The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
Local Elites and Community Affairs
in the Late Impérial Period
Mary Backus Rankin 1
Several récent studies hâve examined the émergence of a sphère of public
activity between state authority and private society in China during the
second half of the nineteenth century and the first three décades of the
twentieth.2 Institutions and concepts approximated foreign models, but this
"public sphère" was not simply shaped by the foreign pressures and domestic
crises of that stressful period. Evidence for a public sphère centering on
1. Mary B. Rankin is an independent scholar in modem Chinese history living
in Washington, D.C. The présent article is based on a lecture delivered in May
1990 at the Centre Chine, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where
she was staying as a Directeur d'études associé. The following abbreviations
are used in the notes: FZ: fuzhi; HDSL: Da Qing huidian shili, 1899 éd.; XZ:
xianzhi.
2. For a summary of the literature see William T. Rowe, "The public sphère in
modem China," Modem China, 16 (3 ),July 1990, pp. 309-329. The majorworks
are William T. Rowe, Hankow: conflict and community in a Chinese city, 17961895 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Mary Backus Rankin, Elite
activism and political transformation in China: Zhejiang province 1865-1911
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986); David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing:
citypeople andpolitics in 1920s China (Berkeley: University of Cal ifornia Press,
1989). For apreliminary extention of the analysis to the 1980s see David Strand,
"Civil society" and "public sphère" in modem China: aperspective onpopular
movements in Beijing, 1919-1989 (Durham, N.C.: Asian/Pacifïc Studies Institute, Duke University, 1990).
Études chinoises, vol. IX, n° 2 (automne 1990)
Mary B. Rankin
local management in the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries can be
found in local gazetteers, memorials and essays. Thus, there was a specifically Chinese analogue to the "bourgeois public sphère" that emerged
in Western Europe about the same time. This managerial public sphère was
essential to the ordering of local societies during the Qing. It is also of
comparative interest because it suggests a Chinese public arena, with its
own paths of development and its own différent characteristics, that
nonetheless contributed to and put its mark upon the late Qing and
Republican expansion that more closely followed European patterns.
The Concept of a Public Sphère
The term "public" {gong in Chinese) has overlapping and ambiguous
meanings in both Chinese and European or American literature. In China
it certainly was predominately associated with state authority; and a strong
dichotomy was drawn between public and private, in which the latter was
frequently connected with selfish and disruptive activity.3 In modem
Western Europe, private interests were distinguished from public authority,
meaning the affairs of the state, during the sixteenth century. Identification
of state and public was implicit in political théories (most extremely in the
ideas of Thomas Hobbes) that idenafïed civil society with the state and
its laws,* and was institutionalized in France through that country's highly
developed apparatus of government.
3. For a good summary see John R. Watt, The district magistrale in late impérial
China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 161-68. On this
dichotomy in the Tang see David McMullen, "Views of the state in Du You
and Liu Zongyuan," in S. R. Schram, éd., Foundations and limits of state power
in China (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1987), pp. 74-77.
McMullen points to the identification of gong with the state during the Tang
dynasty, but also to a late-Tang shift in focus to associate gong with the good
of ail society. Thus began a continuing discourse on public, the emperor, and
the state.
4. Jiïrgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphère: an inquiry
into a category of bourgeois society, trans. by Thomas Burger with assistance
of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Techno-
14
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
The concept of public has numerous other connotations, however. It
means open, known or common to ail, and is used in the sensé of "publicity,"
meaning ideas or actions purposely made known to a significantly wide
audience. "The public" refers to those people outside of government who
are (at least ideally) informed and hâve some potential involvement in or
means to influence political décisions. "Public opinion" refers to consciously
held attitudes or interests of a significantly large social group, possibly the
entire populace but more commonly one social segment claiming gênerai
sanction for its views. In western Europe and America public opinion was
linked to the émergence of civil society, whereas in impérial China it was
most often confined to narrower bounds within the bureaucracy, élite
networks, or localities. "Public goods" or "public needs," on the other hand,
were used within both Chinese and Western contexts to indicate things which
either society as a whole or its élites generally recognized as important to
the well-being of the political-social entity.5
The notion of a "public sphère" draws upon ail of thèse meanings, and
most defïnitely does not refer only to the state. This sphère seems best
conceptualized as an intermediate arena of interaction between state and
society in which the two sides meet and which neither can claim as
completely its own. It emerged differently in late impérial China than in
Western Europe — through local public management rather than by the
articulation of private interest and rights through public opinion and political
compétition with the state.6
As William Rowe has pointed out,7 Jûrgen Habermas' historically
infused sociological analysis of a West European bourgeois public sphère
provides an interprétation of the European expérience that is useful for
logy Press, 1989), p. 11; Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum, The sociology
ofthe state. Crans, by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1983), pp. 105-115; John Keane, Democracy and civil society (London and New
York: Verso, 1988), pp. 37-39.
5. See also Rowe, "The public sphère in modem China," pp. 315-16.
6. Rankin, Elite activism, p. 15. The model in Habermas, p. 30, suggests that the
public sphère may be considered an arena, but he does not analyze it in that
way and tends to link it with bourgeois civil society.
7. Rowe, "Public sphère," pp. 310-18. For Habermas'concept ofthe public sphère
and its origins, see Habermas, op. cit., pp. 14-102.
15
Mary B. Rankin
comparative purposes. Habermas sees this sphère emerging in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between expanding state power and a newly
arising civil society of private property, associations, and rights. Several
large historical processes lay in the background. First, the rise of market
économies and, more specifically, of capitalism. Second, the séparation of
the conjugal family from both médiéval communal settings and household
économie production. A sensé of privacy, individuality, and shared humanness fostered within this new "intimate sphère" was then projected outwards
towards a like-minded bourgeois audience. Third, public authority, once
embodied in the king or feudal lord, was depersonalized as statebuilding
began and government bureaucracies developed.
The bourgeois public sphère developed alongside the institutions of civil
society, including the press, the salons of Paris, the coffee houses of London,
literary societies, and libraries. Such organizations provided arenas of
discussion in which public opinion developed and was legitimized. In
conflicts with expanding state institutions, the new bourgeois public claimed
first the right to debate issues conceming state authority and then the right
to participate in politics and regulate the state. Thèse rights were formalized
as constitutionally protected civil liberties justified in ternis of rational, universalistic natural law. In reality, however, thèse liberties were defined by
the interests of the bourgeoisie, and subséquent structural transformations
of this class-specific sphère began as other social groups started to organize
and advance claims within it.8
The late impérial Chinese context was quite différent Despite continuous
commercial growth, capitalism was not developing.9 Weak notions of private
(si) interests andrights,which were generally delegitimized as selfish, could
not provide an ideological basis for a civil society. There was already a
8. The second half of Habermas ' book analyzes stages oftransformation and décline
of the public sphère in Europe that are not relevant to its origins in China.
9. Articles on the so-called sprouts of capitalism hâve been collected in several
major volumes. E.g., Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming, eds., Zhongguo zibenzhuyi
de mengya (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985). James Cole has translated a
major theoretical article in this volume: Fang Xing, "Why the sprouts of
capitalism were delayed in China," Late Impérial China, 10 (2), 1989, pp. 106133.
16
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
strong pre-modern state. For centuries it had combined bureaucratie
governance with ritually buttressed centralization of authority in theperson
of the autocratie emperor, and it was considerably more successful than
European states in preventing public political debate. The family did provide
a sphère for intimate relationships that did not necessarily follow Confucian
hierarchical models,10 but such practices were not legitimated by theory,
and in any case family or lineage interests were too associated with the
suspect concept of private to be used effectively in challenging the state.11
For such reasons, power relations between government and populace were
not subject to the same wide-ranging theoretical examination as in Europe.
Ideas of community or local public activity were developed away from the
political center and only weakly projected upwards into any reconsideration
of national-level political relationships. The centralized bureaucratie
monarchy, on the other hand, was generally successful in claiming that it
represented the public authority of the realm and was essential to the wellbeing of the populace.
Nonetheless, this centralized state remained superficial and relatively
non-interventionist, and was far from being an effective despotism. Strong
central control was limited to relatively brief periods after new dynasties
solidified their positions, and, as G. William Skinner has suggested, the
small pre-modern bureaucracy was gradually becoming less able to provide
necessary local services to theexpanding terri tory and population throughout
10. The classic depiction of personal sensibilities and relationships within a
cloistered domestic sphère is in the novel, The dream ofthe redehamber. Récent
works on women suggest less isolation and explore the contradictions between
women's artistic accomplishments within family-based networks and the
orthodox NeoConfucian hierarchical social values: see Dorothy Ko, "Towards
a social history of women in seventeenth-century China," (Ph.D. dissertation,
Stanford University, 1989); andEllenWidmer, "The epistolary worldoffemale
talent in seventeenth-century China," Late Impérial China, 10 (2), 1989, pp.
1-43.
11. During the Tang dynasty critics oïfengjian (feudalism) argued that it benefited only the ruler and his relatives whereas junxian (the centralized bureaucratie monarchy) ensured more compétent and disinterested benevolent government. McMullen, "Views of the state in Du You and Liu Zongyuan," pp. 7781.
17
Mary B. Rankin
the late impérial period.12 There was thus considérable latitude for social
organization, and thèse possibilities expanded further when central power
was weak. As the Ming dynasty declined in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, we see several manifestations of socially based public
activity. One involved the émergence of critical public opinion and political
organizational networks among overlapping scholar/official/gentry élites
using académies as institutional bases.13 Thèse beginnings were not unlike
the origins of public opinion and political debate in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Europe, but they were strongly tied to the dynastie cycle.
The process begun under the declining Ming was truncated when the Qing
reasserted autocratie control. Civil society remained underdeveloped and
public opinion did not again become a powerful, open, national poUtical
factor until the late nineteenth century. Debates continued within private
networks, and the political overtones so évident in the seventeenth century
may hâve revived as évidences of govemmental décline and social decay
increased in the late eighteenth, but neither the context nor the audience
was wide enough to justify calling this public opinion. Morally infused,
critical opinion within me lower and middle metropolitan bureaucracy
(qingyi) was expressed publicly — and it might give voice to opinions
developed within literati networks —, but qingyi was too sporadic and
uninstitutionalized to be an effective political force before the larger context
began to change in the late nineteenth century.14
12. G. William Skinner, "Introduction: urban development in impérial China," in
Skinner, éd., The city in late impérial China (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1977), pp. 20-21.
13. Thèse manifestations in élite society occurred at a time of social unrest and
uprisings by members of the lower classes, someûmes joined by lower élites.
Such violent protests may be considered public expression by those to whom
other avenues were closed. They are a différent phenomenon from the public
sphère discussed in this article, and will not be considered hère. However, the
interaction certainly needs to be explored.
14. On revived doubts about the impérial System, see Benjamin Elman, Classicism, politics, and Icinship: the Ch'ang-chou School ofNew Text Confucianism in late impérial China (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1990),
ch. 9; Judith Whitbeck, "The historical vision of Kung Tzu-chen, 1792-1841"
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Califomia, Berkeley, 1980), pp. 47, 97-98.
On qingyi, see James Polachek, "Literati groups and literati politics in early
18
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
Other manifestations were not so closely tied to the dynastie cycle
because they were encouraged by secular économie and démographie
growth that eut across politicalfluctuations.One expansive impetus came
from corporate organizations like guilds, lineages, temples, and religious
associations so common in Chinese society. Guilds formed by private
businesses undertook such functions as regulating markets, maintaining
quality standards, and sometimes collecting taxes. They also sponsored
relief, éducation, festivals and other matters of gênerai community significance.15 Lineage managers, particularly in single-lineage villages and areas
of strong corporate lineages like the southeast, also might assume public
functions, and the term gong might be applied to their activities.16 However,
institutions like guilds or lineages were not established primarily for community- wide activity. Public involvement was a by-product of their business
and kinship purposes that had a more private, albeit corporate, character.
