Social ladder · 1644–1912 (the high Qing, 18th century)
Social Hierarchy of Qing China
From Emperor to Bondservants
By statute, Qing society was divided into relatively closed estates, five in all: the officials, a comparatively minuscule aristocracy, the degree-holding gentry and, among ordinary Chinese, the “good people” (liangmin) and the “mean people” (jianmin). Qing law counted the four traditional occupations, scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants, as good. Slaves and bondservants, entertainers, tattooed criminals and the low-level employees of officials were mean: barred from the examinations and usually from marriage with commoners. Across these lines ran a division the dynasty drew itself, “not between Manchu and Han, but between bannerman and civilian”: about 1.5 million people of the hereditary Eight Banners lived on state stipends under their own courts. Over all stood the emperor, the Son of Heaven. Most people farmed, and their numbers doubled in the 18th century, from about 150 million to 300 million.
Period 1644–1912 (the high Qing, 18th century)People c. 200–250 million (est.)Ranks 12Profile Qing Empire
The ladder
By rank, the ladder is drawn as a pyramid. To scale, each bar is as wide as that rank’s share of the people. Shares marked est. are estimates where no count survives; their boxes and bars are dashed.
Ruler · One ruler
Huangdi (The emperor)
tianzi (Son of Heaven), ejen
The emperor ruled China and the lands beyond it from the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The emperor was an absolute ruler who presided over the six Boards and held, in Confucian theory, the Mandate of Heaven. As Son of Heaven he was both the head of the political system and the head priest of the State Cult, responsible for “all under heaven”. To his Mongol subjects he was the Bogda Khan, and to Tibetan Buddhists a patron of their faith. All important matters were decided in the Inner Court, dominated by the imperial family and the Manchu nobility, where the Yongzheng Emperor created the Grand Council in the 1720s. The Kangxi Emperor reigned 61 years; the Qianlong Emperor led the Ten Great Campaigns, sponsored the Siku Quanshu and used the literary inquisition to silence opposition.
Moving in or out. The throne passed among the sons of the imperial house: on the Kangxi Emperor’s death in 1722 his fourth son became the Yongzheng Emperor, and in 1735 Yongzheng’s son became the Qianlong Emperor. A child emperor reigned through regents, as Kangxi did from the age of seven.
How many? One man, with the imperial family.
Nobility and officials · Fewer than 1 in 1,000 (est.)
The imperial clan and the Manchu nobility
Aisin Gioro (the imperial house), the Eight Great Houses, qinwang (prince of the blood)
Princes of the emperor’s family and a few great Manchu families held noble titles and led the banner armies.
Above the officials stood a small hereditary aristocracy: the princes of the imperial Aisin Gioro house and the Manchu nobles of the “Eight Great Houses”, who held noble titles, as against the commoner bannermen (irgen). Imperial princes had led the Banners against the Ming, and the Inner Court was dominated by the imperial family and the Manchu nobility. Appointments in the six Boards were split between Manchu noblemen and Han examination graduates. Princesses of the imperial house were married to Han generals who had gone over to the Qing and to the sons of Han officials. The emperors watched their kinsmen closely: the regent Dorgon had ruled at the expense of rival princes, many of whom he demoted or imprisoned.
Moving in or out. Noble rank came by birth or by the emperor’s grant, and the father and brothers of an emperor’s mother were raised into the Upper Three Manchu Banners. Rank could be lost as quickly: after his death in 1650 Dorgon was stripped of his titles and his family and associates purged.
How many? Estimate: the statute’s “comparatively minuscule aristocracy”, the imperial clan and the Manchu houses with noble titles, at most some tens of thousands of people among 200–250 million.
Nobility and officials · c. 0.02–0.1% (est.)
Shidafu (Officials)
Officials who had passed very hard exams ran the government, from ministers in Beijing to the judges of every county.
The Qing kept the Ming bureaucracy and divided its posts into civil and military, each in nine grades, from a Grand Secretary down to a deputy jail warden. In the capital each post had a Manchu and a Han Chinese holder: the Han official did the substantive work and the Manchu ensured his loyalty. In the provinces, eight viceroys, the governors and prefects stood over the county magistrate, who by rule could not serve in his home district. Salaries grew less and less adequate, and officials came to rely on “squeeze”, irregular payments; in Qianlong’s last years his favourite Heshen became one of the most corrupt officials of the dynasty.
Moving in or out. Office came chiefly through the examinations: graduates of the metropolitan examination were assured influential posts, but qualified men so far exceeded the vacancies that many waited years, and purchase of office became common in the 19th century. Appointments ran for three years, with an evaluation at the end, and Qianlong’s son forced Heshen to commit suicide.
