The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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THE ROLE OF ELITES 3JI
helping the magistrate in local administration. Serving under them by
rotation were headmen on the village level. As the network of market
towns ramified and market areas fissioned, the map of local administration
changed accordingly. Here was a formalization of the political function
of marketing communities, with local elites serving as quasi-bureaucratic
managers. In such rich, commercialized areas, local elite management was
already moving beyond the informal mediation and ad hoc community
services usually associated with our concept of'gentry society'.
2
City gentry and merchants, too, found themselves acquiring new
generalized administrative roles as urbanization outdated the old rudi-
mentary city services. Gentry-run charity halls and merchant guilds were
assuming general responsibility for urban services by the late nineteenth
century. These were traditional institutions being put to new uses. By the
late nineteenth century, that is, before the advent of modern-style
chambers of commerce, traditional urban associations were empowered
by local bureaucrats to take on some of the functions of city government.
Again, the pattern was of generalized responsibility growing out of
specialized, rather than the reverse: fire-fighting societies took on
charitable and militia work; charity-halls took on militia and fire-fighting,
street-cleaning, and road-maintenance. All this was done, of course, in
the interest of creating a profitable and secure arena for business and for
gentry residence, very much in the spirit of old-style gentry services. The
quasi-governmental powers of such bodies included the levying of taxes
on commerce. As these institutions evolved in the first decade of the new
century, their powers multiplied. The Shanghai City Council was founded
in 1905, partly inspired by the success of the municipal council in the
International Settlement. Under direct official sponsorship, local gentry
and merchants were authorized to choose directors to manage urban
services such as roads, electric lighting and police. Further marks of a
city government were the council's taxing and judicial authority.
3
The financial underpinnings of new elite-managed public enterprises
had to be outside the boundaries of the regular land tax. The imperial
government had done its best to keep local elites out of the regular land
tax system, though by the nineteenth century certain surtaxes on the land
were being collected by gentry-staffed bureaus. Generally, however, it was
trade taxes
(tsa-chiiari)
which afforded local elites a legitimate channel into
the local
fiscal
system. Like the more famous likin, these trade excises were
2
Cbia-ting
bsien hsu-cbih
(Chia-ting county gazetteer, rev. edn.), 1.4b-j.
1
Mark El vin,'The administration of Shanghai, 1905-1914', in Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner,
eds.
The Chinese city between two worlds, 240-50. Shirley S. Garrett, "The chambers of commerce
and the YMCA', in
ibid.
218. Imahori Seiji, Pepin sbimirt
no
jicbi kisei (The self-government
organizations of Peiping burghers), 25—4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
33
2
DEVELOPMENT
OF
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
readily expansible
to
new sources
of
revenue and hard
for
the bureaucracy
to keep track
of.
The
'
local self-government' activities
of
the first decade
of the twentieth century, including new-style schools
and
police forces,
drew upon these revenues. Collections were largely managed
by
local
elites,
who were eager to keep these new revenue sources out
of
the hands
of the county clerks.
An institutional change that emerged from these local activities
was
the oflficial definition
of
a
sphere
of
explicitly ' local' taxation. Previously,
county governments
had
only
the
legally 'retained' amounts from
the
regular
tax
revenues,
in
addition
to the
irregular 'customary fees' which
supplemented
the
inadequate salaries
of the
magistrate
and his sub-
bureaucracy.
It
was
not
until 1908 that
a
local
tax
base was established
to delimit
the
kinds
of
revenue that county elites might
use to
finance
the
new
enterprises
of
local government.
In the 1908
regulations
for
self-government
of
county seats, market towns
and
rural townships,
it
was stipulated that special excise taxes and surtaxes
on
land be considered
the legitimate revenue
of
these new units.
In 1909,
the
spheres
of
national, provincial and local finance were laid
out
in
detail
in a
series
of
massive publications commissioned
by the
newly-formed Ministry
of
Finance (Tu-chih-pu).
4
These showed
how
deeply local elites were already involved
in
collecting and disbursing local
revenues. Miscellaneous excises were being levied on local commerce and
services,
and
receipts spent
on the
newly organized county police forces
and modern-style schools. Elite participation was particularly important
in
the new
educational system, which urgently demanded
new
sources
of
revenue.
Modernized schools increased rapidly in number (in Shantung,
for instance, from 140
in
1903
to
3,424 in 1907), an inviting arena
for
elite
involvement. Much
of
the local take from commercial excises was kept
out
of the
county office, 'managed
by
gentry
and not
passed through
official hands'.
