Research On The Social Control Of The Late Qing Government Over Mass Incidentsin Yunnan, A Border Province

The Late Qing Dynasty is an important period of social transformation in Modern China. The outbreak of mass incidents during this period was an internal response to the shock-reaction model, which was caused by the decline of the traditional feudal monarchy and the invasion of the western powers. With Yunnan province as a study area, this paper concentrates on the generating reasons and operating condition of social structural strains in Yunnan area during the Late Qing Dynasty in the multi-disciplinary perspective. It looks on the mass incidents as a special social phenomenon and studies them by placing them into the changes of social structure during the transformation. By combining the interactive relationship between state and society, it analyzes the Late Qing Government’s measures and organization system which were used to react to different types of mass incidents in Yunnan and the related reaction of all social strata. Also, by setting the boundary of crisis management and providing effective institutional arrangement, it discusses the control effectiveness towards the mass incidents which the regime power within the system had to deal with.After the Opium War, on the one hand, the social structural strains within Yunnan had a direct or indirect contact with the conflicts which were caused by its geographical environment, economic level, ethnic composition, multi-culture and interests appeal, so the occurrence of mass incidents had changes in era significance; On the other hand, the aggravation of the western powers’ competing for economic rights in Yunnan led to the intensity of social protest from Yunnan’s citizens, and the elasticity from the old system and different public interests made the mass social protest become the normalcy in the struggle against aggression in Yunnan area. These can be proved through the quantitative analysis of the distribution of Yunnan’s mass incidents’ time, quantity, area, size, type, ways of carrying out and member attribute during the Late Qing Dynasty. The trends and proportion presented by these figures are helpful to feed back the historical information of the mass incidents in Yunnan province during the Late Qing Dynasty objectively and systematically, and reflect the social characteristics which are diverse and complicated.Seen from the attitude and policy of controlling, with the weakening of the central government’ authority during the Late Qing Dynasty, the resources which were really mobilized and used by the formal state control became limited. In addition, the complex problems of foreign invasion led to the occurrence of a large number of mass incidents, which made the government lack in social resources required to control the frontier area of Yunnan. First of all, when the Qing Government was carrying out its frontier policy, it could not always reach the final balance of policy to maximize the interests of all party groups, after all, the policy itself had the characteristic of non-neutral in generality. Secondly, because the Late Qing Government wanted to cut the cost for it, the emergence of the policy preferences became possible, which resulted in the social phenomenon that the government’s judgment was lacking in justice. So the government’s function as a third-party arbitration was weakened, which made it hard for the effect of carrying out the policy to achieve the expected goal. So, under the influence of the problems they faced at home and abroad and due to the impact of diverse interests, Yunnan’s society in the Late Qing Dynasty was in an unprecedented state of being out of control. Differentiation of the structure and the reconstruction of the order were both shocks for the entire social system of Yunnan province, increasing the difficulty and cost of the government to control the local society.Seen from the organization and operation of the social executing system, there are two systems, including the power control system and the standard control system. The power control system reflects that the Qing Government adopted institutionalized control ways to adjust the relationship between the officials and civilian in Yunnan province and restricted the social behavior of different class groups. The executing agency was the carrier of system rules and shared norms and it could reduce the local government’s risk and responsibility which it should bear to achieve different goals of the state and society. It needed to ensure that the function of the traditional social control mode could be continued in the new historical environment and it also made the newly set agency and extended function put something new into the control of the local society. However, the standard control system shows that the Late Qing Government controlled the values and behaviors of its social members with the help of Informal means, such as ethics, clan rules, social customs and so on. It means that it made use of different kinds of formal or informal social restrictions to urge the people to comply with different structural pressures from the social standard, which was aimed to reduce the social impact of mass incidents on the regional security in Yunnan. In addition, with the four typical cases of mass incidents in Yunnan in the Late Qing Dynasty, Panthay Rebellion, Margary Affair, Langqiong Missionary Case and Recovery of the Seven Cities’ Mine Right Movement, this paper systematically researches the specific operation situation of the Qing government’s control from the micro levels like nation (or politics), diplomacy, religion and economy.In a word, in the modern society of Yunnan, the Late Qing Government was trying to orderly and systematically use its power to adjust the cluster relationship and arrange its strategy, hoping that the practical conditions or direction control brought by the system or the setting of bureaucracy could have a good control effect when dealing with mass incidents. Therefore, for the Late Qing Government, who still could provide power or have the ability to set up some social action system framework, there was a long time to adjust or change the rules of its strategy, the distribution of resources and the thoughts of the people, improve the control efficiency of some executive agencies and system, and create positive effectiveness, thus reducing the social unrest in Yunnan caused by the mass incidents. However, what is needed to point out is that when the existing regime had been too corrupt to maintain the ability to deal with major affairs, the weakened authority and the disappointed public would lead to the collapse of the internal power which the Late Qing Government needed to maintain its rule. With the identity of the power class changing constantly, the cohesion of the government declined obviously, and the differences of its ability to act and control over resource had a substantial influence on the control failure of the Late Qing Government.