| The Qianlong dynasty enjoyed prosperous with booming economy, flourishing society and full treasury. The silver stock in the financial institution reached over 80,000,000 at most. However, behind the prosperity there was corruption cultivated clandestinely. Almost the whole upper class was doing everything they can to extort treasury, which directly led to soaring corruption number and public bribery that undermined the country. The experience and lessons can be used for reference. This article starts from the corruption and bribery crime by governor in the Qing dynasty, concludes the experience and lessons which can work as useful reference to the present society by making full use of history materials, archives and the research achievements made by predecessors and by thoroughly studying the relative regulations used to prevent and punish the governor corruption in the Qing dynasty. In this process, our principle is "make the past serve the present". We respect the history and facts and treat traditional heritage scientifically through the method of historical materialism. The contents of the article are as follows:Chapter One is the introduction which mainly describes the motivation, goal of the research and review relative research achievements.Chapter two contains the research of the governor system, the types and characteristics of the corruption and bribery crime by governor in the Qianlong dynasty. At first we gave a brief description of the governor system. The governor system, which originated from the Ming dynasty, was a temporary assignment officer at first and then gradually transformed into a permanent local officer. Framework consisted of eight governors and twelve provincial governors were formed in the mid-Qianlong dynasty. Governor played a vital role as a connecting link between the preceding and the following in imperial system in the Qing dynasty characterized by high concentration. All policies should be implemented by governors and at the same time governors fed back local situation to the central government. This system once played a key role in the Qing dynasty’s history, and it can be said that, to some extent, the centralized imperial system of the Qing dynasty gained full development with the help of the establishment and improvement of governor system. The governors had many powers and their functions in society differed from whether they did their duties or cherished the people, but the damage to the people and society caused by governor corruption was for sure.The provisions in the statutes of the Qing dynasty against corruption and bribery crime were followed those in the Ming dynasty, and were more well-prepared on their basis. However, as the development of society, the types of corruption and bribery crime became increasingly complicated. With references on provisions in statutes, the author analyses several typical crimes such as official corruption, crime caused by sharing the spoil, extorting wealth from loan bearers as official, illegal bribe taken by official and their families, embezzlement, taxes lent secretly to others and so on. Through the analysis of thirty-one corruption and bribery crime cases in the Qianlong dynasty, we can figure out three features of them:first, grouping of corruption and bribery crime. Group corruption and bribery crime accounted for 20% of total corruption and bribery crime cases, and the percentage reached 50% 40years later; second, be various in forms and became more secret, which were demonstrated mainly in two kinds of cases. One was wringing money from subordinates in the name of treaty or lending. The other was asking their underlings and families to take bribe; third, the corruption sum was large. Until the mid-Qianlong dynasty, property confiscated from governors amount to a hundred thousand, most of which were stolen goods taken as bribes or taken away by force or trickery.In Chapter three, the author focuses on the research of prevention system of the corruption and bribery crime and its implementation in the Qianlong dynasty. Relatively rigorous one was a full set of systems used to supervise and assure that officials will fulfill their post, including selection system, performance evaluation system and supervision system.The first one is the performance evaluation system. In the Qing dynasty, although the governors permanently lived in local place, they were still Beijing officials nominally and therefore were also checked as Beijing officials. The specific assessment criteria for Beijing officials were "shou (discretion in conduct), zheng (government affairs), cai (talent), nian (age)" and each of them represented a level. Those who were unqualified will be listed in "bafa" and be impeached which was called "rectify bad behaviors by bafa". During the reign of Gaozong in the Qing dynasty, two aspects of assessment system were reformed and both were related with the governors. One was to stop self-report mode. The second was to abolish recommendation mode, for in the implementation process of the regulation that "those who asked for resign could recommend someone to replace themselves", drawbacks such as mutual praise, mutual introduction and conspired to take bribes were founded.The second one was the supervision system, which was divided into two kinds. One was Kedao (a general name for supervision officials) and Beijing officials’supervision to governors. Kedao was gradually lost its function as supervision in the Qianlong dynasty. In all the 31 cases, only three of them were impeached by Kedao. Three reasons may account for it. First, supervisors couldn’t know what the local governors did and said timely. Second, words from a man of the lowly position carried little weight. Supervisors can easily be in trouble if their impeachment failed. Third, the supervision function was restricted by the emperor’s idiosyncrasies and political trends. In addition to the official supervision system, other Beijing officers were asked to be responsible for supervising some local affairs too, although without little effectiveness. The other kind of supervision system was the mutual supervision, including the supervision between governors and local officers’supervision to the governors. Compared with the first kind of supervision system, this one acted more efficiently in finding problems. Therefore, the system of local officers’supervision to the governors helped a lot in preventing corruption and bribery crime to some extent in early-Qianlong dynasty. However, when came to the late-Qianlong dynasty, this system lost its function for political environment corrupted and corruption and bribery crime became collectivization. In a word, although the supervision system was rigorous, it was always from top to down, lacking of the parallel and down to top supervision system. It was a vacuum zone and was exactly the place where the governors survived. Besides these two prevention system mentioned above, the Qing dynasty also established yang-lien system to increase the governors’income aimed at preventing corruption crime, however, this goal was never reached for the money being paid couldn’t satisfy the governor’s desire.In chapter four the author mainly focuses on the research of legal system aimed at punishing corruption and bribery crime by governor. Legislations in the Qing dynasty concerned with punishment of corruption and bribery crime by governor mainly embodied in related provisions and by-laws in "the Laws of Qing Dynasty", some of which were "embezzlement","bribes taken by perverting the law" and "bribes taken by not perverting the law". They all belonged to "six kinds of bribes". Until the late-Qing dynasty, the contents of the law did not change while the contents of the