CREATION, CONFLICT, and ROUTINIZATION: the Appointment of OFFICIALS by DRAWING LOTS, 1594-17001

Pierre-Etienne Will

CREATION, CONFLICT, AND ROUTINIZATION: THE ApPOINTMENT OF OFFICIALS BY DRAWING LOTS, 1594-17001

The origins and history of the selection system for official appointments by drawing lots may seem at fIrst sight a somewhat marginal topic. On closer scrutiny, however, it turns out to be more than a mere footnote to institutional history. One reason for taking the issue seriously is that taking care of 'ap• pointment and selection' (quanxuan ~i~)-in other words, fInding the right men to administer the empire, or de ren 1~ A -was always considered the most crucial task of the most important ministry in the central government• the Ministry of Personnel. As the eminent Southern Song scholar and politi• cian, Ye Shi ~~ (1150-1223), put it: "Making orderly distinctions [among men], making no mistakes in demotions and promotions, this is the important task of the Court" (~~.53U~J¥, !lli~~/f'~~, ~~ffz~ JjJt!2); and further on: "The Ministry of Personnel is where the throat and tongue of the Court are!" (:se:fffi~, ~~ff~%Z.B&t!2). These words are quoted by Gu Yanwu in a section of his Knowledge acquired day by day entitled "What is wrong with

1 A first version of this text was presented at the Workshop on Seventeenth-Century China, Fairbank Center, Harvard University, 27-28 May 2000. A revised version has been published in Chinese as Wei 2001. The present version includes a few additional revisions. I wish to thank Dr. Pan Xinghui 7i£tl for his careful reading of the original manuscript and his help in cor• recting some mistakes. Dr. Pan also drew my attention to some material that had escaped me, and later wrote a commentary on the article (see Pan 2002). I owe my thanks to Angela Arm• strong, of College de France, for editing the present version for English.

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appointment and selection" (Quanxuan zhi hai ~i~Z~), which discusses issues which I will have occasion to return to again in this essay.2 So, nothing concerning the selection and appointment procedure could possibly have been considered trivial by anyone in Late Imperial times. The drawing of lots was certainly not a trivial matter. As we shall see, the proce• dure was initiated in 1594 amidst much political furore and was subject to harsh criticism almost from the outset. Yet it survived the violent political confrontations of the last half-century of the Ming, and was maintained by the Qing despite further criticism throughout the founding decades of the dynasty. Indeed, its consolidation, routinization and ultimately universal acceptance provide an interesting case study of the institutional and political changes that took place during the seventeenth-century transition.

Creation and conflict

The decision to make officials draw lots (cheqian ~tl) publicly and in person in order to determine the post where they would be appointed was made by Sun Peiyang i%=1'm, recently appointed President of the Ministry of Personnel; all the sources save one give the date as 1594? The standard ac• count as found in Sun's Mingshi biography reads as follows:

Since Peiyang was rigid and inflexible, ordinary offi• cials never dared interfere in order to advance their pri-

2 Gu Yanwu, Rizhi [ujishi, 8:32a. The phrase "throat and tongue" is found in ancient texts: it means that the prime minister forwards to the country the words of the sovereign and informs the sovereign of what is being said in the country.

~ For example, the Wanli dichao (see below), which one would tend to trust first of all for chronological accuracy, dates the decision to the eighth month, 1594, almost immediately after Sun's appointment as president of the Ministry at the end of the seventh month. The sole dis• senting source is Tan Qian's Guoque, 77/4745, which dates it to the fifth month of 1595; the Guoque's chronology of the entire episode is in fact somewhat muddled. Another discrepancy occurs in the "Treatise on examinations" of the Mingshi, 71 :1716: according to this passage, the drawing-lot procedure was proposed not by Sun Peiyang in 1594, but by one Ni Sihui ~WTlt then head of the Department of Appointments (Wenxuan qing[isi 3t~m~l'i]), in 1601, and then approved by the President of the Ministry of Officials, Li Dai *It, so that Sun Peiyang only "followed his footsteps" (f*,~:m~ffiilTZ.). This is plainly an error from the Mingshi compilers, as already pointed out in the Xu wenxian tongkao, 36:3169; see also Zhang Ronglin 1978,pp.II-12.

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vate interests; he was only annoyed by the demands of powerful courtiers. Therefore he instituted the method of drawing lots. Both for "general selections" and "pri• ority selections",4 candidates were allowed to draw a lot in person; it was forbidden to ask for a replacement. At once the selection of officials enjoyed a considerable reputation for impartiality; but from this point the man• agement of appointments changed considerably. S

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The first question one may ask is how much of an innovation in actual fact was resorting to the drawing of lots. The idea itself should not have stunned Sun's contemporaries. Apart from the fact that drawing lots for a va• riety of purposes has always been part of popular culture in China, the litera• ture mentions several instances of administrative posts being allotted this way. As early as the Yuan dynasty we hear that local officials in Zhejiang province used to be appointed by drawing lots (nianjiu :ttillil, a term more or less syn• onymous with cheqian) in order to avoid rigging by the clerks: the source de• scribes how soldiers would use bamboo chopsticks to pick up the "wads of paper" (zhiqiu *JX,~) on which the names of the candidates had been inscribed, then show them to the clerk as he was reading out the list of vacant posts. 6

4 Respectively daxuan *~ andjixuan ~~. The former took place in even months and con• cerned most first candidacies as well as promotions; the latter, on odd months, were more espe• cially for candidates who re-entered the career after a leave, or other categories entitled to a pri• ority appointment. On these notions under the Ming, see for instance Mingshi, 71: 1716, or Ming Huiyao, p. 894; and Pan Xinghui 2001, pp. 77-85. The system continued under the Qing: see e.g. the relatively clear description in Kond6 Hideki 1958, pp. 36-39. (During the course of the Qing dynasty there were some changes in the categories, or ban f}I, that were designated for either the daxuan or thejixuan.)

5 See Mingshi, 224:5901; also see Sun's biography by Angela Hsi and Chaoying Fang in Goodrich and Fang 1976, pp. 1219-20. For the text of Sun Peiyang's original memorial propos• ing the reform, see Zhang Ronglin, '''Cheqian fa' kao", p. 11, quoting from Zengxiu tiaoli bei• kao ~~$f~f9~V;~,juan 2.

6 See Kong Qi's Zhizheng zhiji, pp. 123-124. The anecdote here relates the story ofa director of studies (jiaoyu ~~tu) who gets the same posting after a period of mourning. suggesting that

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Likewise, it is said that in 1371 Zhu Yuanzhang had thejinshi selected at the first palace examination of the new Ming dynasty subjected to a similar proc• ess of drawing lots (here called wan n) on which the names of the unfilled offices had been inscribed. 7 On two occasions, in 1556 and 1628 respectively, the Ming emperor is reported to have resorted to lot-drawing to select the grand secretaries with the explicit intent of relying on Heaven's will to make otherwise difficult choices. More importantly, however-because we are dealing here with a regular bureaucratic process recorded in bureaucratic sources, not ad hoc measures mentioned in secondary non-official works-the drawing of lots appears to have been the method adopted at some point during the Ming to allocate Imperial University students the various metropolitan yamen where they would do their internships (boli mm) until the better graded became eli• gible for substantial appointments; likewise, the same method of "drawing lots" (nianjiu) publicly appears to have been used to select and promote clerks in the various ministries. In other words, relying on chance to allocate positions among equally qualified candidates was to some extent part of the bureaucratic culture of the Ming. Without doubt, however, Sun Peiyang's decision to systematically sub• ject the appointment of ranking magistrates to lot-drawing, first at the "prior• ity selections" and later at the "general selections",8 was a momentous deci• sion in the history of the Chinese civil service, and indeed was felt to be so by his contemporaries. Most historical sources concur with Sun's Mingshi biography that "at once" everybody welcomed the new procedure as a means of reintroducing fairness into the selection of provincial officials; but at the same time, most do not fail to mention that it was soon exposed to criticism. The Guoque, for

his fate was to serve in this particular county. My thanks to Dr. Guo Runtao ;tlif'J'~~ of Beijing University for pointing this source out to me.

7 For this and the following examples, see Pan Xinghui 2001, pp. 97-98, and 2002, pp. 289- 291. Pan claims that Zhu Yuanzhang's intention in the present instance was to confer more so• lemnity to the occasion, but he does not elaborate on how this was achieved.

8 Sun Peiyang's original memorial of 1594 implies that 'recently' OlD he had successfully in• stituted the drawing-lot procedure for the 'priority' selections that were held inside the Ministry of Officials: it was for the 'general selection' held in the imperial palace (neifu P"IJfi) that he needed to secure the approval of the emperor; see Zhang Ronglin 1978, p. 11.

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"The way men are selected today, the Ministry of Rites pastes their names [on their examination essays 1 to se• lect them, which is to put forward people one doesn't know; the Ministry of Personnel draws lots to appoint them, which is to appoint people one doesn't know. As a result, the ministers are bad at knowing men, but good at avoiding problems" (4-z~±, UI$~l'M~~ Z, £.X~~~ili;~$~.m~z,£fflX~~~ ilio £1.tX~1:Jtft9;IlA, ffijVj/til$).

9 Guoque, 77:4745: -~m0-o f.il1!f1'~~iQ.

10 Goodrich and Fang 1976, p. 1220; incidentally, dating the reform to 1595 the authors of this entry repeat the mistake made in the Guoque.

11 Quoted by Gu Yanwu, Rizhi IU}ishi, 8:22b-23a, from the Gushan bizhu, Yu's biji printed in 1613; for the original text, see Yu Shenxing 1984, 5:54-55. Yu Shenxing was not in office when the reform took place; he had been dismissed in 1591, one of the numerous casualties resulting from the controversy that raged during these years over the Wanli emperor's designation of his heir apparent (i.e. the so-called guoben ~* controversy); he was recalled in 1607 and became a grand secretary, but died shortly thereafter (Goodrich and Fang 1976, pp. 1614-15). His criti• cism of the drawing-lot system is quoted in several other sources.

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The Problem of Corruption I will come back to this sort of consideration. Another type of criticism emerged very soon, however, and this was the corruption and rigging that were reportedly marring the drawing-lot procedure. After mentioning the dis• agreement of 'people in the know' in its entry on Sun Peiyang's reform, the Guoque adds: "Then unscrupulous clerks selected the best posts to be filled up and interfered in the process [by selling them]. It became impossible to re• strain them. At the time [the Ministry of Personnel] was nicknamed 'the Min• istry of Lots'" Cft1&H~i!fw&'! 0 L ""f;ft-¥ 0 7f'fl~g~ 0 ~5JJGi€$). What was the exact nature of this corruption? Here we can only turn to that most damning and at the same time most entertaining of commentators on political mores during the Wanli period, Shen Defu (1578-1642), who has an entry on "Appointments by drawing lots" (cheqian shouguan ~i€~'§) in his Yehuo Man which deserves to be quoted in full:

The method of drawing lots at the Ministry of Personnel was started recently by President Sun Fuping. 12 It did not exist either in ancient or modern times. Sun had come to power thanks to his enduring prestige; he and recently appointed Premier Zhang [Wei] were looking for a pretext to pick a quarrel. He was concerned about those mouseholes in the appointment system (quanzheng) that were difficult to close up due to Zhang's control. Thereupon he made this proposal, leaving the entire responsibility [of appointing officials] to pieces of dry bamboo. When this method was first implemented, the officials in charge, exempted from the responsibility of evaluating [the candidates], were happy to [be able to] refuse to ponder [the appoint• ments]; and the new appointees, accepting the results as a decree of Heaven, were at peace with themselves. The frustration and resentment diminished somewhat. This was altogether a good plan. Now at that time there was an old tribute student from Shaanxi who was selected by lot to be prefectural judi• cial official of Hangzhou. He was terrified and asked to be relieved. Mr. Fuping flew into a rage, saying: "You

12 I.e. Sun Peiyang, Fuping (Shaanxi) being his native county.

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dare disturb my system on account of native-place per• sonal feelings!", and in a loud voice commanded him to be handed over to the judicial authorities for punishment. The man wiped away his tears and went [to his post]. When he arrived, the many demands that were being heaped up on the judicial official of the capital prefec• ture [of Zhejiang were such] that he was unable to per• form his duties. The governor and provincial adminis• trator asked in a memorial that his posting be exchanged with that of a metropolitan graduate [currently] in East• ern Zhejiang. In his heart Fuping knew why, but pre• tended not to know and [simply] gave his approval. From then on the markings were differentiated. In the open distinctions were made between north and south, or according to distance, or depending on the place of origin [of the candidates], with different tubes [for the lots corresponding] to each situation. When a candidate did not have a special connection he was left to take [his lot] himself; but the best positions were secretly kept hidden, and [the Ministry of Personnel] reserved them for the candidates who would come later. 13 Those who drew a post in a remote region or a malarial district cried and cursed, but the tube had already been assigned for the use of other candidates. In the beginning [the of• ficials] were still playing the trick with the clerks. But later, two or three days before each great selection the Department of Appointments officials would shut them• selves up in a heated room and paste on the name of the localities with their own hands, secretly marking their ranking, so that the length, size and thickness of the lots always concealed a riddle. Even the clerks were not in the know. This was called 'fabricating the lots' (zuo• qian).14 They talked about it openly and did not consider

D A similar sort of rigging called 'reserving the lots' (kouqian toii) is mentioned in a memo• rial of 1630: when the Ministry officials see ajinshi (f4E'Jl) for selcction, they draw a pack of lots and allow him to pick up what he wants: this is not 'drawing lots' but 'choosing lots'~ii)! See Zhang Ronglin 1978, p. 15, quoting from the Chongzhen changbian ~wH~:~.

