bureaucracy and the Beast

(from sffnet) Blipvert, I don't know whether this is accurate -- I think I got it from a Heinlein novel -- but the story is that bureaucracy started out in ancient China, both as a way of keeping an increasingly complex society together and a provision for continuity between dynasties.

Hmm . . . I googled, and Wiki confirms this: "The most modernesque of all ancient bureaucracies . . .was the Chinese bureaucracy. During the chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period,...