Officially, Confucianism promotes meritocracy. But it s a meritocracy that comes with a loyalty precondition. In that sense it is very different than the Legalist idea of meritocracy.
The selection of government officials in China had evolved through three
major practices in history.
>From ancient time up to the end of the Han dynasty in 220, officialdom
was primarily hereditary, staying within a tight circle of elite
aristocratic families.
During the three and one-half centuries between the disintegration of
the Han dynasty in 220 and the beginning of the reunified the Sui
dynasty in 581, the practice of selecting officials had been through
nomination by other officials, selected among members of their own
class.
During the Sui dynasty (581-618), selection of officials by public
examinations, known as keju, was introduced.
The hereditary and nomination-by-peers practices have never been fully
abandoned even in modern time.
But since the Sui dynasty, partly because of unprecedented growth in the
size of central government, these two traditional practices were no
longer automatically the only methods employed in selecting officials.
Time had brought about a gradual blurring of the traditional division
separating members of guizu (the aristocracy) whose social role was
focused exclusively on politics and war, from dizhu (the landed
bourgeoisie) whose social role was restricted to economic production.
This rigid separation had been blurred on the one hand by the growing
ambition of the rising bourgeoisie, and on the other by the declining
competence of the entrenched aristocracy. The rapid expansion of
imperial central authority had also created previously unavailable
opportunities in officialdom for dizhu members, whose new wealth bought
their descendants education and connections with which to enter
officialdom.
The impatient and insistent call from scholars of dizhu origin for
admission to the political arena had been increasingly exploited by each
succeeding ruler for his own political purposes.
With only minor modifications in the Tang dynasty, officialdom had
traditionally been organized into nine ranks (pin) and three classes
(ji) since the Han dynasty (B.C. 206-220 A.D.).
The ranks, first rank (yipin) being the highest, determined access to
the sovereign, prestige and privileges of officials, and their influence
in politics.
Each rank was subdivided into main-rank (zhengpin) and sub-rank
(congpin), making effectively eighteen levels of rank. Within each
rank, there were three classes (ji): main (zheng), middle (zhong) and
bottom (xia), further categorize the ranks into a total of fifty-four
steps.
While high rank commands prestige, respect and moral authority, only
holders of third rank (sanpin) and below could hold administrative
posts. It is a general rule to keep administrative power from high-rank
members of guizu (the aristocracy). But the rule was not be strictly
followed, as rules seldom are in Confucian culture. This rule in
principle divided the imperial court generally into upper and lower
houses, with policy authority vested in higher-ranking officials and
administrative power reserved by those of third rank and below. To a
large extent, remants of this system is still visible today.
This professional literati replaced the local aristocrats in their role as local administrators through the vehicle of keju (public examinations) and through state-sponsored xuexiao (schools). The privileged position of this new shidafu class would be solely dependent on the huangdi (emperor). Thus its loyalty would be exclusively devoted to the central authority rather than to localized lords of the aristocratic caste. Without a loyal literati-bureaucracy, imperial policies could not be effectively executed over in-placed opposition of local feudal guizus (aristocrats) in the vast empire. Keju (public examination system) had been devised as a centralist strategy by the sovereign of a newly reunified empire to gain political control of an imperial government which has been historically dorminated by guizu (aristocratic) ministers. It had not been intended as a liberal reformist vehicle for introducing new ideas and open access to government. Evidence for this can be found in the qualifying requirement of the new candidates. Although drawing from a socially more diverse pool, candiates were still judged by their familiarity with the same restrictive Confucian classics that had controlled the thoughts of their predecessors who had been drawn exclusively from guizu (aristocractic) background and from elite families of the hereditary shidafu (literati-bureaucracy) class. Confucian ethics had been the instrument of mind control to instill loyalty to the dragon throne from an inherently antagonistic guizu class who has historically dominated the imperial government. Thus Keju was intended