14 Some sources have zao ~ qian; one also find the phrase zuoqian ~ii, meaning apparently lots that have been 'reserved' by the Ministry of Personnel for people they want to advantage• a lot that is waiting for you, as it were. A late-nineteenth handbook for prefects mentions the fact that even at a session where there is only one man and one post, the drawing must be made

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that the subject was taboo. Thus, paradoxically, it was not the subalterns who transgressed the law. If a candi• date who had entered into a preliminary arrangement happened to draw the wrong lot, he was allowed to do it again one, twice or three times until he got what he wanted. When the others expressed their wishes they were showered with insults and shown to the door. When people talk about uniformity and fairness, that is what it means! 15 [~iU~'§] ~$~tiz.~, Ml§~~f,r;m-'jl**o ~ ~M*~ili.~~~.£,W •••~,.~~~ . • ~ ••~B., ••MM.n.~aA.X.~ ~~.Wff~,~.H~~~~~,$W~ •. ffl. ~~.*§~.m.a •• ~~~ili.~X~~ ~@~~~.~.,§~~MrrttfflM.~.*~.a -'jl0j:::~. m~il&~~fIII~tJt 1rBHt~, nt~~~ir] ffl~.XArt.W~. ~.~,~1rWM,§,~.M ~,*~E~~.~~.~-M*~W,g~~~. a-'jl/!)9;OJtMI:, f$~ffiWftz.. Jlt~~IJ~~7tj3IJ, ~ ~IJEl~~t~7t, ~Jli~7t, Jji!~7t, ~.-~. ~~ ~~.,~X§*.W~~X~.-ffl~*.Jt~~ ~~~z.A,~~~~,~B~~~.W~~W~¥ tt t'F Jlt 11 fflfE+- ¥ Xqi tE.,jJ! ir] '§ 4ij ~:kjJ! iitr ==: B. ~.Jt~m, ~§~~*~,q~.~,~¥.z.& ~lL :j:;JJ', JJ¥t, ~~-lrIMt~!m!. ~M¥¥~~~W PfJ. ~EJ1$: •• 0~~A, ~~.~. ~~t'F~HB f4, &~tEf13i~. JtEJt7t~JiX;l.\-g, W~~1~~., ~IJ -~, =~, =:~, 1Z'~JiJT~Wl1:. 1tP.~~§, ~IJntif ~:±l~. EJ~El:f:>J, jzoWTWB-¥.

There are two main points in this text: firstly, the necessity of introducing some degree of regionalization in the appointment system of officials by drawing lots, of which Sun Peiyang was made aware by the unfortunate epi- according to regulation, and that this is called by the same term zuoqian. See Yanchang 1897, I :4b.

t~ Shen Defu 1997, 11 :288-9, with a few uncertainties in the translation. Although the entry on the drawing-lot system in Ming huiyao, p. 899, gives the Yehuo bian as its source, the text has not much to do with what we have here.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 sooe of a modest Shaanxi graduate who found himself plunged into the mer• ciless environment of a major Southeastern prefecture and was not up to the challenge; I will come back to this aspect later. Secondly, according to Shen Defu, corruption became rife soon after the drawing procedure had become more complicated, implying more opportunities for rigging. What is unique in Shen 's account of course is that he had no qualms about pointing the finger at the ranking officials of the Ministry as the main culprits instead of accusing as was customary the despised clerks for everything that went wrong. What• ever the case may have been, the unanimous praise that welcomed Sun's re• form may not have lasted very long, because almost from the start rigging was denounced in terms that closely anticipated those used by Shen Defu a few years later. 16

Political Conflict The denunciations were not innocent, however. A closer look at the sources shows that the corruption that purportedly defeated Sun Peiyang's at• tempt to make the appointment procedure fair was in fact used as a weapon in one of those acrimonious and noisy political conflicts that were so typical of the period and that so enraged the Wanli emperor; a conflict, in fact, of which the ins and outs were only partially concerned with the selection of officials. It was apparently not for nothing that Sun Peiyang' s reform of the ap• pointment system took place at the end of 1594, shortly after his designation as President of the Ministry of Personnel. In that capacity he would a few months later preside over the 1595 triennial 'great reckoning' (daji 7\:§i-) of all the officials outside the capital -an event which usually produced a clutch of promotions, demotions, appointments and dismissals. Like the sex• ennial 'capital evaluations' (jingcha *~), which under the Ming could in fact result in drastic changes of personnel at the higher echelons and mark the onset of new policies, the 'great reckonings' were the occasion of intense po• litical activity and the cause of much influence-trafficking. The president of the Ministry of Personnel naturally played a central role in the process as a whole, it was he who submitted to the emperor the list of officials drawn up with the aid of a few highly placed colleagues in the Ministry and the censor-

16 The preface to the tirst version of the Yehuo bian is dated 1606.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will ate. Sun's dramatic innovation in 1594 may well have been one means of un• tying his, or rather his Ministry's hands, from the influence of highly placed people at court, such as his enemy, Grand Secretary Zhang Wei ~flI. In any case, the conflict between Sun Peiyang and his opponents, of which the attacks against the lot-drawing procedure were only a part, started soon after the 'great reckoning' of 1595. One of the most bitter among Sun's enemies, who was in fact nourishing his frustration from, precisely, having been barred by him from the position of head of the Department of Civil Ap• pointments (Wenxuan qinglisi langzhong )(~m~E]Jl!B~) in spite of his in• trigues, was Censor Shen Sixiao ¥XJ~~, a protege of Zhang Wei. 17 In other words, Sun started making enemies as soon as he took charge of the Ministry. They chose to attack him through the man who had been given the position coveted by Shen Sixiao, a certain Jiang Shixing ~~¥. Another censor, Zhao Wenbing Mt~'J:F1, was entrusted with writing a memorial denouncing Jiang for making the most terrible corruption reign in promotions and ap• pointments -for 'selling positions and ranks', maiguan yujue if'S-.W, as the phrase goes- giving the figures of the bribes he received for promoting or appointing various officials, naming the people who acted as intermediar• ies, and so forth. 18 Interestingly, Zhao's memorial claims that originally the idea of instituting the drawing of lots did not come from Sun Peiyang himself, but from the Department of Appointments, whose head, Jiang Shixing, hoped to conceal the reality of his deeds from the public under a pretense of fair process. Zhao claimed, not without hypocrisy, that Sun Peiyang -whom he implicitly described in this memorial as gullible and unable to chose the right men for such important positions- was an eminent statesman but needed to be protected from his collaborators. 19

17 On this and other episodes recounted below see among others Sun Peiyang's biography in Chen Ding's Donglin liezhuan, 15:13a, which gives a coherent account of Sun's reform of 1594, of the conflict with Shen Sixiao (called Sidao:ili in that source), of the 1595 great reckoning (where, it says, "peopled submitted to his fairness", renfu qi gong .A..HUt0:-), and the attacks launched thereafter by Shen Sixiao's friends.

18 It seems that Zhao Wenbing was later to change his mind: see his memorial in Wanli di• chaD, vol. 2, pp. 915-919.

19 Zhao Wenbing's full memorial, dated the 7th month of 1595, is given in Wanli dichao, vol. 2, pp. 901-904.

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Jiang Shixing tried with the utmost energy to defend himself, claiming that Shen Sixiao and his henchmen were behind the attack and going so far as to ask to be examined by a sort of panel of judges at court -a request which was refused after the censors had countered that it would be inappropriate. For his part, Sun Peiyang too stood up for his appointee, but to no avail: the emperor angrily denounced Jiang Shixing's corruption and he was down• graded to the status of a commoner. It was a definitive setback for Sun Pei• yang. But this by all accounts respectable official also had other conflicts on his hands. During the 'great reckoning' that took place in early 1595 -just be• fore the Jiang Shixing affair, which seems to have been a consequence of it• Sun had asked for the dismissal of another censor, Ding Cilii Tllt8, who had been denounced for exceptionally serious corruption dating back to a special assignment in Shanxi. As Ding's friends (Shen Sixiao first among them) were trying to rescue him, claiming that he was subject of unjust accu• sations by his political enemies, and despite the pressure exerted on Sun Pei• yang, the latter felt compelled to communicate to the emperor the 'investiga• tion slip' (jangdan ~jjffI) on which he had based his censure of Ding- the 'slip' being in this case a 14-page document listing all sorts of misdeeds. 20 The Wanli emperor flew into a rage and ordered that Ding be stripped of all his titles and sent to the frontier to serve as a soldier.21 As is explained in his Mingshi biography, Sun Peiyang made a lot of enemies with this affair: now all the metropolitan officials from Jiangxi, like Ding Cilii, were against him, first and foremost Zhang Wei, the grand secretary, who came from the same county! To these were added the officials from Zhejiang, since Shen Sixiao, the censor to whom Sun had denied appointment at the Ministry of Personnel, was a Zhejiang native (he hailed from Jiaxing prefecture).

20 Investigation slips were confidential documents compiled at the time of the 'great reckon• ings' based on investigations of 'public opinion' (that is, among the officialdom) about the qual• ity of the individuals being evaluated. See Mingshi, 229:6006, biography of Shen Sixiao. Com• municating this sort of information to the emperor was an unprecedented move; in his Gushan bizhu (see note II above) Yu Shenxing cites this action as one of the two examples where Sun Peiyang -a highly respectable statesman in every other respect- "gravely flouted the great principles" (po shi dati ~~*1m); the other example was of course the adoption of the draw• ing-lot procedure to appoint officials.