How many? Estimate: the article gives no count of posts. 26,747 men earned the highest degree, the jinshi, in the 261 years of the examinations, about 240 every three years, and degree-holders far outnumbered the posts; with their families, a small fraction of one per cent.
Nobility and officials · c. 1–2% (est.)
Shenshi (The degree-holding gentry)
shengyuan or xiucai, juren, jinshi (the degrees)
Men who passed the first exams became gentry, the leaders of their towns and villages.
The gentry were defined by law: a man who had passed at least the first level of the examinations held a degree that qualified him for office, and his wife and some relatives shared his status. He could wear gentry robes and speak to officials as an equal; the shengyuan, or xiucai, were exempt from statute labour and partly from corporal punishment. Informally the gentry presided over local society: they influenced the magistrate, acquired land, lent money, ran schools and charities, settled disputes, helped gather the taxes and led Confucian ceremonies. Those who failed the higher examinations became tutors, secretaries or managers of guilds and temples. They travelled by sedan chair and collected scholars’ stones and porcelain.
Moving in or out. Any commoner of good status could sit the examinations, but years of study, travel and gifts to examiners made a candidate the burden of his whole family, and in the Ming and Qing only about one candidate in a hundred passed the provincial examination. Merchant families could also buy degrees.
How many? Estimate: the article gives no count. The gentry were the holders of examination degrees, most of them the lowest, the shengyuan, together with their wives and some relatives; for every shengyuan only one in three thousand would ever become a jinshi.
Soldiers, merchants and craftsmen · 0.6–0.75%
Qiren (Bannermen)
jakūn gūsa (the Eight Banners), irgen (commoner bannermen)
Bannermen were soldier families, many of them Manchu, who were paid by the emperor and lived in their own quarters of the cities.
Every Manchu household belonged to one of the Eight Banners, which had been joined by Mongol and Han Chinese banners: in effect twenty-four armies, in companies of nominally 300 men. Membership was hereditary, and after the conquest the banners became a salaried military caste. Bannermen received stipends, land, grain rations and housing in garrison quarters, about half of them in Beijing and the rest in some eighteen provincial garrisons, and they answered to banner courts rather than the civil magistrates. All bannermen called themselves the emperor’s slaves (aha, nucai) when they addressed him, a Mongol model of service. By the 1730s many neglected their duties, and the Green Standard Army, formed from surrendered Ming troops, outnumbered the banners three to one.
Moving in or out. Banner status was inherited. Han Chinese entered by adoption into Manchu households, often for money, and were registered apart as “separate-register” bannermen; deserters from destitute garrisons were sentenced to penal slavery or death.
How many? About 1.5 million men, women and children lived in the banner system by the 1730s, among some 200–250 million people: roughly 0.6–0.75 per cent.
Religious and learned · c. 0.1–0.5% (est.)
Buddhist, Daoist and other clergy
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Monks and priests looked after temples, and the emperor himself built great Buddhist temples in Beijing.
The clergy stood outside the four occupations. The emperor took responsibility for every faith in his empire, and the county magistrate, his political and spiritual representative, made offerings at the recognised temples and kept close watch over religious organisations that might defy the state, such as the White Lotus Society. Buddhist monasteries had long been sponsored by the elite, sometimes even by Confucian scholars. The Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors practised Tibetan Buddhism as one of their household religions and built temples that made Beijing one of its centres. Several hundred Catholic missionaries reached China before 1724, when the Yongzheng Emperor proscribed Christianity as a “heterodox teaching”; the Jesuits among them served the court in gunnery, cartography and astronomy.
Moving in or out. Entering a monastery or temple took a man or woman out of the four occupations; the state could also close the door, as when the Yongzheng Emperor outlawed Christianity in 1723 and expelled most of the missionaries.
How many? Estimate: the Buddhist monks, the Daoist priests, the lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist temples and the few hundred Catholic missionaries; the articles give no count.
Free commoners · About 86% (the rest, est.)
Nong (Farmers)
liangmin (good people)
Most people were farmers, and new crops such as sweet potatoes and peanuts helped feed a fast-growing population.
In the Confucian scheme farmers stood second, after the scholars, as the primary creators of wealth, and Qing law counted them among the good people. In the 18th century their numbers doubled, helped by maize, peanuts, sweet potatoes and potatoes from the Americas and new rice from Southeast Asia, and farmers had to work ever smaller holdings more intensely; “the population continues to grow, but the land does not”, the Qianlong Emperor remarked. The land tax was assessed in silver, landlords began to accept rent only in silver, and many households grew crops for sale. The state replaced labour service with a head tax. In 1796 the White Lotus rebels declared that “the officials have forced the people to rebel”.
