132 SOCIAL REFORMin-grade. His solution was the establishment of a National Academy staffed with
the best scholars as teachers and the adoption of a system of recommendation
according to which district magistrates and high-ranking officials would pro-
pose two outstanding candidates a year (segong or annual tribute recom-
mendees) who would serve an apprenticeship in the imperial guards. Rewards
and punishments would be meted out to recommendors to prevent a desultory
approach to their responsibilities. Tung's plan, however, was a compromise with
the ancient ideal: a National Academy fell short of a national school system,
and the recommendation system was limited to incumbent officials and not based
on local community leadersY
Emperor Wu of the Former Han showed some willingness to apply other fea-
tures of the ancient model. He instituted quotas of recommendees for adminis-
trative districts based on population and ordered local officials to recommend
able clerks and local men of talent without quota limits. He also appointed spe-
cialists in the classics (the erudites or po-shih kuan, p 'aksa-gwan in Korean) who
were to teach students selected from local villages on the basis of good behav-
ior and scholarship. After a year's study they were to be examined and appointed
to office on the basis of their performance. 33
By the end of the first century A.D. there was a decline in the quality of men
recommended for office.3^4 Fan Yeh, compiler of the History oj the Later Han
Dynasty, complained that strict criteria for selection were loosened and "the path
to glory was opened wide," stimulating people to "falsify their reputations,
embellish the facts ... " and seek favors from the high and mighty to obtain a
post. The Chou recommendation system was finally reaching its end as the major
method of recruitment in China.
Nonetheless, the reputation of the Han dynasty's recruitment system waxed
in subsequent centuries, probably from a nostalgic yearning for an idealized past.
Shen Ylieh of the Liang dynasty (502-57) gave the Han dynasty high marks
because no distinctions were drawn between the scholar-officials and commoners.
"Naturally, if a man were not an official, he did not go to the capital, and if he
were dismissed from his post as court minister or local magistrate, then in both
cases he would return to his native village.":lS Bureaucratization in the Han, in
other words, had not created the kind of urban/rural gap that characterized later
dynasties and that coincided with class differentiation.
Shen also praised the Han for its extensive school system that funneled the
talented into the lowest levels of the state bureaucracy as clerks or assistants to
local magistrates. These men were eligible for promotion only after proving their
merit by superior performance. "This was the reason why the Han dynasty
reached the heights in obtaining good men for office."3^6
THE EVILS OF ARISTOCRACY
Although the Han dynasty modified many of the more Draconian aspects of Ch' in
bureaucratization and centralization and preserved a few aspects of Chou