21 Scc on this case the documents in Wanli dichao, vol. 2, pp. 905ff.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will In the end Sun attacked Zhang Wei in person, accusing him of manipulat• ing power and forming a faction (nongquan jiedang HffUti;). The emperor however supported Zhang, and Sun asked to be discharged from his duties for reasons of ill health; after several such requests the emperor allowed him to retire even though he had appreciated his attempts at restoring a modicum of integrity in bureaucratic life. 22 Why dwell on this imbroglio? For one thing, it seems to me interesting that an administrative method relating to such an important topic as the selec• tion of men for office, and which moreover would endure through the last days of the empire, should have been born of such lousy politics and admidst such vicious infighting. In a long memorial addressed to the throne at the end of 1595 a certain Yue Yuansheng ~ft§f, then a vice director at the Ministry of Public Works, painted a horrendous picture of the corruption and infight• ing in official circles --censors attacking censors, ministers attacking minis• ters, everybody attacking everybody, so that there was no longer even a sem• blance of propriety in the government and at court. Much of the text details Jiang Shixing's corruption and viciousness and deplores that Sun Peiyang should have allowed himself to be deceived by such a character; but the con• clusion is that everybody "must go" (yi qu 1r:t:), including Sun Peiyang - and here again our problem is mentioned:

Sun Peiyang is self-conscious of his own value and takes the purification of the empire to be his own re• sponsibility. He claims that with his procedure of draw• ing lots he can carry out his duty toward the court. But all sorts of abuses have emerged, like making big lots and small lots or using recognizable tickets with secret marks to make a difference. In every case this is fooling Your Majesty under the pretence of being fair and transparent to the utmost. As I see it, if Peiyang is so to• tally honest and fair, why does not he allow the nomi• nees to draw themselves the lots from the tubes for both

22 Fourteen years later Sun, then 80, was recalled to be president of the Ministry of Personnel once again. In this capacity he had to preside over another famously disputed evaluation, that of the metropolitan officials in 1611, when he attempted in vain to bring back to power his friends trom the Donglin party.

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the candidates and the positions,23 so that everybody be subjected to Heaven's decree, and forbid people who walk away from making comments afterwards? I am perfectly aware that Peiyang's tricks go to this extent. Even though at present [Jiang) Shixing has been ca• shiered, Peiyang is unable to overcome his private feel• ings of blind affection and support for him. He urges all the officials of the censorate to rise as bees and follow him. As soon as he entered the capital, a man whom he has promoted and who turns his back to his own reputa• tion, Vice Censor-in-Chief Zhang Yangmeng, shouted at [Zhao) Wenbing to defile and curb him, so that he could not extend his opinion, blocked him so that he could not follow his purpose, enjoined him to wait at home pretexting illness so as to make him go. [Sun) is destroying the speaking officials' spirit of loyal remon• strance, encouraging the crooks' habits of sycophancy, the rules are upside down, loyalty and viciousness are confused. Knowledgeable gentlemen have their blood running cold. Can one call this a minister who cares for the state? I am thinking of the state, therefore I consider that Peiyang must g024 ~~.~~.~. ~mM~~.Bff. ~.M. •. ~~.~ag.n*.~.z_~.~~q£ Z_ffl. ~HLBtI:\. tbW~~0~aAJ!~_.L E2. ~.~ ••~0. ~~~~ ••~~~~*~. Z.--ffl.~~.~m+**~.*ili. E2~~ ~.ttoo~~~. ~~~~-R,~~.~.X~~ ~~Z~.~~~.E2.~~~Z. ~ •• ~.~ 11WW:.'t~.~, - Amr~, if: JllfX1lJ3&Z1tlJZ, {! ~m~~ •. ~z~~m.x~.~Ztt.~m~ ~. ~*-g,~~Z~. -I.HHEWMlZJi,. fo.\G~li~ ii. ,~$nt#L ~~Z±, ~.tH,'. ~~.Wf~Z E2ili-¥~. E2.H~n, ~IJ~.:§:~ili.

23 This seems to be alluding to a system which is only described by Huang Liuhong in the late seventeenth century (see below): there is one tube to call the candidates (the Ministry ofl'icials draw the lots), and one with the names of the positions to be filled (the candidates themselves draw the lots).

24 Yue's memorial is in Wanli dichao, vol. 2, pp. 907-915, where his surname is incorrectly written ~.

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At the very least, in such a memorial Sun Peiyang was accused of allow• ing practices that defeated the very reform he had advocated; and if we are to believe its author, about one year after the reform these practices were already in full swing. This said, I have quoted these lines above all as an illustration of the very texture and tone of the memorials, edicts, attacks and counterat• tacks that were circulated in the Imperial Gazetteer and can be found in abundance in the extracts copied by the compiler of the Wanli dichao25-a texture and tone that contrast strikingly with the discourse that was allowed to politicians under the Manchu regime a few decades later. 26

The Problem of Regionalization Let me now turn to the other issue addressed in the entry from the Yehuo bian quoted above, namely, the problems raised by a system that was liable to send officials to far away posts in environments with which they would be completely unfamiliar. Shen Defu is rather vague about the system of multi• ple 'tubes' that, according to him, Sun Peiyang instituted after the episode of the Shaanxi man who left for Hangzhou as if he were facing execution; but Sun Peiyang's biography in the Donglin liezhuan is much more precise. It ex• plains how Sun distributed the lots between 'four corners' (siyu ~~) --that is, regions-, namely northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest, each consisting of two or more provinces plus groups of neighboring prefectures, and each reserved for the candidates hailing from the same region; in addition, there was a possibility of compensating between neighboring regions in case of a lack of suitable candidates within one system. 27

25 On that fascinating manuscript see Ono Kazuko 1980. Ono establishes that the author must have been Qian Yiben ~-*, a censor and future Donglin sympathizer who was dismissed from the bureaucracy in 1592 because of his position in the guoben controversy.

26 For more details on the conflict around Sun Peiyang, Shen Sixiao, Ding Cilii et al. in 1595, see for example the biographies of these three in Mingshi, 224:5900-5905, 229:6005-6007 and 229:6007, respectively, citing the names of the innumerable censors who participated in the fight.

27 Quoted in a note by Huang Rucheng to the Rizhi lu jishi, 8/23a. As we saw, according to Shen Defu' s account, the creation of something which must have been the 'four corners' system was a sort of adjustment afterwards; but this and other sources simply say that Sun instituted the drawing oflots with 'four corners' -i.e., from the start. That at least a comparable regional sys-

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It is unclear how long this regional pattern in appointing local officials lasted. In a programmatic memorial dated 7th month, 1602, the recently ap• pointed president of the Ministry of Personnel, Li Dai *~, cited it among the many items on which he was requesting an imperial decision; and what he criticized was not (like Shen Defu) the opportunity for manipulation that such a system afforded, but the fact that its very complication made people suspect that it was unfair. The passage is worth quoting in full because it is suggestive of the adjustments and bargaining through which it was apparently necessary to go at the time of the monthly appointments:

Previously, posts were attributed on the basis of [the qualifications ot] men, and this went entirely through the process of selection and appointment by our Minis• try. Then it was decided to draw the places [where peo• ple would be appointed) by lot. This method is perfectly just, but it includes complicated clauses, some of which cannot be known to everybody. This is why people have started to harbor doubts about its fairness [09'> pre• sumably for 0 5jL). They completely ignore that the ter• ritory is divided between north and south, that in the south there is the southeast and the southwest, and that in the north there is the northeast and the northwest, which is why one splits up [the drawing of lots); and that if the positions open in the southeast are too few, then one will borrow from [those available in) the northeast, while if the positions open in the northeast are too few one will borrow from the northwest -meaning further splitting up [of the drawing). [Furthermore), the qualifications of men are different: for a position of magistrate or prefectural judge, for example, [those eli• gible) can be doctors, licenciates, or tribute students, which is why one differentiates [among candidates); and the lots left by the doctors are kept for the licenciates, while the lots left by the licenciates are kept for the trib- tem- distinguishing between "northern", "central" and "southern" provinces -was instituted by Sun is confirmed by his 1594 memorial itself: see Zhang Ronglin 1978, p. 12. This may have become a four-region system some time later. Apparently a tifth 'tube' for posts located in fron• tier regions (bianque ~3iR:) was added in 1626; in 1628 the original three-region system (north• ern, central, and southern) was restored: see Liu Yulong 1996, pp. 32-33, quoting from the Ming shilu.

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ute students -meaning further differentiation [among candidates]. As a result, all these small details get mixed up, it is always like that. If there is [only] one candidate and one position [fitting each other], inevitably he will have his lot reserved. If there are two candidates and two positions [fitting their status ], inevitably there will be a differentiation by province. Then there are cases with many positions and few candidates, or many candidates and few positions, or candidates who must avoid their native province, or candidates whom the regions [they have been allotted] do not suit, but they are willing to exchange between each other. For all of this, people will have to be prompted (?), places will have to be weighed up, and this is also a pain. Now if one hangs silver in evidence on the market place the bandits won't take it; whereas if one arranges precious treasures in the dark even Zeng [Can] and Shi [Qiu] will harbor doubts. Wouldn't it be better to publicize one day in advance the candidates and the posts involved in their entirety, to write that there are not enough positions in such-and-such region and that they will be borrowed from such-and-such re• gion, and the next day to draw lots in the [corresponding] tubes? First one would exhaust the regions that need to be drawn by lots, then one would proceed to the bor• rowed posts; and for the cases where there is just one man for one position, or the isolated and lonely posts, for which there is no problem in reserving them openly, they would not be included in the drawing of lots. Thus the utmost clarity would reign, and people would know that the drawing of lots does not tolerate any private in• terests!28 ~~~A~~,-~*$~~o~~~.~~o~~ ~0,~~~.*~*.~~~ ••~.~.A~~ 0~z.~L ~~~~1ff¥1:1~, ffiif¥1z.~1f*f¥1®f¥1 ~. ~~z.~~;lU~®:lt~. ~IJ*~,. Wl*f¥1~j>~\ 1ilf®~, *~~~j>~\1ilf®~t. ~1J3Ut~ . .A.~~m~ !RJ. Wl-9;OlHi'§tE., 1f:i!±1f~A1f~UL ~IJ~ ~.:i!±.~M~ffl~~~A •• M~ffl.fto~ X~~o ~3&~lU~i.lmt, ~~~~.

211 See Wanli shuchao, 21 :34a-35a [vol. 59, p. 199].

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~-A~-~*,~~~~~o~=A~=~*,~ ~~*~o X~~$~A~*,~A$~~~*,~ ~~~*~*,~A~~ffi~,~~~£~*oAA .~.1~~.~~.o.~~~o~~a~~* ~§D~~,~ ••~~~.~~.o*.*-B. M.~~~ ••,~.¥~~~~,m¥~~~o ~ B*~.~o*.~.~~~~m~o ~-A-~ ~M~~~~~~B~~,~~.~~~o~~~tt j;:., .A~~O~~.~~~~o

Whether the measures requested by Li Dai were adopted or not is unclear. At any rate it seems that in 1628, at the beginning of the Chongzhen reign, a simpler regional pattern was adopted;29 and what is sure is that by the Qing the 'four corners' system was no longer in existence. More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that the problem of distance and un• familiarity with the environment -hence the necessity of regionalizing ap• pointments- formed part of a wider debate provoked by the creation of the lot-drawing method used to appoint local officials. The debate revolved around the choice between 'fairness' (gong) -meaning, in this case, the im• possibility of influence-trafficking and backdoor interference, which is what Sun Peiyang had wanted to establish- and an informed choice of the right man for the right position -in other words, efficiency. Yu Shenxing, a contemporary of Sun Peiyang cited above, criticized the new procedure on such grounds, saying in essence that the candidates cannot be considered as being all alike and thrown together in a basket from which they will be picked out at random:

As far as the greater or lesser talents of men are con• cerned, there is in each case an appropriate [posting]. When one considers their status, there is in each case [a position] that suits them. When one considers the diffi• culty of a place, there is in each case the right man. When one considers the distance [between native place and posting], there are in each case criteria to follow. But now all of this is left to drawing lots: if one covers a mirror is it possible to get a reflection from it? If one

29 See note 27.

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breaks a scale is it possible to weigh a charge with it? Since antiquity I have not heard of such a method. 30 ~~A~~m,~~m~o ~~~~,~~m~o~ ~~~,~~m*o .*.~~~m~on-#z ~~,~~~~~~~,~~~~~~~mo~~~

3R, /f'~rJt;tt 0

This quote from Yu Shenxing was inserted by Gu Yanwu in his entry on "selection and appointment" (xuanbu) in the Rizhi /u, which starts by con• trasting the flexibility that existed under the hallowed Han whenever it was necessary to appoint magistrates to difficult regions, with the sorry situation 'today':

Today one entirely entrusts [with magistracies] students who have just left their commoner clothes. Among them those who possess a sound knowledge of administrative matters are less than one or two out of ten, while eight or nine are weak and incompetent men. Besides, people are not selected depending on their talent: the method of selection and appointment consists in drawing a lot or casting a hook. 31 This is how the government of districts a hundred li wide [the equivalent of a county] is en• trusted to mediocre and talentless persons. Not only does it harm the people, in the end it also harms the of• ficials themselves. In this way places whose government is burdensome and difficult become traps for their offi• cials; and while the latter succeed each other year after year, the resulting abuses grow more and more serious,

30 Rizhi lujishi, 8/23a; instead ofJj-f.t;;tm-., Yu's original text (see note II above) gives ffiiT.t~1t,;;t 9&1i¥fjljfJi;;t <;T; instead of ~fffil, it has ~tIC.

