Scamming the Purchase-of-Rank System in Qing China

The Qing purchase-of-rank (juanna) system was a site of criminal activities including forgery of jiansheng (imperial university student) licenses and similar credentials associated with the cult of Confucius. Case records reflect the intersection of status hunger, market networks, and political authority. Typical offenders were small-time middlemen who promised to make contributions by proxy but kept the silver and gave their victims bogus licenses. The state needed revenue and could not tolerate forgery of official documents, a serious political transgression. Crime narratives and sentencing recommendations reflected both imperatives, often depicting contributors as ignorant victims and counterfeiters as scoundrels who deserved death.