The Everlasting Empire (21 page)

Paradoxically, then, a radical dissenter was in an advantageous situation when facing the throne insofar as his major goal was not to achieve substantial political change but to preserve his high reputation. Yet it would be grossly unfair of us to reduce the suicidal courage of Hai Rui and his ilk to the selfish desire to enshrine themselves in the Confucian pantheon. From a broader perspective it is clear that by boldly defying the emperor they served their stratum as a whole. By willingly facing martyrdom in the name of their moral principles, these men were reasserting the position of the literati as the exclusive bearers of the True Way, thereby denying the throne the position of moral leadership. Hai Rui could not predict whether or not he would be executed by Shizong; but he knew perfectly well that his memorandum would undermine the emperor’s pretensions to sagacity, which Shizong took quite seriously. Other radical critics pursued similar goals. By dismantling the aura of the monarch’s infallibility, they reconfirmed the position of the literati as the ruler’s guides, and decisively altered the balance of power between the ruler and the officials in favor of the latter.

We are fully justified in hailing the literati’s courage and their unwavering commitment to the True Way; but the story does not end here. The Way of the literati was the way of monarchism, of the ruler-centered polity, and as such it presupposed the utmost loyalty to the ruler—even when that ruler was one whom they bitterly criticized. Criticism and martyrdom were acceptable; but overall defiance of the ruler’s power—definitely not. Hence, a few decades after the Hai Rui affair, when the dissenting members of the so-called Donglin faction were framed by the notorious eunuch Wei Zhongxian (d. 1627), they did their best to quell popular unrest in response to their arrest, even though they knew well that they were on their way to Beijing for sure execution. Their loyal death amid awful tortures, no less than their courageous enumeration of the crimes of Wei Zhongxian (and by implication of his patron, Ming Xizong [r. 16211627]), ensured their posthumous fame as paradigmatic “superior men.”
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Hai Rui’s behavior may serve as another illustration of this norm. After months in prison, Hai was treated to an exceptionally good meal, which he ate calmly, believing that it marked the eve of his execution. Then, a

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warden congratulated him: the emperor was dead, and a new incumbent was expected to release Hai Rui and reemploy him. Having heard the news, Hai Rui broke into tears, crying bitterly until he vomited.
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One can cynically dismiss Hai Rui’s weeping or even the Donglin members’ martyrdom as a careful performance of their roles in the grand historical spectacle;
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but I believe that these acts, even if somewhat melodramatic, do reflect something of the genuine feelings of the men involved. The Chinese literati—even the most critical-minded of them—remained firmly committed to the ruler-centered order. Even when Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and other so-called Neo-Confucians attempted to develop an alternative path to self-realization outside government service (see chapter 4), they never abandoned the expectation that a future enlightened ruler would employ them and allow them, finally, to implement their Way. This yearning for the True Monarch was shared by all major intellectuals, including Zhu Xi, who denied the sagacity of all rulers since the legendary sages of the remote past, or Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), who proclaimed that “the ruler is the one who does the greatest harm to All-under-Heaven.”
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It can be considered the essential common belief of China’s intellectuals.

This understanding elucidates tragic dimensions of Chinese martyrdom. Unlike religious martyrs elsewhere, whose transcendental beliefs lead them to defy mundane authority, the Confucian martyrs acted out of a sense of deep commitment to the same monarchs whom they defied. Even after millennia of frustrations and tragedies, these clear-sighted critics of individual emperors remained unwaveringly committed to the monarchy as the only conceivable political system in which their moral vision could be realized. Hai Rui, weeping inconsolably over the death of an emperor whom he considered incompetent, epitomizes the intellectuals’ bitter love for the throne. This immense and tragic tension between commitments to the Ruler and to the Way remained the single most important determinant of Chinese intellectuals’ life until the very end of the imperial era.

