grade and the first was the highest. Normally each grade was subdivided into two grades, making a total of eighteen. Officials were therefore referred to in popular parlance as officials of a certain p'in grade. Strictly speaking, it must be kept in mind that the p'in grade was not assigned to the person of the official per se but to his office. The official was of a certain p'in grade by virtue of the fact that he was the incumbent of a position of that p'in grade. The civil service of both the Han and the Ming-Ch'ing dynasties thus utilized a rank system (the chih for the Han and the p'in for the MingCh'ing) based on position classification. The question may be raised whether there is any correlation between the prominence of the position classification system and the relative deemphasis of hereditary privilege. I believe there is. Robert Marsh, for instance, has demonstrated on the basis of hundreds of biographies of Ch'ing officials that the ultimate rank reached by each individual in his sample was based on seniority or the number of years he was in the civil service rather than on extrabureaucratic factors such as nepotism or luck. 5 Seniority is a testimony to stamina, perseverance, and professional competence. In other words, it is a measure of achievement, congruous with the performance principle. Although no comparable studies on other dynasties are yet available, there is no reason to believe that their bureaucracies behaved differently. 6 In the highly bureaucratized milieu of the Chinese civil service, a few individuals might rise to the top of the hierarchy on account of favoritism; for the vast majority of the officials, however, their careers were governed by the bureaucratically sanctioned norms. Thus empirically it may be said that periods of Chinese history in which the claims of hereditary privilege were deemphasized tended to favor position classification since the latter was more hospitable to the performance principle. This emphasis on the performance principle as the main basis of the rank system was not compatible with the ethos of the middle period of imperial China. With the fall of the Han dynasty, Chinese society became increasingly aristocratized. If the aristocratic spirit of the age had indeed pervaded the whole of Chinese society, it may be surmised that the rank system of this period should be equipped with a mechanism that moderated the impact of the performance principle by making allowance for hereditary privilege. Was there indeed such a mechanism, and if so, how did it operate?

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We have seen that the traditional p'in grade system was primarily a rank system based on position classification. This method of classification was first applied to civil service positions during the Three Kingdoms period (220-264), following the fall of the Han dynasty. But it was as a classification of personnel and not of positions that the term chiup'in first gained currency. To introduce a measure of order and objectivity into the civil service recruitment and placement processes, Ch'en Chun, the president of the Board of Personnel of the state of Wei, directed the commanderies to rank the candidates they recommended for civil service in nine grades in accordance with their ability.7 This was the chiu-p'in chung-cheng (fair and impartial ranking in nine grades). Although candidates for government service were ostensibly ranked in accordance with their scholarship or their moral character, in actual fact the decisive factor was birth, as attested in the saying "There are no individuals of humble birth among the upper grades and no scions of great families among the lower grades." The phenomenon of the great families monopolizing the political, cultural, and economic life of Chinese society persisted into the subsequent centuries despite barbarian invasion and social unrest. In both the barbarian-dominated north and the indigenous Chinese dynasties of the south, these great families (men-fa) dug in their heels and adamantly refused to have anything to do with people who were not their social equals. Men of lesser pretensions, aping their social superiors, also closed ranks. As a consequence, elite society became highly stratified. Although in this kind of society social status was not entirely divorced from office holding and thus had to be certified by the state,8 the apparatus of state power had in fact been taken over by a self-perpetuating elite. Status in this elite society was conferred by one's fellow men and depended on birth more than anything else. To help settle claims of precedence and provide an objective guide to the prominent clans of each locality, genealogical manuals (pu-tieh) were compiled. As a certain range of positions in the civil service were generally reserved for people of a certain range on the elite prestige scale, the first order of business in making appointments was to check the credentials of candidates against these manuals.' While the overall character of Chinese society in the period from the fourth through the sixth centuries is well known, the precise stratification and the yardstick for measuring social status still remain somewhat obscure. For South China, at any rate, there are indications that a modified chiu-p'in chung-cheng system was still in operation. Under this modified system, it was families or perhaps lineages, and not individuals, that were graded. We learn, for instance, that scions of families of a hereditary second p'in grade (erh-p'in) had an automatic right to be placed in civil service positions.10

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Hereditary privileges did not cease with induction into government service. In the literature of the time, there were numerous examples of individuals who were awarded grade increments (chieh) due to the grace of the emperor or as reward for exceptional merit or on account of the merits of their fathers and grandfathers." In many cases these grade increments were mentioned without reference to substantive appointments. We may therefore assume that these grades had reference to the personal rank of the recipients. Normally personal rank was not conveyed in the first instance by a system of numerical grades but by prestige titles (san-kuan) which probably originated as substantive offices but by this time had no function other than signifying the relative ranking of their holders. A p'in grade was assigned each prestige title so that its holder could be correlated to holders of substantive offices and integrated into a single protocol list. The ascendancy of the men-fa elite occurred at a time when the absolutist monarchy was in decline. In both the north prior to the accession of the Topa Wei and in the south throughout the era of disunion, the ruling dynasties were generally weak and vulnerable. Control over the vital resources of revenue and manpower had devolved to the great families. The situation, however, began to change with reunification of the empire under the Sui and the T'ang dynasties. A centralizing trend was in progress; effective measures were taken to reassert state control over revenue and military manpower. 12 It is therefore conceivable that the state could have regained full control over the processes of civil service recruitment and the mechanism of status apportionment as well. The era of men-fa ascendancy and hereditary rights could come to an end. The T'ang dynasty was equivocal in its attitude toward the men-fa phenomenon, however, and made no serious effort to suppress it. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the whole process of civil service recruitment was biased in favor of the traditional elite families. It is therefore not surprising that hereditary privileges were given a wide berth in the personnel practices of the T'ang civil service. The system of personal rank based on prestige titles developed further. Prestige titles were no longer conferred on a select few as a mark of distinction but became an integral part of the rank structure for the entire civil service. Each member of the civil service on active duty was provided with two titles—namely, a chih (function) denoting the office at which he was expected to work and a chieh or san-kuan (prestige title). The rank (p'in grade) denoted by the functional office did not always coincide with that denoted by the prestige title. The question was therefore raised whether, in computing eligibility for important fringe benefits such as theyin privilege, one should go by the functional office or by the prestige title. In view of the T'ang predilection toward hereditary privilege, it is not

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unexpected that the dynasty ultimately decided in favor of the prestige title.13 This is because if one computed rank by the functional office, the scions of established families would have no advantage over the selfmade man as everybody was required to start at the functional office of the lowest echelon, usually that of the county sheriff, rank 9b.' 4 If, on the other hand, the rank denoted by the prestige title was crucial, the scions of established families would have a tremendous head start for bureaucratic success over those who had no illustrious forebears. This is because yin beneficiaries were entitled to prestige titles of p'in grade 8b whereas self-made men such as civil service examination graduates were only entitled to prestige titles of the 9a-b range. The head start enjoyed by the scions of established families amounted to a minimum of eight years of seniority. Summing up, during the middle period of Chinese history the civil service was indeed equipped with a mechanism for moderating the full impact of the performance principle by making allowance for the claims of hereditary privilege. The mechanism was the personal rank system, which under different dynasties was the basis for appointment to office and for apportioning the tangible benefits of office holding such as the yin privilege. The aristocratic age ended with the T'ang dynasty. Nevertheless, the emphasis on personal rank survived into the Sung. As such, it was an anachronism—the last bastion of hereditary privilege which was in retreat everywhere else. It is therefore understandable that the dependence on rank classification diminished in the maturing Sung civil service. The Personal Rank System of the Sung Civil Service Despite the initial importance of the personal rank system in the Sung civil service, it was not a direct outgrowth of the T'ang system of prestige titles. Instead, it was a system that grew out of political expediency. In Chapter 2, I outlined the process of its evolution, consisting primarily in transferring the actual functions of the once functional offices of the regular, formal bureaucracy to an improvised system of functional offices. After the real functions had been transferred away, appointment to offices of the formal bureaucracy involved no real work but served only the purpose of providing the appointees with formal rank and emoluments. The process, however, was slightly more complicated than I have hitherto described and was not fully accomplished until the reign of Chen-tsung, the third Sung emperor. This was due to the fact that the structure of the formal bureaucracy in its original form could not be used to designate rank. Like all large organizations, it was composed of hundreds of positions arranged in several parallel hierarchies, collectively known as t'ai-sheng-ssu-chien (the censorate, departments, courts, and

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directorates). To be of avail for ranking purposes, the positions in the several hierarchies had to be merged into a single hierarchy so that each position signified a definite rank vis-à-vis the others. The consolidated hierarchy that resulted from this merging was known as the protocol list (ho-pan chih-chih).1 s It was used for ceremonial occasions as well as for determining personal rank. As there were hundreds of positions in the protocol list, it is unrealistic to assume that officials on their way up the official hierarchy were appointed to each one of them. The several hundred positions in the list were in fact consolidated eventually into some sixty-six classes, each class serving as a step in the promotion process. Not all officials were required to go through the successive steps of the protocol list, however. Officials who were examination graduates, for instance, were permitted to skip many alternate steps so that theoretically it was possible for them to reach the top of the hierarchy in thirty-six separate promotions. 16 This process of systematization was carried a step further in the Yuanfeng Reform. Previously, each position class was made up of ten or twenty position titles. It took a real expert to know all the rules and precedents on who was to be promoted to what position class and take what position title." It is true that under the old system there were only thirtysix effective grades, counting each promotion by examination graduates as a grade. Nevertheless, depending on one's own entry point and other relevant factors, the sequence of promotion could vary greatly for different individuals. The Yuan-feng Reform removed this confusion by making the number of classification titles approximate to the number of effective grades. Thus there were only thirty classification titles for administrative class officials, not counting the apex grades such as the Three Dukes (san-kung) or the Three Preceptors (san-shih) which remained unchanged in terminology. 18 In the course of conversion to the new rank system, many position classes of the old system were equated on a one-to-one basis with their counterparts in the new system. In other cases several old position classes were consolidated into a single classification title of the new rank system. The personal rank system with its numerous grades served the purpose of protocol admirably. As the basis for personnel action, however, a further simplification was necessary. Accordingly, grades of personal rank were arranged into convenient groupings and appropriately labeled. For instance, administrative class officials of the five lowest grades in the Yuan-feng system were known as ching-kuan (capital officials) in contrast to those of the sixth grade and above known as chao-kuan (court officials). The latter were so labeled because they were expected to be in attendance in formal court sessions. In Northern Sung times, they were provided with horses for their mount whenever they returned to the capital from provincial appointments." Administrative class officials of the

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ninth grade and above, counting from the bottom, were known as yuanwai lang (assistant section chiefs) and those of the twelfth grade and above were known as cheng-lang or lang-chung (section chiefs). In T'ang times, the position of assistant section chiefs represented the principal access point for upward-bound provincial officials to the upper echelons of the court bureaucracy. 20 In Sung times, the statuses of the assistant or section chiefs were significant primarily for computing yin privilege eligibility. All those of section chief status (or assistant section chief status who carried the civilian chih assignment simultaneously) were eligible for the yin privilege. They could designate their sons or grandsons as their beneficiaries who would be granted civil service status without having to pass the civil service examination. Four grades above the rank of section chief was that of the ta ching chien (senior director). Those of senior director status were empowered to place their yin privilege beneficiaries in the administrative class without undergoing the arduous process of change of official status. 2 ' The top eleven grades of the personal rank system, down to the grade of ta-chung ta-fu, constituted yet another grouping. These grades were not supposed to be held by anybody who had not previously served in those high offices collectively known as shih-ts'ung (ministers-in-attendance) or as liang-chih (personal secretaries of the emperor). Holders of these grades, even after they had been relieved of the substantive posts that made them eligible for these grades, were accorded unusual courtesies.22 For instance, they could be appointed as administrators of important prefectures without the formality of promotion to the functional rank of prefectural administrator. Moreover, as prefectural administrators they were also exempted from signing their names in communications to circuit intendants, which was required of all other prefectural administrators. When journeying between posts, moreover, the boats furnished them by the government for transporting their retinue and personal effects could not be commandeered by controllers of river traffic in an emergency, unlike boats supplied to other officials. The exalted status of these grades of rank was further accentuated by the Law of Halt (chihfa), which applied to all officials who had not held positions in the shihts'ung or liang-chih groupings. The highest grade of personal rank they could attain was the chung ta-fu, twelfth from the top. 23 Barred by the Law of Halt from advancing beyond this point, they were, however, often permitted to have any seniority or merit accruing to them which would otherwise result in personal rank promotions transferred to their designated heirs (hui-shou).24 These groupings of grades of personal rank and their appellations were not arbitrary but represented features of the pre-Yuan-feng rank system that survived into the post-Yuan-feng era. In view of the fact that in the pre-Yuan-feng system a person's rank was indicated by the place of his

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titular office in the consolidated protocol list, there were many individuals who sported position titles of yuan-wai lang, lang-chung, or ta chingch'ien. Appellations such as shih-ts'ung were not part of the position titles of any titular offices of the pre-Yuan-feng era, but they were applied collectively to groupings of titular offices of comparable status. As each of these position titles or position groups of the pre-Yuan-feng era represented a distinct status group with well-defined prerogatives, the old status distinctions were preserved when they were converted into the new system. For instance, although the appellation lang-chung did not appear on those classification titles which corresponded to the old langchung grouping of titular offices, individuals holding these classification titles were accorded all the prerogatives of the former lang-chung rank officials and were in fact referred to as such in Board of Personnel regulations. It was believed that there should be some correlation between one's personal rank and the level of substantive positions (commissions) to which one was appointed. For instance, chief and assistant chief ministers of state generally had personal ranks in the shih-ts'ung range, section chiefs of the six boards in the lang-chung range, and so forth. 2 5 Deviations from the norm, however, were frequent. In continuity with the practice of previous dynasties, the traditional p'in grade classification was applied to both the commissions and the grades of personal rank (that is, both the substantive and the titular offices). In contrast to the prominent role the p'in grade system played in the civil service of previous or later dynasties, however, it had a greatly reduced role in the Sung civil service. First of all, it had no bearing on the tangible issues of office holding such as emolument and the yin privilege and was significant only for regulating the ceremonial trappings of official life. In a funeral procession, for instance, the number of escorts that the deceased was entitled to, as well as the size of the tomb and the nature of the ornamental animals guarding the tomb, were based on his p'in grade. 26 By the same token, the p'in grade of the deceased also determined whether he was entitled to a posthumous name (ssu). With regard to the living, the color of the official costume was based on the p'in grade of the official wearing it. In theory, officials of the seventh p'in grade and below wore green; those of the fourth p'in grade and below wore crimson; and those of the third/?'/« grade and above wore purple. The only area in which the p'in grade of an official had conceivably any pecuniary significance was in connection with the land statutes of the dynasty. There was no law prescribing the maximum amount of land any official could hold, but the amount of tax-exempt land owned by officials was strictly regulated by law. Tax exemption had reference only to that component of the tax bill known as ya-chien, originally a corvée levy but commuted to a cash payment under the reforms of Wang An-shih and assessed on an acreage basis. The maximum amount of land owned

