Local gentry and rural cadres:
the actual link between
state and peasants.
final essay for the seminar:
Social Structure and Kinship System in Rural China.
Professor Guo Xiaolin
Spring Semester 2000
CONTENTS
. Preface p. 3
. I.I The Gentry: a general outline and main features p. 3
. I.II Duties and functions of the gentry p. 5
. II.I Rural Cadres: a new status earned by peasants p. 9
. II.II Rural cadres: pivots of the agricultural production p. 10
. II.III Other important duties and functions carried out by the cadres p. 12
. III.I What is common between gentry and rural cadres p. 13
. III.II The differences between cadres and gentry p. 15
. Conclusion p. 17
Preface
The social groups relevant for the socio-political order in rural China were first the rural gentry and then the rural cadres. They had different origins, moreover the cadres' origins were diametrically opposed to the gentry's origins. But anyway these two groups can be compared for a lot of reasons among which most important was the fact that they had the same place in the socio-political framework of the Chinese state.
What I am going to do in this essay is first to give a quite simple description of what was the gentry, finding out by what kind of men constituted this class and how they could enter it . Then similarly, I am going to introduce a general outline of who were the rural cadres, their origins and how a man could become one. In the following paragraphs I will try to analyse the duties and the functions accomplished by the gentry in rural society and then the duties and the functions carried out by the cadres in the same field. Finally I will try to draw a comparison between the roles of the gentry and the cadres, first finding out what was common, actually many of their roles within society were the same, and then describing what was different between them and the reason why this difference existed.
I.I The Gentry: a general outline and main features.
China has always been ruled by an absolute monarchy and the Emperor was the only person who held the power. Theoretically the Emperor's word was law and he was the only one left outside the law itself, all the others were only subjects obliged to obey, with many duties to carry out but no rights at all. However the Emperor could not administer the country by himself, he had to rely upon a certain number of officials that he needed in ruling a so huge country. These officials functioned as servants with a certain administrative power. The number of officials was very limited, enough big to rule but, at the same time, enough small to be not dangerous for the ruling dynasty. Thus they had to rely on the social group from where they were coming from, the gentry, in order to accomplish their aims.
The main aim of the officials supported by the gentry, was to carry out the orders of the Emperor at the village level, in few words to meet the demands of money (obtained toward taxation) and of men for military purpose (obtained toward conscription). The only way to meet these demands was to shift their burden onto the common people under them. They had to obey the Emperor's orders and at the same time be careful with the people in fact if the demands were too heavy they would become the first scapegoats to be attacked.
Since it was a dangerous and very difficult task to accomplish, one could ask what was the reason why many people sought to become part of the officials. Fei Hsiao-Tung has answered this question comparing the necessity for becoming an official with the need for being inoculated , once the inoculation is over, one has gained 'protection' and can extend it to his entire family. Without any person to rely on at court it was difficult for a family to protect itself from the sovereign that could see somebody's else enrichment as his own diminishment of wealth. In this kind of perspective, the main aim of the Chinese officials was not to work for the State's sake but to gain protection at court and privileges for themselves and their relatives. When this task had been performed then they could retire. Fei Hsiao-Tung says in his essay: "This is the sort of man [retired official] I mean by gentry. The gentry may be returned officials or the relatives of officials or simply educated landowners" . In few word we can say that the gentry class is closely linked with the group of the scholar-officials and they frequently overlapped. Moreover between these two groups there was a biunivocal relationship, since the officials were coming from the gentry and then the gentry itself could exist only thanks to the official and their 'inoculation'.
This 'inoculation' could mainly be obtained passing the imperial examinations. One, who passed these exams, automatically became a member of the gentry class. However this was not the only way to enter the gentry social status, even though titles and degrees seem always to be involved. In fact a title or a degree could be bought. This different way of obtaining them determined two different groups of gentry: the 'regulars' and the 'irregulars'. The first were those who had passed the government examination, the second were those who had bought the titles. In most cases only those who gained the titles through regular examination could enter the higher levels of officialdom and had anyway higher prestige than the 'irregulars'. Beside this two main gates of access to officialdom could be mentioned other ways of entrance, although only a small number of students were admitted through these ways. Descendants of early sages were sometimes granted a title, that permitted to enter the gentry group; then another way of entrance was the yin or inheritance privilege, granted to the sons of meritorious progenitors . However this last two ways of entrance were matter of imperial discretion and the number of students that entered officialdom through them was quite small, depending on the times.
