57Police ControlRural China56as the hsix-ts'e(current registers), was distributed to each pao-difficulties that arosefrom social and political circumstances,Butcheng. At the end of the lunar year the pao-cheng sent it, with properitwas notan entirelyunworkable system.Inlocalities wherecom-entries, to the magistrate, At the same time, a copy of the secondpetent or conscientious officials were able to adapt it to local con-set,known as the huan-ts'e (rotating registers), was given him forditions orto exerciseingenuity in operating it, thepao-chia showedmaking entries during the following year.At any given time one copya degree of effectiveness not observed in other parts of the empire.of one set of these draft registers was in the hands of every pao-In suchinstances local practices always deviated in varying degreescheng, while corresponding copies of the other set were in the ya-from the official regulations.The imperial government, apparentlymenmore interested in getting practical results than in maintaining uni-Successful utilization of the pao-chia in Hunan was claimed for Lu-formity or strict adherenceto law,allowed such deviations and evenfei Ch'lian, governor of the province. It was said that thanks to hisefforts, the pao-chiaof a number of districts became so efficient thatwentsofarastogiveofficial approvalYu Ch'eng-lung,governor of Chihli in the1680's,empioyed the pao-its agents effectively assisted the government in detecting and sup-pressing dangerous hd-fet (secret-society bandits) in 1847.53chia successfully in suppressing the bandits that were previously ram-pant in the province.Huang Liu-hung,a younger contemporary ofT'ao Chu,governorof Anhwei in the 1820's,madean attempttoYi and a magistrate of long experience, Ju Tun-ho, a magistrateextend the pao-chiato special categories of the people.In a memorialServing in Nan-lo Hsien (Chihli) late in the eighteenth century, andof 1825 he reported that he had arranged the p'eng-min (shed people)Wang Hui-tsu, magistrate of Ning-ylian Hsien (Hunan),each in hisof that province into pao-chia, with a p'eng-t'ou (head of the shed)own way achieved success with the pao-chia.Ch'en Hung-mou, anin each grouping serving as a pao-chia agent.s"Thus, for example,eighteenth-century official of renown, extended the usefulness of thepao-chiaby enlisting"beggarkings"aspao-chiaheads to superviseNo.HouseholdsNo.p'eng-t'outhe vagabond households in Kiangsu province, thus bringing undercontrol thosewhose very vagrancy defied registration by the usual17156HsiHsienmethod.The name of Yeh P'ei-sun occupies an especially prominent13232Hsiu-ning Hsienplace in the annals of the pao-chia. While he was provincial treasurer24432Ch'i-men Hsienof Hunan (1781)he devised thehsiln-huan ts'e (rotating registers),110IHsienwhich operated as follows:A set of two registers was prepared foreach pao-chia unit, one of which was placed in the hands of the localThe p'eng-t'ou appear to have been roughly equivalent to the p'ai-t'ouagent while the other was kept in the magistrate's yamen; by peri-in the regular pao-chia arrangement, at least so far as the number ofodically rotating these records, additional entries and correctionshouseholds wasconcerned. Abouttwelveyearslater (1837),whencould be made and official checking could be done without interrup-he was governor-general of Liang-Chiang, T'ao Chu again memori-tion.The imperial government was so pleased with this convenientalized the throne that shed people in several other localities of Anhweidevice that it ordered (1813) all provincial authorities to adopt it.5iwere similarly organized but in a modified and augmented pattern:"ASome of the nineteenth-century local officials could vie with theirp'ai-chwg [p'ai-t'ouof regular pao-chia] was instituted for every tenpredecessors in ingenuity or zeal in operating the pao-chia. The ef-households, a p'eng-chang for every ten p'ai, and a p'eng-t'ou forforts of Liu Heng, magistrate of Pa Hsien (Szechwan), deserve spe-everymountain area.[All these heads] were required to investigatecial mention. In response to the imperial edict of 1814, he set up therobbers and bandits."pao-chiain conformity with the official decimal pattern.He also in-T'ao also undertook to organize inhabitants of villages along thetroduced some refinements of his own.Inaddition to the men-p'aiseacoast of Kiangsu, In a memorial of 1836 he reported:pasted on the door of the household concerned, he instituted a shih-chia p'ai (ten-household card) to be kept by the p'ai-chang (i.e., p'ai-At present all the villages along the coast have been inspected andt'ow, and a card for every hundred households to be kept by the chia-registered. Ten households are made into one chia for which a chia-chag.The pao-cheng were responsible for the compilationof thechangis instituted, As soon as ten chia have been arranged, a tsung.ts'ao-ts'e (draft registers) which formed the basis for the cheng-ts'echia is set up [to supervise them]. If fewer than ten chia are obtained(official registers)to be compiled bythe local yamen.Adopting thein a given place, threeto fivechia are placed undera tsung.rf fewerhsin-huan ts'e system of Yeh p'ei-sun, he required the magistratethan ten households are found in a given neighborhood, or if the house-ofthefirstset,known