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by officials exempt f r o m this tax was regulated by their/)'/« grade. When an official died, his son was entitled to half the father's exemptions. 27 The p'in grade classification was also applied to officials of military rank and played a role among them similar to its significance for officials of civil rank. Thus it constituted a common frame of reference whereby members of one rank system could be correlated with those of the other rank system. This frame of reference, however, was useful only for purposes of protocol and did not imply any standardization of the fringe benefits or the prerequisites of office holding in the two rank systems. For instance, the assistant section chiefs among civil officials outranked the bureau chiefs among military officials in terms of their p'in grade but were not allowed to exercise the yin privilege unless they concurrently carried the chih assignment, whereas among military officials even vicebureau chiefs had access to the yin privilege. 28 The relationship between personal rank and the level of substantive appointment was given institutional expression in the Yuan-feng Reform by difference in the wording of the patents of appointment. If one's personal rank was one p'in higher than one's commission, the substantive appointment would be preceded by the prefix "hsing" (in charge of); if the personal rank was one p'in grade lower, the prefix would be "shou" (custodial); if two p'in grades lower, the prefix would be "ch'tian" (provisional); no prefixes were used if personal rank and commissions pertained to the same p'in grade. These differences in the wording of the patents of appointment were paralleled by small salary differentials. 2 9 This system of prefixes qualifying the level of substantive appointments provoked considerable opposition and was eventually discontinued. In the Southern Sung period, different wordings in the patents of appointment, as described in Chapter 4, were based on the functional rank of officials. The rank system of military officials has been described in Chapter 2. It may be observed in this connection that there were similar laws of halt for them. Those who qualified for civil service status by contribution, for instance, were not permitted to advance beyond the top servitor minor grade (tsung-i lang); those of clerical origin might advance to the top servitor major grade (hsun-wu lang).10 Others who qualified for civil service status by more respectable methods (such as yin privilege) might advance to the top bureau chief grade (wu-kung ta-fu). It is apropos at this point to discuss the possibility of transfer from the civil to the military rank system and vice versa. Such horizontal movements were permitted under certain conditions, and detailed conversion tables had been worked out between grades in one rank system and their corresponding grades in the other system." Motivation for transfer normally stemmed from the conviction that the contemplated move would improve one's career prospects. For individuals at the bottom of the rank

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hierarchies, transfer was usually f r o m the military rank system to the civil rank system. This trend may be attributed to the fact that compared to the bleak career prospects of the servitors minor who were not bona fide army officers, career prospects for executory officials appeared highly attractive. 32 To effectuate the transfer, many military rank officials took the regular civil service examination. As added inducement for them, if they passed the examinations they would not receive the executory grade customarily awarded to successful candidates of the examinations without previous official rank but would be placed several grades higher, depending on their previous servitor grades. Outside the framework of the regular civil service examinations, there were also other recognized channels for effectuating transfers. 3 3 At the other end of the spectrum, transfer from the civil rank system to the military rank system was probably more common. Outstanding statesmen of civil rank might be rewarded with a sinecure appointment to a military governorship (chieh-tu shih) as a token of appreciation for significant contribution to the dynastic cause. The appointment carried with it a handsome emolument and entitled the recipient to outrank many of his civilian colleagues. The acceptance of such an appointment, however, did not prejudice his standing in the civil rank system so that he might continue to rise in the latter hierarchy. Such transfer was thus little more than pro forma and involved no real commitment to the new rank system being transferred to. 34 There were also cases of genuine transfers involving a clean break with the civil rank system. A good case in point was Chung Shih-heng, who began his career as a lowly civil rank official but ended it as one of the most illustrious generals of the empire after spending a lifetime on the frontier battling the Tangguts and other aboriginal tribes of the northwest. 35 Even examination graduates might find it to their advantage to transfer to the military rank system when membership in the latter more faithfully expressed their aspirations. 3 6

The Seniority Principle and Promotion in Personal Rank In view of the substantial stakes involved, promotion in personal rank was a matter of no small importance for most members of the Sung civil service. Accordingly, a conspicuous part of the Board of Personnel regulations was devoted to this subject. There were three bases of promotion in personal rank—namely, seniority, universal application of imperial grace, and special merit, in descending order of importance. Promotion on account of special merit was of major import only for those who were in a position to make an unusual contribution to the cause of the dynasty such as army officers during wartime and high ministers charged with decision making. It had little relevance for the bulk of the civil service.

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In theory, promotion in personal rank by acts of imperial grace differed from promotion by seniority or by special merit in that it was completely unearned. A classic example of such promotion was that in connection with the accession of a new emperor when everybody was promoted one grade. Since this kind of promotion did not depend on the achievement of individual officials but rather on the grace of the emperor, there were no statutes regulating it. The emperor, however, was not entirely free to award whatever promotions he saw fit. To a considerable extent he had to follow precedent. If he was too lavish or too miserly in granting promotions, the remonstrating officials could be expected to speak up. 37 For the vast majority of the civil service personnel, the most important mechanism governing promotion in personal rank was undoubtedly that of seniority. Seniority in this regard signifies the status or merit due to length of service and has no reference to the relative ranking of individuals within an organizational unit in respect of the time they have served there. It translates the Chinese term nien-lao (literally, years of toiling). For the early years of the dynasty, until 997, promotion in personal rank on the basis of seniority appeared to be automatic, as it was geared to the chiao sacrifice which took place triennially. On these occasions, the rank of every member of the civil service went up one grade as a token of imperial grace. 38 After the rapid buildup of the officialdom under T'aitsung, however, a mood of retrenchment set in under his successor Chentsung. At the suggestion of the right rectifier of speech, Sung H o (9611004), the triennial promotion on the occasion of the chiao sacrifice was abolished. In its place were set up procedures for conducting a case review (mo-k'an) for each member of the civil service. Only those who passed the case review were to be promoted in rank. 3 9 The idea of mok'an was obviously based on the concept that rank promotion should be awarded only to the deserving who had demonstrated their worth. Ideally mo-k'an should be a performance evaluation. When the system was first set up, there were indications that it was so regarded. For instance, by a rescript of 1007 it was stipulated that to qualify for mo-k'an one had to be in a substantive post for three full years. 40 Nevertheless, the full logic of mo-k'an was not implemented. Instead of being a performance evaluation it eventually developed into a routine check on the fulfillment of the seniority requirement for rank promotion. If the computation of seniority was not complicated by special circumstances, mo-k'an should take place at intervals of three, four, five, or, at one extreme, ten years, depending on the rank of the official involved. As special circumstances sometimes impinged on seniority computation, however, the normally stipulated time for mo-k'an could be reduced or extended. For instance, the length of time one spent in mourning, in approved leaves of absence, or in disenrollment did not count for senior-

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ity earning purposes. 41 On the other hand, seniority could be imputed to an individual without his serving time at all. As an inducement for officials to take up assignment in hardship posts, for instance, one could be given two years of seniority credit, 42 in addition to the seniority earned in the normal way. Similarly one could be given the seniority earned or imputed to one's father or grandfather under the system of authorized transference (hui-shouIn all these cases, seniority credit was expressed as so many years of mo-k'an reduction time (chien mo-k'an). The effect of seniority credit was to shorten the regularly scheduled time for the next mo-k'an by an equivalent amount of time. Similarly the seniority earned at different statuses had to be adjusted in computing the exact amount of time yet to be served before the next scheduled mo-k'an was to take place. To take a random example, when an attendant of the lower division (hsia-pan chih-ying) was promoted to servitor minor status on account of exceptional war merit, if he had already served eight years before the promotion, he might be given a maximum of four years of seniority credit. 44 This is because at the lower status mo-k'an was at ten-year intervals whereas at the higher status it was at five-year intervals. With four years of seniority credit allowed him, the servitor minor had to serve only one year in his new rank before he was eligible for mo-k'an. By the same token, seniority earned while one held a position in the shih-ts'ung corps (ministers-in-attendance) was to be converted to ordinary seniority by multiplying it with a factor of 4 / 3 when one no longer held the relevant position. 45 This is because as a member of the shih-ts'ung corps, mo-k'an was at three-year intervals, whereas it was at four-year intervals for other officials. Although other formalities were involved in the actual mo-k'an process, these were enforced so perfunctorily that as long as one had accrued the requisite seniority—either straight seniority (nien-lao) or seniority credit or a combination of both—promotion in rank was to be expected. Thus rank promotion was practically synonymous with fulfillment of the mo-k'an seniority requirement. This requirement was computed in a mechanical manner so that in some instances officials who were already dead continued to be the object of mo-k'an at intervals of four or more years. 46 It is therefore understandable that as a basis of rank promotion, mo-k'an was viewed with considerable skepticism and measures were taken to restrict the scope of its application. Thus by a rescript of 1043 it was provided that members of the Two Offices (liang-sheng: the Secretariat-Chancellery and the Bureau of Military Affairs) were not permitted to advance in rank automatically every three years in accordance with mo-k'an procedures. 4 7 They were required to submit their case to court and await its decision. The situation was further clarified by a rescript in 1086 that stipulated the ceiling for mo-k'an for two categories of officials. 48 For officials above the grade of tai-chung ta-fu who were per-

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sonal secretaries of the emperor, mo-k'an would cease at the grade of tung-i-ta-fu.49 For all others, it would cease at the grade of chung-san tafu. The removal of mo-k'an from the promotion process for these top officials was prompted by concern for their dignity. This is because under Board of Personnel regulations, action for mo-k'an was normally not taken unless the beneficiary of mo-k'an requested it. By restricting the scope of mo-k'an to the middle and lower ranges of officialdom, high officials would be spared the embarrassment of having to request mok'an for themselves, thereby giving the impression that they were motivated by thoughts of material gain. The scope of mo-k'an was further diminished by the requirement of sponsorship. By a rescript of 1043, it was provided that promotion to assistant section chief status (yuan-wai lang) required the endorsement of five sponsors selected from those who were circuit intendants or who were "pure and renowned officials" (ch'ing-wang kuan).50 The same kind of sponsorship was required for promotion to section chief and junior director statuses. If the number of sponsors fell short of the required five, the seniority required for promotion was to be increased by two years. 51 Within the range that promotion by mo-k'an was authorized, a distinction was made between straight seniority and seniority credit. In key promotions to grades with personnel action implications (to that of chaofeng lang or chao-feng ta-fu, for example, which signified a change in one's yin privilege eligibility), the use of seniority credit was often disallowed. Also for promotion to the grade of feng-chih ta-fu, the highest grade that promotion by mo-k'an might reach, candidates who met the promotion criteria on account of straight seniority were given precedence over those who relied on seniority credit." This order of priority was important because there was an overall quota for holders of this grade so that promotion into it depended on available vacancies. The emphasis on straight seniority probably could be traced to the need for slowing down the process of rank promotion. Despite these attempts to restrict the operation of mo-k'an, it must not be assumed that mo-k'an was senseless bureaucratic red tape. As we have seen earlier, the procedure of mo-k'an took into account not only seniority per se but also other factors which had to be computed in terms of seniority. The computation of straight seniority was a simple matter; conversion of the other factors, however, posed problems. In coming to grips with these problems, the Sung personnel agencies eventually developed mo-k'an into a versatile tool for maintaining administrative efficiency. The idea behind this use of mo-k'an as a management tool was simple: Incentives could be expressed in terms of mo-k'an reduction time; 53 disincentives in terms of its opposite, that is, mo-k'an postpone-

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ment time (chan mo-k'an). Thus all factors bearing on the speed of rank promotion could be reduced to a common denominator: increases or decreases of the time interval for the next mo-k'an. As a consequence, incentives designed to boost administrative efficiency could be readily combined with other relevant factors in a single computation. It is therefore not coincidental that the personal rank system provided a framework for the systemization of motivational devices. A good example of such systemization may be seen in the scheme of penalties for administrative offenses. 54 There were altogether fifteen degrees of penalties, each postponing the time for mo-k'an by an additional quarter year (from one-quarter year for the lightest offense to four full years for the heaviest). A slight simplification of this scheme is presented in Table 19. This scheme promoted administrative efficiency by operating as a deterrent against undesirable practices. The use of incentives proper was not involved. A more comprehensive scheme, utilizing both incentives and disincentives, was the so-called merit points (kung-fen). (See Table 20.) In this scheme, officials accumulated merit points in a variety of ways such as service in hardship posts or through sponsorship endorsements which could be converted into merit points. Depending on the number of points accumulated, officials could expect certain preferential treatment in rank promotions or in the job placement process. These points could also be used to redeem or lessen the penalties for administrative offenses. For instance, those officials who had accumulated forty points, the maximum for this scheme, were allowed to advance one grade in personal rank immediately (equivalent to four years of mo-k'an reduction time); if they had committed a grave administrative offense which called for the forfeiture of one grade of personal rank, they were spared such humiliation but were suspended from their current commissions. For those with thirty, twenty, or ten points, the reward consisted in the reduction of mo-k'an time by three, two, or one years respectively. Below ten points the incentive consisted primarily in preferential treatment in the placement process, but under no circumstance was an individual permitted to go up in functional rank. (See Table 20.) The merit point system may be considered as the ultimate development in a continuing effort to eliminate subjective judgment in personnel administration by grounding personnel practices in inexorable, impersonal rules. By balancing merits against demerits in a sort of algebraic equation, it integrated placement and rank promotion/demotion into a single system. The point system came into operation every time an official applied for a new commission. On the application form for shooting for positions, one had to state the number of merit points accumulated along with other pertinent data such as the names and number of spon-

Table 19. Schedule f o r P o s t p o n e m e n t of Category

First Second Third

Offense

Rapacity offense, tu degree, light or quite light in nature Rapacity offense, chang degree, heavy Rapacity offense, chang degree, quite heavy

Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eighth Ninth Tenth Eleventh Twelfth Thirteenth Fourteenth Fifteenth Sixteenth

Mo-k'an

Rapacity offense, chang degree, light or quite light Rapacity offense, tai degree Private offense, liu degree, heavy Private offense, liu degree, quite heavy Private offense, liu degree, light or quite light Private offense, tu degree, heavy Private offense, tu degree, quite heavy Private offense, tu degree, quite light Private offense, chang degree, heavy Private offense, chang degree, quite heavy Private offense, tai degree, quite heavy Administrative delinquency, liu degree, quite heavy Administrative delinquency, tu degree, light or quite light

Postponement

Four years Three years and three quarters Three years and three quarters Three years and one quarter Three years Two years and three quarters Two years and two quarters Two years and one quarter Two years One year and three quarters One year and two quarters One year and one quarter One year One year Two quarters One quarter

Note: liu = deportation; tu = forced labor; chang = beating with heavy rod; and tai = beating with light rod. These terms originally denoted varieties of punishment for crimes and therefore stood for a primary system of classifying them. In this schedule, however, they constituted a secondary system of crime differentiation on top of the primary system based on the distinction between private offense, rapacity offense, and administrative delinquency. Source: LPTF 14629:7ab.

