Administrative Bureaucracy: Lessons from China

Could we Yanks learn any lessons from the 2,000 years and more of Chinese dynasties?

Administrative Bureaucracy: Lessons from China – American Thinker <!—-> <!–

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v3.0”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’)); –>

<!–

–>

January 8, 2024

We MAGA Americans hate that we have lived under the yoke of an administrative state for over 100 years. We long to smash the administrative state to smithereens. But our Chinese friends have been ruled by a bureaucracy for about 2,000 years of administrative dynasties. The mandarins were faithful servants of the Son of Heaven, as our Woking Class are fierce advocates of Justice.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”); } }); }); }

But I wonder if we Yanks could learn any lessons from the 2,000 years and more of Chinese dynasties.

If you Google “average length of Chinese dynasty” you get an expert from Harvard, Yuhua Wang, who says:

The 49 dynasties lasted for an average of 70 years[.]

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”); } }); }); }

Each of these dynasties was run by a bureaucracy of mandarins that had passed national tests in Chinese classics in an examination system that began in the Sui dynasty (581-618). La Wik:

The examination system played a significant role in tempering the power of hereditary aristocracy and military authority, and in the rise of a gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats.

Everything rolled along in perfect harmony, as dynasty succeeded dynasty, until the Brits showed up in 1793.

The Brits sent their Macartney mission to China in 1793 to propose a spot of trading. If trading with India had turned out to be a good thing, perhaps a similar arrangement would suit the Son of Heaven. But the Chinese sent the Brits packing; they knew they were dumb barbarians. By the way, did you know that the timid Fanny Price in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park read all about Lord Macartney’s embassy to China? I wonder what Austen meant by that.

Anyway, the rule of the mandarin bureaucrats ended in 1905 with the end of the Qing dynasty. But not to worry, after an interregnum of 45 years a new dynasty emerged, the Mao Dynasty, staffed by bureaucrats that had been rigorously examined in Marxist classics. So nothing has changed in China.

Whatabout our U.S. Dynasties?

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268078422-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3027”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3027”); } }); }); } if (publir_show_ads) { document.write(“

Obviously, our wise rulers are conscious that the present American Dynasty began not later than President Wilson’s election in 1912. Like Claudine Gay, he had been president of an Ivy League university. So our present dynasty is at least 112 years old. But perhaps the current dynasty began with the Pendleton Act of 1883 that ended the “spoils system” in the triumph of the civil-service reform movement.

Seriously, dear liberal friends. Can you really be surprised and shocked that your regime, after over a century in power, is facing a Time of Trouble, an uneasy feeling that the Educated Class has lost the Mandate of Heaven as barbarian hordes of MAGAs harass the Rich Man North of Richmond? Do you really think that your rule has been so beneficent that it is ridiculous to imagine that there might be a few deplorables getting restless?

Put it this way. When President Wilson was inaugurated president, the federal government was spending 2.5 percent GDP. In 2023 under President Biden it spent 23.3 percent of GDP. So, in a mere 100 years, the federal government has increased its spending by 932 percent as a share of the economy. Do you not think, dear liberal friends, that rather too much of that money has gone to supporters and functionaries of the regime, leaving a lot of Americans out in the cold?

Let us say that the U.S. has been ruled by a class of mandarins educated at universities committed — until recently — to the free marketplace of ideas. We could say that, similar to the Chinese mandarinate,

The US university system played a significant role in tempering the power of the spoils system, and in the rise of a gentry class of educated bureaucrats needed to staff the administrative state.

But there is a problem with an administrative state. In China, according to Francis Fukuyama in The Origins of Political Order,

the “leader” sitting at the top of the administrative hierarchy loses an important degree of control over the organization… Chinese emperors experienced this… in the form of unresponsive and sometimes outright rebellious bureaucracy.

Obviously, this notion of a “rebellious bureaucracy” clearly surfaced during the Trump administration.

What to do? The Chinese emperors solved it with a “network of spies and informants who were completely outside the formal government system.”

From 1420 on [the spies, under the direction of a palace eunuch,] were organized into an Orwellian secret police organization known as the Eastern Depot.

In contrast, the FBI in the US, run for many years by a man rumored to be a homosexual and a cross-dresser, has not been used as a check upon the bureaucracy but as a force against enemies outside the regime.

I must say that the idea of eunuchs as a check on the administrative state seems intriguing. Perhaps the current FBI can be replaced by a secret police recruited exclusively from the TERF community.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Public Domain

<!–

–>

<!– if(page_width_onload <= 479) { document.write("

“); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1345489840937-4’); }); } –> If you experience technical problems, please write to [email protected]