A Study On The Assessment System Of Local Officials In Song Dynasty

Following the late Tang dynasty and Five Dynasties, Song Dynasty set up a new centralized autocratic dynasty which unified more than half of China's territory. Song Dynasty summarized the previous dynasties, especially the Tang Dynasty's experiences and lessons of governing the country. Putting prevention as guidance, it takes a series of political actions such as advocating art and inhibiting force, strengthening central authority and weakening local authority, splitting local powers, strengthening central powers, splitting department powers, strengthening emperor centralization. Although these actions twist the Fanzhen separatism and agencies redundancy situation since the late Tang dynasty, they also pay the price for it, that is the plethora of government agencies setup and ever-expanding team of officials. In order to expand ruling basis, Song dynasty rulers take such measures as imperial civil examination, Enyin system and Jinna system, thereby absorbing a large number of the children of Literati, officials and landlords in this political system, which.eventually form a larger number of the people of the bureaucracy than that in previous dynasties in Chinese history.In order to solve the official management problem, Song Dynasty created or implemented a series of Official management system, such as Checking system, assessment system, rank system, paper printing and books wholesaling system, monitoring system, supervisor patrolling system, special envoy checking system, position avoiding system, funeral holding system, protocol system, querying duty system, and so on. This essay focuses on the Official examination system in Song Dynasty.Assessment was known as the "test" or "performance" in ancient China. The Official examination system in Song Dynasty inherited officials assessment experience in previous dynasties, combined the Song Dynasty's reality and gradually developed and consummated, forming Song Dynasty official assessment system characteristicsAssessment of officials in the Song Dynasty is not only a key method for Court to know different localities and departments governance and officials' Governance performance, but also one of the key reasons for officials'promotion. In order to encourage and urge officials at all levels fulfilling their duties, almost all of the Song Dynasty government officials were put into the scope of the assessment. It not only assessed those officials of all departments, but focused more on the assessment to supervisor of Lu level and officials in state and county; not only assessed officials who were close to residents, but also assessed officials who were responsible for levying tax.According to all kinds of different duty of different level of officials, the Song Dynasty developed the different types of assessment officials'target. Among them, the assessment to Lang officials in six departments focused mainly on the number of government affairs they dealt with and the number of error rate; the assessment to supervisor of Lu level and officials in state and county focused on both the performance of duty and their behavior. The assessment to officials who were responsible for levying tax focused mainly on achievement of the amount of tax they imposed.In order to completely control the government officials'performance, Song Dynasty created a regulation recording the scores of the officials on the papers of Yinzhi Lizi, that is when officials took office, the government would provided the papers of Yinzhi Lizi for recording the merits and demerits during their inauguration and the director department would assess and review the written contents after their expiration. In Song Dynasty, not only Assessment Department, Checking Department and Officials Department after Yuanfeng reform, but also some business departments are responsible for assessment and promotion, such as 3 Branches and Civil Department after Yuanfeng reform, General Council in Southern Song Dynasty which is directly responsible for assessing officials'financial performance, Criminal Department and Dalisi took part in assessing officials settling lawsuits performance.Official assessment system in Song Dynasty has its own characteristics. Firstly, regarding assessing objects, it particularly emphasized the assessment of local officials. Secondly, regarding assessment contents, except for officials'well-rounded assessment, it paid more attention on the assessment of officials'business performance. Thirdly, regarding assessing method, it has recording papers to record officials performance, the comment the superior wrote to the subordinate to assess officials generally and also special assessment of a business, such as the assessment to the change of the number of registered residents in states and counties, the assessment to the completion of government supplying money and goods. And in most cases, the latter special assessments were used more common. Fourthly, focusing on quantitative assessment, especially in the aspect of officials leaving tax performance, it should adopt the method of comparing to quota, award or punish officials according to the ratio of losses.Furthermore, the official management system in Song Dynasty is very complex and the official examination system always combines with Checking system, Recommending system and Selecting system. There are two main types of reward and punishment associating with official performance evaluation, one of which is economic incentive, including gratuities, fines, the other of which is administration incentive. As a result of Song Dynasty implemented the separation of rank and dispatch, the officials administration award and punishment in Song Dynasty can also be divided into three parts:1) the award and punishment about checking and promotion. The most common administration award and punishment is the officials'advanced promotion and delayed promotion, that is decreased checking or increased checking in several years; 2) Direct promotion and demotion; 3) the award and punishment about dispatch, that is direct promoting dispatch or demoting dispatch. The excellent officials in this assessment were usually achieve decreasing checking years and recommender, and even promotion or promoting dispatch as award; while the bad officials in this assessment were always got punishment such as increasing checking years, recommender, and even promoting and demoting dispatch.Because Song Dynasty remained emperor authoritarian, they implemented the system of level awarding grades under the control of emperor authoritarian in official selection management. Under this system, due to the abuse of power by people in power such as emperor and ministers, the greed of officials in assessment and promotion department, the effect of the unspoken rules of officialdom and various officials management system including official assessment system, it suffered numerous damage on power, money, human and other non-institutional factors when put into practice.