The donation system, commonly known as buying officials and titles, is regarded by many people as a kind of corruption and something that can't be put on the table. However, if I tell you that this system is longer than China's imperial examination system and has played a positive role, many people will not believe it. From the Warring States to the Qing Dynasty, the donation system has always been an auxiliary means of government finance, which once accounted for 70% of family income in the Qing Dynasty. However, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the court gradually relied on donations, thus undermining the court's credit.
The origin of donation system
In 242 BC, a plague of locusts occurred in Qin State, resulting in a large-scale crop failure. In order to cope with the catastrophe, the Qin dynasty implemented the policy of "worshipping nobles with Su Chongchong", which means that you can be knighted by paying a certain amount of food. But from the beginning, the granting of these official positions did not disturb the normal bureaucracy, that is to say, the donation system was only a means of "ancestor worship" at first, and did not constitute a change in bureaucracy.
Moreover, at that time, these titles granted by the Qin Dynasty were relatively few. There were 20 titles in the Qin Dynasty, of which the lowest grade 8 was specially set for ordinary people with financial resources and moral expectations. Therefore, the official position is only a social honor, or social status.
In the Western Han Dynasty, these titles could even be exchanged freely in the commodity market. Compared with Liu Hong, the spiritual emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it is obvious to sell officials and titles. Cao Song, Cao Cao's father, bought a position in Qiu, but this position is also vacant. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, you could get the title of Marquis with no real power by donating 8,000 stones of grain.
During the Anshi Rebellion, you can get the identity of "Ming Jing" through donation, which is the title of intellectual. In the Song Dynasty, these donors could get some positions with no real power. Even some official positions with no real power need to be strictly selected, and not all official positions can obtain these titles through donations.
The selection process of donations is called open election. This selection process includes the need to examine the background, interview and defense. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the subjective score in the selection process decreased, and even in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the lottery was changed.
Therefore, the donation system since the Qin Dynasty is that the state uses these vacant posts to exchange interests with the people. Although the system was adjusted and the rules were more complicated in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the general process was similar to that in the Song Dynasty, and the benefits brought by donations were also increasing.
Donation system in Ming dynasty
During the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang once abolished the donation system, but after the "Bao Min's Change", in order to expand armaments, the fiscal deficit in the Ming Dynasty was very serious. You know, armaments are the most expensive thing. During the period of Zhu Yuanzhang, the tax rate was extremely limited, so the donation and transportation system was reopened and became bigger and bigger.
1953, in order to relieve the famine, the imperial court ordered that if 800 stones of grain were donated to the disaster area, they could become tribute students, that is, they were eligible to study in imperial academy. Such students are also called tribute students. Because the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was always low, and it was a dynasty that relied on agricultural taxes, donations almost became an important fiscal revenue. Donations also expanded in the Ming Dynasty. During Zheng De's period, even people who were not Confucian scholars could acquire the status of Confucian scholars through donations, which was the so-called "mentoring system". Moreover, both tributary students and diploma students are qualified to be officials, which is equivalent to the official reserve, which is essentially different from the pre-Qin period.
Why are so many people willing to get official positions through donations? The imperial examination in Ming dynasty was held every three years, and it had to go through the division, county division, government division, township division, national division and palace division. If you step by step from children's
Wen Zhiming, a famous scholar in Ming Dynasty, made statistics. There were 1500 students in Suzhou at that time, that is, candidates. In the past three years, only 3.3% people have embarked on their careers, which is the same as the admission rate of our civil servants.
As Liang Qichao said: "A hundred scholars gather in one city, a dozen people make a living, and ten thousand scholars gather in one province, and a hundred or dozens of people make a living;" Gather a few cadres in the world and draw hundreds or dozens of people as Jinshi; After a hundred scholars, dozens of people recruited into the Hanlin. " The huge gap in the proportion of admission to the imperial examination led to the longevity of the donation system.
Many students often have to wait for many years to become tribute students. At that time, the process of advocating students to pay tribute to students was called "tribute", which meant that it would take many years to get out. Donation allowed these candidates to skip the long process from birth to tribute and be promoted directly to tribute. This is a shortcut, so it was very popular in the Ming Dynasty.
Donations are not necessarily for exams. It has become an organic part of the imperial examination system and a tool of social mobility. For people who are the main body of social mobility, donation and imperial examination are essentially the same. If you have more economic strength, you can become a magistrate, county magistrate or higher-level official through donations. In this way, some wealthy people, especially wealthy industrial and commercial households, can be qualified to participate in political activities, thus expanding the ruling base.
Many uses of donations
Donation is not only a response to military supplies and disaster relief, but also related to social problems such as qualification identification, cancellation or mitigation of punishment, promotion and promotion of civil servants. As a social mobility tool, donation can not only promote the upward mobility of talents, but also be a preventive measure for the foreseeable downward mobility. When downward flow occurs, donations can be used to reduce or avoid losses caused by downward flow.
For the needs of private interests, donation has become the product of social interaction. Donations in the Qing Dynasty can be used not only to pay tribute to and supervise students, but also to be an official. It can also be used to donate virtual titles and titles, such as hats and feathers. It can be used for promotion below the rank of Beijing official, promotion below the rank of foreign official, promotion below the rank of guerrilla commander in Wu Zhi, demotion, retention, resignation, original post, original salary, restoration and maintenance or prevention of demotion. Donation and distribution don't just mean saving, upgrading and failing grades. Can also donate, make up for the original vacancy, exemption, real award, real speech, introduction, provision, inspection, withdrawal, etc. There are all kinds of names.