Rural China Police Control cial But a。 entries,to the magistrate.At the same time,a copy of the ditions or to exercise ingenuity in operating it, the bao adegreeofetectirenta3aotbeervedinote ent as the han-ts'e(rotating registers),was given during the following year.At any given time one copy In such ins men while chese one y pao- other set were in the ya- atad mit or strict adheren to law,allowed such deviations and even Successful utilization of the pao-chfa in Hunan was claimed for Lu went so far as to give official approval. fel Ch'tan,governor of the province.It was said that thanks to his yu Ch'eng-lung,governor of Chihli in the 1680's,employed the pao efforts,the 0-cia of a number of districts became so efficlent that ccyin suuang ve andt that r roa ent in detect emp (Chihli)late in the elghteenth century.and extend categories of the a me Wang Hul-tsu oagistrate of Ning-yuan Hsien (Hanan),each in his of 1825 he reported that he had arranged then(shed peor own way achieved success with the pao-cla.Ch'en Hung-mou eighte nth-century of renown extende fulness of No.Households No.p'eng-t'or ecially prominent Hsi Hsien 156 17 olace in the annals of the o-chfa.While he was provincial treasurer Hsiu-ning Esien 232 13 of Hunan(1781)he devised the sm 432 which operated follows 10 4 44 additional entries and corrections could be made and official checking could be done without interrup households was concerned.About twelve years later (1837),when tion.The imperial government was ao pleased with this convenie again memori- device that it ordered(1813) es f Anhwe me of th nth-century could were similar d pam-6hogpm2n ono-chig deserve sp g for every ten p'ai. and e cial mention.In r rial edict of 1814,he set up the e7ermou口 o-cain conformity with the official decimal pattern He also in troduced some refine nents of his own. In addition to pasted on the door a p'ai (ten ard fo tby the sible for the compilation of the ag the coast have been in pected and disters)which formed the basis for the chia have boen official registers)to be compiled by the local yamen.Adopting the han ten ckia are obtained t set
58 Rural China Police Control 59 holds are scattered over a wide area,a chang is set up in each neigh- Every ityhohdsnd another on a street borhood. were to establish a chta [palis de],and t was open in Families living permanently in boats were arranged as follows: the daytime but closed at night,'to forestall plundering by wicked Functionaries in the chou and hsien have been charged with the task people whomighttakedvanaof thege Inhabitant after the pattern of the of Nanking were at first grateful to him. be similarly arranged. A few provincial and local officials endeavored to operate the bao- whic chia in post-Taiping times.Ting Jih-ch'ang,one of the enterprising members of the Li Hung-chang group,issued a number of directives over them. to various magistrates of Kiangsu province,where he served as gov- In the same year Yao Ying,a functionary serving in Formos re- ernor in the 1860's.With ostensible earnestness he indicated his de- to evive the chia which he heprovinctal authortes of ukn that the many parts of the province during the rebellion. addad,isapeaiedi Comparable at- Chia-i Hsien were arranged into thirty-five pao and the 1,427 vil- lages of Chang-hua Hsien int o thirteen pointingou that the popu- tempts were made by Pien Pao-ti,governor of Hunan between 1881 lation of these villages varied from under a hundredt several hun He memorialized that hissbordinates weren pao-chia registers y yea the autu n harvest dred persons. in accordance with the old regulations,and that he owed his success Another instance of tryi was affo to the hearty support of the local gentry,in particular to those of parts of the empire Shu-hsir -a Ch'ang-sha and Shan-hua. of Shen-Kan,who memorialized in 1852 that in obedience Ch'ing-pie s late as in the 1890's a magistrate in Hsien (Shensi)made a n his su perialorder he had formulated a set of rules governing the o He pro- and applied them inp practice.5 periors with a view to implementing