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Rural Administration in Communist China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
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Since the Ch'in dynasty first divided the area under its control into forty administrative districts, the Chinese countryside has experienced a bewildering variety of units of local organisation. Although beneath this variety there is a discernible continuity (for example in the maintenance of the provincial level of organisation since Han times), the student is often hard put to give adequate explanations of the changes which have occurred. This is particularly true of the Republican period, when local governmental organisation was not only a topic of heated discussion but also a focus of considerable explicit experimentation.
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References
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51 In adopting this method, I am aware that it has major pitfalls, (a) In this paper no original provincial sources are used. I am therefore forced to rely on stories from the province which are picked up either by NCNA or the Hong Kong translation services, (b) Each province has peculiarities of its own which make generalisation from it to the national scene difficult, (c) Policy generally comes from above (especially after the moving of regional bases of power to the centre in 1954), but it is convenient to make it appear spontaneous.
At the same time, if one avoids these possible sources of error, the method may shed light on the detail of realities which affect central policy and particularly on the problems faced by local authorities in implementing policy.
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55 SCMP, No. 1416, NCNA, Chengchow, November 9, 1956.
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