Our paper providing an introduction in English to the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing (CGED-Q) is now available at the Journal of Chinese History. The paper is lead-authored by Bijia Chen and is based on the second chapter of her PhD dissertation, which she defended in 2019. The paper will appear in the July 2020 issue.
Here is the abstract:
We introduce the China Government Employee Database—Qing (CGED-Q), a new resource for the quantitative study of Qing officialdom. The CGED-Q details the backgrounds, characteristics and careers of Qing officials who served between 1760 and 1912, with nearly complete coverage of officials serving after 1830. We draw information on careers from the Roster of Government Personnel (jinshenlu), which in each quarterly edition listed approximately 12,500 regular civil offices and their holders in the central government and the provinces. Information about backgrounds and characteristics comes from such linked sources as lists of exam degree holders. In some years, information on military officials is also available. As of February 2020, the CGED-Q comprises 3,817,219 records, of which 3,354,897 are civil offices and the remainder are military. In this article we review the progress and prospects of the project, introduce the sources, transcription procedures, and constructed variables, and provide examples of results to showcase its potential.
Bijia Chen is now a postdoc at the Renmin University Institute of Qing History.
For more information about the CGED-Q, please see the CGED-Q project page.
Errata
Page 2 – Footnote 1 – line 10 – Zhenan should be Zhinan
Page 3- second line in paragraph after heading ‘Origin, current status, and future plans…’, ‘ongoing of study’ should be ‘ongoing study’
Page 3 – Footnote 6 – line 2 – Lishi Yanjiu should be Qingshi Yanjiu
Page 8 – Footnote 22 – line 1 – Jizhi should be Jiazhi
Page 8 – Footnote 26 – line 1 – Jijie should be Ji