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The traditional township system was somewhat like the modern local self-government system in its form and functions. In the late Qing a large number of people thus thought that, “China doesn’t call it ‘local self-government’ but the system exists in reality.”6 In fact the township system of China and the local self-government system of the West were completely different. First, although the township officials in the past were produced by “elections” （xuanju）， these were hardly democratic elections expressing the will of the people; rather, they were selected and ratified by officialdom. Second, township officials lacked the independent administrative powers to decide local matters, rather, they only supplemented the bureaucracy.7 Third, gentry politics was the product of the political culture of feudal despotism. Although the traditional political culture recognized the political importance of the people with such phrases as “the people are the basis of the state” and “the people are important but the ruler is unimportant”--nonetheless the ideology of the people as the basis of the state at best acted only to restrain the vast imperial powers. it could not produce democratic ideologies along the lines of “sovereignty resides in the people” and “government stems from the people.” We can see from the above that the spirit and nature of local government in the West were completely different from that in China. The notion of local self-government based on bourgeois democracy in the late Qing did not develop naturally out of traditional political culture. Rather, it resulted from the intellectual and organizational influence of Western bourgeois democracy. The Introduction of ideas about Local Self-Government Chinese began to gain an understanding of Western democracy at the time of the Opium War. The invasion of China by outside forces and the corruption of the court provoked a few members of the landlord class to open their eyes to the world. They translated and compiled a number of geographical treatises that offered a preliminary introduction to the local government systems of Britain, the United States, and other countries. These writings were quite superficial, but in ways previously impossible they greatly influenced a Chinese society that had for so long firmly shut out the rest of the world. After the 1860s foreign contacts grew constantly. Ambassadors and embassy officials wrote large numbers of diaries and travel accounts describing the local assemblies and self-government systems of the Western nations.8 However, these descriptions were mostly perfunctory and shallow reactions of the landlord class and intellectuals who had not yet formed a systematic and lucid understanding of the West. It was the early reformist thinkers of the period from 1860 to 1890 who seriously thought through questions about government and offered concrete suggestions. In his famous reformist work of the 1860s, “Straightforward Words from the Lodge of Early Zhou Studies,” Feng Guifen advocated that localities be separately governed and that local officials be “elected by the masses” （youzhong gongjue）。 Feng felt that the ruler should rule cooperatively and by delegating powers. The emperor cannot rule the empire alone, and so he delegates power to the great ministers. A great minister cannot rule a province alone, and so he delegates power to the prefectural magistrates. A prefectural magistrate cannot rule the prefecture alone, and so he delegates power to the county magistrates. A county magistrate cannot rule a county alone, and so be delegates power to the various lower officials. Feng advocated a return to the local system of ancient times, in which local officials at the county level and below would be selected by “public elections” and “alternate every three years.”9 Feng‘s recommendations amounted to a criticism of feudal local bureaucratism. They served as an initial call of the early reformist movement, but few agreed with him since China then lacked a social base capable of response. From the 1870s to the 1890s, following the gradual disintegration of the natural feudal economy and the initial upsurge of national capitalism, a group of reformers became intrigued by Western democracy. They began to examine China’s traditional local government and clearly advocated local self-government. Zheng Guanying, Wang Tao, Xue Fucheng, Ma Jianzhong, Tang Zhen, He Qi, Hu Liyuan, Chen Qiu, Chen Chi, and others were important early reformers. They recommended two main ideas. 1. The establishment of local assemblies. Zheng Guanying was the first to advocate a parliament. In his “Warnings to a Prosperous Age” he stated that in the West, “the origins of order and the roots of wealth and strength lay not so much in warships and artillery as in the capacity of parliaments to unite the high and low.” If China wanted self-strengthening, “it first needed to establish a parliament to reach popular sentiment, and then it could expand the might of the nation and prevent foreign humiliation.”10 However, he did not have much to say about the establishment of local assemblies. It was the Zhejiang native Chen Qiu who clearly advocated the establishment of local assemblies. In his “General Discussion of Order,” he said that the assemblies in Western nations acted to unite the sentiments of high and low, but because their political systems were complex, it would be hard for China to follow them. “We should change our institutions and order every province and district to establish an assembly,” he wrote. “To reform the state and the localities, within five days officials should make suggestions according to their circumstances… We may then select the best suggestions and put them into practice.”11 At the same time Tang Zhen also advocated “selecting methods from the West and adapting them [to Chinese conditions].” Aside from a central parliament including high and low, “the affairs of the provinces, departments, prefectures, and counties should be discussed; from the great gentry to the examination candidates, all should join the discussions.”12 He would thus allow political participation by all local scholars and gentry. 2. Public selection of township officials （xiangguan）。 At the same time as the early reformers were advocating assemblies, they also advocated elections for representatives and township officials. Zheng Guanying urged that, “China‘s system of selecting township and village officials should use the Western system of casting ballots in public elections in order to choose talented representatives.”13 Chen Chi was even more definite on the subject. He finished his “Commonplace Writings,” a book of one hundred sections, before the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. His section on township officials proposed that “every prefecture and county should institute the Western system of assemblies. Township officials should be elected by the common people.” Every township would elect two people, one regular and one alternate, at least thirty years old and with property worth a thousand in gold. Officials would post notices to urge the people to vote, and they would place voting boxes by the roads; voting would last three months, at which point the man with the most votes would be elected. The term of office would be two years, followed by new elections. “When a district has major political questions, [the elected leaders] will assemble to consult about them. They will delegate and carry out the tasks of nourishing the people and establishing the teachings, promoting good things and abolishing evil ones, resulting in benefit to the state and the people alike.” Chen considered that a system of township and village elections would allow the state to find good leaders and enable the people to seek their happiness. In order to raise up the nation and benefit the people, therefore, “one must start with the establishment of township officials.”14 |