EPILOGUE: SCHOLAR-OFFICIALS AND THE EMPIRE’S LONGEVITY

My discussion up to this point has focused on the complex interactions between the literati and the throne, which I analyzed primarily from the point of view of the lofty-minded intellectuals. We have seen that their voluntary attachment to the throne was a double-edged sword: it empowered their stratum as a whole by making it indispensable for the rulers, but it also generated frustration and bitterness for generations of literati. It is time now to analyze the broader implications of the intellectuals’

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political commitment for the functioning of the imperial order and for the empire’s longevity.

The stratum of scholar-officials, which dominated the empire’s political and intellectual scene for over two millennia, is peculiar to Chinese civilization. Bifurcation between spiritual and political authority is common in political cultures worldwide; but this was not the case in China. The same men who shaped the country’s cultural values were also its political leaders, responsible for its well-being. Although not all the intellectuals were officials, and not all the officials intellectuals, the hegemonic position of those who combined these two roles remained characteristic of the empire’s sociopolitical structure from its very inception. This combination of two sources of power in the hands of a single stratum became one of the important sources of the empire’s stability.
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The intellectuals’ political commitment had several positive impacts on the empire’s functioning. First, it provided the realm with a pool of well-trained public servants, who in childhood had begun to acquire the skills necessary to run the civil administration. Even if their training seems to many of us today—as it seemed to many imperial literati as well—too bookish and scholastic, it nevertheless brought into government service a large number of truly capable men, many of whom displayed remarkable resourcefulness in dealing with a variety of domestic and foreign challenges. Despite its manifold deficiencies, the imperial system of training and selection of officials produced countless civil servants whose abilities and dedication to the common good cannot be denied. While it is difficult to systematically compare the performance of a Chinese magistrate with that of his counterpart elsewhere, it seems that on average the Chinese empire was run by more professional and committed servants than was the case in most other premodern polities.

Second, the predominance of the literati among the officials contributed to a certain extent to the manageability of court life. Despite their occasional divisiveness, factionalism, and internal cleavages, the literati were generally inclined to resolve these differences in a “civilized” way— through mutual impeachments and legal means, rather than through taking up arms, as was the case, for instance, with many generals and tribal leaders in the court’s service. Although political divisions could be at times greatly damaging, and could even hasten dynastic collapse, as happened in the late years of the Northern Song and Ming dynasties, they rarely attained unmanageable proportions. On balance it seems that the cultural cohesiveness of the literati contributed toward bridging the differences rather than escalating them.
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Third, the literati played an important political role as a counterbalance to the excesses of monarchism. Their loyal criticism and willingness

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to remonstrate with the emperor served, even if inconclusively, to soften the monarch’s abuses. Moreover, as a rule, their criticism was not politically disruptive, because it was couched in the language of ultimate loyalty to the throne. Even the most resentful and disgruntled literati were not prone to rebel—which made them incomparably more reliable servants than other members of the emperor’s entourage, such as military officers or the emperor’s kin. This, in turn, made the emperors more receptive to the remonstrance of their intellectual aides than to other sources of criticism. Eventually, the combination of professionalism, political predictability, and loyalty turned the literati into the default choice of most emperors in staffing their officialdom.

Aside from these direct benefits, the intellectuals’ attachment to the imperial state and the formation of the “scholar-officials” stratum made another, deeper contribution to the empire’s stability. The literati, with their common educational background and common values, served as the pillar of the realm’s cultural unity, perpetuating it under a variety of challenging circumstances. Their determination to serve brought numerous literati to the courts of the most unlikely patrons: from peasant rebels to military adventurists to foreign conquerors. In these courts they often had to accept lowly positions, coexisting uneasily with outlaws, militarists, and alien tribesmen, and also incurred the derision of purists among their fellow literati, who refused to serve a “filthy” regime. Against these odds, the collaborationists pushed steadily for the accommodation of the newly established regime and its adaptation to the basic premises of Chinese political culture. It is due to their willingness to serve that the literati were able to contribute decisively toward the eventual “acculturation” of socially or ethnically “alien” regimes.

