8. Foreign Ministry 8. ---------------------------

9. Censorship (Audit council)

There is no denying that according to our standard this whole system was
still elementary and "personal", that is to say, attached to the
emperor's person--though it should not be overlooked that we ourselves
are not yet far from a similar phase of development. To this day the
titles of not a few of the highest officers of state--the Lord Privy
Seal, for instance--recall that in the past their offices were conceived
as concerned purely with the personal service of the monarch. In one
point, however, the Han administrative set-up was quite modern: it
already had a clear separation between the emperor's private treasury
and the state treasury; laws determined which of the two received
certain taxes and which had to make certain payments. This separation,
which in Europe occurred not until the late Middle Ages, in China was
abolished at the end of the Han Dynasty.

The picture changes considerably to the advantage of the Chinese as
soon as we consider the provincial administration. The governor of a
province, and each of his district officers or prefects, had a staff
often of more than a hundred officials. These officials were drawn from
the province or prefecture and from the personal friends of the
administrator, and they were appointed by the governor or the prefect.
The staff was made up of officials responsible for communications with
the central or provincial administration (private secretary, controller,
finance officer), and a group of officials who carried on the actual
local administration. There were departments for transport, finance,
education, justice, medicine (hygiene), economic and military affairs,
market control, and presents (which had to be made to the higher