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Table 20. Balance Sheet of Merits a n d Demerits Number of Merit Points

40 30

Rewards

Promotion of personal rank by one grade Three years mo-k 'an reduction time or advancing by two grades of seniority (hsun-tzu) for executory officials

20

Two years mo-k 'an reduction time, advancing by one grade of seniority for executory officials

10

One year mo-k 'an reduction time

Redemption of Punishments for Offenses

For demotion of personal rank by one grade, no demotion For suspension on account of serious infraction, demotion to non-ch 'in-min status in lieu of suspension For suspension on account of quite serious infraction, limitation of eligibility for appointment to remote and small locations in lieu of suspension For private offense of chang degree or for administrative delinquency of forced labor in severity or for removal from office on account of minor infraction, limitation of eligibility for appointment to remote and small locations

Shooting for positions without regard for geographical sequence or for one's mingtz'u, advancing ming-tz'u by one year, exemption from short commissions (tuan-shih) and advancing ming-tz'u by half a year

For administrative delinquency of chang degree, short commissions instead of regular commissions

Exemption from short commissions and advancing mingtz'u by a quarter year; exemption from commissions in remote locations

For administrative delinquency of tai degree, short commissions instead of regular commissions

Advancing ming-tz'u by one year Source: LPTF 1420:5b-6b.

sors, all of which were taken into consideration in the placement p r o cess. 55 By the same t o k e n , i n s o f a r as merit points impinged u p o n mok'an time, they became a f a c t o r in rank p r o m o t i o n or d e m o t i o n . In personnel a d m i n i s t r a t i o n as in other facets of h u m a n endeavor, ideas which look marvelous o n p a p e r m a y not work o u t in practice. I have h i t h e r t o presented the merit point system in blueprint f o r m . W h a t a b o u t its i m p l e m e n t a t i o n in practice? U n f o r t u n a t e l y , due to a paucity of source materials, it is presently impossible to trace its i m p l e m e n t a t i o n .

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Our information on this subject is exclusively derived from the official regulations of the Board of Personnel. There is, nevertheless, a high probability that the system was more than a dead letter on the statute books but was in fact operative, at least for some segments of the civil service during certain time periods. It may be interesting to compare the relative weight of the factors bearing on personal rank promotion. Undoubtedly, relative weight varied with different career patterns. For servitors minor holding a succession of service-agent positions, rank promotion was primarily on account of seniority. In a typical career spanning some thirty or forty years they might advance not more than nine or ten grades. 56 On the other hand, well-connected chin-shih graduates destined for top civil service positions scaled the rank hierarchy rapidly—primarily by other factors such as reward for extraordinary effort or reduction of mo-k'an time due to personal or vicarious merit. A Southern Sung official, Mo Ts'ui-chung, for instance, advanced sixteen grades in seven years. 57 In his case, straight seniority accounted for only 12 percent of his rank promotions. For the majority of officials, the role played by straight seniority in rank promotion undoubtedly fell somewhere between these two extremes. Beyond these general statements, it is not feasible to make more detailed statements of general validity. Despite the vast quantity of biographical literature on members of the Sung civil service, only a small proportion gives full details on both personal and functional rank promotions. Those biographies which do are too scattered to permit systematic tracking. 58

Personal Rank and the Reward System Having examined in some detail the structure and mechanism of promotion in personal rank, we will next look into the relevance of personal rank for the reward system, tangible and intangible. Tangible reward consisted in salaries and other pecuniary benefits of office holding. Intangible rewards consisted in the prestige and social influence that accrued to members of the civil service. There is not enough empirical evidence to generalize on the socioeconomic background of the civil service as a whole. Nevertheless, for most members of the civil service the pecuniary benefits of office holding must be considered a matter of great importance. Normatively, the basis f o r computing officials' salaries (lu or feng-lu) was their grade of personal rank, which prior to the Yuan-feng Reform was actually known as stipendiary offices. Nevertheless, whatever the literal or etymological truth of the preceding statement, the system of personal rank eventually acquired a more pressing function in the maturing Sung civil service—that of providing an overarching framework for integrating the diverse groups among the ruling elite. Integration presumes

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status differentiation, which in turn is manifested in subtle differences in the style of housing, clothing, carriage, and speech patterns. Thus the personal rank system became the mechanism for regulating the trappings and paraphernalia which dramatized status differentiation. Insofar as salary differentials were an integral part of status differentiation, they were regulated by the rank system. In general, however, there were no exact correlations between status differentiation and wealth differentiation. This is especially true in premodern societies where wealth as a determinant of status was downgraded so that it was common to have many high-status individuals with relatively modest means or vice versa. 59 As the rank system had been preempted to maintain status differentiation among the ruling elite, it could not at the same time serve as an adequate basis for remunerating officials equitably. As described above, rank promotion depended on a number of factors and personal effort or contribution did not necessarily play the dominant part. If officials were to be remunerated exclusively in accordance with their personal rank, rulers would be deprived of a most potent weapon in motivating their subordinates—namely, the power to reward or punish them financially. To retain this power, there must be a stronger relationship between remuneration and the corresponding work done. Otherwise the bulk of the salary budget would go for the support of the clock-watchers and those born with a silver spoon in their mouth. For this reason, the salary schedule geared to the personal rank system became increasingly obsolete and bore no actual relationship to the monetary rewards of office holding as time went on. It retained its symbolic value, however, as an adjunct of the personal rank system and helped to reinforce status differentiation. A survey of the official enactments on the salary schedules readily substantiates this contention. Altogether, there were four known enactments, pertaining to the eras of Chia-yu (1056-1063), Yuan-feng (10781085), Chung-ning (1102-1106), and Shao-hsing (1131 -1162). 6 0 It may be noted that with the exception of the salary of the lower grades of the executory class officials and the servitors minor, the salary schedule for other officials remained practically unchanged in all four enactments while it has been estimated that the overall price level and the cost of living went up twenty-four times in the course of the dynasty. 61 In the face of such sustained inflation, the salary schedule based on personal rank could be maintained at its Northern Sung level only if it prescribed a kind of token pay while the real remuneration of office holding was pegged to a different system, namely, the commissions that reflected the cost of living more realistically. Before the Yuan-feng Reform, it was highly probable that the actual pay of many officials in the central bureaucracy approximated the salary schedule. There were indeed opportunities for extra income on account

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of commissions. But the collection of this extra income was apparently frowned upon by public opinion. In many instances officials were expected to collect either the salary attached to their stipendiary offices or that attached to their commissions, but not both. The Yuan-feng Reform regularized this "double-dipping." 6 2 Thus the remuneration of officials on active service was compounded of two distinct elements— namely, salary in accordance with their stipendiary offices (classification titles after the Yuan-feng Reform) and an additional allowance due to the functional positions (commissions) they actually held. Whereas the former element remained constant, the latter grew by a series of accretions so that by the mid-Southern Sung period (around 1200), the salary of officials on account of their classification titles was of no more than token importance. 6 3 An analysis of the structure of the salary schedules yields the following observations. (See Table 21.) First, the salary differential was small. Disregarding the top pay grades which were obviously reserved for elder Table 21. Salary Schedule for Civil Officials Position Ministers-in-attendence 1. K'ai-fu i t 'ung san-ssu 2. T'e-chin 3. Chin-tzu kuang-lu ta-fu 4. Yin-ch 'ing kuang-lu ta-fu 5. Kuang-lu ta-fu 6. Hsuan-feng ta-fu 7. Cheng-feng ta-fu 8. Cheng-i ta-fu 9. T'ung-feng ta-fu 10. T'ung-i ta-fu 11. T'ai-chung ta-fu Senior directors 12. Chung ta-fu 13. Chung-feng ta-fu 14. Chung-san ta-fu Section chiefs 15. Chao-ita-fu 16. Feng-chih ta-fu 17. Chao-ch'ing ta-fu 18. Chao-san ta-fu 19. Chao-feng ta-fu

Salary

120 90 60 60 60 55 55 55 55 50 50

45 45 45

35 35 35 35 35

Position

Salary

Assistant section chiefs 20. Chao-ch 'ing lang 21. Chao-san lang 22. Chao-Jeng lang

30 30 30

Court officials 23. Chao-i lang 24. Feng-ilang 25. T'ung-chih lang

20 20 20

Capital officials 26. Hsuan-chiao lang 27. Hsuan-i lang 28. Cheng-i lang 29. Ch'eng-feng lang 30. Ch'eng-wu lang

17 12 10 8 7

Executory officials 31. Ch 'eng-chih lang 32. Ju-lin lang 33. Wen-lin lang 34. Ts'ung-shih lang 35. Ts'ung-cheng lang 36. Hsiu-chih lang 37. Ti-kung lang

25 20 15 15 15 15 12

Note: Salary refers only to monthly cash payments in units of chien (1000 cash). Noncash payments are excluded in this tabulation. This salary schedule was enacted in the Yuan-feng era (1078-1085). Source: SungShih (chih-kuan 12).

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statesmen or retired generals, the top salary was about ten times that of the lowest. The differential was even smaller if we take into consideration payments in kind as well as payments in cash. Second, there were relatively few pay grades for the entire salary schedule—for instance, only nineteen for the entire civil rank hierarchy. Of these nineteen, four were assigned to executory officials and five assigned to the first five grades of the administrative officials (the so-called capital officials). The remaining ten pay grades were to accommodate the rest of the administrative class officials. In the middle of the rank hierarchy a single pay grade had to accommodate five consecutive classification titles, but at the top there was a one-to-one correlation between pay grade and classification title. The peculiarity of the salary schedule was attributable to two factors: historical accident and rational planning. As personal rank grades (titular offices and classification titles) derived from once functional offices in T'ang and post-T'ang times, the salary attached to them and the differential between them were perpetuated into the Sung system. Moreover, the pay grades were apparently designed to enhance status differential among the elite. Whereas several consecutive classification titles could be bracketed into the same pay grade, those classification titles which signified an important change in status from preceding ones were always marked by a jump in pay grade. This was the case at the assistant section chief, section chief, senior director, and ministers-in-attendance grades (classification title numbers 22, 19, 14, 11). Although no longer the basis for computing the real salaries of officials after the Yuan-feng Reform, the significance of the personal rank system for other forms of pecuniary benefits must not be overlooked. One of the main disadvantages of personnel systems in which remuneration is based primarily on position classification is the difficulty of applying material incentives to high achievers who have risen to the top positions in the organization while still in the prime of life. As they are already holding positions that place them at the top of the salary scale, it is not easy to motivate them to greater effort or to show appreciation for them for work well done through regular increments. I have in mind primarily governmental bodies with a fixed salary scale, not business corporations where greater flexibility is allowed. These problems do not arise if remuneration is not directly linked to positions, as in the U.S. Army or the British civil service. The youthful high achievers can be placed in the weightiest jobs, thus satisfying their egos and keeping morale high. But they usually do not have sufficient seniority to be anywhere near the top of the rank scale. Material incentives can therefore be added to the sense of responsibility to keep them at their mettle. The Sung system of reward was originally designed to fit this mold, and, despite the vicissitudes of change, retained this character to a considerable extent.

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Many of the high achievers in the Sung civil service were appointed chief or assistant chief ministers of state while still in their mid-forties or early fifties. 64 In terms of real power and responsibility, they were on top of the world, but their personal rank was probably still in the beginning shih-ts'ung range, more than ten steps from the top of the scale. As they were beyond the range within which the normal mechanism for rank promotion (mo-k'an) operated, they were not subject to the seniority requirement for promotion that mo-k'an involved. As long as they retained the confidence of the emperor they were assured rapid rank promotions. It was not uncommon for them to receive two or more grade increments a year through acts of imperial grace. These grade increments available to the high achievers translated into substantial benefits. If they did not desire to advance in personal rank too fast, these grade increments could be applied, under the system of authorized transference (hui-shou), to their designated heirs thus giving the latter's career an important boost. Applied to themselves, the frequent grade increments brought them within reach of the pinnacle of the personal rank system in a relatively short time. As suggested earlier, the highest grades of civil and military rank carried enormous stipends because they were originally designed as sinecures for high-echelon officials from previous regimes to compensate them for their loss of real power. Eventually they became the fitting rewards for the most deserving subjects for a lifetime of distinguished service. As these stipends were pegged to the personal rank system, they were not subject to the vicissitudes of an official career. Whereas one might be required to step down as chief or assistant chief minister of state for a variety of reasons, it was only under extreme provocation that one had to forfeit one's personal rank. As long as one held onto the rank, the stipends attached to it would be forthcoming. With the sustained inflation which eroded the purchasing power of these supposedly fabulous stipends, a system of supplementary grants was implemented to keep up the monetary significance of the top personal rank grades. High officials were granted titles of nobility with personal appanages, the revenue of which could be appropriated for their own needs (shih-feng).65 While the exact significance of the personal rank system as a basis for apportioning the tangible benefits of office holding is subject to debate, its significance for apportioning intangible benefits is generally acknowledged. It provided the institutional framework for dividing the entire civil service personnel pool into two parallel systems, namely, those of the civil rank and those of the military rank. And within each system, it provided the status markers for differentiating personnel into clearly identifiable groups such as servitors minor, servitors major, executory class, capital class, and section chiefs. Some of these status markers had direct implications for personnel action, others only remotely so. But

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they all stood out as indicators of status and consequently prestige and social influence. Personal rank was not the exclusive status carrier, of course; commissions had a direct and immediate bearing on status as well. Nevertheless, as has been discussed previously in connection with the tangible benefits of office holding, when one vacated the functional office at the end of one's commission, the status that went with it also came to an end. By contrast, the status that went with one's personal rank had a permanent character. More than legal enactments, status is dependent on the popular perception of it. Other things being equal, it may be assumed that the status of a profession or interest group is in direct proportion to the stringency of the entrance requirements. By the same token, status is also directly linked to numbers. In general, the fewer the people that belong to a highstatus group the more it is esteemed by the public and the higher its status. How successful was the Sung dynasty in resisting the pressure for rank inflation so that grades of personal rank retained their value as status indicators? There is not enough empirical evidence to answer this question satisfactorily. As indicated in Table 2, there were no statistics for the last forty years of the dynasty. For the preceding 270 years that the data cover, the social elite by our definition never exceeded fifty thousand. Assuming five persons to each elite family, the total elite population was less than a quarter of a million. This amounted to less than one-half of one percent of the total population, assuming a median population of sixty million for the dynasty as a whole. 66 Obviously the Sung social elite were in no danger of being swamped by the hordes of people clamoring to join their ranks. Within elite ranks the high-status individuals were protected by the structure of the personal rank system itself. Their first line of defense was the vertical cleavage that divided the entire civil service personnel pool into two parallel systems. This cleavage virtually removed more than 50 percent of the entire civil service membership from competition for the choice civil service jobs and prestige that went with them. Their second line of defense consisted in those personnel devices that operated like sluice gates to regulate access to the higher echelons of the rank structure. The most important sluice gate was undoubtedly the one that regulated the entry of executory officials into the administrative class— that is, kai-kuan or change of official status. As the respective figures on administrative and executory class officials indicate, this requirement eliminated from half to two-thirds of the total civil rank officials from competing for real bureaucratic success. Within the administrative class itself, the mechanism for mo-k'an might also be regarded as a sluice gate that helped to space out the attainment of successively higher ranks. Information on the distribution of personal rank grades within the

Figure 4. Distribution by Classification Titles (Roster of Administrative Officials): A.D. 1085

