A Study On Mutual Relationship Between Reserved-officials Group And Politics Of Late Qing Dynasty

The reserved-officials belonged to the bureaucratic stratum.As a group,the reserved-officials also belonged to one of the social groups of Qing Dynasty.In late Qing Dynasty,particularly after the peasants revolted during Emperor Xianfeng,the group of the reserved-officials changed greatly because of political and social changes.They were sent to the central departments and local provinces, directly took part in administrative and social affairs,and had mutual influence on politics of late Qing Dynasty.The paper summarizes the basic characteristics and state of condition of the reserved-officials' group in late Qing Dynasty,analyses the influences of their professional and non-professional actions on the politics of the late Qing Dynasty by regarding the reserved-officials' group in Qing Dynasty as the researching target,with the help of the theories of sociology,politics and psychology,considering the mutual relationships of the reserved-officials and politics of late Qing Dynasty as the frame and the main line of thoughts.The paper probes into the changes of the reserved-officials' group engaging in political,economical and social affairs during the social transformation and gives a reasonable explanation of their influence and changes happened to themselves.We can see the characteristics of Chinese autocracy politics,thoughts and traditional culture from the angles of the seriousness of the reserved-officials phenomenon and unconquered problems of overstaffed reserved-officials.The time duration of the paper's research is from the year 1851 to the year 1911.The main body of the paper is sub-divided into six parts,and the basic content of each chapter is briefly introduced as follows.Chapter 1 explains reserved-officials' concept from both the narrow sense and the broad sense in the light of the stipulation of a system.It also defines reserved-officials' concept considering the time of the actually political state of system in practice.The paper expounds the nature and form of affairs which reserved-officials deal with,and believes it is a unique phenomenon which reserved-officials are engaged in affairs waiting for being appointed to a formal position by comparing vertically with that of any other dynasties in Chinese history.The paper not only analyzes reserved-officials' changeable state of arrangement from the angle of time,space and profession,and the basic causes of arrangement of reserved-officials in late Qing Dynasty,but also illustrates that limited existence of reserved-officials was essential and reasonable in four aspects,including structural traits of the administrative system in Qing dynasty,officials practice of political affairs,reservation requirement of bureaucratic ranks and officials' participating in affairs in time.The paper draws an outline of the distributing,dispatching and assessing system by the way of institutions in Qing Dynasty and appraises the system concisely.Chapter 2 classifies reserved-officials' group into different types according to various standards even though reserved-officials' group is a complicated one,analyzing the basic features of constitutes of reserved-officials' group vertically,and summarizes the traits of reserved-officials' group from many angles.The paper holds that there are three ways of social mobility,including mobility of the internal system,mobility between the systems,mobility of amphibian internality and externality by probing into social mobility of the reserved-officials' group.This paper studies the salary system of the reserved officials;believing the Qing Dynasty has special regulations on their salary.Different family backgrounds,reserved state having a chance of deputy and dispatching or not,all cast direct influence on reserved-officials' salaries.Different incomes decide their material life directly.On the whole,the reserved-officials led a poor life,not be able to make ends meet.Impoverishment was common among them.Reserved-officials had various states of mind,but there also lied many similarities.Chapter 3 illustrates some changes in traditional affairs in late Qing Dynasty,which lied in the increase of conventional affairs and the spring up of abrupt affairs.Due to the peculiarities of the administrative system of Qing Dynasty,when practicing administrative affairs,the reserved-officials become the complement of incumbent officials.Their political role is addendum.Their jobs concern economic and legal affairs and so on,which played a positive role in the traditional affairs of late Qing Dynasty and was an indispensable bureaucratic group.On the other hand,in the process of conducting traditional affairs,the reserved-officials also gained some fundamental economic income, improved their management ability and realized their own value.In the light of the analysis of systems,this paper summarizes the main traits of the dispatching systems which suited to the reserved -officials.The traits mainly presented as supplement and flexibility.From the angle of system designing,the paper explains the phenomenon objectively which the reserved-officials took great part in dispatching affairs.Chapter 4 demonstrates another obvious phenomenon of social changes,and that is the emerge of a great number of new affairs.The old and new exist at the same time---the common traits of social transformation,undoubtedly lies in the co-existence of old and new affairs.The reserved-officials participated in the management of modern times' industries,devoted in diplomacy,overseas investigations,political affairs,military affairs,police and educational affairs.This paper analyzes the chief reasons why the reserved-officials were so concentrated on dispatching affairs,and took part in newly-aroused affairs directly from the aspects of the reserved-officials themselves,the concept and the systems.It proves the reserved-officials played an indispensable role in newly-aroused affairs of the Qing Dynasty.Meanwhile,the emerge of great amount of newly-aroused affairs accelerated the professional disintegration and social mobility,resulted in a certain amount of reserved-officials became the first professional talents in politics and laws.Chapter 5 lays emphasis on the relationship between the reserved-officials group and the deterioration of the officials and gentries of late Qing Dynasty.It is believed the negative influence the reserved-officials cast on late Qing Dynasty's administration of officials can primarily be seen on the following four aspects.Firstly,large quantities of illegal system in practice produced impact on the formation of legal appointing system;secondly,the phenomenon of low quality of the reserved -officials and administrative imbecility are common and obvious;thirdly,in arranging and dispatching the reserved-officials,bribery,relationship net,fawn on and abusing power were common which had a harmful influence on officialdom atmosphere;fourthly,during the process of going for their affairs,the reserved-officials took advantage of rare opportunities securing belongings by force and trickery.This paper also analyzes the essential reasons of the phenomenon that the reserved-officials commonly focused on obtaining their selfish interest and had harmful influence on administration of affairs from the following aspects.They are the personal qualities and political motive of the reserved-officials,the conflict between the number and scale of the reserved-officials and formal and dispatching positions,the winding convey of personal value objective and the serious problem of late Qing Dynasty's systems.Chapter 6 discusses the overstaff of the reserved-officials,and their number exceeds the demand of society which had fundamental influence on the politics and society of the late Qing Dynasty and it became an unconquered political and social problem which was a converging point of all sorts of conflicts of late Qing Dynasty.Considering this,the officials and gentries of late Qing Dynasty put forward different suggestion to solve the problem of reserved-overstaffed officials,and this paper also makes some statement and evaluation on these thoughts and standpoints.The central and local government of late Qing Dynasty made some efforts in adjustment of various aspects as well,but the result was very limited.Especially in the last stage of Qing Dynasty,the Qing government took drastic measures in the so-called New Political Reform,however the consequence was the old problems unsolved,with news problem aroused.The problem of reserved-overstaffed officials unconquered originated from the autocratic system itself and the backward ideologies.During Qing Dynasty,the reserved-officials acting as a supplementary role of incumbent officials has already existed.Most of them participated in central and local governmental affairs in deputy and dispatching ways and the social group was not ignored in bureaucratic stratum.This paper compensates the lack of studies of the reserved-officials of Qing Dynasty and their group researches, widens the researching areas of social groups,and furthermore explores the characteristics and regularities of social transformations,depicts various features and images of the reserved-officials group,and gives them an impartial evaluation.It investigates the personnel system of the reserved -officials and the reserved-officials groups,summarizes the ideas of officials and gentries reforms on solving the problem of reserved-overstaffed officials,and concludes the reasonable factors of these ideas.This paper also analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of appointed officials of the late Qing Dynasty,administrative systems,reforms of administration of officials which can be used as important historical reference to the China's reform and development in the process of social transformation.