When they established or supported a school, foundling home, or community
temple, they were acting within what I will call the local managerial public
sphère, but the guild or lineage per se is usually best viewed as a corporate
societal institution representing only part of the larger community.
nineteenth-century China" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Califomia, Berkeley, 1976), pp. 1-73, 413-534; Mary Backus Rankin, "Public opinion and
political power: qingyi in late nineteenth-century China," Journal of Asian
Studies, 51 (3), 1982, pp. 463-70.
15. On guild activities in the public sphère see William T. Rowe, Hankow:
commerce and society in a Chinese city, 1796-1889 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1984), pp. 317-21. On the functions of guilds in market
régulation, etc., see Susan Mann, Local merchants and the Chinese bureaucracy, 1750-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 23-25, 3435, 154-58.
16. For examples of lineage institutions performing kin-based, but in effect
community-wide, functions in the Pearl River delta and the Lower Yangzi,
see Rubie Watson, Inequality among brothers: class and kinship in south China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 106; and Jerry Dennerline, "Marriage, adoption, and charity in the development of lineages in Wuhsi from Sung to Ch'ing," in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson,
eds., Kinship organization in late impérial China (Berkeley: University of
Califomia Press, 1986), pp. 186-94. Lineage activities might be calledgong.
E.g., Ruichang XZ (Jiangxi, 1871), 1: 13a, 16b; 2: 44b, 47a, 56a, 68a.
19
Mary B. Rankin
Temples, shrines, and the religious associations, although sometimes
associated with private groups, were often a still more intégral part of the
public sphère. The major ones were part of the public affairs of the locality,
and had territorial and communal as well as ritual significance. They defined
social arenas, connected villages, and reflected local structures of power.
Men of prominence were involved in religious associations, the festivals
they sponsored were community events, and temples might serve as meeting
places for periodic discussions of community affaire, thus significantly
contributing to the public space in local arenas.17
The third, broader manifestation of societal public activity involved ail
the practices of local élites in establishing, financing, and managing
institutions and services considered necessary to local communities. This
activity took place outside of bureaucratie frameworks and was oriented
to the community as a whole rather than to any particular segment It was
continuous, it expanded throughout much or ail of the Qing, and it produced
an institutionalized and legitimized sphère of traditional public action.
Within the context of late impérial China this managerial public sphère can
be distinguished from the state (guan) sphère of court and bureaucracy with
its also-expanding compléments of secretaries (muyou) and subbureaucratic
clerks and runners — a distinction that was underlined by the "practice
of avoidance" preventing the appointmentof magistrates to counties within
their native province. It was also distinct from a private (si) realm of family,
business, and property interests. In this article the term "public sphère"
embraces thèse local extrabureaucratic affaire and institutions and the local
élites and officiais acting within this arena. Thus, I substitute the tripartite
division of private-public-state for the dichotomy of private-state/public.
17. Helen Siu, Agents and victims in south China: accomplices in rural révolution
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 76-83, gives a sensé of the
community fonctions of temples in the Pearl River delta. For a gazetteer
référence from Guangdong, see Nanhai XZ (Guangdong, 1910), 6: 9b. For
références from the Middle Yangzi, see XiangtanXZ (Hunan, 1899), 7: 20a;
Jiangxia XZ (Hubei, 1794), 5: 16a. On the public functions of religious
associations and temples in Taiwan and their interaction with guilds (mainly
in late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries), see Kristopher M. Schipper,
"Neighborhood cuit associations in traditional Taiwan," in Skinner, The city
in late impérial China, pp. 669-76.
20
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
The Late Impérial Public Sphère
The public sphère that de veloped in seventeenth- through nineteenth-century
China does not fît Habermas' model. Instead, it arose in the local arenas
of a society with strong community/corporate orientations and in a context
of économie expansion that strengthened and diversified élite interests
without producing Western European-style capitalism or a distinct bourgeoisie. It did, however, comprise an arenaof state-societal interaction that
cannot be assigned to either of those two sectors.
In reality, there was not one but numerous public sphères, defîned in
local and community settings, linked socially as well as administratively,
and revolving about matters in which both the state and the local populace
had an interest. Boundaries wereflexibleand changeable, participants had
other societal or state interests, and the démarcation between governmental
rôles and those of local leaders was often ambiguous and shifting.
Certain arenas of local activity like taxation and criminal justice were
of particular interest to the state; officiais did their best to maintain control
of such matters, which I consider to be within the realm of state authority.
In others, local élites had a definite, sometimes dominant, rôle in decisionmaking, establishment, and management. Thèse arenas included much of
what can be considered the public needs of the local populace: éducation,
water control, a large range of welfare and related services, famine relief,
militia, roads, ferries, bridges, and temples or shrines.
Questions concerning the power relations between government and
populace in this sphère were not generally made expliciL Seventeenthcentury writings on feudalism (fengjian) and the centralized bureaucratie
monarchy (junxiàn) may hâve been moving in this direction, and arguments
that healthy, elite-led local societies would contribute to national stability
had been made at that time.18 However, given the Qing hostility to political
18. E.g., Gu Yanwu's argument that if local officiais were local men they would
take particular care of local needs and the empire would be well-ordered. Gu
Yanwu, "Junxian lun wu," in Gu Tinglin shiwenji (Beijing, 1959), p. 15. See
also Joanna Handlin Smith, "Benevolent societies: the reshaping of charity
during the late Ming and early Ch'ing," Journal ofAsian Studies, 46 (2), 1987,
p. 329, on the views of Chen Longzheng. Further research may reveal that
21
Mary B. Rankin
debate, the issues were not vigorously or openly pursued again until the
late-nineteenth century. Public sphères developed through local practice,
and the concept was only weakly projected from the local to the national
level. There were no defflands for local élites to participate in politics at
higher levels, except tiirough the existing structures centered about the
bureaucracy.
Local public activity, on the other hand, developed its own expansive
dynamics, initially stimulatedby the intersection of favorable économie and
political factors in the late Ming. Secular commercial and démographie
growth caused the monetization of the economy, expanded private économie
activity, increased the wealth and status of merchants, and contributed to
the décline of the corvée. The cyclical weakening of Ming dynastie power
was reflected in the decay of centrally regulated local institutions like the
poor houses (yangjiyuari).19 The décline of the court and the political feuds
in the capital prompted scholars not only to propose "statecraft" (jingshî)
reforms, but also to act outside die bureaucracy to improve social conditions
in their home areas by establishing welfare and other institutions. They might
be joined by merchants and other wealthy commoners interested in raising
their status through public contribution. Thus, at atimewhen the government
had become less effective, social leadership and money were available to
meet local public needs. One manifestation was a vigorous, locally based
welfare movement centering in, but not limited to, the Lower Yangzi.20
the view that locally achieved social stability would benefit the country was
common at the end of the Ming.
19. Liang Qizi (Angela K. Leung), "Mingmo Qingchu minjian cishan huodong
de xingqi — yi Jiang-Zhe diqu wei li," Shihuo yuekan, 15 (7-8), 1986, pp.
307-8.
20. Yang Dongming (see below) tunied to local public activism when forced to
retire for political reasons. Joanna F. Handlin, Action in late Ming thought:
the reorientation ofLii K'un and other scholar officiais (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1983), p. 66. Scholars outof office were among the leaders
of the late Ming welfare movement. See Liang Qizi, "Mingmo Qingchu minjian
cishan," pp. 309-12; Fuma Susumu, "Dôzenkai shoshi — Chûgoku shakai
fukushi shi ni okeru Mimmatsu Shinsho no ichizuke no tame ni," Shirin, 65
(4), 1982, pp. 41-50; Joanna Handlin Smith, "Benevolent societies," pp. 30937.
22
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
The Qing, of course, reversée! the bureaucratie decay of the late Ming
and raised governmental efficiency to new heights. However, the extrabureaucratic welfare movement of the late Ming persisted into the early Qing
(when the Manchus were occupied in establishing control over China), and
it seems probable that local initiative was never fully controlled despite
stronger supervision under the effective bureaucratie govemment of the
eighteenth century. Quite possibly, the amount of local élite management
never decreased, even if patterns were disrupted during the wars of the MingQing transition. Additional institutions like foundling homes (yuyingtang)
and elite-managed homes to care for the poor and sick (pujitang) soon
appeared, and local élites established a permanent présence and influence
as managers in flexibly defined, often ad hoc, local public arenas.21
Ongoing commercial and population expansion continued to raise the
need for local services. Because the regular bureaucracy was not enlarged
and local govemment remained underfunded,22 the Qing bureaucratie capacity soon began to décline relative to the size of the economy and the
population. Such factors as the monetization of the economy, new social
relationships between absentée landlords and legally free tenants, and
widespread évasion of obligations, had rendered the corvée obsolète. Moreover, increasing numbers of educated men had to seek alternatives to officiai
employment as literacy spread. Ail thèse factors continued to favor management by local élites.
21. Fuma Susumu, p. 52; Liang Qizi, "Mingmo Qingchu," p. 313 ; Liang Qizi, "Shiqi
shiba shiji Changjiang xiayou zhi yuyingtang," in Zhongyang yanjiuyuan
Sanminzhuyi yanjiusuo, comp., Zhongguo haiyangfazhan shi lunwenji (Taibei:
Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1984), pp. 106-108, 122; Angela Kiche Leung (Liang
Qizi), "L'accueil des enfants abandonnés dans la Chine du bas-Yangzi aux xvif
et XVIIIe siècles," Études chinoises, 4 (1), 1985, pp. 15-54. Foundling homes
were not a new type of institution, but increased female infanticide caused by
the dévastation of the seventeenth-century wars provided new impetus. Pujitang
were locally financed and managed institutions supplementing the still
ineffectuai yangjiyuan.
22. On underfunding, see Madeleine Zelin, The magistrale's tael: rationalizing
fiscal reform in eighteenth-century Ch'ing China (Berkeley: University of
Califomia Press, 1984), pp. 29-71, 303-8.
23
Mary B. Rankin
The lengthening lists of local public institutions in gazetteers of the later
Qianlong, Jiaqing, and Daoguang periods support the assumption that élite
management expanded as the regular bureaucracy failed to keep pace with
the population.23 This expansion was quantitative, not qualitative. It elaborated existing structures and did not become transformative until the last
décades of the nineteenth century. It also did not occur in conflict with the
state, unlike the situation in Europe at the same time. Given the Qing
dynasty's proven ability to suppress not everything but what it really wanted
to suppress, the best opportunities to expand societal public rôles occured
when they did not threaten the government — when there was basic
agreement between élite leaders and officiais about what needed to be done.
It was for this reason that welfare was so significant in expanding the
managerial public sphère, whereas local militia were suspected by the
government and remained marginal.
Quantitative expansion was poliûcally significant, even if not confrontational, because it created an increasing number of organizational niches
for local élite leaders and an increasingly complex organizational structure
outside the bureaucracy. This institutionalization of local élite public
activities had its own dynamic going back to the Ming, and definitely occured
before the regular bureaucracy appeared to become overwhelmed by
growing social problems and internai corruption at the end of the eighteenth
century.24 Institutional prolifération gradually changed relationships between extrabureaucratic élite leaders and the state, laying foundations for
23. Difficulties in determining a secular trend include fragmentary sources and the
gazetteer-compilers' habits ofuneven and under-reporting, failure to indicate
how long an institution operated, noninclusion of institutions at lower administrative levels, and ignoring institutions that did not fit established catégories
(like organizations without a "building"). Even so, later gazetteers are likely
to list more public institutions than those of the early eighteenth century.