the local police system. posed that the assistance of the gentry be enlisted to supply leader- A third instance of this sort was found in Kang-tung ien(p where Ho Shao-ch'i,the magistrate,organized in 1844 all the ship in the ranks of the ao-chia ersonnel.Perhaps the most novel idea heoffered was that if any of the households tante,Chinese,Moslemrof houschids n was found to have concealed criminals or committed crimes, the fifty-two chia, with an av Hsia Hsieh recorded two empts at making the pao-chia an in- owas to report the matter to the gentry agent in charge.The strument for suppressing opium smoking and for maintaining order magistrate did not deal with it unless it coud not be handled by the during the Opium War.According to him,Huang Chueh-tzu,a high- gentry leaders. ranki ng central official,sought to put a stop to the opium trade by It appears,then,that local interest in the pao-chia continued in prohibiting opium smoking.He said ina memorial of 1838: arts of the empire long after imperial interest had waned.One possible expl tion is that pao- a operation remained almost to It is humbly begged that governors-general and governors be ordered the very end of the dynasty one of the yardsticks for measuring the to instruct sternly the fi,chos,and hsien officials to make an inspec- service merits of local officials.The system had survived its actual tion of the pao-clia.The local inhabitants should be informed before- sefulnes but as an"antiquated routine"it still possessed a ghost- hand to the effect that at the end of one year every five households in the neighborhoods are to furnish written bonds for one another.If at like legal exis stence and a faded administrativ signif cance. Some the end of the specifled there are still offenders,permission of the favorable reports concerning local pao-chia practice may have exaggerated the results attained,if any results actually were attained. against should be ven and substantial rewards gra the d,if offenders are covered One cannot be sure that ostensible local interest was a true index of local success. dp or c these are fou 04 ccord ng to t w,my,with death,and Even if these reports are taken at face value,provincial and local furnish the bonds punished according to law officials had not followed faithfully the regulations of the pao-chia The other attempt which Hsia noted was made in 1842: form and ter When the foreigners entere Hsi -kuan,Huang Fang-t'ung minology that puzzled many a later writer.As early as the seven- ernor at Nanking,ordered that the pao teenth century(not long after the establishment of the pao-chia),Huang
60 Rural China Police Control 61 e with a chia-pao-Hsiang instead concerning Liu-hung set up a pao so much liberty had been taken tax paymentaithactices of long standing.He pointed out coit dvare hile of the official p'ai-chia-pao pattern. generally that by the end of the eighteenth century the official form hending robbe was mutilated almost beyond recognition in many parts of the em been reverently received turb the pire.As a writer of this period summed up the situation, pao-chia on the pretext of urging tax payment be sev ished. Heng-yang and Ch'ing-chuan have not yet obeyed this In the chou and hsien of the present time,some villages have pao- order and the matter stands uncorrected. chang only,others chic ang,and still others p'ai-chang.Some As Tseng's memorial indicates,the shifting of the li-chia's func- have all these,whereas s have only one of these.Where all superior divisions no longer have tion to the pao- ia tended to prevent the latter from performing its three are present,the heads thoe below,each having acquired independen own proper functions.The imperial government therefore tried for a while to keep the two systems functionally apart by threatening with ferent functions. punishment those "who disturbed the pao-chia."But historical cir- Meanwhile,an even more impor rtant change took place:the assump- cumstances favored such a devel pme and some of the emperors tion of the tax collection function of the li-cla by the pao-chia.We do themselves unintentionally contributed to it. know exactly when this happened,but it is certain that the change At the time when the zi-chia was set up (1648),it was assigned the had taken place in many parts of the empire by the middle of the eight- task of assisting in the compilation of thes'e(the yellow reg- isters),the basis for tax as eenth century. ent and colection.gov- This shift of functionfrom t was partly due to the actions of the imperial goverament.For instance,the Ch'ien-lungem n8saecscRwae8nc peror ordered,in a 1743 edict,the pao-chia in Shansi,Shensi,and simplified