Routine Corruption as Seen in Autobiographical Materials by Nineteenth-Century Officials

• In Event: Corruption in the Qing Dynasty: Practice, Prosecution, and Perceptions

Abstract

Official corruption in late imperial China is mainly known through legal sources providing definitions and discussing repression, and through historical records of particular affairs that came to the attention of the authorities and/or the public. The present contribution aims to examine it as a routine activity known to everybody and largely accepted as a fact of life, if not necessarily approved of—what might be described as low-noise corruption. This is made possible by the testimonies of officials who wrote autobiographical records of their careers and described, sometimes with much candor, the practices they observed and in which they were occasionally involved, willingly or not. Such practices included, among others, paybacks from public subsidies (such as famine relief funds), over-taxation, selling one’s influence (real or supposed), and a multiplicity of more or less customary gifts. The main question is to understand how people managed to navigate between, on the one hand, the strictures of state regulations and a concern for their self-image, and on the other, the universal pressure to make money out of administrative positions and activities.

Author

• Pierre-Étienne Will, Collège de France