Power for a Price

Obtaining a government position was the key to success in late imperial China. An official of the state bureaucracy reaped social status, local (and possibly national) influence, and generally favorable life prospects; he could also acquire wealth, sometimes in vast amounts. For these reasons, individuals and families sought to ensure either themselves or their male heirs held an official post, often plotting for generations to not only secure such positions but also to continue to populate them long into the future. Scholars have traditionally maintained that the path necessitated sitting for the civil service examinations and that approaches consisted chiefly of preparing male offspring to excel in the exam. The book under review here shows, however, that the exams were just one part of such strategies: beginning in the Ming and accelerating in the Qing, purchasing an office from the state (juanna) figured prominently into the calculus.It is not that office purchase replaced the civil service exam; rather, Zhang argues, purchase complemented it. Actors made use of all options available to them in obtaining a bureaucratic position, which often included taking and passing the exam, sometimes at the highest levels, and simultaneously purchasing a position. “One of the most important functions of office purchase,” Zhang writes, “was to place an individual in office earlier than he would have been able to through other means” (120). By the mid-Qing it had become increasingly harder to not only pass the exam but also to obtain a post even after obtaining the highest-level degree. By the numbers, somewhere on the order of around three hundred jinshi were awarded at every sitting, making the graduate eligible for one of the only twenty thousand official positions empire-wide. Yet an even smaller number of job openings was available in any given year; thus, thousands of degree holders in line for office found themselves waiting for years or sometimes decades for an appointment or promotion. The purchase of a position could speed up that process. As Zhang puts it, “Office purchase offered, for a fee, a fast-track method in career progression” (57).Consider the case of the Jiang lineage of Changshu county in Jiangsu, one of many that Zhang has dug up from the archives. Beginning in the late Ming, the Jiang family began to produce holders of the highest degree (jinshi), and within four generations the family produced eight jinshi and three juren, many of whom held high office. Jiang Tingxi, for example, was a grand secretary under Yongzheng and his brother Jiang Chenxi was a governor-general. The former's son, Pu, was also appointed a grand secretary, and one of the latter's sons served as a board bureau chief and another as a prefect. Despite their success in exams and bureaucratic career, the family still found it expedient to purchase offices. Pu's son Ciqi held a lower degree and purchased the office of prefect before working his way up to vice president of the Board of Revenue; his brother Yuanshu obtained a juren but purchased the post of Taiwan prefect. The next generation also continued to purchase offices, buying magistrate and prefect positions (162–64). As Zhang notes, “[The family patriarch] purchased office for his sons not because they were failures in the examination, but rather because he wanted them to be officials” (188).Through such cases Zhang reconstructs the history of the institution of office purchase in the Qing, often to the point of exhaustion. The book is meticulous and thoroughly researched: the seven chapters touch on nearly every aspect of office purchase, from individuals’ careers and lineages’ usage to the motivations and misgivings of different Qing emperors. The book maps out the process of purchase and looks in detail at the lists of offices available for purchase published periodically by the state; it explores the fees charged and how the money was allocated; the final chapter even examines how contemporaries understood office purchase, detailing their praise and criticism. Such comprehensiveness sets a research standard, underscoring the importance of the practice and its institutional arrangements in the Qing; it also produces a provocation: How does the political and social fact of office purchase lead to a rethinking of the reproduction of late imperial society? Whereas scholars of the Ming and Qing often subordinate wealth to status and emphasize exams and offices as the path to economic and social power, Zhang's study forces a reconsideration of this relationship, perhaps even turning it on its head.The scope of these implications remains to be worked out. What is clear is that the past few generations of historians have drawn a line of inquiry on the fate of late imperial China that runs from the growth of commercial society in the Ming to the withdrawal of elite support for the state and the fall of the Qing, illuminating an irresolvable contradiction faced by contemporary actors: an ideal and meritocratic society privileging learning and duty versus the influence of financial wealth. Zhang's study not only sheds new light on this contradiction but also shows how adjustments were made to the political system to both account for and absorb an emergent propertied class

Advertising · Business · China · Economics · Power (physics) · Chinese history and philosophy · History

• The Quandary of Proliferating Intermediaries

  Open Access•Choon Hwee Koh•International Journal Middle East…•2025

  Add to list

• The Political Economy of China's Imperial Examination System

  Open Access•Erik Wang, Erik H Wang et al.•The Political Economy of China's…•2025

  Add to list

• Bureaucracy from the Bottom Up

  Open Access•Tristan G Brown•Journal of Chinese History•2025

  Add to list