Compare, for example, Chang-Zhao XZ (Jiangsu, 1687), juan 3, with the 1785
édition, juan 4, and the 1904 édition, juan 17. Simultaneous expansion of the
subbureaucracy may hâve contributed to tensions between this élément and
extrabureaucratic élites in the public sphère.
24. The best illustration of bureaucratie effectiveness in the mid-Qing is PierreEtienne Will, Bureaucracy and famine in eighteenth-century China, trans. by
Elborg Forster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
24
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
a more rapid expansion and subséquent transformation in the post-Taiping
and New Policies periods.
The propositions that there was a definable public sphère in late impérial
China, that its origins were more cîosely shaped by the state than in Europe,
but that it nonetheless had potential for autonomous expansion, lead to
further considération of the organization of this sphère and how it was
perceived by the participants within it.
Structuring Principles and Practices
Throughout the Qing an almost certainly increasing percentage of the local
public organizations were run by local élites, as opposed to officiais with
the aid of deputies, clerks, andrunners. Whereas there was gênerai agreement
on the kinds of institutions a locality should hâve, organizational structure
and practice varied locally. The type and density of institutions actually
founded differed from région to région and between the cores and périphéries
of any one région. Institutions also appeared and disappeared, reflecting
local needs, the availability of funds, the strength of bureaucratie or localelite leadership, and changes in the larger political context.
Indeed, the local variation and the lack of officially fixed uniform
régulations for many institutions constitute évidence against central direction. Centralized régulation was attempted for institutions like the yangjiyuan under the Board of Revenue (Hubu). The central government also
sometimes vigorously promoted certain local institutions. An impérial edict
of 1724, for instance, gave new vigor to a drive to establish foundling homes
in counties throughout China. The Yongzheng Emperor also took an active
interest in encouraging community granaries.25
25. On yangjiyuan see Liang Qizi, "Shiqi shiba shiji Changjiang xiayou zhi
yuyingtang,"pp. 121-22. Liang points out that élites had already founded homes
in a number of Jiangnan counties before the first govemmental promotion in
the Shunzhi reign. On community granaries, see Pierre-Etienne Will and R.
Bin Wong, Nourish the people: food redistribution and the Qing civilian
granary System, 1650-1850 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for
Chinese Studies, 1991), passim, especially chs. 2-3.
25
Mary B.
Rankin
The center could not closely control opérations throughout so large a
country, however, so the pertinent question is what was the balance between
local officiais and élites in managerial public sphères. This question is often
difficult, if not impossible, to answer, but despite the fragmentary record
there is considérable évidence of the societal rôle in local public organization.26
Accounts of local public sphères reveal two différent, but not mutually
exclusive, principles through which activity was organized: "management"
(dongshi, jingli, or jingguari) by local élites, and the organization of
"societies" Qiuî) and "alliances," or "covenants" (yue).
The practice of management emerged unevenly from the late Ming
onwards, and was distinctly différent from the élite corvée obligations of
the Ming. Managers held positions voluntarily. They were chosen on the
basis of local prominence or expertise, and were part of (or interacted with)
high status and wealthy local circles from which donors and organizers were
drawn. Prominent men had contributed funds and headed local institutions
since the late sixteenth century. The appellation dongshi (director) was used
in the early to mid-Qing, but the addition of the term shendong (gentry
26. This and the following sections aim at a generalized description of the public
sphère based on the Institutions and Précédents of the Qing dynasty (HDSL);
on three collections of statecraft writing (the Huangchao jingshi wenbian and
two of its suppléments); on about forty gazetteers from Shandong, Jiangsu,
Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Henan; and finally, on a briefer
survey of twelve more gazetteers from Shandong, Hunan, and Hubei. Most
examples are pre-1850, even if in a later gazetteer. Some later examples are
used, but only if they seem no t to represent a conceptual change. Thèse gazetteers
vary greatly in usefulness, and certainly do not cover ail China, but allow at
least preliminary generalization. I cannot explore régional and core-peripheral
variations hère, although différences in social organization between the south/
southeast and the Yangzi Valley enter into the discussion of structure. One
finds more activity in core than in peripheral économie areas, but this generalization may not hold true where there were strong elite-led village societies
(archetypically in the southeast). Distant périphéries and frontiers were slower
still to develop this public sphère that depended not only on strong local social
organization but also on assimilating élite practices defined in cores.
26
The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
manager) in the early nineteenth century may indicate the rising prestige
of thèse jobs.27
Despite local variations, a composite picture of managerial practice can
be drawn from gazetteers of différent provinces. In this practice management was integrated with local discussion, sponsorship, and financing. The
proposai to establish an institution might come from officiais or local élites,
with the latter most likely to take initiative in core areas where élites were
so often well-connected and rich. After discussions, managers were selected
by local élites, officiais, or both Consulting together; written régulations
might be drawn up at some point by either the local leaders or the officiais.
The magistrate or other officiais might supply funds, sometimes most
or ail, but often a relatively small amount to initiate proceedings and
demonstrate support. The élite sponsors and a small number of friends/
donors might supply ail the local funding, or they might collect subscriptions
from businesses, neighborhoods, landholders, etc. This money might be
temporarily invested in pawnshops ; any left over after constructing or buying
a building would probably be used to purchase an endowment of agricultural
land or urban property to provide income for opérations. Often more money
had to be raised for this purpose, and if an institution survived for a long
time it periodically required additional funds to continue operating and make
repairs.
Managers might specialize in a certain activity like water control or apply
gênerai directorial skills in a variety of organizations. Sometimes a small
group was continually in charge of an institution, but sometimes more men
rotated so that each person was responsible for only one or two months
of the year.28 Local personalities and power configurations affected how
this gênerai scheme was applied in any one place. It can, however, be said
that the extrabureaucratic élites engaged in public affairs were likely to be
27. Mark Elvin, "Market towns and waterways: the county of Shanghai from 1480
to 1910," in Skinner, The city in late impérial China, pp. 462-67; Gaoyou
zhouzhi (Jiangsu, 1783), 1:50a, 51a; Chang Chung-li, The income ofthe Chinese
gentry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), pp. 43-73, 215-48. On
post-Taiping management, see Rankin, Elite activism, chs. 3-4.
28. Xiamen zhi (Fujian, 1832), 2: 43b; Gaoyou zhouzhi (Jiangsu, 1723), 1: 54b;
Chongyang XZ (Hubei, 1855), 3: 69a.
27
Mary B. Rankin
prominent and influential in their locality, and that the loose arrangements
allowed much latitude for social empowerment even when the constantiy
changing officiais tried to maintain close supervision.
Despite the fréquent indications of coopération between officiais and
local élites, élite management existed in some tension with the alternative
of administration by the bureaucracy and sub-bureaucracy. One source of
tension involved corruption. Managers as well as clerks might be corrupt.
Large endowments or institutions like granaries that accumulated valuable
stores invited abuses, and magistrates sought to supervise local institutions
and audit accounts. Sometimes endowments were alternately officially
administered and élite managed as abuses were discovered under first one
and then the other System.29 Local militia, which officiais tolerated during
crises, but tried to disband when order was restored, could be a still greater
source of tension. On frontiers and some périphéries they might be part
of local power structures that lay outside the managerial public sphère altoghether.
Analytical models focusing on conflict between officiais seeking to
impose control and social actors seeking to circumvent it call attention to
this kind of state-societal compétition.30 Magistrates, who generally spent
considerably less than three years at a post, were at a disadvantage in trying
to supervise local élites in their public as well as their private activities.
The issue was not simply one of the effectiveness of govemmental control,
however, but of intégration into the social contexL Managers were defined
by local social networks as well as by the institutions they managed and
the officiais who confirmed their formai positions.31 Thus managerial
29. E.g., Xiamen zhi (Fujian, 1832), 2: 43b; Longyan zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 4:
40b, 16: 53a-b. There were also régulations calling for annual inspections and
rewards for or reappointment of granary managers who performed honestly
for a number of years. E.g., HDSL, 193: 3a-b, 8a.
30. Frédéric Wakeman, Jr., "The évolution of local control in late impérial China,"
in Frédéric Wakeman, Jr. and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and control in late
impérial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 1-25;
Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China: impérial control in the nineteenth century
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, i960), pp. 501-10 and passim.
31. On local élite managerial networks see Rankin, Elite activism, pp. 107-119;
Timothy Brook, "Family continuity and cultural hegemony: the gentry of
28
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
networks overlapped social-power configurations in local communities,
representing at once the private interests of the particular networks, the
public interests of the community, and the public opinion of those concernée
about local affairs.
As already indicated, a second form of local public organization, which
more clearly suggests strong extrabureaucratic initiative and possibly
relative autonomy, consisted of societies (huï) and alliances or covenants
(yué) established by local élites for various public purposes. This use of
hui implies some sort of associational structure, and should be distinguished
from its use to refer to informai, ad hoc meetings to discuss affairs. Although
much more research is needed on this subject, there seem to hâve been two
gênerai types of thèse institutions.
One appeared in the late Ming, when scholars and wealdiy men established societies to provide local services. The benevolent societies (tongshanhid) studied by Angela Leung and Fuma Susumu were the most
prominent, but similar associations were founded for a variety of educational
and charitable purposes. The first tongshanhui that we now know appeared
in the out-of-the way district of Yucheng, Henan, in 1590. It was established
by the district's most prominent scholar-official, Yang Dongming, who
joined four other local men in a covenant (yue) to establish a community
granary during a visit home. This benevolent society emerged from a purely
social drinking group called The Society for Sharing Pleasure (Tonglehui),
thus demonstrating how public activities could émerge from élite social
networks and private literati associations. After being forced to retire a few
years later, Yang and his brother were extremely active in local éducation,
famine relief and water control. Yang established at least one other much
larger society to promote éducation, with régulations that were also called
a covenant (yue). Because he was a nationally known scholar, Yang was
Ningbo, 1368-1911" and R. Keith Schoppa, "Power, legitimacy, and symbol:
local élites and the Jute Creek Embankment case," both in Joseph W. Esherick
and Mary Backus Rankin, eds., Chinese local élites andpatterns ofdominance
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Such networks are revealed
by detailed concentration on a locality, but may also be indicated by ternis
like tongzhi (companions).
29
Mary B. Rankin
the natural center of a prominent network of local élites whom he brought
into his organizations.32
The main development of tongshanhw began twenty or thirty years later
in the Lower Yangzi, particularly in Jiangnan. Some of the founders, like
Gao Panlong and Chen Longzheng, were active in the Donglin movement
or the Restoration Society.33 Thèse benevolent societies were not just an
offshoot of the politicized oppositionist literati movements, however. They
were a late-Ming product of both the wealthy élite's préoccupation with
gaining merit through charity (shan) and the tendency of scholars to seek
"statecraft" solutions to social problems within their home districts outside
of the government Some very eminent scholars were involved, but also
less prominent gentry and wealthy men. Arising at a time of governmental breakdown, thèse societies operated with considérable autonomy in a
spirit of local mutual coopération that could indeed harbor a trace of hostility
to central governmental interférence in local affairs.34 They had as many
as a hundred members, drew up their own régulations, elected their own
heads, and financed activities through dues. Members discussed association
affairs at meetings and listened to speeches exhorting them to philanthropy.
