Wartime Local Government in China

Abstract

U NTIL VERY RECENT TIMES government and administration in China, both central and local, enjoyed a stable existence. From Chin Shih Huang Ti (256-207 B.C.) to the last days of the Manchus (16441911), the unitary empire maintained, on the whole, the same system of government and administration throughout. Of the multitudinous changes and reforms that took place during that long span of twenty-one centuries, many were bound to be of importance. But compared with the system that prevailed before the Chin Dynasty or the new one modern China has been attempting to install, what was founded by Chin Shih Huang Ti and the first Han emperors (206 B.C.-221 A.D.) may indeed be said to have undergone only minor modifications. This is a most essential fact. It explains not only why there has been so much difficulty for modern China to arrive at institutional stability, but also why even in wartime the Chinese are continuing to occupy themselves with administrative experiments which are normally peacetime pursuits. As far as local government was concerned, the more significant changes revolved around two issues: the first had regard to the system of geographical subdivision; the second was concerned with the way the central government maintained its supreme authority. The Chin Empire was divided into forty chun, and the chun was in turn subdivided into hsien. As a basic unit of local government, the hsien, the number of which increased from about a thousand in the beginning to about two thousand at the present time, has since remained intact. But the areas that are superimposed over and above the hsien have changed frequently both in size and variety. While there was only the chun above the hsien during the Chin Dynasty, later times generally witnessed two areas of local government instead of one, the larger one being variously termed tao, lil or sheng and the smaller one, chow or fu. The names of these local areas are confusing.1 Adding to the confusion,