The Bureaucracy That Ate China

China is introduced as a test case. Source trail 0:001:11 Okay, good morning today we do China Obviously we are in China and we will we know a lot of Chinese history So I will go fairly quickly and deeply This is an opportunity for us to look back on the theories. We've develo...for the longest time China really was the civilized civilization poor excellence in the world It gave us all the great inventions that would make modernity possible including the compass paper printmaking gunpowder Okay... If the course's theories work, they should work in the Western context and in the Chinese context. The problem is sharp because China was not peripheral to modernity. For the longest time, it was the civilization par excellence, giving the world the inventions that made modernity possible.

The first explanatory model is open cooperative competition. Source trail 2:343:56 Chinese civilization will come into being at this time You will have something called the hundred schools of thought Confucianism will develop as well Taoism and legalism okay, and these ideas will form the foundation o...,000 years Confucius is obviously Who is best remembered? from this era, but you also have Lao Tzu who is the founder of Taoism? Okay, as well as Zhuang Tzu and Mo Tzu Sun Tzu will at this time write his book the art of... Warring States China is creative because no central authority can close the system, states trade and intermarry, and war forces invention. Openness, cooperation, and competition together produce Confucianism, Taoism, legalism, Sun Tzu, technology, values, and the cultural material that will underwrite China for two thousand years.

The Qin matter because no one would have predicted them. Source trail 3:565:198:47 ,000 years Confucius is obviously Who is best remembered? from this era, but you also have Lao Tzu who is the founder of Taoism? Okay, as well as Zhuang Tzu and Mo Tzu Sun Tzu will at this time write his book the art of...We could not possibly predict that the Qing would conquer and unite all of China because of all these states the Qing was the porous it was situated in the mountains whereas The other states are situated in these fertil... They are marginal, poorer, less cultured, and less populous, like Rome before the Mediterranean and Macedonia before Greece. The margins win because the center is trapped by its own rules. Established states play war as an aristocratic game. Qin invents total warfare.

The Peloponnesian comparison gives the rule away. Source trail 6:357:418:47 was leading sickly the Laying siege to a city and the people inside were starving to death Which is what you do in a siege, right? You starve the population to death, but the general felt tremendous regret and guilt for...they still a lot of intermarriage between them There's still a lot of trade a lot of communication so these states are not trying to use warfare to overturn the social order because they benefit from the status quo they... Athens could have armed the Helots against Sparta, but doing so would have threatened the whole Greek social order. Elites use war to preserve the status order from which they benefit. Qin succeeds because it is willing to break that order and make society itself into a weapon.

Qin's machinery has three parts: legalism, centralization, and total war. Source trail 9:5711:1012:11 So certain characteristics about the Qing Dynasty at this time. First is the idea of legalism. Draconian laws that force a population to behave in a certain way. Something that is very fundamental to the idea of legalis...The Qing Dynasty was also known for its openness. So if you were a man of talent and you could contribute to the military and the bureaucracy, they would welcome you. So think of the Qing as a revolutionary system that... Collective responsibility makes the family liable for the individual. Bureaucracy lets conquest be governed. Total war devotes the whole society to victory. The Han later denounces Qin as barbaric, but Jiang's point is that the Han continues the system it morally repudiates.

Then the ethnic continuity story is disrupted. Source trail 14:2215:0315:06 a lot of trade, there will be a lot of intermarriage, and the steppe people will be hired as mercenaries for internal conflicts within China, okay? So open cooperation now switches from the Han, which has become a centr...Hmm? The Han is called the last ethnically Chinese dynasty committed to protecting Chinese culture. The Tang, often remembered as Chinese height, is recast as a Xianbei-founded universal multicultural empire: open, tolerant, inclusive, connected to Central Asia, Silk Road networks, and Buddhism.

