The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 31
antagonism. Where lineages did not develop, simpler kinship organization
might have similar effect.
51
Local loyalties had much the same influence. Lineage and village ties
often reinforced each other, and villagers had common interests in
self-protection and in maintaining community resources. Inter-village
cooperation or conflict was likely to follow both marketing relations and
kinship networks. Lower-class families might be pulled into protective-
dependent patron-client relationships with richer and stronger families.
Exclusion from the protection of these kinship, community and patronage
structures produced socially marginal outcasts more than poverty per se.
Interaction of locality and kinship was illustrated by marriage practices
of the Teng lineage of the Hong Kong New Territories during the first
half of the twentieth century.
52
In this cohesive lineage rich and poor
followed the same marriage rituals, but wealthy members selected wives
to enhance business and political contacts useful in maintaining upper-class
status.
Such alliances were sought over a fairly wide geographical area.
Brides came with dowries, providing some financial independence, and
the two families continued to interact. Peasant men, on the contrary,
married women from villages close to home, paid a bride price, and
thereafter had little contact with their wives' families. Their isolation from
other communities reinforced their dependency as tenants of the wealthy
Tengs who controlled most of the village land. Such examples suggest
that although upward mobility was not impossible, most of the poor could
not expect to change their class status.
Unequal vertical relationships proved useful to both parties in part
because, as in other Chinese hierarchies, they incorporated principles of
mutuality and reciprocity. It appears to have been a standard practice, for
instance, for landlords in the nineteenth century to forgive rent in bad
years,
sometimes repeatedly accepting partial payments, just as the
government granted tax remissions. Confucian teachings fostered a' moral
economy' in which upper-class consumption and profit-making should
be restrained while peasants should accept social inequalities and
obligations to landlords and the state. Within this value system peasants
51
Literature on lineages is surveyed and the term lineage defined in James Watson, 'Chinese kinship
reconsidered: anthropological perspectives on historical research', China
Quarterly
(CQ), 92 (Dec.
1982) 589-627. See also Jack Potter, 'Land and Uncage in traditional China', in Maurice
Freedman, ed.
Family
and
kinship in Chinese
society.
On other strong kin ties in North China villages
see Perry,
Rebels,
60, 75-8, 80 and for evidence of lineages in Hopei and Shantung see Prasenjit
Duara, 'Power in rural society: North China villages, 1900-1940' (Harvard University, Ph.D.
dissertation, 1983) ch. 2. On Shaohsing lineages see James Cole, 'Shaohsing: studies in Ch'ing
social history' (Stanford University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1975), ch. 3.
51
Rubie Watson, 'Class differences and affinal relations in South China', Man, 16.4 (Dec. 1981)
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
32 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
would accept arrangements that seemed to embody 'justice'. The popular
perception of injustice therefore became important.
53
The increase
of
social instability
In the changes that hit China from inside and outside between 1800 and
1949 we discern certain general features. Most striking is the increase of
militarism, organized violence, among the common people, beginning
especially in poor peripheral areas where recent immigration had
outdistanced government services and controls. Examples included con-
tinual inter-village feuding in central and eastern Kwangtung and chronic
banditry in areas of the North China plain.
54
In the Kiangsi highlands,
for instance, poor migrants to hills lived at odds with the more
prosperous, lineage-dominated rice-growers in the valleys.
55
Illegal
societies flourished and rebellion sprang up in such under-governed
peripheral areas, some of which in the 1930s and 1940s became Communist
bases.
Local and provincial militarization against mid-century rebels increased
troop levels and created insoluble problems of how to disband
out-of-
date armies. The end of Ch'ing military domination after 1911 saw a
proliferation of local security forces. Soon the warlords' civil wars
damaged cities and trade routes even when they did not disrupt
agriculture.
56
Another feature of instability was population movements. Early and
mid-Ch 'ing had seen migration into provinces like Szechwan, which had
been depopulated by late-Ming rebellion, and into border areas including
illegal entry into Manchuria. These outlets (except Manchuria) were
becoming rilled up by the late eighteenth century. Surplus males from
Fukien and Kwangtung were emigrating to South-East Asia and by 1850
to the Americas as contract labour. After the Taiping Rebellion the
depopulated Lower Yangtze was a temporary focus of migration. By the
twentieth century, however, Manchuria was the only remaining region
with large amounts of attractive uncultivated land. The net result of these
53
On
'moral economy'
see n. 73
below.
