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In its memorial regarding the self-government regulations for cities, towns, and townships, the Office of Constitutional Publications pointed out: The origins of self-government lie in the sovereignty of the state （guoquan）； when sovereignty permits it, the basis of self-government is established. The self-government agreement therefore cannot violate the laws of the country; self-government arrangements therefore cannot contravene the supervision of the bureaucracy. Self-government thus refers to that which accompanies bureaucratic rule without contradicting it, it is absolutely not a term referring to that which moves ahead on its own regardless of bureaucratic rule.58 In other words, self-government could not infringe on imperial powers or break loose of the officialdom to become independent. The “Self-Government Regulations for Cities, Towns, and Townships” clearly stipulated: “Local self-government exists exclusively to benefit the locality and to aid bureaucratic rule. According to the regulations, publicly elected qualified gentry and commoners will in turn be supervised by officials.” Local self-government not only had the purpose of aiding bureaucratic rule but would also be under strict government supervision and control. Local officials had the power to investigate whether self-government personnel contravened regulations, order them to make progress reports, verify their budgets, check their files, and conduct personal investigations at any time. Officials could even request the provincial governor to “disband the city, town, or township assemblies and boards of directors, and dismiss the members of self-government organS.”59 The scope of self-government of prefectures, sub-prefectures, departments, and counties was even more restricted. The original regulations proposed by the Bureau for People’s Government stipulated that they be administered by boards of directors, but after revision by the Office of Constitutional Publications their administrative organs became boards of councilors headed by the top official of the locality. This emphasis on central authority followed the Japanese model of local government. “The Self-Government Regulations for Prefectures, Sub-Prefectures, Departments, and Counties” stipulated that “the officials in charge of the prefectures, sub-prefectures, departments, and counties have the right to order reconsideration or veto decisions of the assemblies or boards of councilors.” The regulations also allowed for the governors and governor-generals to petition the Bureau for People‘s Government to dismiss local assemblies.60 The Qing government was thus extremely conservative in planning for local self-government, and downright reactionary in protecting its own powers. This made it difficult for local self-government to escape bureaucratic control. From January 1909 to February 1910, the Qing promulgated local self-government regulations for every level of government and local self-government organization began to become uniform. The movement thus entered its second stage as every province began to plan for local self-government. The chief results of the first stage were: （l） the establishment of local self-government planning stations that began investigations and elections; （2） the opening of self-government research institutes that educated and trained people in local self-government; （3） the selection of assemblies, management boards, self-government organs, and personnel, and the establishment of local self-government offices. According to the reports from the provinces, before the 1911 Revolution exploded, local self-government organizations had been established around the country.61 Threatened by waves of modern political reform pounding against it, the Qing ruling class was forced to accept local self-government as a measure of self-preservation. However, the goal of the Qing was definitely not to give the people the right to participate in government through assemblies nor to bring about bourgeois democracy, rather, it was to use the framework of self-government to stabilize the basis of autocratic government by adjusting the relationship between government and society based on a new “joint rule” of gentry and merchants. Because of the interference and control of the Qing ruling class, the local self-government movement of the late Qing was more an official than a popular phenomenon. The Significance of the Local Self-Government Movement in the Late Qing Local Self-Government and political Development The Revolution of 1911 marked an extremely significant movement in the bourgeois-democratic revolution while at the same time it constituted an important reform of the Chinese political system. The Revolution overthrew the despotism that had persisted for more than two thousand years, created a bourgeois-democratic republic, and offered an unprecedented opportunity to develop bourgeois-democratic politics. However, as every province pursued its own politics and established its own system, political order could not be maintained in the early Republic and basic government fell into chaos. Some local self-government organs made superficial changes while continuing to use their old regulations, while others amended their rules to plan for new local self-government organs. Because of their political and theoretical weakness, the Chinese bourgeoisie lacked experience with bourgeois-democratic republican political systems and local self-government institutions. Real power after the Revolution thus rapidly fell into the hands of the landlord-official bourgeoisie--as represented by Yuan Shikai. Yuan made himself into a dictator by using administrative techniques to increase his control over the central and provincial regimes. He destroyed the national assembly and local representative organs at every level of the early Republic. In February 1914 Yuan ordered a halt to self-government groups and then the dissolution of all provincial assemblies.62 He thus destroyed the local self-government that the bourgeoisie had been promoting since the late Qing. A general look at the local self-government movement of the late Qing shows that since it emerged out of the actions of both society and government, it had multiple functions and influence. In terms of political development, the rise of local self-government helped to modernize early Chinese politics in four respects: First, the inception of local self-government further fractured traditional social organization and further strengthened social mobility. The traditional social organization based on the fundamental classes of literati, peasants, artisans, and merchants had not changed in a long time. Only the literati could advance through the examination system, which limited social mobility. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the class structure of the traditional “four groups” began to fall apart. The timing of the constitutionalist self-government movement in the late Qing was affected by the abolition of the examination system. Local self-government thus gave local gentry and businessmen new ways to make a living. In such places as Shanghai and Guangdong, more open to new ideas, the main supporters of local self-government were precisely those gentry and merchants who had become bourgeoisie or were in the process of doing so. Their embour-geoisement not only undermined the basis of traditional society but also enlarged the national bourgeoisie. In addition, new social niches were being formed. People could use their experience in the local self-government movement to create new roles and seek new positions for themselves in industry and commerce, new-style education, publishing and the press, and every kind of cultural and political work. Although the late Qing increase in social mobility could not change the social structure or political forms in a basic way, it did move China into a transitional stage between the traditional “closed” social system toward a more modern “open” system. |