Ch'ing Officials and Emperors: (Oral comments presented at the 1968 AAS Conference)

24 CH 'ING OFFICIALS AND EMPERORS (Oral comments presented at the 1968 AAS Conference) By Lawrence D. Kessler We have been treated to three fine papers on an exceedingly complicated and important subject -- the relations between Ch'ing emperors and their officials. In my remarks, I want to pick out some common themes of these papers and comment on them briefly. First of all, it is to be noted that in each case, the official (or officials) in the relationship were operating at the provincial or local level and not in the central government. As agents. of imperial authority outside the capital, their relations with the emperor and how they acted in his name were perhaps more significant than if they were officials in the central government, which came under the direct gaze of the emperor. A common concern of each paper was to determine on what level the emperor-official relationship existed. Did they interact on a human and personal basis? Or as types? As expected, the relationship between an emperor and the thousands of district magistrates described by Mr. Watt could not be a personal one, even though the emperor on occasion injected human feelings of sympathy and compassion into an otherwise bleak relationship. In addition to being impersonal, their relationship was also symbolic, being expressed in the familiar familial cliches. In Mr. Spence's study of Chang Po-hsing's career, it is even clearer how emperor and official could interact not as individuals but as types. K'ang-hsi was playing the "Confucian monarch" to Chang's "upright official. " K'ang-hsi placed the relationship with Chang on a symbolic rather than personal plane, despite the very extreme personal crises Chang was experiencing. It is only in the relationship of Yungcheng and Ortai, both Manchus, that we get beyond the realm of types. Although the exact nature of their personal relationship is not known -Yung -cheng's weeping at the sight of Ortai's memorials is nothing more than conventional historiographical rhetoric -- still the manifestations are clear. Ortai had the emperor's confidence enough to push ahead with the kai-t'u kuei-liu policy in the Southwest despite Yung-cheng's reservations and to escape his wrath when the policy precipitated trouble as Yung-cheng feared. 25 The imperial-official relationship, as Mr. Watt pointed out, was hardly a two-way street; no official could have much leverage compared to that available to emperors. One way to get such leverage, I would suggest, would be to manage the flow of information to the emperor . Ortai apparently accomplished this to some extent in making extravagent claims for the success of his reform projects to Yung-cheng. Mr. Watt's paper reminds us of the fact that both Legalist and Confucian values infused the Chinese system of government and law, that a constant tension existed between Confucianism as a morally oriented body of thought and the Legalist view of the state as a power structure. Yung-cheng solved the issue by embracing both rule by man and rule by law. He felt that administrative regulations of the control system were as essential as Confucian norms. In fact, as Watt expresses it in a very telling phrase, "Confucian values were applied within the framework of Legalist priorities. " The application of Confucian values themselves ("closeness to the people, " "promotion of Confucian morality, " etc.) was not very effective, but emperors at least took steps to mitigate Legalist strictures by imperial review of capital cases, redemption of grade demotions, imperial expressions of sympathy for his officials, etc. I would sum up this point by saying, "scratch a Confusian monarch and you will find a Legalist ruler. " I think the same principle, if it can be called such, has to be applied to the K'ang-hsi emperor in what superficially seems like a bizarre relationship with a provincial official whose personal and administrative failures were obvious. Why did K'ang-hsi continue to force Chang Pohsing into an increasingly complex and unhappy public life? Spence suggests that the answer lies in the role K'ang-hsi had assumed -- that of the good Confucian monarch rewarding integrity and virtue. I am sure...