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administrative class is hard to come by. There is, however, a grade-bygrade enumeration for the year 1085.67 This information is presented in graphic form in Figure 4. By juxtaposing other schemes of status classification on this plot, it is possible to compute the number and percentage of the administrative class by p'in grades and by other criteria of status definition such as those eligible for dispensing the yin privilege (Figure 5). The peculiar configuration of the 1085 grade distribution graph (Figure 4) calls for comment. Normally the graph for most personnel systems should be pyramid-shaped with a lot of people congregating at the bottom grades and tapering off toward the top. The 1085 graph, however, has a narrow base which bulges out abruptly at about the fifth grade and thence assumes a more typical pyramid shape. This peculiarity may be explained by the fact that grade 1 was not necessarily the starting point for most members of the administrative class. Depending on seniority and previous rank, an official could begin his career in the administrative class at any one of the first eight grades. This point is further elaborated in the next section. Comparable grade distribution figures for other periods of time are not available. Until the very end of the dynasty, however, there were no indications of any diminution in the respect in which the social elite traditionally accorded achievement in personal rank. 68 The presumption was that despite possibilities of abuse, the sluice gates continued to function so that the status represented by each grade would not be cheapened by inflated ranks. Change of Official Status (kai-kuan) Promotion from the executory to the administrative class (kai-kuan) was a matter of such importance that a more thorough treatment is warranted. For most members of the civil service, this change of official status was undoubtedly the most crucial event in their career—so much so that it was often called chai-chi-ti (passing the examination a second time). 69 Unlike passing the civil service examination for the first time, which required outstanding performance in the examination hall and entailed a sudden rise in personal fortunes, "passing the examination for the second time" did not depend on the outcome of a single event and involved no dramatic turn of fortune. Instead, it was a long-drawn-out process filled with suspense and anguish. Among the prerequisites of kai-kuan, a certain amount of seniority (at least two terms of substantive appointment, totaling four years of creditable service) was always specified. There is, however, no question that the emphasis was on merit not on seniority. The overwhelming majority of officials who had survived the ordeal of kai-kuan had received

Figure 5. D i s t r i b u t i o n by P'in G r a d e (Roster of A d m i n i s t r a t i v e O f f i -

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endorsements from five sponsors. 70 Unlike routine performance evaluations which were made in accordance with prescribed forms and tended to be factually verifiable, the sponsors were given considerable latitude in their definition of merit when they awarded their kai-kuan endorsements." They were, however, held strictly responsible for the consequence of their endorsements. By endorsing a man for kai-kuan, a sponsor had in fact offered a bond for his subsequent good behavior and satisfactory performance. This bond was given for life. Endorsements were therefore not bestowed lightly. In theory, therefore, a prospective sponsor needed convincing evidence of the integrity and performance record of an executory official before he was willing to incur the risk that endorsing the man for kai-kuan entailed. Moreover, even if he was willing to commit himself, his hands were often tied. Each official eligible to serve as sponsor was permitted to make a specified number of endorsements every year, and he usually found that there were far more deserving candidates than he had endorsement rights. Competition was the name of the game. The institution of kai-kuan thus put a premium on those qualities that counted most for success in an official career, namely, moral character, perseverance, and capacity for performance. By making it the gateway to the upper division of the civil service, an effective safeguard was built into the Sung personnel system. This safeguard was all the more important in view of the lack of effective screening in the initial recruitment process. Among the many shortcomings cited by critics of the Sung civil service examination system was the allegation that it did not pass judgment on the moral fitness of the successful candidates. This was, of course, a distorted view based on a misconception of the role of the examination system in the total recruitment process. It was not imperative for the civil service examination system to be a rigorous test of moral character because of the backup system of kai-kuan. While certifying the integrity and capability of the entrants to the upper division of the civil service remained the raison d'être of kai-kuan, in actuality the scramble among the vast horde of executory officials for kai-kuan promotion often gave it a new twist in meaning. It was primarily perceived by executory officials and the personnel agencies as a device to control and regulate their access to the upper division. This perception helps to explain most of the changes in the prerequisites of kai-kuan. These prerequisites were progressively tightened up as the annual volume of kai-kuan increased. Eventually a quota system was rigorously enforced. Disregarding minor changes in the seniority requirements, changes in the prerequisites of kai-kuan bore primarily on the eligibility of prospective sponsors. Initially all court officials above the rank of senior director regardless of their current commissions were eligible to make kai-kuan

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endorsements. There was no limit on the number of endorsements they could make in any one year nor any restrictions on the relationship between the sponsor and the one being endorsed.72 This liberal policy ended in the Huang-yu era (1049-1053) when the annual number of kaikuan promotions reached unacceptable levels.73 Eligibility to make kaikuan endorsements was henceforth limited to administrative class officials currently serving as prefectural administrators or circuit intendants. Moreover, they were allowed to award kai-kuan endorsements only to the executory officials directly under their supervision. The number of endorsements they could make annually was at first unlimited but eventually subject to quota. 74 Initially the endorsements of all sponsors, regardless of their personal rank or functional office, were assigned equal weight. All that an executory official needed to do to meet the requirement of kai-kuan was to collect the requisite number of endorsements from qualified sponsors. To slow down the process and thus further restrict access to the upper division, a distinction was made between the endorsement of an ordinary sponsor from endorsements made by circuit intendants (chih-ssu). Among the five endorsements for fulfilling the sponsorship requirement, one had to come from the intendants. 75 Despite the increasingly stringent regulations, the pace of kai-kuan kept accelerating. During the Yuan-yu era of Emperor Che-tsung, an annual kai-kuan quota was first introduced. Fixed at one hundred a year, this quota was probably based on the average number of successful kaikuan candidates of the preceding years.76 The quota system, like a lot of other institutions associated with the Yuan-yu era, was thrown overboard by the regime of Ts'ai Ching. In the profligate mood which prevailed, the annual volume of kai-kuan ballooned to more than three hundred and fifty.77 Following the Northern Sung debacle, the quota system was reintroduced. After periodic adjustments, the quota was fixed at eighty a year for the entire empire, including fifteen earmarked for executory officials who captured dangerous bandits. 78 The latter were permitted kai-kuan without the endorsement of the requisite number of sponsors. In view of the fact that many groups were exempted from the quota system, the number of men annually inducted into the administrative class certainly exceeded eighty. The most significant of these exempted groups was composed of the beneficiaries of the yin privilege of high officials who were placed directly in the administrative class. Next were executory officials serving as instructors in the central educational institutions or as editors in offices of historiography (kuan-chih) who were permitted kai-kuan without sponsor endorsements.79 The same courtesy was extended to the top three graduates of civil service examinations.80 Although promotion to the administrative class could be effectuated from any of the executory grades, in reality, due to the seniority require-

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ment and the difficulty of amassing the required number of sponsorship endorsements, executory officials in their first term of service were effectively ruled out. In fact, first termers were not eligible to receive sponsorship endorsements, the prerequisite for kai-kuan.*' Thus the zone of consideration for kai-kuan promotion theoretically included all executory officials serving in their second or later terms of service. If we arbitrarily set the percentage of first termers at 30 percent, then 70 percent of the executory officials currently holding commissions were eligible. A system which allows such a wide zone of consideration for promotion generally works to the advantage of the high achievers who as pacesetters in any field chafe at the requirement of seniority and other restrictive rules. This was certainly the case with the Sung kai-kuan system. Those with real talent for administration or with other exceptional talents could be identified readily and, after a brief probation period (represented by the seniority requirement for kai-kuan), placed in the express career track. Blessed with a substantial head start in getting promoted to the administrative class, these fortunate few were able to amass sufficient functional rank seniority to be eligible for appointment, while still in the prime of life, to such pivotal positions as prefectural administrators or circuit intendants, traditionally the jumping boards to decision-making positions in the central bureaucracy. While expediting the progress of exceptional individuals, the Sung system of kai-kuan did not shortchange people of average ability. In a conventional system having such a wide zone of consideration for promotion, those who are passed over the first time generally hold no advantage over others who have just been admitted into the zone of consideration. It might be assumed that each time a candidate is passed over, his prospects become dimmer. 82 It was otherwise with the Sung system. Due to the overwhelming importance of the sponsorship requirement, the decision to promote or to deny promotion was not made by any personnel agency but by all high officials who at one time or another stood in a direct supervisorial relationship to the candidate. By the rules of the game, as long as five of these supervisors voted for him by awarding him sponsorship endorsements, he would be promoted in due course. Negative votes did not count and there was no time limit for him to garner the five affirming votes. Thus a third-term man already with two or more endorsements stood a better chance of being promoted than a man beginning his second term of service with as yet no endorsements to his credit. Meanwhile veteran executory officials, while waiting to land more endorsements to complete the sponsorship requirements, would move up the executory rank hierarchy and hold down weighty as well as lucrative commissions for these ranks. To ensure that these higher executory grades were not merely consolation prizes but gateways to bureaucratic success, it was provided that one-third of the endorsement rights of pre-

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fectural administrators should be reserved for them. 8 3 Moreover, when they were promoted into the administrative class, they would be placed at higher grades. In view of these advantages, it was usual, in Southern Sung times, for executory officials to seek a formal promotion in personal rank (kuan-sheng) before attempting a crack at kai-kuan. The correlation between the previous executory grades of kai-kuan candidates and their entry points within the administrative class is given in Figure 6.

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6 Performance Evaluation and Personnel Supervision

This chapter is on performance evaluation and the role it played in maintaining administrative efficiency. Formal evaluation, referred to as merit rating in this chapter, had little more than token significance in the Sung civil service and was inoperative most of the time. In the absence of an effective evaluation system, supervisors relied on a unique institution to keep their subordinates in line—namely, their power to award a specified number of sponsorship endorsements to deserving candidates which the latter needed for change of official status or rank promotion. We will also discuss the mechanics of keeping personnel files, which the Sung civil service developed into an ingenious device for guaranteeing minimum performance from members of the civil service. Merit

Rating

Personnel evaluation is an essential part of the organized activities of all organizations. Based on their evaluation, individuals are promoted, groomed for top leadership positions, or demoted and dismissed. It is the decisive factor in determining what kind of work force a governmental bureaucracy or economic enterprise will have, whether its morale is high or low, and how efficiently or inefficiently it operates. There are conceptually two kinds of personnel evaluations: formal and informal. Informal evaluations may be called "evaluations by consensus." They work best in small groups where the persons making the evaluations have ample opportunity to observe the candidates being evaluated in a normal work setting. It is the general method whereby top executive positions in large enterprises are filled. By its very definition, however, it is not applicable to the rank and file. For ordinary employees there is no alternative to formal evaluations conducted in accordance with recognized norms and practices. In this chapter we will be concerned primarily with this kind of evaluation, known popularly in the United States as rating or merit rating. A well-designed merit-rating system not only separates the high achiev-

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ers from the average workers but also enables supervisors to call forth the best from their workers. To succeed in this objective, however, the rating should be based on an incentive system that is structurally linked to the principal forms of personnel action such as promotion and salary increments. If the system differentiates between superior and average levels of performance, the worker rated as superior normally expects a superior reward for his efforts. In other words, there should be an appreciable difference in the manner in which he is treated for salary or promotion purposes compared with workers whose performance is rated as only average. If there is no appreciable difference, the potential high achievers could be discouraged. There is no point in knocking oneself out for a meaningless superior rating. On the other hand, if the linkage mechanism is in place and functions satisfactorily, merit rating can be a powerful management tool as it increases the leverage of supervisors visà-vis the people under their supervision. By offering the prospect of superior reward, the supervisor is more likely to hold workers in line. Ratings based on the observation of a single rater over a short period of time usually do not give the true measure of a person's worth. The worker being rated may be temporarily out of form or the rater may have a personal liking (or dislike) for him which detracts from the objectivity of his judgment. In the long haul, however, these temporary quirks usually disappear. Really significant personnel actions—for example, key promotions—are therefore seldom based on a single set of merit ratings but normally take into consideration a succession of merit ratings covering a significant segment of time and reflecting the collective judgment of several raters.' To keep track of these merit-rating reports and other pertinent data for personnel action, it is imperative to have an adequate record-keeping system. As a special case of merit rating, we may mention the necessity for verifying the claims of excellence or achievement of the persons being rated. Verifying the credentials of prospective employees such as academic degrees or professional diplomas is naturally a matter of concern for those responsible for recruitment, rather than those for merit rating. If additional credentials are acquired subsequent to recruitment, however, the task of verifying them certainly falls into the domain of merit rating. Despite the pivotal importance of merit rating in determining personnel quality and therefore the success of the organization, there are as yet no real breakthroughs in attempts to devise a satisfactory instrument of merit rating. In many instances, reforms in personnel evaluation have been thwarted by the featherbedding practice of employee unions. The problem generally goes beyond employee obstructionism, however, and involves the very nature of merit rating itself. The difficulty stems from several sources. First, there is the difficulty of devising a reliable yardstick of evaluation. For industrial workers engaged directly in produc-

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tion, the productivity of the worker serves as an adequate gauge. 2 For many others, however, productivity may be irrelevant—for instance, an office receptionist. For yet others, although their work is quantitatively measurable, the quality of output is always more important than mere quantity—for instance, research scientists employed in research and development in industry. The quality of performance is not amenable to precise measurement. The factor of subjective judgment cannot be entirely eliminated; the best that a well-designed instrument of rating can do is to minimize the subjectivity. Second, for some professions at least, the real magnitude of achievement cannot be accurately gauged at the time of rating but becomes clear with the perspective of hindsight. This is true not only of political leaders but also of the practitioners of humbler professions such as teachers. If the purpose of education is the transmission of moral and intellectual tradition and not simply the acquisition of a body of verifiable facts or skills, merit rating of teachers' performance based on the current progress of the pupils is not likely to do full justice to the teachers. There is no way to evaluate the teacher's impact on the child's character development, which is an ongoing process. It is not unusual for successful people in different walks of life to attribute their success to the mental or moral discipline they acquired under a particular teacher. On this ground, teachers have consistently opposed what passes for merit rating by administrators because it overlooks the deeper dimension of their profession. 3 Third, assuming the existence of a satisfactory instrument of merit rating, the manner in which it is administered is often liable to abuse. Ideally the persons doing the rating should be those most familiar with the work of those being rated, which means the latter's immediate supervisors. Supervisors, however, often feel a bond of solidarity with the people under their charge and often cannot be wholly objective in their judgment. Substandard performers who are their personal friends will not be thrown to the wolves nor are those receiving the best ratings necessarily the most deserving on the basis of performance alone. Favoritism is hard to eliminate. Unions representing state and county employees have generally condemned merit rating as a basis of salary increments on this ground. 4 The difficulty of coming up with an acceptable instrument is best illustrated by the experience of the U.S. military. Due to the importance of the subject to both officers and enlisted men, considerable effort has gone into personnel research. Nevertheless, the result has not been wholly satisfactory as the following account by Morris Janowitz makes clear: Because of its growth [the armed forces] the military establishment has been forced to erect an elaborate and formal personnel system to control promotion

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and career development. But for a realistic understanding of career development, it is impossible to separate the formal procedures from the elaborate screening that goes on simultaneously. . . . Army regulation Number 600-185, issued on June 16, 1948, which governs the filing of officers' efficiency reports, is a formidable document. In addition to describing the officer's last job in detail, supervising officers are obliged to estimate the officer's capacity along nine dimensions using a five point scale. His job efficiency is recorded according to 19 factors. . . . This makes possible, presumably on the basis of machine tabulation, a 3-digit overall score. It has been officially reported that under such a system justification of promotion can involve difference of 1 point in the third digit. It is understandable that there is widespread unfavorable criticism of the efficiency report system. . . . By the same token, it is understandable that elaborate informal devices persist to make such cumbersome systems workable. 5

