Theory Of The Governace System Of The Song Dynasty Official Corruption

This paper makes a study on the governance system of official corruption in Song dynasty. Official corruption refers to by embezzling, filching, cheating or other illegal means to gain the public property through abusing authority. Corruption is illegal and against the law. It’s a kind of criminal act that the official seeks for his own interests by misusing his public power. Official corruption affect the governing badly and degrade the social conduct. It sets obstacles in the normal operation of the state institution, and even lead to political turmoil, imperils the dominant position of the absolute monarchy.Every dynasty should take it seriously to combat corruption and uphold integrity. The social stability would not be possible if corruption could not be restrained, not to mention the development and the social progress. Corruption and anti-corruption run through Chinese five-thousand-year long history, and in some way drive the advance of history.Through out the 320-year history of Song dynasty, we can see that it’s full of corruption records. Official corruption becomes more and more violent in addition to some special period. It involves in all orders of society, and the devil claws stretched to all social fields, which brings serious social problems. The anti-corruption governing system of Song dynasty is the continuation of that of Tang dynasty, which also develops and improves and forms its own features. Generally speaking, the anti-corruption governing system of Song dynasty is praiseworthy. The anti-corruption governing includes punishing corruption and praising probity. Punishing corruption and praising probity are just means, which aims to cultivate an official team with high-quality. Anti-corruption is a great project. Only depending on any measure or any policy would not make sense. It needs a reasonable institution construction system, including the interaction between different institutions, such as the official appointment, evaluation monitoring and etc. Not only negative punishment is needed, positive prevention like upholding probity, preferential treatment etc are also very essential. In all, punishing and prevention or praising should be combined so that the possibility to stop corruption could be increased.This paper will elaborate from several angles on Song dynasty governance system on anti-corruption, what achievement it gets and what it brings to the political development.The official corruption of Song dynasty is mainly serious in the fields of economy, military, administration of justice, monitoring, and the appointment and managing of officials. The anti-corruption strength of Song dynasty starts from strong and gradually grows weak. The founder of Song dynasty-Empire Taizu and the successor Empire Taizong are both very strict on anti-corruption. When it comes to Empire Renzong, the strength of anti-corruption is gradually reduced, and it becomes weaker and weaker from Empire Shenzong, Zhezong to South Song dynasty.The paper breaks into four parts. The theoretical framework is as following: the first part gives an overview of the Song Dynasty official corruption and offers a definition of official corruption and makes a conclusion of means of official corruption according to the analysis of the punishment for official corruption in Song Dynasty law or rules. The second part analyzes the causes for official corruption phenomenon from aspects of the general mood of society, the official salary mechanism, the official supervisory system,the government legislation to punish corrupt official and so on.The third part introduces the construction of the Song Dynasty official corruption preventive system. This part is divided into six chapters, firstly,it introduces punishment for official corruption in the law and legislation of Song Dynasty,then introduces the official supervisory mechanism,in the next,it introduces the evaluation mechanism of officials. The fourth chapter is about the corrupt official avoidance system. In the final, it describes the practice of punishment for the official corruption of Song Dynasty and the anti-corruption measures. In the fourth part, it makes a evaluation of Song dynasty anti-corruption system, mainly from three aspects:achievements, deficiency and enlightenment for the following dynasty.