Corruption in the Qing Dynasty: Practice, Prosecution, and Perceptions

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

It is a truth universally acknowledged among scholars of late imperial China that official corruption was routine, widespread, and intimately linked to the society, economy, and politics of the period. The evils of corruption were a common subject of imperial edicts and official writings, and the ubiquity and negative impacts of corruption were popular themes in literature and other unofficial sources. The objective of this panel is to examine corruption through a range of legal, literary, and autobiographical sources dating from the early Qing to the end of the 19th century. Alexis Siemon examines the legal procedures surrounding the prosecution of corruption, as seen in case studies involving local officials during the reign of the Yongzheng emperor. Nancy Park discusses some of the strategies that officials used to avoid the consequences of corruption, focusing on trial records involving Qianlong-era governors and governors-general. Stephen Roddy examines how corruption was portrayed in late-Qing vernacular fiction, analyzing satirical depictions of corrupt translations between Chinese and Westerners. Pierre Étienne-Will explores how corruption was depicted in autobiographical writings by 19th-century officials, who discussed their struggles to balance the legal and moral strictures against corruption with the fiscal pressures to make money out of administrative positions and activities. Janet Theiss, whose research in Qing law and society draws on a variety of legal and narrative sources, is uniquely qualified to comment on interrelationship between corruption in code and practice, official and unofficial perspectives, and literary and autobiographical narratives.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Nancy Park, California State University, East Bay

Chair

• Janet M. Theiss, University of Utah

Individual Presentations

• Judicial Bribery in Eighteenth-Century China - Alexis Siemon, Princeton University

• The Art and Craft of Corruption: Gubernatorial Strategies for Avoiding Prosecution - Nancy Park, California State University, East Bay

• Kaitong: Opening the Sluices to Official Corruption in Late-Qing Fiction - Stephen Roddy, University of San Francisco

• Routine Corruption as Seen in Autobiographical Materials by Nineteenth-Century Officials - Pierre-Étienne Will, Collège de France

Discussant

• Janet M. Theiss, University of Utah