China's Bureaucratic System

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As a nation with one of the longest history in the world, China boasted a bureaucratic system of more than 2000 years. Since the start of Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C, China has established a centralized bureaucratic system. The First Emperor divided his new empire into 36 commanderies(Jun), each subdivided into a number of counties(xian). (Junxian has been shorthand for centralized bureaucratic rule, as opposed to fengjian meaning decentralized or feudal) (Fairbank, 1998). It is hard to imagine how such a centralized system could persist in a country with huge territory given the extremely poor transportation and communication conditions in ancient times, but it did. The key to the survival of grand bureaucratic regime is twofold: first, at and

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