The Research On Liu Shao's Thought Of Talents

As one of the most important factors in government administration, human resources have been always taking seriously by government official. From the long Chinese history, we can find many experiences and methods of identifying and appointing talent. And Liu Shao's thought of talents is most systematic and representative among all of them. As far as we know, his works Renwuzhi is the first book on talents in China, which is a complete collection of experiences and methods.Liu Shao's thoughts about identifying and appointing talents are based on schools of Ru, Fa, Ming, Dao and Yinyang and concerned with many fundamental problems of modern government administration including sorting, selecting, employing, appointing and self-learning of talented people. These methods constitute a complete system of talents. He takes personality and competency as the criteria of sorting. As for criteria of employment, he accepts and develops thoughts of Ru, and thinks virtues are as important as competency. Moreover, according to him, different kinds of people have different competency, which shows that we should insist on the principle of appointing by proper competency.As the core of Liu Shao's thoughts about talents, identifying is especially insightful, which contains practical method such as "Eight Observations" and "Five Reviews". These methods are based on many psychological insights and their feature is to review human behavior under state of unconsciousness.As we know, civil servant system of China has a history of only about ten years. This system has many limitations. Although Liu Shao is in different historical and social contexts from ours, his thoughts still have great significance in the course of selecting government officials.