652 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
during the Northern Wei dynasty (424-535) when Minister of Personnel Ts'ai
Liang dispensed with evaluations of talent and quality altogether and chose to
shift the major criterion for promotion to time in office (nien-k '0). Any official
had to produce a document of "release" from his past official responsibilities
(chieh; hae in Korean) to obtain qualification for his next appointment. Pi Shu,
however, criticized selecting district magistrates just on the basis of the years of
experience in office because it would destroy the purpose of official review, Instead
of a Ministry of Personnel, "it would be enoughjust to have one clerk who would
control the registers and call out the names." Hu Ch'ih-t'ang also objected vig-
orously to the emphasis on time in office rather than talent as a criterion for pro-
motion, and he predicted that the failure to ferret out incompetent and corrupt
officials would eventually allow them to take over 90 percent of all posts,15
In Emperor Hsiao-ming's reign (5 I 6-28) Ts'ai Hung confirmed Hu's pre-
diction by stating that since the early sixth century the ratings of performance
had been calTied out in a thoroughly routine way to handle the review of as
many as ten thousand men in the triennial review. Since personnel officials never
bothered to investigate merit, the superior or satisfactory rating was given as a
matter of course. and the incompetent were included with the able in virtually
automatic promotions.'o
The emperors of the Sui dynasty caITied the centralization of authority further
in the late sixth century by vesting responsibility for appointments for all "sin-
gle appointment" posts to the Ministry of Personnel, including the appointment
of clerks and assistants. 17 Yu's account showed that the Ministry of Personnel
was now overloaded with reams of paperwork in handling appointments, and many
critics complained that the record clerks dominated the process because of their
special access to the files. After the An Lu-shan rebellion of the mid-eighth cen-
tury, an attempt was made to restore three annual reviews of performance and to
dismiss any official who failed to obtain a promotion before the fourth review. 18
Classical procedure was retained in T'ang times by requiring that the high
ministers of state discuss all candidates for office, and that all officials of the
first through fifth rank appointed to office attend an imperial audience to receive
their office WaITants. Officials below rank six were handled directly by the Min-
istry of Personnel, and the Ministries of Personnel and War divided the task of
examining candidates in their physical appearance, speech, writing skills, and
comprehension. All candidates deemed equivalent were then ranked by virtue,
talent, and industriousness. 19
Unfortunately, when full responsibility for recruiting magistrates was turned
over to the Ministry of Personnel, the quality and prestige of the magistrate fell
because too many military men or war heroes had been appointed to this post.
Even when officials from the capital were appointed to magisterial posts, most
were inferior in quality.20
In T'ang times the whole administration of personnel had fallen into the hands
of the clerks and finding suitable officials depended more on rummaging through
the record books to ascertain the ranks of officials or judging the writing skills