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Establishing the Public Sphere and Abolishing the Private Domain: The Rise of a Doctrine and Its Social Significance in the Spring and Autumn Period
Liu Zehua
Front. Hist. China. 2006, 1 (1): 19-46.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11462-005-0009-2
The dominant views regarding the concepts of the public (gong) and the private (si) took shape in the Spring and Autumn period and matured in the succeeding years of the Warring States period. This paper is an attempt to trace both the growth of the vocabulary containing gong and si and the development of philosophical views regarding issues that center on the relation between the individual and the larger social/communal/political body, of which that individual is a member; it also touches on issues related to the proper handling of public affairs and the relation between state, sovereign, and the individual. The era is often characterized as The Contention of the Hundred Schools of Thought, notwithstanding it ended with but one view that is universally accepted by thinkers of diverse persuasion, namely, si is the source of all social evil and, therefore, should be condemned. This is the doctrine known as ligong miesi (abolishing si so gong may be established), which contributed to the orthodox for that era and the millennium to come. By extolling gong and condemning si, it painted a portrait of the pair as two irreconcilable norms or forces in social and political life; it provided a justification for the then emerging new social arrangement and ways of distribution of power and resources, and it also led to acute conflicts between the sovereign and the state, the ruled and the ruler, the state and the subject, as well as the public sphere and the private domain.
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Township/Village Administration from the Late Qing to the Warlord Period
Wei Guangqi, Ding Haixiu
Front. Hist. China. 2006, 1 (1): 97-123.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11462-005-0002-9
In ancient China, formal government institutions stretched to the county level. This system witnessed a radical transformation during the late Qing and the Warlord period, with various types of township/village administrations mushrooming in many places across the country to meet the requirements of institutional reform and the demands for modernization in local regions. These township/village administrations can be divided into two types: one is the newborn township/village administration in the late Qing dynasty, and the other is the township/village or quasi-administration that evolved from the old localized Xiangdi (local administrative system). Functionally, the former can be further divided into two kinds, the monofunctional township/village administration, which might include education, or police and security, and the multifunctional administration. The latter falls into three categories: some were new-model administrations directly translated from the old rural Xiangdi system; some were subdivisions of the neonatal administration composed of the old local Xiangdi system; and still, others basically reserved the intrinsic property and function of the old Xiangdi system. As political entities, township/village administrations of this era can be further differentiated into those bordering on self-government and those lingering under the official system. Township/village administration at this time mostly consisted of a standing body, with their personnel, who enjoyed the status of professional civil servants, set up by legal proceedings. Government outlay was sponsored by public finance or tax income, and it assumed all kinds of modern administrative functions, basically of a modern character. Meanwhile, of course, it retained much of its traditional flavor in actual operation. All in all, the birth of this form of township/village administration constituted an important dimension of the modernization of China s local administration system.
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