5
Managerial work
by
local elites was accompanied
by an
outpouring
of
theoretical writing. The focus
in
local government had been an important
part
of the
'Restoration'
in the
1860s, when China
was
faced with
widespread chaos
and
devastation
in the
wake
of the
mid-century
rebellions.
6
The effort
by
provincial authorities was
to
firm
up the
bases
4
Tfai-cheng sbuo-ming sbu (Explanatory accounts
of
fiscal administration),
20
vols.
Liu
Shan-shu,
T^u-cbib
tiai-cbeng lun
(On
local self-government finance),
25.
Philip
A.
Kuhn, 'Local taxation
and finance
in
Republican China',
Select
papers from the Center for
Far
Eastern Studies,
3
(1978-79)
100-56.
s
Chang Yu-fa, Cbung-km bsien-tai-bua
ti
cb'i-jB jen-cbiu: Sban-tmg
sbeng,
i860—if 16 (Modernization
in China, 1860-1916: a regional study of social, political and economic change in Shantung
province), 458-9. On elite involvement in local taxes, see Kuhn, 'Local taxation'.
6
See CHOC 10.435-56, 'Post-war problems in the Lower Yangtze', by K. C Liu.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE ROLE OF ELITES 333
of local taxation and order by strengthening traditional agencies of control
and indoctrination: cleaning up county administration, reviving Confucian
education, rebuilding the local economy. At the same time, some called
for new approaches: a recognition that only if a new way were found to
harness the energies of local elites could the imperial system survive. It
was argued (most notably by Feng Kuei-fen) that the old informal power
of local elites was not a suitable basis for imperial control, and that a firmer
administration was needed at the county level and below. By the late
decades of the Ch'ing, a substantial body of thought held that a
rejuvenation of the Chinese polity would depend on a new approach to
local government. How was this to be accomplished? The issue was
whether elite energies were to be harnessed to state purposes by coopting
them into a system of local self-government institutions; or whether a
more bureaucratic control system, extended down to the village level, was
more appropriate to China's political traditions.
The crisis precipitated by the international pressures on China during
the late 1890s gave the question new urgency. Elite outrage against China's
oppressors (and covertly against the Manchu-dominated regime which had
failed to defend the nation) led to pressure for broadened involvement
in politics. The reform movement of 1898 contained a significant stream
of local activism, which envisaged the harnessing of local elite energies
as the only way a strong nation could be built. Reformers such as Huang
Tsun-hsien clearly had the Japanese example in mind when they called
for local self-government as the basis of a strong state. Official control,
he asserted, simply led to dependency and passivity, exactly the opposite
qualities of a successfully aroused populace.
7
The failure of the 1898 reform movement, along with the disaster of
the Boxer uprising, heightened the clamour for constitutionalism, a
substantial part of which was considered to require reforms in local
politics. K'ang Yu-wei wrote in 1902 that local self-government was
essential to national revival. The key was the mobilization of popular
energies, particularly those of the local elite. Only long cultivation in the
arts of running their own local communities would make the Chinese fit
to survive in a competitive world. Here K'ang drew upon the old
' feudalistic'
(Jeng-chieri)
ideas that Ku Yen-wu had espoused in the
seventeenth century, which asserted that the concern of local people for
their community's welfare far exceeded that of a bureaucratic official
7
Huang Tsun-hsien,' Speech to the Southern Study Society', in
Hsiang-pao
lei-tsuan,
foyff.
Criticism
of local administration harked back to the early Ch'ing writings of Ku Yen-wu and Huang
Tsung-hsi that were studied
in
late nineteenth-century
Japan as
well
as
China.
See
Joshua A. Fogel,
Politics and
sinolog):
the case of Naito Konan {1166-19)4), 18 2-90.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
334 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
posted from elsewhere according to the rule of avoidance. That Western
nations
had
been able
to
mobilize popular energies was entirely due,
thought K'ang, to their long practice of local self-government. Economic
development and national strength would inevitably follow the mobiliza-
tion
of
local political energies. These energies were
to be
harnessed
to
national purposes through
a
constitutional system;
in no
sense
was
localism
to
detract from national cohesion. Rather, the two were deeply
connected in K'ang's thinking.
