4.4: The Bureaucracy

But while Huo was in office, he had made decisions about governing.⁴ In Han times, dynastic property was distinguished from public, government property, and most governance was in the hands of the bureaucracy. Recruitment of government officials in Han times was nominally, and in practice partly, meritocratic. Senior officials in the commanderies and kingdoms were ordered to send talented or virtuous men to the capital for evaluation and appointment. Initially this was an ad hoc proceeding, but by about 50 BC there was a set quota: for every 200,000 inhabitants, the governor of a commandery (a group of counties) was to send in one candidate who was locally admired for his virtue and filiality and 6 to 10 who understood literature. Upon arrival at the capital, the recommended men went through some kind of assessment, possibly an examination testing reading and writing. Those who passed joined a pool of men – at times a thousand of them – awaiting appointment to a vacant position. When a post opened up, one would be appointed, perhaps assigned duties in a capital ministry of the central government, perhaps sent out thousands of miles away to take over a county.

Map G. The Han empire at its greatest extent, about 50 BC, with peoples and places mentioned in the text.

The officials of the central government consulted with the emperor or empress to determine policy. Along with senior advisors, two top officials coordinated government, receiving reports from below (memorials) and sending out orders (edicts) in the emperor’s name to manage the nine ministries and numerous smaller offices that made up the structure of government. The ministries were responsible for: superintending the imperial household; setting up and carrying out sacrifices to the various deities and ancestors, observing stars and other astronomical phenomena and creating the calendar to regulate agricultural production; writing law and administering punishments for crime; foreign relations; collecting and recording tax revenue; maintaining granaries, armories and treasuries; determining expenditures on public works projects, defense and other so on; and maintaining records of the hundreds of members of the imperial family with their titles and lands and the degrees of precedence. These were the central ministries.

The whole territory of the empire as it was conquered was divided, eventually, into about 100 commanderies and about 1300 counties headed by a centrally-appointed magistrate, who in turn appointed officials to assist in managing the 10,000 to 2,000,000 people of a county. County magistrates, closely supervised by the central government, arrested and punished criminals, deserters, and those who sheltered them, according to the standard legal code; collected a standard amount of tax in grain, cloth and cash; called up labor gangs as needed for public works; drafted soldiers; maintained roads, canals, and granaries; and kept up the postal system so that orders and reports could go back and forth from locality to capital.

All together, the Han government included about 130,000 bureaucrats on salary – ten times the number of officials in the contemporaneous Roman empire – plus their staffs of 10-20 men, also on salary. Officials were promoted and demoted on the basis of their achievements and honesty. They were paid according to the rank of their post, in grain, silk, cash. They rested one day in five, and could take sick leave; those who served for a long time might get a pension. They were also rewarded with high-status displays, since they represented imperial authority. Each rank had a set color for its special robes and caps. Their offices were large compounds of buildings, walled and symmetrically arranged. Their comings and goings were marked by bells and drums, and the streets were cleared for them to pass. They interacted with one another according to strict rules of protocol, and were entitled to deference from the population, and to respect from the emperor as well. These rituals at the county level echoed those at court, and continued, with variations, throughout the imperial period.

Since the government was a public possession, no longer held by feudal lords, the concept of “corruption” – taking what belonged to the public, or unjustly deciding criminal cases – became thinkable. Many officials benefited from opportunities to corruptly feather their own nests – especially in the southern port of today’s Guangzhou, far from central control, and which welcomed a maritime trade in pearls, rhinoceros horns, sea turtles, and elephant tusks and other exotic goods. Port officials in the south, far from capital control, could profit immensely. But other officials wore themselves out in the service of government, allowing the Han to last for 400 years despite shenanigans at court.

Han continued the Legalist ideology of equality before the law (except for the royal family), as well as its harsh punishments. In 206, having taken the capital, Liu Bang announced:

Elders, you have long endured the brutal Qin laws. The entire families of those convicted of slandering the emperor were killed, and those convicted of plotting were executed … [Now] the Law will have only three sections: one who kills another will die, and one who harms another or steals will pay recompense for the crime. The rest of the Qin laws are all done away with.⁵

Such simple laws, however, could not possibly manage a whole empire, so in 195 BC, the Qin code was restored, with just a few changes. Likewise, thirty years later, Emperor Wen replaced mutilating punishments – facial tattooing, cutting off the nose, or amputating a foot or hand – with beating or penal labor. This was good for his reputation, but in fact more people died from beatings than from the older punishments. Still, in contrast with the feudal distinctions by rank at birth, the law applied to all.

Figure 4.3. Latter Han silk textile woven with animals climbing cloudlike mountains and textual inscription honoring the lord of a palace. Warp-faced compound plain weave, about 9” x 18”. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Commoners could petition about mistreatment by officials. A government branch called the Censorate or Ministry of Investigation kept an eye on all branches of government, up to and including the emperor himself. Justice for commoners could even be upheld against the emperor himself. One day, Emperor Wen’s cortege was passing, so a commoner hid under a bridge to obey the law that the roads be clear. Unfortunately, he popped up before the carriage had passed and startled the horses. Emperor Wen told the Minister of Justice to handle the case, but when the minister only levied a fine, the emperor angrily demanded a heavier punishment: he might have been hurt! The minister insisted that he had to follow the law. If the emperor could command an official to override the legal process, everyone would hear of it and they would no longer respect the law themselves.