The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 41
toriography from the 1950s to the late 1970s stressed the class conscious-
ness of peasant rebels and pointed to poverty, economic inequities
and social oppression as the causes of revolt. Straightforward economic
explanations may account for a range of anti-rent and anti-tax revolts, such
as those associated with the 'Tao-kuang deflation' of the 1840s, the riots
in towns and villages touched off by inflation and new taxes at the end
of the Ch'ing, or the tax protests during the 1930s depression. A focus
on class-consciousness and oppression, however, ignores contrary
evidence and the complexities of rural unrest. In the late 1970s and
early 1980s Chinese historians offered broader interpretations.
72
Another line of explanation looks at primitive (but often organized)
agrarian social protest against landlords, officials and urban capitalists.
Peasants objected to specific injustices and aimed to right specific wrongs,
not to overturn the old social order in favour of a new one. This
perspective, first elaborated as '
social
banditry' in southern Europe, was
broadened through study of food riots and the early English labour
movement, and adapted to analyse peasant reactions when subsistence
village economics were disrupted by imperialist capitalism. While specifics
from other countries cannot necessarily be transferred to Chinese contexts,
the general concept of non-revolutionary, morally-infused protest fits a
range of Chinese rural unrest.
73
71
Two major bibliographic studies of Chinese Marxist historiography are James Harrison, Tbe
Communists
and
Chinese peasant
rebellions:
a study in tbe
rewriting
of
Chinese
history; and Liu
Kwang-Ching, 'World view and peasant rebellion: reflections on post-Mao historiography',
JAS 40.2
(Feb.
1981) 295-306. A theory of
a
class-conscious, revolutionary peasant counter-culture
in Ralph Thaxton,
China turned rigbtsidi
up:
revolutionary legitimacy
in
the peasant world
(chs. i, 8)
requires substantiation. Convincing evidence of correlation between late Ch'ing disturbances,
rice prices and copper devaluation appears in David Faure, 'Local political disturbances in
Kiangsu province, China, 1870-1911' (Princeton University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1976), 270-592.
On this whole question see below, ch. 6 (Bianco).
13
The concept of social banditry derives from Eric Hobsbawm,
Primitive
rebels.
Although criticized
on the ground that all bandits are not socially conscious and many ally themselves with power
holders, not the poor (Anton Blok, "The peasant and brigand: social banditry reconsidered',
Comparative Studies
in
Society
and History, 14.4 (Sept. 1972) 495—504), Hobsbawm's general
assertion of localized, specific, morally infused rural protest appears to hold up. The
phrase'
moral
economy' originated in E. P. Thompson, "The moral economy of the English crowd in the
eighteenth century',
Past and
Present,
50
(Feb.
1971) 76-136. Eric
Wolf,
Peasant wars
of
tbe twentieth
century,
and James Scott, Tbe
moral economy
of
tbe
peasant,
have applied the concept to peasant
societies of Latin America and Indo-China, seeing a basis for union between villagers and
Communist revolutionaries in peasant desire to recapture security and social cohesion lost when
closed villages were invaded by capitalist market forces. Samuel Popkin, Tbe
rational
peasant:
tbe political economy
of
rural society
in Vietnam, suggests that power and interest, not morality,
determined rural relationships. Scott's and Wolf's ideas cannot be applied directly to China where
villages were already commercialized, the direct impact of international capitalism geographically
limited, and traditional rural societies sometimes fragmented and competitive. However, the
general notions of standards of justice and protest of violations can be applied. Some issues are
brought out in
'
Peasant strategies in Asian societies: moral and rational economic approaches - a
symposium', ]AS 52.4 (Aug. 1983) 753-868.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
42 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
The idea of social banditry can be seen in the Chinese tradition of bandit
heroes sympathetic to the downtrodden as well as in popular perceptions
of some actual bandit-rebels like White Wolf in the 1910s.