8
Among the constitutionalists, K'ang's disciple Liang Ch'i-ch'ao was the
foremost promoter of
new
ideas about local self-government. He believed
that
the
main beneficiary
of
self-government would
be
China's public
morale. Far from being
a
formula for parcelling out power, self-government
was
a
way of imbuing the entire body politic with
a
heightened internal
discipline. With
no
officials
to
rule them from 'outside', as
it
were,
the
people would eventually become animated by a body of social rules which
would move them toward shared goals: national unity and strength. Like
K'ang, he believed in the transformative effects of self-government upon
the individual character,
and
therefore ultimately upon
the
group.
Constitutionalism's leading rival, Chang Ping-lin, led the attack against
the ' feudalistic' idea
as
spokesman
for
the T'ung-meng hui. Unlike the
Western nations,
to
say nothing
of
Japan, China was thousands
of
years
removed from her feudal age.
It
was absurd, he thought,
to
assume that
China was
an
appropriate home
for
representative government
of
the
Western variety, which would only produce self-seeking and contention
among politicians and anarchy
in
local communities. What was needed
(presumably as the aftermath of revolution) was a bureaucracy purged of
corruption and disciplined
to
the needs of the unitary nation-state.
9
The official Ch'ing view of local self-government was in large measure
shaped
by
the activities and proposals
of
Yuan Shih-k'ai. As governor-
general of Chihli province, he set about constructing a modernized police
and educational system in Tientsin shortly after his appointment in 1902.
Tientsin was seen by the Powers as an essential link in their access route
to
the
capital,
and an
efficient urban administration
was
considered
necessary
to
avoid repeated outbreaks
of
Sino-foreign conflict after the
Boxer affair. Yuan's programme involved
not
only modern police and
8
Min Tu-ki, 'Ch'ongdae ponggdllon
ii
kundaej6k pydnmo' (The modern transformation
of
traditional political feudalism in the Ch'ing period),
in
Chimgguk
klmdatsaytn'gu,
228-73. Philip
A. Kuhn, 'Local self-government under
the
Republic: problems
of
control, autonomy,
and
mobilization', in Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Carolyn Grant, eds.
Conflict and control in late imperial
China,
272—6.
» Philip A. Kuhn, 'Late Ch'ing views
of
the polity',
Select
papers from the
Center
for Far Eastern
Studies,
4
(1979—80) 10-16.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE ROLE OF ELITES 335
schools, but also a mechanism for coopting and utilizing the local elite.
This was to be done through a system of representative assemblies in the
counties of Tientsin prefecture. Beginning with Tientsin county as a pilot
project, the new police bureaus were to conduct a complete census of
inhabitants as the basis of an electoral list. The Tientsin County Assembly
(J-sbih-bui),
elected in 1907, became the prototype of the Ch'ing
government's efforts to set up elite representative bodies which would
adhere to an essentially conservative view of the prerogatives of local
self-government. Along with this step toward an elite-based constitution-
alism, Yuan set about extending his new police system to other areas in
Chihli, thus strengthening the hand of
the
county magistrates by bringing
the local security system firmly under bureaucratic control.
10
The Yuan Shih-k'ai experiment in elite-based democracy linked with
bureaucratic control can be seen as a reaction to the anarchic North China
situation which Yuan inherited after the post-Boxer withdrawal of the
Powers. Under Japanese influence, a tighter government control was to
be established with the cooperation of local elites.
This outlook was embodied in the Ch'ing court's own view of local
administration, which was revealed on the occasion (1908) of the decree
authorizing the step-by-step installation of local assemblies as the basis
for a national constitutional system. The court viewed local
self-
government as a mere extension of the traditional gentry-bureaucracy
relationship, in which local elites would do those jobs which county
government was unable to perform: essentially in the old gentry realm of
education, public relief and public works. Closely supervised by the
bureaucracy, self-government bodies were to play a purely supplementary
role in local government. Certainly, there was nothing here of the vibrant
calls for popular mobilization that we have seen in the writings of the
reformers. Between these two conceptions
—
the quest for mobilization
and the quest for control
—
Chinese local governmental reform was to
oscillate for the next three decades.