At least some societies persisted for several décades into the Kangxi period.35
32. See accountsby Yang inYucheng XZ (Henm, 1895), 8: 24b-31a, 64a-67a, 68a70b; Handlin, Action in late Ming thought, ch. 3; Fuma Susumu, "Dôzenkai
shoshi," pp. 43-44, 51. Yang was well-known in national scholarly circles and
a relative by marriage of the scholar. Lu Kun. The idea of a covenant can be
related back to the Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi's account of Lu Dajun's
proposai for villagers to enter into agreements providing organization to meet
virtually ail local needs. Zhu Xi, "Zengsun Liishi xiangyue," in Shen Jiefu,
éd., Youchun lu (Ming Wanli reign), 1: la-7b. In practice, the yue grew out
of local societies. I translate the term as either covenant or alliance because
the idea of a written agreement was involved, even when it is unclear whether
there actually was one. Régulations of a welfare institution might be called
a yue: see Xiangshan XZ (Guangdong, 1827), 2: 58b.
33. Fuma Susumu, pp. 44-46,49. Gao headed the Donglin Academy during 16121621 and Chen was closely associated with the Donglin movement through
Gao Panglong.
34. Smith, "Benevolent societies," p. 329.
35. Liang Qizi, "Mingmo Qingchu minjian cishan," pp. 311-13.
30
The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
Although the seventeenth-century societies eventually died out, more
were founded in the Qianlong reign — including a number in Jiangnan
market towns.36 Thèse new societies became part of expanding Systems of
local management, which we may assume were, in gênerai, supervised
vigorously by officiais during this period of strong govemmental administration. Their appearance also underlines the fact that initiatives by local
gentry and merchant élites continued under thèse conditions, even though
the degreeof autonomy may hâvefluctuated. Twenty years after its founding,
the society in the market town of Fengjing in Jiashan county, Zhejiang,
attracted a hundred participants to a meeting that raised 1,000 taels. It had
an endowment of urban property and over 200 mu of fields, and continued
to the late Qing.37 Other societies to promote a variety of welfare activities
were established by local élites during the nineteenth century, so this gênerai
form of organization never died out.38
The other type of societies and covenants or alliances were less associated
with the top levels of eUte society. They were related to strong corporate
social organization at ail urban levels, ultimately resting upon strong
cohesiveness in villages and other sub-county units. Ritually based
community structures appear to hâve been most pervasive and politically
significant in the soufheast, but existed in one form or another throughout
much of China including the northwestern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.39 The basic unit was the she, a small village seulement organized about
a shrine. The complex issues of the she are outside the scope of this article,
but several attributes of such territorial/ritual/social structures (both actual
36. Fuma Susumu, "Dôzenkai shoshi," pp. 54-55; Jiaxing FZ (Zhejiang, 1801),
24: 14a-16a; JiashanXZ (Zhejiang, 1800), 4, gongshu: 9a-12a; Yangzhou FZ
(Jiangsu, 1810), 18: 16a; Gaoyou zhouzhi (Jiangsu, 1783), 1: 57b.
37. Jiashan XZ (Zhejiang, 1800), 4, gongshu: lia.
38. E.g., a society to aid widows was established in Guanquan, Jiangsu, in 1809
(Guanquanxianxuzhi [1921], 2xia: 8a), and another was appended to alocally
established foundling home in a Shanghai market town in the Xianfeng period
(Shanghai XZ [1871], 2: 27a-b).
39. On a late nineteenth-century officiai effort to use xiangshe in Shanxi as a basis
for self-government, see Roger Thompson, "Statecraft and self-govemment:
competing visions of community and state in late impérial China," Modem
China, 14 (2), 1988, pp. 193-203.
31
Mary B. Rankin
and idealized) are relevant. They formed a basis for community organizations, which in turn forged larger communities focused on the rural
township (pciang). Despite the counter-tendency to territorial compétition,
local organization was vigorous and interconnected. Moreover, a certain
mystique of the autonomous, self-governing she entered literati consciousness.
She organized around shrines to worship village gods of earth and grain
go back to at least the fourteendi century.40 The effectiveness of such
organization varied over time; but it was persistent, and it seems reasonable
to believe that it became more complex as population density increased
in the Qing. The state certainly attempted to superscribe its own organization,
symbols, ideology, and control. Ming Taizu decreed that ail villages should
hâve a she school. In the eighteenth century the Kangxi Emperor appropriated the old name of xiangyue (a township covenant) for compulsory
readings of his "Sacred Edicts" throughout die empire. Such mechanical
policies to enforce orthodoxy became hollow in die long run, but lessplanned symbiosis of state and local cuits had deeper effects in integrating
local and national cultures.41
40. See David Faure, The structure ofChinese rural society: lineage and village
in the eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986), p. 141.
41. For brief examples of she in the Pearl River delta, see Siu, Agents and victbns
in south China, pp. 50, 78; Ning Ke, "Shu 'sheyi,'" Beijing shifan xueyuan
xuebao, 1985 (1), pp. 12-24, is a Mler accounî. The connection of she with
polders and the rôle of merchants in fïnancing the she schools that proliferated
in the delta during the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns is stressed in Wang Daxue,
"Guangdong shexue yu shangren," Shanxi shifan daxue bao, 1984 (1), pp. 8289. See also Frédéric Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the gâte: social disorders
in south China, 1839-1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966),
pp. 63-64. The Qing government sought to use she to carry out various policies
besides the well-known granaries and schools. See for example the edict of
1786 inX(/ic/wrt£XZ(Jiangxi, 1872), 4:24b, on deforestation. On the interaction
of orthodox and popular cuits see the introductions by James L. Watson and
Evelyn S. Rawski to Watson and Rawski, eds, Death ritual in late impérial
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), and Prasenjit Duara,
"Superscribing symbols: the myth of Guandi, Chinese god of war," Journal
ofAsian Studies, 47 (4), 1988, pp. 778-95.
32
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
Cultural intégration did not necessarily imply state domination, however.
Local men took initiative to establish societies and alliances throughout the
Qing, and thèse were vehicles for local consultation, discussion, and élection
of managers. The complex southeastern local structures of the Qing involved
numerous societies and covenants to conduct public affairs or to raise money
for and manage spécifie institutional projects like schools, bridges or dikes,
welfare, or défense. The detailed township and county gazetteers from
Nanhai, Guangdong, for instance, show an impressive eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century development of locally financed and managed xiang and
sub-xiang educational institutions (shuyuan, shexue, yixue, wenshe, etc. —
terms that were often interchangeable). Covenants were locally established
during the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods, and people or gentry of the xiang
(xiangren or xiang shenshî) met (nui) annually at académies or community
schools.42 In other cases village temples or larger temples established by
an alliance of villages served as both ritual centers and arenas for public
discussion and decisionmaking by local leaders.43 Such local covenants and
societies were thus ongoing organizations that undertook a variety of local
tasks as needed. Passing référence to bridges or other structures being
constructed by a society or alliance/covenant (huijian, yuejian) may
sometimes indicate the existence of ongoing local organization rather than
the formation of a temporary society for that particular task.44
It was also not unusual, and probably common, for alliances to link
villages and conduct public affairs important to a group of localities. In
42. Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1754), 3: 7a, 7: lb; id. (1830 éd.), 5:
14a-17a.
43. John A. Brim, "Village alliance temples in Hong Kong," in Arthur P. Wolf,
éd., Religion and ritual in Chinese society (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1974), pp. 101-102; Wang Shi-ch'ing, "Religious organization in the history
of a Taiwanese town," ibid., p. 80.
44. Xinchang XZ (Jiangxi, 1872), 5: 44a, suggests an ongoing local association
in an account of an academy being publicly constructed by the xianghui; but
societies organized for a particular purpose are suggested by other accounts,
such as of a man bringing together ten associâtes and establishing a hui to
buy land for a bridge endowment (3: 42b) or of a hui formed to build a shrine
(6:41a); see also Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1754), 3 and 7, passim.
33
Mary B.
Rankin
parts of Guangdong continuing alliances of villages for défense, irrigation,
or other common purposes dated back to the eighteenth, and quite probably
the seventeenth, centuries. In the course of time their governing structures
of locally chosen élites might take on judicial or other needed public
functions. Since some alliances linked villages dominated by one higherorder lineage, thèse associations are a good illustration of the interaction
of lineage and public organization.45
Complex interlocking community organizations obviously strengthened
local societies in relation to the state bureaucracy, and gave institutional
underpinning to the important brokerage rôle of local leaders in linking
communities upward to élite power structures of higher urban levels. Such
organization might also encourage autonomous attitudes within even the
upper-gentry eUte. One essay from the Ming describes how xiang of 100
families established a she that organized a school and later a granary. They
elected bao heads to carry out the xiang alliance. The alliance was concemed
with local governance, the xiangshe with ritual, the baowu provided military
protection, the school educated and the granary nourished the people. Thus,
local affairs were conducted in accord with the people's wishes (he renxiri)
and officiais did not supervise (guan wu du).*6
Not suprisingly, thèse structures were associated with the concept of
"public." Alliances might be called public alliances (gongyué).*1 They
publicly established (gongjian) institutions and were part of public affairs
(gongshï).** Other societies were more specifically established to promote
éducation, welfare institutions, granaries, or militia. Some of thèse, such
as a Jiangxi society for transporting foundlings to a central home in 1771,
seem similar to the associations established by Jiangnan élites,49 but they
were embedded in a régional context of territorial and lineage-based village
associations rather than in the scholarly networks characteristic of theLower
Yangzi.
45. Brim, "Village alliance temples," pp. 94-98; Faure, The structure ofChinese
rural society, ch. 7.
46. XiangshanXZxubian (Guangdong, 1920), 16: 9a. The author, Huang Zuo, was
a jinshi and an important sixteenth-centuiy officiai fron Xiangshan.
47. Shunde XZ (Guangdong, 1929), 3: 3a.
48. Xinchang XZ (Jiangxi, 1872), 5: 40a-b, 42a, 43a, 44b; 19: 39b.
49. Fengcheng XZ (Jiangxi, 1873), 3: 2b, 26: 160b-162a.
34
The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
In Guangdong, xiang-\e\&\ societies were sometimes the foundation for
managerial hiérarchies that seem more complex and more formalized than
those of the Lower Yangzi. They could be mobilized by high-status élites
and officiais for large projects involving more than one county jurisdiction
— as in the eighteenth-century mobilization to repair embankments of the
large Sangyuan polder lying within both Shunde and Nanhai counties.50
Repairs were carried out by high-level bureaus (ju) with managers chosen
by xiang leaders. Once this organization was established it appears to hâve
continued with annual meetings of publicly selected xiang représentatives
and public sélection of managers (by the représentatives?).51 This background of local societies in both county cities and smaller towns or villages,
lay behind the organization of militia bureaus and alliances during the Opium
War and at the time of the Taiping Rébellion,52 and probably was also a
basis for the large amount of local public activity in welfare and éducation
in Guangdong between the end of the rébellion and the New Policies.
Whereas the Sangyuan polder organization was unusually prominent
and visible, that kind of institutionalized, regular local involvement in
decisionmaking and management was not unique. Indeed, it seems improbable that activities of the many local associations further removed from
the county seat were effectively controlled by officiais. Given the évidence
for significant and institutionalized local élite participation in public affaire,
we can next ask how it was conceptualized in China at the time.
50. Shunde XZ (Guangdong, 1929), 4: 9a-12b; Siu, Agents and victims, p. 78.
51. Elvin, "Market towns and waterways," p. 67.
52. For the Opium War, see Wakeman, Strangers at the gâte, ch. 6. Kuhn's classic
work on local militarization during the Taiping Rébellion focuses on Hunan:
Philip A. Kuhn, Rébellion and its enemies in late impérial China: militarization and social structure, 1796-1864 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1970). The many militia organized against the Red Turbans in Guangdong
during this period were connected by structures of alliances and covenants.