74
How local
riots and risings could begin when peasants decided that officials or the
rich would do nothing to help them is illustrated by a report in the
Hong
Kong Telegraph of the confession of a leader of a rising in eastern
Kwangtung in 1907. 'The cause of this rebellion was that rice was very
dear and scarce in that part and had been so for about a year. The
authorities knew this the whole time and would not take any steps to make
rice cheaper. They knew well the laws and duties cast upon them in cases
of this kind. They simply ignored the people and let them starve.'
75
A variant of the peasant demand for simple 'justice' was sale of rice
at low 'fair' prices forced by urban mobs or rural bands, including
appropriation of stores accumulated for temple-sponsored festivals. One
such incident was the invasion of a market town in Kiangsi by out-of-work
tea-pickers organized into a society led by 'Taoist Immortals'. When
forewarned town leaders called off the fair, the tea-pickers forced a rich
merchant known to be hoarding grain to 'sell' them supplies from the
town charitable granary. They then repaired to a temple to hold their own
dninken festival banquet, becoming so satiated that they were still there
several days later when militia finally arrived and cut them down.
76
The importance of religion in sectarian rebellions has contributed to
the identification of a common, free-floating popular religion with its own
scriptures and doctrines. These originated in Mahayana Buddhism and
by the late imperial era combined aspects of Buddhism, Taoism and
Confucianism in millenarian cults revolving about the Venerable Mother
and Maitreya Buddha.
77
This sectarian faith, in different guises and
divorced from any specific organizational base, played a role in three major
risings: the White Lotus, the Taiping, and the Boxers, as well as
numerous minor ones. The role of this religion was twofold. Its sects
offered individuals hope in the midst of life's difficulties and maintained,
over long periods, usually peaceful alternatives to the elite and state-
dominated systems of belief and ritual.
78
But in appropriate circumstances
74
For this interpretation of White Wolf see Edward Friedman, Backward toward revolution: the Chinese
Revolutionary Party, 124-5, ch. 6, and Elizabeth Perry, ' Social banditry revisited: the case
of
Bai
Lang,
a
Chinese brigand', Modern China, 9.3 (July 1983) 3; 5-82.
75
Marks,
'Peasant society', 186, analyses and quotes from
Hong
Kong
Telegraph,
14 Sept. 1907. For
a
general discussion of food riots see Bin Wong, 'Food riots in the Qing dynasty', JAS 41.4
(Aug.
1982)
767-88.
76
James Polachek,' The moral economy of the Kiangsi Soviet (1928-1934)',
JAS
42.4 (Aug. 1983).
77
Daniel Overmyer, Folk Buddhist religion: dissenting sects
in
late traditional China,
chs. 5,7;
Susan
Naquin, Millenarian rebellion,
9—31.
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CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 43
this religion, with its belief in the coming of a new just age, emphasis
on personal salvation, and absorption of folk martial practices, might help
rebellions to break out from their local roots - to mobilize a following
quickly from other social and marketing structures as did the Eight
Trigrams in 1813, or to spread rapidly from an original geographical base
as did the Taipings and Boxers.
79
A study of rebellions in the poor, flood-plagued sections of Kiangsu,
Anhwei, and Honan north of the Huai River found that rebellions
emerged from either predatory or protective strategies devised by kinship
and community networks to enable their members to survive in the
particularly unpromising areas in which they lived. Predatory strategies
utilized banditry, beggary, smuggling and feuds; protective ones set up
militia and defence associations and created fortified villages. These two
strategies interacted, both involved creation of military force, and both
could expand into rebellion if the existing local balance was upset.
80
This perspective emphasizes continuities in rural unrest and its non-
revolutionary character, and could be applied to situations of endemic
unrest, like lineage feuding in Kwangtung.
These various aspects of illegal social organization and different causes
of unrest might at times be compounded into movements that transcended
their origins, as illustrated in the nineteenth century by the Taiping and
Boxer Rebellions. Such major events raise most clearly the questions of
the revolutionary potential and the limitations of traditional millenarian
ideology and economic protest.
