Today, the History Encyclopedia editor brings you the stories of ancient officials. Interested readers can follow the History Encyclopedia editor to take a look together. In ancient times, there were also official assessments. What were the main criteria for assessment?
The standard for assessing civil servants is the main basis for assessing civil servants. Throughout the dynasties, there have been certain standards for assessing civil servants, such as the four virtues and twenty-seven maxims in the Tang Dynasty and the four virtues and four maxims in the Song Dynasty. These standards for assessing civil servants are relatively simple and easy to grasp. Although the Ming Dynasty established a multi-level and multi-channel system for assessing civil servants, the assessment of civil servants in the Ming Dynasty had standards and specific content that could be relied upon.
1、 Notice booklet
The “Notice of Documents” mainly refers to the pre arranged documents related to the deeds, achievements, and records of local officials who have passed the imperial examination and entered the capital for pilgrimage. Officials themselves bring these documents to the capital as evidence for assessment. Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to the assessment of local civil servants. He had repeatedly encouraged local civil servants not to make decisions on the severity of government affairs within their jurisdiction based on facts, and to spare no effort in carrying out any important tasks within the scope of their official duties. He integrated the daily administrative affairs of civil servants with their final administrative results into one assessment, and the actual administrative records compiled according to the statutory duties of civil servants became an important basis for civil servant assessment. The content of the records mainly includes the main administrative affairs completed by civil servants during their tenure and various achievements established.
Although this type of document can record the achievements of officials, its one sidedness is undeniable. It mainly records the outstanding performance of officials, while some aspects are ignored. This naturally goes against the original intention of Ming Taizu. In order to facilitate better assessment of officials, Ming Taizu formulated a normative document called the “Notice Document Book”. There are a total of 31 styles. A series of official records are listed above, requiring officials to follow and implement them as the basis for assessment. Emperor Ming Taizu imposed some content in the book, such as requiring officials to make achievements in talent cultivation and agriculture.
Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty believed that as long as officials implemented the guiding principles stipulated in the documents, they could govern the local area well and become civil servants who lived up to their name. After the promulgation of the “Notice of Appointment”, it did not immediately take effect, and the officials at that time did not act according to the regulations in the book: “The officials used in the governor’s office, prefectures and counties, and the supervisory officials were mostly selected from the civilian elite, talents, and filial piety. After each person was appointed to their post, they did not attach importance to the” Notice of Appointment “, did not plan for public affairs, and did not have good integrity. Based on this situation, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty also formulated a responsibility regulation in the 23rd year of the Hongwu reign (1390), which clearly stipulated that “the Chief Secretary in charge shall personally visit the subordinate office, and the years shall examine their diligence and laziness, argue their integrity and ability, and carefully list the items in the ‘Notice of Appointment’, which must be implemented one by one. This gave officials a new understanding of the document.
From then on, the “Notice and Document Book” not only became the basic basis for local officials’ quarterly and annual exams, but also the materials that must be submitted when the exam is completed and inspected. The compilation of the “Notice and Document Book” is also based on the duties determined in the “Notice and Document Book”. During the Jianwen Dynasty, certain simplifications were made to the literary records, but this was still the practice during the Ming Chengzu period. The standards for assessing officials in the capital were not explicitly mentioned in the documents, and Ming Taizu did not initially establish a unified standard. He only assessed promotion and demotion based on specific examples of job responsibilities, which mainly included the scope of authority of various departments and administrative codes for major government affairs.
Most of these codes were formulated during the Hongwu period. In the 26th year of Hongwu (1393), these codes were compiled into a single “Regulations on the Duties of Various Departments”, which mainly applied to officials in various departments in Beijing, especially regarding the assessment standards for officials in the six ministries and six departments. During the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, on this basis, a “Great Ming Code of Conduct” was compiled, which stipulated the responsibilities of various central departments. Although the code was not specifically used to assess officials, its provisions on various departments naturally became a standard for testing the performance of officials in each department.
2、 Our Six Matters
The “Six Main Duties of Officials” were the six main responsibilities that local officials were required to fulfill according to the regulations of Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, and the practice of fulfilling the six duties and following orders gradually became popular. The six main aspects include schools, fields, household registration, taxation, litigation, and theft. This is the most concise summary of the responsibilities of local officials. Schools are places where feudal officials cultivate talents and provide a large number of talents to feudal countries every year. Therefore, the success or failure of schools directly affects the stability of feudal state power. Whether local officials attach great importance to the development of schools has become the most important criterion for assessing their responsibilities.
The fields are closely related to grain production and are related to the adequacy of the national treasury in feudal countries. Therefore, they have always been valued by rulers. Local officials must encourage local people to cultivate land, expand the existing arable land area, and organize manpower to treat disasters in the fields to ensure grain production. In the early Ming Dynasty, rulers attached great importance to the achievements of local officials in the fields and regarded them as a major criterion for evaluating officials. Household registration is related to the population that feudal countries can control and objectively grasp the basic situation of the national economy. Due to the control of a large population by the powerful, the actual number of people controlled by the state continued to decline, affecting tax revenue. Therefore, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty also attached great importance to the state’s control over the population, constantly urging local officials to register the local registered population and report it to the central government, which is the most important basis for assessment.
However, due to the excessive power of the Ming Dynasty’s strongmen, especially the feudal lords, it was also difficult for officials to accomplish this task well, and even during the reign of Zhang Juzheng, there was not much improvement. Taxation has always been a top priority for feudal governments, as it is related to the country’s income and the key to local stability. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Ming Taizu attached great importance to the construction of the taxation system. In the 24th year of the Hongwu reign (1391), he created the “Yellow Book of Taxation” as the basis for collecting and distributing taxes, requiring local officials to strictly follow and implement it as a standard for inspection in Beijing.
