Abstract: The separation of officials and local staff(官吏分途)was an important phenomenon in the history of Chinese political system. Recently, some scholars have argued for the rationality of its existence from the logic of governance. This paper attempts to demonstrate that the division between officials and local staff is a troublesome institutional arrangement from the perspective of governance, and its formation and persistence are mainly the result of political logic. In ancient China, problems of bureaucratic cliques and aristocratization often led to the erosion of imperial governance power and endangerment of the ruling power. The management system handling petty bureaucratic functionaries at all levels was thus closely associated with governance risk prevention. First of all, this study argued that separating officials from local staff began with the bureaucratic aristocratization during the Eastern Han dynasty. The difference in social status between nobles and commoners affected the establishment of formal official ranking system, resulting in a total separation between officials and local staff in recruitment, ranking and moral prestige. Secondly, the continuity of this separation after the Tang dynasty was closely related to the rulers' desire to prevent governance risks. After Song dynasty, the problems associated with the separation between officials and local staff became well recognised. For each succeeding dynasty, reform proposals were attempted but more or less all wanted to go back to the open but politically highly risky selection system(pishu, 辟署制). The Imperial rulers would rather endure the ills of the system than change it. This paper reveals the bureaucratic personnel risks that have not been explored previously and its profound influence on the ancient Chinese bureaucracy. It is worth noting that similar political risks still exist in contemporary times, and they are now receiving increasing attention and rectification.

Key words: local staff, the separation of officials and local staff, ruling risk, selection system(pishu)