E.g., Haiyang XZ (Guangdong, 1900), 25: 24a; Xiangshan XZ xubian
(Guangdong, 1920), 16: 5b. Shunde XZ (Guangdong, 1929), 3: 3a-4a, shows
linkage between the gongyueol the 1850s andearly nineteenth-centurygongyue
for défense against pirates.
35
Mary B. Rankin
The Language of the Public Sphère
Although there was little theoretical literature on the relationship between
state and social power in impérial China, the practice of local élite management resulted in the ad hoc extention of "public" and related terms
to refer to activities and institutions within local arenas where both officiais
and local élites assumed responsibilities for ordering affairs. In this context,
the concept of public might be associated with the social community as
well as the state. State power was not necessarily dominant, and government's claim to best represent the welfare of the people might be matched
by similar claims of local leaders. The meaning of public was not necessarily
fixed, but might shift and expand as différent groups assertedpolitical claims.
Evidence for the association of public with extrabureaucratic affairs is not
found so much in political theory or discourse as in the sources most closely
linked to the practice of local management and government.
The resulting vocabulary was not used systematically or ubiquitously.
Most gazetteer accounts of local institutions are terse and do not provide
many descriptive détails or use revealing adjectives. Nonetheless, certain
key words appear with sufficient frequency to suggest some of the characteristics that people attributed to local extrabureaucratic managerial
sphères. Moreover, they are found both in documents written by officiais
and in gazetteers compiled by local élites, suggesting a shared conceptual
framework. Thèse terms include first of ail gong (public) and a variety of
associated words, like yi (public, public spirited, charitable, righteous) or
shan (charitable, given to good works), that reinforced the legitimacy of
public activity. Other words like gong (community, collective, together),
he (united, joint), and tong (united, ail) suggest collective, coopérative
community-oriented action. Min (people) might hâve collective connotations, but like zi (a collective, not an individual, self) might also distinguish
extrabureaucratic from officiai (guari) activity with suggestions of autonomous local action.53
53. On the etymology of the English-language public and the Chinese gong, see
Rowe, "Public sphère," pp. 316-17. Gazetteers vary greatly in the extent to
which accounts are embellished with adjectives necessary to document per-
36
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
It is important to stress once more that ail thèse words
were ambiguous. They were not used exclusively to refer to activity within
the local managerial public sphère, and might hâve quite différent connotations in other contexts. Chinese writers creatively expanded existing terms
and concepts in discussing différent situations and catégories of political
relationships. Meaning might vary with the context, but in the local context
thèse terms marked an arena of community-oriented activity distinguished
from both officiai and private.
The meanings of gong: moral, officiai, and extrabureaucratic
In accounts of local affairs gong is used in at least four différent ways
that are overlapping and sometimes interchangeable. It might be a respectful
honorific meaning something between sir and mister, a terni of moral
approval, a référence to local officiai government, or an indication of
extrabureaucratic elite-led community activity. Ail thèse meanings interacted, and like the multifarious uses of "public" within the EuropeanAmerican historical tradition the Chinese "public" drew nuances from ail
its différent connotations.
The possibilities are illustrated by its fréquent use as an honorific attached
to the surname of either an officiai or a local élite (Li gong, Wang gong,
etc.).54 The bare factual statement that "Mr. Li constructed," for instance,
a bridge (Li gong jian...) also carried connotations that Li was a good,
respectable man who behaved in a public-spirited (gong) way and that his
building occurred within the local public (gong) sphère of communityoriented activity. Thus the one word very economically suggests ail thèse
aspects of Li's act.
ceptions of a public sphère. There are suggestions of régional variation, such
as a préférence for yi over gong in Shandong, but, in gênerai, the same terms
appear in gazetteers from différent areas. A common vocabulary is not surprising. Compilers were usually local men, but they came from social groups
whose members traveled away from home, had outside connections, perhaps
had held office, and might hâve read accounts of public organizations elsewhere.
54. During the Zhou dynasty gong was the highest hereditary noble rank, translated
into English as duke. It was still used by the Qing in titles of princes of the
37
Mary B.
Rankin
The moral meanings of "just," "public-spirited," "concerned for the
common welfare" were, of course, not only applied within local frameworks.
The concept of public concern, as opposed to private gain (/i), permeates
Confucian morality and was used both to legitimize the acts of rulers and
officiais and to criticize their déviations from moral standards.55 But it was
also used to describe the character of local people who established, contributed to, or managed welfare organizations, educational institutions, water
control projects, bridges, roads, and other local projects. Examples of the
most common phrases include gongzheng (public spirited and upright),
gongde (just—or public spirited—and virtuous), fenggong leshan (serving the public interest and delighting in good woiks),jigong haoyi (zealous
in the public interest and given to charity).36 Such phrases as gongzheng
yinshi (public spirited and wealthy), used to describe the kind of men who
should manage local institutions or projects, attest to the assumption of both
officiais and the local populace that wealthy men were less likely to be
corrupt than those still trying to make their fortunes. They also reflect
merchants' stratégies of using local contributions and management to gain
status, enter élite networks, and legitimize wealth. A merchant or other rich
man might be described as fur en haoyi (a wealthy man who was public
spirited) or furen xinggong (a wealthy man with a public-spirited nature).57
Gong meaning public-spirited/just was used interchangeably with or in
conjunction with yi (righteous, public spirited) and shan (charitable, given
blood and in honorary titles awarded to distinguished officiais. However, it
was more commonly used politely to refer to persons of respectability and status.
55. The most famous reversai of the standard gong-si dichotomy is the criticism
of rulers as selfish by Huang Zongxi, "Yuan jun," in Mingyi daifang lu, la2b.
56. Xiamenzhi(Fujian, 1832), 2:44b;Foshanzhongyixiangzhi (Guangdong, 1830),
4: 2a; Shanggao XZ (Jiangxi, 1869), 8:81a; HDSL, 193: 3a. Such phrases are
part of an essentially symbolic normative vocabulary labelling people as good
or as doing socially or officially approved things. They appear widely and are
in no way limited to characterizations of local élites in the public sphère.
57. E.g., Ge Shijun, comp., Huangchao jingshi wen xubian (Shanghai, 1888), 37:
8b; Xinjian XZ (Jiangxi, 1871), 24: 38a; Fengcheng XZ (Jiangxi, 1893), 20:
19b; Xiangtan XZ (Hunan, 1889), 7: 12a.
38
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
to good works).58 Shan was particularly characteristic of the late Ming/early
Qing références to men engaged in charitable or other bénéficiai local
activity, reflecting the rise of this activity under the Buddhist inspiration
to accumulate merits through good deeds. Gong and yi appear to become
more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, there
was no marked shift in terminology; shanshi or shanmin (charitable scholar
or person) continued to appear in nineteenth- and twentieth-century publications.59
Ail this attribution of high moral character to local élites engaged in
the public sphère does not hâve to be taken literally, although it does reflect
the reality that managers were frequently drawn from respectable, even
prominent, social networks or from the ranks of upwardly mobile men
seeking to solidify their local social positions by demonstrating their (sometimes new-found) capacity for public responsibilty. The moral emphasis
served a symbolic purpose in legitimizing expanding extrabureaucratic
activity as the préserve of men of high character. The public spiritedness
claimed for local contributors and managers oriented to the needs of
community constituencies might be contrasted with displays of a selfish
and avaricious nature (zisi zili zhi xin).60
Turning to the connection witii local state authority, gong was used
without moral connotations to refer to local governmental bureaus and
buildings, certain activities, and most particularly the finances specifically
earmarked for expenditure within the county at the discrétion of the magistrate.61 Local governmental funds were called gong during the Ming.
However, the category became more precisely defined in the 1720s and
1730s with the reforms initiated by the Yongzheng Emperor to allow
governors and magistrates to use either the meltage fées added to land-tax
payments or portions of other designated taxes for a variety of public needs
(relief, repair of city walls, roads, various emergencies, etc.) within their
58. E.g., scholars characterized as public spirited and charitable (haoyi leshari)
undertook road repairs that were termed public affairs (gongshi). Longyan
zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 16: 80b.
59. E.g., Cengcheng XZ (Guangdong, 1921), 12: 3b.
60. See Ge Shijun, Huangchao jingshi wen xubian, 93: lia.
61. This terminology is explained in Zelin, Magistratë's tael.
39
Mary B.
Rankin
jurisdictions. Thèse funds might be alloted to counties and zhou by provincial officiais or they might be retained in the county with provincial supervision, but they could not be taken over by the central ministries. Such
monies were called public funds (gongxiang) or public silver (gongyin).
They were intended for public expenditures (gongfei) or public use (gongyong) to carry out public affairs (gongshi), and they were dispensed from
public treasuries (gongtang).
Such terms appear frequently in gazetteers and memorials of the
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Zelin has described how the System
of discretionary funds controlled by local or proviciai officiais broke down
during the Qianlong period. Définitions again became looser, but the gênerai
idea persisted. The primary contrast in this range of usage was between
central and local within the bureaucratie structure. In theory mese funds
were not supposed to be tapped for administrative expenses but were to
give local officiais the means to respond to the fluctuating needs of the
populace. Magistrates were supposed to "use public funds for public needs"
(yi gong fi gong). Not suprisingly, practice was not always strict, and
magistrates might use money called public funds for such purposes as
entertaining officiais passing through the county or making the expected
gifts to their bureaucratie superiors.62
Gong was also part of other phrases denoting local governmental activity
or institutions. A public office or yamen was a gongshu, and a gongju was
a bureau established by a magistrate or other officiai to deal with some
aspect of local affairs. Public office (gongsuo) might also be used in this
sensé. Officially owned or controlled land providing income for public
purposes might be called gongtian. This use of gong overlaps some of the
uses of guan (officiai) in material on local affairs. There were officiai
granaries (guancang) and officiai fields (guantian), which are sometimes
difficult to distingish from institutions called public granaries or fields.63
62. Pierre-Etienne Will, "Bureaucratie officielle et bureaucratie réelle: sur quelques dilemmes de l'administration impériale à l'époque des Qing," Études
chinoises, 8 (1), 1989, pp. 93-94.
63. Magistrates gave guantian to académies in Cengcheng, Guangdong, in the
eighteenth century (Çengzheng XZ, 1754, 9: 22b-23a), but the land under the
40
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
Hère, however, the context shifts, and the contrast is between the local
officiai bureaucracy and sub-bureaucracy and local élite communities.
Officiai construction (guanjian) or officiai administration (guanban or
guanguan)^ contrasted with activities by local men outside the bureaucracy.
This, then, leads to the fourth, and in gazetteers most fréquent, use of
gong to refer to extrabureaucratic, community-wide, élite public activity.
This was not a discrète category by any means, nor was it necessarily in
opposition to officiai activity. Indeed, the extrabureaucratic, elite-managed
public sphère often expanded in arenas where élite leaders and officiais
basically shared Confucian définitions of what benefited the people. Officiai
and local-elite public activities were linked by the concepts of public needs
(gongyong) and public affairs (gongshi). Thèse words were used frequently in both contexts, and public office (gongsuo) might be used for either
bureaucratie or extrabureaucratic organizations. The chapter structure of
gazetteers sometimes distinguished, but did not overtly state the différences, between institutions established and/or managed by officiais and those
of local élites. Both were listed in chapters on buildings (jianzhî), éducation,
water control, and various listings of bridges, roads, ferries, shrines, and
temples; but elite-founded or managed institutions might be grouped together and slightly distinguished from officiai yamens.65
magistrate's control is more commonly called gongtian in gazetteer accounts
— as in funds from gongtian contributed to a new academy (Haiyang XZ
[Guangdong, 1900], 19: 45b).
