The Spirit Of Public Opinions During Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty usually for people's impression is Chang Weis's (厂卫) running amuck, eunuch' despotism and emperor's power, and is incomparably dark. But, in this dark despotic time, the public opinions are actually exceptionally active. This is not only because of society's evolution, but also because the Ming Dynasty has established set of quite enlightened public opinion mechanisms. From this angle, we can discover that the Ming Dynasty actually is an era with freedom of speech.This paper mainly discusses the background of active public opinions during Ming Dynasty, as well as public opinion carriers and main bodies. In the end, essence of dynamic public opinions is explored. The background mainly manifests in the system establishment and the consummation, social economy development and so on; the public opinion carriers mainly divide into the Yan Guans (言官), the Shi Da Fus (士大夫) and the citizens; The spirit of public opinion carriers mainly display in Di Newspaper (邸报) and Jing Newspaper (京报). While the essence is in fact a set of surveillance activities conducted following emperor's orders and citizens'revolts against the regimes.The Ming Dynasty has established the near perfect social opinion circulation mechanisms which included Tong Zheng Department (通政司) and Yan Guan Department (言官制). The Ming Dynasty pioneered Tong Zheng Department that is responsible for communications between the emperor and citizens. The powerful ministers all tried hard to be in charge of this department. Obviously, it is a very important and powerful department. Yan Guan system existed even just after Qing Hang, during the Ming Dynasty greatly was improved. Yan Guans supervised the official, and used their supervisory authority to provoke a lot of big or small public opinion movements, effectively supervised public opinions. During the Ming Dynasty, Yan Guans are extremely famous, and are the most active main bodies of public opinions. Except the organization consummation, the emperors during the Ming Dynasty are quite open. They not only encourage Yan Guans and other civil and military officials speak, but also frequently are very tolerant regarding the intense opinions. At the same time, the media had more freedom compare to the previous dynasties. Such as, Di Newspaper as an official owned media often published some quite bold politics opinions, even criticized powerful ministers and emperors. The improved organizations and emperors' open minds enable the public opinions dynamic. Social and the economical development created the physical conditions for the public opinions. For examples, more people got education, printing and publication technology developed, population in the cities boomed, and the Enlightenment appeared.Public opinion carriers include Yan Guans (言官), Shi Da Fus (士大夫) and citizens. Yan Guans sincerely submitted comments and criticized high-level officials. Their encourage and moral are so remarkable. During the latest period of Ming Dynasty, the Dong Lin Movement (东林党) and the Restoration Society (复社) organized by Shi Da Fus so called "the political discussion" not only initiated the Enlightenment but also widely influenced a lot of citizens. Due to more enlightened policies to public opinions and incisive society contradictory, the ordinary citizens, who actually always are "the silent majority", also are extremely active and created and spread out massive ballads to express their opinions and explode society's corrupt darkness.Regarding public opinion carriers, this paper only covers Di Newspaper (邸报) and Jing Newspaper (京报) and books that played major rolls during the Ming Dynasty. Di Newspaper is always China's official gazette since it was born during Tang and Su Dynasty. During Ming Dynasty, the reader groups expanded, news inspection got loosen, and the function of leading public opinions enhanced since ever. Jing Newspaper (京报) is a folk newspaper. Its appearance showed the folks consciousness of participating in government enhanced. The books may express authors' thoughts, love and hate and potentially influenced public opinions. During the Ming Dynasty, city population's booming, culture and art's prosperity, as well as books'moderate prices drove people like influence public opinions by books.Although the Ming Dynasty established the perfect opinion transmission mechanisms and the opinion was quite free, it did not ease social dissatisfaction. The reasons are besides there were inherent unable solved class contradictions, also because the essence of opinion transmission system is the tools for the emperors to monitor and govern the people. For instance, the real purpose to establish Tong Zheng Si Department (通政司) itself is for the centralism imperial authority, for emperors to understand the official trend and the public opinion tendency. Yan Guans (言官) system is one kind of supervisory system, its function first lies in auditing hundred officials, performs to the bureaucrat system to supervise. Under the despotic regime, this kind of opinion system from head to foot serves for the imperial authority and is very easy to degenerate corrupt.The Ming Dynasty's opinion is free, but its leading opinion system actually is one kind of from top to bottom authority network. This inevitably can create the social communication not to be asymmetrical, "where has the oppression, where has the revolt", the general populace inevitably can carry on the revolt from bottom to top. The ballads and the political discussion exactly proved that the public opinion mechanisms during the Ming Dynasty had inherent flaws, although the people have not lost the freedom of speech, but their freedom of speech actually exactly was instead satirizes to the free system.In order to carry out the surveillance of his national subjects, the Ming Dynasties'emperors developed and perfected a set of advanced opinion transmission system that enabled two large active public opinion branches, the Ming Dynasty's officials and folks. The system constructions and emperors'manners regarding the public opinions were more open compared to former various dynasties; this was the result of evolution. But relatively improved public opinion systems during the Ming Dynasty still did not reflect what the people really wanted. Rebellions happened. This is the necessity of the despotic system.