31 The phrase tanchou tougou (where I assume that tougou has the more specific meaning of "casting aline", i.e., at random) is the equivalent of "drawing lots". It is found in the Xunzi, 12 ("f!i~) with the interesting comment: "Drawing lots, this is how to be fair" (fJIi.t§t~lf, pIT j:) 1i¥0t!1). It occurs in a series of parallel sentences mentioning other apparels (such a~ tokens, scales, or measures of capacity) whose common characteristic is to ensure fairness, equality and trust, but which will be of no use if the prince himself gives an example of partiality, avarice, and so on, to his ministers. Knoblock 1990, vo!. 2, p. 177, translates: «Testing the counting stick with the hand and casting belt buckles are means of guaranteeing impartiality and objectivity», which sounds a little strange, to say the least. There is also a French translation (Kamenarovic 1987, p. 156) which completely misses the point.

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to the point where it becomes impossible to correct them. ~~-~w~~.m~.~.~~.~.*,+~ =, rm'~~~~fl~*, ..§.Jj!ntAfL*. X~jl;Jt.A~M, rm~.5ft~ ••ffl~~ •• ~~.~~M~~. ~;f-t~.A. ~;t~~R, rm$~nHl~. ptJj!j~ltl~ ~, ~.-g.A~ll€Jm, rm:q:::q::£f~, ;Jt~:fid:¥*, rm~PJ ~*.

This is typical Gu Yanwu: almost by definition, "today" everything goes wrong (although in such cases one is never sure whether the emphasis should rather be on the late Ming that Gu and some of his illustrious colleagues had known in their youth or on the early Qing, when they were writing); and for him, the dysfunctional effects of the by then no longer new procedure of ap• pointment merely compounded the results of mediocre learning and insuffi• cient training. This passage from Gu's Rizhi tu is followed, as we have seen, by an ex• tract from Yu Shenxing's Gushan bizhu, from which I have already quoted a few passages. Among his reflections on appointments Yu mentions the neces• sity of taking the criterium of distance into account. After this quote Huang Rucheng inserted a lengthy note based on Sun Peiyang's biography in the Donglin liezhuan which explains the 'four-corners' system mentioned earlier. At this point the original text of Gu Yanwu is resumed, where he denounces the lack of what I have called the 'regionalization' of appointments -so, pre• sumably, after the 'four-corners' system had been abandoned at some point:

Selecting southerners for the south and northerners for the north, this has been the ancient rule of past years. In 1116 under the Song, it was ordered that when appoint• ing magistrates, even those sent the farthest apart [from their native places 1should not have to travel more than thirty postal stations. Thirty postal stations, this is 900 li. In today's selection system, people may have to go sev• eral thousand li away: they do not know the local cus• toms, they do not understand the language, and the ex• penses incurred in getting to their post and travelling back home are incalculable. This is taking the empire as one 'route'. If one wants to eradicate the abuses in the

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appointment system, why should one have to keep it like this in order to achieve complete fairness? i¥iAlRi¥i, ~tAJN!~t, l1t1f~Wi9tlo *iE)[f[]/\~, ~~~ ~~lR,fi~~~~~+5o~+5~,AB~illo 4-zJGA, tIJ¥!yf(T~o m.±/G~, MHf/G~, rmM:1:f **zft,~/Gm~o~**rrmnillo~~~iE)[z ~, 's!t1HmJlt, rmf~~~0$?

Further on Gu Yanwu develops the same points at great length. Officials may have to journey several thousands of li to reach their posts, they incur debts to pay for their travel expenses, they do not know the local customs and have difficulty in understanding the local dialects, and more often than not as a result it is the crafty clerks who are entrusted with political power. And this has been the case "ever since Southerners have been appointed in the north and vice versa" (~l¥f:fc1L~zi&)' Once again the chronology is uncertain. As far as I can know, appointing Northerners to the south and vice versa was not the rule under the Ming, except perhaps under the Hongwu emperor. 32 According to the author of a compendium on government institutions com• piled at the very end of the Ming, the opposite practice appears in fact to have prevailed: "Localities are divided into north and south, large and small, fron• tier and interior. Southerners mostly go to the south, Northerners mostly go to the north; it also happens that north and south are exchanged in the appoint• ments, but there is no fixed regulation" (tt!r.1:J7tl¥f:fc:*:/NlfIDL l¥f.A§1Jl,;tm, :fc.A§1rt:fco x~m:fc1L~, fAUE~U).33 In any case, Gu Yanwu concludes this section with more criticism of the system of drawing lots:

Before the drawing-lot system was instituted, the De• partment of Appointments still could form an opinion to decide on attributing the posts. Even though in most

32 In 1380 the system of moving officials from the north to the south and vice versa in ap• pointments was established(JEI¥i~tJ1!~mA): see Ming huiyao, p. 895; the text gives the re• spective lists of the provinces where ofticials would be chosen and where they would appointed.

33 See Lu Lun' s Shixue quanshu, Lt;;, I :4a. The passage quoted occurs in a section exposing the drawing lot method. The author does not specify whether special 'tubes' corresponding to the different categories he mentions were used. He goes on to say that the more desirable posts -in the interior rather than on the frontier, large rather than small- tended to be attributed to jinshi, while the less desirable went to juren or gongsheng.

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cases the place was selected for the sake of the man, it was still possible to select the man for the sake of the place [i.e., the interests of the localities could be ranked above those of the candidates]. But since the new sys• tem has been enforced, everything is left to fate and is unpredictable. As a result, in certain busy and difficult localities each time it is impossible to get a worthy mag• istrate, and they have to be dismissed one after another. The way of the gentleman relies on faimes's, one does not want to give cause for suspicion; as a result, local officials undergo a trial period. 34 ~iiz.¥t*rr, ~ii']~m~~tt~o B$lf~A1l ~,$~ft~~1lA. ~~¥t~rr,~~gz.~~~ z.&o~~~z.~lf.G~m~+,~~.R*o~ ~~z.l1!tE¥~0, {¥-jIlUlz./L." ~~~A:tt~'I"

~A: 0

Late Ming Developments As a matter of fact, in the end the Qing appear to have opted for the non• regionalization of appointments -possibly to discourage the development of local cliques- and to have maintained and even developed the system of ap• pointment by drawing lots invented by Sun Peiyang. I will shortly introduce some of the early Qing discussions of it (significantly, it no longer seems to have been an issue after about 1700). To stay with the Ming, we note that de• spite numerous criticisms and several calls for ending the drawing-lot proce• dure,35 not only was it not suppressed, but on the contrary its application was enlarged. Whereas in the late 1590s already it was used for some transfers

34 Rizhi lu jishi, 8/26a.

35 In addition to those mentioned above, see a few more examples in Zhang Ronglin 1978, pp. 14-15, and Liu Yulong 1996, pp. 33-34. In a memorial of 1606 devoted to the procedure of se• lection and appointment, Weng Xianxiang ~~~¥:, a censor recently appointed to the surveil• lance section of the Ministry of Personnel (like ~f1j.), asked for the immediate suppression of the drawing-lot method, which according to him had been everybody's "laughing-stock for many years" (jiu dang we; xiaobing ~ 1r~Jt::) and was "an extremely lousy procedure" (ji/ou zhi gui ~~2JJl). Using the same formula as other critics, Weng claimed that if officials were selected in that way and even if no cheating took place, then "one mere clerk could do the work of the officials of the Ministry of Personnel"! See Wanli shuchao, 21 :43b-44a [vol. 59, pp. 203- 204].

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will and promotions, there is evidence that by 1611 (when Sun Peiyang was back at the Ministry of Personnel) educational officials were likewise drawn by lots, and that the procedure was subsequently extended to other categories such as the selection for "frontier posts" (bianque jf~); furthermore, in the very last years of the dynasty the Ministry of War also adopted the drawing• lot method to appoint military officers. 36 The only reported move against the selection of officials by lots is attrib• uted to Zhao Nanxing mWJ£ (1550-1628), a famous Donglin associate who was made minister of Personnel in 1623 after a thirty years' absence from government. 37 We find the following in theXu Tongdian:

At the begirming of the reign of Xizong, Zhao Nanxing was in charge of the Ministry of Personnel. He sent a memorial to the effect that "The method of drawing lots has not been in existence since Antiquity. It was re• sorted to during the Wanli era in order to proclaim fair• ness. From the start it could not be implemented; then there was the abuse of 'fabricating lots'. Anyone who was fishing for a post could get it. Censor Zhai Xuecheng's memorial finds the system perfectly ridicu• lous; but there truly is nothing strange that it should be so.38 When Xun Qing says that "drawing lots and cast• ing a line is how to be fair",39 it is to illustrate that im• plementing a system depends upon [the quality of] men, by no means does he intend that such a thing should ac• tually exist in the empire! It should seem that the proce• dure must be changed in order to restore the original

~6 On this late-Ming developments see Pan 2001, pp. 98-101, and Pan 2002, pp. 292-295. Pan insists that even though the evidence is spotty, the trend is unmistakable.

~7 When Zhao Nanxing was dismissed in 1593, he was in charge of the Department of Evaluation at the Ministry of Personnel; his involvement in the sexennial evaluation of capital ofticials of that year, when pressure and interference from above were ignored, had earned him the displeasure of Grand Secretaries Wang Xijue 7.mf.} and Zhang Wei ~fHj'j.: see Goodrich and Fang 1976, pp. 128-9.

38 The memorial of Censor Zhai Xuecheng, dated the tenth month of 1623, is abstraeted in Xizong shilu .*'ff~; see Liu Yulong 1996, p. 34. Zhai is mentioned alongside Zhao Nanxing in the Ming Huiyao, 48/899, as a critic of the drawing-lot procedure.

39 The Xunzi text has tougou instead of qugou: see above note 31.

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laws of the dynastic ancestors." Thereupon the proce• dure of drawing lots was suspended. But it was again enforced at the end of the Tianqi period, and to the end the Ming did not change it any more. As a result, people made fun of the Ministry of Appointments [i.e., the libu], calling it Ministry of LotS.40 .*m~~£*~$o~§o ~~Z~,§~*~o §.M~~,~fflz~~0o~m~~nffo.~. ~z.o~M~,.~~.o.~.~~Z~~~. PJ~o ~?Jl'.,tl~~o i1J9RPEL 1*5Jtx:~, ?JT~. 0o~~fi~Rff~z~A~o~~.~~Z*~ ~.~o~~w~~.m*Zwo.w~~Z~o ~~~*.ffo.~ili~.~oA~.D$.~$

There is no mention of this event in Zhao Nanxing's biography or else• where in the Mingshi and other chronicles; however, it may well have been one of the drastic actions Zhao is known to have taken during his tenure in order to restore a modicum of order and uprightness in the functioning of the Ministry of Personne1. 41 A question that might be worth investigating, incidentally, is the intellec• tual and political orientation of those who criticized the initiative taken by Sun Peiyang. The debate does not actually seem to have been much deter• mined by political and philosophical alignments. As we know, Zhao Nanxing was very close to Gu Xiancheng (whose examiner he had been and who was his associate during the 1593 sexennial evaluation) and his friends in the Donglin party, who brought him back to the government in the early Tianqi years in spite of his reluctance. But Sun Peiyang also had close ties with the Donglin scholar-politicians, with whom he was actively involved in the years following his resignation in 1596 and whose fortunes he tried to promote when he returned to power. 42 We also know that Jiang Shixing, his subordi• nate as chief of the Department of Appointments who in 1595 was bitterly at-

40 Xu Tongdian, xum!iu Ji!JJf!, 22:1255; same quotation in XU Wenxian tongkao, 36:3169. The source seems to be Shenzong shilu ffl$*.~, 40. Research into Zhao's writings might yield a more complete account.