54
On
Kwangtung: Harry Lamley, 'Hsieb-tou: the pathology
of
violence
in
southeastern China',
CSWT 3.7 (Nov. 1977) 1-40; Marks, 'Peasant society', 135-51. On the North China plain see
Perry, Rebels, 59-94. Interpretations
of
the social effects
of
banditry and warlordism
in
North
China during the Republic are in Philip Billingsley,' Bandits, bosses, and bare sticks: beneath the
surface
of
local control
in
early Republican China', Modern China,
7.3
(July 1981) 235-88; and
R.
G.
Tiedman, 'The persistence
of
banditry: incidents
in
border districts
of
the North China
Plain', Modern China, 8.4 (Oct. 1982) 395-433.
" This hill society
is
analysed
in
Stephen Averill,
'The
shed people and
the
opening
of
the Yangzi
Highlands',
Modem
China,
9.1 (Jan.
1983) 84—126.
" James Sheridan, CHOC 10.317-19.
On the
growth
of
militarism see also below,
p. 65.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 33
migrations was a growth of population outside the Yangtze valley to the
north, west, and south-west.
Superimposed upon these permanent migrations were two kinds of
temporary movements: travel to employment and nights from war, famine
and poverty. Urban tradesmen, businessman and workers, even when
settled permanently where they worked, often remained 'sojourners'
organized by native place, who hoped eventually to return to their original
homes. A large flow of people occurred on an annual basis. Thus workers
at the traditional iron-foundries of the town of Ch 'ing in northern
Chekiang, or tinbeaters in Hangchow, worked at their trades most of the
year, but returned to Wusih, Kiangsu, and to parts of Ningpo prefecture
respectively in the summer to help their families with harvesting.
Impoverished peripheral regions set up migration patterns of their own.
For example, poor people from Huai-pei sought seasonal jobs in Shanghai
as labourers, porters and rickshaw pullers, but often ended up begging
because of lack of jobs. Begging in a richer urban locality became an
accepted off-season means of subsistence, just as itinerant begging was
a way to survive when natural disaster struck one's home area. Banditry
and smuggling, as more aggressive, illegal ways to earn a living, were
sometimes pursued on a seasonal basis, often to extract money from
outside areas. If one adds the travel of porters, boatmen, traders and
peddlars along trade routes, the amount of occupational movement in the
late Ch'ing was very considerable.
57
In addition, natural disasters, rebellions and wars created waves of
refugees. Bands of 'distressed people' inspired fear in the towns they
passed through, where small family groups or individuals were highly
vulnerable.
These kinds of popular mobility cannot be measured, but undoubtedly
increased during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The growth of
foreign trade, urban jobs, and transport improvements fostered new
patterns of temporary migration. In 1882, for example, 70,000 Chinese
travelled by steamer from Ningpo to Shanghai and 73,000 booked a
passage from Shanghai to Ningpo. Twenty years later these figures had
approximately doubled, and by 1910 467,000 Ningpo passengers travelled
to and 470,000 travelled from Shanghai. Even allowing for a shift from
57
A general theory of sojourning is in Skinner,' Mobility strategies'. For Ch 'ing town ironworkers:
Mary Rankin,' Rural-urban continuities: leading families of two Chekiang market towns', CSWI
3.7 (Nov. 1977) 67-104. Hangchow tin-beaters: Sim-pao, 17 Sept. 1874, j. On banditry as a
seasonal sojourning occupation, see Perry, Rebe/s, 55, 60-70; also Cole, Sbaobsing, 167. Impact
of permanent migration to Yunnan on urbanization and agriculture is analysed in James Lee,
'Food supply and population growth in Southwest China, 1250-1850', JAS 41.4 (Aug. 1982)
711-46.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
34 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
junk to steamer travel, these escalating figures indicated more people were
travelling.
58
These population movements were, first of all, beyond the ability of
governments to control, and, secondly, they affected all parts of China.
Isolated villages were growing rarer. The search for urban jobs was not
necessarily channelled through marketing structures in an ascending
hierarchy of towns and cities. Surplus rural labour moved directly into
urban centres, creating new channels of contact, while city merchants
became more involved in the villages
—
putting out materials for rural
handicrafts, purchasing agricultural produce, and like other wealthy city
dwellers buying agricultural land.