Donations can be used as donations, and the appointment has been received; After being elected, you can donate money for promotion, donate money for protection and accelerate the pace of promotion; You can donate money for the exam after you become an official. Can prevent the decline in advance; If you are punished and leave your job for some reason, you can donate money to broaden the road to rehabilitation. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, no matter who took the right path or the wrong path, many people used this function.
Donation is also an important tool of social mobility, which supports the imperial examination to some extent. As a tool of social mobility, sperm donation also has the following characteristics: First, it has a long-term effect, and the role of the imperial examination is limited to obtaining reproductive qualifications. Once this qualification is obtained, the role of the imperial examination as a social mobility tool will basically end. If social mobility is extended to life, donation, as a tool of social mobility, will have a lifelong effect.
Donation can prevent the decline of liquidity. Donations, like imperial examinations, are open to all members of society except "basic books". However, sperm donation is far more common than the imperial examination, and it is entirely to follow the imperial examination to get a person's birth. The combination of certain academic ability and economic strength is an indispensable condition for the success of the imperial examination. Under the donation system, as long as you have certain economic ability, you can get your own birth through donation. If you can't raise funds at the moment, you can also donate by borrowing.
As a tool of social mobility, the imperial examination has strict conditions for use. I have to accept it.
It is another important innovation of this system to combine donation and imperial examination system, and then compare their characteristics, so as to vividly reproduce the functions of donation and imperial examination system in China in Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Is it worth donating?
In the Qing Dynasty, you could also ask a bank agent to donate money. They are proficient in the regulations of various government agencies, but they also have to pay an agency fee. In the Qing Dynasty, money houses were mainly concentrated in Shaanxi and Zhejiang, and they were all concentrated near Long Fu Temple and Dongsi Pailou in Beijing. Among them, the agents in Zhejiang province have the best reputation, because there are the most officials from the central government to the local government in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
These donated students have to wait for a vacancy in the official department. In the Qing dynasty, officials were released once a month. Officials who leave because of anxiety, illness and other reasons need someone to fill the vacancy. But these positions first consider those who gain fame or fame through formal channels, and the donated tribute students are arranged in a lower position.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were many blank donation licenses. For example, from 20 to 32 years of Guangxu, * * * issued 430,000 blank licenses. In other words, at this time, donations are excessive. The price of a donation license is 1 1,000 taels of silver, while it was 3,200 taels of silver during the Qianlong period, which has been greatly depreciated. At that time, the annual salary of Sipin officials in the Qing Dynasty was 105 taels of silver, which means it will take more than ten years to return to the original salary. If it is legal income, it must be a loss-making business.
If the official who donates money is for the benefit, then he must recover the cost through right rent-seeking and seek promotion as much as possible, because the bigger the official, the higher the rate of return. In other words, the donation system itself is corrupt.
During the Kangxi period, in order to raise the military expenses for pacifying San Francisco, the imperial court opened up a donation item, which was called "Mao Yi Donation" in history. At this time, it is limited to some positions in imperial academy, mainly responsible for the duties of national sacrifices, and there is not much real power. Moreover, during the Qianlong period, after the national financial surplus, this cut was closed again.
During the Xianfeng period, in order to solve the problem of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Qing Dynasty launched a donation and construction project dedicated to improving the salary. Six official posts below Langguan in Beijing and local official posts below Daotai are all open. This project * * * involved 2 1 job, and lasted until the fifth year of Guangxu.
These donation projects are like a booster. When the Qing court was dying, they provided financial support to barely get through. This not only saved the rule of the Qing court, but also ensured social stability.
Kangxi dynasty donated more than 2 million taels of silver and more than 500 officials, effectively enriching the state treasury. In the ninth year of Yongzheng, he donated 4.2 million taels of silver, accounting for 42% of the income of the family bank. During the dry year, he donated 5.66 million taels of silver, accounting for 39% of the households. Jiaqing donated/kloc-0.83 million yuan in nine years, accounting for 78% of the bank. It can be seen that donations gradually became an indispensable financial source in the Qing Dynasty.
At the same time, donation also provides another upward channel for society. In the Qing dynasty, there were only four channels for being an official, namely, shadow seal, imperial examination, official donation and promotion. Generally speaking, promotion needs to be the assistant of government officials, and through the promotion of these government officials, they can get the opportunity of promotion. In the Qing Dynasty, many famous officials made great achievements through donations, such as Li Wei, Tian Wenjing and Zhang Guangsi in Yongzheng period, Zhang Yin, a diplomat in the late Qing Dynasty, and Cen Chunxuan, who was famous for punishing corrupt officials. They all had the experience of donation.
These donated officials got rid of the rigid thinking of literati and were more flexible in dealing with actual government affairs, which indirectly enriched the talent structure of the Qing Dynasty. They were more willing to accept new knowledge and new ideas, which promoted the modern transformation of the late Qing Dynasty.
From the perspective of political clarity, this is a bad system, because it is almost inevitable.