Moving in or out. A prospering farm family could educate a son for the examinations, the road to the gentry, though the cost fell on the whole family. Millions moved instead, to Yunnan, Guizhou, Taiwan and the highlands, and poverty drove some families to sell children under the guise of adoption.
How many? Everyone not counted in the other tiers: chiefly farming families, the great majority. Several of the other ranks are estimates, so this share is one too.
Free commoners · c. 3–6% (est.)
Gong (Artisans)
Craftspeople made silk, paper and fine porcelain, and some of it was shipped all the way to Europe.
Artisans came third in the four occupations, makers of useful things, and Qing law counted them among the good people. Textile and handicraft production boomed in the 18th century. In the textile, paper and other industries, large-scale production rested on many small workshops, each with a small team of workers under a master craftsman, and wage labour spread. The kilns made porcelain for the home market and export porcelain designed for Europe, and the Imperial Household Department ran textile factories in Jiangnan. Guild halls (gongsuo) came to control crafts such as carpentry and weaving, and issued codes and price schedules.
Moving in or out. Artisans were good people, so a prosperous craftsman’s family, like any family of good status, could try to put a son through the examinations.
How many? Estimate: the craftsmen of the workshops and guild halls of the cities and market towns, in a country whose cities grew only slowly; the articles give no count.
Free commoners · c. 2–5% (est.)
Shang (Merchants)
Merchants were placed last in old Chinese ideas, but many grew rich trading salt, tea and silk.
Merchants stood last in Confucian theory, seen as a social disturbance for piling up wealth, but Qing law counted them among the good people, and many were far richer than their place suggested. Merchant guilds multiplied in the growing cities, and guild halls (huiguan) housed travelling traders. Rich merchants with official connections built huge fortunes and patronised literature, theatre and the arts; the salt merchants of Yangzhou dealt directly with the Imperial Household Department. Wary of their power, the Qing limited trading licences and usually refused permission to open new mines. From 1757 the Canton Cohong, thirteen firms, held the sole right to trade with Western merchants, and tea came to make up ninety per cent of the exports leaving Canton.
Moving in or out. Merchants could buy degrees, and under the Ming and Qing their sons could sit the examinations: in 1711 the success of salt merchants’ sons at Yangzhou led to a bribery case and the chief examiner’s execution. By the late imperial period gentry and merchant families overlapped and mixed.
How many? Estimate: from the great salt merchants and the Canton Cohong to shopkeepers and travelling traders; the articles give no count.
Serfs and dependants · c. 0.05–0.2% (est.)
Booi (Banner bondservants)
booi aha (booi niyalma, men, booi hehe, women), aha
Bondservant families served a banner household for generations; some farmed, while others ran the emperor’s palace business.
The booi aha, “household people”, were hereditarily servile members of the banners, often translated “bondservants”. There were company servants, half-company servants and estate bannermen; booi usually did domestic service, while aha worked in the fields. The historian Mark C. Elliott warns that calling them slaves conveys the wrong meaning, for Chinese society had no matching status: booi often held powerful positions and were sometimes intimates of the emperor. The Imperial Household Department, which managed the palace in place of most eunuchs and ran trade in jade, ginseng, salt and furs, the Jiangnan textile factories and dealings with the salt merchants, was staffed by booi of the Upper Three Banners.
Moving in or out. The status was inherited, but booi families could be moved into the Manchu banners by the emperor’s order, and Manchu families adopted bondservants’ sons, often for payment; the court discovered such adoptions in 1729, and their descendants came to fill soldiers’ places in the banners.
How many? Estimate: the hereditary servile households within a banner population of about 1.5 million; the articles give no count.
Picture: The Empress Dowager Cixi with her palace attendants at the Summer Palace, about 1903 · John Yu Shuinling · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Outcast groups · c. 1–3% (est.)
Jianmin (The mean people)
Actors, entertainers and some poor workers were called “mean people” by law and were not allowed to take the exams.
Below the good people Qing law placed the mean people: entertainers, including actors and prostitutes, tattooed criminals and the low-level employees of government officials; the rules of the examinations also name boat people and beggars among them. They were legally inferior to commoners: they could not sit the examinations or hold office, were usually not allowed to marry free commoners, and were often required to acknowledge their abasement by bowing. Entertaining was thought of little use to society, and full-time musicians and dancers were of low status, many entering the work through poverty, yet wealthy families kept private theatre troupes and audiences idolised famous performers.
