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Ideals about clan ( zu  族) have been an essential ingredient in Chinese conceptions of social order since antiquity. It was grounded on a feudal familybased model. However, the change from an ancient feudal to a bureaucratic system implied major changes. In this article I provide a historical overview with a focus on the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126 AD), showing that strong ideas of familialism or clanism were in fact never skipped in pre-modern China but inherited and continuously propagated by Confucianism – including such well-known elements as common ancestor worship. Rather complementing than replacing this family-based model, the later introduction of the civil service system on the political level led to a new clientelism. Furthermore, Confucianism as the hegemonic ideology of imperial China not only extended family-based ideas to a new universalism but also strongly propagated ideas of a common good and impartiality as a corrective to career and family-oriented egoism. In summary, I argue that as a result of a long process of negotiations, Chinese familialism (clanism) as an ideal of basic social structure, the ideal of impartiality and concern for the common good ( gong  公) as well as clientelism in the bureaucratic system have coexisted in imperial China for a long time and have produced a particular (path-dependent) blend (and ‘division of labor’) of socio-cultural patterns.

From Clan to Clientelism and Beyond. Changing Elitist Social Networks and Discourses in Premodern China