The causes of the Taiping Rebellion, which some have called an aborted
revolution, included poverty and social disruption, an adverse foreign
economic impact, patriotic anger at invasion, and contempt for a militarily
weak government
—
causes that sound much like those put forth to explain
revolution in the twentieth century. The millenarian message and Utopian
vision adapted from Christianity inspired the rapid march of a zealous
army and presented a strong challenge to Confucian ethical and religious
78
On long-lived peaceful sects see David Kelley, 'Temples and tribute fleets: the Luo sect and
boatmen's associations in the eighteenth century',
Modern
China,
8.3 (July 1982) 361-91; and
Richard Shek, 'Millenarianism without rebellion: the Hungtian Dao in North China', Modem
China,
83. (J^y '9'*) }°5~37- Kenneth Lieberthal,
Revolution and tradition
in
Tientsin,
1949—Jfj2,
14-15,
points to many peaceful sects in Tientsin in 1950.
75
Daniel Overmyer, 'Alternatives: popular religious sects in Chinese society',
Modern
China,
7.2
(April 1981) 159—61, 167-8: Stevan Harrell and Elizabeth Perry, 'Syncretic sects in Chinese
society: an introduction',
Modern
China,
8.3 (July 1982) 288-93. On millenarian aspects of Taiping
Christianity see Philip Kuhn, 'Origins of the Taiping vision: cross-cultural dimensions of a
Chinese rebellion',
Comparative Studies in Society
and
History,
19.3 (July 1977) 350-66; and Rudolph
Wagner,
Reenacting
the Heavenly vision.
*° Perry, Rebels, ch. 3.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
44 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ,
norms.
The
social egalitarianism
and
programmes
for
land redistribution
spoke
to
peasant complaints,
and the
response revealed hostility
to
landlords that
in the
twentieth century would attract peasants
to
communist programmes.
The
idealistic social-political structure designed
by Taiping leaders would have fundamentally altered
the
existing system
of government. Whereas some
of
the claims made
for the
transcendental
universalism
of the
Taiping message seem
a bit
overblown,
and it was
not solely
a
peasant revolution,
it was
indeed
the
most massive attempt
to address rural grievances before
the
middle
of the
twentieth century.
81
However,
the
Taipings failed because
of
internal weaknesses
in
leader-
ship
and
organization
and the
strength
of the
elite-led opposition. They
foundered
on the
persistent localism
of
Chinese society. Once they
had
abandoned their original base
in
Kwangsi, they failed
to
penetrate
communities
in the
Yangtze valley where they
set up
their government.
Peasants were
not
thoroughly mobilized, elites were
not
enlisted,
and
secret societies retained independent identities.
At the end the
Taipings
came
to the
Lower Yangtze
not as
revolutionaries
but as
invaders,
bringing death
to
poor
and
rich alike.
82
Having failed
to
transform
the
social order, the rebellion's main historical legacy was
to
help set in motion
other social
and
political forces that would bring down
the
dynasty fifty
years later.
The Boxers were
in no
way
a
revolutionary group,
but
their brief rising
also combined numerous aspects
of
rural unrest
and set in
motion events
that
had
nothing
to do
with
the
beginnings
of the
incident.
83
Evidence
for direct organizational connection with White Lotus sects
is
scattered
and fairly weak. However, Boxers
did
practise sectarian rituals
and
absorbed some sectarian beliefs that put them
in
competition with Catholic
communities
in
western Shantung. Their local groups developed
in two
distinct ways.
In the
relatively prosperous south-west part of the province
where landlords were strong
and
tenancy rates high, Boxers began
as
elite-led local defence societies which protected property from bandits.
In
the
poorer north-west, where
the
land
was not
productive enough
to
attract landlord investment, there was relatively little tenancy. Here, Spirit
Boxers
led by
ordinary villagers practised
an
egalitarian ritual through
which anyone could
be
deified
by
being possessed
by
spirits.
The
Shantung governor encouraged those Boxers organized
for
village defence
and failed
to
recognize that
the
north-west groups were fundamentally
81
See
Philip
A.
Kuhn,
"The Taiping Rebellion', CHOC 10, ch.