Third, these movements affected the social structure. Urban wage
earners, both male and female, acquired new importance in the village
families whose incomes they augmented. Meanwhile flights from rural
poverty meant unanticipated uprooting, broken families, sale of wives and
children, and individual powerlessness. We cannot trace a simple process
of immiseration. But in some areas of high tenancy, rental agreements
became less favourable to tenants. In eastern Kwangtung, for instance,
in the 1890s, peasants were required to assume more risk and had less
right to rent reduction in a bad year. By the 1920s some peasants were
operating under one-year oral agreements that provided no security
whatever. In the Lower Yangtze rent-pressing bureaus had spread after
1911,
rent deposits became more common, and short-term rentals
increased. Inconsistent government policies could add to tensions, as in
Chekiang where a rent-reduction law was passed in 1927 and then
vitiated.
59
Meantime the increase of violence and popular motility both
weakened the protection formerly afforded by patron-client relationships
and community networks.
Instability does not lend itself to quantitative comparisons. We note,
however, that the social disorders of the mid-nineteenth century came at
a time of mounting population, deflation, and decay of major government-
supported systems of water transport, control and famine prevention.
During the last Ch'ing decade and the early Republic social instabilities
were further induced by economic expansion and reforms. During the
s8
Imperial Maritime Customs, Inspectorate General of Customs, Trade reports 1882, 270; 1900, 374;
1910,
52J.
s
» On Kwangtung, see Marks, 'Peasant society', 338. On the Lower Yangtze see Bradley Giesert,
'Power and society: the Kuomintang and local elites in Kiangsu province, China, 1924-1937'
(University of Virginia, Ph.D. dissertation, 1979) 94—5, 101, 189-93, 213—15. On Chekiang land
reform see Noel Miner, 'Chekiang: the Nationalists' effort in agrarian reform and construction,
1927—1937'. For the view that peasant living standards did not rail except under abnormal
wartime conditions see Ramon Myers, The
Chinese
peasant
economy:
agricultural
development
in Hopei
and
Shantung,
ifyo-194? *9*~5 and passim; and below, ch. 5 (Myers).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 35
second half of the Republican era instability was more and more often
produced by economic adversity and war. Life became less secure for
everyone.
Fusion and fragmentation of traditional elites
Elite society began to change when commercialization led to the final
breakdown of formal distinctions between merchants and gentry degree-
holders. The fusion of these two groups was indicated by the sale of
degrees during the late imperial period. Wealthy Canton hong merchants,
Kiangsu and Chihli salt merchants, and Shansi bankers had bought
degrees and enjoyed high status in the eighteenth century. In the
nineteenth century, many merchants in any given city were likely to be
non-natives and, therefore, distinct from the native gentry, but the two
groups merged in their home areas. Trade never acquired the prestige
of first-class scholarship or high office, but it was at least as good a way
to make money. The evidence for the assimilation of merchants into the
ruling class is overwhelming.
Members of large extended families had normally pursued diverse
routes to success, different brothers specializing in scholarship, trade and
estate management. Lineage ties obscured merchant-gentry distinctions,
as did their cooperation in managerial activities. This coalescence meant
more than merchants purchasing degrees or officials investing in business.
By the mid-nineteenth century individuals began to display both merchant
and gentry characteristics, combining scholarship and trade, high degree-
holding with active business management, and a willingness to leave
stagnating official careers in favour of broader opportunities in industry.
In regions of economic growth like the silk-producing areas of Chekiang
and Kiangsu, scholars could not resist being drawn into production or
trade.
60
This convergence of merchant and gentry was made final and
unavoidable by the end of the examination system in 1905, which left
education more open to those who could pay for schooling. This change
created a more broadly defined and open elite, ready to welcome social
mobility but well able to maintain itself as a class because it could draw
on diversified sources of income and status.
This broadening of the elite social category was accompanied by an
60
On the fusion of elites in general see Bastid-Bruguiere,' Social change'. Comment in the Shih-men
(Chekiang) gazetteer is cited in Li,
China's
silk
trade,
106. The case for fusion of merchant and
gentry has been repeatedly made: e.g. Keith Schoppa, 'The composition and functions of the
local elite in Szechuan',
CSwI'
2.10 (Nov. 1973) 11 and
passim;
and Rankin, 'Rural-urban',
85-4.
Continuing differences are stressed in Edward Rhoads,
China's Republican
revolution:
the
case
oj
Kwangtmg,
iSfj-rpij, 82, 9}, 174.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
36 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
increase in elite-directed social organizations. The most obvious were
guilds and native-place associations
{hui-kuari).
