Abstract
Gongqing Wangming is a kind of capital punishment procedure for Governors-general and Governors (_??__??_) without getting emperor's sanction by using Wangming Qipai (_??__??__??__??_). It can bethought to come from the expedient measure in military affairs.
In the Yongzheng (_??__??_) era, it was the expedient measure for capital cases which was chosen to hasten the execution of the death penalty. However, it was only the method accepted with the limitation after troublesome procedure, which was possible to impose a serious punishment in comparison with the Cane punishment (_??__??_) of the same time.
In the early Qianlong (_??__??_) era, the emperor made Governorsgeneral and Governors use properly the Cane punishment and the capital punishment by the statute law to impose a punishment corresponding to the crime. So they had to grope for the new method in the case using the Cane punishment to hasten the execution of the death penalty. As coping with this situation, some methods to hasten the execution of the death penalty were groped on each step of capital punishment procedure. One of them was an Imperial ordinance at 1761 and 1764 that establishes to use Gongqing Wangming in the case of murdering parents or grandparents. It was established as the method to impose quickly the capital punishment by the statute law.
After the mid-Qianlong era, the case of Gongqing Wangming increased since establishing to use it in the case of murdering parents or grandparents. On the one hand the emperor and the government officials worked for establishing in advance, on the other hand they used it as the expedient measure. Occasionally, the established method was born of such practice. These were activities about an aptitude for procedure in the whole of the bureaucracy system, and establishing was the process that took root of those in the fixed method. "The system" of Gongqing Wangming was established by repeating trial and error with an uncertain limit during the historical change, as the form that it didn't contend gradually for the kernel. There is a feature in holding fluidity in system at all time.
The function of difference in punishment by the elements of procedure was produced from the increase and establishment of Gongqing Wangming after the mid-Qianlong era, and contributed to making it stabilize an established method. As the stability of established method rose from such an interaction, the expedient function to hasten the execution of the death penalty changed into the function of difference in punishment in the established method of Gongqing Wangming. One of the reasons why Gongqing Wangming became to be used only in the part of establishment at the end of Qing dynasty is a decrease of the expedient function in "the system" of Gongqing Wangming.
