漢代考課制度雜考

The Annual Personnel Evaluation of Officials in the Han Dynasty

廖伯源(Liu Pak-yuen)

《中國文化研究所學報》 42期 (2002/01) Pp. 1-20

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.200201_(42).0001

並列摘要

In this article, the author investigates the system of annual evaluation of officials in the Han dynasty which is only scantily documented in traditional historical records. Every governmental employee, officials and soldiers alike, received an evaluation made by his direct superior yearly. The result of the evaluation, as a part of the annual administrative report, was then forwarded to a higher level governmental office. The central government got information on the conduct of officials and kept local governments under control through these reports. Promotion, degradation, reward and punishment of officials were all based on such annual evaluation. The annual evaluation started at the beginning of the tenth month and terminated at the end of the ninth month of the next lunar year. It was called the ＂evaluation year.＂ Local government handled the problems of population, cultivated field, taxes, justice matters, conscription of soldiers, of corvee, public works, etc. - all these problems were articles of the evaluation. The superintendent evaluated article by article and gave points to each article, and then drew up the whole grades. There were nine grades in the evaluation. Officials who got grade 1, grade 2 and grade 3 were good or superior; those who got grade 7, grade 8 and grade 9 were bad or inferior. Some of the methods of the evaluation that were adopted by the ＂private critique＂ among the intellectuals in the Eastern Han dynasty became part of the system of Nine-grades evaluation (jiupin zhongzheng zhidu 九品中正制度) in the Wei and Jin dynasties.