Tang openness has a danger inside it: powerful generals. Source trail 16:2617:38 But there are many problems with the Tang Dynasty. So there's a heavy reliance on generals to fight wars, and this will eventually lead to the An Lushan Rebellion, okay? Which lasts for almost 10 years. An Lushan is the...the Song Dynasty will adopt a policy of diplomacy to build assimilation with the northern tribes, okay? They're trying to avoid the trap of the Tang, where you give too much power to a general, and the general will rebe... An Lushan is the trusted general who turns independence into rebellion, killing a catastrophic share of the population. The Song remembers the trap and shifts power into imperial bureaucracy. It wants to avoid generals who can become sovereigns.

Here the lecture's answer arrives. Source trail 18:5820:08 The Manchus are just another iteration of the Ming Empire. They will rule China until 1911, when the empire is overthrown, a republic is established, and this gives way to, of course, the People's Republic of China, oka...China for the longest time was just too large, too diverse to be unified centrally. And as a result, the idea of open cooperative competition would still give rise to innovation. But starting at the time of the Song, we... Before the Song, China is too large and diverse to be centrally controlled for long, so open cooperative competition keeps returning. Starting with Song and especially Yuan, Ming, and Qing, the center can control the provinces. Open competition dies with the Song. That is why China stops being creative.

Wang Yuhua's paradox is the spine of the middle lecture. Source trail 21:1822:3523:45 So that's the answer. But then this gives rise to another question, which is, how was China able to create national unity? All right? All right. So to answer this question, I want to refer to the work of Professor Wang...Five emperors, at least five emperors, during the Tang Dynasty were deposed by the elite. The aristocracy got together and were through the emperor, usually by killing him, okay? So this is the Tang Dynasty. But when yo... Tang China has wealth and power, but emperors are deposed by the elite. Qing China is poorer, technologically behind Europe, and wracked by rebellion, but its emperors live long and rule stably. When China is wealthy, the emperor is weak. When the emperor is strong, China is poor.

The trick is elite localization. Source trail 24:5326:16 The up is when a new dynasty starts. And so at this time, the new dynasty is run by a very strong leader, like, for example, Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, okay? These are extremely...But the centralized elite can always threaten the emperor, who is dependent on the elite for their support in the military and in government, okay? Starting around the Song… Okay? The centralized elite is now broken dow... A unified national elite can promote growth, but it can also kill the emperor. Starting around the Song, the emperor breaks the elite into provincial pieces. Local elites compete with each other, focus on local rivalries, and fail to build alliances across provinces. The center becomes safer by making society less capable of coordinated innovation.

The Huang Chao Rebellion supplies the violent opening. Source trail 27:2328:4429:50 All right. And what Professor Wang Yuhua says is the main mechanism that the emperor used in order to achieve this radical cultural shift is the kezhu. Okay? The kezhu is the civil service examination that promoted bure...Okay? Because when you have a centralized system, what often happens is that the nobility engage in rent -seeking behavior. Basically, they exploit the peasants. And that's fine if the weather is good. When the weather... It destroys the Tang aristocratic families at Chang'an. Once nobility has been physically removed, the Song can institutionalize a new order that makes sure nobility does not arise again. Bureaucracy is born from a social absence created by catastrophe.

Trade makes the same choice visible. Source trail 31:0132:1133:2634:37 All right? And this, again, allows now the emperor to divide and conquer. All right? So let's just do a comparison of the Tang and the Song. As you can see, what's really important is, look at this, guys. The networks b...Okay? By localizing elites, you ensure the center can be challenged, and as a result, you give a semblance of national unity. But the problem with this, as we know, is it comes at the cost of innovation, which will make... Abbasid maritime networks pull Chinese wealth toward the coast. Zhu Yuanzhang sees the political danger: if coastal regions grow too rich, they can rebel or depose him; if the interior becomes poorer, it can rebel too. So the Ming closes the sea. The Qing continues. China chooses internal stability over wealth and prosperity.