I.II Duties and functions of the gentry.
In the previous paragraph I briefly talked about the officials and the local gentry. Each group had its definite functions: the officials were the agents of the provincial government, they were the rulers within the territory, and they received the orders from the provincial government and carried them out. They were too high to be approached by the common people. The kind of gentry that I am going to analyse was made up of families of prestige and social position on the same level of those of officialdom but, at the contrary, they were usually natives of the local community. This is the reason why they were recognised by the common people, since the officials were almost 'untouchable'.
As Chung-li Chang has explained, the gentry was a social group with a leading position and certain social functions. Among all they concerned themselves with the welfare and the protection of the interests of their community, or better, they represented the interests of their community vis à vis the government officials .
One of the most important functions of the local gentry was to interpret local needs and to assume leadership in taking measures to local problems. Consequently the gentry members had to be men of a considerable culture. They had to distinguish themselves from the rest of the people by knowledge of law and social affairs. They had also to have travelled a lot and to have met different kinds of people in order to react properly to any new situation. Thus they were recognised as social leaders and obeyed, respected and admired by common people.
A second task the local gentry had to accomplish was that of police, since China's rural communities were easily invaded and there were no policemen in the countryside. They played the role of "eyes and ears" of the provincial government, providing information about neighbours and residents. Especially when a new and difficult situation occurred and necessitated collective action. It often happened that a retired official was asked to assume a role of leadership and defender of a community against enemies. As Chung-Li Chang has explained in his book the upper gentry members materially promoted and financed local militia corps, while the lower gentry members operated within a small area as commanders of military units, often participating in actual fighting.
A third important duty of the gentry was to settle down the everyday local disputes. Except for serious criminal acts most of disputes were not settled by law. Formal actions of the government magistrates were undertaken only when the gentry mediation had failed. Even in this last case, the gentry members acted a very important role. The parties involved referred to them for advice and hints, since most of people were uncommon with legal matters and usually illiterate. Last but not the least the gentry was linked and on good terms with the officials. Thus the gentry acted as lawyer, advisors and judges. Actually they did not really act like judges. They did not deal with a case distinguishing right from wrong, but trying to work out a solution, or better, a compromise which would be accepted by both parties without "public loss of face".
The fourth duty of the gentry was their own community welfare. They tried to solve problems such as famine and epidemics organising large-scale mutual arrangements, charities and sometimes relief granaries that could serve poorer villagers . In many areas, the problem the gentry was most concerned with, was irrigation and other major development projects to benefit their communities. "The gentry seem to have felt that it was their responsibility to guard and promote welfare [.]. This sentiment was lacking among the magistrates and other local officials who were nonnatives" .
A fifth really important function of the gentry was to be a moral example for the common people, to impose norms and ideals (especially Confucianism). The gentry functioned as "guardians of the traditional moral teachings" . They helped to look after family ceremonies, such as weddings and funerals or to choose a name for the new born babies. They were themselves supposed to be examples of what men should behave: they had to live up to the norms and social conventions, otherwise those who could not fulfil these expectations would lose prestige. This is why the gentry was actively engaged in teaching and promoting the moral principles, they materially helped to establish temple schools and contributed funds and lands, the proceeds of which were utilised to subsidise students .
Using a definition by V. Shue in her essay "The Reach of the state" all those described above were roles primarily serving the community. Anyway beside these social functions of welfare we can find other important roles. Using the similar definitions of V. Shue herself: roles primarily serving the interests of the state and roles that primarily served the interests of the gentry families themselves. Among the first the most important was the collection of taxes for the government and the organisation of corvée labour services (the peasant were obliged, for a certain number of days per year, to work for the state for free, generally in public works such as the construction of dams, roads and other works of public utility).