The locus classicus of merit rating in Chinese history is the relevant passage in the Canons of Yao (Yao tien), a document purporting to be a record of the administration of the legendary sage emperor Yao. In deference to this tradition, most Chinese dynasties had specific mechanisms for conducting merit rating formally. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the traditional Chinese civil service was more successful than the modern industrial West in coming to grips with the problems inherent in the process. According to Chang Chin-chien, a well-known authority on Chinese political institutions, the alleged benefits of merit rating were seldom realized even under dynasties which pushed for it with more than customary vigor, such as the T'ang, the Ming, and the Ch'ing. 6 He attributes the failure of merit rating to the perfunctoriness and venality of those charged with administering it. Perfunctoriness stemmed from officials in charge of merit rating who refused to take responsibility for their action by automatically assigning a rating in the middle range of the rating scale. As the rating in question involved neither rewards nor punishments, the rater avoided putting himself on the spot. Perfunctoriness stemmed also from the rigidity of the rating system. Under the Ming dynasty, for instance, there were apparently quotas (numerical or percentage) for each rating for each grade of officials. When a particular quota—for example, that for inferior performance—had been filled, no additional personnel could be assigned this rating, however horrible their performance might be. On the other hand, if the quota was yet unfilled, those in charge of merit rating would resort to nitpicking to pin the inferior rating on any hapless officials who happened to be around. 7 The venality of officials in charge of merit rating requires little further comment, as the same scenario obtains everywhere regardless of cultural differences: The size of the bribe, rather than performance, determines the rating one receives. Despite the obvious shortcomings in the implementation of merit rat-

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ing in China, the system was not without virtue. We will therefore take a closer look at merit rating as practiced under the T'ang dynasty, generally reputed to be the best system in Chinese history and the model upon which the Sung system was based. The T'ang system of merit rating was apparently applied to the entire civil service.8 Members of the civil service proper, namely those who possessed a regular p'in grade, were rated once a year. There were nine possible ratings in the rating scale: three superior ratings (superior-upper, superior-middle, and superior-lower), three middle ratings (middleupper, middle-middle, and middle-lower), and three inferior ratings (inferior-upper, inferior-middle, and inferior-lower). These ratings were suitably pegged to meaningful forms of personnel action. For instance, four successive ratings of middle-upper or better were required for each hd\i-p'in grade promotion in personal rank. If one of the ratings was in the inferior range, promotion was to be deferred for an additional year. Ratings in all cases were conducted in accordance with the promulgated canons of rating. These principles consisted of two sections, namely the so-called ssu-shan (four excellences) and the erh-shih-ch'i-tsui (twenty-seven ultimates). The four excellences had reference to the general character of the candidates being rated; the twenty-seven ultimates spelled out the performance expected of officials in various positions of the imperial bureaucracy. In general, whereas the criteria of the four excellences were applicable to all officials, only one of the twenty-seven ultimates was relevant for each category of officials. An official who measured up to the specification of each of the excellences or ultimates was credited with it. The best possible rating was therefore composed of four excellences and one ultimate. This was the rating of superior-upper. Three excellences and one ultimate earned the candidate the rating of superior-middle. Two excellences and no ultimate landed the candidate in the middle-middle range. For those whose performance directly contravened the canons of evaluation, they were given the inferior-lower rating. More than one echelon of the imperial bureaucracy was involved in the rating process to ensure its integrity. Initial ratings were set by the governor of the prefecture in the provinces and by the head of the bureaucratic unit in the capital. The result of the rating together with the comments in support of each rating were read aloud to all officials of the unit assembled specifically to be apprised of the results. In lieu of such public reading or in addition to it, the results of rating could be posted on the bulletin board of the yamen (office building). This stipulation persisted until the time of the Five Dynasties.' Such public announcements were intended to impress candidates being rated that everything was open and above board. Undoubtedly it served as a deterrent against favoritism and gross injustice. It was to be presumed that if a rating was based on

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patently wrong points of fact, the error could be brought to light and rectified. For the Sung dynasty, although there is a substantial amount of extant material on processes ancillary to rating such as personnel-file keeping, information on rating per se (the process whereby individuals are rated in accordance with a fixed merit scale) is rather sketchy. 10 Moreover, available evidence seems to indicate that rating was applied only to officials in provincial posts, unlike the situation in T'ang times when all officials had to be rated systematically. The first known enactment on rating occurred the year Emperor T'ai-tsung ascended the throne (976), when in an imperial edict he called upon circuit intendants to evaluate officials in their jurisdiction. It provided that those officials with outstanding performance were to be rated superior; those who did an adequate job were to be rated average; those who were slovenly and had nothing much to their credit were to be rated inferior. This enactment served as the basis of the rating system for three-quarters of a century until it was partially overhauled during the reign of the reforming emperor Shen-tsung. In the intervening years, the ratings of super-superior and super-inferior were added to the original scale of ratings. It is doubtful that these extra ratings were ever resorted to. Available evidence pertaining to the Huang-yu era (1049-1053) seems to indicate that some individuals rated average were really outstanding in their performance." Undoubtedly, the vagueness of the rating criteria had an inhibiting effect on individuals administering the rating. The difference between outstanding performance and adequate performance is often a subjective one; so is the difference between average performance and inferior performance. To play it safe, Sung administrators therefore stuck to the medium range of the rating scale. When Li Tien was demoted in 1066 after receiving successive inferior ratings, his case was so unusual that it was reported in the Sung dynastic history.' 2 Partly to remedy the vagueness of the rating criterion, the rating system was revamped under Emperor Shen-tsung in line with the general tenor of administrative reform of this time. Obviously modeled on the T'ang rating system, this revamped Sung system, however, was designed exclusively for county magistrates and had no relevance for other provincial officials. The T'ang canons of rating with their structure and terminology were adopted with some minor modifications. The structure of the four excellences was taken over intact, but the wording was somewhat altered. As the Sung canons of rating were not concerned with the entire range of administrative positions but with a single position category, the majority of the T'ang twenty-seven ultimates became irrelevant. Among these, the one ultimate that was applicable to the case in hand was expanded to correspond to the different areas of the magistrate's responsibility. The entire set of canons thus consisted at first of

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four excellences and three ultimates. During the following reign a fourth area within the responsibility of the magistrate was included in the rating, bringing the number of ultimates to f o u r . " For the text of these canons, see Table 22. Specific information on the functioning of this revamped rating system has not been discovered so far. On the state of performance evaluation in general during the Yuan-yu era of Emperor Che-tsung (10861093), we have the testimony of Fan Tsu-yu (1041-1098), the renowned historian, who said: "Although there is performance rating, it is useless because it is not backed up by the sanctions of reward and punishment. The ratings of superior, middle, and inferior meted out by the Board of Personnel are mere formalities.'" 4 Periodic attempts to revitalize the system did not seem to avail much, and eventually the supervisors responsible for rating their subordinates ceased to go through the motion of rating. A system of rating similar to that in effect in the pre-Shen-tsung period but with a different set of terminology was adopted by the second emperor of the Southern Sung period, Hsiao-tsung, in his quest for administrative efficiency. His system was applied primarily to prefectural administrators. They were to be rated annually by the circuit intendants and assigned ratings of tsang (good) for those with remarkable performance, fou (bad) for those who were greedy, inefficient, and perverse, or p'ing (average) for those who were neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. With the emperor as the prime mover behind this system of rating, it was vigorously enforced for more than ten years.' 5 A few administrators persistently rated fou by a consensus of circuit intendants were punished. Table 22. Four Excellences and Four Ultimates (Ssu-shan

Ssu-tsui)

Excellences 1. 2. 3. 4.

Renowned for virtuous principles Well known for purity and sincerity Commendable for fair-mindedness Tireless devotion to duty

Ultimates 1. Ultimate in population increase: overall increase in population; updating accurately the corvée roll by entering those who came of age and removing the aged 2. Ultimate in management of affairs: not wronging anybody in criminal or civil justice; not resorting to harassment in making the people pay their taxes 3. Ultimate in promoting agricultural development: agriculture and sericulture flourish; irrigation projects are kept in good repair 4. Ultimate in nurturing the living and burying the dead: suppression of banditry so that people can live in peace; relief for the destitute so they do not become vagabonds in search of food; emigrants are induced to return and be rehabilitated; all corpses in town and country are duly buried Source: Ch'ing-yuan t'iao-fashih-lei 5:50.

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A few high achievers were rewarded. Nevertheless, abuses cropped up and the emperor himself became disenchanted. His successor, Emperor Kuang-tsung, formally abolished the system.16 A similar move to apply the tsang-fou system of rating to county magistrates never got off the ground. Under the last emperor of the Southern Sung period, Tu-tsung, with a last-ditch attempt to reform the abuse-ridden administration, the rating system with the threefold ratings of shang (superior), chung (medium), and hsia (inferior) was reactivated. 17 The speedy collapse of the dynasty precluded results. In sum, then, formal performance evaluation in the Sung civil service was erratic, sporadic, and unedifying. For most of the duration of the dynasty, it was either nonexistent or implemented perfunctorily. The sorry state of rating was undoubtedly due to the fact that it was not backed by meaningful sanctions of reward and punishment. The functions that it was supposed to perform—namely, advancing the worthy and screening out the malevolent and incompetent—could be done more efficiently by other means. For instance, nothing was valued more by executory-rank county magistrates than kai-kuan sponsorship endorsements. The prospect of landing an endorsement from a potential sponsor would keep them in line. The reward incentive of the formal rating system was of little significance unless it could be linked to the sponsorship endorsement. This linkage, however, was never contemplated. And as a deterrent against wrongdoing, formal rating served no useful purpose. This is because circuit intendants and prefectural administrators were always held responsible for reporting the wrongdoing of their subordinates so that the normal procedure of impeachment could be trusted to identify and proceed against those unfit for official service. By and large, the system of merit rating was a lone institution in the Sung civil service without close links to the mechanisms of job placement or rank promotion. Serving no useful purpose, its anemic condition should occasion no surprise. Personnel-File

Keeping

Although merit rating was anemic, the ancillary process of preparing the personnel file for members of the civil service was in a flourishing state. It flourished because it led not only to merit rating but, more important, to such vital personnel practices as job placement and rank promotion. These latter functions furnished the rationale for the meticulous keeping of personnel files and spurred its institutional development. The Sung system in this regard became one of the most ingenious ever devised. If personnel actions are not to be dictated by the whim and caprice of the immediate supervisors but are to be based on orderly procedures in accordance with promulgated rules and regulations, it is imperative to

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have a record-keeping system to keep track of the performance of each member of the personnel system. Such a system of record keeping should provide for permanent storage as well as easy retrieval of the information so stored. The easiest way to meet these objectives is to set up a separate file for each member of the personnel system. Despite progress in automation and the computer data bank, the file has remained the basis of record keeping in most personnel systems today. The existence of the file gives rise to questions—Where is the file to be kept and who should have access to it?—which can be matters of great concern to members of the personnel system. In centralized personnel systems such as that of the U.S. Army, the ultimate file is kept at the highest level. Officers compete for promotional opportunities not only with their fellow officers of the same rank in the same army units but also with their counterparts in other units of the a r m y . " At the other extreme of the organizational spectrum, we have highly decentralized systems as in large private universities where each unit (the academic department) retains operational autonomy. All crucial personnel actions (hiring, firing, tenure, promotion) usually originate at departmental levels, and the personnel files of employees are usually held in the department o f f i c e . " The relative merits of centralization versus decentralization of the personnel function is an issue that pertains to the dynamics of organizational theory and as such lies outside the scope of this work. The implications of this issue for personnel administration, however, may be stated briefly. It is clear that centralized control of the personnel function, like centralized control of other vital resources, presumes a considerable development of infrastructure. Information for personnel action has to be transmitted along a communications network and processed in an appropriate manner. Whether the communications system consists of special couriers or a regular postal system or electronic transmission, considerable effort is required to organize and maintain it. The same is true of processing the information so transmitted. In any event, centralized control of the personnel function usually involves considerable costs, of which not the least is the impetus it imparts to the phenomenon of bureaucratic proliferation. Whether the personnel file is held in a distant place at the highest level or nearby at the lowest level of the organizational unit, the problems of access remain. It is difficult to devise a system with the proper safeguards under which personnel may be permitted easy access to their own file whenever they wish. Often they have no control over what is to be put into the file nor are they given an opportunity to check the veracity of statements about them. 2 0 There is also the likelihood that whenever files are transferred f r o m hand to hand in the course of preparing for personnel actions, vital documents may be misplaced or lost. In the old days

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when office buildings were often flimsily constructed, destruction of the personnel files by fire was a serious risk to be reckoned with. So too were the ravages caused by paper-eating worms which in a damp, warm climate could wreak havoc in a relatively short period of time. Against the drawbacks of the conventional system, the Sung system for maintaining the personnel files merits attention. The Sung system was unique not in any method for monitoring performance of civil service members but simply in the manner in which the individual files were deposited for safekeeping. Instead of making any organizational unit responsible for them, each member of the civil service was made the responsible custodian for his own file. By this simple practice, the problem of access is solved, the perils of fire and worms are minimized, and the pressure for bureaucratic proliferation is alleviated. The Sung personnel file was known as yin-tzu (stamped paper). When a member of the civil service received his first appointment to a substantive position, he submitted twenty sheets of paper to the Board of Personnel which when duly stamped with the seal of the board were returned to him for safekeeping. This constituted his personnel file. 2 ' Subsequently all data bearing on his career such as performance evaluations, commendations, reprimands, date of assumption of office, and leaves of absence were entered or noted in this file. If, after a few terms of office, the pages of the original file were all used up, additional sheets could be appended to it as needed. The original file was not to be discarded and a new file was not to be issued to any official except under one circumstance—namely, when an official was promoted from the executory to the administrative class.22 Executory officials who were not promoted in this way, and all officials of military rank, retained the original files throughout their careers. 23 A good analogy of the Sung system of personnel files is the modern bank practice of recording all transactions for savings account customers in a passbook kept by the customer. To pursue this analogy a little further, it is feasible to have all transactions recorded in the customer's passbook because they are limited to a few basic categories such as fund deposits, withdrawals, and interest accruals. The transactions are usually recorded by machine, which also serves as a means of validation for the transactions. More complex transactions involving protracted negotiations, such as mortgage loans, discounting of promissory notes, or issuance of letters of credit, cannot be handled in this manner. By the same token, the Sung system of personnel files set up on principles similar to that of the savings account needed a validating or notating mechanism. Moreover, personnel actions to be noted in the file should be of a simple, standardized nature if the system is to work efficiently. Under the Sung system, whenever an event with personnel action consequences transpired, a record of the event was to be promptly entered or

