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All governments need some method of contact with the governed to assert their legitimacy. It's telling that in North Europe we had parliaments - places to speak

by lainga 8y ago

All governments need some method of contact with the governed to assert their legitimacy. It's telling that in North Europe we had parliaments - places to speak your mind - because speaking your mind was how we did that. Oratory was, and is, seen as a necessary quality in a good governor, since at least ancient Greece and certainly since the days of Rome. In China, on the other hand, there is no major oratory tradition. The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen. If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old way of doing things.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago
> If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old way of doing things. Yes but this was a huge source of instability for the Qing regime. Arguably, the Qing's failure to adapt to the modern world came in part from a cabal of bureaucrats that opposed reforms.
pnathan 8y ago
> The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen. What does everywhere and nowhere, mean, specifically, in the context of a society without telephony and electronic surveillance? What were the means for a local official to adapt policy in the face of pressures and demands from his local stakeholders? How were these pressures transmitted? Again, happy to read scholarly works well versed in the way of Chinese governing here, this is probably "Basic Chinese government history 101" stuff. :)

by lainga 8y ago

Karrot_Kream 8y ago

> If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old way of doing things. Yes but this was a huge source of instability for the Qing regime. Arguably, the Qing's failure to adapt to the modern world came in part from a cabal of bureaucrats that opposed reforms.

pnathan 8y ago

> The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen. What does everywhere and nowhere, mean, specifically, in the context of a society without telephony and electronic surveillance? What were the means for a local official to adapt policy in the face of pressures and demands from his local stakeholders? How were these pressures transmitted? Again, happy to read scholarly works well versed in the way of Chinese governing here, this is probably "Basic Chinese government history 101" stuff. :)