41 See his biography in Goodrich and Fang 1976, pp. 128-132.

42 As we saw, he was included in the Donglin biographies compiled by Chen Ding in 1711.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will tacked for his corruption, as we saw earlier, was an intellectual associate of another of the future Donglin leaders, Zou Yuanbiao (1551-1624).43 For his part, Yu Shenxing, one of the most vocal opponents of the reform, does not seem to have had particularly close intellectual ties with the milieu which was to coalesce in the Donglin party; yet his disgrace in 1591 was largely a result of the emperor's displeasure with his position in the guoben controversy, an experience he shared with a number of the 'good elements' later associated with the Donglin and other such groups.44 This said, the authors I have cited in the controversy over the drawing-lot method are too few in number to allow any kind of generalization. Beyond being a facile argument in the political row of 1595, the corruption and ma• nipulation that were denounced almost from the beginning certainly were a factor in determining the attitude of those who were sincerely concerned with preserving (or restoring) the reliability and objectivity of the procedure of ap• pointment; but then again, and despite their claims to the contrary, sincerity and a concern for 'purity' in governmental operations were not a monopoly of the Confucian revivalists usually associated with Donglin sensibility. As we saw earlier, the real debate seems rather to have revolved around issues of fairness and efficiency. Not everybody agreed on what was fair and what was efficient; or more to the point, insofar as efficiency meant an informed choice of the men who would be sent to postings of variable importance and diffi• culty, not everybody was equally confident that it was possible to be at the same time fair and efficient. Given the circumstances of late Ming political culture it required a certain degree of idealism to believe that objectivity could be maintained in the workings of the Ministry of Personnel machinery, in other words, that wise men impervious to influence and partisanship could be found who would be able to impose discipline and impartiality, making a trick like drawing lots pointless. Zhao Nanxing and his political friends cer• tainly considered themselves to be such men, but as everybody knows they were unable to stay in power for very long; indeed, I am not sure that, had the

4J See the commentary in Guoque, 77:4755: ~~~}tt, t:t~~jCfJ.Ji~~.

44 If this has any significance, it can be remarked that among the eight post-Sun Peiyang me• morials (out of a total of fourteen) selected for the 'official appointments' section (quanzheng lei iii&!J!Ji) in the Donglin-oriented anthology of memorials, Wanli shuchao, only two broach the subject oflot-drawing, namely those by Li Dai and Weng Xianxiang cited in this essay.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 evil Wei Zhongxian not existed, the outcome would have been significantly different.

Early Qing Discussions As we will see, the same issues of efficiency and fairness are raised in the Qing discussions about the best way to go about appointing officials, of which in fact we have already had a foretaste in the extracts from Gu Yanwu quoted earlier. The tone of the debate, however, seems different. There are several reasons for this, some of them rather complex, of which I can only pinpoint a few. One is that the nature of power changed completely with the arrival of the Manchus. In the circumstances of the conquest and because of the necessity of strengthening their dominion, the Qing emperors and regents were not prepared to allow Chinese politicians to control and paralyze the central organs of the new regime with their factional infighting and networks of influence-trading. In this respect, together with the imposition of the Man• chu-Chinese dyarchy in every administration and a more direct control by the throne of how the government was run, the drawing-lot procedure was seen as a means of reducing the impact of factional politics on the proper manage• ment of personnel. At the same time, in an early-Qing context where the security of the re• gime was still at stake in many regions, the governors-general and governors appear to have wielded significantly greater power than their Ming predeces• sors. Even in the eighteenth century, under emperors who claimed that they were able to keep an eye on everything, the governors acted indisputably as 'viceroys'. One aspect of this is that the evaluation of local officials lay largely in their hands: the hallowed Ming institution of regional inspectors sent by the censorate (the xun 'an yushi ~11i:~.3t:) had come to an end by 1661, and the Ming practice of magistrates paying triennial visits to the capi• tal and presenting their 'government records' (zhengshu i&~) was discontin• ued. 45 As far as the actual appointment of local officials was concerned, in time the governors came to hold considerable initiative in placing the men of their choice in the more important and/or rewarding positions within their province -I will come back to this later. It is not easy to examine this prac-

45 Some of these 'government records' written by Ming magistrates were published as hand• books and models.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will tice in the early decades of the Qing (indeed, to some extent it appears to have been a possibility as early as the Ming); but as we shall see it was already a topic for debate in the seventeenth century, and more than one author was forced to admit that the comparative importance of the Ministry of Personnel organs of appointment and evaluation diminished as a result. Finally -to come back to the drawing-lot procedure itself- better controls seem to have drastically limited the opportunities for corruption and rigging, which pro• vided the opponents of the system with one of their main arguments.

Technical Changes This leads me to say a few words about the technical changes which that procedure appears to have undergone -or more to the point, to recall that in many respects a great deal of further research is needed to have a clearer idea of these changes. The sources on the drawing-lot procedure which I cited ear• lier are rather vague on the details, and nothing can be found in the Ming Huidian since its last edition antedated the Sun Peiyang reform. For example, we do not know exactly when the 'four-corners' system of drawing lots was abandoned. In 1655, at the beginning of the Qing, an imperial edict from the Shunzhi emperor ordered that as a first step the candidates be evaluated on their appearance, their speach and their ability to write judgments (shen yan shupan Jit § 1i*U) and graded in three categories (deng W.f); the prefectures and counties should also be graded in three categories according to their im• portance; then the candidates from the first category would be appointed to first-category offices by 'equitably drawing lots' (conggong cheqian tt:L}~ ~), and so on. 46 But thereafter this system of three categories is no longer mentioned. On the other hand, several edicts from the eighteenth century show that in theory at least a thorough check of the physical condition and abilities of the candidates was made by the nine ministers and the censorate after they had drawn lots and received assignments; they had to present their curriculum vitae (liili BM) and were encouraged to expose their views on government in writing before being introduced to the emperor. A man ap• pointed to a magistracy could be downgraded to an educational official if the

46 See Qingchao wenxian tongkao, 55:5367; Da Qing huidian shili, 44:5a.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 check proved unsatisfactory. It is unclear, however, how seriously these con• trols were effected. 47 Even the physical details of the ceremony of drawing lots during the Qing vary according to source (for example, the descriptions in the three seven• teenth-century magistrate handbooks I will mention in a moment, which pro• vide fairly detailed descriptions of the entire procedure and of the ceremony itself, present several differences). However, all the sources, both Ming and Qing, stress one crucial aspect, namely, that the drawing was done publicly• "in full view of all the candidates" (gongtong kanche 0[PJ~~), says the Qing Institutions and Precedents describing the procedure as established at the beginning of the dynasty;48 the Qing sources add the precision (not found in Ming texts so far as I know) that the drawing took place "outside the Gate of Heavenly Peace", some of them even explaining the route that the candi• dates who had been shortlisted for the bimonthly sessions followed inside the government compounds to get there. Another question is when (in the Ming or the Qing) was the drawing of lots used for the appointment of personnel to offices in the metropolitan ad• ministration as well. Initially it appears to have been reserved for the first ap• pointment of provincial officials (waiguan 1f. 'g); subsequently, promotions and re-appointments were also included. 49 Likewise, all the descriptions I have seen so far, including official regulations (such as the Huidian shili of the Qing) and official handbooks, deal exclusively with the appointment of provincial officials. But during the Qing at least it is perfectly clear that, from an unspecified date to be sure, the same system was used to appoint middle-

47 See Da Qing huidian shili, 44:4b-5b (section on "verification of the officials appointed at the monthly selections", yueguan kaoyan f3 '§'~~), edicts of 1726, 1735, 1752-the last one deploring that the Nine Ministers "do not care to make the examination seriously" (buken shixin ticha 1'~1!f{Alt%'€).

48 Da Qing huidian shili, 43:4a.

49 According to an early Qing author, the Qing decided to include not only first appointments (xinshou ~:f)l), but also promotions and re-appointments (shengbu ft-Ml). See Cai Fangbing ~ J3#'j, "Postcript to the memorial of Censors Lei and Gu on supervising the drawing of lots" Cili m=*ii$~~Jfrt13n in Huangchaojingshi wenbian, 17:10a. However, we saw earlier that some of these additions to the appointments of new magistrates seem to have already taken place before the end of the Ming.

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and lower-rank personnel in the ministries and other capital administrations: possibly, this was taking place during another ceremony. 50 It also remains unclear what levels of appointments were involved atflrst. In the mature Qing system, all levels from provincial intendant (dao) and ministerial department director (langzhong) downwards were concerned -at least those posts not reserved for special imperial decisions. 51 Ming sources seem to suggest that drawing lots was only used for county and department magistrates, their deputies, and prefectural deputies. 52 We do know, however, that in 1640 the Ministry of War was authorized to use the drawing-lot proce• dure to appoint officers to the positions of vice-general (canjiang ~~), commander (youji ifft.), colonel (shoubei v1Jffi) and captain (yingzong :g~,) wherever they needed to be filled (tuibu mflij) in the provinces. 53 The only type of institutional innovation which is relatively well docu• mented for the early Qing concerns security. As we said earlier, and as will be seen in more detail below, although opportunities for rigging did not com• pletely disappear, at least the new regime was apparently successful in mak• ing it much more difficult. Several authors seem to consider that the reliabil-

so As for the Ming, the only source that says that the drawing-lot procedure was also applied to the "high and low officials attached to the Nine Ministers in the capital" (:frJ7qjcIJ\1LYflII;;t)l ~) is the "Treatise on examinations" of the Mingshi (71 :1716), of which we have already seen (see note 3 above) that it is in error concerning the date and initiator of the reform.

5! That is, the so-called "posts for which a rescript is required" (qingzhi que ~,§3iR): in this case, the emperor chose names from a list prepared by the Ministry (kailie I*l:9U). In his Weiz• heng diyi bian of 1702 (see below), Sun Hong notes that 'recently' many people who had drawn posts of intendant or prefect have had the unpleasant surprise of being replaced by people who had been seen by the emperor in an audience or had been recommended. For posts of magis• trates the risk seems low, according to the same source, but it is still better to wait until one has the imperial appointment decree in hand before celebrating with one's friends (I :5a-b).

52 See the sources quoted in Pan 200 I and 2002; among the prefectural deputies (juzuo W'1tc) the prefectoral judicial officials (tuiguan ffUn must probably be counted: this would fit in with the anecdote in Wanli yehuobian quoted earlier.