Rome enters as a comparative machine. Source trail 35:5337:54 Okay? All right? So that's a quick introduction. All right? Any questions about this so far? Are you guys clear? Any questions? You guys are clear, right? Okay. All right. So that is Professor Wang Yihua's argument. And...Okay? And these three things are manifested in the nobility. Okay? What the Romans call patricians. Patricians. And the patricians will exercise power. For something called the Senate. Okay? And it's this very idea that... A republic is a society governed by laws, tradition, and history, and those things live in the patricians. Patron-client networks give Rome coherence across distance. The emperor has an empire, but the aristocrats have empires inside the empire.

That makes nobility dangerous and necessary. Source trail 39:3740:4642:07 And again, this is important for us because the British will copy this model when they build their empire. Okay? As well as the Americans. The problem with this system, though, is that if the patriarchs don't like the e...And in the Roman Republic, the chances of you staying alive aren't very high. Okay? So starting with Diocletian, they start to develop an imperial bureaucracy to counter the power of the nobility. Okay? The problem, tho... Aristocrats can depose emperors, but they also carry the will to fight, unity, and culture. If you destroy nobility, you do not merely remove rivals. You risk destroying the society's tradition, history, courage, and national identity.

Byzantium becomes Rome's bureaucratic negation. Source trail 43:10 But the imperial bureaucracy could not challenge the authority, power, and legitimacy of nobility. Okay? That's why Constantine would, in 330, move the capital to Byzantium and create the Byzantine Empire. Okay? And as... It is not, in this telling, the continuation of the Roman Empire but the rejection of the Roman Republic. China will make the same move after the Tang: it will create an imperial bureaucracy that rules for the next thousand years.

The Keju is the instrument. The myth says meritocracy: the exam selects the best and brightest. Jiang's reversal is that it was never designed for that. It is a quota system that localizes elites Lens point bureaucracy-institutional-death Bureaucracy converts ambition into compliance when elite energy is routed through exams, offices, quotas, discretionary promotion, and official culture, making status depend on serving the system that prevents rival sources of power. Source trail 44:3345:34 But it is not a meritocracy. It was never designed to be a meritocracy. I know that in school you are taught that they have the Keju in order for the emperor to select the best and brightest in China and because they ar...Right? Beijing and Shanghai. Right? But that's not how the system works. There is a quota system in place. There's geographic distribution. Only certain number of students from Beijing and Shanghai can get into Beijing... and makes them fight one another for slots. If selection were simply open merit, one region could dominate and build a national elite. Quotas keep ambition provincial.

The exam is unfair by design. To master Wenyan takes tutoring, money, leisure, and decades. Only elite families can seriously compete. That is the point. Their ambition is fed into the exam rather than rebellion, invention, or literature Lens point bureaucracy-institutional-death Bureaucracy converts ambition into compliance when elite energy is routed through exams, offices, quotas, discretionary promotion, and official culture, making status depend on serving the system that prevents rival sources of power. Source trail 47:39 You don't have to work. Okay? So in other words, only the elite families of China can compete in the system. And that's the point. Okay? The point is to concentrate the ambition and energy of the elite families into the... . The Keju is an ambition trap.

Even success is not success. Finishing first does not guarantee office. The emperor decides appointment and promotion Lens point bureaucracy-institutional-death Bureaucracy converts ambition into compliance when elite energy is routed through exams, offices, quotas, discretionary promotion, and official culture, making status depend on serving the system that prevents rival sources of power. Source trail 48:38 It is discretionary. Meaning the emperor. The emperor gets to decide who becomes an official and who gets promoted. Only the emperor. All right? And often what will happen is the emperor will start to promote maybe some... . That discretion creates insecurity in the provinces. No family can become secure enough to feel like nobility. Precariousness is a method of rule.

