Law and Politics in Modern China: Under the Law, the Law, and Abo ...

chancellor. A single presiding minister (shangshuling) headed the Executive Department. The Tang bureaucracy as a whole was vertically divided into nine grades, the first two of which were reserved for elder statesmen. The actual responsibility for administration lay with officials of the third grade and lower. The secretary general, the chancellor, and the presiding minister were all third-grade officials. They exercised the same functions as those of the chancellor of the Han dynasty.

During the Tang dynasty, the most important government legislation took the form of imperial decrees (zhi), which were issued by the Imperial Secretariat in the name of the emperor. His Imperial Majesty did not draft the law himself; it was written by lower officials of the Imperial Secretariat known as drafting officials (zhongshu sheren). There were seven or eight such officials under two assistant secretary generals (zhongshu shilang). This procedure was called “deciding the intent and issuing the decree” (ting zhi ch'u ming).

Although the emperor was the mouth of the imperial law, the legislative power, which put the words into the imperial mouth, rested in the hands of the government that drafted and issued the imperial decrees. In this system, the drafting officials drew up a number of draft memorials, from which the secretary general or assistant secretary general would chose one and revise it into a formal decree. This decree would be submitted to the emperor for his signature (hua zhi) and then sent to the Imperial Chancellery for review.

This procedure guaranteed a clear separation of power between legislation and administration of the law. The head of the Imperial Chancellery would immediately review each decree and ask for additional opinions from its reviewing officers (jishizhong), who were lower ranking officials under the Imperial Chancellery. Whenever the imperial chancellor was opposed to the decree, the document would be returned to the Imperial Secretariat with comments for revision. This power of review, which lay with the Imperial Chancellery, is what could be called, in modern terms, the countersignature.