On The Disciplinary Systems Against Government Officials Of Qing Dynasty

The disciplinary systems against government officials of the Qing Dynasty was the one established by the imperial court of Qing for punishing the civilian officials who made mistakes and committed crimes. It consisted of two parts with one, formulating the disciplinary laws and regulations against the officials, and the other, being a series of the punishment scope, measures and procedures provided by these laws and regulations.The disciplinary laws comprised two sections, the administrative disciplinary law and the criminal disciplinary law. The administrative disciplinary law was mainly constituted of The Collects of the Canons of Great Qing, under which all the penalizing rules and regulations against the officials were enacted, and "Rules and Statutes", which was a direct official stipulations on how punishing the civilian officials making administrative mistakes and had two branches, the Punishment Statutes of the Six Ministries made by the imperial order and the Punishment Statutes of the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs made by the imperial order. The criminal disciplinary law took the law principles and specific regulations of Great Qing as its fundamental shape. Although the administrative disciplinary law and the criminal disciplinary law were independent in terms of different documents and being suitable for different characters of the wrongs, the both were interdependent each other and were involved with entity law and procedure law so that combination of the both formed an integral law system disciplining the officials.The contents of disciplining the officials were extremely comprehensive. The disciplinary range was from moral conducts, abilities, official achievements, etc to age,health and so on. There were two categories of disciplinary ways, executive sanction and penalty sanction. In the process dealing with these cases, the supreme authority was always held in the emperors, and no organs or persons might do something without authorization.On the whole, the disciplinary systems against government officials of the Qing Dynasty are of feudalism, which is necessary for their high concentration of the legislations and the executive authority, and striking innate purpose to defend the domination of the landlord class on the basis of traditional, natural economy. Their feudal nature did not change, although the rectified plan of the disciplinary laws and regulations emerged, towards the end of Qing dynasty, with laying down disciplinary solutions respectively against civilian officials and against judges and the ideal to set up an administrative judicial organ, and, particularly, having make a draft of New Criminal Law of Great Qing and establishment of The executive 'cabinet' unlimited in the use of personnel, which appeared that the disciplinary systems had an evolutionary trend towards modern disciplinary systems against officials.The disciplinary systems against government officials of the Qing Dynasty stands in vivid contrast against the Western or modern disciplinary systems against officials, being identical with features, such as high concentration of the disciplinary authority, executive sanction and penalty sanction being independent as well as joined up, different measures of penalties against criminalities identical with each other according to class difference, investigating and affixing criminals or wrongdoers responsibility to and punishing the persons related to or the acquaintances with the criminals, binding together punishment and teaching, and so on.The disciplinary systems against government officials of the Qing Dynasty carried forward and perfected Chinese disciplinary systems against government officials through the ages, based on the domination need and officialism condition of the Qing Dynasty. The Collects of the Canons under the times of four emperors, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing, and The Collect of the Canons under the day of the emperor, Guangxu, acclaimed as "the most systematic and complete one of feudal administrative codes in the world, along with the standardization and perfection of "Statutes" provided with "the nature of edicts" outside canons and laws, particularly, formulation of the separate regulations disciplining officials, the Punishment Statutes of...