Abstract:
Retiring of aged officials has always been one of the national systems of administering government officials since the ancient times. As early as the Tang Dynasty, there were established rules proscribing the age and treatment of retired officials. According to these retiring rules, a retired official should enjoy more than half his salary in office, and a medium-or-high-rank might even enjoy some previlidge of “imperial allowance”. These rules assured the retired officials’ needs for life and prevented the aging of the bureaucratic team, but they resulted in the hereditory system of medium-and-high-rank officialship, seriously affecting the normal operation of governmental function.
