CHINESE HISTORY AND CH,ING INSTITUTIONS
13
Mongols became increasingly sinicized, as a comparison of the ad-
ministrative attitudes and personal lifestyles of Chinggis Khan and his
grandson Kubilai Khan amply illustrates. In testimony of the Yiian
dynasty’s patronage of Confucian scholarship, at least in its later years, the
civil service examinations, which had fallen into abeyance, were re-
established in the early fourteenth century. Characteristically, however, the
Mongols imposed a rigid orthodoxy on the content of the examinations,
incorporating the commentaries of Chu Hsi into the official examination
syllabus, where they remained until 1904.21
The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) expelled the Mongols, but continued the
trend toward despotic rule by means of the early abolition of certain im-
portant institutional checks on imperial power, including the office of
Prime Minister. Overall, however, Ming despotism neither stifled artistic
activity nor hindered commercial growth. What is more, contrary to stereo-
type, the Ming was a time of considerable vitality and diversity in Chinese
intellectual life. The great scholar and Confucian activist Wang Yang-ming
was a towering figure in Chinese philosophy during the Ming era, but he did
not stand alone.22 Nonetheless, it must be said that on the whole, Ming
culture lacked the cosmopolitan spirit and sparkling creativity of earlier
dynasties such as the Han, Tang, and Sung.
With this brief historical overview as a backdrop, we may dwell at
greater length on the Ch’ing dynasty, the chronological context of our
analytical study. As I mentioned previously, the Ch’ing represented the
culmination of China’s entire cultural tradition, a period, in the words of
Ch’ing chroniclers, “unparalleled in history.”22 What were the basic in-
stitutional features of this great dynasty?
in its broad outlines, and in most specific respects, the government of
the Manchus was patterned on the Ming model. At the top stood the em-
peror, the Son of Heaven (T’ien-tzu) and supreme executive of the imperial
Chinese state. He was, in the well-chosen words of John Fairbank,
“conqueror and patriarch, theocratic ritualist, ethical exemplar, lawgiver
and judge, commander-in-chief and patron of arts and letters, and all the
time administrator of the empire.”24 To play all of these roles effectively
required a ruler of heroic talent and energy, and in the first two centuries of
Ch’ing rule there were several such individuals.
Below the emperor lay a complex bureaucratic apparatus designed for
stability at the expense of administrative efficiency. At the metropolitan
level in Peking, the conduct of governmental affairs rested with the Grand
Secretariat (and after 1730, the Grand Council), the Six Boards or
Ministries (Civil Office, Revenue, Rites, War, Punishments, and Public
Works), and a special “imperial bureaucracy” for the administation of the
emperor’s palaces, bodyguards, and estates.2’ A censorial system, designed
to be the “eyes and ears” of the emperor, supervised governmental affairs