The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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EARLY POLICIES OF NANKING 351
Nanchang Conference. The problem was that strengthening government
at the county level was not enough. Below the ward level, complained
Yang Yung-t'ai, was still
a
world
of
the ' corrupt local bullies and evil
gentry'. These were presumably more likely
to
incite rebellion than
to
pacify it.
37
In any event, such local elites were not seen as effective tools
of
a
reformed county administration. Instead, the five bandit-suppression
provinces (Honan, Hupei, Anhwei, Kiangsi and Fukien) were now ordered
(December 1934) to establish between three and six wards in every county,
their headmen to be appointed by the provincial governments on recom-
mendation by county magistrates.
A
bureaucratic touch borrowed from
the Shansi system was that ward headmen might not serve within their
home counties: the rule of avoidance, traditionally the bridle of the regular
bureaucracy, was now
to
control personnel
at
the sub-county level.
38
Between county and province, the tightening
of
bureaucratic control
also left its mark. Although the Nanking government had abolished the
intermediate level
of
circuit
{tad),
which the early republic had inherited
from
the
Ch'ing,
the
peculiar difficulties
of
local administration
in the
1930s induced a number of provincial governments to reinstitute this scale
of supervision. The officials known as administrative supervisors
(hsing-
cheng tu-cb'a chuan-yuari)
were appointed first
in the
bandit-suppression
provinces
in
1932
but
were gradually instituted more widely. Internal
security, especially
the
anti-Communist campaigns,
was
their chief
concern.
The
new institution arose
out of
such organizations
as the
' branch government/party committees' set up for anti-Communist work
in Kiangsi. The promulgation
of
the system
did not
proceed initially
through the regular procedures of
the
central government, but rather (like
the county-level measures just discussed) through the military Communist-
suppression headquarters. Because
of
their dubious legitimacy
in the
constitutional scheme (which officially held
to a
two-level system
of
province/county),
the
administrative supervisors were considered
a
'temporary' measure
in the
Executive Yuan directives that finally
emerged.
In
practice, the appointment of circuit-level supervisors (often
serving magistrates holding the office concurrently) involved
a
confused
mixture
of
civil and military regulations emanating from Nanking and
from the bandit-suppression headquarters.
30
This piling-up of supervisory
layers
was
contrary
to the
spirit
of the
Kuomintang's theoretical
inheritance, which stressed popular mobilization over bureaucratic
machinery. The impressive persistence
of
this middle-layer unit
in
local
37
Ko-sbtng kao-cbi bsing-cbeng jen-yuan.. .(Report
of
the
Nanchang Conference,
1934)
Work
critiques,
56.
38
Ch'eng Mao-hsing, 111-28.
35
Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, Min-kuo cheng-cbih sbib,
5
26ff.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
352 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
administration also suggests the persisting weakness of the province-
county link in a country with poor communications and cumbersome
administrative routines.
It may well be wondered whether the Kuomintang party itself had
anything to offer the development of new relationships between local
government and society. Although the party was envisaged by Sun as a
supervisor of political'
tutelage',
in practice the county-level Kuomintang
branches found themselves virtually helpless to influence the conduct of
the local bureaucracy. Dependent on government for their funding,
inferior to the bureaucracy in prestige (and in access to high provincial
officials), county branches were at best an awkward inconvenience to
county administrators and were hardly likely to serve as the nuclei of
greater popular participation in local government. Here, as in other
respects, the weight of the bureaucratic state lay heavily upon the political
system as a whole.
40
It was during the exile at Chungking that the Nationalist government
attempted to redress the balance between bureaucracy and participation,
and in the process to reinvigorate local government. This was the highly
touted 'New County System'
(hsin-hsien-chih),
first outlined by Chiang
Kai-shek in June 1939. The new system, which unfortunately remained
largely a paper plan save in areas near the wartime capital, envisaged a
county government with a secure local tax base and a mechanism for
self-government. County revenues were to include designated fractions
of the land tax and certain miscellaneous excises, all of which were to be
collected by the county government
itself,
not by provincial or central
agencies. Higher levels of government could no longer force counties to
raise funds locally for provincial or national
projects.
