Changes Of China’s Primary-level Administrative Organization In The Interaction Of State And Countryside

The primary-level administrative organization is the product that formed in thegame process between state power and rural forces, its operation matters to theintegration of rural social power and penetrability of state power. This article chooses“the interaction between state and countryside” as a breakthrough point, and thenanalyzes the evolution and transformation of China’s primary-level administrativeorganizations in the perspective of Weber’s bureaucracy. In the era of Imperial, due tothe inherent limitations of administrative system, the state was hard to achievecomprehensive countryside control in the interactive process. Qin and Han dynastiesestablished Xiangguan institution—a co-governance of bureaucrat system and eldersclass. This institution had collapsed in middle Tang dynasty, from then on, the Songdynasty finally established Zhiyi institution which forced rich peasants to assume dutiesof governing villages. However, continuous decay became a trend of the villageorganizations since then. The state power of the twentieth century launched new processof reconstructing rural grassroots organizations, but the construction of "top-down" didnot realize the modernization of the primary-level organizations, neither of the late QingDynasty’s "township and village self-government" or the Kuomintang’s two reforms ofcounty system. In the early land reform movement in the People’s Republic of China(PRC), the Chinese Communist Party had mobilized the masses and Organized peasantassociation, reinvented the rural order and eliminated the landlord authority, finallyestablished a set of new rural administrative organizations. In the Later Agricultural Cooperative Movement and the people’s commune period, the primary-leveladministrative organization gradually comprehensively dominated countryside, andachieved the bureaucratization in form or structure. Not long after the disintegration ofthe people’s commune, the model of “countryside politics and village governance” hadshaped, then the operation of township and village organizations turn tobureaucratization in content or functioning. The strengthening of administrative controlhas emerged in countrysides on the Post-Agricultural-Taxes era, and this tendency islikely to evolve into obstacle to the positive interaction between state and countryside.