| It has been a long time since China came into being. As we know, China has a continuous history about five thousand years and also has a long history of its official system, which is indispensable to maintain the state machinery, safeguard the political operation and the development of economy and culture in ancient time. An important component part of this system is what is reduced to merit system whose objective is to drain away the mud and bring in fresh water. Merit system, just as its name implies, is to apply administerial evaluation and responsibility supervision to every official by confirming their administerial function, duty and their contribution to the state. In a sense, merit system is to re-deepen and re-inspect the process of assessing and selecting officials; in other words, it is a kind of system to maintain the order of the collectivity of officials, to put the administration of officials in order and to enhance the quality of the officials by means of administerial inspection.In ancient China, the promotion, demotion, rewards and punishment of officials, in different grades, were connected with the result of inspection according to the merit system. The election and appointment of officials was tied up with achievement -checking. Just as written in Shangshu, the act of "going on a tour of inspection " appeared as early as in days of Shun. Though its development in both Qin and Han dynasties, merit system had come to maturity and formed a rigorous organization system, inspection standard and brought forward different requirements to officials in different positions during Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. Classified inspection and the method of connecting inspection with rewards and punishment were developed at the same time, which had some positive effect on praising good, blaming evil and rewarding diligence, punishing sloth, also on encouraging officials to be assiduous and clean-fingered. However, the formation of the merit system of ancient China did go with the development of feudality under the domination of paramountcy of the imperial power. So it is inevitable that this system does have some limitations. Although quite a few dynasties had established regulations or laws of the merit system, it is rather difficult to carry out without fear or favor in practice. The result of the inspection often depended on the individual inclination of the emperor or the officials in charge, which resulted in the serious departure from the truth. Make a comprehensive view of the merit system of ancient China and we can see that although it contained quite a few defects, its positive effect is unable to neglect. This article is to make a systematic investigation into the merit system in several aspects as follows:Part 1 .-Introduction. This part summarizes the development of the merit system of ancient China in general.Part 2: The directive ideology of the merit system of ancient China. The fact that the feudalistic imperial power strictly controlled officials' thought and behavior is the primary content of the directive ideology of the merit system of ancient ChinaPart 3: The concrete content of the merit system of ancient China. This part is to expatiate on the concrete content of the merit system in four aspects: material institutions and content of the merit system of ancient China, classification of theresults of the inspection and measures to prevent the departure from the truth of the inspection.Part 4: The characteristics of the merit system of ancient China. This part is to mainly discuss the characteristics of the merit system in three aspects: 1) It formed and matured at a rather early time. 2) It was institutionalized during its formation. 3) It was from bottom to top in procedure and controlled by the imperial power.Part 5: Evaluation to the merit system of ancient China and its use for reference for contemporary society. Firstly, the formation and maturity of this system positively promoted the development of feudality in ancient China. Secondly, due to its inne... |
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