The Influence of Historical Tradition on Central and Local Governments

In the Song Dynasty, there were originally only two levels of local administration: state level and county level, but soon after the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC) (in the third year of his reign, in 997 AD), one level was added above the state level, which was called "Lu", and its chief executives were actually four. In the Southern Song Dynasty, it was simply called Shuai (peace envoy, in charge of military affairs), Cao (communications envoy, in charge of finance) and Xian (judge envoy, in charge of finance). This is ridiculous. In the Tang Dynasty, states and counties accepted only one boss (observer), while in the Song Dynasty, they had to flatter four. How can this local official do well? What's more, there is no connection between these four officials, and they are all directly responsible to the emperor. What do you think of this? So the local administration in the Song Dynasty was a complete mess.

In the ninth year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty (AD 1375), before Zhu Yuanzhang prepared to abolish the Prime Minister, he first abolished the local "book province in the middle of the line" and renamed it "undertaking the announcement of the array", and its chief officer was called "undertaking the announcement of the array" or "disposal for short". The ambassador is an official name, and the secretary is a yamen, which are not domain names. It can be seen that this local administrative region, now called "province", actually does not have a proper name. It is meaningless to call a province a department, just like calling a city or a county a bureau, which is unreasonable at first. If you want to call it, you should also call it "the declared battle zone". However, the court only set up the yamen (government affairs department) and did not issue the area code. It's hard to change the secular name. Let's call it "province" and live! As a result, the real "province" was abolished (and forgotten), and what was not "province" became "province".

In the Ming Dynasty, there were three yamen at the provincial level, namely, the department of undertaking propaganda and deployment, the department of proposing proposals, and the department of commanding and making, which were called "three departments" for short. In the Qing dynasty, the commander-in-chief was reduced to the "second division." The Chief Executive, political envoys and provincial judges of the Second Division, commonly known as Mrs. and Mrs. Fan, are all governors. Fan Tai is responsible for administrative finance, and Feng Tai is responsible for judicial supervision. In fact, according to the judges, Taiwan Province still works hard, because the proposal is a platform. It's pointless for the envoy to call Taiwan Province. However, in the Qing Dynasty, not only the chiefs of vassal states and vassal departments called Taiwan, but also the officials of their subordinate institutions (divisions) called Taiwan, which was called "Daotai". It doesn't matter. To make matters worse, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as in the Han, Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, it was not enough to have local administrative agencies, but also to station institutions and officials below. The Han dynasty was the secretariat of the county, and the county became a state; In the Tang Dynasty, observation envoys and our envoys were added in various counties, and the result became Tao. In the Song Dynasty, there were more governors, officials and bureaucrats, which became Tao. In the Yuan Dynasty, provinces, courtyards and Taiwan were added to the roads, which became provinces. In this way, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the legal local administrative regions were three levels: provincial level, prefecture level and county level. In the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, the government was a "special administrative region", which was actually a state. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was an official administrative region at the level below the province and above the county level, which was equivalent to the current prefecture-level city. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, counties were basically not in counties, but the administrative relationship was either provincial (minority) or subordinate to the government (majority), so counties should be regarded as the first level. This was not bad at first, but the problem was that "special commissioners" were sent to this province during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The Ming Dynasty sent three: the governor, the governor and the governor. At the beginning of its establishment, the governor was in charge of military affairs, the governor was in charge of administration and the governor was in charge of supervision. In the Qing dynasty, the duties of the governor were merged into the governor, leaving only the governor and the governor. However, the governor, governor and governor in Ming Dynasty were temporary and non-permanent, while the governor and governor in Qing Dynasty were permanent, which was equivalent to adding "super governor" to the governor (political envoy and provincial judge) and "super governor" to the provinces (the governor was in charge of two or three provinces, but only one province was not). There are provinces in the province and officials in the office. The more complicated, the more complicated. The vassals were also unambiguous, and they also sent down the "Tai Shang Huang", which is the division of the company. There are also two ways to divide roads: those sent by political envoys are called branches, and those sent by judges are called branches. This is the Ming system, and the Tao of the Qing Dynasty is more complicated. This is another level inserted between the province and the government. If the governor's jurisdiction (region) is level one, the province is level one, the road is level one, the government is level one, and the county is level one, there are five levels. What is the result? That is, as Mr. Qian Mu said: "There are many officials, but few people are in charge." There are not only few people in charge (that is, county officials and state officials), but also their status and power are low. There is a magistrate above the county, a platform above the magistrate, a deployment envoy and a provincial judge on the platform, a governor above the deployment envoy and the provincial judge, a governor above the governor and a central government above the governor. States and counties are at the bottom, and it's too late to kiss up to a lot of bosses. How can we have time, energy, energy and mind to be close to the people? Local politics is in chaos.

The change of bureaucracy is nothing more than the words of the people: dragons don't control water, chickens don't lay eggs, and officials don't do things!