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The Political System of Imperial China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Harold Scott Quigley
Harold Scott Quigley*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

For more than two thousand years the government of China exhibited, in the main, the elements which characterized it when, in the reign of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti (221–209 B.C.), feudalism was abolished and a centralized system inaugurated. Through successive dynasties the changes introduced were in matters of detail. These facts admonish to unusual caution in the accepttance of the present system at its face value. “Republic,” “president,” “cabinet,” “parliament,” “courts,” “democracy,” —these are titles of Western institutions which continued to stand for the corresponding institutions in China when the latter were established upon the model of the former. Even in Western states the meaning of these terms varies, as does their application in actual government. It would be strange if a decade of republicanism in China had evolved a political organization which still remains largely an ideal among nations which have spent centuries of effort toward its attainment. New terms are applied more readily than old ways are altered. Different clothes may be a disguise, not a sure gauge of habitat or occupation. The more one strives to understand present political forces in China, the more is he driven to study the old régime.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , November 1923 , pp. 551 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1923

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References

1 Translation by Legge, , Chinese Classics, Vol. V.Google Scholar

2 Yen, H. L., A Survey of Constitutional Development in China (New York, 1911), p. 72Google Scholar; Cheng, S. G., Modern China (Oxford, 1919), p. 3Google Scholar; Tyau, M. T. Z., China's New Constitution and International Problems (Shanghai, 1918), pp. 3–6.Google Scholar

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4 Mayers, W. F., The Chinese Government, 3rd ed. (Shanghai, 1897), p. 12.Google Scholar

5 Smith, A. H., Chinese Characteristics (New York, 1894), p. 113.Google Scholar

6 Brief descriptions of the Manchu “Banner” organization are given by Parker, E. H., in China, 2nd ed. (New York, 1917), Ch. XIIIGoogle Scholar, and by Morse, H. B., The Trade and Administration of China, rev. ed. (Shanghai, 1913), pp. 61–66.Google Scholar

7 For an example of plain speaking which cost a Censor his life see Bland, and Backhouse, , Annals and Memoirs, pp. 68–72Google Scholar; see also the valedictory memorial of Wu K'o-tu to the Empress Dowager, T'zu Hsi, in Bland, and Backhouse, , China under the Empress Dowager, pp. 95–99.Google Scholar

8 See article entitled “The Chinese Judiciary,” by Chang, Y. C., in the Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. II (Dec., 1917), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar Mr. Chang quotes the Book of Records to the effect that “a sentence before being passed has to be referred to and approved by some assessors or jurors to be selected from amongst the populace;” from the Book of Rites that “sentences involving capital punishment should be passed with the advice of the ministers, the minor officials or the people.”

9 Mr. Chang's article contains a concise and clear account of the development of the judicial system from the earliest times.

10 China under the Empress Dowager, p. 158.

11 Morse, H. B., The Gilds of China (London, 1909).Google Scholar

12 Leong, Y. K., and T'ao, L. K., Village and Town Life in China (London, 1915), Ch. 1.Google Scholar

13 Smith, A. H., Village Life in China (New York, 1899), Ch. 21.Google Scholar

14 A comprehensive treatment of the Chinese district magistrate by Byron Brenan, C.M.G., will be found in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXXII, 1897–1898, pp. 36–65.Google Scholar

15 Mayers, pp. 48–51.

16 Article above cited: “The Chinese Judiciary,” p. 78.

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