The Cultural Essence Of Economic Crimes Of Government Officials In The Western Han Dynasty

Although with repeatedly effort , the rottenness which is mainly manifested as economic crimes of government officials not only can not be eliminated but are becoming more and more serious, causes enormous losses to our country and people, and makes substantial damage to the international figure of the Chinese government. The emergence of this phenomenon ascribes much to Chinese traditional culture. Government officials, economic crimes are common in Chinese feudal society. After various studies, almost all scholars take the autocracy as the basic reason for this. In the author's opinion, every cultural phenomenon includes many interactive elements, so she thinks there are many other elements which are as important as autocracy in causing this phenomenon. This paper chooses the Western Han Dynasty as feudal society's epitome. By rearching the elements which cause the officials economic crimes and putting forward some proposals on overcoming them, the author hopes to do some good to today's anti-corruption struggle.The paper includes four parts. The first part is introductory. It mainly talks about the reason why the author chooses the theme. It aims to get a better knowing and understanding of the historical essence so as to make some devotion on today's anti-corruption struggle.The second part talks about the basic condition of economic crimes of government officials in the western Han Dynasty and the government's anti-measures. Officials took various steps to make illegal money. In spite of rigorous laws and the supervisory system, malfeasants still came one by one .The third part mainly talks about the elements that cause officials' economic crimes. There are two ruling elements. One is the influence of the way in which early state arised .There are two steps, charity for attracting people and family ruling the country. The first one determined that the political working system in early China to be being-model politics, which cultivated a following upper-levels social psychology, that is the upper level leaders corrupted , the lower level officials would rotten . the second one means that the country was ruled by one family . the emperor who had legiclative power judicial power and administrative power in his hand was the root of rottenness. Because officials got their powers from superior, they must use money and goods exchanging for obtaining and strengthening power . The other dominantelement was the effect of "official being the highest standard concept" on the traditional culture. Chinese people valued happiness,Longevity, Property, official salary highly .Being an official was the best way to realize these aims .Officials used official position as a mean to obtain money and goods, so if they had chances they would use their power illegally to make money . In bureaucrat system ,the emperor and the officials each used the other for his own ends. Officials always used their power to obtain illegal money and goods, becanse their political position and power could be deprived of by the emperor at any time . There are many other elements restricted by the preceding two :1. Law As law was a mean by which the emperor rule his country, he could take many malfeasants he doted on under his wing . Malfeasants who had higher level officials as their powerful backing could escape the net of justice too. For money and goods, the judges always deciberately misinterpreted laws to frame up innocent person or absolve guilty person .2.supervision. Although supervisory system could restrain rottenness to some extent, it was only a piece of white paper to emperor's relatives and friends. If the fatuous emperor persecuted integrity supervisor, weakness of the supervisory system was a matter of course . The higher levels supervising the lower levels made their collusion easy . the supervisors always colluded with their target to make illegal money. 3.The disadvantage of local administrative working system. In the western Han Dynasty, the transmition of central decree to local government and the feedback of...