Assemblies and '
new
administration'
(bsin-cbeng)
For all its limitations, government-sponsored constitutionalism had a
huge impact on local politics. It is an indication of the overwhelming
prestige of state agencies that the innate activism of the local elite only
began to flourish in a big way once the Ch'ing court itself became
10
Stephen R. MacKinnon, Power and politics in late imperial China: Yuan Sbib-kai in
Beijing
and Tianjin,
ifO/-rpoS, 137-79- John H. Fincher, Chinese democracy: the self-government movement in local,
provincial and
national
politics, tfoj-if/4, 30-42.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
336 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
committed
to
limited institutional reform and created legitimate bodies
to carry
it out. The
shock
of
the Boxer humiliation
in
1900
led to
court-sponsored measures that
had the
effect
of
creating
a
number
of
channels through which local elites could participate
in
administration.
Chief among these were the educational reforms
of
1901-5, which first
mandated
a
new school structure modelled
on the
Japanese, with
the
introduction of Western-style curricula. When the traditional examination
system
was
abolished
in
1905
and the
new-style schools became
the
standard channels
for
social mobility, there followed
a
vast expansion of
elite involvement
in
the administration of the new system. The shortage
of both funds and personnel
in
local government ensured that the new
school system would be primarily a local elite enterprise. The ' Education
Promotion Offices'
{ch'iian-hsueh
so)
set up in all
counties
by
imperial
order
in
1906 typically installed local elites
as
directors, who quickly
became involved
in
countywide fund-raising and management." What
education was for the local literati, the new officially mandated chambers
of commerce were
for
the merchants and manufacturers. Like the new
school system,
the
chambers were
an
unofficially sponsored system
through which elite activists could play
a
role in public affairs.
12
Local self-government, however, in the form of municipal councils and
county assemblies, was the most important channel for the county elite's
move into politics.
Its
institutional prestige
was
invitingly close
to
officialdom, and its capacity to intervene in governmental affairs seemed
to address certain longstanding sore points on the agenda
of
local elites.
Chief among these was some measure of control of public finance, which
was seen as
a
source
of
extortionate profits
for
clerks and local officials,
with little benefit
for the
community. Having been
a
rallying
cry for
reformers since the late 1890s, local self-government now emerged as an
official component
of
the new constitutional programme announced by
the court
in
1908. Shortly after
the
promulgation
of
rules
for
electing
delegates
to
provincial assemblies,
it
was announced (27 August 1908)
that self-government regulations
for
administrative cities
{cb'eng),
non-
administrative market towns
{chert)
and rural townships
{hsiang)
were
to
be drawn up. These regulations were forthcoming from Peking
on 18
January 1909.
13
Self-government
for
administrative units followed that
11
Local gazetteers are full
of
information
on
this move
by
local elites into county educational
systems. See
for
example
Wan-bsien
(Hopei)
bsin-cbib,
1933 edn., 3.8-9,
4.37ff.
Also see Edward
Rhoads,
China's Republican
Revolution:
tbe case
of
Kjvangtung,
ifpj-iprj, esp. ch. 4. For Chihli, see
Richard A. Orb,' Chihli academies and other schools in the late Ch'ing: an institutional survey',
in Paul. A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker, eds.
Reform
in
nineteenth-century
China,
231-40.
12
See CHOC 11.563 by M. Bastid-Bruguiere; and 12.721-825 by M. C. Bergere.
13
Fincher,
Chinese
democracy,
104. The operative memorial from the Constitution Drafting Office
regarding local self-government
is
reproduced
in
Ta-Ch'ing Kuang-bsu bsin fa-ling
(New laws
of
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE ROLE OF ELITES 337
for settlements: on 6 February 1910, Peking issued regulations for elected
councils in prefectures, sub-prefectures, departments and counties (/»,
fing,
chou
and bsien).
The process of establishing elected councils
(i-shih-hui)
began with
taking census of electoral districts (the cities and townships of the 1909
edict) and educating the public about local self-government. These tasks
were entrusted to new bureaus staffed by county
elites:
the self-government
affairs office
{t^u-chih shih-rvu so)
and self-government study office
{t^u-cbib
yen-chiu
so).
The criteria for running such posts, like the franchise
itself,
limited membership to the propertied or educated elite. Considering the
newness of the enterprise, it is astonishing how quickly the councils were
actually elected and convened: in the relatively advanced portions of the
eastern provinces, for instance, local councils were in session by the
autumn of 1911. However vague the understanding of elections and
assemblies, there was clearly a strong momentum toward involvement in
local politics. In addition to these councils for self-government of
settlement units, elections were held by early 1913 for the county
assemblies
(hsien-i-hui),
that is, for the county unit as distinct from the
county-seat city. Each 20-man assembly then elected an executive board
(ts'an-i-bui)
to be headed by the county magistrate. It appeared that a new
basis had been laid for involving elites in the formal governmental system
at the local level; a substantial break with the past.