With this strengthened
tax base, the county would supposedly be able to implement a genuine
local self-government system, with some real funds for the county
assembly to appropriate. The assembly was to be built up of representatives
from towns
(cheri)
and townships (bsiang), which themselves drew
representatives from none other than the
pao-chia
units, which were now
declared to be for both 'self-defence and self-government'. Though there
was no hope of adequately testing this system during wartime, it does
suggest that Chiang was well aware of the declining effectiveness of local
government and of its failure to elicit mass support.
41
*° David Tsai, 'Party government relations in Kiangsu Province, 1927-1952',
Select
papers from the
Center for Far
Eastern
Studies,
1
(1975-6) 85-118.
41
Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, Min-kuo
chtng-cbih
shih,
176ft".
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION MOVEMENT 353
THE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION MOVEMENT
While governments attempted
to
control rural China, making what use
they could of twentieth-century ideologies, some Chinese intellectuals did
rural work in
a
different
way.
The vogue of
the'
peasant problem'
{nung-min
wen-ft)
in
1927 was,
in
one sense, nothing new: rural uplift formed one
focus
of
reformists' concern
in
late imperial times. What was new was
the fascination
of
some urban intellectuals with problems
of
rural
development, intellectuals
who had in
many cases been educated
in
Western fashion and who had little personal experience with the rural
sector of Chinese life. Their approaches to rural problems involved some
political experiments, but more typically aimed at educational work in the
villages. In this sense ' rural reconstruction' shared the liberal conviction
that political-institutional change
was
meaningless unless based
on a
change
of
consciousness. Rural reconstructionists also tended
to
believe
that the political forms
of
rural life would never be sound until peasants
learned
to
cope with their terrible economic problems.
Rural reconstruction
{hsiang-ts'un chien-she)
was associated with several
key conceptions. 'Reconstruction'
{chien-she)
seems actually closer
to
our
idea
of
'development', and may
be
considered
a
modernized extension
of
the old
'public works' rubric
in
traditional Chinese government.
Associated with
it
were the ideas of'investigation' and 'experiment', the
first describing the increasingly popular exercise whereby concerned urban
intellectuals
got in
touch with rural conditions through on-the-spot
surveys (the whole August 1927 issue of the
Eastern Miscellany {Tung-fang
tsa-chih)
was devoted to such reports). The second involved field projects
in education
and
rural extension work, some
of
which became quite
famous both
at
home
and
abroad; 'demonstration' would
be a
more
appropriate way
to
describe them, since they were designed
as
models
for nationwide imitation.
The continuity of
elite
concern for rural problems is seen in the history
of Ting county, Hopei, which was the site
of
one
of
the best known
of
these demonstrations. Amid
the
enthusiasm
of the
post-1900
'new
policies'
{hsin-cheng)
reforms, a prominent elite family in the market town
of Chai-ch'eng sought
to
transform local society through education
-
hardly
a
new activity
for
rural elites, but animated now
by
nationalism
and by
a
radical scepticism about conventional neo-Confucian views.
Mi
Chien-san, the founder of reform in Chai-ch'eng, believed that Confucian
teachings had been perverted by undue stress on self-cultivation and not
enough on practical government. Restating some early Ch'ing critiques,
he saw hidden Buddhist influence
in
Chu Hsi's classical commentaries,
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
354 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
the canons of the civil service examinations. Having failed the provincial
examination
himself,
he forbade his son, Ti-kang, to take it. Instead, the
family were to devote themselves to practical service
(ching-sbib)
in their
home town.
42
In
1902—3,
Mi Chien-san was asked by the magistrate to create a system
of modern-style schools in Ting county. Mi's system extended beyond
the standard school format to stress popular literacy and citizen education.
As the local self-government movement was being promulgated after
1908,
the Mi family naturally took a leading role. Chai-ch'eng soon became
an active model of local reformism, with the emphasis on education, public
mores (anti-opium, anti-footbinding), and local security. Chien-san's
Japanese returned son, Mi Ti-kang, saw the strengthening of the village
format as the basis of a nationwide revival. Village-level communal
institutions (especially in compulsory education and farm credit) would
form a new basis for rural society.
