What is Feudal Bureaucracy

Feudal bureaucracy in ancient China refers to the two levels of bureaucracy, the central government and the local government, set up under the emperor. The central government, as the auxiliary government of the emperor, mainly set up the zaiwu, the prime minister and the governmental organizations responsible for various aspects of affairs. At the local level, a whole set of tightly regulated by the central level of the local ruling institutions. At the same time, in order to ensure that the bureaucracy at all levels had sufficient candidates and that the officials at all levels were loyal and responsible to the emperor, it was also equipped with a set of relatively systematic and complete system for the selection of officials and the management of officials. The official system was the ruling pillar of the centralized feudal authoritarian state. The political system of the feudal state gave the emperor supreme power, but it was difficult to realize the rule of the country only by the power of the emperor alone. Therefore, the establishment of officials and the separation of duties was both a sign that human society had entered a class society and a necessity for the ruling class to rule. Thus China developed a feudal bureaucracy centered on the emperor and based on the landlord class.

Under this system, officials at all levels were responsible only to the emperor. The officials became powerful nobles with different authorities according to their hierarchical status. However, they were not allowed to govern as nobles, but had to govern as servants of the emperor. The power to appoint, remove, or dismiss officials of all sizes was centralized in the hands of the emperor.