64. Longyan zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 4: 40b; HDSL, 927: 4b, 932: 10a.
65. Particularly in the nineteenth century, gongsuo and gongju might be used for
definitely extrabureaucratic institutions (e.g., Chang-Zhao hezhi [Jiangsu,
1904], 17: 9b-10a), and gongsuo was also used for guildhalls. An unusually
clear example of distinction between officially managed and elite-managed
institutions is found in the subdistrict gazetteer Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi
(Guangdong, 1830). It has a very short chapter on officiai y amen (guanshu).
Schools and académies appear in a separate chapter, as is typical. Some local
extrabureaucratic institutions are listed in a chapter with huiguan, but most
appear by themselves in still another chapter. Liang Qizi ("Shiqi shiba shiji
Changjiang xiayou zhi yuyingtang," p. 107) argues that welfare institutions
were treated slightly differently than officiai yamen in the chapter structure
of Jiangnan gazetteers. E.g., Chang-Zhao hezhi (Jiangsu, 1785), juan 4.
41
Mary B.
Rankin
Nonetheless, gong is often used in ways that indicate local élite public
action. In this sensé it is linked with ideas of the people; of community,
collective or autonomous activity; and of associational social organization.
Frequently used phrases often refer to actions undertaken by local men rather
than to the institutions in which officiais mightplay apart: publicly construct
or establish (gongjian, gongli, gongshe), publicly contribute (gongjuan),
publicly discuss (gongyï) and publicly request (gongqing), publicly sélect
or elect (gongju), and publicly repair (gongxiu). Although gonglun might
be used for public opinion in local contexts, the synonymous yulun seems
to hâve been more common.6* Such terms were used in the late Ming,67
and are very definitely found in documents from the Kangxi, Yongzheng,
and Qianlong reigns of the early and mid-Qing.68 In gazetteers of some
provinces, like Shandong, yi might be substituted for gong, as when county
gentry publicly constructed (yijian) a bridge and local people publicly
contributed (yijuari) for a charitable graveyard in Weixian, but the meaning
is the same.69 Only a few examples of quite a wide-ranging terminology
are listed hère, and such compounds become more common in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gazetteers, suggesting a progressive development.
The sources clearly indicate that it was local élites of varying wealth
and prestige who contributed to, established, or managed local institutions
and projects, discussed local affairs, and were consulted by officiais. A
temple to the river spirit was publicly constructed (gongjian) in 1795 by
the gentry and people of a hamlet (bao) of Nanhai, Guangdong; after
66. HDSL, 928: 15b; He Changling, comp., Huangchao jingshi wenbian (1826),
103: 30a.
67. E.g., gongju and the variant yiju (publicly sélect), in an account of establishing the Shanggao huiguan in the capital, probably written in the Wanli reign,
reproduced in Shanggao XZ (Jiangxi, 1869), 3: 46a-b.
68. E.g., HDSL, 193: la, 4a; Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 42: 4a; Nanhai XZ
(Guangdong, 1835), 10: 21b, 12: 29b; Zhaozhou FZ (Guangdong, 1762), 15:
14a; Chang-Zhao XZ (Jiangsu, 1687), 4: 24b; Jiashan XZ (Zhejiang, 1677),
3: 12b; id. (1800), 4, gongshu: 8b, lia; ZhenhaiXZ (Zhejiang, 1754), 3: 49a;
Changshan XZ (Shandong, 1801), 13: 61a; Chongyang XZ (Hubei, 1855), 3:
52b; Jiangxia XZ (Hubei, 1794), 5: 8b.
69. Wei XZ gao (Shandong, 1760), 2: 15b, 3: 21a.
42
The Origins of a Chinese Public
Sphère
receiving permission from the governor to acquire land for an endowment
the next year, the gentry (shenshi) publicly elected wealthy, public-spirited,
and upright men to manage the temple, and at meetings they discussed public
affairs.70 In Haiyang, Guangdong, gentry and elders publicly constructed
the south gâte sluice. In Fengcheng, Jiangxi, a ward (fang) publicly established an academy and a charitable school; and villages in Changshan,
Shandong, publicly bought (gongmai) land on which to locate a drainage
ditch for flood control in 1760.71 Gentry in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, seeking to
reform the administration of the foundling home's endowment, urged new
régulations and the public élection of managers to return to a System of
élite management and eliminate the corruption of yamen clerks.72 The return
of the endowment of the main academy in Longyan, Fujian, to gentry
management in 1829 was called "public management and public classification" (gongban gongdeng).73
In gênerai, thèse terms were not used for actions of officiais, except
that "public discussion" might be used for situations in which the magistrate
consulted local élite leaders and "public sélection" might refer to sélection
of local managers by an officiai — presumably in consultation with local
élites.
Given the looseness of the vocabulary, there were inevitably other
ambiguities. Gong was sometimes used to describe the activities of dibao
(local constables). For instance, the various dibao publicly selected twentyeight "charitable scholars and people" to oversee and rotate as managers
of a charitable graveyard in Longyan, Fujian,74 and one cannot be sure
whether this usage indicates that the dibao of this locality were viewed as
community représentatives or if gong is being applied to a local functionary
who looked to the county government. In other cases, dibao were lumped
with clerks and runners as the kinds of people who should be kept out of
70. Nanhai XZ (Guangdong, 1835), 12: 29b.
71. Haiyang XZ (Guangdong, 1900), 6: la; Changshan XZ (Shandong, 1801), 1:
38a; Fengcheng XZ (Jiangxi, 1873), 5: 39a.
72. Jiaxing FZ (Zhejiang, 1801), 24: 17b.
73. Longyan zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 16: 55b.
74. Ibid., 16: 78b. Siu, Agents and victims, p. 85, argues that dibao in the Pearl
River delta acted in the interests of local communities.
43
Mary B. Rankin
the management of public institutions. More importantly, gong was
sometimes applied to lineage activities or the management of xiang and
lineage public affairs might be juxtaposed.75 This usage appears to be most
common in areas with large, strong corporate lineages and numerous singlelineage villages in which lineage and community affairs were intertwined.
Very probably, thèse borderline cases can be understood both in terms of
groups engaging in activities generally understood to be public and in terms
of their advancing claims that what they were doing was legitimate because
it was public.
More commonly than being extended to kinship organization, public
was distinguished from "private" (si). Private was most commonly applied
to two différent catégories of interests: those of clerks and yamen underlings,76 and those of local individuals, families, or lineages. Clérical private
interests were almost invariably depicted negatively. The damage done by
private local interests was most strongly portrayed in writings about water
control.77 However, resources might be labeled private without any moral
connotations simply to distinguish them from public ones, and the greater
value accorded wealth from the late Ming onwards meant that private interest
was not always condemned. Thus the scholar-official, Sun Yiyan, praised
a lineage in southeastZhejiang for using private wealth to support the district
school for four centuries.78
75. Xinchang XZ (Jiangxi, 1872), 8: 14a, 19: 42b; Shanggao XZ (Jiangxi, 1869),
8: 81a.
76. Ge Shijun, Huangchao jingshi wen xubian, 38: 7a-8b; Watt, The district magistrale, pp. 164-165.
77. Pierre-Etienne Will, "State intervention in the administration of a hydraulic
infrastructure: the example of Hubei Province in late impérial times," in S.
R. Schram, ed.,The scope ofstatepower in China (London/Hong Kong: SOAS/
Chinese University Press, 1985), pp. 331ff. Peter Perdue, Exhausting the earth:
state and peasant in llunan, 1500-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East
Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987), pp. 211-33; R. Keith Schoppa.Xùmg
Lake — nine centuries of Chinese life (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), pp. 78-79, 105-109, 125-28. For examples of références in memorials,
see HDSL, 927: 3a, 4b.
78. Sheng Kang, comp., Huangchao jingshi wen xubian (Shanghai, 1897), 64:22a23b. This essay was written after the Taiping Rébellion, but such positive
évaluation of private wealth traces back to the Ming.
44
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
Further mixing of the public-private distinction occurs in the Shunde
gazetteer, which labels ail lineage schools and académies private even
though it shows that some were established with (officiai?) public funds.79
Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to believe that the différence was generally
understood, as illustrated in the account of the founding of a small temple
in a Guangdong village. The organizers thought it should not be built on
a pièce of land that was offered by a member of the founding group.
Therefore, they consulted and collected money. The owner willingly sold,
so that "ail returned to the realm of public affairs and community célébration
did not involve any private interest."80 Of course, the owner's interest may
hâve been simply to get a good price for the land — but the perception
of différent sphères still holds.
Communal
focus, collective action, and
autonomy
If the term gong often expressed a reasonably well-defined concept of
extrabureaucratic activity, what other concepts help define its character?
It has been suggested that this meaning of public involved linkage with
the character gong meaning community, collectively, together.81 The two
gongs were sometimes used together in the sensé of benefitting the public
{gonggong)?2 More commonly, gong (community) might be used interchangeably with gong (public) and appear in compounds usually written with
the latter character. Thus in the early 1820s gentry, merchants, scholars,
and ordinary people (shu) of Amoy collectively contributed 20,000 yuan
for a charitable granary, and during the late 1820s degreeholders, household
heads, and "villagers" (limin) in Longyan, Fujian, communally collected
(gongjf) money for the academy endowment83 Other accounts use first one
79. Shunde XZ (Guangdong, 1853), 5: 4b.
80. Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1923), 8 xia: 27b.
81. Rowe, "Public sphère," p. 317. On the late-Ming philosophical réévaluation
of the meaning of gong and its association with the state, Rowe cites Mizoguchi
Yûzo, "Chûgoku ni okeru ko, shi gainen no tenkai," Shisô, 669 (1980), pp.
25-32.
82. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce, p. 320; Xiangshan XZ (Hunan, 1825), 4: 27a.
83. Xiamen zhi (Fujian, 1832), 2: 41b; Longyan zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 6: 61a.
45
Mary B. Rankin
and then the other gong in compounds with the same meaning.84
The suggestion of commonality and solidarity in the joint involvement
of not only groups, but groups that sometimes eut across status (or administrative, geographical, and kinship) boundaries, is reinforced by use of
other characters with the same connotations: notably he (united, joint), tong
(together, ail), and tongzhi (like-minded companions). The idea of common
group action was also reinforced by the word zhong, which in the context
of late-imperial public management often had flexible connotations of
"everyone," "ail," "a group of ' (usually élites).
Thus in 1673 people and scholars of Foshan, Guangdong, jointly
constructed (hejian) an academy, while in 1849 fovaxiang in Shunde "united
their strengfh and publicly built" a polder.85 Tong similarly indicated coopérative efforts, as when men from two villages in Xinchang, Jiangxi, built
a bridge together (tongjiari), or two men called a meeting Qiuiji) of gentry
publicly to plan together (gongtong) the repair of the Confucian temple at
Weixian, Shandong, in 1830.86 It also appeared in the compound tongzhi,
indicating a network of local people with a shared sensé of purpose and
values. The scholar-official Yang Dongming referred to the men with whom
he established a benevolent society in his native Yucheng county in 1590
as like-minded companions (tongzhî).*7 This désignation appears in gazetteers throughout the Qing: to refer, for instance, to local men in Foshan,
Guangdong, who at différent times from the mid-eighteenth through the
mid-nineteenth century established an academy, a school, and a society to
collect and burn waste paper containing characters, or to characterize
"charitable scholars" who financed bridge repairs during the early 1830s
in Weixian, Shandong.88 The phrase was still being used in republican
84. E.g., "Collective discussion" and "public discussion" of fund raising in
FengchengXZ(Jiangxi, 1873), 3, gongjie: 6b. See also HengshanXZ (Hunan,
1821), 12: 10b.
85. Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1754), 7: 2b; Shunde XZ (Guangdong,
1853), 5: 49a.