6.
82
James Cole, The people versus the Taipings: Bao Usbcng's 'Kigbttous Army ofDongan'', 7—21.
83
This account follows Joseph Esherick,
'Lun I-ho
ch'uan yun-tung
ti
she-hui ch'eng-yin'
(On
the
social causes
of the
Boxer movement).
Wen
sbib
cbe
(Literature, history,
and
philosophy),
1
(1981)
ZI-JI.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 45
different. It was these Spirit Boxers, unrestrained by weak elites, that
expanded aggressively into eastern Chihli, threatening to turn against
officials but directing most of their hostility against Christians and
foreigners.
Once the movement began to expand out of control it became
disastrously mixed up with court politics. Conservatives in the court tried
to use the Boxers to strengthen their position while ridding the country
of foreigners. Such high-level support allowed further rapid development
of a movement that the government would have normally sought to
suppress. It soon inspired foreign intervention. Different phases of the
movement thus involved different constellations of social forces. Eventual
political ramifications, including further alienation of southern elites from
the government and resentment of tax surcharges to pay the Boxer
indemnity, were far removed from any outcome predictable when the
incident began.
Both these rebellions showed an extremist potential that nonetheless
stopped short of changing the existing social structure. They failed not
only because opposing forces were stronger, but also because leaders had
no clear plan of a new order and followers had even less. The political
possibilities of violent rural discontent remained to be realized under a
different kind of leadership.
The labour
movement
and its rural ties
Industrialization began to create a distinct urban proletariat in the
twentieth century, but city workers were neither a new phenomenon nor
very far removed from their peasant origins. Artisans and labourers had
long been part of the urban scene. Frequently they were migrants from
specific rural areas who resided only temporarily in the cities. Their
organization in gangs, secret societies, native-place associations and guilds
was not sharply separate from rural social organization. Indeed in the
highly commercialized Canton delta, guilds in the nineteenth century
might span continuums of urban workshops in towns, and household
producers in villages, interacting with local lineage and religious
institutions.
84
Introduction of factories using steam power started to change this
situation by bringing together larger numbers of workers in distinctly
urban settings where operations were largely governed by impersonal
84
Winston Hsich, 'Guild capitalism in village China: the legacy of rural entrepreneurship in the
Canton delta, 1875-1925' (paper presented at the Columbia University Seminar on Modern China,
Nov. 1982), 1-4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
4.6
INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
market forces. However, there was no sharp break with the past. On the
one hand, many small workshops with power-driven machinery were
intermediate between older handicraft establishments and larger factories.
On the other, rising demand for factory labour accelerated rural
migration. Cities in the Republican period were constantly absorbing
peasants from the countryside, who brought old patterns of behaviour
with them.
85
These workers often came from specific localities and did not sever
connections with home. Thus women cotton-mill workers in Shanghai
came mainly from parts of southern Kiangsu, particularly Wusih and
Changchow, or from areas in the north of the province. Hiring reflected
personal connections and workshops were usually composed of girls from
the same villages. Apprentice ironworkers in Tientsin were similarly
recruited from specific counties in Hopei with ironworking traditions, and
were likely to be connected to the owner by ties of kinship, locality or
other personal relationships originating in the countryside.
86
Such patterns, typical of early industrialization in other countries, meant
that from one perspective the proletariat was an urban projection of a
highly mobile rural populace. Workers did not necessarily remain long
in the city. Girls returned home to marry. Older workers often left their
families in the villages, and there is some evidence that people who lost
jobs in Lower Yangtze cities during the 1930s depression returned to the
countryside. Wages also supplemented peasant family incomes. Part of
children's factory earnings might be sent directly to their parents.
Earnings of urban workers might be used to increase the landholdings
of the more successful families or to maintain the livelihood of poorer
ones.
87
The urban worker's social perspectives were likely to depend
upon whether he or she was part of
a
rurally based family supplementing
its agricultural income, or whether (usually) he came from a marginal rural
stratum unsupported by kinship networks.
