ns. The court also controlled centrally the conscription for
the general military service. Beside the ministries there was an
extensive administration of the capital with its military guards. The
various parts of the country, including the lands given as fiefs to
princes, had a local administration, entirely independent of the central
government and more or less elaborated according to their size. The
regional administration was loosely associated with the central
government through a sort of primitive ministry of the interior, and
similarly the Chinese representatives in the protectorates, that is to
say the foreign states which had submitted to Chinese protective
overlordship, were loosely united with a sort of foreign ministry in the
central government. When a rising or a local war broke out, that was the
affair of the officer of the region concerned. If the regional troops
were insufficient, those of the adjoining regions were drawn upon; if
even these were insufficient, a real "state of war" came into being;
that is to say, the emperor appointed eight generals-in-chief, mobilized
the imperial troops, and intervened. This imperial army then had
authority over the regional and feudal troops, the troops of the
protectorates, the guards of the capital, and those of the imperial
palace. At the end of the war the imperial army was demobilized and the
generals-in-chief were transferred to other posts.

In all this there gradually developed a division into civil and military
administration. A number of regions would make up a province with a
military governor, who was in a sense the representative of the imperial
army, and who was supposed to come into activity only in the event of
war.

This administration of the Han period lacked the tight organization that
would make precise functioning possible. On the other hand, an
extremely important institution had already come into existence in a
primitive form. As central statistical authority, the court secretariat
had a special position within the ministries and supervised the
administration of the other offices. Thus there existed alongside the
executive a means of independent supervision of it, and the resulting
rivalry enabled the emperor or the chancellor to detect and eliminate
irregularities. Later, in the system of the T'ang period (A.D. 618-906),
this institution developed into an independent censorship, and the
system was given a new form as a "State and Court Secreta