as a recruitment devise for a new crop of government officials from a growing non-hereditary shidafu class whose members were more sympathetic to the expanding powers of the dragon throne, but the same Confucian values were required of newly-selected officials to instinctively bind them to an ethics of unquestioning loyalty to the dragon throne. In promoting keju, the emperors were not promoting new ideas on politics and governance as much as they were shopping for new loyal servants in public administration. Unfortunately for the dynastic rulers, the rise of a meritocratic shidafu class in government had the unintended effect of making the three main traditional government organs increasingly the administrative instruments of the central governing institution rather than the captured private agents of the reigning huangshi (imperial house) as it had been in the past. In this respect, the sovereign in time became just another role in imperial government, albeit an important role, as contrast to the tradition of government being the personal property and direct extention of the reigning sovereign. Henceforth, the sovereign served the state, rather than being the state. Shidafu scholars, as ideological captives of the Confucian doctrines of righteousness in politics and morality in personal behavior, were more true to the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) for good government and more vigilant about the proper role of the Son of Heaven (Tianzi) prescribed by this Mandate than to the reigning sovereign's narrow interest in personality politics and unencumbered power. Shidafu ministers, despite their dependence on the sovereign for appointment, viewed with equal suspicion potentials for abuse of power both by guizus and by the Son of Heaven. In Chinese politics, loyalty is always preferred over competence. The ideal is to have both in a minister. Failing that, loyalty without competence is preferred as being less dangerous than competence without loyalty, the stuff of which successful revolts are made.
The civil examination system has the dual purpose of infusing new blood into the establishment as well as co-opting the talent and leadership of the able and restless underprivileged. This examination system should now be expanded and institutionalized to serve the political purpose of the imperial dragon throne. It should be based on a curriculum of moral studies drawn from an approved syllabus of Confucian classics The Confucian instinct of blind loyalty to legitimate dominion, together with its penchant for meticulous obedience to upright authority were the main theme of Confucian meritorcarcy.
The Old Book on Tang, compiled in 945, some 252 years after the event, would contain in the biographical segment 56 entries on persons who had distinguished themselves, in one manner or another, solely through heroic acts of loyalty, usually ending with death or severe physical mutilation to their bodies, and sometime those of members of their families. The message to posterity would be so compelling that many who would desire a place in history would since find passionate protests in the form of self-inflicted harm easier alternatives to immortality than the cultivation of other more useful but more demanding forms of political talent. Among the entries in chapter on Loyalty in the Selected Biographies (Lie zhuan) section of the Old Book on Tang (Jiu Tang Shu), compiled in 945, would be one Su Anheng who reportedly submited a petition in the First year of the Reign of the Great Satisfaction (Dazu), 701, to advice Wu Zhao, the female Emperor (Huangdi) of the new Zhou dynasty, considered by Confucian historiographer as an usurper of the Tang throne, to offer the Dragon Throne to her son and heir to retore the Tang imperial house at the earliest possible date. There was eveidence that the petition was planted by Wu Zhao herself. Nevertheless, Confucian historiographers celebrated Su Anheng for his Confucian righteousness and loyalty to true legitimacy.
Henry C.K. Liu
"Rosser Jr, John Barkley" wrote:
> Henry,
> You contrast a supposedly egalitarian and
> "meritocratic" Legalism against a Confucianism that is
> supposedly none of either. I certainly grant that
> Confucianism implies hierarchical relationships of various
> sorts. But is it not also true that in principle
> Confucianism was meritocratic? Anybody could become a
> mandarin bureaucrat who could pass the appropriate exams?
> Is it not in fact the case that the degeneration away from
> that and the rise of bought positions in the mandarin
> bureaucracy and the inheritance of such positions by
> incompetent sons was the key sign of a corruption of
> Confucianism, a tendency observed in the decadent periods
> of declining Confucian-oriented dynasties?
> Barkley Rosser
>
> --
> Rosser Jr, John Barkley
> rosserjb at jmu.edu