Within the city, the recent rural origin of the work-force was likely
to interfere with labour solidarity. Hostility between relatively well-off
85
Irene Taeuber,' Migrants and cities
in
Japan, Taiwan, and Northeast China',
in
Mark Elvin and
G. William Skinner, eds.
The
Chinese city between
two
worlds, 374; Gilbert Rozman, Urban networks
in Cb'ing China
and
Tokugawa Japan,
78.
86
Information
on
Shanghai women textile workers
is
from Emily Honig, 'Women cotton mill
workers
in
Shanghai, 1912—1949' (Stanford University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1982); that
on
Tientsin iron-workers
is
from Gail Hershatter, 'Flying hammers, walking chisels:
the
workers
of Santiaoshi', Modern China, 9.4 (Oct. 1983) 387-420. For the contract labour system, see Honig,
' The contract labor system and women workers: pre-liberation cotton mills
of
Shanghai', Modern
China,
9.4
(Oct. 1983) 421—54.
87
Aspects
of
rural-urban labour interchange are described
in
Randall Stross,'
A
hard row
to
hoe:
the political economy of Chinese agriculture in Western Jiangsu, 1911-193 7' (Stanford University,
Ph.D.
dissertation, 1982), 44—jo.
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CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 47
and cultivated cotton-mill workers from Kiangnan, and the poorer cruder
women from north Kiangsu, who got the dirtiest jobs with least chance
for advancement, obscured resentment against mill-owners. Even major
incidents like the Peking tramway workers' strike of 1929 might have
more in common with traditional riots than with the class-based economic
protest that appeared in later stages of capitalist industrialization in
Europe.
88
In addition, the bargaining position of many urban workers was
exceedingly poor. Early modern industry was in effect subsidized by the
surplus of agricultural labour. Workers who left their families behind
could be paid very low wages, and the young girls and boys who were
a major part of the labour force in some industries had even less control
over their situations than did adult workers. Long established methods
of recruitment and training could become warped in these transitional
circumstances. Contract recruitment systems, for instance, reflected locally
based patterns of work-related migration, but control by gangs in
Shanghai exposed women millworkers to kidnappings and rape and
depressed their living conditions, because labour bosses paid for and
controlled their dormitories. Similarly, the apprentice system of the
Tientsin iron factories provided owners with a rotating supply of
inefficient but exceedingly cheap unpaid apprentices, who were often
dismissed to look for jobs elsewhere when their three years of service were
over.
89
Despite these weaknesses, labourers did begin to organize in the 1920s
in cities where there were substantial numbers of factory workers. Old
style guilds provided one foundation for mobilization in places like Canton
where they were already highly developed, but the new organizations
followed the model of Western trade unions. The leading wedge was
provided by relatively skilled and vigorous adult male workers, such as
mechanics and seamen, while organizational impetus came mainly from
new intellectuals.
In the Canton area unions rapidly replaced craft and trade guilds after
the May Fourth movement. The first wave of formation in 1920-2 during
the postwar boom reflected the workers' own appreciation of their
growing numerical strength during a period of economic expansion when
labour was in demand. Strikes in these years advanced spontaneous
demands for higher wages and better working conditions. A two-year
88
David Strand and Richard Weiner, 'Social movements and political discourse in 1920s Peking:
analysis of the tramway riot of October 22, 1929', in
Select
papers from
the
Center for Far
Eastern
Studies,
3 (1978-9) 137-80.
80
Ming-kou Chan, 'Labor',
140-1,
150, makes points similar to those made by Honig about
Shanghai and by Hershatter about Tientsin.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
48 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
hiatus coincided with both economic recession
and the
nationwide
political retreat of the labour movement following the bloody suppression
of the Peking-Hankow railway workers early
in
1923. Erosion
of
earlier
gains
by
renewed inflation was partly responsible
for a
second strike wave
in 1925—7,
but in
these years the labour movement was much more closely
involved
in
political
and
nationalistic issues
—
as exemplified
by the
Canton—Hong Kong general strike
and
boycott.