Finally, the literati, in their double role as bearers of the realm’s cultural tradition and its political leaders, enormously enhanced the imperial regime’s cultural prestige, and fortified the imperial political system’s hegemony in the minds of its subjects throughout the millennia. The intellectuals were the empire’s architects and custodians, and it was they who provided it with unparalleled cultural legitimacy. Even at times of crisis and disorder, when it seemed that the very foundations of the imperial polity had been irreversibly smashed, no alternatives to imperial rule were ever offered. Insofar as the stratum that determined right and wrong for the bulk of the population remained unwaveringly committed to the imperial political system, this system could withstand any domestic or foreign challenge, and could be resurrected after ages of the most woeful disorder and disintegration. It may be not a coincidence, then, that the end of the empire in the early twentieth century came shortly after the erstwhile intellectual consensus in its favor was shattered. Abandoned by

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its natural protectors, the empire fell with unbelievable ease, proving by the rapidity of its demise that throughout its history it had been primarily an intellectual rather than merely a sociopolitical construct, and that it owed its longevity overwhelmingly to the intellectuals, who designed it and ran it throughout the twenty-one centuries of its existence.

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CHAPTER 4
Local Elite

It is not difficult to govern: just do not offend grand families.
Whatever grand families admire, all the state admires;
whatever all the state admires, All-under-Heaven admires.
Thus, moral influence can abundantly fill in all within the
Four Seas.

—
Mengzi

MENGZI’S ASSERTION cited in the epigraph is a curious anachronism. It presupposes the existence of a socially and culturally powerful elite, on whose influence power-holders must depend to ensure smooth governance. This elite did indeed exist through the second third of the first millennium BCE, but by Mengzi’s time (fourth century BCE) it was vanishing, submerged by the increasingly powerful bureaucratic Warring State. Yet retrograde as it looks, Mengzi’s statement was also something of a prophecy: within a few centuries of his death the power of “grand families” would be duly resurrected, and they would play a crucial role in sociopolitical dynamics until the very end of the imperial age and beyond.

In this and the subsequent chapter, my narrative shifts from the imperial core to localities, and from the upper to the middle and lower levels of China’s sociopolitical pyramid. Away from the capital, in China, as in many other premodern polities, powerful local elites that wielded considerable social, economic, cultural, and at times political power in their communities served as an intermediary between the imperial state and the general populace. As such, the elites counterbalanced the power of the officialdom, and at times significant tension ensued between them and the imperial bureaucrats. Yet despite this tension and occasional conflicts of interest, the imperial officials and local elites gradually achieved a remarkable degree of cooperation and even complementarity. Through a variety of means, from co-optation and moral suasion to intimidation and occasional oppression, the bureaucracy succeeded in maintaining a tense but reasonably efficient modus vivendi with holders of local societal power. In what looks in retrospect like one of its major achievements, the imperial state turned local elites from potential competitors into its agents and reliable guardians of the imperial order. This success came at a price, and tensions between local elites and the officialdom persisted through

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out the imperial millennia; but the overall contribution of the former to the imperial polity’s perpetuation, especially in the late imperial period, is undeniable.
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Of the manifold means by which local elites were co-opted, the imperial examinations are justifiably singled out as the most important, especially for the second imperial millennium. It was once common to identify local elites—which are frequently dubbed “gentry” in Western scholarship—with degree holders from the imperial examinations. Recent studies have shown that this identification is imprecise: in different times and localities wealth, pedigree, military power, or religious and technical expertise were far more important than an examination degree in ensuring local power and prestige.
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Yet this chapter will focus primarily on those members of local elites who were connected to the government apparatus—either through the examination system; or, earlier, through the recommendations system; or otherwise, for instance, through family ties. These wealthy and well-educated landowners provided the broad pool of talent from among whom the high-level literati discussed in the previous chapter were drawn; they were the core of local elites in much of China proper throughout most of the imperial period; and their lifestyle and values were emulated by other elite members. This core group of local elites decisively shaped state-elite interactions throughout imperial history.