China

Central government

In its early form the Ming central government was dominated by a unitary Secretariat. The senior executive official of the Secretariat served the emperor as a chief counselor, or prime minister. Suspected treason on the part of the chief counselor Hu Weiyong in 1380 caused the Hongwu emperor to abolish all executive posts in the Secretariat, thus fragmenting general administration authority among the six functionally differentiated, formerly subordinate Ministries of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works. This effective abolition of the Secretariat left the emperor as the central government’s sole coordinator of any significance, strengthened his control over the officialdom, and, in the view of many later scholars, gravely weakened the Ming state system.

Especially prominent among other agencies of the central government was a Censorate, which was charged with the dual functions of maintaining disciplinary surveillance over the whole of officialdom and remonstrating against unwise state policies and improprieties in the conduct of the emperor. Equally prominent were five chief military commissions, each assigned responsibility, jointly with the Ministry of War, for a geographically defined segment of the empire’s military establishment. There was originally a unitary Chief Military Commission paralleling the Secretariat, but in the 1380s its authority was similarly fragmented. The hereditary soldiers, who were under the administrative jurisdiction of the chief military commissions, originated as members of the rebel armies that established the dynasty, as surrendering enemy soldiers, in some instances as conscripts, and as convicted criminals. They were organized and garrisoned principally along the frontiers, near the capital, and in other strategic places but also throughout the interior, in units called guards and battalions. Whenever possible, such units were assigned state-owned agricultural lands so that, by alternating military duties with farm labour, the soldiers could be self-supporting. The military families, in compensation for providing soldiers in perpetuity, enjoyed exemptions from labour services levied by the state on civilian families. Each guard unit reported to its Chief Military Commission at the capital through a provincial-level Regional Military Commission. Soldiers from local guards were sent in rotation to the capital for special training or to the Great Wall or another area of comparable military importance for active patrol and guard duty. At such times, as on large-scale campaigns, soldiers served under tactical commanders who were on ad hoc duty assignments, detached from their hereditary posts in guard garrisons or higher echelons of the military service.