On The Local Bureaucratic Reform In The Late Qing Dynasty

AbstractChina was faced with the transformation from an agricultural, patriarchal society into a modem, industrial one in the early 20th century, when the Qing Dynasty was beset with crises from home and foreign countries. Influenced by the world-wide reform trend, pushed by the realists and the reform party pf the ruling class and pressed by the revolutionary, the Qing Dynasty made a radical policy innovation, that is the New Deal in the Late Qing Dynasty. In the process of carrying out the new policies, the bureaucratic system reform was considered an important part. For a long time, the unreasonably established local institution, the redundant personnel and the lack of assistant officials led to a corrupt official management and the loss of an administration function. Besides, the local authority was powerless, which was unfavorable to the building-up and development of the locality. In the process of planning the local bureaucratic reform, different group and forces began a fierce scramble for power, especially the scramble between the local viceroy and the central government. Finally they reached a compromise.The local bureaucratic reform began first in the Northeast, Zhili and Jiangsu provinces, then spread to the other parts of China. The local viceroys took the charge of the bureaucratic reform, because the central government power was decreasing, while the local viceroy's was expanding. The progress of the spreading of the bureaucratic reform was quite different in the different parts of China.The reform was a failure, and also a success. It was a failure because the Qing government hadn't properly coordinated the various contradictions, which led to the enforcement of the local authority's centrifugal force. It was a success because the reform was the beginning of the modem local administrative system in China, which established the local three-power-division model. Since then, the administrative management inclined to bureaucratization, and the new intellectuals began to have more rights to participate in politics. All these made the local government more modernized.