43
Beginning in 1924, Mi Ti-kang
collaborated with the Shantungese reformer Wang Hung-i to found an
informal association in Peking to promote their ideas. This 'village
government group'
{ts'un-chih
p'ai) eventually attracted the attention of
Liang Shu-ming, who went on to become the most influential of the
Confucian-oriented rural reconstructionists. (As we have seen, the ideas
of the Mi family had already been taken over as the rationale for a ' village
government system' in Shansi.)
44
Given more than two decades of success in Ting county, it was
appropriate that Yen Yang-ch'u (Jimmy Yen) should have chosen the
county as the locus of his Mass Education Association's principal rural
site.
Yen, American-educated and a Christian, had been active since 1922
in urban mass education. In 1926 Ting county was selected by his Mass
Education Association (Chung-hua p'ing-min chiao-yii ts'u-chin hui) as
the centre of its national efforts, and in 1930 Yen himself moved there
from Peking. The association's vigorous work in basic literacy, along with
Yen's international connections, made Chai-ch'eng and Ting county a
magnet for Chinese and foreign research workers in rural society. Work
in Ting county was mainly in an 'experimental area', comprising some
60 villages and market towns. The number of'people's schools'
{p'ing-min
hsueh-hsiao)
directly managed by the association numbered only 20, out
"
Cbai-cb'eng
tiun-cbib, 44-7. Sidney D. Gamble,
Ting
Hsien:
a North
China rural
community,
146-65.
Charles Hayford, 'Rural reconstruction in China: Y. C. James Yen and the Mass Education
Movement' (Harvard University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1973).
43
Mi
Ti-kang,
'
Yu chih Chung-kuo she-hui kai-liang chu-i' (My proposals
for
reforming Chinese
society) reprinted
in
Cbai-cb'eng ts'un-cbib, 314—28.
44
Alitto,
Tbe
last Confucian, 145-7, has the authoritative account
of
the village government group.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION MOVEMENT }5J
of 440 being operated in the county by the year 1932 (the others being
the product of county government or of purely local initiative).
45
Yen's vision for rural China centred on developing its human potential
rather than remaking its institutions. Illiteracy was a hopeless disadvantage
in the international power-struggle, for 'how can a blind man compete
with a normal seer?' Education would go beyond literacy to remedy
China's four great ills: ignorance, poverty, physical weakness, and lack
of public spirit. The programme of the people's schools therefore
combined practical training with social morality and civics. Although
concrete problems of social injustice were not attacked directly, the tone
of the association's rhetoric was populist: most civilized nations run
education for the elite, to train the sons of the propertied class
{t^u-ch'an
chieh-cbi);
the association's aim is to educate for the 'abolition of class
education'. The implication was that national strength, along with
democracy and economic progress, rested on the transformation of public
consciousness; a task which could only be approached through education,
and from the bottom of society upwards. Thus Yen's programme was
not incompatible with the spirit of the original gentry-style efforts in Ting
county; and, like the Mi family, Yen operated under the patronage and
protection of the regular bureaucratic system.
46
This melding of populism and patronage was also to be seen in the work
of the mass educator T'ao Hsing-chih, who became involved in rural work
as a born-again disciple of John Dewey. T'ao's fascination with Deweyan
educational theory, which he studied at Columbia Teachers College
between 1915 and 1917, fitted right into his existing belief in Wang
Yang-ming's 'unity of knowledge and action'
{chih-hsing
ho-i).
Dewey's
distaste for a ' spectator' theory of knowledge, and Wang's insistence that
right thinking and right action emerged simultaneously rather than one
from the other, lent joint impetus to T'ao's activist nature. In the early
twenties, T'ao became convinced that not only would a school-bounded
education fail to reach China's masses, but also that the Western mode
of education was basically unsuited to solving China's rural problems.
Having been active in the city-based Mass Education Association, T'ao
broke out of his urban and Western orientations simultaneously in 1927
when he opened a teacher-training school in a village outside Nanking.
This school at Hsiao-chuang sought to remake young teacher-trainees by
immersing them in the life of the peasantry. Only thus could they become
45
K'ung Hsueh-hsiung, Cbung-kuo cbin-jib cbib nung-ttun yun-tung
(The
rural movement
in
contemporary China), 112.
46
Ibid.