regulations were made corresponding changes. During the reign of Yongzheng, many adjustments were made to the content of the regulations. After Qianlong ascended the throne, slight revision was made to the new regulations aimed at punishing corruption officials. The overall trend was "more charity, less strictness" and there were three major adjustments:First, reforms were carried out to do away with the drawbacks of regulations made in the Third Year of Yongzheng dynasty, which ruled that "corrupt officials who can return the illicit money in one year will be immune from death penalty". Two regulations were abolished, which were that corrupt officials who took bribes for the sake of themselves and those who took bribes by preventing the law can apply to regulations of "corrupt officials who can return the illicit money in one year will be immune from death penalty". After the abolishment, few corrupt officials can escape the death penalty.Second, further modified regulations aimed at ordering the criminals to return the spoils. Besides the recovery of "money will be compensated by superior officers if there wasn’t enough to be paid by corrupt officers" which was stipulated in the early years of the Yongzheng dynasty, modification was also made to regulation that "a son has to compensate what should be paid by his dead father". It was ruled that even the son had his own family he can be imprisoned until he compensated the public money embezzled by his father. Those modifications in the Qianlong dynasty showed that the emperor Gaozong was bitterly detested such behaviors. He hoped to reach a social effect that no corrupt officials will be found under the heaven by performing above regulations, for superior officials will not screen followers’ faults for being afraid of committing themselves and officials will realize that fully performed their duty will benefit their descendent.Third, specific prohibitions were made based on some situations of corruption and bribery crime by governor and bad conventions were abolished, for instance, governors were forbad to accept local specialty and counties were prohibited from doing things on behalf of provinces where they belonged, governors were forbad to have their house keepers collecting money.In chapter five the author touches on the punishment of corruption and bribery crime by governor in the Qianlong dynasty and analyzes the impact of imperial power on it through the study of the process of conviction and weighing of punishment. The emperor had supreme judicial power and the punishment of the corruption governors was all depend on him. To investigate or not and how to administer justice and punishment were finally decided by the emperor. Therefore, imperial power was crucial in the punishment of corruption governor. Emperor Gaozong adopted stronger measure than ever before to punish corruption crime. From the first to the sixtieth year of the Qianlong dynasty, punishment for corruption crime had never been stopped. The number of governors punished for corruption exceeded the number in any dynasty before. However, to the late-Qianlong dynasty, although emperor Gaozong investigated some big cases of corruption and bribery crime by governor, the intensity to deal with the officers’ management was slacked off, which acted adversely to stop the rising tend of corruption, let alone thoroughly eliminated the political corruption. All these put a heavy burden on the achievement he had received since he ascended the throne.Besides, under the political system of feudal society, the first thing asked for the officers was loyalty and then the honesty. During the emperor Gaozong, he took corruption and rebellion together as the primary targets which should be severely punished by the law. Yet comparatively speaking, he preferred loyalty to honesty, which also had negative effect on punishing the official corruption and to some degree, made corruption worse.In chapter six the author discusses the effectiveness of the prevention and punishment of the corruption governors in the Qianlong dynasty. Corruption and bribery almost became common problems of China’s whole feudal dynasty, especially among the governors who played very important roles in politics in the Qing dynasty. Although great efforts were made to the prevention and punishment of corruption and bribery crime by governor and achieved some success, the corruption and bribery problem became more and more serious as the punishment increase. In my opinion, two reasons may account for this phenomenon:One was the inherent reason of the governor corruption, which came from the political environment, social structures and economic institution of the feudal society. On one hand, for the need of long term stability, it was necessary for the emperor to combat corruption and bribery crime. However, as a kind of political exploitation, imperial corruption was inevitable and cannot be controlled. There was fierce contradiction between them and the emperor often became corruption core. On the other hand, in economic area, the yang-lien system was implemented in the Qing dynasty and the governors had enough money to spend, but their burdens became heavier for some reasons such as they had to tribute to the emperor and so on. All these pushed forward the governors on the road of crime.The other one was the self-limitation of the prevention and punishment mechanism. Firstly, the governors had too much power while the corresponding prevention mechanism itself had many loopholes. Secondly, the legal system for corruption punishment and its implementation had some problems, which mainly existed in two areas:the basic content of the law of corruption punishment can not be changed from time to time, which resulted in completely divorce from reality. If strictly in accordance with the provisions of law, most officials should be sentenced to death which was infeasible in practice. Therefore, the legal authority of corruption punishment was lost; there were many bad conventions in the Qing dynasty and relevant laws had no uniform rule about it. There was no clear criterion between the legal and illegal in legislation and the criterion was created by all sorts of bad conventions. Most provisions only aim at eliminating a specific bad convention of which the number was endless. It was difficult to thoroughly eliminate bad conventions through a passive and one-to-one way which we described as mending the fold after the sheep have been stolen.In the last part the author reflects on corruption and bribery crime by governor in the Qianlong dynasty and concludes the experience and lessons which can be used as reference for combating corruption and upholding integrity in today’s society. The author puts forward two suggestions:on one hand, the focus of anti-corruption should be the crime prevention. Crack down on crimes alone cannot effectively stop crime and may led to a strange phenomenon that the more severe punishment the more corruption crime. It can worked efficiently only when we focus on prevention and weeds out corruption at root by strengthening the government’s transparency, reinforcing supervision responsibility of leaders, intensifying multi-channel ways of supervision. On the other hand, further stipulation and improvement of relevant legal system are needed. Anti-corruption work must be built based on the rule of law in order to play a sustainable role of constructing a clean and honest administration on the rule of law and avoiding situation as "when a man in power dies, all the political measures he made will cease" which existed in traditional construction of legal system on building of clean and honest administration. |
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