The
merger
of the
Nationalist
and
Communist parties fostered radicalism,
and the new
Nationalist government at Canton encouraged mass organization.
By 1927
there were
200
unions
in
Hong Kong,
300 in
Canton,
and an
estimated
700-750 thousand members
in the
delta
as a
whole.
The labour movement never became
a
strong political force, however.
Intellectual agitators, especially Communists,
had
limited rapport with
union rank
and
file, who remained primarily interested
in
improving their
own economic situations. Workers
saw
political struggles against
imperialists
and
warlords
as a
means
to
this
end,
whereas left-wing
intellectuals promoted worker economic struggles
as a
step toward
revolution.
As
unions became mixed
up in
politics they became more
dependent
on
government tolerance. Their political role
in
Canton ended
with participation
in the
unsuccessful Communist insurrection late
in
1927.
Surviving unions were still allowed
by
more conservative govern-
ments
to
advance limited economic demands
but no
longer participated
in larger movements.
90
Details
and
timing
of
the labour movement varied from place
to
place,
but
a
similar evolution
can be
seen
in the
other
two
centres
of
activity,
Shanghai
and
Hunan.
91
The
urban workers were still
too few, too
weak,
and
too
beset
by
their own difficulties
to be an
independent political force.
The proletariat probably
did not
number more than
a few
million
in the
1920s, even including people
in
workshops
and
service jobs
as
well
as
in modern factories.
It was
concentrated
in a few
places where there
was
a substantial amount
of
modern industry
or
mining: Shanghai, Canton,
Hunan/Hupei, eastern Shantung, north-east Hopei around Tientsin,
and
southern Manchuria. These pools
of
urban workers grew when economic
conditions favoured industrial expansion,
as
they
did
from
the
late
1910s
through much
of the
1920s. Political conditions
in
Central
and
South
90
Ming-kou Chan,'Labor',
165-6,2o8-28,and
passim;
Lynda Shaffer, Mao
and tbe
workers:
tbe Hunan
labor movement,
1920—192),
109-12.
91
On
Shanghai
see
Jean Chesneaux,
The
Chinese
labor
movement,
1919-1927.
For
somewhat
contrasting
views
on the
dynamics
in
Hunan
see
Angus McDonald, Jr.
The
urban
origins
of
rural
revolution,
142-206,
241-50;
and Shaffer,
Mao
and
tbe
workers.
Chesneaux (407-12) maintains that
the
labour movement
was the
leading revolutionary force
of the
1920s.
For
additional
bibliography
see
Ming
K.
Chan, Historiography
of
tbe Chinese labor
movement,
1S9J-1949.
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STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS 49
China permitted, and in some places favoured, organization until 1927.
However, once brought into politics, workers were pushed into con-
frontations with stronger adversaries at a very early stage of union
development. There was very little time for growth and organization.
Some Nationalist officials and some capitalists recognized that workers'
living conditions needed improvement, but world depression and war in
the 1930s and 1940s created very unfavourable conditions for any
enlargement of an urban working class and were even less conducive to
a labour movement.
STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
Society and state are whole and part, comparable perhaps to cell and
nucleus. China had inherited from politically creative eras - like Ch 'in plus
early Han and Sui plus early T 'ang
—
a remarkably powerful state based
on time-tested structures, practices and ideas. Not least of its strengths
was a capacity for coalition politics and decentralized administration that
the outside world is only beginning to study.
Political history of the late
Ch
'ing and the Republic has usually been
summed up in one of three ways: in cyclical terms, seeing a late dynastic
decline, a period of disorder and military competition, and the re-
establishment of
a
centralized state; in terms of
a
slow, uneven expansion
of state power into the society as government sought to extend its
administrative apparatus to the village
level;
and in terms of
a
revolutionary
process through which old political myths and social structures were
destroyed, new classes brought into politics, and a new state created on
a radically different ideological and social base.
92
All these approaches
provide insights. There was a decline, interregnum and reconsolidation.
