The plight of expectant officials through the lens of the daily Shenbao
(See English below)
Frau Prof. Elisabeth Kaske (Universität Leipzig) wird uns am 27. März 2025 ab 18 Uhr eines ihrer aktuellen Forschungsthemen unter dem Titel „The plight of expectant officials through the lens of the daily Shenbao“ im Rahmen eines neuen CrossAsia Talk vorstellen. Ihr Vortrag untersucht, wie die Shanghaier Zeitung Shenbao die prekäre Situation der „Erwartungsbeamten der späten Qing-Zeit kommentierte – ihre zunehmende Zahl durch den verkauf von Amtstiteln, ihre oft unsichere Beschäftigung und die wachsende Kritik an diesem System. Diese Analyse stützt Frau Kaske auf die digitale Auswertung der Shenbao-Archive und die damit verbundenen methodischen Herausforderungen.
State bureaucrats became an object of ridicule in many literatures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, think of Gogol or Kafka or Li Boyuan’s Officialdom Exposed. However, they are not normally an object of compassion. This talk explores how the Shanghai daily newspaper Shenbao treated a very specific group of officials, namely the expectant officials of late Qing China.
Their numbers had become inflated by the widespread sale of official rank since the 1850s. Although they sported official titles like “magistrate” or “prefect” or “circuit intendant,” their employment situation was often precarious, with the luckier ones employed in newly established provincial bureaus. By the early 1900s, this system of parallel bureaucracies became increasingly seen as an aberration, as one commentator put it: “Foreigner are telling jokes that talent in China is defined exclusively as ‘expectant circuit intendant’. When I heard this, it makes me sweat.” (Shenbao 1907/02/22)
Wang Juan has argued that ridicule of the officialdom was a product of the tabloid press which only emerged after the failed reform movement of 1898. Before the disaster of defeat in the Sino-Japanese War gave rise to a public sphere in the late 1890s, Shenbao was (almost) the only Chinese language newspaper that commented publicly on government affairs. What was the stance of the newspaper towards the problem of expectant officials? When was it recognized as a problem? What were the solutions? When and how did a problem-solving attitude shift to ridicule and exasperation?
I have used Shenbao to gauge the changing perception of the expectant officials through almost forty years of Shenbao publishing from 1872 to 1911. Shenbao is entirely digitized. CrossAsia currently holds two versions of the Shenbao corpus. In addition, I have used the HistText corpus established by Christian Henriot and his team. However, the use of these corpuses poses methodological problems. The search “expectant official” yields a huge amount of results. Moreover, we need to distinguish journalistic comment from the memorials collected in the reprints of the Peking Gazette and from news items, which in all of these corpuses cannot be entirely mechanized. This exploratory talk from the perspective of a user of these corpuses will discuss the problems, possible solutions and tentative results.
Die Vortragssprache ist Englisch. Bei Fragen kontaktieren Sie uns unter: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.
Der Vortrag wird darüber hinaus via Webex gestreamt und aufgezeichnet*. Sie können am Vortrag über Ihren Browser ohne Installation einer Software teilnehmen. Klicken Sie dazu unten auf „Zum Vortrag“, folgen dem Link „Über Browser teilnehmen“ und geben Ihren Namen ein.
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Prof. Elisabeth Kaske (Leipzig University) will present one of her current research topics entitled ‘The plight of expectant officials through the lens of the daily Shenbao’ in a new CrossAsia Talk on 27 March 2025 from 6 pm. Her talk will examine how the Shanghai newspaper Shenbao commented on the precarious situation of the ‘expectant officials of the late Qing period – their increasing numbers through the sale of official titles, their often insecure employment and the growing criticism of this system. Ms Kaske bases this analysis on the digital analysis of the Shenbao archives and the methodological challenges associated with it.
State bureaucrats became an object of ridicule in many literatures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, think of Gogol or Kafka or Li Boyuan’s Officialdom Exposed. However, they are not normally an object of compassion. This talk explores how the Shanghai daily newspaper Shenbao treated a very specific group of officials, namely the expectant officials of late Qing China.
Their numbers had become inflated by the widespread sale of official rank since the 1850s. Although they sported official titles like “magistrate” or “prefect” or “circuit intendant,” their employment situation was often precarious, with the luckier ones employed in newly established provincial bureaus. By the early 1900s, this system of parallel bureaucracies became increasingly seen as an aberration, as one commentator put it: “Foreigner are telling jokes that talent in China is defined exclusively as ‘expectant circuit intendant’. When I heard this, it makes me sweat.” (Shenbao 1907/02/22)
Wang Juan has argued that ridicule of the officialdom was a product of the tabloid press which only emerged after the failed reform movement of 1898. Before the disaster of defeat in the Sino-Japanese War gave rise to a public sphere in the late 1890s, Shenbao was (almost) the only Chinese language newspaper that commented publicly on government affairs. What was the stance of the newspaper towards the problem of expectant officials? When was it recognized as a problem? What were the solutions? When and how did a problem-solving attitude shift to ridicule and exasperation?
I have used Shenbao to gauge the changing perception of the expectant officials through almost forty years of Shenbao publishing from 1872 to 1911. Shenbao is entirely digitized. CrossAsia currently holds two versions of the Shenbao corpus. In addition, I have used the HistText corpus established by Christian Henriot and his team. However, the use of these corpuses poses methodological problems. The search “expectant official” yields a huge amount of results. Moreover, we need to distinguish journalistic comment from the memorials collected in the reprints of the Peking Gazette and from news items, which in all of these corpuses cannot be entirely mechanized. This exploratory talk from the perspective of a user of these corpuses will discuss the problems, possible solutions and tentative results.
The lecture will be held in English. If you have any questions, please contact us: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.
The lecture will also be streamed and recorded via Webex*. You can take part in the lecture using your browser without having to install a special software. Please click on the respective button “To the lecture” below, follow the link “join via browser” (“über Browser teilnehmen”), and enter your name.
You can find all previously announced lectures here. We will announce further dates in our blog and on X.
