Читать книгу Study on the Auditing System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics - Liu Jiayi - Страница 15

In the 13th year of the Hongwu Era (1380) of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang deposed his counselor-in-chief and decentralized the powers of the Imperial Secretariat and counselor-in-chief to the Six Ministries whose heads directly reported to the emperor. Two years later, the Censorate was set up. Audit functions were mainly manifested in the following three aspects: (1) to expose misdeeds in government offices and identify officials who took bribes, bent the law, and violated the decrees of finance and economy; (2) to appraise the administrative performance of officials over the economy; (3) to manage the Supervisory Censors from the Court of Censors in charge of auditing. As recorded in The History of Ming the latter were responsible for “investigating misdeeds of officials, auditing the account books, and checking the treasury, salaries, warehouse inventories, money, grain, salt, water transportation, tea and horses.”35 In addition, the Ming Dynasty assigned the task to the Jishizhong (an imperial attendant) of the Six Ministries (Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs, Ministry of Revenue, Ministry of Rites, Ministry of War, Ministry of Punishments, and Ministry of Works), which directly reported to the emperor instead of the Censorate and other organs. The History of Ming recorded that Jishizhong was responsible for auditing on administrative control, supplement, appropriate and audit ministerial affairs at all levels.36 The Jishizhong could participate in government affairs, discuss politics and suggest persons to be given an official rank and dismissed, and also take charge of audit supervision over a wide range of activities.

The Supervisory Censors from the Court of Censors and the Jishizhong from the Six Ministries were collectively referred to as “Kedaoguan” (supervisory officials), exercising independent audit powers under mutual coordination and restraint. However, the Ming Dynasty encouraged the two sides to monitor and report on each other, to prevent Kedaoguan from deceiving the emperor. Consequently, this resulted in endless disputes and abuses of power. After the reign of emperors Jiajing and Wanli, the increasing factional strife aggravated this situation. “In the reign of emperor Shizong, the restrictions on public opinion were much relaxed, resulting in different arguments. It was a worry that some arguments were excessive and inapplicable. As they often bore ill wills more opinions would mean nothing but more chaos.”37

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) basically followed this auditing system. The system of combining supervision and examination was introduced. In the first year of emperor Yongzheng’s reign (1723), the Six Ministries were incorporated into the Censorate, thereby reducing their power to make remonstration and deliberation. On the other hand, this strengthened the efforts of the Censorate to investigate, report, and rectify the acts of all departments and related officials. In the Censorate, the Six Ministries, Fifteen Departments, Imperial Office of Censor, and Censor Office of Imperial Household Supervision Department had audit power.38 The Six Ministries were to “verify all government affairs,” “investigate and interrogate the official business to write off official papers,” and so forth. Despite the different audit fields, the Six Ministries were jointly responsible for inspecting warehouses, water transportation, and provisions, as well as salt-related matters, where audit powers were mostly assigned to the Ministry of Revenue and Ministry of Works. The Fifteen Departments exercised certain audit power.39 According to the Wenxian Tongkao of the Qing Dynasty (Comprehensive Investigations based on Literary and Documentary Sources), “Supervisory Censors from the Fifteen Departments were responsible for investigating the misdeeds of all officials, checking the records of lawsuits by all government offices, inspecting the capital garrisons, supervising all levels of examinations, and inspecting departments, courts and offices; externally, they were responsible for supervising the affairs relating to salt, transportation, warehousing and schools.” Among them, checking the records, supervising salt, and transportation were specifically related to the audit function.

The Kedao Audit Supervising System of combining supervision and examination was introduced in the Ming and expanded in the Qing Dynasty, to meet the needs of centralism under imperial power. On the whole, the system of “unity of special audit, concurrent audit and internal audit by different departments respectively” had been abolished, though it was a beneficial exploration in auditing. Accordingly, the Kedao Audit Supervising System was inevitably downgraded to a tool of imperial autocracy and rule by man. For example, in the Censor Office of the Imperial Household Supervision Department under the Censorate, “all revenues and expenditures of the Imperial Household Department shall be checked and compared by the censor in accordance with the budget of the Capital Province, in order to check the records of lawsuits by all government offices.”40 However, the Imperial Household Department, with more than 3,000 officials and tens of thousands of personnel under its jurisdiction, directly served the imperial family. On the contrary, the Censorate only assigned two 7-grade part-time officials and three 9-grade inferior officials to examine and audit the Imperial Household Department, making the work a mere rubber stamp. As a matter of fact, the Censorate was responsible for write-off, that is, to legitimize the expenditures of the imperial family and corruption of powerful ministers, which led to it being given the title of “the worst least useful government office of the Qing Dynasty.”