Gentry (China)

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Gentry (China)

In imperial China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, gentry
Gentry

Gentry generally refers to people of high social class, especially in the past. The word derives from the Latin gentis, meaning a clan or extended family....
were the class of landowners who were retired mandarins or their descendants. Their power and influence eclipsed that of the Chinese nobility

Chinese nobility

Di and Wang and Huangdi * The King during the Xia and Shang dynasties called themselves di * The King during the Zhou dynasty was called Wang , was the title of the China head of state until the Qin dynasty....
during the Sui

Sui Dynasty

The Sui Dynasty followed the Southern and Northern Dynasties and preceded the Tang Dynasty in China. It ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes....
and Tang

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an Dynasties in Chinese history preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire....
dynasties when the civil service exam

Imperial examination

The Imperial examinations in Imperial China determined who among the population would be permitted to enter the state's bureaucracy. The Imperial Examination System in China lasted for 1300 years, from its founding during the Sui Dynasty in 605 to its abolition near the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1905....
replaced the nine-rank system

Nine-rank system

The Nine rank system , or much less commonly Nine grade controller system, was a civil service nomination system during the Three Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China....
which favored nobles.

Under the Confucian

Confucianism

Confucianism is a China Ethics and Philosophy developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . It focuses on human morality and right action....
class system the scholar-official was at the top with farmers, artisans, and merchants in descending order. Since the next highest class was agricultural, scholar-officials retired to landed estates.

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Encyclopedia

In imperial China

China

Chinese nobility

Sui Dynasty

The Sui Dynasty followed the Southern and Northern Dynasties and preceded the Tang Dynasty in China. It ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes....
and Tang

Tang Dynasty

Imperial examination

Nine-rank system

Confucianism

Imperial examination

Late Imperial China

Late Imperial China refers to the period between the end of Mongol rule in 1368 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 and includes the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty Dynasties....
, sons of merchants used their money to buy an education and enter the civil service

Civil service

The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* Branch of governmental service in which individuals are hired on the basis of merit which is proven by the use of competitive examinations....
. Also, financially desperate gentry married into merchant families which led to a breakdown of the old class structure. With the abolition of the exam system and the overthrow of the Qing dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, followed the Ming Dynasty in History of China, and was the last ruling Chinese Dynasties of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 ....
came the end of the mandarins. Now known simply as landowners, they were criticized for demanding and collecting high rent from their tenants during the republican period

History of the Republic of China

The history of the Republic of China begins after the Qing Dynasty in 1912, when the formation of the Republic of China ended over two thousand years of Imperial rule....
. Many organized violent gangs to enforce their rule. They were frequent targets of the communists who were able to rally much of the peasant population through their promises of agrarian reform and land redistribution. After the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
was established, many landlords were executed by class struggle

Class struggle

Class struggle is the active expression of class conflict looked at from any kind of socialism perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, leading ideologists of communism, wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
trials and the class as a whole was abolished. Former members were stigmatized and faced persecution which reached its heights during the Cultural Revolution

Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the People?s Republic of China was a period of widespread social and political upheaval that led to nation-wide chaos and economic disarray, which would engulf much of Chinese society between 1966 and 1976....
. This persecution ended with the advent of Chinese economic reform

Chinese economic reform

The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of microeconomic reform called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in 1978 by pragmatists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping and are ongoing as of the early 21st century....
under Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping was a prominent Chinese revolutionary, politician, pragmatist and reformer, as well as the late leader of the Communist Party of China ....
. Excerpts from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

The only class which at all resembles the territorial magnates of other countries is the class of retired officials. The wealth of an official is not infrequently invested in land, and consequently there are in most provinces several families with a country seat and the usual insignia of local rank and influence. On the decease of the heads or founders of such families it is considered dignified for the sons to live together, sharing the rents and profits in common. This is sometimes continued for several generations, until the country seat becomes an agglomeration of households and the family a sort of clan. A family of this kind, with literary traditions, and with the means to educate the young men, is constantly sending its scions into the public service. These in turn bring their earnings to swell the common funds, while the rank and dignity which they may earn add to the importance and standing of the group as a whole. The members of this class are usually termed the literati or gentry.

The peasant class forms the bulk of the population. The majority of Chinese are small landowners; their standard of living is very low in comparison with European standards. This is in part due to the system of land tenure. A parent cannot, even if he wished to do so, leave all his land to one son. There must be substantially an equal division, the will of the father notwithstanding. As early marriages and large families are the rule, this process of continual division and subdivision has brought things down to the irreducible minimum in many places. Small patches of one tenth or even one-twentieth of an acre are to be found as the estate of an individual landowner, and the vast majority of holdings run between" one and . With "a family is deemed very comfortable, and the possession of means luxury.

Gentry (China)

See also