A Study Of The Procedures Of Officials’ Assessment And It’s Operation In The Tang Dynasty

The Assessment system was an important institutional support for bureaucratic politics in ancient China,therefore an in-depth study and discussion of the assessment system is necessary.This article focuses on three aspects of the procedure for the assessment of officials in the Tang dynasty and its operation: the assessment by the emperor himself,the assessment by the Ministry of Personnel Kao Gong Bureau,and the assessment by the envoy.The subjects who were assessed by the emperor himself include the officials specified in the assessment decree,and also include officials who are temporarily given the grade of assessment by the emperor;the procedure of the emperor’s personal assessment was:send the official’s merit and demerit documents to the Department of Imperial Secretariats-the emperor determined the grade-the royal decree to the Department of Imperial Affairs-send to the Ministry of Personnel Kao Gong Bureau-the official himself received the grade.The emperor’s personal assessment criteria are not bound to the standards of“4 virtues and 27 mosts”(四善二十七最).The emperor’s personal assessment results will affect the rise and fall of the official position.In the Tang Dynasty,the Ministry of Personnel Kao Gong Bureau was responsible for the assessment of capital officials and local officials below the third rank.The assessment of the capital officials includes three stages:the division determines the grade-Kao Gong Bureau determines the grade-monitoring of relevant officials to determine the final grade;The assessment of local officials includes three stages:state’s assessment-Kao Bu sent to the capital by Chao Ji Shi-Department of Imperial Affairs’assessment;The documents involved are Kao Zhuang(考状),Kao Bu(考簿),Dan Shu(单数),Xie Ming(挟名),Kao Die(考牒).The medium of transferring the documents of the examination for foreign officials was the court envoy.The medium through which the local officials’assessment documents are delivered is the Chao Ji Shi(朝集使).After the abolition of the Chao Ji Shi,the function of sending the local officials’assessment documents to the Department of Imperial Affairs was undertaken by the local envoys.In the Tang Dynasty,the administrative and supervisory envoys,the local military envoys,and the financial envoys all had the right to assess the local officials,and their assessment results also had to be validated by the Ministry of Personnel Kao Gong Bureau and monitoring of relevant officials to determine the final grade.The court also had corresponding assessment methods for the envoys.