Litigation and imprisonment are the main manifestations of the judiciary, involving whether officials can fairly enforce national laws and regulations, handle people’s litigation requests fairly, and also serve as a basis for assessing officials’ actual administrative capabilities. The local courts in the Ming Dynasty were responsible for the main litigation and imprisonment matters in their respective regions. The number of difficult cases decided each year has become a standard for assessing local officials. Thieves are mainly targeted at people’s uprisings, which are naturally labeled as thieves by feudal rulers. Therefore, officials are required to detect and suppress peasant uprisings within their jurisdiction as early as possible.
This is one of the main responsibilities of officials. Every year, a large number of officials are commended for suppressing people’s uprisings or anti rent struggles. The effectiveness of suppressing local people’s resistance has always been one of the standards for civil service examination in the Ming Dynasty. These six things are things that officials must concentrate on doing well during their term of office, but many officials only focus on taxes, labor, prisons, and other aspects. The rest are mostly perfunctory in their responsibilities. Therefore, during Zhang Juzheng’s reform, the four aspects of equal corv é e, corv é e, li jia, and post delivery were listed as the standards for assessing officials, which can reflect the social performance of civil servant assessment.
3、 Interview form for exam language
Exam language and interview forms are mainly personal evaluations made by the officials in charge of assessment on each official who receives assessment. The exam language must be combined with the actual political achievements of the officials listed in the “Notice Book”. According to the exam language regulations, when an official completes the exam, their supervisor will first prescribe the exam language for them and report it step by step. During the biannual inspection of the capital, officials in various government offices in the capital are also required to conduct language tests for their subordinate officials. The language used for the pilgrimage inspection of local officials is determined by the two departments of Bu and Yin. In the reign of Emperor Sejong, it was stipulated that local civil servants would be required to submit language exams every year during their visits to Beijing for inspection.
There are institutional regulations for the examination language of local officials’ pilgrimage inspections, which must summarize various aspects of the officials, such as conduct, administrative ability, etc. Therefore, it is required that the supervising official must have actual knowledge of the assessed official. Although this is the case, exam language also has significant limitations. It cannot exhaustively list the achievements and mistakes of officials. The exam language issued by officials often focuses on certain aspects, such as knowledge, morality, or intelligence. The content of the exam language is mostly untrue, making it difficult to truly assess officials.
In order to change this situation, Hai Rui, Lv Kun and others advocated merging the two into one and have implemented it in their own jurisdictions, but the results were quite limited. The visiting list is mainly used as a basis for investigation, and can play an auxiliary role in the examination language: “When the Ministry of Personnel inspects, they consult with the public to determine whether they are virtuous or not, and court officials submit their opinions to the authorities based on what they have learned from the book. The visit form should also be issued by the officials assessed by the supervisor, and is the result obtained after visiting the officials. One beneficial aspect of the interview form compared to the exam language is that the officials who fill out the form can express the true political achievements of the evaluated officials, but they can also make unfounded statements and strike at the evaluated officials. The false accusation of Zhejiang Political Consultative Officer Ding Xiaolu is an example: “If someone in Jiangsu and Zhejiang does not give up on this matter, someone will accuse it of being unjust, and the Ministry of Personnel will submit the interview form. Lu will then be pursued and sent to the garrison, and although the person is unjust, they do not know who Dan is. The same was true during the inspection in Beijing. This situation did not change until the Ming Dynasty passed away.
4、 Eight inspection examples
The “Eight Inspection Rules” is a standard formulated for the completion of civil service examinations. The election records in the “History of Ming Dynasty” provide an overview of this: “Through investigation and analysis of officials both inside and outside the country, there are eight objectives: greed, coolness, restlessness, inadequacy, aging, illness, abandonment, and lack of diligence. The two aspects of greed and coolness are mainly aimed at the character of officials, that is, officials should not have the heart of corruption, should not be too cruel to subordinates and the people, and impatience and incompetence are mainly related to the mentality of officials, who should be calm and composed. The last four aspects are mainly aimed at examining the physical aspects of officials. A healthy body is a prerequisite for officials to enter politics. Without a healthy body, they naturally cannot exercise government affairs normally, which is also one of the main aspects of assessment.
The eight inspections are generally aimed at examining the mistakes and faults of the officials under investigation. The eight criteria for examining officials gradually formed during the reign of Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty. In the fifteenth year of the Hongwu reign (1382), Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty established the Tianxia Prefectural and County Censorate Division, with 530 officials including Confucian scholar Wang Cunzhong serving as officials. These officials were all civil servants, and Emperor Taizu naturally valued their character and had high expectations for them. Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty said to them, ‘In memory of the past, there were no more corrupt officials than those who were greedy for money, and those who were despicable were second. Nowadays, the officials of prefectures, states, and counties in the world often suffer from both.’.
This approach has been effective. During the inspection of officials, a large number of officials who were not suitable for these eight standards were identified. During the reign of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty, this point was reiterated: “Anyone sent by the imperial court or county officials who are corrupt and unruly shall be executed, and county officials who are incompetent or sick shall be sent to the capital. In the fourth year of the Xuande reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty, an investigation was conducted on the six subordinate officials in Nanjing based on these eight criteria, and it was found that “the nine officials, including Xu Xu, who were appointed as the Minister of Justice, were not talented enough and should be demoted.
5、 Summary
In subsequent dynasties, this standard gradually took shape. These eight standards mainly focus on the conduct of officials, reflecting the moral requirements of feudal countries for officials. Although they may not be fully implemented in practice, they are not just empty words and are still worthy of recognition.