86. Xinchang XZ (Jiangxi, 1871), 3: 47a; WeiXZgao (Shandong, 1941), 8: 25b.
87. Yang Dongming, "Jinglao luxu," in Yucheng XZ (Henan, 1895), 8: 27b. See
also Yang's "Xingxue hui yue xu," ibid., 8: 30b, 31a.
88. Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1830), 12 shang: 42b, 12 xia: 3b, 25b;
46
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
gazetteers to describe groups of local activiste in the late Qing.89 Usually
itreferred to élites, but it might also be used to suggest community solidarity
across class lines. The Longyan gazetteer refers to the gentry and villagers
(shenshi limin) who repaired a bridge as companions from high and low
levels of society (shangxia tongzhi).90
For the most part, thèse words were applied to the same kind of
extrabureaucratic local activity that was elsewhere called public, and sometimes they were directly combined with gong. Thus, the benevolent society
organized by the scholar Gao Panlong in Wuxi was organized for "public
coopération" (gongtong).91 Several centuries later, abrief gazetteer-biography of a juren in Haiyang, Guangdong, describes how he was active in
local public affairs (gongshi) during the Kangxi period, uniting (he) with
three other gentry and elders and calling forth the people of the same rural
township (tongxiang min) to make repairs after flooding.92 A similar
description of the founding of a benevolent society in the market town of
Fengjing, Zhejiang, in 1755 tells how the founders united the town's scholars
and people to publicly construct it (he zhen shimin gongjian), "ail the
surnames" commonly contributing to the endowment (zhongxing gongjuan)P None of thèse terms was exclusively associated with extrabureaucratic public activity. Indeed, the compounds gongtong and huitong often
appear in memorials and edicts to refer to ad hoc meetings of metropolitan,
provincial, or sometimes even local officiais.94 In local contexts, however,
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
WeiXZ gao (Shangdong, 1941), 10:11b. See also JiaxingFZ (Zhejiang, 1801),
24:20b; CengchengXZ (Guangdong, 1754), 9:20b, 21b;XiangshanXZ(Hunan,
1825), 8: 26a.
Longmen XZ (Guangdong, 1936), 14: 173a.
Longyan XZ (Fujian, 1890), 16: 83b.
Smith, "Benevolent societies," p. 328. The phrase is from an account by Gao's
friend, the scholar and Donglin associate Chen Longzheng.
Haiyang XZ (Guangdong 1900), 42: 4b. One also finds hexiang gongjian
(uniting Ûiexiang to publicly construct), and variants, in.Xï/u:&z/ig.XZ(Jiangxi,
1872), 5: 24b, 36a.
Jiashan XZ (Zhejiang, 1800), 4, gongshu: lia. See also Changshan XZ
(Shandong, 1801), 13: 74b.
E.g., Gugong bowuyuan, comp., Shiliao xunkan, 1930-1931, 38: 5b, 10b, 53:
5b, 60: 8a, 66: 8a.
47
Mary B.
Rankin
such phrases almost always appear to indicate joint public action by local
élites.
The same is true of "people" (min) and "self (zï). Min was used in
many différent ways that often had nothing to do with public activism. It
might indicate civil as opposed to military registration. It often denoted
private économie activity or property: minchuan refered to ships operated
by private traders as opposed to merchants with monopoly licences, and
mintian meant privately owned agricultural land as opposed to officiai or
public holdings. Min was also used to refer to non-degreeholders, probably
often merchants, but it might be used more broadly to mean ail the nongentry or non-elite populace of an area, or even ail the people including
gentry. The min were repeatedly invoked as the passive objects of impérial
or officiai concern; fostering their welfare was a basic tenet of Confucian
good government. But when min appeared in accounts of local public affairs
it often implied something différent from the image of the people as passive
récipients of governmental (or élite) benevolence: thèse people were actively
doing something or at least had some spécifie group identity, interests, or
opinions.
Confusion is obviously possible, but nonetheless there are spécifie
phrases within the context of local affairs in which min means public activity
by local élites. The best-known examples of this usage in the seventeenth
and eigtheenth centuries corne from the sphère of water control. People's
dikes, embankments, etc. (minyuan, minti, minyu, minyan) were communityestablished structures locally financed and maintained either by managers
or by dike captains chosen from the local populace (a position originating
in the Ming corvée and continuing in some places as a form of management
during the Qing) or by less formally defined élite managers. Gong was also
sometimes used for thèse community dikes, which were generally smallto mid-sized structures that could be maintained with local resources. Such
dikes were legally sanctioned by the government and paid a tax but were
distinguished from the usually larger officiai (guan) dikes, established by
the government and maintained with officiai funds because the costs were
too large for communities to bear. They were also distinguished from taxevading illégal (si) dikes erected without officiai permission to protect or
enlarge private property, with often disruptive conséquences for the larger
48
The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
interests of the community or the environment. This tripartite division was
spécifie to water control, but it has a wider significance as a clear example
of a gradually emerging relationship between state and society and as a
precursor of the official-public-private divisions made during the New
Policies of the last Qing décade.95
By the early nineteenth century, if not before, min was being used in
the phrase minjuan minban (the people contribute and the people manage)
to mean financing and management of any of the wide range of local public
institutions by local élites.96 This phrase tells us little about the degree of
officiai oversight — which presumably varied from none to gênerai supervision, but management by the people defïnitely contrasted with officiai
management and occurred in the extrabureaucratic public sphère. "Publicly
managed" (gongban) does not seem to hâve been used in lieu of "managed
by the people." It is possible, however, to find loose association of public
and people in the same account, even though the words are not interchanged
directly.97
On the other hand, min referring to local élites involved in public affairs
was repeatedly associated with the character zi ("self). In most such cases,
self definitely refers to the local community or its leaders, not to private
individuals. It is like the self in "self-government," and although the
compound zizhi was not used in that sensé until the late nineteenth century,
it was used earlier to refer to local public management — as in "self-
95. See Wei Yuan, "Huguang shuili lun," in Sheng Kang, Huangchao jingshi wen
xubian, 17: 23a-25a;Will, "Stateintervention,"pp. 331-32; Perdue, Exhausting
the earth, p. 217. For an example of gong, used instead of min, to classify
a dike in 1832, see Sheng Kang, Huangchao jingshi wen xubian, 16: 15a.
"People's dikes" are widely referred to in officiai documents, going back at
least to the early Kangxi period: see HDSL, 928: 12a, and 927-928, passim.
96. E.g., Ge Shijun, Huangchao jingshi wen xubian, 96: la, 4a; HDSL, 928: 5a.
Min in this phrase implies nothing about social status except to indicate people
(local élites in thèse contexts) outside the bureaucracy. It is interchangeable
with phrases like "gentry," "gentry and merchants," "gentry and people."
97. See the régulations of a charitable granary in Xiamen zhi (Fujian, 1832), 2:
43b-44a.
49
Mary B. Rankin
direction" (zizhi) of water control by local men.98 In other words, zi takes
on the identity of the subject, or assumed subject, to which itrefers. Examples
in which it means private activity are consistent with this principle. For
instance, a gongsheng in Shanggao, Jiangxi, himself gave (zigei) money
to lineage and public affairs. Similarly, zi might refer to action by a private
business, and with the closely related si might dénote illégal non-taxpaying
private enterprises or socially disruptive acts."
As is the case with min, the différent uses can be confused, but zi
nonetheless can unambiguously indicate management by local people even
in eighteenth-century sources. In an edict of 1724 the Yongzheng Emperor
urged that the remedy for malpractices in community granaries was for the
common people to do die job themselves (zixing) andnotbeboundby officiai
rules (guanfa).100 A report on dike repair stated that the people did it
themselves (min ziwei zhî) and officiais were not involved.101 Self-contribution for self-protection (zijuan ziwei) was the phrase used to describe
the formation of militia by local leaders when peasants living on the
reclaimed "sands" (sha) of the Pearl River Delta were threatened by pirates
in 1716. The account also juxtaposed this action to the public élection of
men to manage sha offices (suo).102 Another spécifie association of the terms
zi and gong appears in the account of the endowment of the chief academy
in Longyan, Fujian, reverting to a System in which gentry themselves were
managers (gui shenshi zi weijingli); the next year they publicly requested
that a certain jinshi head it.103 Zixing (self-execution) was perhaps the
compound containing the character for self used most frequently to dénote
public action, but a considérable number of others appear as well, including
98. See Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 113: 2b. This use of zizhi is from the early
nineteenth century.
99. Shanggao XZ (Jiangxi, 1869), 8:81a; Xiangshan XZ (Guangdong, 1827), 3:
21a; XinjianXZ (Jiangxi, 1871), 75: 42b; Xiamen zhi (Fujian, 1832), 5: 4a.
Si appears frequently in documents on such monopolies as sait and copper,
usually indicating illégal private production or trade/smuggling.
100. HDSL, 193: 2b.
101. Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 116: 41a.
102. Xiangshan XZ xubian (Guangdong, 1920), 16: 5b-6a.
103. Longyan zhouzhi (Fujian, 1890), 16: 53a.
50
The Origins ofa Chinese Public Sphère
self-repair (zixiu — as of a bridge), self-contribution (zijuari), and selfselection (ziju).m Several of thèse compounds are more commonly written
with gong or min, and like the examples given hère are used in the context
of public, notprivate, activity. Although eventually this conceptof self began
to acquire some autonomous implications, in the early- and mid-Qing it
differentiated public from bureaucratie without political nuance.
Returning to the thème of the complex interweaving of society and state
in the public sphère, a final example is provided by the charitable schools
(yixue), charitable granaries (yicang), charitable cemeteries (yizhong), and
ail the other endowed local institutions or services to which the term yi
was attached, like ferries, roads, wharves, or the unusual "open markets"
(yiji) of Shandong.105 Yi implied "public" in the sensé of being available
to ail and charitably endowed, if not always completely free; charitable fields
(yitiari) was the name given to the land donated for endowments. Charitable/
public did not discriminate between officiai and local élite founding,
financing, and management within thèse institutions. Charitable granaries
were usually officiai. Charitable schools were often established by officiais,
but also might be extrabureaucratic institutions — particularly at the
subcounty level and in the southeast. Charitable graveyards and ferries were
often extrabureaucratic, but might be officially established. Finally, yi is
another example of a similar vocabulary being used for both public and
kinship structures. The endowed estâtes established by lineages in the Yangzi
Valley to finance éducation and welfare for their members were known
as charitable estâtes (yizhuang), which performed functions within the
104. E.g., HDSL, 929: 19b, 931: 12a, for zixiu; HDSL, 193: 5a, for zijuan; Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 42: 22b, for ziju. Ziban (self-managed) and zili (selfestablished) may hâve been later variants: see Xiangshan XZxubian (Guangdong, 1920), 16: 6a; Chengxian XZ (Zhejiang, 1934), 2: 14b.
105. Charitable schools, granaries, and graveyards are frequently listed in gazetteers,
and other institutions called yi appear quite often. For Hankow, see Rowe,
Hankow: Commerce, pp. 305, 318, 319. In the Shandong "open markets,"
dating from the seventeenth century, powerful élites of local lineages paid
the tax quotas and managed the markets to exclude both outside merchants
with tax-collecting monopolies and yamen clerks and runners (Mann, Local
merchants and the Chinese bureaucracy, pp. 77-80).
51
Mary B. Rankin
lineage similar to those of charitable schools or granaries in the local
community.
Rationale and Legitimization
As already suggested, the language of the public sphère, so heavily infused
with suggestions of morality, charity, public spirit and community responsibility, provided much of its own legitimization. Accounts of public institutions add somewhat fuller justifications that draw both on Buddhist and
Confucian norms of charity, magnanimity, and benevolence, as well as on
statecraft ideas of order and good govemmenL Bodi thèse ranges of justification were significandy similar to rationales for state activities of the
same type.
