The Recommendation System Takes Shape

Before the Qin, offices were mostly hereditary among the nobility; the Qin chose officials mainly through military merit. In the early Han the government began trying local recommendation of talent, and Emperor Wen once ordered regions to nominate men who were “worthy, upright and able to speak frankly and remonstrate,” but no fixed system existed. To meet the need for talent in a unified state, Emperor Wu decreed in 134 BC that every commandery and kingdom should nominate one filial son and one honest official each year, known as “recommending the filial and incorrupt” (xiaolian). The recommendation system (chaju) was thus established. Local heads regularly assessed local talent and recommended people on the basis of character and ability, and the court examined them before appointing them. The categories were regular and special: regular ones were held on schedule, mainly xiaolian and xiucai (renamed maocai in the Eastern Han to avoid the name of Emperor Guangwu, Liu Xiu); special ones were decreed as needed, such as the worthy and upright, literary scholars, and those versed in the classics or in law. The system brought in many able men, such as Gongsun Hong, Dong Zhongshu and Zhufu Yan, and broke the aristocratic monopoly on office. But because it depended on local officials' recommendations without objective standards, it was gradually manipulated by great families in the late Eastern Han, giving rise to the saying: “The recommended xiucai cannot read; the recommended filial and incorrupt live apart from their fathers.” In the Wei and Jin it was gradually replaced by the Nine-Rank system, which later developed into the Sui and Tang imperial examinations.