14
However zealous the local scholar-gentry and merchants, it seems likely
that the speed with which these early stages of self-government proceeded
was dependent upon official attitudes. Though noted for its activist and
highly commercialized elite, Kiangsu was evidently hampered in the
process by the foot-dragging of the Nanking governor-general's office.
The rationale of the court's programme for 'local self-government' was
nevertheless based on the protection of official prerogatives. It was
pointed out by the Constitution Preparation Office that the realm of
elite-managed local activities had never been clearly marked off from the
realm of official governance. Hence official weakness inevitably led to elite
arrogation of
powers,
and vice versa in an unending contest. With clearly
demarcated formats for ' local people managing local affairs', it would be
possible to keep both elite activism and official oppression within bounds.
Local self-government was to be limited to those functions which ' official
the Kuang-hsu period),
bsiett-cbeng,
2. 44-62. Sec also Kuhn, 'Local self-government' (see n. 8).
Cp.
CHOC 11.398-402 by C. Ichiko.
14
The case study of Chekiang by R. Keith Schoppa shows the range of development of such
institutions between advanced and backward areas: Chinese elites and political change: Zhejiang
province
in the
early twentieth
century,
}i-j. For
a
comprehensive view of self-government institutions
in Shantung and Kiangsu, see articles by Chang Yu-fa and Wang Shu-huai in Cbimg-yangyen-cbiu-
yuan Cbin-tai-sbibjen-cbiu-so cbi-k'an, 6 (June 1977), 159—84, 315—28.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
338 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
government' was not able
to
perform: public services which were beyond
the resources
of the
official system.
It was
purely
an
auxiliary function
legitimated
by the
bureaucratic state, which mandated
its
local powers.
15
Education, public health, road-maintenance, public
relief,
plus such
' improvements' as electrification and water systems, were well within
the
sphere
of
traditional' gentry' concerns. Now delimited
by
explicit grants
of power, and managed by elected representatives
of
the local community,
these functions seemed to the court a safe and useful adjunct to the powers
of the state bureaucracy.
It
was obviously
a
way
of
ensuring that public
service functions would
be
carried
out
without running much risk
of
political challenges
to the
bureaucracy.
The concerns
of
the local assemblies
and
councils
did not in
practice
fall far outside the range of traditional elite concerns: such traditional items
as waterworks maintenance, education
and
public relief
all
found their
way
on to the
agenda. Raising funds
for the
activities
of
these bodies
occupied much
of
the public discussion. With no established local revenue
base,
the
self-government bodies sought funds
on the
margins
of
the
tax
system:
ad hoc
mercantile levies (similar
to the
likin), surtaxes
on top of
the regular land
tax, and
modest government handouts: hardly
the
material basis
for
vigorous local politics.
The potential
for
elite participation
in
local politics
is
revealed
by the
rapid expansion
of
the size
of
the electorate
as
registration requirements
were loosened.
An
electorate
of
perhaps
1.7
million
in
1909
(of
whom
some
one
million actually voted) constituted
a
tiny
0.42 per
cent
of the
population.
In 1912,
after
the
fall
of the
monarchy, more liberal
registration rules (based
on
residence rather than
the
traditional 'native
place'
and
with looser property
and
educational requirements) generated
an electorate
of
perhaps 40 million.
16
Though we know little about voter
interests
or
behaviour
in
these early elections
for
local
and
provincial
assemblies,
the
range
of
political concerns
on the
county levels suggests
a broad interest
in
local development
and a
pervasive contentiousness
about county finances. Gradually branching
out
from traditional elite
concerns, the town councils and county assemblies promoted such modern
enterprises
as
electric light companies
and
modern clinics.
Viewed over its lifespan of nearly two
decades,
the career of representative
assemblies
in
Republican China exhibited two countervailing trends.
One
was
the
expansion
and
partial politicization
of the
elites
in the
more
advanced counties.
As a
channel
for the
expression
of
political interests,
assemblies
and
councils were especially important
in
counties where
15
Tanking Ruang-bsu bsin fa-ling,
45.
16
Fincher, Chinese democracy,
112, 223.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE ROLE OF ELITES 339
traditional mechanisms of elite power were inadequate to an increasingly
complex social and economic system. (In more backward areas, it was
evidently less useful to have new, public institutions: traditional kinship
and economic ties were all local elites needed.)
