An Inquiry Into The Merit System Of The Wei, Jin, Southern And Northern Dynasties

That the bureaucratic politics in ancient China could stand a long time was attributed to its own intrinsic logic and the support of many systems, e.g. the electoral system, the merit system, the supervisory system, retirement system among others. As one of the important systems, the merit system was based on certain standards, organized and implemented by relevant authorities, and aimed to evaluate the achievements, moral conducts and "年劳" of the officials. According to the evaluation results, an official would be promoted or demoted, rewarded or punished, by way of which the vitality and advancedness of the bureaucratic mechanism could be guaranteed. The merit system played an important role in pushing the self-perfection and long-term development of the the bureaucratic system. In Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the unified and central governments no longer existed, the imperial power decreased, and the powerful familes and powerful-family system developed unprecedentedly. Nevertheless, the merit system did not fade away. Moreover, it obtained significant development and gradually adapted to the powerful-family system.Chapter One probes into the objects of the merit system in Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. During this time, the major objects included the central and local officials, the working staff for senior officials, Sanguan and military officers, etc. During the Dynasty, the central officials were included in the merit system and conesponding regulations were prescribed, which changed the former tendency focusing on local officials. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, villiage officials were brought into the merit system, indicating that the imperial power in that dynasty had penetrated into the grassroot levels. The constant expansion of the objects of the merit system reflected the continuous strengthening of imperial power in the Wei Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.Chapter Two discussed the criteria of the merit system. The criteria included the achievements, morla conducts and 年劳, and would progress with the changes of time. "The achievements" were the initial standards when the merit system first started and could be visualized with figures. The establishment of moral conducts and 年劳 as the standards went through a historical development process. "The moral conducts" were included in the merit systme with the perfection of evaluation methods (aided by the Nine Grades Appraisal System) and against the background of the Confucianization of laws, "年劳" was in a degree contradictory to "the achievements" and "moral conducts". But it could reflect the tenure, curriculum vitae and 勤恪 of the officials and could adapt itself to the operation of bureaucracy. As a result, it was brought into the meirt system. The standards of "4 virtues and 27 mosts " in the Tang Dynasty were precisely the results of the long development and evolution of the criteria of "achievements" , "moral conducts" and "年劳" during the Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and Sui Dynasty. The changes of the criteria accelerated the conflict-to-integration process of Confucianists and Legists. In Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, the Shangji System symbolized the establishment of the merit system, which evaluated the government official strictly by the standard of achievements instead of moral conducts. It implies that the very initial merit system was the pracice of legalist thoughts, and had nothing to do with the moral conducts advocated by Confucianists. In the Two Han Dynasties, moral conducts of the officials were maintained by the township and overseen by supervisory institutions. But at that time the merit regulations were prescribed by the legalist school and so reflected its thoughts. Moral conducts had not officially become the standard of the merit system.From Wei-Jin Dynasties, both achievements and moral conducts became the official standards of the merit system, marking the gradual integration of the achievements advocated by legists and the moral conducts by Confucianists. The notions of the two major schools of thought were visualized through the merit system. To monitor the moral conducts of officials by means of the merit system was one of the major characteristics of the bureaucratic politics in ancient China.Chapter Three discussed the administrative mechanism of the merit system. Kaogong Cao was established by central authorities and targeted at the civil and martial senior officials. The transformation of Kaogonglang in affiliation and superintendence during the period from Wei-Jin to Tang Dynasty, reflected the establishment of the system in which each department took its own responsibility respectively in election and evaluation. Gong Cao was set up by both central senior officials and prefectures in order to manage the government staff. The central Kaogong Cao and Gong Cao were separately in charge of the senior officials and the affiliated staff. In Sui Dynasty, the central government strengthened its power and deprived the local governments of their merit system. The management of all officials fell on the Kaogong Cao at the central level, so as to incorporate the merit system of both government officials and their affiliated staff.Chapter Four discussed the operational mechanism of the merit system. A comparatively complete mechanism was built up during that period and was an interconnected process, such as collection of merit information, determination of merit ranking, supervision in the evaluation process, rewards and punishment after evaluation, and the time span etc.Collection of merit information was the beginning, which included many kinds of channels. From-bottow-to-top channels included Shangji system, reporting system by other officials and appraisal by the masses of the government officials. From-top-to-bottom channels included perambulatation and the Nine Grades Appraisal