A quantitative analysis of the localized administrative importance rating system and the selection of officials in Qing China

Administrative districts during the Qing dynasty were rated according to the "Chong Fan Pi Nan" system, imposed on each province, prefecture, sub-prefecture, department and county. The classification distinguished between the need for appointment to "most important" posts (zuiyaoque), "important" posts (yaoque), "medium" posts (zhongque), and "simple" posts (jianque). In accordance with the importance rating system, the Qing court subsequently determined the sequence of officials necessary in each administrative unit as the appointments by the Emperor (qingzhique), the appointments by the Governor-General (tidiaoque), and the appointments by the Board of the Personnel (buxuanque), with the Emperor, Governors-General, and the Board of Personnel having the authority to select officials. In tracing and quantifying the "Chong Fan Pi Nan" system as well as the division into "most important" posts, "important" posts, "medium" posts, and "simple" posts, we can see how the Qing government used geographical information to target the deployment of limited bureaucratic resources based on locally-specific difficulties in governance. In addition, according to the statistics, it appears that "Chong Fan Pi Nan" as a proxy indicator reflects the spatial differences in terms of the disposition of local transportation, administrative affairs, tax collection, and local security. We can also observe that the Qing state intentionally promoted the weighting of frontier provinces to attract officials with better administrative abilities. This article examines how the administrative importance rating system influenced the origin, selection, and promotion of Qing officials by tracking the data of millions of officials in the newly established quantitative database of the Jingshenlu (Records of the Gentry). This study will provide a longue-term perspective for understanding the contemporary Chinese government's official selection system.