A second trend was the gradual reimposition of bureaucratic authority.
Faced with an obstreperous local assembly movement, Yuan Shih-k'ai
decreed the abolition of local self-government and substituted a format
more congenial to official control. Yuan's system retained a unit on the
sub-county scale: the ward
(chi'u),
a territory so large that there were but
four to six per county, and whose headman was in reality to be a
functionary of the county government, not a community-chosen
representative.
17
After the death of Yuan and the failure of his imperial
project, local assemblies enjoyed a brief second flowering from 1921 to
1927;
but the context had changed. Specialized administrative agencies
had emerged to handle such functions as education, so assemblies were
now called upon merely to fund such bodies, not manage them.
Furthermore, magistrates gained back a large measure of control over
county affairs through executive boards
{ts'an-shih-hui),
of whose members
only a minority were chosen by the assemblies. Thus Yuan's attack on
the assembly system can be seen as but an extreme example of a general
trend toward the reimposition of bureaucratic control: the fledgling local
elite political institutions were no match for it.
18
Nor was the elite-led assembly movement popular among the peasantry.
It was clear from the outset that local self-government was not likely to
build a constituency among the masses at the county level. On the
contrary, sporadic popular violence broke out in many areas in reaction
to what was perceived as merely another kind of elite profiteering. In
particular, mass anger was vented against the modern schools. These cost
considerably more than schools of the traditional sort; money for them
had to be raised from the commoners in the form of
excises
on daily trade
commodities and surtaxes on the land. Since the modern schools were
less accessible to the peasantry than the traditional schools and taught
subjects less useful to them, they were reasonably seen as taxing the people
for purposes not to their benefit. Another object of popular ire was the
local self-government office
itself;
projects such as a local census for
election rolls were feared as the prelude to a head tax. The widespread
practice of taking over local temples for use as schools or self-government
offices offended popular religiosity. The early years of self-government
brought a rash of riots leading to burnings of modern schools and houses
17
Cp. CHOC 12.237—46 on Yuan's dictatorship, by E. Young.
18
Schoppa, Cbituse elites, 31—4, 186-90, acid passim.
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34° DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
of self-government leaders. The local elite had got themselves into a
situation where the most progressive-seeming reform and development
programmes were seen as exploitative as well as culturally offensive.
19
Self-government was tending to drive reformist elite and conservative
peasantry further apart, rather than to create a vigorous local politics with
an elite leadership and a popular constituency. With allies neither above
nor below, county-level elites were not likely to transform China's
political system from the ground up, nor to compete successfully with a
resurgent bureaucratic state.
20
REGIONAL REGIMES
Out of the confused melee of proposals, regulations, and local power-
competition that made up the constitutional movement, there emerged
some concrete efforts to reorganize local government. It should not be
surprising that as the central government lost its capacity to enforce its
will locally, these efforts first took root under provincial auspices. They
began with the programme of Yen Hsi-shan, warlord leader of Shansi
province, to establish better control over his territory by placing new
emphasis on village-level organization. Undertaken as they were by
military power-holders, provincial initiatives of this sort were not likely
to place much store by popular mobilization or participation. Although
no such scheme was without 'self-government' rhetoric, the practical
emphasis was in quite another direction.
The
Shansi
programme
The ' village system'
(ts'un-chib)
of Shansi, inaugurated by Governor Yen
Hsi-shan in 1917, is an example of the process by which bureaucratic
solutions grew out of voluntarist and populist programmes, and eventually
came to dominate the local government of the republic. Yen's system was
an outgrowth of two trends, both conservative in intent: first, the
abolition of county and province self-government by Yuan Shih-k'ai
(1913-14) was followed
by
an' experimental' system of local administration
by wards
(cb'u),
a sub-county unit roughly on the scale of the traditional
hsiang
district. These districts were, in Yuan's plan of 1914, to be managed
by appointed headmen, essentially as adjuncts of county government. The
•« Cp. ch. 6 (Bianco).
20
Wang Shu-huai, 319-27. Amy Fei-man Ma, 'Local self-government and the local populace in
Chuan-sha,
1911*,
Select papers from
the
Center for Far
Eastern
Studies,
1
(1975-76) 47-84. Roxanne
Prazniak, 'Community and protest in rural China: tax resistance and county-village politics on
the eve of the 1911 revolution' (University of California, Davis, Ph.D. dissertation, 1981).
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