Literacy is the second monopoly. Source trail 49:5351:0852:2553:43 you want to be admired, if you want to be respected in China, you do well in the Keju and you become an official. That's a dream of every family in China. Right? It's still true today. Right? Where the dream of every Ch...So let's look at an example of Egypt. Okay? Egypt. Egypt has been around for as long as China. And over centuries, they would make their language a lot easier to understand. So in the beginning, they had hieroglyphics.... Most cultures make writing easier because broader literacy drives development. Jiang contrasts Egypt moving from pictograms toward alphabetic simplification with China making writing harder over time. Literary Chinese becomes bureaucratese: a specialized language only bureaucrats can understand, like legal contracts that force everyone else to pay rent for access.

Culture is the third monopoly, and culture here means Confucianism. Confucianism teaches balance, harmony, ancestor-bound locality, and a status hierarchy where scholar-officials sit at the top while merchants and artists are pushed down. Artists can produce new ideas. Merchants can move, trade, accumulate wealth, and challenge the empire. The bureaucracy lowers them because they are dangerous. Source trail 53:4354:5856:28 All right? And this is what we call rent -seeking behavior. You create something that only you can use. And people have to pay rent in order to access your knowledge. All right? So literacy, the problem with literacy, w...Okay? So the Kuju... Sorry. The bureaucracy, the imperial bureaucracy was able to maintain its monopoly over status, literacy, and culture through three mechanisms. The Kuju, Wenyan, literary Chinese, and Confucianism....

The four inventions finish the argument. Source trail 57:4159:041:00:08 The military wanted to go fight and defend Song territory. The bureaucracy wanted to just bribe everyone. Okay? Alright? Okay. So... And because you have too much power within the bureaucracy, this will stunt developmen...the very idea of the printing press made available all these books, all this knowledge that wasn't available before. And now people could just learn how to read and write. Okay? So this will give rise to literacy. And w... Paper, printmaking, the compass, and gunpowder revolutionize the world. In Europe they help produce capitalism, mass literacy, the Renaissance, the Reformation, exploration, colonization, muskets, and citizen revolutions. In China they do not transform society because bureaucratic culture absorbs them.

This is the lecture's hardest provocation: technology does not matter. Source trail 1:01:22 China did nothing whatsoever with all four inventions. All right? So the key lesson here, guys, and this is really important, technology does not matter. You can steal the technology. What matters is the culture. All ri... You can steal the technology. What matters is the culture. Yuan China imports foreign experts and foreign technology; Ming China gets rid of foreigners and technology and becomes more insular. Innovation is a threat to the status quo, and the empire chooses the status quo.

A student asks whether Confucianism is a religion or a culture. The answer is sharper than either category: Confucianism is bureaucratism Lens point administrative-filter Confucian bureaucratism filters status by making cultivation, literacy, and cultural legitimacy flow through scholar-official hierarchy, so rival paths to power look lower or less civilized. Source trail 1:02:471:04:10 All right. Good. Any questions? Does it make sense to you guys? Does this conform to your understanding of Chinese history? Yeah. Okay. So the question is, is Confucianism a religion or a culture? So, no one thinks Conf...Chinese history the most virtuous people are always bureaucrats scholar officials right and this propaganda is so effective that eventually Europeans will stop what will start to mimic this propaganda so Voltaire the Fr... . It is designed to make everyone believe that a bureaucratic society is the best and most sophisticated society, one where bureaucrats naturally belong at the top.

The closing story makes the point unforgettable. Source trail 1:04:101:05:311:06:321:07:45 Chinese history the most virtuous people are always bureaucrats scholar officials right and this propaganda is so effective that eventually Europeans will stop what will start to mimic this propaganda so Voltaire the Fr...and everyone's excited okay so everyone comes and takes the examination when the results come out what happens is that the the test takers from the south do a lot better from the north so these northern test takers feel... Zhu Yuanzhang restores the Keju. Southern test takers outperform northerners. The emperor demands an investigation. The minister proves the exam was fair, open, and transparent. The emperor kills him, the investigators, the test makers, and the top scorers. He does not want a fair system. He wants a system in which the localities will not rebel against the center. That is what the Keju is.