Welfare institutions and granaries were established and dikes were constructed to improve the people's hvelihood and out of commitment to good
works (shari). The Buddhist concept of shan, used to justify public activity
by wealthy merchants in the seventeenth century, continued to be used to
characterize extrabureaucratic contributions and management of any type
of welfare throughout the Qing.106 Foundling homes demonstrated humanity
(reri), the love of life, and the désire to alleviate die injustice of female
infanticide.107 Schools nourished talent in scholars and improved local
customs by educating the lower classes, thus benefitting society and country.108
The aims of maintaining social order, peace between upper and lower
classes, and stability bénéficiai to both the state and élites were also much
in mind. There was no reason why statecraft (Jingshi) could not be practiced
by local élites outside Ûie bureaucracy as well as by officiais. In addition,
local élites could claim one justification for their involvement that officiais
could not: spécial knowledge of local affairs and spécial relationship to and
106. E.g., HDSL, 927: 8a-9b; Xinchang XZ (Jiangxi, 1872), 29: 21a; Shanggao XZ
(Jiangxi, 1869), 8: 76a.
107. Fengcheng XZ (Jiangxi, 1873), 26: 161a-b.
108. Rankin, Elite activism, pp. 123-24; Deqing XZ, (Zhejiang, 1923), 10: 7b-8a.
52
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
concern for the people at home.109 This argument completely ignored the
large amount of local social compétition that existed alongside community solidarity against outsiders, but was effective in what it attempted to do:
justify élite local management.
More typically, however, local élite activity was legitimized in the name
of the public good but not sharply distinguished from the state. Management
was the extrabureaucratic counterpart of administration. One might suggest
the opération of a principle of complementarity recognizing that both
officiais and élites had an interest in similarly defîned good government
and that it was appropriate for both to be involved in local public sphères.
This was expressed in several standard formulas to describe officiai and
élite rôles in public affairs: the officiais led and the people contributed
(guanshuai minjuan), the officiais supervised and the gentry managed
(guandu shenban), and, at least by the later nineteenth century, officiais
and people jointly managed {guanmin hebari).110
Despite such harmonious conceptions, tensions existed. Another strain
of officiai and literati thought remained suspicious of local initiative and
stressed the need to sélect and supervise managers carefully.111 Cases of
managerial corruption gave substance to thèse suspicions. Private élite
practices like hoarding grain during food shortages or narrowing channels
by building private dikes also might raise doubts about whether local men
would behave responsibly in the public sphère without being balanced by
officiais. Officiais were even more suspicious of militia, which might keep
social order but also might seriously impede government control.
109. Ge Shijun, Huangchao jingshi wenxubian, 38: 5a. The Chinese jingshi means
"ordering society," but does not restrict such an activity to the state sphère
as the usual English translation "statecraft" implies. The argument also rests
on the partly true assumption that there was a stratum of responsible, respectable
élites in a locality, who would act in the community interest.
110. Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Guangdong, 1830), 6: 10b; Haiyang XZ (Guangdong, 1900), 18: 10b; Ge Shijun, Huangchao jingshi wen xubian, 99: 69.
111. Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 111: 26a, 113: 13a. However, such arguments
might also envision elite-official coopération for mutually bénéficiai ends :
ibid., 113: 13a.
53
Mary B. Rankin
Such tensions did not hait the growth or undermine the legitimacy of
the public sphère, however. Economie and démographie growth made
extrabureaucratic management essential. Moreover, there was one widely
shared, constantly repeated justification for élite management: it kept the
clerks and runners out of local institutions. Yamen underlings came to be
viewed as a serious problem in the later Kangxi and Yongzheng periods.112
Since the size of the regular bureaucracy did not increase and magistrates
did not hâve adéquate funds, the choice lay between local services run by
yamen clerks or élite managers. Thèse two groups were thus in direct
compétition in public sphères. Local élites benefitted by stressing the
corruption that undoubtedly existed in the subbureaucracy, and frustrated
officiais were ready to listen. By the end of the eighteenth century, there
was substantial agreement within and outside the government that local élites
were préférable. When bureaucratie government was conceived as including
the subbureaucracy, it was discredited, and élite management was legitimized as the way to exclude yamen underlings from the public sphère.
Concluding Remarks
Thus, a sphère of local public management existed throughout the Qing
between state and local community structures. Both officiais and local social
leaders had rôles in this sphère, but there was no uniform national format.
The type and number of local institutions, and the balance of power between
officiais and local élites within them, were worked out in thousands of local
arenas and shaped by local contexts. The local managerial élément in the
public sphère was affected by the dynastie cycle, but it was more strongly
governed by commercial and démographie growth. It became less autonomous during the period of strong bureaucratie assertion in the eighteenth
century, but very probably this did not prevent it from steadily expanding
in China as a whole.
112. Ibid., 42:4a-b; HDSL, 193: 5a. The need to exclude clerks is almost routinely
mentioned in gazetteers. See also Will, Bureaucracy andfamine, pp. 105-106,
314.
54
The Origins of a Chinese Public Sphère
Local élites acting within the public sphère cannot be defined as being
primarily agents of the state. The right of officiais to supervise, the need
to accomodate local élite views, and the advantages of local management,
were generally recognized. Elite rôles were not only shaped by their interactions with officiais: élites also faced toward their local constituencies
of other élites, of kinship and other corporate groups, and of the lower classes.
Involvement in public affairs was a way both to acquire and demonstrate
status locally and to pursue either community or private interests. The
ambiguous divisions between state and society undoubtedly benefitted the
late impérial state by allowing it to govern effectively with a remarkably
small bureaucracy. But the System also limited the state by making it
increasingly dépendent on the public activities of local social leaders. Thus,
my concept of the public sphère is similar to, but definitely not the same
as, the Weberian concept of "liturgical governance" used by Susan Mann
in her study of Chinese merchants and tax farming. Mann describes men
outside the governmentperforming public services "in the state's behalf,"113
and uses a public (meaning state)/private dichotomy in showing how élites
often acted in their own interests rather than those of the state. I, on the
other hand, view the public sphère as an arena in which élites performed
public services on behalf of their localities, and usually, but not necessarily,
in coopération with the state.
The late impérial public sphère of China differed from the public sphère
of Europe in being bounded by local arenas, defined by the practices and
institutions of management rather than those of opinion expression, and
oriented more to collective interests than to individual property rights.
The lack of structurally transforming conflict is another major contrast
to the processes by which a bourgeois public sphère was coming into
existence in Western Europe about the same time. Tensions did exist between
the conflicting demands on local élites made by the Chinese state on the
113. Mann, Local merchants, pp. 12-13; Will, Bureaucracy and famine, p. 316,
appears to be close to Mann in characterizing managers as "in effect parapublic servants acting on behalf of, and theoretically under the control of, the
local administration." However, he also notes that local élites became essential
to famine relief and were a preferred alternative to clerks and runners (pp.
103-105, 314-15).
55
Mary B.
Rankin
one hand and locality/kinship on the other. Why then was there not more
conflict, especially during the period when the Qing state was expanding
local bureaucratie power?
Part of the answer lies in the combination of state-societal agreement
on the needs to be met and the intimidating strength of the state in premodem China. Another explanation is that this was not a zero-sum game.
Local needs were expanding faster than the bureaucratie capacity to meet
them. Local élites were well-positionedto follow soft stratégies of temporary
accommodation to strong bureaucratie initiatives, followed by eventual
reassertion of their positions in the public sphère. They had the advantage
over both officiais who would soon leave for another post and yamen
underlings who lacked social respectability. They lost little by not directly
challenging state authority. Indeed, it would hâve been foolhardy and
counter-productive to do so. At some point in the mid- to late-eighteenth
century the présence of the state in the public sphère began to receed relative
to fhat of the élites, also reducing the likelihood of sustained conflict Elites
were not facing new state claims, but were rather being presented with de
facto opportunities to extend their participation in local affairs.
In another major divergence from European patterns, the late impérial
public sphère preceded the development of a strong civil society, which
did not really begin to evolve in China until the late nineteenth century.
It is not very helpful to look for European-style origins in private arenas,
in the définition of private interests and rights, in the expansion of private
demands on government, and in the appearance of private associations and
publications. The late-imperial public sphère was defined between groups:
the state, and social corporate- and community-organizations, or locally
defined élite networks. There was, however, a substantial development of
social organization in the local public sphères under the protection of both
state and society. It is often hard to distinguish in the sources between what
might be called individual action and community action. Given the Qing's
hostility to associational activity, one may hypothesize that local public
sphères provided a managerial oudet for activities analogous to those that
expanded civil society in Europe.
Certainly the extrabureaucratic élément in the public sphère had a strong
expansionist potential. More and more organizational niches were being
56
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
Sphère
created for élites to run local affairs and take part in decisionmaking. Elites
were brokers between the state and local societies, but they also managed
essential public services from positions that were increasingly institutionalized and not simply informai. Extrabureaucratic management was also
becoming more autonomous well before the mid-nineteenth century crises.
Although this development would not be openly admitted, it was nonetheless
real.
An example of this progression can be found in Shanghai county before
the city became a center of international trade and Western impact. We
hâve seen that significant aspects of local welfare were elite-managed since
the late Ming. Mark Elvin suggests that officiais were also enlisting gentry
to manage local water control in the 1670's, and that a definite System of
gentry management of small and médium projects took shape in the mideighteenth century. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century it became
routine for élites of wealth and status both to levy funds and to manage
projects as professional organizers.114 Still further évolution, suggesting
developing autonomy, is implied by an edict of 1816 about a large project
to dredge the Wusong River. The work, it says, was entirely managed by
the people themselves (zi weijingli) without officiai interférence. Because
the "people contributed and the people managed," it would not be necessary
to render a financial accounting to officiais after the project was finished.115
Where was the expanding activity in the public sphère heading? One
possible direction was toward cyclical dévolution of state power to local
élites, which would impede twentieth-century state building.116 Another was
toward state-controlled local self-government formally attached to the
bottom ofa rein vigorated modem bureaucracy, as envisioned by Yuan Shikai
and other officiai architects of the New Policies at the end of the Qing
dynasty.117 A third was toward a redefïned public sphère, closer to the
114. Elvin, "Waterways," pp. 462-63.
115. HDSL, 931: 19a. The project involved several districts, and a large sum of
money was raised from property owners and merchants.
116. Kuhn, Rébellion and its enemies, pp. 211-23.
117. Philip Kuhn, 'The development of local govemment," in John K. Fairbank
and Albert Feuerwerker, eds., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 13,
57
Mary B.
Rankin
European bourgeois model postulated by Habermas. To some extent, ail
thèse paths were followed at various times and places. I would, however,
argue that although the public sphère had not become transformative in the
context of the traditional late impérial polity, it provided an important
underpinning for the transformations that occurred after the mid-nineteenth
century under pressures of foreign encroachment and internai rébellion. We
then see a marked quantitative expansion of the local public sphère as well
as an outward and upward spread of extrabureaucratic élite involvement
in national public affairs, taking advantage of new institutions.118 This new
phase leads on to new questions about how the old public sphère interacted
with the rapidly emerging associations of civil society, and what basis it
offered for building political partcipation upward from local levels.
Chinese characters
GaoPanlong Jj^jMHL
gong (public)
>£.
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gongban
•£ ~$ffi
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Republican China, 1912-1949, part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), pp. 330-40, 348-52, 359-60.
118. Rankin, Elite activism, chs. 4-5, cornes close to this view, although without
using the concept of civil society.
58
The Origins ofa Chinese Public
gonglun
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Mary B.
Rankin
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