53 See the memorial of Bureau Director Zhang Ruoqi ~B~~lH5I1t dated Chongzhen 13/7/24, in Zhongguo diyi lishi dang'an guan ~~m-~§I:~~ill Mingdai dang'an a)H-t~~. The memorial (communicated to me by Mr. Pan Xinghui) describes in some detail the drawing-lot ceremony that took place at the Ministry of War presided over by the President and Vice• President and in the presence of the officials from the Bureau of Officials (Zhijang qingli si ~ :1:Jrrf~l§lj). There were two "tubes", one for the North and one for the South, respectively.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 ity thus ensured legitimized the procedure, as it were. In a text anthologized in the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, Cai Fangbing ~1J1f.j, a scholar who earned his bachelor degree under the Ming and was apparently a contempo• rary of Gu Yanwu -and like him a native of Kunshan- comments that from the outset the Qing divided the supervision of the drawing oflots among Chi• nese and Manchu officials and avoided leaving it in the sole power of the De• partment of Appointments; then, as this appeared to be insufficient, supervi• sion by censors was added to the procedure. 54 And the gist of the text is that as a result the procedure became "pure" and impartial, the candidates were no longer ableto resort to trickery in order to outdo their rivals, and the selection of officials was protected from animosity resulting from influence-trafficking or factional alignment (enyuan yitong zhi xin }gt?&~[QJZ~). Therefore, con• cludes Cai, the drawing of lots must definitely be maintained. 55 I will come back to the other dysfunctional aspects of the system dis• cussed by Cai Fangbing and other authors in the early Qing. But in actual fact, there is not much debate concerning drawing lots per se in the sources I have been able to look at; and, as far as I can tell, from the turn of the eighteenth century onwards the procedure is no longer discussed: it had obviously be• come routine in the selection and appointment -occasionally subject to new regulations, but certainly not worth passionate comment and criticism. On the whole, the comments we find during the second half of the seven• teenth century deal with the two problems which we have already seen dis• cussed by Ming authors: firstly, drawing lots is by definition incompatible with finding the right man for the right place. Secondly, is the danger of cor• ruption. Let me start with the second.

54 The presence of a Manchu and a Chinese censor of the Henan circuit to supervise the draw• ing-lot ceremony together with the officials of the Ministry of Personnel was decided in 1661 (see Qingchao wenxian tongkao, 55:5369); it is mentioned in the Da Qing huidian shili, but not until an entry dated 1799 (44:4a).

55 Cai Fangbing, loc. cif. The text cannot be dated precisely. According to his short biography in Qingshi liezhuan m~JUf!, 71:14a, Cai never held an official position. He pleaded illness to excuse himself from attending the Boxue hongci special examination of 1679, and so was with Gu Yanwu among the 36 scholars (out of 188) who managed to skip it. He is said to have com• posed a treatise on the appointment of officials (Quanzheng fun ~i&~). The bibliographical treatise ofthe Qingshi gao, 146:4309, mentions a Quanzheng lunfiie ~ii&ilifB~ by him.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will The Temptation of Corruption We have just seen that the trafficking with which everybody agreed the system was rigged at the end of the Ming 56 appears to have been curbed by the new Manchu regime -at least to some extent. Other sources suggest that it was in actual fact not completely eliminated. As it happens, my interest in the system of drawing lots was kindled by a satirical description of the cere• mony and the corruption involved written by a Jesuit missionary, Gabriel de Magalhiies, referring to an incident which .supposedly took place in 1669. It reads as follows:

Now it is the custom to write as many names of Cities as there are Mandarins that stand for employments, upon little thin Ministrys, which are thrown into a Ves• sel, and every one is Governour of that City of which he draws the Name. Nevertheless when a man has agreed with the Tribunal, the Tablets are so order'd that the Person draws the City which he desires. However this Artifice fail'd a Mandarin in the year 1669, who had given a good Sum to a Prothonotary, who had promis'd him the ready draught of a City of great Trade, and not far distant. For he drew a miserable City in the Province of Quei cheu, the most remote and the poorest in the whole Empire. Thereupon the wretched and unfortunate Mandarin quite out of his wits at his ill Success, without any respect for the Tribunal, or the presence of above three hundred Mandarins, rose up all in a rage (for they draw upon their knees) crying out with a loud voice he was undone, and throwing off his Robe and his Cap, fell upon the Prothonotary, threw him upon the ground, and with his Foot and Fist belabouring the poor Officer, cry'd out, Knave and Impostor as thou art, where is the mony that I gave thee? where is the City of which thou gav'st me a promise, with many other reproaches of the same Nature? Thereupon the Tribunal broke up, and the Mandarin and the prothonotary were both committed to

S6 It is remarkable, however, that in his very critical comments on the late-Ming system of appointment and evaluation the author of the Shixue quanshu (see above, note 33) does not criticize the drawing-lot procedure, and especially does not mention the problem of corruption <-.t~,juan I, fi$).

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the Prison of the Criminal Tribunal, where they were both in great hazard of being condemn'd to death. For such sort of merchandizing is death by the Laws, be• sides that the scandalous Circumstances of the Action render'd the Crime much more enormous. 57

To be sure, Magalhiies's account of China, even though it purportedly de• scribes the 'marvels' of that vast empire, is astonishingly and systematically harsh about its Mandarins, everywhere characterized (Chinese-style) as 'rav• enous Wolves' and utterly corrupt. Much more rosy in its depiction of Chi• nese institutions is Father Du Halde's Description de la Chine; Du Halde drew his information from a host of Jesuit authors, including Magalhiies, with comparative fidelity but still with a tendency to smooth out their possibly critical comments. And yet he too admits that there may have been some fraud involved in the drawing-lot procedure. After a brief description of the ceremony (the source of which is not clear), he adds:

( ... ) & l'on dit que quand on a des amis, ou de l'argent it donner, les Chinois ne manquent pas de diverses adresses, pour faire tomber les meilleurs Gouvernemens, it ceux qu'ils ont dessein de favoriser. 58

What contemporary Chinese authors have to say on the subject? Interest• ingly, the only three Chinese sources from the early Qing known to me which mention that corruption may have occurred in the procedure are very close in time to Magalhiies's anecdote. All three are handbooks for magistrates: one is Pan Biaocan's Weixin bian (1684 preface), another is Huang Liuhong's Fuhui quanshu (1694 preface), and the third is Sun Hong's Weizheng diyi bian (1702 preface).59 Chronologically speaking, the first two can be considered

57 Magaillans 1688, pp. 246-7. The first French edition of the book, of which this was a trans• lation, was published in Paris the same year; it was itself a translation of the original manuscript in Portuguese, which has been lost. We do not know how Magalhaes heard about the incident, which is not recorded in the Chinese sources I have been able to see. ss Du Halde 1736, vo!. 2, p. 34. The origin of the statement seems to be Father de Premare. On the sources of Du Halde's Description and his scissors-and-paste method of composition, see Landry-Deron 2002, Chap. 4.

S9 Contrary to the Fuhui quanshu, whose author was a former magistrate, both the Weixin bian and the Weizheng diyi bian were composed by private secretaries said to have possessed a

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will even closer to Magalhiies's story than the dates of their prefaces would sug• gest, since Pan Biaocan's work, based upon his experience of the previous years, was composed in 1675, while Huang's career as a magistrate, from which most of the contents of the Fuhui quanshu are extracted, also took place in the 1670s. The three authors do not by any means dispute the legitimacy and appro• priateness of drawing lots to appoint magistrates: after all, their viewpoint is that of a candidate who follows a prescribed ritual to obtain a post, not that of a statesman or commentator who deplores that this is not a good system to get the right candidate. What they do is, first, describe the appointment procedure in detail, including the ceremony of drawing lots, for the instruction of their readers; and then, warn that when they are in the capital awaiting the day their fate will be decided, they will no doubt be approached by untrustworthy peo• ple who will assure them that in return for a fee they can guarantee a 'hand• some post'. Such con men who claim to have the right connections to fix the outcome are, the authors warn, most probably crooks, and the rumors one hears in Peking about opportunities for rigging the procedure of drawing lots should not be believed imprudently. And lastly, Pan Biaocan and Huang Liu• hong remind their readers that this is neither a respectable nor an auspicious way of embarking on a career. Indeed, it is interesting to reproduce what they exactly have to say. First, Pan Biaocan in his Weixin bian:

Even though abuses such as 'sealed lots' and 'sitting lots' exist, the 'tube' is deep and the lots are short, and [such counterfeited lots 1are extremely difficult to make. The best thing is still to leave it to nature. Besides, drawing lots marks the start of a career. It goes without saying that one ought to rectify perverse practices; op• portunism is not admissible here. 60 vast administrative experience. Sun Hong's highly detailed and factual treatise has by far the most extended account of the appointment procedure, including the ceremony of drawing lots. Until recently, only the copies kept in the rare books sections of Beijing University Library (where I saw it) and of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University (only the first half is extant) could be consulted; it has now been reproduced in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu.

60 Weixin bian, 5:2b. The exact meaning of 'scaled lots' and 'sitting lots' escapes me. In other sources (such as Da Qing huidian shili, 44:4a), the former simply seems to refer to lots prepared and sealed by the officials. The latter possibly means 'reserved', 'waiting for you', or something

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B~M~~~z~,~~~~m,~~~B"~~§ ~.~"~.~~.~z~" §~~~@$" •• ::fPJ ill"

Then Huang Liuhong in the Fuhui quanshu -a text which is not easy to translate exactly, to be sure:

The rumor in the capital has it that there is the abuse of 'sitting lots'. However, scoundrels who Claim to be in collusion with officials should not be trusted impru• dently. Whenever 'sitting lots' [are arranged] they will necessarily designate several posts as 'beautiful', and more than one man will have reserved them, who [wants to] widen the road in the hope of achieving success. If it works [these people] will prevail upon their service to extract gifts; if it does not, [their victims] will close their mouth and not dare say anything. It is clear that one will have fallen into their tricks. Now, to be the people's father-and-mother and insist on having a fat post, what attitude of mind is that? When one embarks on onc's career, one must have a righteous heart. The advantages and disadvantages of being an official lie with the man: it would not seem that they are entirely dependent upon whether the place is 'handsome' or 'ter• rible' .61

t!rr;f§-m~~~Z~o ~HjlJ!~, iJJiJJftffi 0 fL~ ~, 1H~;E~-lf~, ~~)(~~-A, ~Jt~~*~" ~ ~1J,*:r}J~~, ::f~~lJm D ffii::fi\&"§" Jt~l1llm~ aA *"~.~~~,ffii~ •• ~."Jt.~wm~?g ,JJZtJJ, }lA/~iiL m-g~*, ff~JtAo irJ,*~'.ffii B~:tt!!.7JZJUt-illo

of the sort. For all of the sources quoted here some concrete idea of what a 'tube' and a 'lot' looked like certainly would help in translating the text. The only description we have says that the 'tube' was like a brush-holder (bitong ~mi); but this is in a late-nineteenth century explana• tion to the Liubu chengyu 1\;mgX,~a, and it may not be correct for earlier periods. Some Ming texts speak ofa 'vase' (pingltli).

61 Fuhui quanshu, I :3b-4a. The translation in Djang 1984, pp. 75-76, seems to me hopelessly muddled.

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And lastly Sun Hong, who is adamant that "the method of appointment is perfectly fair and there is not the slightest abuse". First, he warns his readers against the temptation of listening to rumors or to 'friends' who have marvel• ous tricks to offer. Later, when describing the ceremony itself, he insists that abuses are impossible:

For first appointments and re-appointments, each candi• date draws his lot himself. For promotions, the officials of the Department draw on behalf of the candidates. Be• fore the draw, the officials of the Department take the lots they have sealed and shuffle them inside a tube. At the moment of the draw, the clerks take the lot that has been drawn and publicly tear up the piece of paper [bearing the name of the post that has been drawn]. the President in person writes down in the register which candidate has drawn which lot. The method of appoint• ment is perfectly fair and there is not the slightest abuse. As for [the claim] that it may be possible to 'study' the lots inside the tube, just think for a minute: a tall tube is placed on a very high table; then, the lots inside the tube are shorter than it by several inches; even standing on tiptoes and dropping one's hand, one can barely reach the lots inside the tube: how could this admit of deliber• ately picking up [the coveted lot]? Besides, the Ministry President and Vice-President 62 preside sternly from above, and the personnel of the Department are standing beside you, watching. When the names are called and the lots are drawn, the slightest hesitation is immedi• ately greeted with angry shouts. That is why all this talk about bribery or conspiration is totally useless 63 .M~~a ••,m*~~~~ •. XM.&,~~ ~Fjfttz.iUfAX~. X~5t.&, ~'B~B.Z.~, 0mXm.X~.~~&,~'BAA~~z.~,.~X rt. H",*~0, ~~~~. ;fi~~pgtt~BJ(;~~*, ~Jt}~,~~~Z~, jI¥}~Z~, rm~Z?±~, ~oo-~~ ~~.~~~¥~&oo-~~~~~~~~.~~~

62 The text has f;!;J1~; I have corrected it into f;!;Jf'if (for ft;}i!t and f'if~~), which fits perfectly with the context.