67-9. Yen's principal foreign support was from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
356 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
effective village schoolmasters. T'ao's view of the school as a motive force
in rural society was not too alien to the ideas of the gentry-reformers of
Chai-ch'eng: teacher trainees operated
as
activists
in
various spheres
of
life,
including the reform of morals, the improvement of agriculture, and
the organization
of
local security.
A
self-defence corps was organized
among
240
local villages
and the
peasants instructed
in
rudimentary
military skills. T'ao, unlike Yen, was unabashedly nativist: the West was
neither a likely source of inspiration for China's reform, nor a particularly
attractive one.
T'ao's relationship to political authorities was ambivalent, and
in
the
end his rural experiment was unable to secure the effective protection of
anyone
in
power.
A
mysterious relationship existed between T'ao and
Feng Yii-hsiang, the ' Christian general',
a
rival of Chiang Kai-shek who
admired and probably aided the operation
of
the Hsiao-chuang school.
Chiang himself took
a
brief interest in the progress of Hsiao-chuang, but
in 1930 ordered
it
closed, probably because
of
what
he
considered
its
socially radical potential.
47
Liang Shu-ming's rural reconstruction experiment in Shantung achieved
at least
a
temporary protection
by
political authorities, and relied
on a
radically nativist Confucian reformism. Under
a
considerable grant
of
authority from Governor
Han
Fu-ch'ii
(a
general formerly
in
Feng
Yii-hsiang's organization), the Shantung Rural Reconstruction Institute
was opened in the county of Tsou-p'ing in
1931.
Not only were numerous
counties eventually designated
as
experimental reconstruction districts
under the institute's guidance (more than 70 by 1937), but two counties
were practically turned over to the institute's administrative control. Such
an extraordinary delegation
of
powers was legitimized
in
1933
by the
Nationalist government
itself,
which was apparently seeking both
to
control and to profit from the various rural reconstruction projects then
being undertaken. The guiding genius
of
the Shantung project, Liang
Shu-ming, was the most explicitly nativist and socially radical of the rural
reconstruction group. His radicalism was self-consciously anti-Western
and based on Confucian premises. China had to blaze her own path toward
modernity. That path could have nothing
to
do with the individualistic
and selfish attitudes fostered by Western cultural contact, but instead must
utilize the supposedly collectivist and unselfish spirit inherent to Chinese
civilization.
Like T'ao Hsing-chih's school at Hsiao-chuang (which Liang admired),
Liang's institute sought to train a special type of rural cadre: the educated
47
See the recently published
T'ao
Hsiitg-cbib cbiao-yii wcti-bsuan
(Selected essays on education by T'ao
Hsing-chih); also the 320 letters published
in
T'ao Hsing-chih,
Hsing-cbib sbu-bsin
cbi.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION MOVEMENT 357
youth who would be taught to endure the privations of the peasantry and
communicate easily with them. The style was distinct from that of the
Western-educated Jimmy Yen, whose Ting-hsien centre was decidedly
not worshipful of Chinese traditional ways. Liang's cadre-students were
mainly from rich peasant or landlord families, and therefore presumably
already had a certain adaptability to rural ways. Confucian influence was
prominent in the style of moral indoctrination and personal self-cultivation
which characterized the routine of the school.
Local organization in Tsou-p'ing was also made to accord with Liang's
neo-traditional bent. Sub-county divisions were redrawn to conform with
supposedly 'natural' pre-existing areas, with the natural village
(//««)
and
apparently the market areas
(bsiang)
as the format. Abandoned were the
larger, more artificial wards and townships of the Nanking code.
Administrative bodies on township and village levels were called
'
schools',
in accord with their educational and motivational approach to
the peasantry. To what extent Tsou-p'ing's system furthered popular
participation in local politics remains unclear. But the nativist emphasis
assumed, at least, that rural ways were slow to change, and that forcing
exotic new systems or coercive bureaucratic forms upon village society
would lead nowhere. Building from below, thought Liang, required that
government work slowly and unobtrusively through education and
motivation of the peasantry.' Too many restrictions, too much " helpful"
initiative,' he thought, damage society without really improving matters.
The weight of a busy, pushy government apparatus can only be an extra
burden if there is no corresponding activism among the people.