with the merging of the(corvee tax on adult males) other "frontier regions"to report per ons "who were behind in their into the A-liang(land tax),a change which payment of land taxes,who committed theft,and those whose places teentcentury and was completed early in the nineteenth.seven thus mak of origin were obscure.Perhaps for the sake of convenience,the ing the task of lf-chia registration less formidable.And when the emperor thus unwittingly threw together functions belonging to two K'ang-hsi emper decided in 1713 to fix the ting tax quota perma- separate systems of imperial control.In other cases the change was nently on the basis of the census returns of 1711(tostop makin ng new due to actions of local officials,without the knowledge or authoriza- assessments thereafter even though the population of the empire later tion of the eported by government The most outstanding instances were an in the middle of the nineteenth century in wed an increase),the compilation of the lichia registers lost much of its significan I the Heng-yang and Ch'ing-ch'uan (Hunan).In a memorial (1854)he said: The practice of compiling quinquennial registers was allowed to continue for a while.It did not take the imperial government long to Investlgation shows that the of Heng-yang Hsien and Ch'ing- see that as the "household and inhabitant"registers compiled after ch'uan Hsien have re been devoting their time exclusively to 1713 theoretically had little nection with evenue system,it collecting the money and aeue was a useless duplication of function to have both the /i-chia and pao- covering bandits.The origin chia compile separate registers.Consequently,the task of compilation fifteenth year [1835]when Sher Hsieh a former magistrate of Heng- was officially taken away from the 4-chia in 1740(Ch'len-lung 5)leav- In so doing he had neither me- ing the pao-chia the sole agent to perform it.A government order od the finance com said: missioner.He simply made the pao-c all the taxes.The magistrate of Ch'ing-ch'uan followed him and did the same thing. Since men-o'ai [door placards]of the pao-clia have been instituted in the chor and asien of the various provinces,on which native in- and transient dwellers are all enumerated,[the population whereas those who are powerful connive with corrupt ya- locality]can ascertained in the se records.正 -1 gs to extort money from them beyond the amount of taxes the y ven r of the is deducted and the number of the in- ttninth moth of Tao-kuang thrtieth habitants is of the latter can readily be re he ordered It ma determined.The governors-gene overtors year [1850]Wu Jo-chun,an imperial censor,memorialized the throne to send in,in the eleventh month each year,reports of the actual
82 Rural China Police Control 63 detriment of the pao-chia as an instrument of police control,The situ- ation in Hunan province reported by Tseng Kuo-fan was not the only Thirty-two years later (1772),the task of revising the hs-k'ou regis- instance disappeared altogether d become by then and pa erye years,aabolished,thereby putting an the rma dict of 1775( 40)the emperor set forth the reason for relying on the pao- hiaaiog dle of the eighteenth century it had become firmly established in many for lu-k'on registration: instrument of rural control,sbouldering oA经 oimclae a important.Each of the A umber of villages.He shares the andomeste ereiter,Frgm to ers It he ma s any slight mistake oris actio,即acr8ar肉 ag eou the pros ce theg an了n of the pa ots to remeds speaking logical products of the historical circumstances.They were nts dictated by convenience.For,while the land tax was ndthe d-inate or the latter s or th the tax payments the quotas of and at ths action did not bring much adult males who had died or had aased the age of tax calltles it remained difficult to keep the i-fang and pao-chia func- be periodically deleted and the names of youths who had me onally apart For instance,a 4-fang agent was instituted (1763)in come of age duly added.The pao-cila registers should have been able each of agea of Tung-kuan Hsien (Shensi)to sup vise the required in as to the number of households and or village;they need not be ac. well as the uon purposes perhaps is ber of districts of yu-lin the nineteenth century.In some loealities in Kwangsi province the t soon found it im -gvirtual山y replaced the pa o-ckia and,somewhat curiously,re- possible to keep the other main function of the li-chia, ed distinct from the B-chia.According to these from being imposed upon the pao-chria.Local officials now had to rely solely on the pao-elfafor information oncerning the number and loca The [hosehoids and mouths]have two different aspects.On