63 Weizheng diyi bian, 1:4b-Sa.

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This is a far cry indeed from the seedy atmosphere of corruption that ac• cording to Shen Defu's description pervaded the offices of the Ministry of Officials during the Wanli era. Better still, Sun Hong's enthusiasm about the fairness of the procedure -as long as it is implemented with the required guarantees of honesty- is rather remarkable. We have seen it in the extract quoted above. Earlier in the text, when he recalls how the proportion of eight people to be appointed for the first time (yingxuan J!!~) against two people to be promoted (yingsheng J!!7t) -that is, out of every ten posts to be filled- is scrupulously observed even though it may raise technical difficul• ties when the number of candidates shortlisted in one session cannot be split accordingly, Sun Hong exclaims: "This shows even more how much the sys• tem of appointments is fair!" (~$~0, ~lftPJtJ1Jt~).64 Whatever the case may have been, the only point where the three authors just quoted differ is that the first two, while admitting that there are possibili• ties of rigging the drawing of lots, warn that they are limited and risky (as well as being dishonourable); whereas Sun Hong, who wrote a little later, simply says that it is not possible. He seems to inaugurate a new era in the sense that, from then on, there was apparently no more point in discussing the mistakes to avoid or the risks involved in a procedure through which every• body had to pass and which had become so routinized that the candidate about to get his post did not even need to know what he had to do and not to do. To my knowledge, and strikingly enough, after 1702 (the date of the Weizheng diyi Man preface) no magistrate handbook discusses the question any more: most treatises written in the eighteenth or nineteenth century open, as before, with a description of the first steps of a magistrate's career, from appointment at the capital to assuming one's new post; but none has even a description of the drawing-lot ritual.

64 Weizheng diyi bian, 1:4a. Here promotion means promotion to magistrate from a lowly po• sition such as that of zuoza fti:~ (local subaltern official) or education otliciaL Sueh people, who already had some administrative experience, competed with the juren or jinshi who were awaiting their tirst post.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will Early Qing Criticism Under the Qing dynasty, as we said earlier, the few texts which overtly criticize the drawing-lot procedure date back to the early decades of the re• gime. Moreover, instead of denouncing the procedure as an open invitation to corruption like the Ming texts, they focus on its assumed inefficiency in find• ing the man right man for the right post. 65 This was, as we have seen, a long• standing debate. Chapter Seventeen of the Huangchao jingshi wenbian, on the system of official appointments (quanzheng), abounds with essays con• cerning the problem of whom to appoint where, on what criteria and for how long, and how to remedy such drawbacks of the system as obliging candidates awaiting their first appointment to spend too long a time in the capital and thus run up debts to pay for their accommodation and travel expenses. Gu Yanwu, from whom I have already quoted some extracts, figures promi• nently -as he does in the Jingshi wenbian in general, where he is the abso• lute best-seller. Apart from him, however, only two other authors introduce the drawing of lots in the discussion, and both apparently belong to the same generation as him. One is Ren Yuanxiang {f~ffr¥ and the other is Cai Fangbing, mentioned earlier. Like Cai Fangbing, Ren Yuanxiang -a native of Yixing 1r~ county in Jiangnan- had earned his bachelor degree under the Ming, had no official career, and was principally known as a litterateur. He is supposed to have been deeply interested in administrative problems, however, and apparently worked for a time as an administrative adviser to a relative who was a local official. 66 Interestingly enough, the first of the two texts of his that open the Quanzheng chapter in Huangchao jingshi wenbian67 insists on the necessity of taking the right decisions at the beginning of a new regime "in order to set

6~ In addition to the texts cited in this article, there is the Chunming mengyu lu ;ffaJl~;~~ by Sun Chengze f*':$:i! (1593-1675), an extract of which is quoted in Xu Wenxian tongkao, 36:3169, stating that "the decay of the method of selection dates back to 1594 when the draw• ing-lot procedure was [first implemented]" (~$Z~EI ~MEfl q:if.~.MliQ); the text goes on to quote the reflections of Yu Shenxing we have already seen.

66 He has one biography in Qingshi Iiezhuan, 70:20b, and two in Beizhuan ji bu ~{t~fffi, 44:16b.

67 Ren Yuanxiang, "Method of appointment" (Quanfa ~$), Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 17:la-b.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, J594- J700 the system of a whole dynasty on a firm footing" (yi ding yidai zhi zhi PJJE• {~Z*rJ)-in other words, whatever his feelings about the new dynasty were, he believes in the future of the Qing. He mentions with approval a number of recent measures relating to the appointment and promotion of officials (which he has seen in the Imperial Gazetteer),68 and gives his opinion on other me• morials which are still under discussion. One of these suggestions, which he says was made by several provincial chiefs "who have not conferred with each other", concerns the desirability of being able to move magistrates around in order to take account of their abilities and of the requirements of the posts; and this is where he inserts a denunciation of the system of drawing lots, which has by now become an "important institution" (dianyao !1t!~), re• sorted to not only for first appointments (chushou :m~), but also for re• appointments (houbu {I*:fm) and for promotions (tuisheng ffE7t) as well. Like Cai Fangbing, Ren acknowledges that the system is shielded from corruption; this, however, is a purely negative quality: "The officials of the Department supervise the drawing of lots, the censors supervise the drawing of lots, all of this is simply to allay suspicion and be able to proclaim the ab• sence of any fau1t!" (:§t'§]~~, f4J1[~~, fLPJ~~W€, E~*ffiJB). His request is that the candidates should at least be divided between 'outstanding' (jiezhe f~~) and 'ordinary' (yongzhe III~), and the localities between 'busy' (chongzhe #~) and 'remote' (pizhe ~~), before drawing lots. The thrust of his text, which derides a method that "blindly leaves things to chance" (mingxing tingshu ~t'J~~), is that in an age when "one is seeing for care• fulness and prudence" (jiangqiu xiangshen zhi shi ~~*§-FtffiiZ~) the people in charge -here, the Minister of Personnel- are not concerned about per• sonal considerations (bu yi sijia wei nian =1;;PJfl,~~~), and as a result there is no need of "allaying suspicion": their sole ambition is that the officials serve the sovereign (wei yi ren shijun zhi shi tu 'It.PJA$~Z~Iii). Ren's second text in the Jingshi wenbian reiterates the same criticism against an exclusive recourse to chance: the method of drawing lots was insti• tuted to combat corruption and restore fairness, and "If one considers fairness,

68 One of these measures was the· abolition of the great reckonings (daji), which according to Ren efIectively curbed the competition for positions: we have already seen the bitter enmities that arose out of the 'great reckoning' in 1595. It seems, however, that the great reckonings were only briet1y cancelled between 1662 and 1665 only: this would date the text the early years of the Oboi regency.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will then [now] it is fair indeed; but leaving it all up to a blind method, is it possi• ble not to stumble'?" (~0J:{iJ0*o ffij-{f;!'t~1=r, fig~m-'¥). There is, however, no point here in spelling out his arguments which, as I said, revolve around the need to find ways of using officials where they can deliver their best. 69

The Governors vs. the Ministry We saw earlier that in his "Postscript to the memorial of Censors Lei and Gu" Cai Fangbing relates the series of reforms of the first decades of the Qing which, according to him, ultimately ensured reliability and honesty in the drawing-lot procedure. But then he goes on to say that the age-old problem of getting people attuned to the particular conditions of their postings remains unsolved. His main argument, shared by several other authors at the time, is that once an official has been dispatched to a province using this perfectly fair method, sufficient leeway must be left to the governor general and governor to evaluate his performance and suggest to transfer him accordingly:

I think that once the governors general and governors have lucidly tested the functionaries [under them], they will certainly reach a correct opinion [of their abilities]. When they memorialize to transfer them, it is entirely appropriate to send an authorization in return. Some will say that the requests of the governors general and gov• ernors cannot be trusted. This means necessarily that the individual cannot be relied on; and ifhe cannot be relied on, then he must be replaced. If that is not so, and [gov• ernors] who have been entrusted with the affairs of a re• gion are not allowed to modify the distribution of talents in that region, there won't be any men among whom to distribute the tasks at hand and their calls for help won't be answered: then how will they be able to promote their policies? Presently the Court considers that if one wants to obtain the benefits, one must first eradicate the abuses; which is why energy has been focused on su-

69 Ren Yuanxiang, "Proposal on official positions" (Zhiguan yi ~'§~), Huangchao jingshi wenbian,17:1b-2b.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 pervising the drawing of lots. Now that we are about to see that the abuses in appointing officials have been dis• continued, we must deal with the benefits of evaluating those who have been appointed. 70 ·I1UH.\I!i~~1f,§,] S)Hi\zA~FJT ~&:'., :J1Wimltlfl, lE:§: ~ft, EJt~if~FJT~1FFJEffi, ~&:'AA/FJE1~ft ili,~~/FJE~~~.~AXA,~~~G~-~ Z.~/F~~~-~Z~,~~.A ••/F.,~~ ~~~,~~~~~~~X~,~~X~,$~~~ ~~~Zr:p. rr~fflAZ~~, &:'~~fflAZ~~,

This text raises an issue which has been constantly under discussion: how much latitude should be left to the provincial chiefs in managing or even ap• pointing the personnel under them? Corruption once again is a central issue. Inasmuch as provincial administrative posts were of varying attractiveness to the officials selected to fill them, there had always been intense competition to obtain those deemed the most attractive-what, in official jargon, were called 'handsome posts' (meique ~lfik:) or, more cynically, 'fat posts' (jeique B~lfik:). In the same way as candidates in the capital were prone to resorting to corruption and cheating to obtain good assignments from the Department of Appointments, similarly, governors empowered with redistributing posts in their provinces were subject to all sorts of requests and flattery. Faced with such demands, could powerful provincial officials, even the most committed and competent among them, be trusted not to allow themselves to accept practices which amounted to 'buying posts'? This raises, once again, the issue of efficiency vs. fairness. In his entry on 'selection and appointment' quoted earlier, Gu Yanwu discussed the alternative between a centralized system of appointment con• trolled by the Ministry, on the one hand, and entrusting provincial chiefs with the power of evaluating local officials and moving them to posts more suited to their capabilities, on the other. (In Cai Fangbing's argument, both methods should be complementary rather than alternative.) Taking examples from the Tang, Song and Yuan periods, Gu was indeed approving of the latter practice, and, significantly, he dismissed the argument that it led necessarily to corrup• tion:

70 Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 17: lOb.

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Commentators today always say that if one proceeds in this way, in most cases it will be an invitation to asking for favors and will open the way to bribery. But why should men of the Tang have been systematically up• standing and why should all our contemporaries be ava• ricious and impure?71 4-z~::t!f, &:'El:9nJlt$~1tZrt ITiJ~~ll*zfl!o ~ JilfAiffit~ll, ITiJ4-A ~jt~$?