48
Quite
a
different spirit animated the local organization in western Honan
run by P'eng Yii-t'ing, a former secretary of Feng Yii-hsiang. Where Liang
stressed a return to native values and a Utopian communalism, P'eng built
his organization on the longstanding self-defence needs of village society.
His was essentially a militia network transformed into a local government.
P'eng may have absorbed some of
his
rural reconstruction ideas at Feng's
headquarters, for Feng himself had apparently developed a lively interest
in the subject (it will be remembered that he was a close friend of T'ao
Hsing-chih). P'eng's approach to rural organization, however, built upon
a more traditional base: the vigorous and ancient local defence tradition
48
Liang Shu-ming, 'Pei-yu so chien chi-lueh' (An account of what I observed on my northward
journey), in Cbwig-kuo min-ttu t^u-cbiu jm-timg cbib tsui-bou
chueb-wu
(The final realization about
the Chinese people's self-help movement), 287—8. Kuo-min cheng-fu chun-shih wei-yuan-hui
wei-yuan-chang hsing-ying, Hupeh ti-fang cheng-wu yen-chiu-hui tiao-ch'a-t'uan (Field HQ of
the chairman of
the
National Government Military Commission, Hupeh local government study
association), comp. Tiao-clfa bsiang-t/un
cbien-sbt
cbi-yao (Record of rural reconstruction
investigations), 75-6. The foregoing account of Tsou-p'ing is indebted to Alitto,
The last
Confucian,
esp. 238—78.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
35
8
DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
of the North China countryside. Linking villages in local defence
compacts, led by lower gentry, was
a
natural response to regional banditry,
and had characteristically displayed either pro- or anti-government spirit,
depending on the situation. For all its localism, however, P'eng's organ-
ization in Chen-p'ing county had modern and patriotic dimensions. P'eng
was linked to the village government group through Feng Yii-hsiang,
who brought him together with Wang Hung-i (Liang Shu-ming's
Shantungese reformer friend) and Liang Shu-ming himself in 1929, to
found a Honan Village Government Academy. Ideologically, P'eng's local
regime in Chen-p'ing had a nationalistic flavour derived (in P'eng's own
words) explicitly from Sun Yat-sen's conception of bottom-up constitution
building. It was unfortunate for P'eng that the direction of his movement
was,
by force of circumstance, anti-government. The only way to par-
ticipate in China's national revolution, he declared, was to foster 'local
revolution'
—
a necessary precursor to ' local self-government' in that area
because of society's need to protect itself against rapacious government
troops (' bandit soldiers') and greedy local officials. In the end, P'eng found
himself taking over local government in Chen-p'ing (with associates doing
the same in neighbouring' counties). After Chiang Kai-shek's followers
assumed power in Honan in 1930, P'eng's consistent refusal to comply
with government tax demands made him a marked man. He was
assassinated by 'bandits' in 1933. An enterprise such as P'eng's could
hardly survive the Nanking government's determination to bureaucratize
local society and wipe out all vestiges of '
local
self-government'.
49
Predictably, the Nanking authorities became involved
in
rural reconstruc-
tion too.' Experimental counties' were established, under the sponsorship
of the Nanking authorities, at Lan-hsi (Chekiang) and Chiang-ning
(Kiangsu), operating as explicit models of bureaucratic local reform.
Chiang-ning, right outside Nanking, was designed as a model administrative
system under the aegis of the Kiangsu provincial government. Staffed
by faculty and students of the Central Political Institute (Chung-yang
cheng-chih hsueh-hsiao -
a
CC clique institution), it was an avowedly
top-down reform project, and also a showplace for visitors. A county
governing committee supervised the work of the magistrate's office, and
itself reported directly to the provincial government. The tax system was
administered by a trained, salaried staff (a reform measure that had been
proposed since early in the century). All tax revenues were retained and
disbursed within the county
—
hardly a demonstration of practical reality.
49
Cben
p'ing
bsien
t^u-cbib
kai-k'uang
(Local self-government in Chen-p'ing county); Guy S. Alitto,
' Rural elites in transition: China's cultural crisis and the problem of legitimacy', in
Select papers
from the Center for Far Eastern Studies, 3 (1978-9) 218—86.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION MOVEMENT 359
Lower-level unit boundaries were redrawn
to
conform
to
natural villages
and market streets.