Although the history of
such groups goes back several centuries, they developed strongly during
the latter part of the Ch'ing to meet the needs of sizeable groups of
merchants, workers and artisans living away from home.
61
Money derived
from trade often supported other kinds of societal organizations. Newly
wealthy families continued into the twentieth century to set up charitable
estates. Elites took charge of dike repair, burial, and other community
associations. Public associations run by gentry, merchants, and temples
increased markedly in the second half of the nineteenth century. During
rebellions or in peripheral areas of chronic unrest, militia and defence
associations overshadowed elite-run civil organizations. These multi-
faceted organizational capacities helped the local elite preserve its position
not only in agrarian society, but also vis-a-vis the bureaucratic state.
62
While merchants and gentry were coalescing into a broader single elite,
signs appeared of fracturing along different lines that would eventually
produce a new class structure. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries more and more scholar-gentry had been diverted into career
paths outside the bureaucracy. The spread of education accelerated this
process during the last decades of the Ch'ing. There were simply too many
qualified men to be absorbed into government posts. Some wealthy young
men turned to idleness and dilettantish literary pursuits. Less affluent
lower-degree holders might find a living locally in collusion with corrupt
elements in the yamen sub-bureaucracy. But there were also serious,
respectable alternatives to bureaucratic careers. An early example was the
academic community that grew up in the Lower Yangtze in the eighteenth
century - men who specialized in precise scholarship, research and
academy teaching supported by salaries from private patrons or provincial
officials. Establishment of new, high-level scholarly oriented academies
gave them a solid institutional base. Appointments were made by
governors or governors-general. Such positions were highly prized and
keenly sought by ambitious scholars. Bibliophiles enlarging their libraries
furthered book-printing, and so helped the printing profession. This
academic substratum had a life of its own not oriented to the official
examinations or pursuit of office.
63
In the nineteenth century, particularly the latter
half,
gentry management
61
See
Ho
Ping-ri, Cbimg-km bui-kuan sbib-lim.
62
For more
on
this trend see below, ch.
7,
"The role
of
elites
in
local government*.
63
Benjamin Elman,
'The
unravelling
of
Neo-Confucianism:
the
Lower Yangtze academic
community
in
late imperial China' (University
of
Pennsylvania, Ph.D. dissertation, 1980),
166-261;
also
his
From
philosophy
to
philology: intellectual and social aspects
of
change
in
late Imperial
China.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 37
also became a major career alternative. Managerial activities were
frequently generalist, like those of a magistrate, but some specialized in
functions like water control. Management of lineage property became
another respectable use of administrative ability. Wealthy merchants or
investors often hired managers to run individual firms.
Specialization appeared within the bureaucratic sphere as some men
trained to be clerks and others to become legal or financial secretaries
(mu-ju, ' tent friends') in the entourage of high officials. Li Hung-chang,
for example, kept scores of supernumerary specialists on his
staff.
These
specializations often had local bases. Thus scholars from Shaohsing,
Chekiang, were particularly noted for their skills as legal secretaries and
their success in obtaining clerical positions in the capital.
64
Some Shaohsing
families also made fortunes managing banks owned by Ningpo merchants.
More fundamental changes of role began in the treaty ports, where
foreign affairs experts, compradores, treaty-port entrepreneurs, and
Western-style professional men formed a small urban bourgeoisie; edu-
cated army officers appeared as forerunners of militarists of the Republican
period; both missionary and modern Chinese schools began to produce
an urban intelligentsia outside the Confucian framework. This fragmenta-
tion and redefinition of old elites continued during the Republic. Whereas
late Ch'ing elites had never been homogeneous, they were now more
divided, not only by region but by occupation. New differences gradually
emerged between elites of core and peripheral areas as much as between
city elites and rural' gentry'. Armed force often became a more important
buttress of elite status in the countryside. Indeed in some militarized rural
areas local elites were almost defined by control of defence forces,
65
whereas in core regions wealth was still likely to be divorced from arms.
There was no longer a more or less uniform elite stratum definable by
simple criteria of degree-holding or wealth.
This fracturing of
elites
was accompanied by organizational diversifica-
tion. As China had more contact with the modern international world,
her urban life saw the growth of elite-managed institutions comparable
to those abroad - steam and/or electrical-powered manufacturing, trans-
port and communication; more open markets for the mobilization of
capital, labour, and
ideas;
institutions of social overhead (education, public
health, police, disaster control, the administration of justice); and even
political activity. Chinese urban elites assimilated Western ways that they
64
Kenneth
E.