Since the "hands" of the state did not reach the peasants' level, it was necessary to rely on the gentry to "extract the surplus production" . Given that the government's regulations limited the time an official could hold an office in a place (which certainly was not his home area) it resulted in a lack of power of officialdom. They did not have enough time to know all their subjects, and even if they ever wanted, sometimes it was almost impossible because some districts counted many thousands of people. More over the official were not encouraged to begin long term tasks and projects since they would never see the results. On the other hand the gentry members had all this sort of things and it was natural that such functions were given to them. Obviously they treated themselves well, I mean that they obtained economic privileges from the exploitation of their position. They were totally exempted from the labour service conscription thanks to their culture which would not permit manual labour, but they were not exempted from the payment of the fu (property tax) and the other land taxes. As stated by Chung-Li Chang, "even meritorious officials were exempt only from the land tax due on land which had been awarded to them by the court. They had to pay on land they purchased, as would any other person" . Anyway there were many tricks to evade taxes. The most common was the delay of payment, which was permitted by the rules, and sometimes it lasted for so long that at the end it would be invalidated by prescription. Theoretically gentry members who refused or delayed the payment of taxes could be punished and deprived of their position, but practically corruption and the net of "favours" the officials and the gentry had to return each other, was so wide that rarely somebody would be punished. More over the gentry enriched itself with the collection of taxes. For example in the Nineteenth century, during the Qing dynasty, the gentry went so far as to usurp the actual collection of taxes that should be handed over to the government or at least to "create" new taxes for their localities. As stated by V. Shue, such practices were "hard to stamp out" since every one involved in the matter had interests and "was served by the arrangement" .
Following the division of the roles carried out by the gentry members made by V. Shue the last "roles" to consider were those to serve the interests of the gentry families themselves. Actually it seems to me that we cannot make a clear distinction between all these roles. As I explained above, the gentry members, carrying out the interests of the state with the collection of taxes, at the same time they carried out their own interests. Similarly, concerning themselves with the welfare of their communities on the other side they helped the state which otherwise would have been unable to provide assistance and services to the lower level of society.
To summarise then, there was not a clear and sharp distinction of roles carried out by the gentry, but at the contrary, they were grouped together in a "system of roles" whose effects affected (positively or negatively) many social groups, among all the gentry itself.
II.I Rural Cadres: a new status earned by peasants.
The term cadre (ganbu) referred first to the activists against the Japanese or the Guomindang and to the leaders of the revolutionary movement, those people with a certain level of political consciousness that permitted them to assume responsibility and a role of political leadership. Then, when the CCP became the ruling party, the meaning of the term "cadre" expanded to include also all those who were paid by the state but were not engaged in manual labour. Thus the current Chinese concept of cadre includes two distinct categories: (1) the political elite, correspondent and evolution of the former revolutionary leaders (2) all the functionaries of the huge state apparatus.
The original revolutionaries were recruited among the poorly educated peasant class and they brought a "rural orientation" to China building after 1949, continuing to recruit cadres from the lower layers of society. We can take as an example P.S. Ye, the main character of the biographical book by Huang Shu-min "The Spiral Road: Change in a Chinese Village Through the Eyes of a Communist Party Leader", who can be considered an average cadre and says about his origins: "My father lived a miserable life! He worked so hard his entire life that he was no better then a blind water buffalo [.] by the time all his sons had become independent and well-to-do and able to give him good things to eat and use, he passed away" . Then P.S. Ye, talking about his grandparents says, "My grandmother was the only child of her family. Her parents [.] decided to keep her at home [not to marry her outside the family as usual]. My grandfather was brought in to marry my grandmother" . In fact this practice, called zhaozhui, "adopt a son-in-law" was known to be very common among poor peasant families that could not even afford to grow their own son and were obliged, against the common custom of patrilocal residence, to "sell" their son to other families. We can say that the status of rural cadre was a big challenge for the peasants, for some of them capable, represented the possibility to acquire for the first time a certain grade of responsibility within society. They were chosen by the Communist Party because they met some requirements: the first, and most important, was that they came from the "right class background" (the poor peasantry) a perfect base to build the new revolutionary socialism on, socialism that was itself in the service of the peasants. The cadre status was something earned "through personal talent and effort" but only if supported by the approval of the party-state, which granted a kind of dependence on the state for legitimacy.