The
townships
and
market towns
{hsiang
and
cheri)
were supposed
to be
self-governing after
a
suitable period
of
tutelage.
Unfortunately, little seems
to
have been accomplished.
By the
testimony
of Ch'en Kuo-fu, former governor
of
Kiangsu, the experiment was more
name than reality.
It
foundered on poor leadership
at
the magistrate's level
and little
or no
tutelage
of the
local communities.
By 1936 it was
acknowledged
to be a
failure,
and the
county's 'experimental' status was
abolished.
50
Rural reconstruction thus involved
a
broad range
of
types: Western-
influenced and nativist, educational and military, populist and bureaucratic.
Common
to all was a
strong political relevance.
To
revitalize
the
countryside through educational
and
economic reforms meant working
out relationships
of
patronage
and
protection with political authorities.
This
was
surely because
any
attempt
to
work with
the
peasantry
in an
organized project inevitably raised questions
of
political orientation
and
legitimacy, whether
or not the
project
had any
explicitly political aims
or activities. From their earliest days,
the
Ting-hsien
and
Tsou-p'ing
projects secured
the
blessings
or
acquiescence
of
provincial authorities.
The Nanking-administered experiments,
it
could
be
said,
had
such heavy
bureaucratic input that they were unable
to
generate more than
a
pallid
local response.
The
independent projects
of
T'ao Hsing-chih
and
P'eng
Yii-t'ing were
not
only without sufficient political patronage,
but
also
aroused
the
suspicion
and
antagonism
of
state power:
T'ao,
because
of
his populist leanings
and
independent style; P'eng, because
of
his open
resistance
to
corrupt
and
predatory state agents. Both these unorthodox
experiments were crushed.
The
rural reconstruction experiments
as a
whole fared
no
better
in the
end;
the
Japanese invasion wiped them
all
out. What remained was
a
legacy
of
widespread interest
in
basing China's
nation-building effort
in
rural society; and,
by
implication,
a
recognition
that rural reform could not survive
in a
hostile political environment.
The
base-areas concept, developed
by the
Communists,
was an
attempt
to
encase
a
new rural system
in its own
political
and
military protection.
Participation and bureaucracy: the historical process
From the material presented here,
it
appears that the dichotomy suggested
at
the
beginning
of the
chapter
may not
represent
a
true contradiction
50
Ch'en Kuo-fu,
Su-cbcng bui-i
(Memories of governing Kiangsu), 14. Hsu Ying-lien
et
al.
Cb'San-ha
bsuuig-t/un
cbien-sbe jtm-tmg
kai-k'uang
(General account
of
the nation-wide rural reconstruction
movement), 530-648.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
360 DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
at all. The development of local government has not, in fact, been a series
of choices between more participatory or more bureaucratic alternatives.
Rather, development has proceeded as an alternation, with popular
demands for access to local politics providing the framework in which
bureaucracy could make further inroads. The determination of
the
Ch'ing
court to move ahead with a constitution was conceived from a mind-set
in which participation would end in the strengthening of bureaucratic
prerogatives. The history of county assemblies indicates a beginning full
of enthusiasm and with broad involvement by the local elite, ending with
cooptation of assembly leadership by the magistrate's executive council
and the ultimate strengthening of his administrative power.
Patterns of sub-county division that originated in gentry activism and
communitarian elan (the Chai-ch'eng ' model') lent impetus to a heavily
bureaucratic and authoritarian system of local management (Yen Hsi-shan's
'village system'). Sun Yat-sen's bottom-upwards model of political
development, with its vibrant populist tone and 'self-government'
prescriptions, did indeed produce some initial plans which might have
led to greater participation in local politics. Yet the way these plans were
modified by the Nanking regime during the thirties meant that the very
units which were supposed to be vehicles for self-government became
units for deeper bureaucratic penetration of local society.
Participation and bureaucracy have been, it seems, interrelated in a close
historical nexus; the eagerness of elites (and, to some degree, the broader
citizenry) for access to politics did indeed produce strong surges of
institutional reform. But riding the crest were the agencies of the
bureaucratic state. These were what remained when the waves receded.
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