Social Structure of a Port Town under the Ch'ing Dynasty

Abstract

Along the coast of the Huang Ho ships could sail from Lan Chou to Ho Kou Chen. This water transport was used as the main economic artery connecting the North West of China and Peking. Medicines and other things were carried down on a raft from Lan Chou. Ho Kou Chen had grown more prosperous year by year in the Ching Dynasty as the terminus of this water transport.Neither the officers of the central government nor those of the local government resided in Ho Kou Chen. The municipal administration was in the hands of an organization called ho chieh. Ho chieh was at first a territorial unit like a village having p'ai - a neighbourhood unit composed of ten houses - as its main substructure. With the development of commerce and industry, however, the p'ai turned into a gild merchant since merchant capital - mainly rice brokers and pawnbrokers - had come to hold real power. This organization had, therefore, a joint gild of rice brokers and pawnbrokers as its main constituents and many other gilds, such as the trade gild, the area gild, the neighbourhood gild etc. were placed under its control.The gild merchant had two chiefs called hsiang ch'i. They were elected from, for instance, the rice brokers and they held their office at the hsiang ch'i fu. They had the pao chang do the administrative work. The pao chang arose from the pao chia system-an administrative organization, but actually the pao chang were employees of the ho chieh and were paid by them. In Ho Kou Chen there was nothing that had any connection with the government administration, nor was any kind of government autonomy enforced. Instead, the gild merchant, acting as go-between for the government officials and the people, carried on the peripheral affairs of the autocracy in obedience to the officials' orders on the one hand, and forced the officials to accept requests from the people on the other hand. One case of the former was the construction of embankments and one of the latter was the abolition of double taxation. So far as the municipal administration was concerned, the officials could do nothing without the help of the gild merchant and the gild merchant had no authority without the backing of the Ch'ing Dynasty. This was the real fact of the so-called "autocratic dynasty." The jobs of the hsiang ch'i fu (they were not undertaken on that body's own initiative) were to execute the municipal administrative affairs such as. administration of the court of justice, of the police, of the night watch; economic administration such as the standardization of weights and measures; public undertakings such as schools, wells, ferries; religious undertakings such as dedication of plays; various kinds of charitable undertakings and so on.Moreover, it did some temporary works such as offering prayers for rain in case of drought. It was a noticeable fact that the gild merchant had its own army, not the army of the government, and looked after the safety of the city and traffic.Most of the various groups in Ho Kou Chen were at first neighbourhood units or area units, the latter being organized in every hsien in most cases, but with the development of commerce and industry, the gilds came to take the place of these units. After the appren-ticecraftman system was established, paternal autocracy thoroughly permeated every workshop on the one hand and on the other hand the family came into power as a communistic unit as a natural result of the feudalistic commerce and industry. The ho huo system was established as a structure for such commerce and industry as this. All storekeepers were under the control of merchant capital and at the same time they belonged to a community-like-fellowship. This contradictory state of affairs resulted in both disorganization and reactionary strengthening of the feudalistic commerce and industry. The gild was an organization founded on the feudalistic commerce and industry. It was organized differently for different trades.