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China Traditional Social Structure
Throughout the centuries some 80 to 90 percent of the Chinese
population have been farmers. The farmers supported a small number
of specialized craftsmen and traders and also an even smaller
number of land- and office-holding elite families who ran the
society. Although the peasant farmers and their families resembled
counterparts in other societies, the traditional Chinese elite,
often referred to in English as the gentry, had no peers in other
societies. The national elite, who comprised perhaps 1 percent of
China's population, had a number of distinctive features. They were
dispersed across the country and often lived in rural areas, where
they were the dominant figures on the local scene. Although they
held land, which they rented to tenant farmers, they neither
possessed large estates like European nobles nor held hereditary
titles. They achieved their highest and most prestigious titles by
their performance on the central government's triennial civil
service examinations. These titles had to be earned by each
generation, and since the examinations had strict numerical quotas,
competition was fierce. Government officials were selected from
those who passed the examinations, which tested for mastery of the
Confucian Classics. Elite families, like everyone else in China,
practiced partible inheritance, dividing the estate equally among
all sons. The combination of partible inheritance and the
competition for success in the examinations meant that rates of
mobility into and out of the elite were relatively high for a
traditional agrarian society.
The imperial state was staffed by a small civil bureaucracy.
Civil officials were directly appointed and paid by the emperor and
had to have passed the civil service examinations. Officials, who
were supposed to owe their primary loyalty to the emperor, did not
serve in their home provinces and were generally assigned to
different places for each tour of duty. Although the salary of
central officials was low, the positions offered great
opportunities for personal enrichment, which was one reason that
families competed so fiercely to pass the examinations and then
obtain an appointment. For most officials, officeholding was not a
lifetime career. They served one or a few tours and then returned
to their home districts and families, where their wealth, prestige,
and network of official contacts made them dominant figures on the
local scene.
Data as of July 1987
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