Governments did indeed try to extend their authority, centralize control,
and restructure finances and administration. But on balance we believe
the history of these 150 years is more adequately defined as a revolutionary
92
Theories of nintecnth-century cyclical dynastic decline, expressed either in terms of loss of control
and consequent rise in corruption and disorder, or in terms of decentralization accompanied by
the rise of regional armies, appear in Franz Michael,' Regionalism in nineteenth-century China',
introduction to Stanley Spector, U
Hung-cbang
and
the
Huai army; and in Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural
China: imperial control in the nineteenth century, 501-18. An interpretation of twentieth-century
Chinese politics in terms of traditional disintegration and modern reintegrarion appears in James
Sheridan, China in disintegration: the republican era in Chinese history, 1912—1)49, ch. 1. A similar
framework, drawing upon theories of political culture, is advanced in Lloyd Eastman, The abortive
revolution: China under Nationalist rule, 1927-19)7, vii-xiv, 283-ji} (sec also ch. 3 below). Twin
theories of elite invasion of local government powers in the mid-nineteenth century and
twentieth-century governmental efforts to extend administrative control downwards to the village
level appear in Kuhn, Rebellion and its
enemies
in late imperial China: militarisation and
social
structure,
1796-1S64; and ch. 7 below.
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50 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
movement of society out from under the old state control, the emergence
of new social classes, the redefinition of political relationships, and the
creation of a new state structure and ideology. It was an uneven,
spasmodic, and often bloody process.
Compared with younger and/smaller countries, this modern trans-
formation of the Chinese state was slow and tortuous. As the government
began to bulk larger within the society, the cognate phenomena of
penetration and participation, of state-building and popular mobilization,
formed two sides of the same coin, but both were slow to develop. In
China, as elsewhere in the nineteenth century, modern firearms, steam
transport and telegraphic communication became available, but the
Ch 'ing government's use of them to penetrate the society down to the
level of village and household was tardy and halting. A similar slowness
in the spread of literacy, a daily press and postal service inhibited the
growth of popular participation in politics. No doubt this record of
non-performance, of potentialities realized only gradually and grudgingly,
reflects the innate strength of China's late imperial polity. It did not change
easily. Despite an appearance of metamorphosis between 1800 and 1949,
basic features of elitism and authoritarianism strongly persisted.
Disequilibrium
in the
Ch
'ing
establishment
Basic relations between the Manchu-ruled Ch'ing state and Chinese
society were mapped out in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Once the conquest was achieved, precedents for alien rule were so well
established that anti-Manchu sentiment found expression mainly in
Confucian-style loyalty to the Ming dynasty, not in a Chinese nationalism.
Fundamentally, the examination system inherited from the Ming tied the
interests of the upper class to the monarchy, created bridges between
localities and the capital, and helped to maintain the orthodox ideology.
93
Several other basic arrangements further defined state-societal relations.
First, at the time of the conquest, the upper-class elites for the most
part accepted Manchu rule as a reasonable price to pay for a return to
order and stability. In return they were allowed to retain a substantial
portion of their local position and interests.
94
Second, the government
93
See
Barrington Moore,
Jr.
Social
origins
of dictatorship
and
democracy:
land and peasant
in the
making
of
the
modern
world;
Philip
A.
Kuhn
and
Susan Mann Jones
in
Select papers from
the
Center
for
Far Eastern Studies,
3
(197
8—79)
xiv,' Introduction', discusses' the relationship between
the
central
government bureaucracy
(the
state)
and
local administrative systems (society)'.
«• Hilary
J.
Beattie,
"The
alternative
to
resistance:
the
case
of
T'ung-ch'eng, Anhwei',
in
Jonathan
D.
Spence
and
John
E.
Wills,
Jr., eds.
From Ming
to
Cb'ing: conquest, region,
and
continuity
in
seventeentb-century China, 242—3,
256; I
Songgyu, 'Shantung
in the
Shun-chih reign:
the
establishment
of
local control
and the
gentry response',
CSW1 4.4 (Dec. 1980)
19-27;
4.5
(June
1981)
13-23.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008