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noted (p'i-shu) in the personnel file of the relevant official. When an official promised to stand surety (pao) for another or when he served as sponsor for another (chu-chu), these facts were duly noted in his file so that the principle of joint adjudication could be enforced. 24 In this regard, the file could be notated at any time. Most entries in the personnel files of officials did not originate in this sporadic fashion, however, but were due to systematic notation carried out at regular intervals and in accordance with fixed formulas. For most incumbents of civil service positions, systematic notation of their files was required annually as well as upon the termination of each term of office. 25 The formula for notation varied with each position category and resulted from a long process of evolution by trial and error. In most cases, these formulas consisted of two parts: part 1 was applicable to all civil service members and part 2 was peculiar to each position category.26 In general, part 1 had reference to factors bearing on the computation of seniority such as the following: reward for meritorious service, if any, resulting in mo-k'an reduction time; dates of taking leaves of absence, if any; dates of being sent out on authorized errands, if any; dates of rank promotion; dates of taking civil service examinations or examinations in law, if any; matters for which the person in question was punished or was under investigation for serious wrongdoing. The information called for in this part of the notation formula led to precise computation of creditable seniority. Part 2 of the notation formula varied considerably from position category to position category. The most developed formula of which record has been preserved pertained to the circuit intendants. It consisted of fifteen items each addressed to a specific area for which an intendant was responsible. Together these fifteen items constituted a checklist of the entire workload of an intendant. If the notation of his personnel file was done conscientiously at yearly intervals in accordance with the notation formula, a complete and accurate record of a circuit intendant's performance throughout his tenure of office could be found in his file. The text of this formula is reproduced in Appendix VI. Each item of the formula is so phrased as to evoke a response that was grounded in verifiable fact if not expressed in quantitative terms. The need for subjective judgment is mostly eliminated. The development of factually verifiable criteria in measuring performance goes a long way in laying the groundwork for a feasible evaluation system. The formula was in fact known as the evaluation standard (k'ao-k'o k'o). Conceptually, however, this formula is not concerned with evaluation per se (the rating of an individual's performance in accordance with some recognizable scale) but with record keeping as the indispensable prerequisite to evaluation. The comprehensiveness of the formula for notating the personnel file of circuit intendants undoubtedly stemmed from the importance of these officials in provincial administration and the consequent necessity of keeping close tabs on their activities. In a lengthy article in Monumenta

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Serica, 1 have traced the development of the institutional structure of Sung provincial government. 27 In this structure, the circuit intendants were charged with the mobilization of resources as well as with supervision of the prefectures and counties, the basic units of provincial administration. Thus they were the instruments whereby the ruling dynasty sought to exercise centralized control over the entire country. Their caliber and dedication were crucial to the success of Sung rule over the provinces. It is therefore understandable that the selection of intendants and their evaluation were matters accorded high priority in personnel administration. At the other end of the spectrum, the notation formula for county sheriffs and other functionaries, such as constables on patrol, was also fully developed. 28 Owing to the narrow scope and well-defined nature of their duties, their performance was susceptible of precise quantification so that the crucial reward system could be directly keyed to it. We have already seen in the preceding chapter how a separate annual quota was reserved for executory officials to be promoted to the administrative class on the basis of their bandit-capturing endeavors. They were exempted from the sponsorship requirement. Where so much was at stake, errors due to memory lapses or clerical absentmindedness could not be tolerated. Special efforts had to be made to keep close tabs on their performance. As what was recorded in his personnel file could mean so much to an official, precautions had to be taken to prevent the falsification of records. Falsification could result from collusion on the part of the authorities responsible for notation, or it could be due to unilateral attempts to alter the notated text fraudulently. Stiff penalties were therefore provided for tampering with the notation process. 29 Moreover, the normal structure and processes of personnel administration could also be expected to exert a restraining effect on fraudulent practice. Under the Sung, the prefecture was the lowest administrative unit of the imperial government with a personnel function. Most provincial officials therefore had their personnel files notated under orders of the prefectural administrator. Between ordinary officials and the prefectural administrator there was a considerable social distance. This distance inhibited cronyism, a necessary condition for collusion. In the case of circuit intendants, the notation of their personnel files was done by their colleagues—for example, the fiscal intendant notating the file of the judicial intendant and vice versa. Overlapping jurisdiction and a system of mutual responsibility whereby one was held culpable for the wrongdoing of another unless he took the initiative to denounce it could be expected to nourish a healthy rivalry among them, thus minimizing the chances of collusion. The openness of the notation process and the preference for factually verifiable statements also mitigated falsification. 30 Although an official's personnel file was the only complete record of

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his work performance, records of individual events that transpired during his tenure of office also made their way into the archives of relevant government agencies. The Sung state operated in a manner similar to most bureaucratically organized bodies—namely, on the basis of an intense two-way flow of messages up and down the communications network. Reporting procedures were developed to keep the higher echelons of the administration apprised of what was happening below. By an edict of 1050, for instance, counties and prefectures were required to report incidents of banditry involving more than five armed bandits to the judicial intendants. 3 1 The reporting of crop and weather conditions was routinely carried out until 1074.32 There were also laws requiring the regular reporting of revenue collection. 33 Apart from direct reporting by what may be called the line organization (those governmental units charged with the normal production of services such as the circuits, prefectures, and counties), officials attached to the staff organizations such as the censors were also a source of information for the decision-making center. Censors were specifically charged to monitor the morals and performance of high officials, including the record of men the latter sponsored. Not infrequently they were dispatched to make on-the-spot investigations in the various circuits and report on the performance of officials they encountered. Moreover, high officials returning to the capital on the expiration of a provincial appointment could also be eagerly questioned by the emperor. Consequently, anything that an official did or failed to do could be captured by this communications network. The availability of corroborating materials f r o m other sources made it possible to subject the content of these personnel files to rigorous scrutiny. Personnel action such as rank promotions were not taken unless the merits claimed in the personnel files were substantiated by a verification check. 34 In any event, the knowledge that what was notated was likely to be checked would caution the prospective falsifiers to take a different course. As personnel actions relating to job placement and rank promotion could not commence unless the notation in the file was in proper order, the file often served as a device for guaranteeing a minimum standard of performance. This minimum standard was easy to enforce if it was expressible in quantitative terms. For this reason and also because the finances of the dynasty deteriorated considerably in the Southern Sung period, this minimum standard was often equated with the minimum quota of revenue which each prefectural and county official had to collect. 35 As long as the minimum quota of revenue expected of an incumbent was met, normally no other questions were asked and the notation of his personnel file was a mere formality. If he was able to boost revenue collection by as much as one or two-tenths above the expected quota, he

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would be in line for substantial rewards. On the other hand, if revenue collection fell by one-tenth, dire consequences could result. This lopsided emphasis on revenue collection certainly had a detrimental effect on other aspects of the prefectural and county administration. Nevertheless, the abuses could not be laid entirely to the design of the system. By requiring the personnel file of officials to be properly notated before personnel action could commence, the system had given supervisors a potent instrument for controlling their subordinates. The notation, of course, had to be based on appropriate formulas and consisted of factually verifiable statements; irresponsible or arbitrary statements were not permitted. A supervisor, however, could withhold permission to have the personnel file of an offending subordinate notated. With the record of a term of service completely blanked out from his personnel file, the offending subordinate had a lot of explaining to do before he would be eligible for any kind of personnel action. Notation of the personnel file thus helped to define the supervisor/ supervisee relationship. The Sung pattern of organization gave considerable scope to functional supervision whereby an office or position was placed under a different supervisor for each area for which it was responsible. In the Sung system, the supervisor owed his authority, among other things, to his statutory right to notate the personnel file of the incumbent of the supervised position. This mechanism of file notation was of fundamental importance to the operation of the circuit intendants (and other supraprovincial agencies such as the comptrollers). Without their own staff in the execution of their policy, they had to press prefectural and county officials into service. To ensure that the designated individuals from the prefectural and county administration would do their bidding and assign high priority to this aspect of their work, the latter were required to have their personnel files notated by the relevant circuit intendants. 36 A variation on the same theme is joint supervision. Unlike the more conventional type where supervision was divided along functional lines, joint supervision operated along geographic lines. A good example is the constable on patrol assigned to two or more adjoining prefectures. The authorities in each prefecture would usually prepare a text for notating his personnel file independently and then took consultation to prepare the final version of the text for notating his file. 37 During the first hundred years of the dynasty when merit rating was still an ongoing concern, the recording secretary (lu-shih tsan-chiin) of the prefecture or similar officials in other government agencies would compose a concise statement in support of the rating assigned each official. As merit rating became a dead letter and the notation of personnel files was conducted in strict accordance with fixed formulas, official participation in the rating/notation process tapered off. Eventually the process was entrusted entirely to clerks. 38 Clerks were responsible not only

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for notating personnel files but also for reading and processing them afterward. This is because the Sung Board of Personnel was seriously understaffed so that the officials in charge of the board could handle only urgent business. Routine business was left to the clerks. The processing of requests for personnel action was the main function of the board and therefore mostly routine. Thus to the extent that the notation of personnel files was based on a code language, both the coding and the decoding were done by clerks. Clerks are great sticklers for form by profession, and it is to be expected that they will subject most documents passing through their hands to careful scrutiny. It is therefore not surprising that clerks in charge of the routine work of the Sung Board of Personnel were often accused of unnecessary red tape. Some of the criticisms leveled against them were certainly undeserved. For instance, due to the possibility of falsification, they could not accept at face value statements on the personnel files of officials or other relevant documents submitted in connection with requests for personnel action. Wherever circumstances warranted, they were in fact required by law to refer any matter back to the originating office (the office that issued the document or the incumbent of the office who notated the statement on the personnel file) for verification. There is, however, no question that this conformity to the letter of the law often went too far, resulting in a senseless literalness as the following two anecdotes reveal. Hung Mai (1123-1208), a Southern Sung scholar-official, related that when Chang Tsun was viceroy of Szechwan he promoted officials by giving them temporary patents of appointment. Those who were promoted were then ordered to submit the relevant documents to court for ratification as well as to receive a regular patent of appointment. Among the requests for ratification was one submitted on behalf of a local deity who was promoted by Chang Tsun for his alleged intervention during a battle which resulted in a Sung victory. This request was denied by the Board of Personnel on the ground that the deity did not apply in person nor was it submitted within the one-year time limit. The board's decision, along with the relevant reason, was communicated to the deity.39 The second anecdote concerns Hung Mai himself. He had designated his one-year-old son as beneficiary of the yin privilege, which he was eligible to dispense. In compliance with the regulations for registering the beneficiaries of the yin privilege, he produced a guarantor to vouchsafe the identity and eligibility of his son, the intended beneficiary. The original statement submitted by the guarantor, however, was rejected by the Board of Personnel for failure to comply with the required format. To save the situation, the guarantor was specifically directed to answer the following questions: Whether the intended beneficiary had previously been accorded official ranks but had since been disenrolled due to serious

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wrongdoing; whether the intended beneficiary had previously taken civil service or law examinations. Hung Mai was amused that these questions could be asked of a one-year-old baby.40 Such bureaucratic inflexibility could provide the pretext and the occasion for clerks to gratify their instinct for self-aggrandizement. To spite someone who had inadvertently incurred their displeasure or just to prove their power, they could hold up his request for personnel action (either mo-k'an or job placement) for nothing more serious than a simple clerical error in his personnel file notation. By referring a simple matter back to the originating office, indefinite delay could ensue. It was not uncommon for the clerk originally responsible for copying the text of the notation to have been transferred and the records of the case misplaced. Such delays seriously undermined official morale. Imperial edicts were therefore repeatedly issued to personnel agencies directing them to overlook these minor flaws in the processing of requests for personnel action. 41 Identity

Verification

We turn now to a topic which does not constitute much of a problem in personnel administration today but presented a much greater challenge to the Sung civil service—namely, identity verification. Whenever an individual acts in any capacity other than strictly for himself, he needs to produce evidence validating that capacity. A policeman or sheriff's deputy stopping a motorist for questioning relies on his uniform and badge to validate his official capacity. Sales agents representing a firm or claims adjusters representing an insurance company carry identification cards proving their connection with their principals. The question of employee I.D. is linked to the matter of security. Company secrets will be jeopardized if enemy agents can forge credentials to gain access to places where they have no business. Much effort has therefore been made to design a forgery-proof I.D. system. Advances in photography and telecommunication have helped tremendously in this regard. The era of the grand impostor who could play the ambassador in a far country on credentials stolen from the real ambassador has long since gone. Without benefit of modern identification technology, the question of identity verification remained a real one for the Sung civil service. The phenomenon of imposture, particularly in the lower echelons of the civil service hierarchy, was rampant. The fraud was of two kinds. First, sometimes an individual would appropriate the identification papers of a member of the civil service who had died and hence take on the latter's identity.42 Second, sometimes an individual benefiting from the yin privilege would hire an expert to take the placement examination for him. 43 The Sung civil service had indeed taken precautionary measures

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against these fraudulent practices; for instance, each member of the civil service usually received a succession of appointment papers (kao-ming or fu-sheri) in the course of his career. These papers, together with the yintzu notations for each term of substantive appointments, provided him with full documentation for his entire career. Before the Yuan-feng Reform, initial appointment papers not only gave the name and age of the appointee but also noted his conspicuous physical features such as swarthy complexion or bulging eyes.44 The inclusion of this information should have had a considerable deterrent effect on imposture if those in charge of personnel actions were meticulous in their methods. This was often not the case, however. Another device which had considerable potential in deterring imposture was the requirement that one must submit the names of his immediate ancestors of the three preceding generations (father, grandfather, great-grandfather) when requesting personnel action of any kind {mo-k'an, commissions, and so on).45 This requirement was more than a litany for the sake of filial piety; it also served the purpose of a secret identification code. It discouraged outright imposture as the impostor would be hard put to discover the names of the ancestors of his assumed identity correctly. It also minimized the possibility of crediting one with the identity of another of the same name—a real possibility in view of the limited number of Chinese surnames in common use. Finally, the Sung civil service had recourse to the familiar Chinese practice of having respectable people stand surety or vouchsafe (pao) the identity of the individual in question. In identity verification as well as in document authentication, the Sung civil service also made use of a prototype of the modern law firm, known as shu-pu (literally, bookstores). 46 Shu-pu operators were experts in all phases of official paperwork, and it was customary for all officials or would-be officials to make use of their service. For instance, a beneficiary of the yin privilege about to take the placement examination would certainly need the service of a shu-pu. Upon information supplied by the patron, the shu-pu operator would fill out all necessary forms. In preparing documents for their patrons, they also provided a kind of notarizing service. Most personnel actions could not be initiated without reference to the relevant sections of the yin-tzu notation. These sections had to be copied out (lu-pai), checked against the original, and, duly notarized by the shu-pu operator, submitted to the Board of Personnel together with other documents for processing. In view of the close relationship between shu-pu firms and the civil service administration, we may consider them quasi-public institutions. Each section of the Board of Personnel had an arrangement with some shu-pu whereby the latter handled exclusively the paperwork of the officials under its jurisdiction. 47 It may be observed, however, that the clientele of the shu-pu was not limited to officialdom; even humble folks had

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occasion to use their service. For instance, documents in suits of litigation were usually prepared by shu-pu operators. 48 So too were documents solemnizing a marriage. 49 The profession of shu-pu operator was therefore not limited to the capital area but could be found in all prefectural cities throughout the Sung empire. Supervision

of

Personnel

Before we proceed to discuss the dynamics of personnel control in the Sung personnel system, it is necessary first to clarify the organizational context within which supervisors were empowered to coordinate and direct the efforts of their subordinates. We will approach the subject by comparing the Sung model of organization with the typical model in the modern world. Until recently the structure of most modern organizations has been based on the twin doctrines of the delegation of authority and undivided supervisorial authority. 50 It is believed that a high-level administrator can only function effectively by reducing the areas where he personally has to make decisions to a manageable minimum. Decision making over trivial or technical matters should be left to subordinates. Delegation of responsibility to subordinates does not absolve the supervisor of ultimate responsibility if something goes wrong and someone has to take the blame. This fixing of responsibility follows from the doctrine of undivided supervisory responsibility. With a clearly defined chain of command, it is possible to pinpoint responsibility for any eventuality. Since every individual in the organization takes orders from only one boss, confusion due to conflicting directions may be obviated. There is no passing the buck if anything goes wrong with one's subordinates because that subordinate is under one's exclusive supervision and no one else is to blame. 5 ' In this classic organization model, no distinction is made between the hierarchical structure and the authority structure; they are synonymous. If a person is placed on a higher echelon of the organizational chart, he has authority over those placed at a lower echelon. The assumption is therefore that power is conferred by hierarchical position. This assumption, for instance, underlies the organizational principle of the U.S. military establishment. According to Paul Y. Hammond: The hierarchical general staff concept of organization relied heavily on the principle of subordination. Various amounts of power are distributed throughout the system and each subordinate reports to a superior. The superior, being higher, presumably has more power; he at least has more legal authority. The tendency to equate hierarchical position with power leads to the myth. . . . !2

