The Impact Of Confidential Memorial On Recommending Talents In Yongzheng Dynasty

At the beginning of his reign, Emperor Yongzheng was very eager for people oftalent to help him strengthen the centralization of power. Therefore he followed theprevious policy of confidential memorial to the throne as one of the important channelsfor selecting talent and promoted more regulations about recommending talent throughthis channel. This article will analyze confidential memorial’s unique influence totalent selection from the following three aspects.The first chapter mainly focuses on the positive influence. First of all, comparedwith the routine selection system, confidential memorial was more efficient due to itsconvenience of the process and the flexibility of the time, which greatly upgraded theefficiency of selecting talent. Second, the confidential memorial could avoid theevading policy and the restrictions to people’s qualification and nationality. Finally,this channel conveyed considerable personnel information to Emperor Yongzheng,enhanced the appointment right of local governors to balance Official Department’spower in local regions, and therefore further strengthened and stabilized EmperorYongzheng’s authority.The second chapter mainly focuses on the negative influence. Firstly, there weremany limitations to memorial’s content, and talent recommendation heavily relied onofficials’ subjective opinion. Secondly, the policy provided potential opportunity forofficials to play favoritism and commit irregularities.The third chapter mainly analyzes the conflicts and coordination between thememorial policy and the routine selection system. These two channels were theindispensably key tools with respective advantages and disadvantages for EmperorYongzheng to select talent. The co-existence led to inevitable conflicts, but meanwhile,they had a unified intention of autocratic imperial power. Under the autocratic imperialpower’s control, these two channels complemented each other and ran in order.