113Research Trends

State Ritual and Political Culture in Imperial and Late
Imperial China: Research Reﬂections on Li*Macabe KELIHER†In the late nineteenth century, the Guangxu 光緒 emperor commissioned anupdate of the collected rules and regulations of the Qing dynasty. It wascalled the Da Qing huidian 大清會典, and it had served as the foundation forrunning the Qing state and its multiethnic empire for more than two centuries.1 “The spirit of this book is to make clear established regulations of li 禮for administration,” the emperor wrote in his preface. “Following and practicing [li] will achieve perfect goodness and perfect beauty [in governance].”2Continuing this theme of state organization and operation, he emphasized in
an addendum the importance of li as a disciplinary mechanism. “No matter if
an oﬃcial is civil or military, of the inner or outer court, pure or impure—nomatter if his position is superior or inferior, major or minor—all are fully
subsumed by li.”3 For the Guangxu emperor, administrative procedure and its
regulation were embodied in li.
The Qing emphasis on li was not unusual. Often translated as “ritual” or“rites,” li has long been the organizational principle of moral and social actionin China.4 Confucius put li at the center of his teachings, while Xunzi 荀子† Macabe KELIHER is Assistant Professor of History, West Virginia University* This essay is based on research presented and remarks delivered at a recent AAS-inAsia panel, “State Ritual and Political Culture in Imperial and Late ImperialChina,” AAS-in-Asia Conference, Kyoto (June 26, 2016), and the accompanying
workshop at Kansai University, “Dentō Chūgoku no reisei to seiji bunka” 伝統中国の礼制と政治文化, Kansai University (June 28, 2016).
1 For an extended discussion of the Huidian and its administrative uses, see Keliher
2016.
至於本雎麟之精意，著官禮之成規
著官禮之成規，是訓是行
是訓是行，盡善盡美。
2 Da Qing huidian (1899). 至於本雎麟之精意
3 Quoted in Lu Li 2001. 官無論文武內外清濁
官無論文武內外清濁，秩之崇卑大小
秩之崇卑大小，咸一禮之所彌。
4 As McDermott (1999, p.1) wrote in the opening lines of an edited volume on state
ritual in China, “Ritual has been a central concern of Chinese culture for at least
four thousand years.”

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reﬁned the concept to give it an institutional form that subsequently served as
the foundation for the organization and operation of the imperial state fromthe Han dynasty onward. State makers of each successive dynasty built their
institutions and political operations from li, and implemented various practicesof statecraft and social organization as part of the repertoire of li.5 Even
leaders in contemporary China have recently taken to explicitly articulatingand enacting li as a means of bureaucratic management.6
At the core of the institution of li is the notion of a hierarchical sociopolitical order with prescribed sets of behaviors and actions for all social actors.
As it related to statecraft in imperial China, li constituted a system that
included a range of ritual and ceremonial activities, from court audiences toannual sacriﬁces. At the state level, these practices did far more than simply
project symbolic power and arrange legitimizing symbols of the ruler andstate, as scholars have argued in recent years.7 More fundamentally, li
constituted politics. Recent developments in ritual theory and Chinese statecraft show that the practices of li put political and social actors into particularkinds of relationships that facilitated politics and administration, and in doing
so gave some people greater access to political and material resources, whichenabled them to set the terms over what others could and could not do.8
An oﬃcial of a certain rank, for example, would come to know his placein the political and social order through his position and role in ceremony andsacriﬁce, as well as in how he was prescribed to interact with other oﬃcialsof other ranks through greeting rites, clothing, attendants, and written correspondences. At the top, the emperor occupied a superior position and wassymbolically placed at the head of the state when leading a ceremony or rite,
while all other political actors had to kowtow and express subservience; hewas also given control over the court audience rite, where policy decisions
were made and political orders issued. In this way, li served as the basis of
the rules and regulations for administrative activity in imperial China, asarticulated by the Guangxu emperor in the quote above.9
Given the importance of li in Chinese history, scholars have spared noeﬀort in investigating and analyzing the concept and its associated prac-

5 Chen Shuguo, in his survey of the practices of li in each dynasty (2002), oﬀers agood overview of li in Chinese history.
6 In recent years, Chinese president Xi Jinping has embraced Confucianism and spokenof li in ways reminiscent of the Guangxu emperor. See Keliher and Wu 2016.
7 For a representative study of li as ritual and symbol, see Zito 1997.
8 For an expression of advances in ritual theory, see Seligman et al. 2008. For adiscussion of these themes through Chinese ritual theory, see Ing 2012.
9 Ch’u T’ung-tsu (1961) spoke of this as the Confucianization of law.