In more recent years the orthodoxy of the classic organization model seems to have lost ground. Patterns of organization at variance with the

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classic model are increasingly gaining acceptance. For instance, bases of power other than that represented by hierarchical position have been recognized. In an age of high technology the power of the expert cannot be exaggerated. The computer man who designs the intricate programming system very likely exercises more real power than his nominal supervisor. For these reasons, unitary supervision has sometimes given way to functional supervision so that an operating plant may be under separate bosses for financing, purchasing, marketing, and so forth. One-man decision making is likely to be replaced by committee decision making. 5 3 The Sung organization pattern differed in fundamental respects f r o m the classic model. First, the Sung system made a clear-cut distinction between the hierarchical structure and the authority structure. Hierarchical structure may be equated with the sequence of functional rank promotions. This sequence, for instance, ran from county sheriff/registrar to county magistrate (executory class), from county magistrate (administrative class) to prefectural vice-administrator, and f r o m prefectural viceadministrator to prefectural administrator. This sequence, however, must not be confused with the authority structure. Although the county registrar/sheriff was lower than the county magistrate, he did not take orders f r o m the the latter nor was the prefectural vice-administrator subordinate to the prefectural administrator. 5 4 The authority structure denoted, on the other hand, a direct superior/subordinate relationship. The relationship was cemented by the power to commend and impeach (chii-tz'u) which was at the superior's disposal for motivating and controlling subordinates. Thus all officials within a prefecture were the direct subordinates of the prefectural administrator and also of the prefectural viceadministrator. The disparity between the hierarchical structure and authority structure was not limited to the prefectural administration. On the circuit level, for instance, the sequence for functional rank promotion led from the fiscal staff supervisor (chuan-yuan p'an-kuan) to prefectural administrator, to judicial intendant, to fiscal vice-intendant, to fiscal intendant. This sequence constituted the hierarchical structure but bore no relationship to the authority structure. Thus in circuits where there were both a fiscal intendant and a fiscal staff supervisor, even though the former had a functional rank several steps above that of the latter, he was not the latter's superior but his colleague. Each shared the responsibility of the intendancy and exercised powers independently of one another. 55 By the same token, on the central level, even though the position (and functional rank) of the section chiefs (lang-chung) of the Six Boards was below that of the presidents and vice-presidents of the same boards, they were not necessarily regarded as the latter's subordinates. 5 6 Moreover, direct superior/subordinate relationship in the Sung system generally did not mean unitary control (or supervision) as in the classic

Performance Evaluation and Personnel Supervision

191

model of organization. In fact, the Sung civil service seems to have favored dual control over unitary control consistently. By dual control I mean a phenomenon whereby a regular pattern of organization with the chain of command between two echelons A and C going through an intermediate echelon B can be suspended under certain circumstances in favor of an alternative pattern of organization in which the chain of command goes directly from A to C bypassing B. This phenomenon is well illustrated in provincial administration. In the regular pattern the chain of command went from the central government through the circuit intendants to the prefectures and from the prefectures to the counties. With the alternative pattern the chain of command went directly from the central government to the prefectural administration, bypassing the circuit intendants. It also ran from the circuit intendants to the counties, bypassing the prefectures. 57 Dual control was also found in the central government. The Six Boards were technically subordinate to the Department of State Affairs (shang-shu-sheng), for instance, but not all dealings with the court had to be routed through the Department of State Affairs. 58 Provided that proper safeguards are implemented and the alternative pattern of organization can only be activated under clearly defined conditions, dual control can be an improvement over the classic model. It opens up alternative channels of communication so that the higher-ups will not be blocked by the intermediary levels of the administration in their attempt to comprehend the real situation confronted by the organization. Collusion between administrators on successive echelons as well as empire building within the organization are also less likely to happen. Access to the alternative chain of command means that an administrator is no longer exclusively dependent on his immediate superior for merit rating and other kinds of evaluation for personnel action. The evaluations of the latter will have to be balanced by independent evaluations from the higher-ups. A new factor has been injected into the superior/ subordinate relationship. Whereas previously the subordinate might have little redress against the tyranny of his immediate superior, the mere presence of the alternative chain of command would have considerable deterrent effect on a superior's tendency to abuse his power. Thus domineering behavior on the part of the superior and sycophancy on the part of the subordinate are likely to be replaced by more professional attitudes on the part of both, to the benefit of the organization. Although the authority of the supervisor in the Sung civil service was diminished by the system of dual and multiple controls, in most instances this diminution of authority was amply compensated for by the institution of controlled sponsorship (chu-kuan). Controlled sponsorship was compounded of two basic elements. First, it was based on the systematic application of the familiar Chinese concept of interpersonal relations

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(pao, standing surety for) to personnel administration. This concept implies the ultimate of trust between two individuals whereby one is ready to pledge his entire being (honor, wealth, his own life, and the life of his family) to guarantee the integrity of the other. The trust, of course, could be misplaced and the guarantor would have to suffer the consequences of his judgment. One recalls the tragic fate of Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the grand historian, who unreservedly pledged for his good friend Li Ling, the Han general dispatched to fight the Hsiung-nu. When Li Ling defected to the enemy, Ssu-ma Ch'ien was punished for his foolhardiness. 59 In the Sung civil service, pao was the basis for a wide range of personnel actions. Scholars wanting to take the civil service examination needed established families to testify (pao) their eligibility.60 Beneficiaries of the yin privilege needed guarantors to vouchsafe their identity. 6 ' Officials whose appointment papers or personnel files were lost or partially destroyed needed guarantors to vouchsafe the veracity of their allegations. 62 Officials reactivated after a long period of idleness needed guarantors to vouchsafe their identity. 63 In all these cases, the guarantors were liable to punishment, together with the principals (the persons they guaranteed), should it be found that the truth was other than what they had vouched. This was the principle of joint adjudication (lien-tso). The testimony of guarantors carried weight because they were held responsible for what they testified. This general concept of pao was fused with another time-honored Chinese practice—the recommendation of worthies (chien-chu)—to form the distinctive Sung institution of controlled sponsorship. To the extent that the emperor or the men in charge of the appointment agencies were not personally acquainted with all qualified personnel, the appointment to a considerable proportion of civil service positions, especially those with heavy responsibilities, had by necessity to be based on the judgment of men the emperor trusted. Normally, it was understood that the recommender assumed responsibility for the men he recommended. The exact extent of responsibility, of course, varied from time to time and depended on the balance of pertinent circumstances. Under the Sung dynasty the full rigor of the joint adjudication concept was introduced into the practice of recommendation. The practice was routinized and evolved into the unique Sung institution of controlled sponsorship. The evolution and scope of controlled sponsorship in personnel administration have been dealt with in great detail by Kracke. 64 In his view, the men appointed or promoted on the basis of sponsorship were likely to be high achievers with proven integrity, demonstrated by their performance record. They were also likely to have greater incentive to perform, knowing full well that if they failed to measure up to the expectation of their sponsors, they would bring shame and disgrace to them.

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The extensive use of sponsorship was not without problems, of course, but the obvious pitfalls of the system could be minimized with appropriate safeguards. Since sponsorship meant making or breaking the career of an individual, for instance, he who owed so much to his sponsor naturally had a tendency to gravitate into the latter's personal clique. To counteract this tendency, the system of multiple sponsors was implemented. On any occasion calling for the use of sponsors, more than one was usually stipulated, the exact number varying with the circumstances. For promotion from the executory to the administrative class, for example, one needed five sponsors. As there were many key rungs on most career ladders where the use of sponsors was mandatory, one became in the course of time indebted to many different sponsors. These sponsors could be expected to cut across factional lines, thus minimizing the significance of any single sponsor/client relationship. Kracke treats sponsorship as a distinct method of personnel selection independent of, and often in competition with, other methods. 6 S This was undoubtedly true in many instances. By the time of Emperor Chentsung at the latest, however, the use of sponsorship had become so widespread and mandatory for most personnel actions involving promotion in rank or job placement that it was no longer an option but was the cornerstone of a single set of prerequisites for personnel action. It is no longer meaningful to speculate on the percentage of civil service positions filled by sponsorship or the percentage of rank promotions effectuated by sponsorship compared to other methods. The sponsorship requirement, fused with other relevant factors such as seniority, had become the main channel of advancement." Any other combination of factors with sponsorship left out was definitely a deviation from the normal pattern. 6 7 The pivotal nature of sponsorship in the Sung personnel system had profound implications for other key personnel functions. We have already seen how the function of merit rating atrophied; it had lost its raison d'être as sponsorship became the absolute arbiter on who should be promoted in rank or who should be placed in choice civil service positions. We will now see how sponsorship, having preempted the function of merit rating, developed into a potent instrument for motivating and controlling subordinates. All motivational systems are variations of the stick and carrot theme; that is, they are built on the psychology of reward and punishment. Both sticks and carrots are essential components: Different motivational systems differ in the emphasis and the proportion of the two components. For the Sung system, the emphasis appeared to be on carrots rather than sticks. The power to punish was implicit in the supervisor's right and duty to notate the personnel file of the subordinate. By making a below-par eval-

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uation or by refusing to notate at all, a supervisor could cause serious damage to the career of an unruly or perverse subordinate. For the most part, the realization that the supervisor had these options available to him was sufficient to keep subordinates in line. What this big stick accomplished was to guarantee a minimum standard of performance. Ordinarily a motivational system which guarantees that all employees measure up to a certain standard is adequate for most organizations. For goal-oriented organizations, however, something more is required. 68 To accomplish exceptional goals, it is not enough that everybody does an adequate job; everyone has to make an exceptional effort beyond the call of duty. To elicit this level of effort, an exceptional reward has to be offered. This interplay between reward and effort is well expressed in the Chinese saying "chung-shang chih-hsia pi yu yung-fu" ("Brave men will step forward if the prize is right"). The prospect of sponsorship endorsement was the exceptional reward supervisors could give. To those whose careers hinged upon receiving the requisite number of sponsorship endorsements for change of official status or rank promotions, to be rewarded with an endorsement was more than merely gratifying. It was evidence of solid progress in the quest for professional success leading to fame, power, and wealth. The prerogative to confer sponsorship endorsements thus represented a highly valued resource at the disposal of the state. As the value of this resource was due mainly to its scarcity in relation to the steady demand for it, sponsorship endorsements could not be offered lavishly. Otherwise, like cheapened coin, they were no longer coveted. The effective exploitation of this resource called for a policy of conservation. To this end the Sung dynasty implemented a strict rationing system. Every unit of government with a personnel function was allocated a fixed quota of sponsorship endorsements of various kinds, roughly in proportion to the number of authorized positions in the unit whose incumbents needed them for change of official status or rank promotion. 6 9 To the supervisor of the unit, this quota was probably more valuable than money. It gave him the required leverage vis-à-vis his subordinates and assured him of their dedication and morale. Whenever a new government unit was set up or when an existing unit was assigned additional duties and personnel, new quotas for sponsorship endorsement had to be negotiated. High officials drafted to head an expedition or a task force often requested—in addition to troops, supporting staff, and provisions—the authority to make a specified number of sponsorship endorsements to motivate the staff assigned to them. 7 0 An idea of the distribution of these quotas is given in Table 23. These quotas apparently were strictly observed. As an illustration of the efforts to hold the line against liberalizing the rationing policy, it may be observed that when new government agencies were created or when exist-

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tZ-i —E^SO® gr f - t - 1 : . Tohoshi Kenkyu, vol. 39, no. 4 (March 1981): 79-114. Wang Chien-chiu ZEiliA. Sung-tai t'ai-hsiieh yii t'ai-hsueh sheng 'A: f t % ^ fJH A Vf-'Y.- Taipei: Chung-kuo hsiieh-shu chu-tso chiang-chu wei-yuan hui, 1965. Wang Hsiao-po Li Shun tzu-liao hui-pien T. 'hi® $ HIS iS f i S i t fi • Compiled by the Department of History, Chengtu Normal University, 1970. Wang I-yai iH Chung-kuo ti-li 2 vols. Taipei: Kuo-li pien-i kuan S i i i S f f t l , 1955. Wang Te-yi JL'MWi- Li Tao fu-tzu nien-pu -f--iC T^-¡m- Taipei: Chung-kuo hsueh-shu chu-tso chiang-chu wei-yuan hui, 1963. Wang Tseng-yii E t t ^ - Sung-ch'ao ping-chih ch'u-t'an Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1983. Wang Ying-chen '¡EBfg. Wen-ting chi sUfe^. TSCCCP edition.