System. Then the administrative authority would assemble all the information and accordingly determine the rank for each official. The rank determination needed a frame of reference, e.g. a specific scope of land or officials at the roughly same level. Rank determination in the Wei Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties continued to use the nine grades of the Han System, and also developed further. Particularly, Northern Wei Dynasty adopted three-rank and seven-grade system, which catered to the political needs of accelerating the promotion and demotion of officials, and highlighted the position-removal function of the merit system.The central government strengthened supervision of the evaluation process and management of the evaluation archives. The supervisory authority (e.g. Kedi Cao) took part in the evaluation process. To evaluate the economic achievements of the officials, Goujian System was adopted. The Northern Wei Dynasty used the amanuensis of three systems for comparison and produced the system of mutual supervision and level-to-level conditioning. Although the tenure of the officials had significantly changed from Wei-Jin to Sui Dynasty, the cycle of the evaluation remained roughly the same to the tenure. The time span had gradually become from "once in three years" to "once a year". The rewards and punishments after evaluation constituted an organic constituent of the merit system , which played an important role in both the career development of the officials and the post-death treatment. For both civil officials and military officers, the rewards and punishments were linked up with their official ranks, which exerted great influence on the historical development by narrowing down the gap between the plebeian class and privileged class. The cycle and the time span of the merit system were both methods to solve the contradiction between the supply of bureaucrat positions and the need of government officials. The change in the quantity reflected the fluctuation speed of officials.Chapter Five and Chapter Six, discussed the relations between the Shangji System, the perambulatation system and the merit system . As a tradition which started from Two Han Dynasties, Shangji system still served as a method to evaluate the local officials. In theWei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, through the perambulatation system the central government sent heralds all over the nation, corrected, evaluated and dismissed the local officials. Both the report official and the perambulator were regarded as the connection between the center and local. The Shangji system and perambulatation system were not only the method of collecting information, but also were important parts of the merit system.Chapter Seven discussed the relations between the Nine Grades Appraisal System and the merit system. The Nine Grades Appraisal System was a special form of examination that fit the powerful family system. The Nine Grades Appraisal System adapted to the political situation of Middle-Ages aristocrat society. Although it compromised to the powerful family's superiority, it was still acceptable to the emperor. Finally the imperial authority restored through it. The Nine Grades Appraisal System functioned quite differently from the aristocrats to the ordinary people. In Wei period, it relatively focused on the officals' virtue and talent. But when it came to West-Jin Dynasty and after, the parentage and morality were mostly considered but the official's achievements were ignored, which was quite favorable for the aristocrats. They could easily get positions and be promoted just because of their parentage and self-proclaimed virtues. While the ordinary people had to work out great achievements and passed the evaluation to get promoted. So the ordinary people focused on the achievements while the aristocrats focused on their virtue. The Nine Grades Appraisal System played the role of meirt system and exactly showed some features of the merit system under the powerful family system.Chapter Eight discussed the public evaluation and its influence on the officials in the Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The public evaluation of the officials concerned their achievements and virtues. It served as an important way for the central government to know the local officials. It also influented the evaluation results directly or indirectly, which in someway reflected the features of the merit system under the powerful family system.The merit system was fully established in Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The upper powerful family realized their political wills through the Nine Grades Appraisal System, while the lower family got their evaluation from the public opinion. The Nine Grades Appraisal System played as the role of the merit system in some way. It reflected both the restriction and influence from the powerful family and the public opinion. The evaluation results in that period stemmed from the joint effects of the central government, the powerful family and the public. The mutual cooperation among them contributed to a relatively complete merit system, but still with the imperial power at the dominating,status.To sum up, in Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, when the powerful family system took an important position, the merit system not only existed, but significantly developed to a system that adapted to the powerful family system, which can be seen from the expansion of the evaluation objects, integration of the standards, unification of the administrative organizations, institutionalization of the operational mechanisms and diversification of the evaluation models. The merit system had developed to a new level during the Wei ,Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. It occupied an important status in the development history of the merit system in ancient China and exerted profound influence upon the political system and histroical development of that time and even the following Sui and Tang Dynasties.