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tices.10 The proliferation of research in these areas has meant that scholars
have examined the meaning and form of li, either through an investigation ofdevelopments in early China, or by exploring practices across dynasties inpursuit of a comprehensive understanding of the concept and the ritual andceremonial practices often associated with it. Existing studies are universal inscope and do not discriminate across time, however. Whether they pursue an
understanding of the philosophy or examine the manifestations and prescribedactions, these studies illuminate the characteristics and nature of li, and often
do so by delving into one aspect of li, which is generally understood as ritual,i.e., formalized acts done repeatedly and involving more than one or more
actors. What they leave untouched is how the practices and concepts of lichanged over time, and how such changes facilitated unique political culturesin diﬀerent dynastic states, from the Han to the Qing.
Building upon the foundation of previous research, historians have begun
to pry open the historical speciﬁcs of li and investigate its impact upon theformation and development of particular states. Taking up the practices ofdiﬀerent states in Chinese history, historians are now focusing on the integrated development and mutual construction of li and the imperial state,whether it be in the Han or the Ming. For example, scholars have shown thatHan political actors introduced a cosmological component to li when building
an empire and confronting Daoist challenges;11 that Tang emperors adaptedand adjusted state ritual to accord with a shifting meaning of sovereignty;12that Song thinkers grappled with the question of to whom an adopted
emperor should oﬀer sacriﬁce, his biological father or adoptive father;13 andthat Ming oﬃcials changed imperial marriage rituals in order to manipulate
the nature of familial relations.14 In each of these cases, li was transformed toaccord with immediate political and cultural circumstances, and these circumstances changed, both between dynasties and over the course of any single
dynasty.
In addition, it is becoming clear that the diﬀerent forms of li implemented
as part of the state building process could determine the structure of the stateand shape the fate of the dynasty. Take the Qing as an example. In the 1630s
and 1640s, as the power relations and institutions of the Qing state emerged,
the form and practices of li were simultaneously constituted. The imperial
relatives of the emperor initially struggled for power with the ruler andamong themselves, but in exchange for their support and acquiescence, they
1011121314

The historiography referred to here is discussed at length in Keliher 2015, pp.39 80.
Sato 2016.
Chou 2016.
Kroher 2014 and Meyer 2012.
Zhan 2015.

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were given ranks, titles, and positions in the new state. In order to both
integrate these relatives into the emergent administrative framework andsecure their investiture in the state system of ranks, titles, and positions, they
were incorporated into li. In contrast to the Ming—or any other dynasty—
imperial relatives partook in state ceremony and sacriﬁces, and they wereprescribed speciﬁc ritual actions based on their ranks and positions. The
inclusion of new political actors here expanded li both in content and form,
and in so doing restructured the organization and operations of the late imperial Chinese state, giving it a unique Qing orientation.15
The incorporation of relatives into the political framework through li
further shaped politics and state administration, making imperial relatives
instrumental in government. In 1723, for example, the Yongzheng 雍正
emperor appointed his brothers to the head of three administrative boards. His
younger half-brother was placed in charge of a secret military commissionthat later became the central administrative organ of the Qing, the GrandCouncil 軍機處.16 Similarly, in the early nineteenth century, a son of theDaoguang 道光 emperor negotiated the Opium War settlement with theBritish. And when the Qing fell in the early twentieth century, the generals
protecting the capital were all imperial relatives. This group of people could
serve the state, not just because decisions were made to give them administrative positions, but because they were incorporated into the Qing meaningof li and, being thus incorporated, came to constitute part of the politicalorder and operations of the Qing state.
Similar developments in each period of Chinese history testify to themalleable and indeterminate nature of li. Collectively, studies of such eventsshow that there was no set form of li that could be indiscriminately applied
by a ruler to yield a complete institutional order or oﬀer a range of practices
that would determine all political and social action. There was no quintessential Chinese state undergirded by singular philosophical concepts andutilizing a predetermined system of rituals and administrative practices. Lichanged throughout history according to the immediate political and cultural
circumstances of the time; it was refashioned to account for diﬀerent politicalactors and their internal struggles for power and position. Although theterminology and principle of a hierarchical organization built upon ritual acts
may have been preserved in the concept of li, the practices and their meaning
shifted as the structure of the state was remade and reimagined. To put it
15 This summary is based on research in Keliher 2015, pp.131 181.
16 Beatrice Bartlett (1991, pp.69 70) remarked, “Prince Yi served Yongzheng in manyways that an ordinary oﬃcial who was not a close relative could not have done.”
She cites his handling of problems of intrigue and treachery in the court, and hisrole in providing policy suggestions.

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another way, the li articulated by the Guangxu emperor in the late Qing was
not the same li employed by Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋 in the early Ming.
These insights into li help explain the structure and transformation of theimperial and late imperial Chinese states. We know that diﬀerent dynasties
had diﬀerent levels of political development with varying organizationalstructures. For example, the Tang had a strong aristocracy with oversizedpolitical clout; the Ming lacked a Grand Secretariat 內閣; and the Qing
employed diﬀerent ethnic actors in politics and administration. Even fromthese simple references, it is clear that it is not tenable to think that thestructure of the imperial Chinese state remained unchanged from the Han tothe Qing with little variation over time in political organization or practice.
Yet this fact must be reconciled not only with an ever present idea of empire,but more fundamentally with the continued reference by contemporaries ineach era to li as the organizing principle of state and society. Viewing li as
indeterminate makes sense of this seeming contradiction. Understanding theintertwined development and mutual constitution of li and state building brings
into focus the logic of the state and its institutions, and enables a better
analysis of the changes and transformations throughout history.
This approach helps us move beyond both the traditional understandingof dynastic cycles and the classical notion of a linear development of history.
Having cast aside the orientalist view that China was vast and unchanging, it
does us little good to embrace a notion that charts a progression throughhistory from one set of institutional arrangements to another in a forwardmarch toward an ideal state, whether that be liberal bourgeois democracy orcommunism. Not only do such views betray the empirical evidence at hand;
they also leave us with little hope for action. If history is determined, then weare not masters of our fate and, like Macbeth, are condemned to succumb tothe prophesy of the witch. The insight of institutional variation and the indeterminacy of li frees us from historical determinism and opens a path todeveloping a better explanation of history and of social possibility.
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