Folsom, Friends, guests, and colleagues; and James Cole, 'The Shaoxing connection:
a vertical administrative clique
in
late Qing China', Modern China,
6.}
(July 1980) $17-26.
65
See Guy Alitto,' Rural elites in transition: China's cultural crisis and the problems of legitimacy',
in Select papers from the Center for
Far
Eastern Studies,
j
(1978-9) 218-75.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
38 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
found useful so as to update and strengthen Chinese counterpart
institutions that might already have had a long history in China.
These trends lay behind the attack on Confucian social values in the
first decade of the twentieth century. The assault was led by urban
intellectuals as part of a broad challenge to family authoritarianism,
beginning with the emancipation of women and youth.
Women had been slowly securing a higher status and a considerably
broader range of activities than permitted by orthodox Confucian moralists.
The number of educated women in elite families had been rising since
the sixteenth century. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Chekiang
gazetteers record public donations by women; some biographies indicate
their vigorous role in local as well as familial affairs. Women of poorer
families played a more crucial economic role and were more active outside
the family than were elite women. Women fought on and sometimes
commanded pirate ships in the early nineteenth century. They took
leading positions in heterodox sects, and participated in riots. Eco-
nomically independent women weavers in the Canton delta established
their own organizations and even eschewed marriage.
By the late nineteenth century restrictions were slowly relaxing even
among the wealthy, but the convention that women properly pursued their
activities within, not outside, the household remained an impassable
barrier to their assuming public roles. One impetus for breaking this
barrier came from abroad. Missionaries argued in favour of schools for
girls and against footbinding. Foreign ideas and examples provided a new
image of women's place in society; ideals of nationalism and freedom
furnished a rationale. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao in 1896 wrote one of the first
denunciations of the stifling of Chinese women. The anti-footbinding
movement became widespread and vigorous, although its history has
hardly been studied. In the 1900s and 1910s advocacy of women's
liberation was a hallmark of radicalism and opposition to footbinding a
basic ingredient of social progressiveness. Some women easily moved
outside the household, others faced a difficult and painful struggle.
66
It was easier, though never simple, for male youths to declare inde-
pendence from family ties. Students became part of the new political
66
A
good starting point
for
information
on
women
in the
late Ch'ing
and
Republic
is
Margery
Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds.
Women in Chinese
society.
On their part in the May Fourth movement,
see Roxane Witke, 'Transformation
of
attitudes toward women during
the
May Fourth
era of
modern China' (University
of
California, Berkeley, Ph.D. dissertation, 1970). For an example
of
a woman active
in
local
as
well
as
family affairs,
see
Cole,
Sbaobsing,
94-6. For an
example
of
female rioters: 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), 127-51, 142-9.
On
women pirates: Dian Murray, 'Mid-Ch'ing piracy:
an
analysis
of
organizational attributes', CSWT 4.8
(Dec
1982)
7.
See also 'women'
in
indexes
of
CHOC
10, n and 12.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 39
landscape as soon as they began to study abroad or in new schools.
Abolition of the traditional examination system made education less
time-consuming. Young men spearheaded the demands for political and
social change. The assertion that the young were independent of their
elders and should quickly assume positions of responsibility was a radical
step.
Students and intellectuals formed the backbone of revolutionary
parties before 1911 and would continue to be leaders of radical parties
in the Republic.
67
Rural
organisations
and popular
movements
Associational groups among the peasantry ranged from legitimate institu-
tions,
such as lineages and village associations led by respectable elites,
through borderline institutions like village protection associations and
militia (which could be founded with government approval but potentially
could challenge official control), to distinctly illegal (but sometimes
tolerated) groups like sects, secret societies, or smuggling, bandit and
pirate bands. Even the illegal sects, gangs and secret societies were
imbedded in local social and commercial structures. Many were continuous
organizations that helped members make a legal or illegal living and
offered them protection, companionship, and (in the case of
sects)
religion.
In effect they complemented the official and high-level elite organizations,
but they were not perceived primarily in terms of social class. A variety
of lower elites or partially educated men could be found among sectarian
and secret society leaders, and the members appear to have shared the
values that permeated respectable society. These organizations cannot,
therefore, be looked upon as embodiments of a separate peasant little
tradition with its own separate values. The distinction was more between
those included in or excluded from orthodox and officially sanctioned
institutions. Illegal organizations therefore had a competitive capacity
vis-a-vis the state and upper-class society, insofar as they were formed by
people who felt unfairly excluded or inadequately provided for.
