What are the backgrounds of the formation and development of ancient feudal bureaucracy in China?

The feudal bureaucratic politics in ancient China was a kind of privileged politics, which was the product of the transformation from feudal aristocratic politics to imperial politics.

1, the feudal economic base is the "hotbed" for its growth.

Bureaucracy is a political form of feudal society. The factors that play an overall decisive role in feudalism are the modes of production dominated by natural forces such as agricultural labor and land. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the extensive use of iron farm tools and the continuous improvement of social productivity led to the disintegration of the old relations of production. In particular, Shang Yang's political reform in Qin established the dominant position of feudal economy, which was manifested as a self-sufficient natural economy, decentralized and feudal individual small-scale peasant economy. It needs a strong central government to safeguard national unity and social stability, thus ensuring the production and reproduction of small-scale peasant economy. At the same time, the vast and scattered private small producers can not unite to represent their own interests, and objectively there must be arbitrary rule of the feudal bureaucratic class in distributing taxes and corvees. These changes have promoted the transformation of the non-centralized aristocratic political form to the centralized autocratic bureaucratic political form, and promoted the transformation of the landlord economy of "dividing farmland" to the landlord economy of "paying farmland tax" and "renting farmland". With this change, the first unified dynasty in the history of China, the Qin Dynasty, was born. Although the Qin Dynasty only had a short life span of fifteen years, it opened the feudal autocratic bureaucracy in China. Li Si's suggestion of "abolishing the enfeoffment system and prospering counties" thoroughly swept the remnants of the feudal lords' economy and aristocratic politics into the garbage dump of history. Since then, the history of China has entered an era of bureaucratic autocracy.

2. The centralization of absolutism is its breeding "midwife".

The establishment of absolute centralization is a great progress in the historical development of China. Under the impact of the improvement of productivity and the great development of commodity economy, it was completed in the long-term struggle of landlord class politics and patriarchal clan system.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, one of the core contents of political system reform was to replace clan land ownership with family land ownership. Its political performance is to replace the aristocratic system with monarchical centralization. From the Warring States to Qin and Han Dynasties, the abolition of enfeoffment system was the most important step to strengthen centralization. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that extreme monarchy was formed, and the autocratic centralization reached its peak, which also had a far-reaching impact on the new system. At this point, after several dynasties' continuous inheritance and transformation, centralization of authority has matured and reached the peak of the times, and the feudal bureaucracy has come to an end with its demise.

With the continuous strengthening of imperial power and the recognition of its legitimacy and sacredness, it has also become the authoritative source and conceptual pillar of bureaucracy. Legal norms are the lifeline of rational administration in bureaucratic system. In China's ancient autocratic and centralized state system, imperial power was supreme and absolute, and various restrictions on imperial power were relative, including the power of prime minister, which was also given by the emperor. However, the restriction of imperial power by the later three provinces in order to avoid the mistakes caused by autocratic monarchy is the result of the continuous enrichment of ruling experience and the continuous improvement of political system, which is an inevitable requirement for the mature development of bureaucratic system.

3. The principle of talent selection is the "nutrition source" for its survival.

China's ancient politics was autocratic, but the rulers still needed a certain social class as their ruling tool. After the establishment of centralization, the landlord class constantly demanded the establishment and perfection of centralization in order to consolidate its dominant position, safeguard its political and economic interests, protect its land ownership and suppress farmers' resistance. This requires a carrier to meet their political needs, and this carrier is the bureaucratic group.

With the implementation of the diversified official selection system, intellectuals were absorbed into the bureaucratic group to the maximum extent, so that the intellectuals wandering on the wrong road in ancient China were merged with the autocrats to the maximum extent, and were constantly incorporated into the bureaucratic group, thus forming a huge bureaucratic group.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with the decline of the official system, the official system gradually rose, and many new methods of selecting officials appeared. Many "scholars" who originally had no inheritance rights obtained official qualifications through recommendation, running schools, lobbying for self-recommendation, recruiting talents, and military service. The Sui Dynasty initiated the imperial examination system. This examination and recruitment method characterized by the pursuit of fair competition and the principle of bureaucratic selection based on the principle of "seniority" ensure that the bureaucratic team can absorb outstanding talents from all walks of life to a certain extent, make the bureaucratic team constantly flow and update, prevent bureaucratic aristocratization and aristocratization, and at the same time build bureaucratic politics on a deeper and broader soil.

4. The unique political and cultural background is the cradle of its growth.

As far as the whole ancient history of China is concerned, the dynasty took the bachelor as the main source of bureaucracy and Confucianism as the orthodox ideology, which also constituted its unique political characteristics and unique bureaucratic political form. Therefore, if we ignore the cultural level of politics, we can't thoroughly understand the development and changes of traditional ancient bureaucratic politics.

The rulers of the Zhou Dynasty inherited the practice of the Shang Dynasty, used theocracy to serve their own rule, and put forward the idea of "respecting morality and protecting the people", ignorant of the ruled and strengthened their rule. This view of heaven has a great influence on the formation and strengthening of authoritarian bureaucracy in later generations. But bureaucrats don't take these things as their own legal thoughts, so Confucianism acts as an intermediary. Confucianism, which aims at maintaining autocratic bureaucracy, is the "cradle" for the long-term survival of China's feudal bureaucracy.