Moving in or out. Mean status closed the road of the examinations. The emperor, his court and the bureaucracy worked to reduce the distinction between the debased and the free, but even at the end of the dynasty they had not merged the two.
How many? Estimate: entertainers, actors and prostitutes, the low-level employees of officials, boat people, beggars and tattooed criminals; the articles give no count.
Picture: Actors of the Chinese theatre in costume, Beijing, 1874 · Adolf-Nikolay Boiarskii · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Enslaved · c. 0.5–2% (est.)
Nubi (Enslaved people)
Some people were enslaved, often as a punishment for crimes, even though one emperor tried to end slavery.
Slavery was comparatively uncommon in Chinese history and was practised largely as a judicial punishment. The Yongzheng Emperor tried to ban it entirely, without success. Poor families’ children were often enslaved illegally under the guise of adoption, and the historian Sue Gronewold has suggested that up to 80 per cent of the prostitutes of the late Qing may have been enslaved. The state itself enslaved convicts: Han criminals were exiled to Xinjiang as slaves of the banner garrisons there, and Mongol, Russian and Muslim convicts from Inner Asia were sent to the Han banner garrison at Guangzhou; after the Jahriyya revolt in Gansu was put down in the 1780s, Muslims such as Ma Jinlu were exiled there as slaves of banner officers.
Moving in or out. People fell into slavery by a criminal sentence, by the sale of poor families’ children, or as rebels and deserters punished by the state; the Yongzheng Emperor’s attempt to abolish slavery did not succeed.
How many? Estimate: slavery was comparatively uncommon in China and largely a judicial punishment; to it were added children sold under the guise of adoption, many prostitutes and convicts sent as slaves to the banner garrisons.
Picture: A woman of Beijing with her servant, photographed in 1874 · Adolf-Nikolay Boiarskii · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Born into history
Where would you have stood? Chance places you on the ladder, as birth placed most people: weighted by how many each rank held.
Moving up and down
The examinations were the great road up. Since the system did not formally discriminate by social status, it offered an avenue of upward mobility, and its quotas spread the prizes across the provinces in rough proportion to their people. Yet only about 5 per cent of those who sat the examinations passed, most candidates were men of some means, and preparing one son was a burden for the whole family. Failure did not cost a family its wealth or local standing: failed candidates taught, served as secretaries or managed local projects. Wealth also bought rank, as merchant families purchased degrees and, in the 19th century, offices, and gentry and merchant families mixed. Within the banners, Han Chinese bondservants’ sons were adopted into Manchu households and whole groups were moved from Han to Manchu banners by order. Below, the line between good and mean people closed the examinations to the mean, and the court’s efforts to narrow it never fully succeeded. Failure could also turn to revolt: Hong Xiuquan, after his fourth failure in the shengyuan examination, went on in the 19th century to lead the Taiping Rebellion.
Women on the ladder
Women were excluded from the examinations, so a woman’s standing came from her father and husband: the gentry included degree-holders’ wives. The Kangxi Emperor’s attempts to discourage Chinese women from foot binding failed, while the regent Dorgon had directed Manchu women not to bind their feet in the Han Chinese style. A decree of 1648 let Han civilian men marry Manchu women of the banners with official permission, a policy later abandoned; the family of an emperor’s mother was raised into the Upper Three Manchu Banners, as the Han bannerwoman Empress Xiaoyichun’s was. Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, mother of the Shunzhi Emperor, made most decisions for her twelve-year-old son and proved a skilled political operator. Under the Qing women wrote poetry in larger numbers than before, and among the Manchus shamans were often women. At the bottom, many entertainers and prostitutes were enslaved, and poor families’ daughters were sold under the guise of adoption.
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Sources and further reading
- Crossley, P. K. (1999) A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Elliott, M. C. (2001) The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Elman, B. A. (2016) "Civil Service Examinations Kējǔ 科举", in Cheng, L. (ed.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, pp. 405–410.
- Porter, D. C. (2024) Slaves of the Emperor: Service, Privilege, and Status in the Qing Eight Banners. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Rawski, E. S. (1998) The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Zhang, Z. (1955) The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
The shares are of the whole population, children included. Where a scholar has counted or estimated a rank, its share follows that work, named on the rank; where no count survives, the share is an estimate, marked est. and drawn dashed, made from what the rank was and did, from related figures and from the same rank in comparable societies, and its note says what it rests on. Population: the Qing dynasty article: about 150 million in 1700, doubling to some 300 million by 1800; the middle of the century lay between them.
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