This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
The ancients often said, “Generals and ministers are not born to their rank; a man must strive for himself.” To go out as a general and come in as a minister became the dream of countless people in ancient times. And unlike the “general” (将), who was in charge of campaigns, slaughter and military strategy, the “minister” (相), as head of the civil officials, naturally attracted countless scholars and men of talent, who spent their whole lives hoping to be “a farm boy in the morning, ascending the Son of Heaven’s hall by evening.”
Thanks to the popularity of costume dramas on film and TV, chengxiang (丞相) and zaixiang (宰相) have become the most familiar kinds of “minister” in our daily lives. But on the other hand, precisely because these costume dramas are not rigorous, many people cannot tell the difference between chengxiang and zaixiang and think they are one and the same. In fact, the two have things in common, but also quite a few differences.
The establishment of the chengxiang
The chengxiang first appeared in the Qin and was established by King Wu of Qin. King Wu of Qin was a man of great ambition; ashamed to be in the same rank as the six states, and seeing that the six states all had the office of xiangguo (chancellor), he renamed Qin’s office of xiangguo as chengxiang. In the second year of King Wu of Qin (309 BC), King Wu established the office of chengxiang in Qin, with one Left and one Right Chancellor; he appointed Gan Mao as chancellor concurrently in command as supreme general, and Chuli Ji as Right Chancellor. He ordered Gan Mao and others to revise the field laws, redraw the borders, dredge the rivers and build dikes and bridges. The Tongzhi, the Tongdian and even the Wenxian Tongkao all say: “The Yellow Emperor appointed six ministers. Yao had sixteen ministers. Tang of Yin had Left and Right Ministers. King Cheng of Zhou had Left and Right Ministers.”
The Book of Han records: “The xiangguo and the chengxiang were both Qin offices, with gold seals and purple ribbons, in charge of assisting the Son of Heaven in managing the myriad affairs of state. Qin had Left and Right; when Emperor Gao took the throne he appointed one chengxiang, and in the eleventh year renamed it xiangguo, with green ribbons. Emperor Hui and Empress Gao appointed Left and Right Chancellors; in the second year of Emperor Wen one chancellor was again appointed. There were two chief clerks, with a rank of a thousand shi. In the second year of Yuanshou of Emperor Ai it was renamed Grand Minister over the Masses. In the fifth year of Yuanshou of Emperor Wu of Han the office of Director of Uprightness was first established, with a rank equivalent to two thousand shi, in charge of assisting the chancellor in exposing wrongdoing.”
What is a chengxiang?
Chengxiang, as an official title in ancient China, can be traced back as early as the Warring States period. In the Shuowen Jiezi, 丞 (chéng) is explained as: “To assist. From 廾, from 卪, from 山. The mountain is high — the meaning of holding up in support”; and 相 (xiàng) as: “To examine and look.” From this it can be seen that the chengxiang was the person who assisted the Son of Heaven.
However, the original chengxiang was not “below one man and above ten thousand.” To be precise, in the pre-Qin period, many feudal states, thanks to changes in social structure, successively established the offices of xiang and xiangbang, and faced with complicated affairs of state they naturally needed deputies to help out. Thus the office of chengxiang came about; that is to say, the original chengxiang ranked below at least two people.
The continuation of this office was due to Qin’s unification and the needs of establishing the Qin dynasty. In the time of King Hui of Qin (334 BC), Qin established the office of xiangbang, responsible for assisting the King of Qin in governing the realm, and Lü Buwei became one of Qin’s earliest xiangbang. But later, when Lao Ai’s affair with Zhao Ji and Lao Ai’s rebellion were exposed, Lü Buwei was implicated and dismissed, and the office of xiangbang remained vacant.
The evolution of the chengxiang
In the pre-Qin period there were the titles xiang, xiangbang and so on, but they were different from the office of chengxiang, because artifacts unearthed from the Eastern Mausoleum of Qin bear the bronze inscription: “Eighth year, xiangbang Lord Xue, chengxiang Shu.” This proves that xiangguo and chengxiang were two completely different offices that existed at the same time; the chengxiang was the deputy of the xiangbang, and the xiangguo ranked above the chengxiang. Qin’s first xiangguo was Jiu You; later King Wu of Qin added Left and Right Chancellors as deputies of the xiangbang, and thereafter the xiangguo and the Left and Right Chancellors coexisted. After the First Emperor of Qin unified China, the Left and Right Chancellors were retained. Only under the Second Emperor of Qin was the office of Central Chancellor added, so that at that time there were Left, Right and Central Chancellors at once. The Han inherited the Qin system and still had a xiangguo, with the chengxiang still his deputy. The Western Han also had a chengxiang, until in the second year of Yuanshou of Emperor Ai (1 BC) the chengxiang was renamed Grand Minister over the Masses. This period of more than 300 years was the longest in history during which the office of chengxiang existed. From Emperor Ai to the thirteenth year of Jian’an of the Eastern Han (208), for over 200 years, there was no chengxiang; in the thirteenth year of Jian’an Cao Cao re-established the office and took it himself, but only for a short time. In the 370 years of the Three Kingdoms, Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, apart from Shu, the early Eastern Jin and brief periods in the Northern Dynasties, there was no chengxiang; the Sui did not have one, and the Tang and Song basically did not either. In the first year of Kaiyuan of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (713), the Left and Right Executive Assistants of the Department of State Affairs were renamed Left and Right Chancellors; in the eighth year of Qiandao of the Southern Song (1172) the Left and Right Executive Assistants of the Department of State Affairs were likewise renamed Left and Right Chancellors; and the Yuan had chengxiang in the Secretariat.
In the 1,600 years from the Qin to the early Ming, when Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the chancellorship (through the Hu Weiyong case), the office of chengxiang existed only intermittently; as an official title, chengxiang did not exist for very long in history.
The difference between chengxiang and zaixiang
Zaixiang is a common term in ancient China for the officials who assisted the ruler and held the highest power of the state; it is not a specific official title. Note that a zaixiang was not necessarily a chengxiang; in different dynasties, zaixiang corresponded to different official posts.
