Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2018

An Examination of the Filling of Clerical Vacancies and the Associated Payment in the Qing Dynasty (Abstract)

Fan Jinmin

In the Qing bureaucracy, at all levels from the central government down to prefectures and counties, it was common practice for those wishing to fill a clerical vacancy (dingchong) to make a payment for the position at market prices. An examination of the extant documentation on the filling of these vacancies shows that over 2000 clerical staff worked for the Zhejiang financial commissioner, a figure that was 30 or 40 times the authorized staff ceiling. The person filling the vacancy could either go to work in the office himself or, if necessary, choose someone else to handle the actual work. The nominal holder of the position was often not the person actually doing the work; that is, the position and the work were separate. The position came with ownership rights, and could be inherited or sold on the open market, or even be used as collateral for a loan. The price of these positions kept rising, but their cost to the purchaser never reached the heights claimed by contemporaries, who said they had shot up to “thousands of taels of gold” or “up to ten thousand taels of gold.” There is no record of the end of a clerk’s term, suggesting that most positions did not have a term limit. In the provincial governments of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the positions of clerical staff could apparently only be handed on to clerks in the same place and the same occupation, but inheritance within successive generations of a family was not evident. Anyone taking over a position had to be recommended by his colleagues, indicating that governmental approval was necessary when a position was passed on. The requirement for colleagues’ public recommendations shows that vacancies could not be passed to and fro in private; both consultation with colleagues and government approval were needed. Most clerical staff did not have high real incomes, and some lived in considerable penury. The records in the extant files are very different from the institutional arrangements laid down in imperial edicts, and also very different from the requirements of the legal code and from what people imagined.