The Ming Dynasty's Imperial Power Game

Clever and well-behaved, obedient to their ruler's every command; talented yet always following the rules; willing to die remonstrating, but never to rebel. The scholar-officials of the Ming dynasty were a peculiar group. How did they become this way?

By recounting how the founding and second emperors of the Ming secretly set up two great schemes, and the "criminal careers" of the two pawns they sacrificed, this book attempts to offer a profound answer. These two sacrificed pawns were the two emperors Zhu Yuanzhang and his son most favored: two pivotal figures who bridged the old and the new. One was Hu Weiyong, the last chancellor; the other was Xie Jin, the first Grand Secretary. They were also representatives of two traditional types of Chinese scholar-official.

Reading this book offers insight into how the Hongwu and Yongle reigns tamed and reshaped the literati, and reveals the inner workings of the Ming dynasty's principle that "the ruler is honored and the minister is humble." It also explores the political roots of the reverse selection process that, after the Ming, stripped Chinese literati of their ambition and individuality, reducing them from servants of the state to servants of the ruler's household and transforming them as a whole into slaves and rigid conformists.