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Index

absolutist monarchies in Europe, 1, 3 An Lu-shan Rebellion, 53-54 appointment to positions: geographic sequence of (rotation of service), 132; and patronage appointment (tsou-pi), 136-137; and placement assemblies (chichu), 133; and pre-appointment fitness test (ch'iian-liang), 265n. 43; reality of appointment process, 135; role of Board of Personnel in, 131, 132; shooting for positions (she-ch 'ueh), 133 Assistant Minister of State (tsan-chih cheng-shih), 43, 122 Buddhism, 1, 201 bureaucracy, 2; activism in, 12-13; and empires, 3; function of, 17; necessity of, 8; of Sung period, 12, 15,28-33 Bureau of Military Affairs (shu-mi yuan), 44-45; Sung version of, 59, 71; T'ang version of, 54 Byzantium, 2, 13,21; bureaucracy in, 14, 19-21; and John the Lydian, 19 Canon of Yao, 175 Carney, T. F., 18, 247n. 30 Censorate (yu-shih t'ai), 44-45, 184 chai chi-ti (passing the examination a second time), 165 ch 'ai-chien. See commissions chan-mo-k'an (postponement of mo-k'an), 152,156 Chang Chin-chien, 175 Chang Tsun, 97, 186,211 Chao K'uang-yin, 56, 63 Chao Ju-yu, 108 chen-chiang (garrison commandants), 54, 59 Ch'en Chun, 144 ChenTe-hsiu, 111 chi-shu (technician), 250n. 70 chiang (garrison, permanent troop deployment), 77

chiao (suburban sacrifice), 152 chiao-wei (colonel), 75 Chief Minister of State (ts'ai-hsiang or cheng-hsiang), 43, 54, 122, 266n. 52 chieh-tu shih (military governors): during Sung period, 59; during T'ang period, 59 chien mo-k'an. See mo-k'an, seniority credit chien-pan (anterior ranks), 64. See also shih-ch 'en chih (position in T'ang civil service), 54-55 chih-fa. See personal rank system, laws of halt chih-shih (retirement), 113 chin-na (or na-shu, recruitment via grain or cash donation), 110-111 chin-shih (doctor of letters), 86-102; divisions of, 89; special usage of term, 258n. 21

Chinese cities, 10, 38 Chinese economy, 9, 37 Ch'ing dynasty, 4, 15; decision-making during, 276n. 7; personnel administration of, 224-225, 276n. 9 ching-chao kuan (administrative grade official), 32-33; Sung version of, 60, 147; T'ang version of, 51 ching-shih (ordinary position), 128-129, 264n.30 chiu-p'in chung-cheng (fair and impartial ranking in five grades), 142, 144, 266n. 4. See also p 'in chou-hsien kuan (prefectural and county officials), 61 Chou Pi-ta, 212 Chu Hsi, 111 chu-jen (academic degree during MingCh'ing period), 275n. 4 ch 'u-ming (disenrollment), 112, 261n. 73 chu-ssu shih-fu (chiefs and vice-chiefs of bureaus of inner court), 55-56; Sung variety of, 61; Five Dynasties variety of, 56

293

294

Index

ch 'iieh (title of nobility during T'ang period), 54-55 chun-kung (military merit), 69 chun-pan (officer of army rank), 64; See also shih-ch 'en circuits, 41-42; comparison with MingCh'ing provinces, 244, 276n. 6. See also fiscal intendants; judicial intendants civil service, 37-38, 116; and army recruitment, 109-110; definition of, 27-28, 34; factors limiting size of, 83; and modern civil services, 78, 117; sample positions of, 129 civil service examination: frequency of, 8788; function of, 95-102; and law examinations, 187, 241; military version of (wu-chii), 87; records of, 86; recruitment through, 93-94; role of, 92-93; safeguards for integrity of, 90; subject matter of, 219; views against, 260n. 41. See also chin-shih; departmental examination; prodepartmental examination; qualifying examination; t'e-tsou-ming clerks, 15, 23-24; and personnel action, 185-187, 208; rank system of, 75 commissions (ch'ai-chien): definition of, 119-120; kinds of, 119, 265n. 47; and personnel control, 118-119; during postYuan-feng, 262n. 8 Confucianism, 2, 3, 11, 106 counties (hsien), 40, 252nn. 18, 19; magistrates of, 129, 142, 257n. 3, 264n. 27 Creel, HerleeG., 1, 245n. 2, 252n. 17 departmental examination 89-90, 96 dynastic cycle, 3-4, 14

(sheng-shih),

Eisenstadt, S. N . , 2 - 4 , 13, 16 Encyclopedia of Military History, 62-63 erh-p'in (hereditary secondp'in grade), 144 examination primer, 135, 266n. 50 Fan Ch'eng-ta, 48 Fan Chung-yen, 106, 121 FanTsu-yu, 178 fei-fan pu-kuan (unconventional accession), 108 fei-tz'u (extraordinary positions), 128-129, 264n. 30. See also position classification, temporal scheme fen-ssu (inactive status for officials), 112 fiscal intendants, 42; formula for evaluating performance, 182, 243-244; responsibilities of, 89, 134, 137; role inshe-kuan service, 200-201; role in ting-ch'ai scheme, 206-210 Five Dynasties (wu-t'ai) period, 21, 36, 53, 56-58, 76

French estates general of 1789, 83 fu-ku 'ei (reinstatement after three years' mourning), 113 fu-wei (lieutenant), 75 functional rank (tsu-hsii), 59; disparity between, and commission, 132; definition of, 125-127, 264n. 28; and military officials, 138; promotion in, 130; qualifiers for, 139-140 Han empire, 4-5 Han Fei-tzu, 196 Hangchow, 6, 76, 97 hanlin academician, 45; son of, 198 Hartwell, Robert, 10-11, 248n. 38, 259n. 29 heng-hsing (horizontal file), 69 hereditary privilege, 142-146 ho-pan chih-chih (protocol list), 147 hou-fei en-che (relatives of imperial consorts), 107 hou-tz'u (waiting for one's turn to bid for commissions), 134 hsia-pan chih-ying (attendant of the lower division), 75, 153 hsiang-kuan (domicile), 272n. 45 Hsin T'ang Shu, 80 hsing-shou-ch 'iian (denoting relationship between personal rank and commission), 150 hsu-fu (rehabilitation for officials), 112 hsuan-fu ssu (viceroyalty), 97 hsuan-huiyuan (court for proclaiming the imperial majesty), 66 hsuan-jen (executory officials), 32-33, 6061 hsiin (military merit during T'ang period), 54-55 Huang, Ray, 4, 12 hui-shou. See personal rank system, hereditary transference in Hung Mai, 186-187, 269n. 71, 271n. 24 i-kuan (physician), 250n. 70 identity validation: and appointment papers (kao-ming or fu-shen), 188; code used in (san-t'ai, hsiang-kuan), 187-188 imperial clansmen, 98-99, 107-108 irredentist ideology, 6-7 judicial intendant, 42, 96; formula for evaluating performance, 182,243-244 Jurchen (Chin), 6, 65, 75-76; Sung-Chin wars, 6-7 K'ai-feng, 6, 10, 13,57,75-76 kai-kuan (change of official status): and eligibility of sponsors, 167-168; and hsuanjen, 167, 269n. 6; merits of, 160-161; requirements for, 165-170

Index kai-kuan in Szechwan: quota for, 212-213; reforms of, 212, 213 kai-kuan hsii-ju, 214 ko-chih (appointment to palace gate), 6768 Kracke, E. R „ Jr., 61, 95, 118, 192, 193, 248n. 50,250n. 69, 254nn. 26, 28,29, 256n. 46, 258n. 14, 259n. 30, 260n. 40, 262n.8,267n.15 kuan (titular office), 59-60. See also personal rank system kung-fen (merit points), 155, 157-158 kung-jen (public servant), 75. See also clerks Kwangtung-Kwangsi, 200-201 land communication, 48, 49 lang (gentleman), 7 lang-chung (section chief), 148-149 lapse factor, 51,61, 134,206 Li Hung-chang, 276n. 6 li-jen (clerical personnel), 75. See also clerks Li Po, 202 Li Te-yii, 102 Li Tien, 177 Uang-chih (drafting official and academician), 122, 148 liang-fu (or liang-sheng, two offices), 122, 153 Liao (Khitan) empire, 6, 75, 95; civil service examination of, 96; relations with Sung, 5 lien-tso (joint adjudication), 192, 199, 273n.77 literati, 4-5, 15,58 Liu, James T. C., 248n. 50, 250n. 62 liu nei ch 'uan (bureau for executory officials), 71 Liu Yu, 275n. 1 Lo Chen-yii, 231 Lu Yu, 260n. 47 Mandate of Heaven, 2-3, 5, 14 Marsh, Robert, 143, 267n. 5 men-fa elite, 21-22, 53, 80, 82 men-k'e (clients), 47, 88 miasma-prone localities (chang-hsiang), 200 military rank officials, 27-28; during Five Dynasties, 56; during T'ang period, 5456 Ming dynasty, 4, 14-15; revenue during, 8 9 ming-tz'u (place on waiting list), 134. See also sheng-ming-tz'u mo-k'an (case review): as administrative tool, 154-158; definition of, 152; limits for, 154, 162; and seniority credit (chien mo-k'an), 153-154, 204, 269n. 53

295 Mongols, 7; conquest of Sung, 14-15, 222223 Mughals, 7, 16-17 nien-lao. See personal rank system official gazette (ti-pao), 49-50 organization: classic model of, 189; and control supervision, 190, 191 Ottoman empire, 2, 7, 14, 17 pan-hsing (division ranks), 64. See also shih-ch 'en pao-chia (militia), 77 Pei Kuang-ting, 115 performance principle, 143, 146 performance evaluation (merit rating), 172, 173-174; under Ming system, 174-175, 270n. 7; under Sung system, 177, 178, 179; under T'ang system, 176-177, 271n. 11; for U.S. Army, 174-175 personal rank system, 146, 159; civil and military transference in, 150-151; distribution of, 163-164, 166; evolution, 146147; hereditary transference in (huishou), 148-153, 267n. 24; and laws of halt (chih-fa), 150, 268n. 49; remuneration in, 158-161; and Yuan-feng Reform, 147, 159. See also kai-kuan\ salary schedule; seniority principle personnel file, 180, 184; abuse of, 185-187; and file notation (p'i-shu), 181-182, 193194, 271n. 24; precautions against falsification in, 183; and stamped paper (yintzu), 181 p'in (grade of rank or position), 142-143; and funerals, 268n. 26; and officials' costumes, 144-145; in pre-Sung civil services, 51, 145-146; and taxation, 150 placement assembly (chi-chu), 133, 210 placement examination (ch 'uan-shih): military version of (cheng-shih), 105; Sung version of, 105; T'ang version of, 51-53, 81-82

p'o-k'o (grace positions), 128-130, 133. See also position classification, temporal scheme position (ch 'iieh), 120, 121; brokering of (mai-ch'iieh Shen-chia), 136, 266n. 51; imbalance between personnel and, 136; redesigning of, 263n. 16; and title (hsien), 120, 263n. 15 position classification: bases for, 124, 125, 144; and ch'in-min, 124; contrast between Sung and modern systems, 123124; Han variety, 142; Ming-Ch'ing variety of, 42-43; Ssu-ma Kuang's scheme of, 121-123; of Sung system, 122; temporal scheme of, 128-129

296 prefectures, 38-40; administrators of, 129 prodepartmental examination (lei-sheng shih), 96-97, 211 pu-li wu (not attending to business, sinecures), 120 pu-tieh (genealogical manuals), 144, 267n. 9 qualifying examination (chieh-shih), 88-89, 258n. 18; function of, 101-102 rank classification, 58, 141-142; dual system of, 58-60 rank promotion, 151-158; by imperial grace, 152; by special merit, 151. See also kai-kuan; mo-k'an reckoning of age (shih-nien, chronological age, and kuan-nien, official age), 114 Roman empire, 7, 13 salary schedule, 159-161 san-kuan (prestige title): during pre-T'ang period, 145; during Sung period, 71; during T'ang period, 54-55 san-ssu (finance commission), 59, 122 san-t'ai (three generations), 188 schools as civil service recruitment channel: kuo-tzu chien (school of advanced study for children of officials), 95; san-she schools, 102; t'ai-hsueh (Imperial University), 89, 130; T'ang variety of, 81, 237-238 Secretariat-Chancellery (chung-shu menhsia), 43, 45 seniority principle, 17, 19-20, 115; and computation of, for promotion, 114 service-agent position (chien-t'ang), 124, 137 shang-shu tso-hsuan (Left Personnel Office of the President), 71 shang-shu yu-hsuan (Right Personnel Office of the President), 71 she-kuan (acting officials), 96, 201 shen-kuan yuan (bureau of evaluation), 71 sheng-ming-tz'u (advancing one's place on list), 134, 157 shih-ch'en (servitors), 62-67; career pattern of, 239-240; job assignment of, 137-140; during post-Yuan-feng period, 73-74; recruitment of, 107-108, 109-111; during Southern Sung period, 78 shih-feng (personal appanages), 162 shih-lang tso-hsuan (Left Personnel Office of the Vice-president), 71 shih-lang yu-hsuan (Right Personnel Office of the Vice-president), 72 shih-ts'ung (minister-in-attendance), 148149,153

Index shou-shih (registering of sponsorship endorsement), 212 shu-pu (bookstores): as quasi-public institutions, 188; role of, 189,272nn. 48,49; survival into later times, 272n. 46 sponsors (chii-chu): and endorsement rights, 194-195, 270n. 71, 273n. 71; use of, 193 sponsorship (chii-kuan), 191-193, 273n. 67; as channel of advancement, 193; comparison of, and merit-rating, 196-199; as management tool, 191-197 Ssu-maKuang, 121-123 ssu-shan and erh-shih-ch 'i-tsui (four excellences and twenty-seven ultimates), 176, 177-178 Sung armies, 7, 8, 63-65; types of, 78 Sung finances, 8-9, 12-13 Sung Ho, 152 Sung iron industry, 10-11 Sung laws: chih-ling-k'o-shih, 232; hsinshu, 23; shen-ming, 233; t'iao-fashih-lei, 24 Sung territories, 4, 35-36 Szechwan, 201-202,203 Szechwan special civil service: change of official status in, 211-216; early Sung regulations, 203; summation of Sung civil service personnel policy, 214-216. See also kai-kuan in Szechwan; ting-ch 'ai ta-chiang (marshals), 75 ta ching-chien (position title), 148-149 ta-fu (grandee), 71 tai-ch 'iieh (waiting for commission to take effect), 134 t'ai-sheng-ssu-chien (senior director), 124125 tai-tz'u roster, 209 t'ang-ch'u (hall appointment), 132 T'ang empire, 5, 36; central government, 42-44 Tangghuts (Hsi-hsia), 8, 65, 95 Tao Ku, 61 t'e-tsou-ming (facilitated examination), 90; and discriminatory treatment of graduates, 91, 133-134; military version of, 87; output of graduates of, 227-229 tien-ch 'ai (extra quota appointment), 120 ting-ch 'ai (delegated appointments), 205206; implementation of, 218; monitoring devices for, 209; and nullification of appointments (shua-ch'ueh), 210; and post-Yuan-feng vicissitudes, 208-209; roster of, 209 Ts'ai Ching, 168 ts'an-ling (residual position), 128-129, 133, 264n. 31. See also position classification, temporal scheme

Index tsang-fou-p'ing (good-bad-average), 178 tso-hsuan (officials of the left section), 74 tsung-nu-fu (husbands of imperial clanswomen), 107 tsung-shih (imperial clansmen), 107 tzu-hsii (qualification). See functional rank Vogel, Ezra, 20 Wang An-shih, 11-12,61,70, 77, 102, 106, 119, 149,208, 256n.52 Wang Chi-en, 203 Wang Te-yi, 232 Wang Yeh-chien, 4 Wang Ying-lin, 116, 141, 268n. 36 Wang Yu-ch'uan, 3 water transport, 47, 48 Wei Liao-weng, 213-214 Wu Hsi, 275n. 1 ya-chien (exemption component of tax bill), 149

297 Yang Wan-li, 135 Yangtze gorges, 202, 274n. 11 Yangtze valley, 9, 36-37 yao-chiin (also yao-ling, system of honorific apex grades), 69 Yeh Shih, 36, 106, 115, 198, 255n. 32 yellow-garbed personnel, 237 Yen-Yiin prefectures, 5-6 yin privilege, 29, 73, 102-109; beneficiaries, 105; dispensers, 104-106; effects of Yuan-feng Reform, 105; placement examination, 105; and recruitment, 107109; recruitment for military rank officials, 107 ying-k'o (examination standard), 130 yu ch 'u-shen (formally qualified graduates), 91 yu-hsuan (officials of the right section), 75 yuan-wai lang (assistant section chiefs), 148-149

About the Author

Winston W. Lo is associate professor of history at Florida State University. He was born in China and grew up in Hong Kong. After graduating from the University of Hong Kong with an honors degree in history, he went to Harvard University on a Harvard-Yenching Fellowship. There he received his Ph.D. in 1970, with a specialization in medieval Chinese history. He has published numerous articles on Sung governmental institutions and is the author of The Life and Thought of Yeh Shih (11501223).

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