Of all the early modern states, China had the longest tradition of centralized rule and political integration. By the time the Qing dynasty came to power in 1644, China could look back on many centuries of effective unity. Although interrupted periodically by peasant upheaval, external invasion, or changes in dynasties, cultural expectations nonetheless defined a unified state, headed by an emperor, as the norm. The Qing dynasty, although of Manchurian origin and proud of its military skills, generally accepted Chinese conceptions of statecraft, based on literary learning and a long-established system of civil service examinations designed to recruit scholar-officials into official positions. During the long reign of Kangxi (KAHNG-shee) (r. 1661–1722), that dynasty initiated a vast imperial project extending Chinese control deep into inner Asia. (See pp. 640–42.) Document 13.1 contains a number of Kangxi’s personal reflections on the management of this huge imperial state and its bureaucracy. Drawn from his own writings, this “self-portrait” of the Chinese emperor was compiled by the highly regarded historian Jonathan Spence.

THE EMPEROR KANGXI

Reflections

1671–1722

Giving life to people and killing people—those are the powers that the emperor has. . . . He knows that sometimes people have to be persuaded into morality by the example of an execution. . . .

Hu Chien-ching was a subdirector of the Court of Sacrificial Worship whose family terrorized their native area in Kiangsu, seizing people’s lands and wives and daughters, and murdering people after falsely accusing them of being thieves. When a commoner finally managed to impeach him, the Governor was slow to hear the case and the Board of Punishment recommended that Hu be dismissed and sent into exile for three years. I ordered instead that he be executed with his family, and in his native place, so that all the local gentry might learn how I regarded such behavior. . . .

I have been merciful where possible. For the ruler must always check carefully before executions and leave room for the hope that men will get better if they are given the time. . . .

Of all the things that I find distasteful, none is more so than giving a final verdict on the death sentences that are sent to me for ratification. . . . Each year we went through the lists, sparing sixteen out of sixty-three at one session, eighteen out of fifty-seven at another. . . .

There are too many men who claim to be ju—pure scholars—and yet are stupid and arrogant; we’d be better off with less talk of moral principles and more practice of it. . . . This is one of the worst habits of the great officials, that if they are not recommending their teachers or their friends for high office, then they recommend their relatives. . . .

There is no way the emperor can know every official in the country, so he has to rely on the officials themselves for evaluation, or on censors to impeach the wicked. But when they are in cliques, he has to make his own inquiries as well; for no censor impeached the corrupt army officers Cho-ts’e and Hsu-sheng until I heard how they were hated by their troops and people and had them dismissed. . . .

The emperor can get extra information in audience, on tours, and in palace memorials. From the beginning of my reign, I sought ways to guarantee that discussion among the great officials be kept confidential. The palace memorials were read by me in person, and I wrote rescripts on them myself. . . . [R]egular audiences are crucial with military men, especially when they have held power for a long time. . . . And army officers on the frontiers tend to obey only their own commander, acknowledging him as the ruler. . . .

On tours I learned about the common people’s grievances by talking with them, or by accepting their petitions. I asked peasants about their officials, looked at their houses and discussed their crops. I heard pleas from a woman whose husband had been wrongfully enslaved, from a traveling trader complaining about high customs dues, from a monk whose temple was falling down, and from a man who was robbed on his way to town. . . .

In 1694 I noted that we were losing talent because of the way the exams were being conducted: even in the military chin-shih exams, most of the successful candidates were from Cheikiang and Chiangnan, while there was only one from Honan and one from Shansi. The successful ones had often done no more than memorize old examination books, whereas the best should be selected on the basis of riding and archery. . . .

Even among the examiners, there are those who are corrupt, those who do not understand basic works, . . . those who insist entirely on memorization of the Classics . . . those who put candidates from their own geographical area at the top of the list. . . .

My divines have often been tempted to pass over bad auguries, but I have double-checked their calculations and warned them not to distort the truth: the Bureau of Astronomy once reported that a benevolent southeast wind was blowing, but I myself calculated the wind’s direction with the palace instruments and found it to be, in fact, an inauspicious northeast wind; I told the Bureau that ours was not a dynasty that shunned bad omens; I also warned the Bureau not to guess or exaggerate in interpreting the omens that they observed, but simply to state their findings. . . . And being precise about forecasting the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, the winter and summer festivals, the eclipses of the sun and moon—all that is relevant to regulating spring planting, summer weeding, and autumn harvest. . . .

I have never tired of the Book of Changes, and have use it in fortune-telling and as a source of moral principles; the only thing you must not do, I told my court lecturers, is to make this book appear simple, for there are meanings here that lie beyond words.