As a matter of fact, one important reason why drawing lots to appoint lo• cal officials became a sort of non-issue during the eighteenth century, may well have been the fact that the responsibility of deciding who would ulti• mately obtain a 'handsome post'-and the potential influence-trafficking and bribe-taking that went with it- was more and more transferred to the prov• inces themselves, in other words, to the governors. As is well-known, about one-quarter of the posts of magistrates in the empire -at the same time the most strategic and the most significant economically- were 'transfer posts' (diaoque ~m~), that is, posts to which the governors were allowed to transfer deserving officials who had proved their worth in the province for at least three years; the others were 'selection posts' (xuanque ~~), in other words positions to be filled by the Ministry of Personnel following the procedures outlined above. There is plenty of evidence that over the course of the eight• eenth century governors tended to use every available pretext to increase their discretionary powers and especially their control over local appointments. Besides, it is an established fact that in the first half of the nineteenth century during the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods, magistrates tended to be constantly moved around by governors, and more often than not counties normally con• trolled by the Ministry were administered by 'acting' (shu~) officials desig• nated by the provincial government, so that the orderly succession of officials appointed by the Ministry, each one carefully checking the accounts of his predecessor through the 'transfer' procedure (jiaodai 5({~), tended to be the exception rather than the norm.72 Indeed, in the nineteenth century at least,

71 Rizhi lu jishi, 8/24a.

72 The constant shifting around of magistrates and short-term replacements with 'delegates' (weiyuan) in Hunan during the first half of the nineteenth century is emphasized in Weiss 1980, esp. pp. 6-17. See also Suzuki Chiisei 1958, pp. 262-3. While Wciss tends to see this as a sign of

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 eligible candidates selected by the Ministry appear to have drawn lots indicat• ing not a particular post but a province; they would then be sent to the provin• cial capital as 'expectant' (houbu fl~fffi) officials, and once there, it was up to the governors to select them for filling up 'acting' positions for short periods of time until they at last received a substantive appointment. 73 Thus, provincial governors under the Qing had considerable leeway in deciding where local officials would be posted within their province; and this evidently encouraged flattery and bribery on the part of the local officials. Following Gu Yanwu's above-mentioned criticism against leaving it to chance rather than carefully choosing appointees according to the require• ments of the job, his editor Huang Rucheng inserted the following comment by the famous scholar and historian, Qian Daxin f~*8JT (1728-1804):

Toelay magistracies are divided into two categories, 'se• lection posts' and 'transfer posts'. But in addition the governors general and governors ask that the men se• lected for appointment should be used as probationary officials when they arrive at the provincial capitals. As a result, the positions to be filled by the Ministry are re• tained [by the governors] in a proportion of eight or nine out of ten. The powcr of selection and appointment has devolved entirely to the governors, and corrupt officials grow more numerous by the day. Such is the evil which arises out of not trusting the Ministry of Appointment and trusting the governors. The more powerful the gov• ernors grow, the more difficult it becomes to forbid the magistrates to offer gifts. Whenever a post falls vacant, those who scheme to obtain have no qualms about pay• ing out bribes in the amount of thousands and tens of thousands. How could one expect that there be upright officials among them? Gu Yanwu only sees that the drawing of lots does not allow to get the appropriate t1exibility and efficiency, in Suzuki's emphatically dark vision of the late imperial Chinese offi• cialdom it was merely an illustration of pervasive int1uence-trafficking and corruption.

73 The late-Qing commentary on the entry 'qiantong' _fW (lots holder) in the Liubu chengyu zhujie 7\rmffX:~~?IM says that the bamboo slips bear the name of a province (or of a metropoli• tanyamen in the case of selecting metropolitan officials); the entry 'cheqian'~_ (drawing lots) says that the system is used to appoint expectant (houbu l~ffli) or 'apprentice' (xuexi ~~) offi• cials. See E-tu Zen Sun 1961, pp. 7-8; Li Pengnian et al. 1994, p. 16.

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men; he does not see that in the provinces the selling off of posts is ruinous for the state and harmful to the peo• ple. This abuse is much deeper seated and more poison• ous [than the one he denounces]. Therefore Sun Pei• yang's method of drawing lots should not be over• criticized. The governors general and governors already have the power to recommend and censure, there is no point allowing them to select and appoint officials as well. Belittling the power of the central government and increasing the power of the provinces is not, I am afraid, the best way to nip [corruption} in the bud!74 ~fflU~* •••=.,® •• Xa.gA.~~~ ffl 0 m-~$.z{jj!H[] M~+ zJ\.fL 0 ji~zllii;f$ m- •• o®~~B.-Bo~~M.$®M ••z .~o ••z.a.®fflUz~Ha~~.o. M~~.~z~.~m.+ •• zMo~.X~W ~~.?~~@~.~z~~Ao®~~*W.M zmm~~oX.~~fi.~o~mm~.~.z ~b1;;~Jf~~o 1lH\I\Ii~W~Mzfl, ~:§:£1F.H2J.jiJ!z ¥'to j7g~®7'~., ~~~f±itll1J~!lzn~o

As I said earlier, from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards the procedure of drawing lots to appoint officials appears to have disappeared from the debate -what Qian Daxin's comments on Gu Yanwu's critique say in essence is that this is not the real issue. Interestingly, we have to await the early years of the twentieth century to come across once again such an attack on the procedure, and this time not due to Chinese writers. The Shinkoku gyo• sei ho, the great compendium on Chinese institutions commissioned by the Japanese authorities in Taiwan, gives a detailed, very clear account of the various procedures for selecting civilian officials. 75 It includes a description of the drawing of lots, followed by a commentary to the effect that "deciding the appointment of officials by drawing lots is a mere child's play, truly ri• diculous. Moreover, it will easily give rise to corruption. This is because those who are hoping for a post will give bribes beforehand to the officials of

74 Rizhi /ujishi, 8/26b.

7j See Shinkoku gyosei hO, vo!. lb, pp. 229ft~ Chinese translation in Qingguo xingzheng fa fan/un, pp. 620f1:

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation, Conflict, and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials I7y Drawing Lots, 1594-1700 the Ministry of Personnel and to the clerks and will intrigue to be selected. It's everywhere like this", and so on. 76 The text goes on to quote from some of the authors whom I have intro• duced in this essay, notably Gu Yanwu and Cai Fangbing. It adds that "even if it were possible to eliminate bribery and manipulation from this procedure, how could a system which merely uses drawing lots to fill up positions and does not concern itself with whether or not the post and the candidate fit each other be a good system? Moreover, if one wants to be impartial, the procedure of drawing lots is precisely the root of abuses". Proof of this is found in the passage from Huang Liuhong's Fuhui quanshu which I quoted earlier. And the conclusion is: "Alas! If such abuses already existed during the heyday of the Qing, how worse it must be nowadays that this heyday is over!,,77 As I have suggested in this essay, this is probably not a correct view of the history of the drawing-lot procedure during the Qing dynasty. What I find interesting is that a method of selecting officials that had become completely routine and was considered unproblematic, even by the time of the late Qing reforms, should be looked down with such disdain by people who considered themselves to be the vanguard of political modernization in Asia and were indeed considered in China as a model and an inspiration during these years; and at the same time, it is interesting that they should have to look for evi• dence over two centuries old to support their view. 78 The notion of "heyday" (longsheng Ili[~) is also worth noting. The au• thor of a recent, carefully researched study on the selection of officials under the Ming marvels that a system which in his view, and in the view of many contemporary authors, could only be a stopgap measure in an age of deca• dence, was maintained and systematized during the so-called heyday (sheng• shi ~t!t) of the Qing. His explanation is that the Manchu regime was only interested in maintaining its ethnic prerogatives and that as a result it chose to ignore the principles of "separation of powers" and even the "democratic

76 Qingguoxingzhengfafanlun, pp. 673-4.

77 Shinkoku gyosei hO, vol. Ib, p. 233. The Chinese translation of this passage is inaccurate.

78 It should be remembered that the compilers of the Shinkoku gyosei ha were isolated in re• cently Japanese-occupied Taiwan and worked mainly from printed sources.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Pierre-Etienne Will spirit" inherent (or progressively developing) in the domestic Han-Chinese tradition. 79 I have my doubts about such notions which are indeed consonant with the approach taken by several generations of Nationalist Chinese historians in the Republican era for whom the Manchu dynasty can only have been an improb• able and regrettable episode in the historical development of the Chinese na• tion. While it is true that -as stressed above- the Qing founders were anx• ious to limit the Chinese academic elite's means of controlling access to pub• lic positions and to curb its tendency to disrupt the orderly pursuit of an au• thoritarian style of governance with its factional politics (whether or not we think of them as "democratic"), I am not at all sure that the maintenance and expansion of the lot-drawing procedure was part of a concerted plan towards this end. For one thing, we should not allow ourselves to be blinded by the idealized notion of a body of impartial and virtuous officials at the Ministry of Personnel who were impervious to pressure and who combined fairness and efficiency in managing appointments in a perfectly objective way. Ap• pointments have always been an integral part of politics, and clientelism was as rife during the high Ming as it was under the Manchu regime. Furthemore, it is important to remember that the general economy of the system of appointing officials to provincial posts changed considerably from the former to the latter regime. Partly because of their alien origin and their nature as a conquest dynasty, the Qing were much more open-minded about recruiting talents that had been nurtured outside the examination system than their predecessors were. 80 The ensuing flexibility in recruitment, whose posi• tive results, notably but not exclusively during the first half of the dynasty, should be obvious to any Qing historian, demanded as much objectivity and evaluative ability from those who were in a position to determine careers as it did from the Ministry of Personnel dignitaries under the Ming before the creation of the drawing-lot procedure; or, to put it the other way round, the

79 See Pan 2002, p. 297.

80 In this respect one should recall the important role in the Qing of the selling of official ranks by the government (the so-calledjuanna m~ system), which has been much criticized at different times but which in reality acted as an important means of promotion for non-academic candidates whose professional qualifications might be equal or superior to those of candidates withjinshi degrees: for example, a sizable number of former private secretaries (muyou W:bO with a long experience of administration made their way in officialdom in this manner.

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 10:41:03AM via free access Creation. Conflict. and Routinization: The Appointment ofOfficials by Drawing Lots. 1594-1700 danger of favoritism or influence-trafficking was as great in one case as in the other, and could only be controlled by the same sort of professional and moral authority. Above all, focusing on the drawing-lot system is probably missing more important issues. By itself, drawing lots to allocate more or less similar posts to people whose formal qualifications are more or less identical is in no way a startling proposition: let us not forget, after all, that Athenian democracy - the mother of all democracies- resorted to this system for a large number of functions, and many other examples from a number of political and adminis• trative cultures could be adduced. The serious work of promoting people who had proved their worth and could be evaluated on the basis of their achieve• ments came later. As we have seen, under the Qing it tended to be left in• creasingly to the provincial governors, both for 'transfer posts' and in the many cases when vacant positions needed to be temporarily filled with acting officials. Whether such practices were conducive to corruption more than anything else, or on the contrary allowed a flexible and informed use of ad• ministrative talent, remains an open question, and, as we have seen, one that was already debated by Qing authors. Everything points to a highly fluctuat• ing combination of both, with probably a trend toward more influence• trafficking on the part of the governors during the nineteenth century. At court, too, the practical limitations of a procedure based on chance that was otherwise widely accepted as fair were to a large extent compensated by the existence ~ill' O~le case olllprefrects Iand 'llltendants~1 05. positions' deemed .im• portant enough to be filled by a special imperial decree: in such cases the em• peror had to choose names from a list submitted by the Ministry of PersOlmel, itself based on a careful selection of officials with the best record of those eli• gible for promotion. To this should be added the possibility for the emperor to pick up officials who had impressed him during audiences by their character and competence and put them on the fast track: there are many examples dur• ing the entire duration of the Qing dynasty. While it might certainly be argued that this was only an expression of the Manchu autocrats' increased involvement in government in general and in personnel management in particular, in contrast to the remoter stance adopted by the Ming monarchs who were more inclined to trusting the judgment of their high officials, another way of looking at the issue is to simply speak in terms of a different distribution of competence among the higher rungs of the

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Central government under the Qing. While under both regimes the emperor was the ultimate authority in official appointments -no selection could be valid without the sanction of an imperial rescript- what made the difference was the greater involvement of all the Qing emperors in the actual running of things. Whatever the case may have been, direct appointments by special re• script (tejian ~~fm), like those just mentioned, are one more example that the generalization of the lot-drawing procedure for routine appointments under the Qing did not in any way preclude the possibility of an 'intelligent' selec• tion of officials based on their proven competence to serve in posts with spe• cial needs or involving particular problems.

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