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This article investigates the practice of returning marked papers to rejected candidates in late imperial Chinese examinations. The practice--common from the sixteenth century to the abolition of imperial examinations in 1905--established a sense of personal communication between examiners and examinees and was an opportunity for rejected candidates to benefit from the examination system. The failed papers returned to their authors enabled them to make sense of their performance by interpreting, when not misconstruing, examiners' comments. The examiners sometimes praised the papers and blamed the decision to fail on other examiners. As a result, most rejected candidates tended not to challenge the examiners through official channels or take collective action against the examination system. Thus, in the late imperial examination system, the ways in which rejecting decisions could be negotiated and construed were no less important than the awarding of degrees to an extremely small proportion of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gongju, or public offices, controlled by the local gentry class, were the grassroots authorities in rural Guangdong during the late Qing. These offices maintained their own armed forces and usually had powers of administration, tax collection, and self-defense, as well as judicial powers. They were considered the extension of prefecture and county governments. With the authorization of the prefecture and county governments, these offices had the power to deal with important legal cases. Although they came under attack during the 1911 Revolution, these offices were able to recover quickly in different forms. In the late Qing era, local gentry with official titles earned in middle-level or lower-level civil service examinations took the leadership roles in such grassroots offices, but they were replaced by people who had direct control over the armed forces during Republican times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Chinese Qing government's relations with the Kham region of eastern Tibet, China, Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province. An overview of China's copper industry, including Japan's decision to limit copper exports to China, is provided. The role that China's hereditary tusi (native official) played in establishing Chinese rule in eastern Tibet, including in Lhasa, China, is discussed.

The article discusses practices related to the recruitment of employees for the Chinese state bureaucracy during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), focusing on meritocracy and office purchase. The ways to obtain a post in the government through purchase, the financial aspects of the practice, and its impact on social mobility are explored.

There was a strict procedure to follow for minister plenipotentiary selection in the late Qing Dynasty. First, high-ranking officials recommended persons with diplomatic talent, some of whom the Grand Council and the Zongli Yamen 總理衙門 would put into a list of minister candidates. When a minister left office, the Zongli Yamen would present the list of candidates to the emperor. With further recommendation and advice from the Grand Council and the Zongli Yamen, the emperor would select the most appropriate one for the new minister post. However, only with the acknowledgement of the Grand Council and the Zongli Yamen could the recommendation of the high rank officials be effective. Sometimes, the emperor also showed his initiative. Persons on the list were evaluated according to their membership in political factions and their ability to deal with foreign affairs. The final appointment was influenced by a variety of complicated factors, involving power struggle, interpersonal relations, and economic interests. By examining documents concerning minister selection, this article explores and reveals the details of this procedure in the late Qing Dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analyses of factors such as their geographical distributions, ranking stratifications, imperial civil service examination backgrounds, this article finds that the geographic origins of officials who had audiences with the emperor became more and more imbalanced from higher to lower Administrative Region. The Jiangnan and the capital regions were the two most significant core areas for personnel recruitment. Manchu bannermen and officials from Hangzhou prefecture also enjoyed higher status during the Qianlong reign than during the Yongzheng reign, which the official clerks who were in charge of Manchu-Chinese paperwork received higher priority during the Qianlong reign. The article also argues that while the ratio of successful examinees with imperial audience was higher during the Qianlong reign than during the Yongzheng reign, the middle and upper officials successful from the lowest rank such as gongsheng had a higher ratio of success than jinshi and juren. All the analyses demonstrate that the bannermen and those from the capital areas received priorities for recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early Qing Dynasty, Ministry of Public Works was overall responsible for river conservancy and the ministry delegated authority to the Director-general of the Grand Canal. By the eighteenth century with ever-increasing population pressure on the economic development of socity, the Qing government was more seriously concerned with matters related to the national economy and the people's livelihood. At that time the Governor General of Liangjiang (Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Anhui) was given the bureaucratic responsibility and power to administer river conservancy. In the process they realized that their value had improved and promptly made the transition to technocrats. This administrative change revealed the eighteenth-century social environment required talented bureaucrats and technical personnel and that social environment also provided a great stage for the transformation of administrative bureaucracy. Secondly, there were positive aspects of the changed bureaucratic system: the importance of the personal qualities of bureaucrats could not be ignored, and bureaucrats at all levels of government held the administrative lifelines of autocratic imperial authority within this complex bureaucracy at all levels of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the imperial policies of the early Qing dynasty from 1645 to 1720 in China regarding scholars, scholarship, and public service examinations. During the previous Ming dynasty, scholars from the lower Yangzi Delta region were noted for their superior training and concomitant high grades on government administered examinations. The adaptive polices of the Qing dynasty regarding this group of scholars is explored. The article also discusses Confucianism, the Palace Examination of 1659, China's Kangxi emperor Aisin Gioro Xuanye (r. 1662-1722), and Jiangnan province scholars Xu Yuanwen (1634-1691) and Ye Fang'ai (1629-1682).

Boxer Rebellion Lyric has molded of a series of images of uncommon people, including Boxer Rebellion Lyric 1. Zhang Martial who Li Bo-yuan designed is obviously the representative of the country people from all corners and he defected to Zhu Hong-deng for murder, which does not meet the real living condition of Martial art in the late Qing Dynasty. Li Bo-yuan's design was to highlight special background of Zhang Martial, in order to avoid the description of the embarrassment that a person from the lower class was promoted to be the group leader, which reflects the writers gradation bias. Boxer Rebellion Lyric said that the rural villagers" religion conflict began with the dispute of Zhang martial and it highlighted the legend and the content of violence of Boxer Rebellion Lyric. The beginning of Boxer Rebellion Lyric selected Zhang Martial as the representative of anti-religion, which is just one of hundreds of religion movements, and the image of Zhang Martial reflected many images of martial in the late Qing Dynasty such as Pang San-jie and Fan Bing-zhang. Zhang Martial represented mental and behavioral commonalities gentry rather than group interests. All corners world that Zhang Martial brought was the continuation of the true nature of folk imagination in Boxer Rebellion Lyric and the image of Zhang Martial, for his background, became the bright spot of Boxer Rebellion Lyric [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]