The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has announced that China will revive its traditional Culture by 2025. Chinese democracy activist Wang Dan said that the “core” of the comprehensive revival of traditional culture is the two words “imperialism”.
When it comes to the imperial system, Chinese people always think that it is a regression in the system and a treason. In fact, from the perspective of history and political culture, the imperial system is not without merits.
First of all, in terms of succession of power, the imperial system was hereditary, i.e., the system of passing from father to son. In terms of which prince to appoint as the heir, the struggle was fierce, but it was only within the court, and did not involve the community in the struggle for supreme power. No matter how bloody the palace fights were, they did not disturb the people or cause disaster to the whole society. The hereditary succession of power has its stability, so that China’s imperial dynasties have had a Life span of two to three hundred years, from their peak to their decline.
Second, the power of the Chinese emperors was not without checks and balances. In the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu proposed “respecting the king” to consolidate dynastic rule, but also proposed “suppressing the king and respecting the sky”, that is, above the absolute power of the monarch, there was “sky” monitoring the “The Emperor was also called the Son of Heaven. Therefore, the emperor was called the Son of Heaven, and he had to make regular sacrifices to Heaven, and if there was a natural disaster, it was regarded as a punishment from Heaven, and the emperor often had to issue an edict of sin to improve his governance. “Heaven” is a check on the imperial power. The emperor’s power is absolutely no more than the “fight with the sky, the joy” atheism of the absolute power of the hand.
Another constraint on imperial power is the Confucian Taoism. Dong Zhongshu proposed “exclusive respect for Confucianism”, and Taoism means that Confucian scholars were “scholars aspiring to the Way”. In the minds of intellectuals, Taoism was the source of ideas to counterbalance autocratic power. The intellectuals’ straightforward advice and the Taoist tradition of “dying rather than living in silence” have always balanced the political system of the imperial power, “so that any despotic lord knows that apart from his own real power, there is another supreme figure in terms of Education and reasoning to whom he cannot but bow down. The “existence of the The imperial system’s prison of words at most put to death intellectuals who criticized current affairs, but it did not “stink” intellectuals, as the absolute power without the “moral system” restraint, and carried out spiritual and personal humiliation.
Chinese emperors, although there are lascivious and corrupt, but the vast majority of modern Chinese court dramas are not portrayed as a harem all day long, hanging out with the ladies. The emperor was ordered by heaven to take charge of state affairs, must be very diligent. The emperor’s short life is not because of addiction to alcohol and sex, but overwork. Their work and rest has a strict schedule to the emperor of the Qing dynasty, woke up at 5:00 every day, first read two hours; 7:00 in the morning, to receive important ministers, listen to reports, explain the affairs. 9:00 breakfast, after dinner to review the documents. At 2:00 p.m., he ate, and then went to bed until 9:00 p.m., when he had to go to bed. He ate only two meals a day. Yongzheng Emperor reigned for 13 years, leaving more than 17 million words in his own handwriting, more than 1 million words a year, the average day to write three or four thousand words.
What the emperor saw every day, what was said, there are historians recorded as a note. The historian recorded according to the facts, the emperor does not have the power to ask the historian to modify.
In addition, there are constraints on the imperial power of the bureaucracy under the imperial examination system, especially the imperial historian, the supervision of the admonisher. As the saying goes, it is a great blessing for the country that the civil servants died to advise. The Ming emperor Tang Taizong, who obeyed the advice like a stream, achieved the rule of Zhenguan, a model for all generations. There was a magistrate who wrote a letter to criticize the emperor fiercely, and Emperor Taizong was a bit angry and wanted to be punished for “slander”. If it is not radical, it cannot arouse the heart of the master. If it is not, it will not arouse the heart of the master. Emperor Tang Taizong was enlightened and ordered to reward the magistrate.
The monarchy relied on honor to rule. An imperial system with honor and checks and balances is definitely better than all unelected, unchecked autocratic systems. Of course, all imperial systems inevitably fail, so perhaps the most stable system in the world is the constitutional monarchy. The British monarch has the power, but can never use it. Since the constitutional monarchy began in the 13th century with the Magna Carta, England has not had a civil war in 600 or 700 years, making it the most politically stable country in the world. The United States republican system was also stable, but less monarchical sense of honor, so it is a little difficult to defeat the “money makes the ghost push the mill” of foreign erosion.
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