68
This
tension, underlined by the fact of illegality, surfaced periodically in
rebellions or in official repressions of still peaceful groups.
Was there an expansion of illegal or borderline organizations in the late
Ch'ing comparable to the increase in autonomous elite-run organizations?
All that can now be said with certainty of religious sects is that they were
numerous, that a considerable number of risings in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries indicated a surge of activity, and that sects
67
The
rebellion
of
Chinese youth against
the
family system
is
addressed
in
literature more than
in academic scholarship.
See
Leo Lee, 'Romanticism and emancipation', CHOC 12.476-80.
68
This competitive aspect within
a
framework
of
shared values
is
pointed
out in
Susan Naquin,
Shantung rebellion: the Wang
Ltm
uprising of1774,
161.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
40
INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
continued
to be
active into
the
Republic.
69
Somewhat better evidence
exists about secret societies. Triads, first established
in the
early Ch'ing,
extended their activities into
the
interior
of
the south
and
south-west
in
connection with
the
opium trade
and
other smuggling during
the
early
nineteenth century. They further spread among settled communities
in
the Canton delta during
the
Opium
War. The
Elder Brother Society
probably emerged
in
the 1850s
or
1860s
to
become
the
dominant society
in
the
Yangtze valley.
A
handful
of new
societies
was
established
in
Chekiang
in the
latter half
of
the nineteenth century.
70
Local studies also
show that natural disasters
and
disorders
had
produced
a
large number
of societies/sects/gangs/defence associations north
of
the Huai River
by
the late Republic.
It seems probable, therefore, that population growth and commercializa-
tion stimulated organization within lower
as
well
as
upper levels
of
society. Disorder acted as
a
catalyst
to
produce new organizations. This
proliferation
was
important because, although riots
and
protests might
arise spontaneously, disorders were likely
to be
more frequent
and
prolonged when pre-existing organizations were involved. While
in-
creasing
the
possibility
of
disorder,
the
involvement
of
either societies
or sects might also serve
to
keep
it
within bounds,
for
they both
supplemented
and
existed
in
tension with
the
state
and its
adherents.
In
situations
of
instability,
the
internal logic
of
their practices
and
often
illegal activities tended
to
push them from their marginal positions into
rebellion against, rather than coexistence with, authority.
Yet
their
members
had, or
aspired
to, too
many ties with
the
existing order
and
shared
too
many
of
its values
to
reject
it
completely
or
leave
if for
long.
Thus we believe that rural unrest was multi-faceted, and until the 1930s
and 1940s seldom aimed
at a
revolutionary restructuring
of
government
and society. Theories
put
forth
to
explain popular movements have
stressed
a
variety
of
different aspects.
71
Dominant Chinese Marxist
his-
65
A
list
of
sectarian risings
in the
late eighteenth
and
early nineteenth centuries
is in
ibid.
154-7.
Perry, Rebels, 96—152, shows
how
sects became integrated with local social structures
in
North
China during
the
late Ch 'ing
and
Republic, whereas members
of
earlier sects were recruited
as
individuals (Susan Naquin, 'Connections between rebellions: sect family networks
in
Qing
China', Modern China,
8.3
QvAy 1982) 340-9).
70
On the
Elder Brother Society, see Charlton Lewis,' Some notes
on
the Ko-lao Hui
in
late Ch 'ing
China',
in
Jean Chesneaux,
ed.
Popular
movements
and secret societies
in
China, /S^o-rfjo.
On
late
nineteenth-century Chekiang societies
see
Mary Rankin, Early Chinese revolutionaries: radical
intellectuals in
Shanghai
and
Chekiang,
1902—if 11,128—39;
see
2
^
so
Wing Ssu-chih,' Tsung-tsu chih-tu
ch'ien-lun' (A brief discussion of the lineage system), in
Ch'ing-shih
lun-ts'ung,
ti
ssu ch:
(Essays
on Ch'ing history, fourth collection), 152-78.
71
For a survey of the literature see Frederic Wakeman, Jr. 'Rebellion and revolution: the study
of popular movements in Chinese history', JAS 36.2 (Feb. 1977) 201-38. Some major aspects
of rebellions are set forth in Joseph Esherick, 'Symposium on peasant rebellions: some
introductory comments',
Modern
China,
9.3 (July 1983) 275-84.
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